opusculasedfera | (no subject)

Go read all the Femslash Exchange 20013 fics! There are some super fabulous ones, and also SO MUCH FEMSLASH IN GENERAL. YAY. :D There are like a million fandoms represented, so I strongly encourage checking the whole list out.

In other AO3 news, apparently there's a 'fandoms' page that isn't the works one that lists all the extant character tags and all the associated pairings with each! Which is kind of handy, or at least fascinating to poke at! The hockey one is here, and they're all under ao3.org/fandoms/[fandom tag in question]. Organisation! \o/ Also, I think this could be useful in some way for some kind of rare ships or rare characters fest, but no definite plans yet.

Reading Ben MacIntyre's Double Cross sulkily, because I do want all of this information about WWII spies (there are recently declassified documents! It's very cool!), but I could do without the general impression that the author is secretly very upset that no one turned out to be James Bond. These people did massively impressive things! Stop complaining that they did them while being besotted with a small dog/being unimpressively drunk/giving everything bad pun codenames/talking like real people from the period, including slang that now sounds goofy and uncool! Sigh.

Crossposts: http://biggersandwich.livejournal.com/80312.html

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From:

skygiants

they did them while being besotted with a small dog/being unimpressively drunk/giving everything bad pun codenames/talking like real people from the period, including slang that now sounds goofy and uncool! But this sounds like the best part of the story!

Edited Date: 2013-11-15 12:31 am (UTC)

From:

opusculasedfera

Doesn't it? Particularly if you are, say, writing a popular history book. It's not as if there isn't enough sex and so on happening, it's just happening to people who are uncool, and also who just get shot in the head if they fail, instead of escapably deathtrapped. Which isn't cool either, but is certainly narratively dramatic enough for anyone.

From:

guingel

That "fandoms" page makes me so happy - I always search by character but then I'm never sure if I'm getting everything because some (fiendish) people only tag by pairing. Now I can systematically check everything. :DDD

Awwwwwwww, I love Ben MacIntyre!! I haven't read Double Cross yet, though. But oh my god, it has my boy Garbo right on the cover, I am going to need to get my paws on this ASAP.

I've only read Operation Mincement cover to cover so far, and I really enjoyed it - I love his approach of giving loads of background information and being willing to go sort of wildly off topic to give all the human info about what's going on. And I've started Agent Zig-Zag, but haven't gotten that far into it. Garbo is my love, though, so I will definitely drop what I'm doing right now to read that... I can't believe I haven't already read it, actually - maybe I did and it somehow blurred with all the other spy books I've read, I consumed Garbo-related/Double Cross-related media pretty intensely... oh wait, I was doing this in 2011, I think. Huh, it feels more recent. XD

I'm sorry to hear that he takes a less positive tone in talking about the spies, though! Hopefully my love of them will allow me to sail past any negativity.

From:

opusculasedfera

Isn't it lovely? And so interesting to poke at what pairings someone wrote that you'd never have thought of!

Interesting! WWII isn't my period at all so I don't know much about these individuals; someone recced the book to me is all. It's nice to hear that someone does like the author, gives me hope. I do like that he includes all the extra detail about people's dogs and so forth, I just feel he could be less grumpy about it. He does have a whole mess of new declassified information to work with, so I'm sure this book would be even more appealing to someone who already knows the topic.

From:

guingel

Forgot to respond to this. XDD

Yeah, apart from the fact that modern history isn't so much my thing, it was always really hard to access WWII because my dad's parents are holocaust survivors and that always loomed so large over the whole thing, I couldn't really approach the subject any other way, and it was too hard to focus on what they'd gone through.

But then I somehow randomly ended up wikisurfing all these articles more about the British perspective - I think I started on Winston Churchill's "this was their finest hour" speech and just spiraled completely out of control from there - Battle of Britain, the measures taken to defend Britain in case of an attack on the mainland, and then into the technological battles, which were so, so cool, the radar and all that stuff, which led to the enigma machines and everything, which led to the spies and the double cross stuff - where I stuck around and ended up buying or borrowing loads of books and stuff.

It's so much more... straightforward and heroic, from the British perspective? Which definitely has it's problems, I feel like there's kind of an attitude that all the shitty colonialism horrors they perpetrated were kind of wiped clean by how very much on the side of "good" they were during WWII. But it's still more straightforward than the American side, where there's the horrors of the atomic bombs to deal with, in addition to how late we started.

From the British perspective, and especially when you get into the spies where they were SO much more effective than their opponents, it's easy to just focus on each little topic that interests me and not think about the war as a whole. Plus it's easier to avoid the more horrible parts of the combat itself in the European front than the Pacific front.

... That was a super lot of detail for no reason? But yeah, it totally surprised me that I got so into it, because military history in general has never been a particular interest in mine, and WWII especially was something I avoided as much as I can, but when I started focusing in on the British activity, there was so much interesting stuff going on and I was able to avoid the troubling stuff to a certain extent.

From:

opusculasedfera

Mmm, yeah, I know that feeling. I can't really handle proper military history, all those troop movements and death rolls, but once it starts turning into social/cultural history, I'm a bit more there. Though it is weird, that combination of horrors and cheerful discussions of wartime radio plays and precisely how transit between Britain and the continent was disrupted (surprisingly little! Which I know, but am always freaked out by when reminded.)

From:

guingel

I'm kind of in between the two - you can almost convince yourself that the war was entirely conducted by each side trying to figure out better ways to block the others' radio navigation systems (which I am so, so nerdily into) and sending each other complicated bundles of false information. It's still stuff related to the actual military action, just with no... fighting. Although I also got into various defensive strategies and aerial battles were kind of strewn throughout, but there's still quite a lot of distance from all the particularly horrible parts of war.

And the way Britain has remembered the war in popular culture makes it easier, I think? It's all pluckiness and heroism.

Although I have Thanksgiving with my mom's side of the family, who have been in America for a generation or two longer than my Jewish family/dad's side, and WOW is the discussion around WWII different. I mean for one thing, it exists. But it's all stories of where everyone's dad served and how they survived and it's so American, but for me that narrative has always been such a small part of my personal connection to the war that it's weird to hear it discussed in that way, so normal and typical.

From:

opusculasedfera

Mm, I can see that. My perspective is rather shaped by the fact that I'm not interested in the war per se, but I did study mid/late 19th c. women's/colonial history, which are both subjects where you end up getting into the World Wars because goddamnit there ARE historical continuities, even if the wars were a catalyst for massive social change. So I know all this stuff that's kind of about saying that the wars weren't THAT much of a big deal, which isn't true, precisely, but is for specific topics? I'm not sure that was clear... As an example: people get all excited about postwar legislation about women, right? But a lot of it is precisely what was being agitated for before the war, and there's a good argument to be made that some of it was actually delayed in passing because the war was a convenient excuse for the government to tell pressure groups to wait, because obviously they were so busy, what with the war, etc., etc. So I know that the war was important, but I have this background in saying yes, but not to EVERYTHING.

But then, that's probably easier for me because my family just Doesn't Talk About It, so I don't have an emotional connection to the war at all, even though I know just enough that I know there are personal stories there? (If nothing else, my dad's family were all in England/Wales for the whole thing! But they don't talk about it, though all other kinds of family stories are repeated ad nauseum.)

From:

guingel

Hehehe, that's just what I'm getting up to in Downton Abbey, to be honest! WWI is just ending and they're all like "EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED NOW" and it made me think of this very comment. But yes, definitely even on that show, they were showing the women's rights movements before and then mentioned that it was more that they got shelved during the war. Downton is obviously all focused on the economic situation of these grand estates, and maybe those did change dramatically immediately following the war, but presumably people in cities were less affected? Or rather, everyone was personally affected but there was perhaps less direct economic upheaval for people who were already split from those super traditional systems.

Yeah, my dad's family is pretty Don't Talk About It, obviously... we know some basics and I was able to track down a bit of info about maybe where they were and stuff, but of course it's not something you'd talk about. My grandpa recorded an oral history but no one in my immediate family has been able to watch it. It's hard enough having a non-specific idea of what they might have gone through.

But what I wish I knew more about is their lives before the Holocaust, which they also didn't really talk about - which is understandable, my grandpa in particular lost a lot... and I think we're also not good as a family at that sort of family storytelling, on either side unfortunately, but I would really like to know more! It's hard to ask about these things, though, isn't it? I mean, I was too young to ask my grandparents but I know the feeling of wanting to broach a personal topic!

From:

opusculasedfera

I cannot deal with Downton bc I know the history too well, lol (though, if it doesn't bother you, that's fine! I have been given to understand that it's delightfully soapy!) But yeah, there's a certain amount of social change that just burst upon the oblivious bits of upper class society even though it had been simmering for ages. And the upper class inheritance system was spectacularly shattered by the war, even if the actual impact of e.g. entire poor towns losing all their men in one fell swoop was worse (regiments all recruited in one place were such a great idea....)

Afaik, my family doesn't have stories more tragic than the ones I know (i.e. some of my great-uncles died, as did some of everyone's), we just don't talk about it. Everything else, they're fairly open about, though also quite bad at remembering that the children haven't actually heard ALL the stories, so they'll pop up with some bizarre detail and then be shocked that I didn't know it already, as though I could have pulled it out of the air.

From:

aliceylain

Holy crap, thanks for mentioning the fandoms page on a03! I've got the Doctor Who one pulled up and am gawking at the 10983839905 tags that I didn't know existed. Organization indeed!