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Five sentence prompts: 'Family' and...John Basilone. Supporting cast of your choice. 😁

Supporting cast of my choice, you say, and give me such free reign.. Not what I expected to write, nor any kind of happy direction I initially thought of letting this flow to, but War’s demands come swift and fierce and painful these days. I offer sincere apologies.

His men talk about home in hushed voices, barely rising above the waves, and there is something of nostalgia in the tones of remember when – dad and I used to go fishin’ – mom makes the best – told my sister – wrote to my brother – my eldest kid – my wife my wife my wife that makes him feel more seasick than anything and has him walking the deck at the hours when the whispers don’t sound louder than the water.

It’s not that he doesn’t remember the tight embrace of family, warm in his arms and loud in his ears and so much of everything good, and he’s not some liar who’ll claim not to miss them at all; it’s that he is told to keep them locked tight, alive in his chest but nowhere else, even though he can’t cope with throwing away the key.

“Eyes on the fight, John,” she admonishes, one night, when he’s below deck and huddled in the darkest corner with only her for company, “and nowhere else – didn’t I teach you that” – and there she is, wondering out loud about things that she may not have said, and he’d almost listen to her now – “or are you going to ignore me one more time, at your own peril?”

“The latter,” he says, words cleaving through her scornful laugh like a knife through flesh, “always” – because even she weeps his name to the wind and water in the knowledge she stands to lose him to time and tide in days to come – “because you don’t own me, lady,” and unsaid but not unheard goes the Lena does Lena does Lena does that always makes her furrow her brow, “and I serve you however the hell I see fit.”

He thinks she means to stave off destiny when she warns him to guard his heart – thinks she means to fight it, sometimes, when her eyes go black and her voice cracks with the strain of a god facing mortality – because hers is wide open and already bleeding with his coming sacrifice, knowing as well as he that there is no greater good than this: to die fiercely, as good as he has lived, out of the love he bears this world more than he ever will his god, with his wife’s name singing in his head and his battle won, and to die well.

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have you ever written anything for the pacific? if not, or just if you want to, how did the marine corps react to the news of women paratroopers? and did they ever meet joan warren and the rest of the girl gang?

First question: Yes, a tiny bit! I have The One That Hits You, which is an Andy Haldane/OFC, and one very small Thirsty Thursday bit with Joan, which you can read here. John Basilone does also have a bit part/running joke offscreen in Darkening Sky, and there is another Thirsty Thursday crossover where Eileen joins his warbond tour.

But the second part of your question, Nonnie, is a huge question, and a critical one, and I'll be honest - I really haven't done that part of my worldbuilding homework on it yet!  So thanks for putting me on notice, and we're going to do it now.

In The Darkening Sky, in Chapter 2, Annie Sutton walks through some of the altered history that gets us to this point:

The Army had long since realized that women for the Quartermaster corps and Services of Supply was no great sacrifice of its ideals, especially after the long years of the Depression reminded them that unmarried women are far cheaper than men.

It should be noted, though, that while the Army was slow off the block to accept women for wartime service during The Great War, the Navy, and the Marines, were not.

{extensive notes beneath the cut!}

Josephus Daniels, then the Secretary of the Navy, re-interpreted a line in the 1916 Navy Act and allowed women to serve as non-commissioned officers - with the appropriate (F) appended on their title so they wouldn't be assigned to a ship.  The National World War One Museum reminds me that "While many female recruits performed clerical duties, some worked as truck drivers, mechanics, radio operators, telephone operators, translators, camouflage artists and munition workers. They had the same responsibilities as their male counterparts and received the same pay of $28.75 per month." (GO NAVY!) @tortoisesshells has taken this one step further in the DS universe with  her fic the vessels run to their labors and her OFC Alma Sullivan, who is an LST driver. (Landing Ship, Tank.) I'm also thinking...maybe some Lady Seabees?

The Marines, too, were slightly quicker to accept women for service - in 1918, a study found that 40% of jobs being done by officers could, in fact, be done by women. Called, variously, Skirt Marines, Marinettes, 100% Girls, and Lady Hell Cats (which ...I'm going to have to do something with) we see the fruits of this service in The Pacific with Lena Riggi-Basilone. Historically, the Marines suspended this program at the Armistice, but in the alternate history, it seems pretty likely that, like the Army in Annie's sketch above, they could and would have retained the clerical workers while they gradually moved closer to combat adjacent roles - which is actually what they did post-WWII. The first female Gunnery Sergeant was promoted in 1960, and there's no reason why we couldn't bump that forward a few years.

I'm of two minds on this next bit - are there women in combat in the Pacific? In TDS, when John meets Joan at a dinner in Washington, it's insinuated but never said that he doesn't really see her as a soldier, just another pretty face - but he's been in combat for the last year, whereas she's been at boot camp. On the one hand, the Marines, at least as they're portrayed on TP, does seem to have a slightly more egalitarian feel to it - John addresses Lena as Sergeant and has no problem doing this. These women are an accepted part of the Corps.  This would not be a huge stretch.

On the other hand...this is the Pacific Theater - the theater where one combatant signed but never ratified the Geneva Convention, and thus never really held itself bound by its rules. I can't help wondering if the Marine planners drew that line on their tables of organization and said they couldn't handle that much pearl-clutching from the (very, very racist) mothers and fathers of America worrying about 'the yellow menace.'  Drawing such a line, though, would certainly create some MORE resentment from men who were sent to fight because a woman could do a safe stateside job. And we have a historical precedent for women in the PTO as POWs - Army and Navy Nurses on Corregidor, as well as civilian internees in the Philippines and elsewhere.

So - to return to the original question - what does H Company, sitting in their tents fending off crabs and reading old newspapers, think of the Paragals? I'm going to go with - not impressed. The Marines already have women and have done so for a while, they're nothing special, and furthermore some poor schmuck like them is on one of these godforsaken atolls 'cause a pretty someone in a skirt can type faster than he can. There are some Airborne troops in the Pacific, but the Marines as a service have their own myths and standards of service, and hearing that a couple of girls are jumping out of airplanes while they're literally blasting through coral is ...not going to sound impressive.

(But someone's definitely got an Eileen Hammond pinup in his tent.)

And, last question - do they ever meet the Paragals? Well, we’ve already talked about John, Joan, and Eileen - and I actually have a headcanon that one of The Pacific characters marries a paragal when the war is over, and the only thing I’ll tell you about that is that the woman in question is ... Doris. (Speculate away!)

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Can I ask for a kiss between Dick and Joan out of envy or jealousy please?

Still filling some prompts from earlier this week - this was a good one.

"So, this is one of the famous Walküre." The general had obviously had some thoughts about what his surrender this afternoon was going to look like. He'd dressed for the occasion, his decorations immaculate even if his uniform coat had seen better days - but it was doubtful a woman had factored in at all, and his comment was delivered with an assessing smile. "You know, I think, that we do not allow women into our own army, Leutnant. It is a pleasure to remand it to such a pretty pair of hands." He held out his Luger, offering the handle to the woman in front of him.

Joan, to her great credit, neither rose to his flirtation nor even acknowledged it, and accepted the pistol with a face that would have done a statue proud, turning around and just as quickly passing the gun to Lipton. But the general was still smiling behind his Iron Cross with oak leaves, and it was making Dick angry, to see her thus observed, like a thing to be consumed.

They exchanged salutes, and Joan returned to the group, letting the sergeants take over to herd the formation back to the POW area.

Dick suddenly rose from the front seat of the jeep. "Lieutenant Warren! A word, if you would."

She joined him in the shadow of the airfield's hangar, and no sooner were they out of sight than he had pushed her against the wall to kiss her, his hands cupping her face like a bowl he was going to drink dry.

She pulled away, flushed and smiling. "What was that for?"

"No reason," he managed, trying for evasive and knowing he sounded a little cross, and that a kiss in the middle of the day was fairly wild where he was concerned.

"Dick, are you jealous?"

Well, yes. Yes, he was. He knew he was transparent as anything, but why shouldn't he try and save face about it? "I'm...I'm not jealous. We won, he lost. Why would I be jealous?"

"Because he called me pretty in front of his entire battalion," Joan pointed out quietly.  He couldn't think of anything to say, but his silence, and the fact that he couldn't quite meet Joan's eye, did all the talking for him. "Hey," she said, finally, waiting until he looked up at her. "Come here." She moved his hands to her hips. "You...have nothing to be jealous about. He's going to a crowded camp with cold showers and no privacy and no one to write home to, and at the end of today, you're going home to a hot dinner, and a warm bath, and a woman who loves you." She stroked his fingers, looking down at his belt buckle for a moment. "Maybe you can even have the bath and the woman at the same time," she suggested with a smile, provocative smile, looking up at him from under her eyelashes.

His hands tightened at the idea. "Oh yeah?"

"Mmmm," she said with a smile. "Now kiss me again like you're really angry about something and then let's get out of her before the neighbors start talking."

He was only too pleased to obey.

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A small taster of beer for your Thursday - by the end of the war, even Colonel Sink starts shipping Winters and Warren. He sees they photograph very nicely together; and perhaps sees all those lingering glances, honest smiles, and excuses to talk to each other 😄😏

Bob Sink was tired.

He was tired of casualty lists, tired of accidental deaths. Just today it had been a car accident. Peace was killing more men then the war had.

He found he was looking forward to other sorts of math problems- balancing checkbooks, and paying for groceries, and putting gas in the car. Normal things. Everyday things. He hated to think what the cost of gas was looking like these days, or what it took to keep the kids in shoes and school clothes, or what sorts of crazy, new-fangled things he'd be writing checks for when he got home. But one day, the war had to end, and they'd all go home to wives and homes and college degrees and children they hadn't seen for nearly three years. There would be changes - changes at home, and changes in the men. And change was hard, which was why he was sitting each and every one of his men down, while he could still make them listen, and getting some sense of their future plans - in the hope that he'd be able to intervene before someone thought that driving too fast was the way to live. Wars created warriors - and peace destroyed them.

In front of him now, as it happened, was one man he prayed very much would not be destroyed - Richard Winters had started this thing a mere second lieutenant, and now he was one of the best battalion commanders Sink had had the pleasure of commanding - even if Winters himself didn't seem to think so some days. 

"I heard your request for transfer was denied," he said, merely for the point of making conversation.

The major's gaze was cool, direct - it was one of the things Sink liked about the man. He always had himself under control. "Yes, sir."

"Can't say I agree, but that's the Army. Any idea what you'll do when you go home?

"Captain Nixon's got some ideas about a job at his factory, sir. Resource management. Pay's good."

Sink nodded, resting his folded hands on his blotter. "That's sensible, settling down. Young man like yourself will have possibilities opening up." He tapped his thumbs together. "There a young lady at home?"

For the first time in three years, Sink actually saw Winters blush a little, and look down at his hands. "No sir, there's ...not anyone. At home."

...But maybe there's someone here? Sink thought to himself with an internal smile. I wasn't born yesterday, Winters - and you two might have been good at hiding it when there was a war on but being in love during peacetime's a different kettle of fish.

They'd been quiet about it, his two Easy Company officers, the kind of blink-and-you'll-miss-it shows of affection. (Not like Spiers and that Mitchell woman - and he was married, even!) He couldn't say for sure how long it had been going on, but it seemed...recent, something with the shine still on. A credit to the pair of them that they weren't being more obvious about it, actually. But if you caught them at the right moment, there was genuine affection there - the Sunday to Saturday kind of love that balanced checkbooks and packed lunches for the kids.

He'd realized, recently, listening to all of these interviews, that a man gets to a point in his life where he starts considering his legacy - the things he'd built, helped grow. And he couldn't deny that something in him liked the idea of this ...particular pair. They made a handsome couple, in their class As, the sort of subject photographers love. He knows strategy and she's well-connected - could do well in politics, if he could learn to lie a little better. And everyone will say 'They met in the Army.' Press office would have a field day - send the Army Band to play her up the aisle, no doubt.

"Lieutenant Warren was just in here, before you were,” he said, casually. “She's thinking about staying in - people know her, and the Army can use a spokeswoman, if we're going to keep up appearances." He cleared his throat, watching Winters carefully, and tapped his folded hands on the desk again. "She's a damn fine soldier, and a...a fine woman. Don't expect you'll find too many more like her when you get stateside. Good head on her shoulders."

A flash of affection in his eyes - agreement, even. "She is that, sir."

"Hate to see that kind of woman misused," Sink went on, as if musing aloud. "Certain kind of man would - you hear stories. Be a damn shame." He took a breath, went on. "You've created something special here, Dick, been a part of something that will last, and you should be proud of that."

Dick looked up, wondering what he was talking about. "Sir?"

Let him wonder. "Your officers, your men won't forget it easily - and neither should you."

"Of course, sir."

They talked for a minute more about home, Lancaster and Nixon, New Jersey and the trouble with train schedules, and then he sent the younger man on his way. He watched out his window a moment, Winters fixing his cap before he met Warren in the courtyard, the two of them talking closely. His hand found hers for a moment, stroking the backs of her fingers. They could have been talking about the PTA meeting, or what she’d put in his lunch - or balancing the checkbook.

 You'd better marry that woman before someone else gets a chance in, Dick. They don't wait, you know.

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kruschteln (german) - 'to look for an item in a disorganized pile of stuff' - and for something a little different - for Anne Winters back home in Lancaster! Juno xx

The sunshine lied.

It was bright outside Annie's bedroom windows, but still too cold to be playing in the yard just yet, and anyway, Hattie Talbot and Clara Richardson said they were too old for playdates now, even if their mothers kept organizing them, so instead of dolls or a board game they were sitting in Annie's bedroom reading magazines Clara had brought from home, and Hattie was experimenting at Annie's dressing table with a lipstick she'd borrowed from her older sister's dresser. Annie didn't like the color - it made Hattie look like she was bleeding - and she didn't like the idea of stealing things from other people. (But then, it wasn't like she had a sister, as Hattie had reminded snippily.) They probably should have been doing homework, or something, but neither of the other girls had showed any interest in their math problems, and it was making Annie feel like a terrible 'square.'

They weren't really her friends, but her mother went to book club with theirs, and now with Mrs. Talbot and Mrs. Richardson both working, the Winters house was a convenient place for the girls to go after school, so they called it a playdate and let the girls manage themselves. Annie wasn't sure she liked the arrangement any longer, if she was going to feel out of place in her own bedroom.

"Photoplay says they're thinking about making a movie about Joan Warren and those women in the paratroopers," Clara observed aloud to no one in particular. She was lying on Annie's bed like it was her own while Annie sat, awkwardly, in her desk chair, her wall of clippings behind her.

"My brother knows her," she offered.

Clara looked up from her magazine, disdainful over the top edge. "Does not."

"Does so!" Annie shot back. "He went to boot camp with her and everything. He says she's really nice."

Hattie looked at the two of them in Annie's mirror. "You're making that up."

"I am not!" Annie rose furiously from the floor and practically stomped over to her dresser, fumbling through her top drawer for her brother's letters, pawing past science fair ribbons and report cards and art pieces she'd saved until she found the envelope she was looking for. She pulled out the photo and brandished it under Clara's scrunched nose."

"See? That's Dick - and that's Joan Warren."

Hattie joined them on the bed, the three of them crowded around the small square of photo paper, jostling for a look in. "She looked prettier in Vogue," Hattie said with a sniff.

Annie felt a sudden jolt of defensiveness, thinking about some of the stories her brother had told about boot camp, running those hills and hitting bullseyes and crawling through pig guts. "Well, she's not supposed to look pretty, is she, she's going to fight a war."

"I'm just saying she could try harder," Hattie accused. "Claudette Colbert looked pretty in So Proudly We Hail, and she was supposed to be a prisoner of war."

Clara was still studying the picture. "Do you think they'd put your brother in a movie about her?"

"I don't know. They're just friends. There's lots of officers in the company." Annie took the photo back, holding it carefully by the edges so she wouldn't put a fingerprint on it. Dick, standing at the back of the group because he was tall, looked like he was having the time of his life. "See, your brother does know some 'cool' people," he'd written on the back. She wished she could meet the people in this photo. He didn't talk about most of them very often, just a hint here or there. She missed him.

"They'll need a love interest, if they're making a movie," Clara went on, returning to her magazine, disinterest back on like a mask. "She's probably dating a Roosevelt or something - someone handsome." Like she'd take your crummy brother anyway, her voice seemed to say.

Annie looked back down at the photograph, at Joan's smile in the front row, kneeling next to a shorter man with a gapped smile. She knows what she's worth, Dick had said offhandedly in one of his letters home. She doesn't let other people tell her that.

Annie took a deep breath, remembering the sound of her brother's voice. If she can do it, then I can, too. And, careful as she had come, she slipped the photo back in its envelope and placed it back in the drawer.

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Ooh, could I please request #20 — 'reflections in glass' for Andy and Viv?💛

On nights like this the war seemed far away.

August in New England was hot, the heat settling over streets and houses like one of their marine shelter halves, sending everyone for fans and taller glasses of iced tea. Yes, summers were for drinks with lots of ice, dinners on the back porch after the sun went down, listening to the crickets buzzing out in the lawn as the sun dipped lower on the horizon. The nights were quiet here, but Andy could remember places where it had not been so, when the sunset meant tightening discipline, and not relaxing it. But here, in the backyard of the Arsenault family home, with Vivian and her mother clearing the dishes from dinner and a string of party lights lighting the pergola, the war was far away.

His eyes followed Vivian in the kitchen, Mrs. Arsenault starting to run the sink while her daughter stacked dishes. He felt like an intruder, sitting out here on the grass looking in on this conversation between mother and daughter he probably wasn't supposed to see, like a ...a reflection in the glass, a television set showing him someone else's life. He touched the scar on his stomach. It was supposed to be someone else's life.

The screen door banged, and he looked up - Mr. Arsenault had come back outside, bringing with him a bottle and two café glasses for an after-dinner aperitif.

"Women are inside, now we have a serious drink," he said with a grin, settling the glasses and the bottle down on the table. "Calvados - from Normandie. Strong drink for strong men. Georges brought it home." He sat down and uncorked the bottle, pouring a fingerful of the liquor into each glass. "Santé, Andre."

"Santé," Andy said, raising the glass and sipping, the apple brandy burning a little down his throat.

"You were far away, just then - when I came outside," Mr. Arsenault said with a slight smile, sipping his drink. Andy shrugged. It seemed pointless to deny it. Georges Senior wasn't a solider, himself, but he saw things, like any good foreman would. "I know...you leave a lot of yourself in war," he offered. "I saw it in my father, my friends. Georges, Laure, Vivienne, I know they all...leave things. Terrible things they don't want to tell their papa. I know you do, too, Andre - think about what you did...what you didn't. It makes you human." He took a deep breath, rolling his drink in his hands a little. "Is is easy to sit in the summer and wonder who is not here because you are." He paused, studying his son in law. "But you do good, where you are, here, now. You are good for Vivienne, for Maman, for your students. Is all that matters." He raised his glass.

"What are you all doing out here?" Vivian had returned to the backyard, her mother still standing at the kitchen sink. "Oh, something special, is it? Where were you hiding this?"

"Bah, no," Georges said, batting his oldest daughter away from the bottle. "You want some, you ask your husband, not me."

Vivian looked over at Andy, batting her eyes a little, and he sat back in his chair a little so she could sit on his lap, plucking the glass from his hand and taking an experimental sip, her arm at his shoulders, his arm at her waist. This isn't a reflection, his heart said. This is real.

The night was warm, and his wife was beautiful, and the war was far away.

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Band of Brothers Appreciation Week: Day 3 - One Episode ⇝ Episode 3 - Bastogne

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Happy birthday, @ktredshoes! 💙 I hope the new year of your life will treat you with kindness! And, well, I knew I had to gift you just a little something.. I hope you’ll enjoy my little dip into a very familiar AU, as I visit Hoosier in his foxhole and bring a certain god with me.. 😉

claim

He has learned to fear the quiet.

There’s a long, pregnant sort of pause between one shelling and another. There is a point during all the shooting and running where his ears don’t even ring anymore, but all sound pops out of existence and he’s left with voiceless things instead. There is a moment – short-tempered and ugly and entirely necessary – where he provokes a screamed response out of Leckie just to fill up the void that looms heavy within their shared foxhole.

Night stretches out around him in a language he doesn’t speak, though he’s learned her in many tongues since childhood. He’s learned her silence most of all – the dark that is somehow full, and promising, and kisses the top of his head the way a mother does.

Guadalcanal’s dark feels nothing like midnight from back home.

Keep reading

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It’s @ktredshoes​‘ birthday today, and when I asked her what sort of drabble she wanted, she asked for Hoosier, from The Pacific, and a chance encounter with one of the Girl Gang somewhere. There’s a pretty wide gap between Melbourne and Aldbourne, though, so this is most def post war, and actually features someone I haven’t talked about at all yet - she’s an OFC who should be appearing later this year in a forthcoming ensemble fic from @wexhappyxfew​.

He thought going home would mean he wanted to stay there.

He’d had enough of traveling to last a lifetime, on troop transports and hospital ships, trucks and LCVPs and DUKWs and trains, and he’d thought by the time he made it home it would time for him to rest his feet.

But instead of resting, Hoosier Smith was restless.

There were no beaches in Loogootee, no oceans or waves except for the wind blowing through the cornfields, the endless horizons green and golden growing things, instead of blue water. Now, he was fairly certain he never wanted to see another beach again in his life, never mind another palm tree, crab, or coconut, but he found himself missing all those things - or rather, missing things around them, the friends that were now more dear to him than family.

Keep reading

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Three reasons why this fic happened: Joe, Maggie, and my gods!AU. I’m taking ample liberties with @mercurygray’s TDS universe here and rolling around in the hay of my own universe with these characters real quick, haha. If you’re new here, all you really gotta know is this: I have an AU in which gods walk the earth beside us and designate some of us as their chosen, and beloved Maggie is the OFC I handed to Merc for use in her lovely story The Darkening Sky. 

Enjoy?!

whisper to the wild water

He’s forgotten what it’s like to feel clean.

The past couple of months have been nothing but earth and dust. Piled high all around him and sprawled out from where he walked and slept and stood. Earth and dust, as far as the eye could see. The taste of cobwebs in his mouth, with specks of dirt journeying beneath his fingernails, and something of death to follow it in his lungs.

The snow had been a saving grace. He knows that’s not true for many. Knows that this company is made of all things fire, even now that they no longer carry that sort of god-chosen in their ranks, and that there is something none of them can fathom about the snow.

Joe knows snow. Or, at least, it had proven not really different from water once he’d placed his bare hand in it and focused.

Keep reading

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…The poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place.

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Vintage Pin Curl Setting Patterns | x

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🌹! Please and thank you!

A little shippy snippet here.

And one of the tall, blonde Resistance members was kissing Joan in the middle of the road, kissing her like he'd known her his whole life - and it didn't look like Joan was complaining about it. Her helmet hung, limp, in her hand, awkward where she'd caught it falling off her head, but she was in a different world entirely - and possibly even a different woman besides.

But in that moment, all Dick knew, in a breathtaking, heart-stopping way, was that he didn't like it. "Warren!" he barked, and Joan seemed to wake up, breaking away and shoving her helmet back on her head, all business and precision once more.

[send me a  🌹 and get a WIP snippet - no more, please!]

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Sending you a ⭐ for anything you wanna talk about, and a little director's commentary request for the introduction of one Harry Welsh to TDS..!

Another man appeared at the bar, drink already in hand. “Am I interrupting?”

“No, no,” Dick said, taking his glass with him as he moved over to make room for the newcomer, glad for the interruption. “Just the man. Lieutenant Lewis Nixon, Lieutenant Harry Welsh, just in from OCS - by way of the 82nd,” he couldn’t help adding, trying to make a joke. “And your replacement.”

Welsh was a short bantam of a man, with ruddy hair, freckles, a sort of pugnacious smile that seemed ready to take all comers, a boxer’s lightness on his feet and a habitual jokester look about the eyes. He offered a hand to shake. “Don’t hold it against me, now,” he said with a grin. “Congratulations on your promotion.”

“If you wanna call it that.” Nixon took the offered hand and shook firmly on it. “You'll learn him pretty quickly,” he offered, pointing a chin at Dick. “No flaws, no vices, and no sense of humor.

Chapter 11 of Darkening Sky - Meet Harry Welsh 

Harry is one of my favorite characters in BoB - if he didn't come pre-installed with a girlfriend, he's absolutely the character I would have written an OC for, and I think part of the reason I've never gotten around to writing fic for Band of Brothers before is for this exact reason.

So, Harry's very important to me. And I *love* the way that he's introduced in the show- you immediately get the sense that he's got a sense of humor, that he gets along well with Dick, and that he's prepared to backtalk his commanding officer to men he hasn't actually known for all that long. Also, you have to keep the ‘no flaws’ line - it’s iconic and a huge part of Winters as a character.

But I needed to hide Joan in this scene, because half the fun is having Nix and Winters be surprised when she appears. So instead of the barracks, where it's just the three of them, they meet in the officer's club instead - big crowd, a little bit of music - and I deliberately wrote the person Harry's introducing in gender neutral pronouns and descriptions to hold the suspense.

As first written, the scene ended with Dick's observations about Joan being an ally - but I had this bit with Harry talking about how they met at OCS, and I really wanted to use it. It didn't quite work while she was still in the room, but once she'd left, and these other officers (like Meehan and Speirs, who also needed to be introduced anyway)  were closing down the bar, then Harry could open up and cut lose a little bit, and fill in some of the gaps about what Joan's experience at OCS was like. She wouldn't come out and say 'the deck was stacked against me' - but Harry, who has no filter, would. He's a good expositional character like that.

[directors commentary on a fic!]

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⭐️⭐️⭐️

He was a legend, almost a myth. This was the man who’d fought the Moros and the Mexicans, who’d lead their fathers and uncles into France during the last war, who’d driven his troops into open combat when the British and the French had stuck to their trenches, and who had, ultimately, triumphed over all of it. He had a face that seemed to demand better things of his soldiers, and men stood a little taller as he passed by.

Chapter 8 - Uncle Jack?!

When I first started reading BoB fanfic, I read a couple of 'famous relative' OCs - George Marshall, Bob Sink. World War One is one of my favorite conflicts to talk about, so I decided to take a more roundabout approach with this trope, because John Pershing leaves a huge mark on the men that serve under him and later go on to lead the army in WWII. The story about his wife and daughters dying in a housefire is just...incredibly sad, and I wanted to give Frankie and her girls a second chance, kind of. So that's where Joan comes from.

In the original concept, Joan's cousin Warren was going to come by Toccoa and sort of pull her out of a PT formation to introduce to some friends and that's how everyone found out she's famous. It was kind of an underhanded way to pull out the rug that Joan comes from People, and it lacked ooomph and power. Not only do we, the audience, need to see this moment, but the entire company does, too, to have this moment where they realize that this  woman COULD have done this the easy way and asked for special treatment, and didn't. She was the dirt with them, and that should tell them something about who she is as a person - she doesn’t like taking the easy route.

And it's not just the enlisteds - the rest of the officers need to see it, too, because this them being put on notice, too. Joan Warren has sat through six months of bullshit, and at any moment, she can pull receipts, so you'd better be on your best behavior from this point out.

Joan's already mentioned her uncle a couple of times, that he's career army, that he taught her to shoot, and everyone's already worked out that her family has some power and influence somewhere. The swap between John and the diminutive Jack makes the reveal even more dramatic, especially since this is a man that everyone knows! There are streets named after him! His picture is on walls! He has Very Important Medals And Decorations! 

But to Joan, he's just ...her uncle. The guy who shows up for her and cheers. Which is...essentially what he’s doing here. He came to graduation - but he just...also happened to be the commencement speaker, too.

[directors’ commentary on fanfic!]

[seeking-the-order-in-disorder]

⭐👀 Hope you're enjoying your New Year's Day!<3

It was only natural in this cross section of American womanhood there should be a variety of types, and Eileen and Connie were opposites, the first a city girl from Los Angeles who had aspirations to be an actress, hopeful that wartime service would get her into pictures, and the other a farm girl from Wisconsin who wanted simply ‘to do her part’ and came from a family that could send no sons.

Chapter 1 - The Girl Gang

The first chapter of Darkening Sky...is concept art. I just started writing to see...if it could be done. Honestly, I wasn't expecting to take it past the first chapter - I just wanted to see if I could set the concept up in a way that made sense. If you look in particular at the exchange at the end of the chapter between Nixon and Winters, it doesn't quite fit with what happens in later chapters. (I didn't have Annie Sutton as a character or even an idea until I started writing chapter two, and said '...you know, I need a female officer for these girls.')

I knew that I couldn't start where the show started - it's an iconic open, and no one likes seeing the same scenes rehashed. I needed to establish the sort of social situation around these women joining the army - not good - and introduce a lot of characters in a short space while giving a snapshot of a couple of personalities. So - the barracks. It's a wide shot, and allows for a lot of little vignettes and stage business as the scene moves.

I wanted to start with the camera up on Joan, but I was afraid no one would like her if I did that, so I started with Eileen - whose name was originally Mary, back in May? (I'm so glad I changed that, by the way.)  After I published that first chapter, I was actually really afraid that everyone was going to side with Eileen and hate on Joan, which, thank goodness, has not been the case.

By starting up on Eileen, you get a good sense of her, and, in opposition, a good sense of Joan at the same time. Eileen is fun, Joan is driven, Eileen breaks rules, Joan follows them. And by giving Joan a little monologue after she leaves the barracks, she gets to establish herself as the lead a little and hopefully create some camaraderie with the reader. 

[directors’ commentary on a fanfic!]

[seeking-the-order-in-disorder]

⭐? Please and thank you!

And all Billie wanted, more than she’d ever wanted anything else in her life, was get right back into that airplane and do it again.

She looked around, watching the chutes touch down across the Georgia fields, their occupants gathering them back up so the girls in the packing sheds could see to their reuse. This was it. They had done it! There was Joan, and Pat, Molly and Perconte, June and George, eight, nine, ten, eleven...eleven?

Billie looked around, her eyes suddenly raking the trees. "Where's Eileen?"

From the get-go, I knew that Eileen was going to leave and join the USO. I thought about having the episode with Sobel be her tipping point, but when I got to that part of the story, she...didn't want to give Sobel the satisfaction of leaving knowing that he'd got to her, so I needed a dumb reason for leave - she had to get forced out.

In the first draft, the thing that distracted Eileen during her jump was Sobel, again doing another 'equipment check' - but another sexual harassment episode felt cheap, so I went with something totally out of her control, something that could really force her out - a simple blackout episode. I happen to suffer from occasional syncope, and I'll be honest - writing this chapter was a little triggering for me. Part of managing my syncope (which is triggered by high blood pressure) is avoiding situations where me blacking out would be a problem, and parachuting...is definitely one of those things.

Billie's monologue in Chapter 7 was originally a Thirsty Thursday prompt. I liked it so much I incorporated it into the chapter and then had it bleed into them trying to figure out what happened with Eileen.

[directors commentary on a fanfic!]