I have such a deep fascination and love for the WWI stories, because they're such a strange and different beast, not quite written for children, a blur of antics - of course, antics, the gap between the school room and the squadron mess was too scant - and deeply poignant, brittle, brutal records of trauma, grief, depression, despair, violence and guilt. I can't quite believe they were published as they were. There's something incredibly honest about that strange mix, and I love them a lot for it.
And I'm so fascinated by this gap in canon between these stories, and then bam, everything seems to have sort of shaken out by Cruise of the Condor, and I just can't stop thinking about how do they get from one place to the next. I've said this elsewhere but canonically, at the end of the war, Biggles is a 19 year old orphan with a terrible leg injury, a drinking problem, and quite clear signs of PTSD. He mellows out, slowly, over the years, with some terrible flashes back to it - there's scenes, here and there throughout the books that really get me - but I can't help but think a lot about what that process was of coming home. How can you ever really come home. So as part of this bigger algy feelings fic, this whole long part is going to be that, how bad it gets, and how they come through - because as you said, it's a very narrow path for them both to come through it and still want to be around each other.
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I have such a deep fascination and love for the WWI stories, because they're such a strange and different beast, not quite written for children, a blur of antics - of course, antics, the gap between the school room and the squadron mess was too scant - and deeply poignant, brittle, brutal records of trauma, grief, depression, despair, violence and guilt. I can't quite believe they were published as they were. There's something incredibly honest about that strange mix, and I love them a lot for it.
And I'm so fascinated by this gap in canon between these stories, and then bam, everything seems to have sort of shaken out by Cruise of the Condor, and I just can't stop thinking about how do they get from one place to the next. I've said this elsewhere but canonically, at the end of the war, Biggles is a 19 year old orphan with a terrible leg injury, a drinking problem, and quite clear signs of PTSD. He mellows out, slowly, over the years, with some terrible flashes back to it - there's scenes, here and there throughout the books that really get me - but I can't help but think a lot about what that process was of coming home. How can you ever really come home. So as part of this bigger algy feelings fic, this whole long part is going to be that, how bad it gets, and how they come through - because as you said, it's a very narrow path for them both to come through it and still want to be around each other.