#biggles

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman at NADWCON 2011 (North American Discworld Convention) ❤

Neil: The single worst experience that we went through was, I think, the film. The first go round on the film, where it was bought by very nice people who convinced us they were very nice because we were absolute innocent. And I just remember going up for the first meeting with them.

And we were going up for the meeting, and Terry says, 'Here, come over here.'

I said, 'Okay.'

He said, 'Um, look, I'm not sure about these people, and you're not sure about these people. If this is our first meeting, if they're just completely barking, we should have a code word. And whoever says the code word, we both get up in unison and we leave'.

I said, 'Okay, so we need a code word that neither of us could conceivably say in normal conversation.'

And Terry says, 'Yes.'

I said, 'Okay, what about Biggles?' Now, Biggles, for those of you who don't know, was a famous...

Terry, joking: A famous Cardinal. [Cardinal Biggles in Monthy Python].

Neil: He was. Of course.

Terry: They're young, that's the only one they know.

Neil: Captain W. E. Johns wrote books about Biggles, who was a World War I flying ace who, with his pals Ginger and Algy used to go out and shoot out the evil Germans. So, if any Germans are here, you're not evil, it was just in this book. So. So, I say, 'What about Biggles?'

And Terry is, 'Okay. Biggles it is.'

So we head up for the meeting, and we're sitting there around the table talking to what seemed to be terribly nice, sensible people. And then the executive walks in. And the executive in this case was a woman who looked like she had mugged somebody 20 years younger than her and stolen her hair. And she walked in and she didn't... She said like, 'Hi, Neil. Hi, Terry. It's lovely to meet you both. Now, I'm sure that the guys have been talking to you about your book, Good Omens, and what we're thinking about now. Okay, let me just run some stuff past you. We figure the dynamics of this are the kid, Adam, whatever his name is, Newt, the witchfinder. We see him as, like, maybe being Tom Cruise, young, goodlooking, hunky, but he's looking for the witches. And the witch, Athaneema, I think her name was. Okay, so there's Newt and there's Athaneema'.

And I look at Terry, and I need to actually mime this - I think we should do this together.

.

Fun fact: Neil wrote the 'Athaneema' into the Good Omens series :).

Biggles at the Home Front - The Beginning

Tagged by @hetchdrive! Given my prolific writing ways, this was .... hard. Really hard. Obviously there are many fics I've written that I like and am proud of and reread a lot that aren't on this list. But as far as ones that really stand out to me, I guess we'll start with ...

Tin Soldiers (Agent Carter, Jack/Daniel + ensemble, 37K wds) Technically this is a fusion with the show Almost Human, but you don't really need to know anything about it, and in fact I changed enough that I really didn't borrow anything except a few concepts; it's set in a near future police state dystopia in which human police are paired with subsentient android partners, but some of them have crossed the threshold into true sentience/personhood. I was dealing with some really delicate issues in this, including police brutality and the nature of personhood and consent with someone who has no legal ability to give it, as well as building up the romance arc and some fairly AU character dynamics and worldbuilding and plot, and I'm just really delighted with how it all came together.

Balance of Trust (Captain Marvel, Maria Rambeau + Yon-Rogg, gen, 35K wds) This was written for an exchange (High Adrenaline, formerly known as Heart Attack) that I signed up for because I saw this relationship and thought, "Oh man, I could do something with that." I really did not intend to do 35K of that in two weeks. But this is another one where I'm just incredibly pleased with how the character dynamics worked out, especially since these characters never even met in canon but do actually know about each other. I feel like what I ended up with is very grounded and is kind of a redemption arc while feeling a lot more unusual than just being a straightforward redemption arc, and also builds a very delicate antagonism-to-trust arc between Yon-Rogg and Maria and Monica in a way I was ultimately very happy with. I always meant to write more in this 'verse, but never got around to it.

And Still of a Winter's Night (Ben January Mysteries, 11K, gen) Written for Yuletide, this is for a series with an incredibly distinctive narrative style and a very strong sense of place in 1830s New Orleans with characters who mostly speak French, and given all of that, I really feel happy with how well it came together; I feel like I nailed it, both the narrative style and the fact that this feels like it could be an actual mini-mystery from the books. Plus I had terrific fun with all the costumes and identity porn. The recipient wanted (among other things) Ben's sister Dominique playing a large role, since she rarely gets to in the books and her talents run more towards gossiping and fashion than mystery-solving and derring-do, so I had a lot of fun giving her an important role in solving a mystery while also having at least a little derring-do because you really do need that in this canon.

Shelter on a Foreign Shore (White Collar, 64K, gen w/canon pairings) I genuinely had soooo much trouble figuring out which of my longer White Collar fic to put on this list; I felt that one of them should be here, and The Measure of a Hero (superpowers AU) and The Right Way To Fall (guardian angel AU) were also top contenders. I went with this one because I really liked how the disability plot thread came out and also put a ton of work into the worldbuilding for the AU setting and character relationships - it's a canon-divergent AU in which Peter is badly hurt pre-series (loses an arm), and retires upstate with El. So he only knows Neal as someone he once put in prison, until Neal and all of Neal's various complications show up on his doorstep. This is another one where I felt like the AU relationship-building and the action plot threads and the worldbuilding all fell together really nicely.

Bodyguard (Iron Fist, Colleen & Ward, 29K, gen) So it was actually kind of a toss-up between this bodyguard AU and my Babylon 5 bodyguard AU, The Bodyguard Protocol. I went with this one by a slight margin because, while I'm also very happy with the AU worldbuilding and relationship-building in the other one, it's also mainly riffing off the end of canon, whereas this one goes AU from pre-season-one of Iron Fist and pretty much builds up the Colleen & Ward relationship from scratch, and as you may be getting an idea from my other picks for this list, when I can do that with the word count and handling to sufficiently pull it off, I tend to be really pleased with the results.

And here are 5 bonus runners-up besides those mentioned above:

The Cartography of Feeling (Torchwood gladiator AU with emotion-sharing, Owen & Ianto gen, 20K) - Look, this is pure distilled id and I loved every minute of writing it.

Something Old, Something New (Biggles, forced marriage AU, Biggles/Erich, 22K) - Another of those really iddy concepts that I leaned into full force and had a great time. (It was one hell of a toss-up between this and the werewolf AU, The Pack You Need, but I think this wins once again on complexity and the satisfying relationship arc that I had a lot of fun with.)

Gift (Babylon 5, Londo & G'Kar, season 4 AU, 3K) - Honestly I could've picked a lot of my fic for them on pure id grounds, but I just really loved the concept here and I feel like I could go a lot farther and a lot iddier with it.

Black Water Rising (Agent Carter, gen, 29K) - My first long fic in the fandom, and it did perfectly everything I wanted it to do.

Beads on a String (Black Panther/Falcon & Winter Soldier, Zemo & Ayo, 14K) - Another entry in the AU relationship-building category, in which the War Dogs task Zemo to do jobs for them, and Ayo, his handler, begins to develop more empathy for him than she was expecting.

Space Commander: "But are you sure you can fly our high tech space crafts?" Android loaded with the magnetic tape storage of the brain of 20th century ace pilot James "Biggles" Bigglesworth: "A plane is a plane, old chap. Even in space. Now point me at those boogies."

FBI coordinator: "Infiltrating the mafia will dangerous. They call this guy 'the Cardinal of crime'. Are you sure you can handle him? O.g. Femme fatalle Milady de Winter of the Three Musketeers fame, currently possessing a police officer through means of a cursed piece of jewelry: "Mon cher, you have no idea!"