Fun fact: Though being gay in the 40s sucked, being gay in the military was easier, and pretty common. There were apparently, at one point in time time so many lesbians in the military that when they tried to crack down on it, the girls wrote back and said “Look I can give you the names, but you’ll lose some of your best officers, and half your nurses and secretaries.” And they pretty much shut up about it unless you were especially bad at subtlety. (Source: Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers. A good source for gay history from 1900s onwards.)
Sergeant Phelps worked for General Eisenhower. Four decades after Eisenhower had defeated the Axis powers, Phelps recalled an extraordinary event. One day the general told her, “I’m giving you an order to ferret those lesbians out.’ We’re going to get rid of them.”
“I looked at him and then I looked at his secretary. who was standing next to me, and I said, ‘Well, sir, if the general pleases, sir, I’ll be happy to do this investigation for you. But you have to know that the first name on the list will be mine.’
“And he kind of was taken aback a bit. And then this woman standing next to me said, ‘Sir, if the general pleases, you must be aware that Sergeant Phelps’s name may be second, but mine will be first.’
“Then I looked at him, and I said, ‘Sir, you’re right. They’re lesbians in the WAC battalion. And if the general is prepared to replace all the file clerks, all the section commanders, all of the drivers—every woman in the WAC detachment—and there were about nine hundred and eighty something of us—then I’ll be happy to make the list. But I think the general should be aware that among those women are the most highly decorated women in the war. There have been no cases of illegal pregnancies. There have been no cases of AWOL. There have been no cases of misconduct. And as a matter of fact, every six months since we’ve been here, sir, the general has awarded us a commendation for meritorious service.’
“And he said, ‘Forget the order.’
– The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America
I’ve reblogged this before but it didn’t have these comments and HOLY HOT DAMN DID IT NEED THEM.
So, when someone sits down to write a fiction about Women commandos, and a Dudebro steps in to say “Huh, that is so unrealistic huh.”
Harold… oh, Harold…sit down, shut up, and stay out of our way.
History is infinitely gayer than a lot of people want to admit ❤
The best cover for Bruce Wayne would be dumb carefree playboy who is also Instagram Optimistic, everyday he’s posting a selfie of his smiling at his breakfast with a caption like “it’s a waffle day! #goodvibesingotham #grateful” or a picture of a sunrise with a caption that’s just “wow #blessed”
Bruce Wayne ending up as Gotham’s favoured son because he may be an idiot, but he’s a cheerful idiot, and he donates tons to charity and genuinely loves Gotham and actually, truthfully does put a lot back into the city. And his instagram is a bright ray of sunshine, and honestly there are a lot of people in the city who get surprisingly defensive of their Dumb Carefree Playboy because, okay, sure, every month or so Bruce Wayne falls off a yacht or sleeps with a reporter or whatever. The man clearly never met a healthy coping skill even once in his life.
But as far as news regarding Gotham’s prominent citizens go, Bruce’s ‘scandals’ are so normal that it’s downright refreshing. When a headline has ‘Bruce Wayne’ in the title, you know you’re either going to read some Celebrity Gossip level non-drama, or else something to do with a charity. Maybe he’s been kidnapped again, but that’s only happened a few times. Bruce Wayne news is like the Gotham equivalent to special reports about dogs who rescue their owners from drowning, or raccoons who’ve figured out how to get past the new self-locking garbage can lids.
And there’s something weirdly reassuring about following his twitter. Like, if Bruce Wayne is tweeting about a really neat old tree he just saw, things must at least be sort of alright.
(Meanwhile, Bruce’s social media persona is 100% him flanderizing Clark.)
A Statistics teacher in Gotham makes a graph comparing times when Bruce Wayne goes on long vacations with times Batman gets beaten up really badly by villains to illustrate to his class how correlation does not equal causation.
Well, obviously Bruce Wayne wouldn’t want to be in Gotham when Batman is in recovery and can’t protect the city. Duh!
And that’s how “The Coward Bruce Wayne” became an incredibly popular Gotham meme
I’ve seen some comments of Wonder Woman,
basically on the extent to which it is alternative history, if Wonder Woman’s
involvement in WW1 was hushed up, if it
could be hushed up, if the rumours of a superhuman warrior queen never
spread because the people she saved ended up dying, or if her involvement is
widely known, a historical fact, etc.
And it’s a cool question, and I hope people will
write the same quasi-historical, quasi-journalistic fics about her that they
wrote about Captain America.
At the same time, WW1 mythology was fucking
unbelievable. I’m not an expert, but I worked with someone who was, and I’m not
kidding, very bored but very scared people come up with some exceptionally
weird shit. Contemporary reporting of WW1 was already a mess of understatement
and overstatement. If you want to calm the panic on the home front, you’ll
write about how our soldiers laugh in the face of machine guns, and mustard gas
is just a minor inconvenience. If you want to motivate people, you’ll tell them
the enemy desecrates altars and murder babies for fun. People were told conflicting things about the
confusing terror they experienced.
Partly as a result of this, partly as a result
of shock upon shock, people who were in the middle of it came up with the
weirdest shit, truly. There were tons of stories about stone statues on churches
who came to life, either to protect the inhabitants or to predict the end of
the war. Overall, very many things prophesied the end of the war: spontaneously
breaking glassware, blessed infants who spoke immediately after birth, all
sorts of dreams and visitations. A flying woman with a shield was not the
slightest bit out of place in the trenches. Catholics would probably assume she
was the Blessed Virgin Mary, some Brits would probably say she was Britannia
herself, and after the war was over, nobody would be quite sure if they really
did see her, or if they just really, really needed to see something to give
them the strength to walk out into No Man’s Land.
Started off as a fantasy story/propaganda piece, entitled “The Bowmen” by a writer named Arthur Machen who had written other fantasy/wartime propaganda stories.
This one, however, for whatever reason, took off big time.
People started swearing it was true; “friend of a friend” stories circulated (”My cousin told me that a nurse told her that a soldier invalided home from the trenches saw it all!”) and indeed Machen had a lot of trouble convincing people that no, it was only a story and no, it wasn’t based on any “true happening”.
So a battlefield story of a woman with a shield who couldn’t be killed by German bullets and fought for the British? Completely in keeping with the temper of the times.
You’ve have those who said “This is only a story, just like the Angels of Mons” and those who said “Yes, you mean it’s real and is being hushed up by the government, just like the Angels”.
1. Humans say ‘ow’, even if they haven’t actually been hurt. It’s just a thing they say when they think they might have been hurt, but aren’t sure yet.
2. Humans collect shiny things and decorate their bodies and nests with them. The shinier the better, although each individual has a unique taste for style and colouring
3. Humans are not an aquatic or even amphibious species, but they flock to bodies of water simply to play in it. They can’t even hold their breath all that long; they just love to splash!
4. When night falls and the sky goes dark, humans become drowsy and begin to cocoon themselves in soft, fluffy bedding.
5. Some humans spend time in each other’s nests! Just for fun! It’s not their nest; they’re just visiting each other.
6. Some humans use pigments and dyes to make their bodies flashy and colourful! They even attach shiny dangly bits to their cartalidgous membranes!
7. Humans are very clever, and sometimes adopt creatures from other species into their family units. They don’t seem to notice the obvious differences, and often raise them alongside their own young!
8. If a human sees another creature in distress, they can commonly be observed trying to help! Even at their own risk, most humans are deeply compassionate creatures!
9. If a human hears a particularity catchy sound or tune, it will often mimic it, even to the point of annoying themselves!
10. Sneezes are entirely involuntary, and completely adorable. Especially when the human in question becomes frustrated
11. Humans love treats!!! Some more than others. Many humans will save these treats specifically for a later date when they are in need of comfort or reassurance. IE, pickles, pop tarts, Popsicles, etc
12. They’re learning to travel in space!!! They can’t get very far, but they’re trying!!! So far, they’ve made it to the end of their yard, and have found rocks
this sounds like it was written by a really enthusiastic alien humanologist
