#leftenantjopson

[oatflatwhite]

Is there any chance you could elaborate on the PhD lit review where you talk about the dear Vera letters? Because I am highly intrigued

HI hello i'm sorry to leave this unanswered for so long!

i wrote the lit review in 2021 and don't have a firm grasp on a lot of the subject matter in there anymore; i dropped out of my phd the following year. i will however just paste the relevant paragraph below!

i was more broadly intending to study religion in the context of australian soldiers of the first world war. an eminent australian historian bill gammage once wrote in his seminal text on anzac, "the average australian soldier was not religious" (despite more than 98% of them being some form of christian because come on, bill, it was 1914) and i wanted to explore and contend this. i looked a little at the pacific and band of brothers as reference points for how religion is handled in a military context from an american point of view, because it is entirely different to the australian context (we aussies for the most part despire evangelicals, wowserism, public displays of faith, and so on, which bleeds into a secular historiography entirely reluctant to take on the topic of christianity lest they be ridiculed by broader academic circles and the public at large). this is where this short discussion of vera as leckie's confessional - something i still stand by! - fit in. i can't really say more than this as a) i don't recall a lot of it off the top of my head and b) i don't want to put all my thesis thoughts out here on tumblr lol. but i hope this is somewhat interesting and what you were after!

[nedlittle]

Other actually good queer historical fiction recs:

- Fingersmith & The Night Watch, both by Sarah Waters

- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

- Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski

- The Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker

- The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst

HOW did i forget kavalier and clay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[radetzkymarch]

Blease tell me your url is a reference to the book because it slaps so hard

(The piece of music is good too though)

It is!

[sea-changed]

Disclaimer that I technically read Scranton’s PhD thesis that total mobilization is adaptare from because that’s all I could find through my library, but I definitely agree with what you said that he’s mad at a canon that doesn’t really reflect history, but at the same time, he doesn’t really spend much time talking about catch 22/sh5/naked and the dead at all. Most of my thoughts right now are that despite how he says he’s focusing on the “trauma hero” until 1975, I feel like he barely touches on the shadow of the Vietnam war, which can be deeply felt in works such as catch 22/sh5 and postwar writing in the 60s-70s as a whole. I also felt that even though I acknowledge you can’t talk about everything in one book, he also overlooks any serious discussion on race and gender, because I feel like you can’t talk about trauma and violence without it. He devotes so much time to doing nitty gritty literary analysis (ex. “The structure of the first stanza of this poem implies x”) that doesn’t really feel necessary with the result of skipping more of the important historical context

There are some parts that I do agree with, but most of those were about the aesthetics of violence and sacrifice, especially re: the bomber war. But I still can’t believe that there’s a line that says “When the American trickster is conscripted as a war hero, he turns the irresistible seductions of consumer capitalism into a weapon of empire” and it’s about Bugs Bunny, not Milo Minderbinder, who isn’t brought up at all

That last part made me laugh out loud, thank you.

(This is all in reference to this post.)

This is interesting, thanks for sharing--this seems to conform more or less to where I saw the book going based on the part of it I read (and, personally, suggests that I indeed would not have gotten a lot out of it, as I predicted). Especially in re: your note about literary analysis--literary analysis is fine and even indeed good! But it seemed like he was going to focus on literary over historical analysis which, when you're making a specifically historical argument in your literature book, may get you in some trouble.

(Not the least of which being of course that our modern idea of "trauma" is itself historically informed in a way that I think makes it difficult to project backwards like this--which is not to say that WWII soldiers didn't get PTSD and that that wasn't processed--or not--personally and culturally, but that you need to engage at least a little with the thing you're writing about didn't exist in the cultural lexicon of the authors and characters you're discussing.)

[bl00dline]

@leftenantjopson tagged me to spell my url with songs! thank you for tagging me, this is one of my favourite things to be tagged for :) i'm going to do the same thing as you and not repeat any bands, but if i tag you you don't need to do the same thing :)

v- vienna by ultravox

i- insight by joy division

c- change by tears for fears

t- two divided by zero by pet shop boys

o- only you by yazoo

r- relax by frankie goes to hollywood

i- if you want by depeche mode

a- a forest by the cure

n- new rose by the damned

c- cuts you up by peter murphy

r- red guitar by david sylvian

y- you've got everything now by the smiths

p- promised you a miracle by simple minds

t- the chauffeur by duran duran

i- in our angelhood by the cocteau twins

d- death or glory by the clash

feel free to do this if you'd like! @cherubina, @nefarious-nightjar, @alfred-st-john, @havves-other-cat

[kafkaesquegf]

Finished catch 22 a few weeks ago and it made me insane so I’m so excited for you to also go insane over it. Also shoutout to the person with the url of “whatsgoodforthesyndicate” hanging out in the notes of a mash post, because that person has good taste in war media

IT'S SO GOOD i somehow never clocked that this book was a comedy in all the many times i had heard of it so i was quite pleasantly surprised!!!

[focsle]

Harry Lloyd as Lawrence is absolutely excellent

Harry Lloyd in Great Expectations has such Lawrence energy…

[6thofapril1917]

So as I was saying, I need a gif set of Paddy’s “at the end of the desert we’ll be walking hand in hand” from episode 3 because it made me feel emotions that don’t exist

FOR REAL it makes me feel shrimp emotions!!!! i think someone’s made one?? but i will tag @cloudyfacewithjam because they’re like. thee sas rogue heroes gifmaker

[goldnnavy]

First impression was cool person who has great taste in boat media

Aw shucks 😊

[the-golden-vanity]

Day 3 of our sailing voyage, somewhere off the coast of Long Island— I had a little friend with me at the helm. He stayed on our mainsail boom long enough to dry his feathers, and then flew off to wherever he was going.

[blue-spectors]

Thank you for the tag @leftenantjopson !💙

Here's my five favorites:

Astarion Ancunín (Baldur's Gate III)

Edward Little (The Terror)

Jack Aubrey (Master and Commander)

Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy (Pride & Prejudice)

Papa Emeritus IV (Ghost)

And I'm going to tag: @mushroomslovesyou @ambivalent-engines @benjhawkins @a-french-guardsman @beggars-opera

Five Comfort Characters

Tagged by @schofielded thank you!

I’m too sleepy to find gifs but I can make a list

Dean Winchester (Supernatural)

Bucky Barnes (MCU)

Eowyn (Lord of the Rings)

Jon Snow (A Song of Ice and Fire)

Thomas Jopson (The Terror, as I am nothing if not predictable)

Tagging: @murderballadeer @cherubina @davidstirlings @blue-spectors

[nedlittle]

3, 22, 13 👀

3. What were your top five books of the year?

a wizard of earthsea by ursula k le guin (review)

a little devil in america: notes in praise of black performance by hanif abdurraqib (review)

good bones by maggie smith (review)

braiding sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants by robin wall kimmerer (no review yet)

take what you can carry by gian sardar (no review yet)

13. What were your least favorite books of the year?

i posted my shitlist earlier and while i think i read more worse books by quality in 2022, i think the worst books of 2023 made me madder in more incomprehensible ways. there are authors on that list who i think i would maul in the street if i'm being honest

22. What’s the longest book you read?

the weight of ink by rachel kadish clocking in at 576 pages! i could do better tbh. review here

[sea-changed]

Can we talk about slaughterhouse five and catch 22 please please please

Always! My thoughts are perennially consumed.

[kafkaesquegf]

SAS rogue heroes aka real life looney toons calling itself desert warfare

SO TRUE. paddy hitting people with pianos. exploding planes with little cloth packages. jumping out of planes. sas rogue heroes is a comedy

[goldnnavy]

Thank you for the tag, @leftenantjopson !!

I'm going to tag: @icarusinfreefall @ambivalent-engines @a-french-guardsman @mushroomslovesyou @beggars-opera @fleur-de-paris @gigamuffin @benjhawkins @pentecostwaite and @hiddenmapleleaf

tagged by @bone-collector-cryptid to make a little fishbowl of my blog with this picrew. ty!!

i'll tag: @kneadingwater @norashelley @leftenantjopson @carmichaelthepolarbear @absolute-nonsense-scribblings @nelson-riddle-me-this @budcortfancam @tennesseewillams and @alfred-st-john

[werewolfetone]

Tagged for 10 people I'd like to know better by @drumlincountry

Last Song: johnnie armstong by steeleye span...

Last Book: wicked by gregory maguire 😃 unexpected new fave I didn't think I would love it as much as I did

Last Movie: alien vs predator last night 💥

Last TV Show: honestly I forgor. maybe it was derry girls? but I was just using it as background while drawing so actually it might have been the hanging gale I don't knowww

Last thing I Googled: active zlibrary link reddit. looking for my next book

Favourite Colour: I do like a nice dark red

Sweet/Savoury/Spicy: savoury

Relationship status: unclear situationship with an irl for over a year.

Looking forward to: reading the book I just downloaded from zlibrary

Current Obsession: yeah I got bit by the polar exploration bug while thinking I was just going to be doing research for an oc's special interest who caressss

Tagging @transrevolutions @bombplot @peigslayers @drinkthemlock @saintjustitude @acrossthewavesoftime @talasem @anarchotolkienist @leftenantjopson @revolutionfairies and honestly the rest of my mutuals consider urselves tagged also even though it only said to do ten