Good Omens and Fanfiction.net

[louiselux]

Last night I did the thing that always has to happen with any new fandom sooner or later: the fanfiction.net trawl. Trawling fanfiction.net, as far as I am concerned is the ultimate act of fannish devotion, or do I mean masochism? Although I have to say that it's far less confusing, layout wise, than places like Fiction Alley.

There are two techniques I use: flogging myself with the author directory, or punishing myself by going through each story individually. I find using the author directory far easier, because that way you're presented with a finite list rather than a swamp of seemingly endless pages to click through.

There are currently 74 authors listed for Good Omens, and 152 stories.

Some things I noticed were:

Good stories that I'd read already, by authors that I liked.

A handful of stories that I hadn't read before, by people I didn't know, and that I liked enough to save.

A lot of stories where Aziraphale is called 'Zira, complete with apostrophe. It's the sort of idea that could work once, maybe. Any more than that and it's annoying.

Stories in which the characters aren't actually Crowley and Aziraphale.

Quite a few stories where they are very, very soppy with each other and mushily in love. See above.

Stories where Aziraphale is described as lean. This gives me visions of Aziraphale going to aerobics, which is not nice. At least no one has him as muscled, because then I'd have to think of him pumping iron, and that would be even more not nice. ::hits brain::

A few intriguing WIPs that I would be interested to see finished.

Quite a lot of stories that hit a sort of middle ground for me; they had good ideas, but presented in a way I didn't like. I was quite willing to read these, just so I can see what people have done with the characters.

There were only a few stories truly bad enough to be unreadable.

Quite a lot of stories where Crowley is all protective over Aziraphale. I like this idea, but only when it's done in a particular way ie, he pretends that he isn't caring at all.

And there were no pwps. *edit*: the NC 17 ban explains that, but I think I can safely say that generally in this fandom there's no graphic stuff. (If there is some lurking out there, please feel free to contradict me). I saw a comment on CA recently that made me smile, about there being no porn in this fandom. There are actually some fantastic GO stories that do have sex in, but not that many of them, and nothing that's really explicit. I don't know why it should be, except that it would all be faintly ridiculous, and a, they're sexless, b, it took them 6000 years to admit even liking each other and c, it's not that easy shifting the light tone of the book into something a bit hot and steamy without coming across a bit Jackie Collins, or worse, Alan Titchmarsh. The horror!

It's the growing affection and dependency between them that interests me most, especially on Crowley's part because you know that he'd hate to admit it. But perversly, I do keep trying to make them have sex, which is a complete turn around for me because I've never been that interested about writing sex before. I'm not entirely sure what it is about these characters that has inspired this sudden change, but it's...interesting.