A Copper's Instinct: Chapter 12
Title: A Copper's Instinct
Fandom: Hot Fuzz
Characters/Pairings: Nicholas/Danny, Nicholas/OC, Doris, Bob, Andes, Saxon, Turners, OC
Rating: PG-15
( Chapter 12 )
Fandom: Hot Fuzz
Characters/Pairings: Nicholas/Danny, Nicholas/OC, Doris, Bob, Andes, Saxon, Turners, OC
Rating: PG-15
( Chapter 12 )
Kinnell's a great character because of that - it's so easy to hate him that it really smacks you upside the head when you realise that he didn't just wake up one morning and decide to be an arse but has a long, nasty history that'd leave anyone off-kilter. I adore characterisation like that exactly because it rattles you by being all about shades of gray where you thought you had simple blacks and whites. A bit like the original ending for I Am Legend, if you've seen it (except that one's reversed, compared to Kinnell and Frank Butterman). Might throw you on the short run since it makes you feel uncomfortable about your own hasty judgments, but that just makes it much more interesting overall.
I've been wading through all your Hot Fuzz fic, by the way - I think Chutney on Toast was the last one I read (I laughed so hard and you wrote about people past their prime and I'm gonna have to read it again yes I'm rambling). I'd love to comment on each one individually as I go, but that'll have to wait until my schedule's a little less frantic. To comment briefly on my overall impressions, I really like all these tangents and "what ifs" that you and waffleguppies play with. Werewolves? Time travel? Soured relationships and documentaries? It sounds pretty out-there, but then I start reading and the atmosphere is just right, the same balance of 'very serious' and 'bloody ridiculous' that the movie struck to such great effect. And you don't overlook detail that would bother me like heck if it was ignored, like the invention of the stab vest, and the bit about sodomy laws and social awareness that could be expected of the contemporaries. Part of me was convinced the differences in public morality were going to be glossed over in Sympathy for the Devil, but they weren't, and then it became a running gag! Needless to say, I was quite smitten with the story after that. And you don't shy away from displays of human stupidity and imperfection, either, which I think is great because it makes the characters more tangible and much easier to relate to. It's far less difficult for me to imagine Nicholas slipping up in an argument and accusing Danny of being like his father than it is to imagine that he never had to deal with the thought, because it didn't pop into his head in the first place. And this stuff has happy endings too, which is marvellous because they feel genuine and struggled for - while reading, I keep thinking there's gotta be some happy waiting at the end, but you've kept me in enough doubt to make sure I wished for it, rather than knew it was coming.
An audio book would be quite brilliant, yes please! PM me about details?
I was oddly partial to Aziraphale in GO, myself. Perhaps it's a bookworm thing, or just that he's actually such a bastard underneath his frumpy exterior. It bothers me endlessly that the book is so hard to find - I'd like to get a translated copy for my nephew (our native language is Finnish and his English is not yet quite good enough for all the wacky Pratchettianisms), but since this is a book that I hear sometimes gets stolen from libraries, I'm not holding my breath.
Now that is an ending. I love that Amy's in it, and the bit with the cameraman made me snicker! It's also awesome that Kinnell gets his second chance, too - you've got something of a propensity for redemption stories, no? (It's great! You make it earned instead of instant-goodness-through-being-sorry, and I like that) That was very neat, thanks for sharing! :)
Can't help but think about how my country would respond, though - I imagine we'd act like we were being all liberal and reasonable and bitch about how the Russians were doing it wrong, while making ourselves look bad in comparison to Danes, the Dutch and others again by going on about how we know about international human rights issues but just don't see the need to apply any measures at home.
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:D Yep, Kinnell goes from annoying Golden Boy Gary Stu to downright evil manipulative bastard to... all that, and someone you feel really sorry for. Really, all he wants in life is a bit of approval. And who wants to watch a villain get an easy out, or try to escape responsibility by killing themselves? (Also an easy, annoying out. It's much more interesting to watch them suffer for it.) I actually started writing fics because of a redemptive villain plot I watched when I was fourteen or fifteen, and I've been writing ever since. I have heard of the Richard Matheson story, although I've never read it, and I'm annoyed that every movie adaptation has always omitted the rightful ending- really annoyed!
I'm a huge fan of stories that reverse your expectations of characters like that- in traditional legend, changelings are something to be driven out. The Moorchild is the first book I've ever read which tells it from the sympathetic changeling's point-of-view. *kind of a dork about Celtic legends*
I'm more of a Crowley fan myself- though if they ever make Good Omens into a movie, Aziraphale absolutely ought to be played by Stephen Fry. Terry Pratchett once said that the best compliment he'd ever gotten was that his books were the 'most-stolen' in shops and libraries.
That's why I was a little worried about the audiobook to be honest- I knew English was a second-or-third language for you, though not precisely from where you hailed- and from knowing a few au pairs, though they could read English perfectly well, often conversation needed to slow down to become understandable, and subtitles were needed on films. I'm glad you're so confident, fluent and well-spoken in your English-speaking abilities (more so than I am at analyzing ideas and themes), and I am mortified of not knowing a single word of Finnish to thank you for your massive, perceptive comments in return. :)
Thank you! Although it probably won't ever be finished, I liked the progression of the three stories- outing to self and partner, attempted blackmail and outing to close friends and colleagues, then outing to whole world and attempting to make the world a better place for others in similar situations. Jeez self, heavy real-life analogy much? (Yes, I love Amy too! And poor cameraman. He was not anticipating anybody being crazy enough to do that on live television, and he's also terrified for potential backlash.)
When I was thinking 'sane European countries', oddly enough, I was thinking Denmark and the Netherlands. I don't know all that much about Finnland, to be honest, but I'm certain you're more reasonable than my country is about anything, where it boils down to gridlocked stubbornness with everyone on both sides having a paranoid 'us-vs-them' complex. I'm pretty sure most werewolves in the face of that would flee to Canada.
I'm not sure I want to contemplate what Russia would do to werewolves, especially during the Soviet years. Brr.
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That's because it's how we start. What if Nicholas was a werewolf? *writes story* What if some agent went after him? *writes story* Life on Mars was fantastic, let's do a back-in-time to the days of the early British Peelers. *writes backbreakingly long epic*
I did a serious amount of research concerning gay people- or rather, people who tended to get caught having sex with other guys, since 'gay' is a modern concept and lesbians were thought to not even exist- in the early 19th century. I love the moment when the little light flashes on in 1834!Danny's head as he puts two and two together. And the way Nicholas refuses to take his stab vest off in the pub made me think that if he were in a place where stab vests didn't exist, he'd bloody well make one. And going back in time without examining the social differences would be such a waste of unexplored territory.
Erin and I like happy endings. There's not much fun for us if we can't dunk our characters in trouble, and then work their way up out of it. But the important part is that they work their way up out of it, not be whisked out of it by the demands of the plot.
I love this paragraph of analyzing why you like our fics- it tells us what we are doing right and how to keep doing it. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
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My English abilities, pffffft. I've definitely got the emphasis on writing and reading skills that you describe, but I'm sort of supposed to know my way around the spoken word by now because I'm sort of a student in English for a little bit. It's my third language, by the way. It's possible that the problem the au pairs had was also due to Finnish tending to be spoken slower in comparison, and the cultural detail that we rarely speak simultaneously. But here's a Finnish word for you: "perkele". It's not exactly on the polite spectrum, but this is required knowledge even for beginners. A solid demonstration can be found here, along with another useful word of almost mythical proportions, "sisu":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xuv9RVss_Y&feature=related
What ifs are great, aren't they? I like to spin them as well, but I have the handicap of often thinking they'd be of little interest to anyone besides myself. The research effort you put in definitely showed throughout the writing. There's no reason why fanfic should be slapdash or couldn't teach the reader something they didn't know before, and it's lovely to see cases where this isn't the case - especially in smaller fandoms where the pickings are already sparse. I think you're doing a smashing job and it's only fair you're let know this! And I loved that "lightbulb moment" too, so much so that I laughed out loud at it. The swan, 1834!Danny with the elephant gun and the conversation that took place while making the vests were other fave moments of mine.
It would've been a nice parallel - Justice and Frisbees trilogy, eh? :D Well, it's good to get a description, if not fic - writing stories isn't always a walk in the park, after all. I'm also a sucker for tales of change for the better (I know what you mean - "look at me, I'm well-adjusted and successful and brave and make all you haters look bad"), and I always want to stash little elements of it into my writing.
> if they ever make Good Omens into a movie, Aziraphale absolutely ought to be played by Stephen Fry.
Oh gods yes. I had to google him, but yes.
I just remembered this - Johanna Sinisalo has a book called Not Before Sundown. Though I cannot, for the life of me, understand why the US edition has the name it has - Troll - A Love Story. It's like calling Romeo and Juliet Tragic Tale of Youth Suicide (cheers, Tim Messenger). The story contains a pretty major reversal of expectations as well, though it'll spoil if I say too much. Wouldn't call it Celtic under any circumstances - the mythology's pretty Finnish - but you might enjoy it.
Danes and the Dutch are kinda famous for their social liberalism and human rights record, no? And I'm less that delighted to tell you that we've got our own us-vs-them paranoids here as well, in addition to the usual cast of smarmy old pervs and their sexual harassment SMSs, toothy poster boys who yoga to relieve the stress of plotting for a takeover, Leftists who mistake double the median national income for the official poverty line, agricultural magnates that hog farming benefits with uncultivated land, Greens with humongous car stickers that say "This, too, could run on natural gas", devotees to the political ostrich defence of Pleading Utter Stupidity, people who respond to every criticism of the system with affirmations about low corruption rate, and the frothing pseudo-Aryan nationalists of doom. But don't get me started on politics, because I will never shut up.
In Soviet Russia, werewolves fear you. *ahem* I'm actually not that sure that Soviet Russia would've been the worst place ever to be a werewolf in. Who knows, they might have even had state-enforced protection and specialised health care as long as they steered clear of kolkhoz poultry and social activism and let party scientists ask them endless questions about sensory perception change. The system was odd like that.
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It's like calling Romeo and Juliet Tragic Tale of Youth Suicide (cheers, Tim Messenger). LOL. Also, holy crap, this looks fantastic.
Werewolves in Russia probably formed a sort of spy network for the government. I'll go a little bit into that in our next fic, which I'll put up in October.
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Ohh, that sounds good. Also now you'll have me compulsively hounding your LJ, waiting for the fic to come out. (I promise I'll be good and real quiet)
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