gattycat

This is too raw and too real, and maybe too close to what Biggles and Algy might actually have been like, had they been real WW1 pilots. black_bentley writes up amazing biographies of pilots, and the ones with the date of death in a period of war, listed as being in their 20’s when they died - it’s so hard to reconcile that with the breezy, boys-own-adventure vibe of the Biggles books, and it almost makes me feel guilty for very much enjoying the Biggles books precisely because that’s what they are. And then your fic is somewhere down the middle of that line, and I’d still be tempted to avoid it because it’s sad in a way that feels inescapable - but everything about the way you write is so captivating and compelling, and every detail is like looking in through a window, and you bring such life to Algy’s desperate cheer and Biggles’ hopeless shattered state and the journalist’s (socliety’s) sharp eyed greed for misery porn and sensationalist ‘have you heard?’ gotcha stories. It makes my heart hurt, not just for Algy and Biggles but for all the boys and men who came back to war like this, and all the ones who came back and didn’t have an Algy or a Biggles or an inherited Mount Street flat.

Algy is also so fortunate that, as it turns out, Biggles recovers enough to be functional and more or less okay; and that Algy’s persistence and loyalty and determination didn’t spur Biggles to turn his back on him completely once he was through his darkest days, needing to close the door on Algy as well if he’s to be able to close the door on that awful chapter of his life.

Anyway, I know this doesn’t sound like a comment by someone who deeply, deeply loved your writing, but it is, I’m just incapable of expressing it! You made me read the kind of story I didn’t think I wanted to read, and it made me feel things and think things, and it was perfectly done in every way <3