More Words, Deeper Hole

Trust me, if you're Australian it makes perfect sense. We are very good at ignoring things.

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voidampersand.livejournal.com

"young adult invasion" — And when did it start? Nobody seems to be fighting it.

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fridgepunk.livejournal.com

With Snape Meets that Asshole Harry Potter, the first of the Severus Snape books.

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avram

Titled When Harry Met Severus in the US.

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lsanderson.livejournal.com

Is available on US Netflix as streaming.

And not bad. They're filming another in the series.

Edited Date: 2012-11-22 06:33 pm (UTC)

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sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)

The books are good if you can get past the absurdity of the geopolitics -- i.e., the US doesn't intervene because we're afraid of another Vietnam, as though helping an unpopular dictatorship fight a civil war is at all comparable to helping an ally repel an invasion by a regular army, to say nothing of the fact that the US Navy and Air Force could cripple the invasion without the need for a single American soldier to set foot in Australia.

The movie, however is ... ugh. There's one point where the heroine almost gets her merry band killed because she and another girl are so busy gossiping about boys that they fail to notice an enemy patrol walking down the road towards their position. Keep in mind, this is the same heroine who, just a few scenes earlier, threatened to execute a guy for getting stoned while on lookout.

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I'm sorry, but I need to explain a bit of Australian sceptisim here. A lot of Australians believe that if we were invaded by a foreign power, the US would only intervene if it was in the best interests of the US. There is historical proof that the US was considering, during the Second World War, leaving Australia defencless and withdrawing back to Hawaii. At the same time, the UK was demanding we supply troops for the Middle East conflict, even if that left Australia vunerable. John Curtin, the Prime Minister at the time, defied Churchill and sent the troops to Papua New Guinea to relive the men fighting the Japanese at Kodada. If he hadn't done so, we may have been invaded. As evidence has later proved, the Japanese High Command was so busy fighting an internal war with itself that they probably would never have managed an invasion.

Also, I have never forgotten the US Ambassador inthe early eighties, being asked (on a TV program about a hypothetical invasion of Australia) if the US would honour the ANZUS treaty. He replied "We would act in America's best interests". Believe me, the US will not save us if they believe that their interests are better served elsewhere.

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dharawal.livejournal.com

Agreed, if you ask most Australians if they think that the US would come to our aid the answer would be, only it made things better for the US, otherwise they would let us sink or swim on our own.

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Yup.

Australian foreign policy is almost 100% "let's suck up to the USA in the hope that they'll bail us out if the shit hits the fan [1]". It used to be the same policy with the British Empire substituted for the USA, but the fall of Singapore put an end to that.

OTOH, everyone with a knowledge of modern history knows that the USA can be relied upon to act purely in its own self interest nearly 100% of the time (just like virtually every other country) [2].

[1] Because we recognise that Australia probably does not have a sufficient population or economic base [3] to defend such a large continent (chock-full of valuable mineral resources, and located in a rather unstable bit of the world) against a competently planned invasion. We can't defend ourselves with the military, so we try to do it with diplomats. The main role of the Australian military is essentially being hired out as mercenaries to the USA in exchange for diplomatic favour.

[2] If defending "freedom" is in alignment with US political and economic interests, then the 101st Airborne is on the way. If it isn't, then if you're lucky they won't show up at all. If you're not lucky, they'll show up on the other side.

[3] For an example of the limitations of Australian military power: there are more people in the USMC _reserve_ then there are in the entire Australian Defence Force.

Edited Date: 2012-11-23 02:57 am (UTC)

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To be fair: THe US has more people than we do. We have the better healthcare* Let's be proud of something

*okay, it's not perfect, but it's better than theirs.

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Which reminds me of a song:

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sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)

There is historical proof that the US was considering, during the Second World War, leaving Australia defencless and withdrawing back to Hawaii.

Yes, that would be at the point where it was unclear whether the US would be able to mount any sort of campaign west of Hawaii, what with the Pacific Fleet getting crippled in a surprise attack and all. You'll note that the US had to abandon a hundred thousand soldiers in the Philippines at the same time. That's a wee bit different from a regional power invading Australia.

As for American interests -- you guys aren't the Grand Duchy of Fenwick; you're a multi-billion dollar trading partner. Your continued existence is in American interests.

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catsidhe.livejournal.com

That contrast actually makes sense, though. She was getting all het up because the guy had made himself incapable of performing guard duty.

She was capable of guard duty, but didn't have the discipline to keep it together. So it was a failing, but it was a failing of a different type and degree, even if the potential consequence was as bad.

Plus there was the tension of setting a high standard, a necessarily high standard, even though she herself found herself lacking when it came to the crunch.

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They are teenagers, folks. That's one of the points of the novels. They are kids dealing with terrible choices, and they stuff up. Sometimes badly, but to say anymore would be to venture into spoiler territory.

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sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)

But the movie assumes the alleged heroine is incapable of realizing she's in the middle of a life-or-death situation and behaving accordingly. That's not behaving like a teenager -- that's being an idiot. Although many people assume the two conditions are indistinguishable, they are not. The kids at Columbine and other similar situations were able to exercise common sense, so I expect fictional characters to do the same.

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chris-gerrib.livejournal.com

Having served in a real military as a 20-something "adult," let me assure you that many stupid things are done by young sailors and soldiers. I include myself in that category.

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cofax7

The books are really very well written--great action/suspense sequences and very strong personal drama & psychological damage. You do have to get past the inherent implausibility of the setup, and while Marsden never identifies the invader, it's clear they're East Asian or South Asian--the most likely candidates appear to be New Guinea or Korea.

He's really not interested in the geopolitics, but in the damage fighting an insurgency does on the insurgents. For what they are, they're very good, and they don't shy away from the uglier sides of the fighting, on all sides.

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Eh? Papua New Guinea doesn't have enough military power (or social cohesion) to conquer anything bigger than a village.

Perhaps you meant Indonesia?

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We are very careful not to say "Indonesia". We want them to take more refugees and stop putting them on to boats to Australia.

When these books were published, Nth Korea wasn't considered a threat....now they have missles. Not terribly good ones, luckily. In Australia, there is an old, old paranioa called "The Red Menace" It is the fear that hoards of Chinese would sweep down and take over the country. Marsden was careful not to idenity a particular country. As Cofax 7 said, his interest was otherwhere. Of course, we no longer fear the Chinese. They buy our minerals, and can probably buy the country out from under us before we'd even notice.

To be trueful, we are a paranoid lot down here. At least the Anglos are.....

If PNG ever gets organised, they may surprise us all.....

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You're speaking to a fellow Ozian, BTW.

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After having watched every episode of "Sea Patrol", I can think of a plausible scenario. The Australian Navy gets invited to a beach party, and then has all their ships stolen by PNG forces while they are busy sensuously slathering sunblock on each other's naked flesh. As none of the crew notice until they sober up the next day, the PNG forces have time to take over the country.

Mind you, it does take them some effort to drag a ship cross-country to that artificial lake in Canberra, so they can properly attack the landlocked naval headquarters with their own ships.

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Hey, in one episode of Sea Patrol, some people from an unnamed island nation nearly took out the pride of the Australian Navy.

Apparently, Australian Navy personnel are so distracted with multiple overlapping romantic entanglements that anyone with a blunt butter knife could take over the whole organization.

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timgueguen.livejournal.com

Who saved the day? The beefy cook guy, or whatever he is? (Yes, I have watched a couple of episodes of the show, but not enough to remember everyone's name or role on the ship.)

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Oh, they all pulled together as a team and learned a valuable lesson about mateship. Plus they got to fire the big gun.

This was in the later episodes, when they got their new ship.

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rfmcdpei.livejournal.com

Decent enough, given the vastly implausible geopolitics.

See

http://www.rsimpson.id.au/books/tomorrow/explore/explore.html

The author's analysis of the implausibility of this invasion is thorough.

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vass

"[An] issue for me was the security of Australia. I have no political barrow to push, and I know next to nothing about our defence and security arrangements, but it amazes me that we never talk about these issues. We fondly imaging that we live in a perfectly safe country, but history suggests that we shouldn't be so complacent. It is a rare country that has gone fifty years without being invaded. The fact that Australia has had such a long run without a direct military threat is as much good luck as good management, but it's not something we can rely on forever"

So he's saying that he knows next to nothing about the issue, but he thinks everyone should be more worried about it, and will therefore write a series of thrillers promoting a sense of vague worry without allowing any facts to interfere? How... responsible.

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mrteufel.livejournal.com

Pretty much no-one came down here to bug the Aborigines for 40,000 years, give or take a lost fisherman. One of the things going for us is a really big moat, plus a backyard big enough to lose an army in.

Edited Date: 2012-11-23 03:04 am (UTC)

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This is quibbling, but there was significant trade (Trepangs etc.) between northern Australia, the Torres Strait islands and New Guinea pre-European settlement.

It's risky, but if you time it right you can cross from Australia to Indonesia in a tinny.

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xiphias.livejournal.com

plus a backyard big enough to lose an army in

Didn't that actually, literally happen in WWII? I remember a story that the Japanese actually DID manage to land a small force in Australia, and nobody noticed until a couple weeks later when a couple Aborigines came into a town for supplies and happened to ask if anyone was planning on doing anything about those guys starving out in the bush over there.

Could be a tall tale, I suppose.

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chris-gerrib.livejournal.com

Not an Ozian, but this site suggests a few scouting parties may have briefly landed but nothing of substance.

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Well, Newfoundland got invaded in 1943 by German troops, who came ashore from a U-boat. They didn't see anybody, so they set up a battery-operated weather station and went back home.

We didn't find out about it until decades later, when a German asked whatever had happened to it. I saw it at the Canadian War Museum, where it's currently on display.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Station_Kurt

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vass

I haven't read them, but nearly every other Australian I know of my age has. He also won awards for a YA book with an extremely Newberry plot: So Much To Tell You, the diary of a girl with an acid-scarred face and selective mutism, and everyone was all over that too.

I met him once, and he seemed like one of those sensitive teacher types who congratulate themselves on how much they understand and empathise with the students, which I found irritating. (You should bear in mind that this was my impression at age eleven or so, and I was not at all a sympathetic observer.)

Also, my father (an academic in a related field) used to rant about how they were connected to earlier potboiler invasion novels, and to a generalised fear of Australia being Overrun By Asians. I never thought to ask him for citations for those those potboilers. I might email him now and ask.

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ethelmay.livejournal.com

I definitely remember hearing Marsden's books being spoken of as having elements of Yellow Peril. Ah, yes: http://farah-sf.blogspot.com/2006/11/yellow-peril-1990s-style-john-marsden.html

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sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)

That summary is a bit dodgy -- for instance, the Asian teen is about as much of a token character as Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, and there's a Shrill Christian Pacifist Girl who repeatedly gives voice to the "Maybe We Deserve This" argument.

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