netgirl_y2k

For the last month or so all my free time has been consumed by football and books. Football for obvious, world cup related reasons; and books because, well, let's be honest, there's a lot of time during football games when not a lot is happening.

So, to get me out of my posting malaise, I'm going to do that seven days of self-promotion meme that's been going around. Um. Yippee.

Day 1. Something Old.

Not Exactly Human (Discworld; Susan Sto Helit/Angua von Uberwald)

Every year since it started (and it started in '04, three mods ago, eek) I've done the annual femslash ficathon. It's probably, actually, a pretty good measure of my changing fandoms, style, and writing ability. I started off writing Harry Potter fic for it, then Buffy, Doctor Who, Merlin, and for the last few years, Game of Thrones.

And looking at my earlier fic in the more technical sense; these days I am much less prone of misspellings and typos, much fonder of the oxford comma, about as likely to skip words on account of my brain being faster than my fingers, and I abuse grammar in different, yet equally incorrect ways (if I scatter enough semi-colons around the place some of them must end up in the correct places, right?)

We're not going all the way back to 2004, because no-one with eyes needs to be subjected to my early attempts at stringing words together. Anyway, five years is ancient history in fandom terms. Fandom years are like dog years.

So in 2009 I wrote a Discworld fic for the exchange. And the thing I think is interesting about Discworld fic, is that if you're going to write it then you have to emulate the style of the books, otherwise what's the point? And I don't think that's true for all fandoms, not even all book fandoms where there is a written source to emulate. Certainly, my ASOIAF fic is nothing like in GRRM's style, because who wants to spend three paragraphs describing some armour or a food laden table. As a matter of fact, the stuff I write in ASOIAF/GoT is probably as close to my original style as anything, if that makes sense. But in Discworld, absolutely, go Pratchett or go home! Which is probably why I've only written two fics in the fandom, and why it is still, I think, a Yuletide sized fandom. Pratchett's style is fun to emulate, if very easy to miss hit. And you get to play with footnotes, which let me get my jokes in without mangling comma usage even more than I usually do. But one of the reasons to wish there was more Discworld fic than there currently is that maybe then we could have a standard way of formatting footnotes in fanfiction.

There are a couple of interesting things about Susan/Angua as a ship; namely Angua being a werewolf, and Susan being Death's granddaughter can be thought of as comparable experiences, what with having one foot in two worlds, and abilities other people don't have however much they may inconvenience you in your day to day life. I really could have done more with that rather than going the cliched quaff alcohol - hook up approach.

There's also Angua's canon relationship with Carrot. And there are a bunch of of different ways to write out a canon love interests, from having the relationship never happen in your AU, to sending them on holiday to Scotland for the duration of the fic, to killing them off. I've noticed that the less I like a canon pairing, the more gently I break them up, and the fairer I am to the "surplus" love interest. It's like a precaution against inadvertent character bashing. And I must confess that I have long been slightly skeeved by the Angua/Carrot relationship. There's an owner/pet vibe to it that I really can't dig. And it doesn't matter that that's been addressed in canon, that it's part of who Angua is, or that Carrot's a good guy who would never take advantage of it. The fact that Angua couldn't, as I recall, leave him even if she wanted to, that what she wants or thinks will always be second to what he wants or thinks bugs me.

I mean, I'm overthinking this, I know. We're talking about a canon where Carrot's only real love rival for his werewolf girlfriend is an actual honest to god wolf called Gavin. Still, it's one of those lizard brain things. So I went out of my way to have Carrot be a good guy, and a good friend, because, you know, he is. I like Carrot. I just don't want Angua with him.

In conclusion, I think it's cute, and funny, and Pratchett-y enough to gloss over the more out of character moments. But better things were to come.