Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 42

[cahn]

Last post, we had (among other things) Danish kings and their favorites; Louis XIV and Philippe d'Orléans; reviews of a very shippy book about Katte, a bad Jacobite novel, and a great book about clothing; a fic about Émilie du Châtelet and Voltaire; and a review of a set of entertaining Youtube history videos about Frederick the Great.

Comments

Re: Your Mission: Composing a Manifesto

[mildred_of_midgard]

I think for my own personal version of this trope I need the assistant to be really good at something besides people skills. Logistics is good! Organization is good!

See, Patroclus is in my headcanon (*someone* has to be, and I *don't* think it's Achilles), but I fully admit I'm not basing that on anything in canon. But I agree with you, it really helps.

Yes! This is the trope I like! Except that the leader doesn't actually have to be mercurial, and I like it better when the leader's not (another reason I don't like Achilles that much).

I know I'm in a minority on this in the 21st century, but Achilles/Patroclus is possibly my favorite ship of all time. And I absolutely love and sympathize with Achilles. And yes, I showed up on the first day of grad school and the professor said something derogatory about Achilles, along the lines of, "I've never met anyone who liked him," and I was like, "WELL NOW YOU HAVE." :PP

I mean, yeah, my teenage self goes "ick" at overt slash shipping, buuuut she knew what she liked ;)

Yeah, even speaking non-shippily, my teenage self had not yet developed whatever preferences I have since developed that mean I would probably have cared about the two of them if I'd encountered them later, or if I were to go back. I did not care about Kirk at all, not even a little bit, and I basically wanted to *be* Spock, but I'm not sure I cared about him as a character in any other sense.

Re: Your Mission: Composing a Manifesto

[selenak]

He, well, I did not care about Kirk, either, back then as a teenager, whereas I did love Spock, but if I wanted to be anyone as a ST-watching and reading teenager, it was Saavik.

Adult me warmed up to Kirk a little bit and could see where all the slash came from but they still never became a pairing I shipped. And I was one of those ST fans in the early 1990s who were definetely replying "Picard!" in the "Kirk or Picard?" debates. My first two ST slash pairings were, accordingly, Picard/Q and Garak/Bashir. Neither of whom work with the Mercurial Genius/Hypercompetent Sidekick trope, so Fritz/Fredersdorf might even be a first in that regard...