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I think the main difference between television show fandom and book fandom is the difference in the amount of available canon. Well, maybe not the main difference. The main difference is how you keep your characters in-character - I will admit I find television fandom easier because I can hear what they're supposed to sound like, not just in terms of voice but in terms of verbal idiosyncracies, what they say and how they say it, etc.
But I digress. One of the differences between the two is amount of available canon. Things like Stargate and M*A*S*H, both with hundreds of episodes, have a hell of a lot of canon. I think it's strange how a fanfic writer really thinks nothing of having seen all the episodes, or having seen most of them - it's just what you do if you're a fan.
But Discworld is an exception to the rule, methinks. It's taken me two months to read most of the canon (I have three books left to read - Eric, Moving Pictures and The Science of Discworld II: The Globe). There's just so much of it, and characters appear and reappear and connect with each other in new ways, so it becomes one series instead of several series-within-series. I think that's the problem in writing Discworld fanfic - what can you write about, when all the gaps are so well filled in canon?
And as well as that, it's hard to write fic about some of the Discworld characters when they're not really characters. I wasn't originally a fan of Rincewind (he's growing on me since The Light Fantastic) because he isn't a real character - he's designed to make everyone feel better. You think your life is an endless, depthless black pit of sucking despair, but even then you can take comfort in the fact that at least you're not Rincewind.
Similarly, the other wizards. Ridcully is a real character, as is Ponder Stibbons (he's Harry Potter grown up!), but the others aren't, not so much. To start with, they don't even have names - they're just the Dean and the Senior Wrangler and the Chair of Indefinite Studies and the Bursar and all the rest of them (I think my favourite is the Professor of Cruel and Egregious Geography) and they seem to serve as the general peanut gallery. Not that I think this is a bad thing - they are unfailingly hilarious. The Bursar's ongoing insanity comes to mind, as do the Dean and his motorcycle.
I forgot the Librarian. But who doesn't love the Librarian?
Which I suppose takes us to the Watch, by way of nothing at all. The Librarian is the missing link - hee.
The Watch books are my favourites, even though they're slightly less funny than the others, because the characters are so.... for lack of a better word... real. Sam Vimes particularly, of course, but also the others. Carrot is such an intriguing character; such an olive leaves and dispensing-justice king, and yet he doesn't want to be king, he wants to be a watchman, and moreover, a watchman with no understanding of metaphors. I like the way this comes up in The Truth as an unsubstantiated rumour, like so many things do in The Truth. I'm re-reading it at the moment, and I didn't realise how much I liked William de Worde as a character. He couldn't be more different from Vimes, which I like for the sake of variety, but more than that I like the way he considers other things to be important. There's Vimes, who wants to arrest everyone, including the gods, for not doing it right, and William, who really does believe the pen is mightier than the sword. His determination not to be Lord de Worde is very interesting, and particularly so because it's subtly going in the background, and is never the focus of the story.
[There is of course the fact he went against his entire family to become a journalist, but that has nothing to do with it at all]
Like The Truth, Night Watch seems to be only peripherally a Watch book. The Watch do appear in it, but so do Ridcully and Ponder Stibbons; they aren't the main focus. But even so, just in general, Night Watch is the best addition to the Watch canon there is. I particularly like the retroactive characterisation of Sam Vimes - young!Vimes, pre-Lady-Sybil, pre-alcoholism, pre-everything, is so different and so plausible. And young!Vetinari - I love him as an adult, but as a teenager, he's even more appealing. It's hard to be sure why Vetinari is so appealing, and for while I thought it was just me, but I'm sure he has other fans, despite the fact he is unscrupulous and absolutely amoral. Maybe it's because he's unscrupulous and absolutely amoral whilst also not being evil. A wonderful combination. And even more wonderful when he's about sixteen, which is the case in Night Watch if my maths is right.
Equally, I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees a whole lot of slashy potential in the image of young!Vetinari with a knife in each hand and a bunch of lilac flowers in his mouth, trying to save Vimes' life. There's definitely a fic in it, if I ever get around to it. Despite![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hathy_col's attempts to tell me otherwise, Vimes and Vetinari are slashy. So much so.
And talking of slash (you knew I would get there in the end), the point of all this. Finally. The point is, I would have said it was only a matter of time before a canon-slash-pairing appeared in a Discworld book. And one did, in Monstrous Regiment, in the shape of Tonker/Lofty. What I particularly liked about it was that if they hadn't been canonically slashed, people would have slashed them.
Which brings the grand total of canon slash pairings I can think of to three. Tonker and Lofty, Willow and Tara (no, I'm not a Buffy fan, but I think everyone knows this) and Balthamos and Baruch.
The end.
But I digress. One of the differences between the two is amount of available canon. Things like Stargate and M*A*S*H, both with hundreds of episodes, have a hell of a lot of canon. I think it's strange how a fanfic writer really thinks nothing of having seen all the episodes, or having seen most of them - it's just what you do if you're a fan.
But Discworld is an exception to the rule, methinks. It's taken me two months to read most of the canon (I have three books left to read - Eric, Moving Pictures and The Science of Discworld II: The Globe). There's just so much of it, and characters appear and reappear and connect with each other in new ways, so it becomes one series instead of several series-within-series. I think that's the problem in writing Discworld fanfic - what can you write about, when all the gaps are so well filled in canon?
And as well as that, it's hard to write fic about some of the Discworld characters when they're not really characters. I wasn't originally a fan of Rincewind (he's growing on me since The Light Fantastic) because he isn't a real character - he's designed to make everyone feel better. You think your life is an endless, depthless black pit of sucking despair, but even then you can take comfort in the fact that at least you're not Rincewind.
Similarly, the other wizards. Ridcully is a real character, as is Ponder Stibbons (he's Harry Potter grown up!), but the others aren't, not so much. To start with, they don't even have names - they're just the Dean and the Senior Wrangler and the Chair of Indefinite Studies and the Bursar and all the rest of them (I think my favourite is the Professor of Cruel and Egregious Geography) and they seem to serve as the general peanut gallery. Not that I think this is a bad thing - they are unfailingly hilarious. The Bursar's ongoing insanity comes to mind, as do the Dean and his motorcycle.
I forgot the Librarian. But who doesn't love the Librarian?
Which I suppose takes us to the Watch, by way of nothing at all. The Librarian is the missing link - hee.
The Watch books are my favourites, even though they're slightly less funny than the others, because the characters are so.... for lack of a better word... real. Sam Vimes particularly, of course, but also the others. Carrot is such an intriguing character; such an olive leaves and dispensing-justice king, and yet he doesn't want to be king, he wants to be a watchman, and moreover, a watchman with no understanding of metaphors. I like the way this comes up in The Truth as an unsubstantiated rumour, like so many things do in The Truth. I'm re-reading it at the moment, and I didn't realise how much I liked William de Worde as a character. He couldn't be more different from Vimes, which I like for the sake of variety, but more than that I like the way he considers other things to be important. There's Vimes, who wants to arrest everyone, including the gods, for not doing it right, and William, who really does believe the pen is mightier than the sword. His determination not to be Lord de Worde is very interesting, and particularly so because it's subtly going in the background, and is never the focus of the story.
[There is of course the fact he went against his entire family to become a journalist, but that has nothing to do with it at all]
Like The Truth, Night Watch seems to be only peripherally a Watch book. The Watch do appear in it, but so do Ridcully and Ponder Stibbons; they aren't the main focus. But even so, just in general, Night Watch is the best addition to the Watch canon there is. I particularly like the retroactive characterisation of Sam Vimes - young!Vimes, pre-Lady-Sybil, pre-alcoholism, pre-everything, is so different and so plausible. And young!Vetinari - I love him as an adult, but as a teenager, he's even more appealing. It's hard to be sure why Vetinari is so appealing, and for while I thought it was just me, but I'm sure he has other fans, despite the fact he is unscrupulous and absolutely amoral. Maybe it's because he's unscrupulous and absolutely amoral whilst also not being evil. A wonderful combination. And even more wonderful when he's about sixteen, which is the case in Night Watch if my maths is right.
Equally, I'm sure I'm not the only one who sees a whole lot of slashy potential in the image of young!Vetinari with a knife in each hand and a bunch of lilac flowers in his mouth, trying to save Vimes' life. There's definitely a fic in it, if I ever get around to it. Despite
hathy_col's attempts to tell me otherwise, Vimes and Vetinari are slashy. So much so.And talking of slash (you knew I would get there in the end), the point of all this. Finally. The point is, I would have said it was only a matter of time before a canon-slash-pairing appeared in a Discworld book. And one did, in Monstrous Regiment, in the shape of Tonker/Lofty. What I particularly liked about it was that if they hadn't been canonically slashed, people would have slashed them.
Which brings the grand total of canon slash pairings I can think of to three. Tonker and Lofty, Willow and Tara (no, I'm not a Buffy fan, but I think everyone knows this) and Balthamos and Baruch.
The end.
