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Contains moderate swearing, some sexual content and allusions, including homosexuality. Attitudes may be expressed about gay characters which reflect the full spectrum of opinion expressed in 2000's Britain,or indeed Australia, and which are almost certainly paralleled anywhere where gay people exist. If you like your humour to be PC, this is not your sort of short story.
Spoilers to the plots of "Maskerade, "Moving Pictures", "The Last Continent" "The Fifth Elephant" and Thud!" As the story deals with Moving Pictures, it has been rated 15. (Patrician's Advisory Classification System).
You have been advised.
This piece of fanfic emerged out of private speculation concerning what one of my favourite Discworld characters, who has starred in only one book, chose to do next. I didn't want to lose him, so I rescued him from the end of Moving Pictures for this "sequel". Call it Moving Pictures II: They're back! Or similar movie cliché.
If anyone is offended or put out by my fleshing out the character of André, from Maskerade, I'm sorry but I can't help that. A friend of mine who is never, ever, wrong about these things gave me a flash of inspiration one day, and after turning her ideas over in my head, I realized she was very probably right. This is what I wrote on the relevant Pratchett and Discworld Wiki discussion page:
Not that it matters (well, not that it matters for the wrong reasons, I hope these are the right ones), but a woman I know, who is a bit of a "fag-hag" by her own admission, gave me back the copy of Maskerade that I'd loaned her and said "I'd bet you anything that André is gay.", and asked if it had ever occured to me on reading the book. It hadn't, but I know her gaydar is never wrong, and on re-reading it, there all manner of things that would make more sense if the character of André were homo rather than heterosexual. That he doesn't write off Agnes because she's a plain and unattractive woman, for instance, and that he actively appreciates being in her company; that he appreciates Christine's style and presence while being able to see further into her than a straight male could (ie, he isn't blinded by her looks), and that he is irresistibly drawn to the iredeemably high-camp world of musicals.
It would also add to the load of random casual cruelty that the world has chosen to dump on Agnes Nitt's head from a very great height, were she to become aware that the only man to take a deeper personal interest in her for some time, one who appreciates her for her intellect and Great Personality, turns out to be the sort of chap who on a night out might head for the Blue Cat Club rather than the Pink PussyCat Club... only to be expected, really, as Agnes also attracted a most unsuitable male in Carpe Jugulum.
As a policeman he'd be an odd-man-out, and therefore natural for undercover work, as in a very real sense he would have been acting an undercover role all his life…
This is just a thought, but reading André as a straight-acting gay does appear to make a lot of sense in the mad world of opera!!!--AgProv 13:07, 27 November 2007 (CET)
Talk:André
So for her thoughts on André, this piece of fanfic has to be dedicated to Pamela J.A.
Enjoy, Pam!
The reader will also note that I fought a mighty inner battle to prevent a key scene between Angua von Überwald and Sally von Humpedink descending into a, hem, different, genre of fanfic. I don't think I'm ready to start writing that sort of slash fiction yet, and in any case I didn't want to give an impression that Sally or Angua are anything other than hetero. There isn't even a subtext justifying any other treatment, although I note Terry Pratchett himself nearly steered them into a naked mud-fight in Thud! (I suspect TP was making a point about the existence of slash fiction there, and having a sly dig at the sort of minds that create it). It is fair to assume that two close girlfriends might be touchy-feely in a strictly non-sexual sense, though, and Sally's sense of mischief might extend to very ostensibly "washing the dog" after she's been rolling in mud…
Where possible I have tried, for preference, to flesh out minor characters who are actually mentioned in the Pratchett canon, although some invention of new ones, such as the two female Troll officers in the Watch, is inevitable. The Blue Cat Club "exists" in Ankh-Morpork, as does its owner Mr Harris. In the canon, only as a footnote used to illustrate the broad-mindedness of Rosie Palm as head of the Seamstresses' Guild: she welcomes Mr Harris not only to Guild membership but also to its council, on the grounds that un-natural acts are only natural.
Pratchett has acknowledged in passing that homosexuality exists on the Disc, like any other phenomena or practice the human race has evolved, and that this is generally accepted. The two city hippopotami, Roderick and Keith, are said to have an arrangement of their own, for instance. And in Maskerade, Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax have a moment of uncharacteristic doubt about the gender of a beautician who has just been working on Granny. As the core value of the Discworld books is tolerance - so many of the books deal with the tragic or even horrific results of what happens when this value is lost - I have treated it in the same way.
A second piece of Discworld fanfic budded out of this story: but as it's not directly relevant, it has been taken off elsewhere. How André Got his Badge Back will probably be my next writing venture.
I see this piece as setting the scene for a longer novel-length adventure involving the characters: I only have vague inklings as yet of where it will go, but Holy Wood may be involved. Look upon this as an extended prologue.
Finally, in keeping with Discworld, I have added footnotes and made sure there are ample potential annotations and sly references. Enjoy!
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