please you guys you have to reblog art and fanfics and gifsets and analysis! likes don't actually boost posts on tumblr, reblogs do!!! support your local artist, writer, and gifset makers!!!!! REBLOG REBLOG REBLOG!!!!!!!!!!!
Do we have a canon AU where John is there with Gale on the Bremen mission and they both go down, then have to first find each other, then be on the run together? I think it would be interesting to see them trying to get out of Germany alive and actually making it. With much angst and love, of course.
Even with the sweat sticking to their body, the smell is so inherently Gale that John almost wants to cry at the idea that he could have lost it forever.
- Unnamed WIP set after the Regensburg Mission
OMG?? Near death experience and cathartic sex after? Can I know more? A snipper, perhaps?
I giggled at this, thank you 🥹❤️
So, actually, the funny thing is I've hit a slump on this WIP because I couldn't decide if I wanted them to go the smut route or not lmao. I feel like lately I've written a lot of smut for them, or at least turned a lot of moments that could be fully fluffy or otherwise into smut moment so I had to take a step back to see if that was me being horny or if it actually fitted the fic 😂 I think that snippet is from a moment where they hug but the undertone definitely is there lol, and y'know, after John takes care of Gale's wounds, Gale wants to clean John's cuts and at that point, he is on John's lap so...
[click for better quality, thx tumblr]
Something about them both being desperate to be one and to feel the other, to know the other's warm and alive and what better way for Gale to make sure that John's alive but to feel John's heartbeat deep inside him?
when i first started looking into wwii records, my main thought was ‘damn really feels like this should be easier??’ i was thinking, given the booming books-about-tanks industry in america, that there would be some kind of massive GI database or a big book saying where every unit was when, etc etc. and there is super not. in my opinion this is the fault of the national archives and records administration, but we don’t have to get into it.
here is a big list of the workarounds and resources i use to find existing primary and secondary source information about wwii, from the level of one individual GI up to units and divisions, as well as general context about the soldier’s experience.
SO YOU WANNA FIND…
…one particular guy
draft cards - every man in the us born between 1877 and 1927 was required, at some point 1940-43, to register for the draft. the registration cards have all kinds of data, including a guy’s birthdate, address, full name, next of kin, employer, and physical description. you can also see their signatures which is nice. digitized by state on familysearch (accesssible w free account). also a collective database on ancestry (paywalled).
enlistment records - these records have some overlap w draft cards, but they include the date and place of enlistment, initial serial number, amount of school completed, and job at the time of enlistment. index on familysearch (accessible w free account)
hospital admission records - transcriptions of army surgeon general records on just about every injury or illness treated in army hospitals during the war, including what kind of injury, how and when it was acquired, and how it was treated. i hesitate to recommend something that's only accessible behind a paywall but these records are SO juicy. on ancestry.
newspapers - if your guy of interest was from a small town, there is a decent chance that some local paper was literally publishing his letters home to his mother throughout the war. newspapers are also a good way to keep track of things like promotions. newspapers.com and newspaperarchive.com are two good repositories, but they’re paywalled. lots of state libraries, historical societies, or university systems will have free historical newspaper databases (here’s california’s.)
census - if you want more info about a guy’s family or life in the states before or after the war, the us census is your go-to. taken every ten years, the latest year currently available to the public is 1950. the 1940 lives here. the 1930 is here. (accessible w free account)
…one particular unit
the org chart - aka the order of battle in the eto. what units were in charge of what other units, who was in command when, what campaigns was everybody part of, etc etc. not juicy, but useful. transcription at the center for military history.
unit histories - the real juicy stuff (where a unit was on each day of the war and what they did) is in the unit histories. the originals are held by nara and can be accessed by paying them for photocopies and waiting five months or by going to college park maryland which i do not recommend. fortunately, an enormous variety of unit histories, morning reports, and after-action reports, primarily for combat units, have been digitized and made full-text searchable on the ike skelton digital research library.
unit yearbooks - lots of units also wrote their own unofficial histories or yearbooks. these can be a treasure trove of weird inside jokes, details about living conditions and day-to-day duties, and old photos. there’s a collection on fold3.org (paywalled) but it’s by no means complete, plenty are available on the internet archive as well.
oral histories - wwii oral histories are scattered wildly across the internet, but the closest thing i’ve found to a central repository is the veterans history project at the library of congress. they have a giant database of oral histories from veterans, which you can search by unit, branch of service, campaign, and geographic area. in a lot of cases you can also stream the original recording, which is great to get a sense of tone and speech patterns.
just plugging the name of the unit into archive.org or google or jstor and seeing what comes up - self explanatory. a good way to find weird little memoirs and dissertations and forums and war department publications.
…general info about the soldier’s experience
technical/field manuals - handy dandy instruction booklets for the soldier, published in the bajillions by the war department. a helpful way to understand how things were supposed to operate during the war. the library of congress has research guides listing the titles of each tm and fm.
the green books - enormous series of books written by the army postwar to analyze their own performance. helpful for understanding how macro-level decision making translated into unit level movements, and answers a lot of questions about logistics. if you are wondering things like ‘where were they getting the bullets from?’ or ‘how did a replacement depot work?’ the answers are probably in these books. index of titles is here, the books themselves are on the internet archive.
film shorts - a librarian on the internet archive has collected, among a ton of other super useful publications and ephemera, over 2,000 wwii era newsreels, cartoons, and training films. they're sick!
the american soldier in wwii project - a modern project out of virginia tech analyzing and transcribing the results of a corpus of surveys given to gis during the war. interesting commentary! just a neat project! also includes a helpful glossary of slang and abbreviations.
life magazine - a good look at how the war was marketed to the american public as it was happening. helpful for understanding pop culture as well. also the ads are often hilarious. full-text searchable on google books.
mizzou prices and wages through the decades libguide - closing on my best best best best best beloved. my legal wife the mizzou prices and wages through the decades libguide. designed to contextualize comparative historical values of money. i would recommend clicking around on it, losing 1-6 hours, and coming back to thank me.
all debates abt the artistic merits of fanfiction fail to recognize the purpose of fic. you don’t write fic to be published or to learn how to construct a narrative although you can use it to develop style. you write it so that your friends will message you “bestie you’re utterly deranged for this one im eating dirt”
If not gay ... THEN WHY EACHOTHER'S NARRATIVE FOIL?🤨 hmmm?? 🤔🤔🤔 WHY THE LIGHT SIDE TO HIS DARK ONE?? WHY CAN'T GO WITHOUT THE CAMERA POINTING AT FACE FOR MILLISECOND WHEN OTHER'S NAME MENTIONED??? why SO MUCH VISIBLE SUBTEXT IN CONTEXT?? 🧐
Moi! I've been posting snippets here. I'm 15k into what I expect to be a 120k minimum project. And I'm loving every second of it.
Here's another snippet, cause why not.
The boys are talking about a replica of the The Kiss by Rodin.
Gale rather liked the sculpture. Its craftsmanship was undeniable, though not as breath-taking as the original. It leaned into the grandiose and the nebulously modern, which clashed with the parkland’s idyllic surroundings and its pastoral ideal.
Caught in its curvature was a peculiar and beguiling rawness, a lyrical debauchery: two lovers, their bodies twisted by unruly desire, sharing an almost kiss moments before disaster.
“They’re the epitome of hiding in plain sight,” Bucky had said once, peering at the entangled figures from the east balcony. “Look at them, it’s like they’re asking to get caught. But they’re so brazen about it, so carelessly casual. No one would dare to call them out.”
“Francesca and her lover were murdered by her husband,” said Gale.
“Good thing I’m not married.”
“Don’t tempt fate,” Gale warned him.
Bucky didn’t respond. Instead, he pulled Gale closer and bit into the tender side of his neck, which was a type of an apology in their books.
Thank you @amiserableseriesofevents @alienoresimagines and @majorbuckyegan for the tag!
Of course, this is from Atonement AU. Did I mention I'm obsessed?
Gale grabbed Marge by the elbow, nudging her off the road. “Speak of the devil, hmm?”
With a timid touch to her sunburnt cheeks, she scurried closer. “Please, will you do the dramatic reading?” she asked, putting her full weight on his arm and lacing their fingers together. “For me.”
Startled, he ripped his hand away. “Don’t do that."
“Why?” She pouted, but took a step back, holding her fist to her chest as if nursing a burn.
There was no time for explanations. The car, honking thrice, came to a screeching halt at their side, gravel spurting from beneath the wheels.
“Marge, look at you!” Helen called from the passenger seat, rolling down the windows. “You’ve grown at least two inches since April, I swear. Did you miss me?”
No context spoiler:
Tagging @middlingmay @kaaaaaaarf @sleepr-agent420 and @whirlpool-blogs <3
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