Boneclaw Sister
Ahhh...The inevitable poorly written Digger Fanfic
People deal with shock and grief in weird ways. Okay, that's a bit of a weird statement with which to start a blog-post, and a weirder still one with which to try and sell a Fanfic, but stick with me for a second.
Not wishing to give away the sort of spoilers that get metaphorical bricks lobed through my allegorical window something happened in Digger a short time ago, and this triggered my stress-responce. As you might guess from my career choice, archaeology, when stressed I tend to reach into the past.
In this case this manifested as me writing a Fanfic set in the Digger setting long before the aforementioned shocking event. Unfortunately, being an archaeologist and therefore unable to conceptualize periods of time shorter than decades at all well, and being the sort of Fanfic writer who hates actually writing anything that could openly contradict the established cannon, I set it quite a LONG time before the "present" in the comic.
About two generations, to be precise.
This should have been clear from the title, at least to anyone who is up-to-date on Digger The fiction is set so far before the events of Digger that, hopefully, it will not only not-conflict with the cannon of Digger, but not conflict with any other related worked Ursula may want to do at some point in the future. Only two characters in this Fanfic actually appear in Digger and both of who are pretty elderly by that point. No points for guessing who.
Okay, now for the Disclaimers:
The webcomic Digger is wholly owned by Ursula Vernon and this work is a fan-produced fiction. I do not own the rights to the characters of Boneclaw or Owl-caller, the setting, or anything else featured in this Fanfic. This is a fan-made tribute produced under fair use and is not to be reproduced of circulated for profit by anyone. I hereby surrender any and all claim to ownership of any character, setting or feature featured in this Fanfic (but not to non-fanfic work on this website or references to this or other fanfics), and any opinions expressed are my own and in no-way represent the opinions of Ursula Vernon, who does not support or endorse this fiction in any way (In fact I'd be very surprised if she even knows this exists), and the events depicted should not be construed to constitute cannon in any story-setting of Ursula Vernon or any other individual. Please support the official Digger release.
If you have any problems with the content or style of
this fanfiction, please feel free to contact the
Protectors of the Plot Continuim.
It's also worth stating at this point that I am not as good a writer as Ursula Vernon. Nor am I as good an Anthropologist: although I have attempted to base some elements of this story on anthropologically-derived data, I am an Archaeologist by training. This means I bear about the same relationship to a "real" anthropologist that a Stage Medium bears to a postman. One delivers information of an extant person or groups of persons, trying to let their own opinions and biases get in the way of this duty as little as possible, and the other makes wild, possibly false and almost certainly biased claims and then says they relate in some way to actual information imparted by the dead, and yet somehow still draws huge audiences from doing this, all of whom would probably be slightly distressed to learn of the biases and open guesswork the performer will, if they are honest, freely admit goes into their work. Under these circumstances it's easy to see how the two may slightly resent each other. Anthropologists sometimes see archaeology as too open to manipulation by the archaeologist's own biases, too vague, and too full of speculation. All of this is true, but the same could be said of anything, as archaeologists are keen to point out. In the other direction there is the slight but persistent belief by archaeologists that anthropology is, somehow, too easy. After all, they mutter, you only have to travel half way around the world, slum in, get threatened by the locals, try to learn how to understand and study a culture completely alien to you whilst the same culture, if you realize it or not, studies you, weed out your own bias and try to maintain scientific objectivity despite the fact you're cold and tired and dirty and have no clue what's going on, and then writing it up with bugger-all funding. Easy! The people you're struggling to understand aren't even dead yet!
There is also the problem that as well as being an archaeologist, and therefore a charlatan (at least when it comes to applying for research funding, but who isn't?) there is the fact I'm also male, ands therefore prone to the dreaded "anorak effect". When looking at a strange and wonderful culture carrying out a beautiful and deeply spiritually symbolic ritual, I'm sure that would be what Ursula would focus on. I, however, would be wondering how exactly they made that strange and beautiful idol and would, if I could get away with it, be poking around it, opening it up, taking the ancient ancestral relics out from inside and checking the bones for signs of osteoarthritis and generally focusing on how people do and build things, including beliefs and their own bodies, and not on why. So rather than a love-poem delivered accurately by a postal worker, my writing is closer to a medium channeling the spirit of the most boring person in the universe, who is spending their afterlife cataloging vintage VCR instruction manuals.
That said, apparently I write this crap up in a way
that makes it sound passably interesting, so there you
go.
Link to PDF of the Fanfic, by chapters, below. New
chapters comming at one a week,
hopefully.
Chapter One.
Chapter Two.
Chapter Three.
Chapter Four.
Chapter Five.
Chapter Six.
People deal with shock and grief in weird ways. Okay, that's a bit of a weird statement with which to start a blog-post, and a weirder still one with which to try and sell a Fanfic, but stick with me for a second.
Not wishing to give away the sort of spoilers that get metaphorical bricks lobed through my allegorical window something happened in Digger a short time ago, and this triggered my stress-responce. As you might guess from my career choice, archaeology, when stressed I tend to reach into the past.
In this case this manifested as me writing a Fanfic set in the Digger setting long before the aforementioned shocking event. Unfortunately, being an archaeologist and therefore unable to conceptualize periods of time shorter than decades at all well, and being the sort of Fanfic writer who hates actually writing anything that could openly contradict the established cannon, I set it quite a LONG time before the "present" in the comic.
About two generations, to be precise.
This should have been clear from the title, at least to anyone who is up-to-date on Digger The fiction is set so far before the events of Digger that, hopefully, it will not only not-conflict with the cannon of Digger, but not conflict with any other related worked Ursula may want to do at some point in the future. Only two characters in this Fanfic actually appear in Digger and both of who are pretty elderly by that point. No points for guessing who.
Okay, now for the Disclaimers:
The webcomic Digger is wholly owned by Ursula Vernon and this work is a fan-produced fiction. I do not own the rights to the characters of Boneclaw or Owl-caller, the setting, or anything else featured in this Fanfic. This is a fan-made tribute produced under fair use and is not to be reproduced of circulated for profit by anyone. I hereby surrender any and all claim to ownership of any character, setting or feature featured in this Fanfic (but not to non-fanfic work on this website or references to this or other fanfics), and any opinions expressed are my own and in no-way represent the opinions of Ursula Vernon, who does not support or endorse this fiction in any way (In fact I'd be very surprised if she even knows this exists), and the events depicted should not be construed to constitute cannon in any story-setting of Ursula Vernon or any other individual. Please support the official Digger release.
If you have any problems with the content or style of
this fanfiction, please feel free to contact the
Protectors of the Plot Continuim.
It's also worth stating at this point that I am not as good a writer as Ursula Vernon. Nor am I as good an Anthropologist: although I have attempted to base some elements of this story on anthropologically-derived data, I am an Archaeologist by training. This means I bear about the same relationship to a "real" anthropologist that a Stage Medium bears to a postman. One delivers information of an extant person or groups of persons, trying to let their own opinions and biases get in the way of this duty as little as possible, and the other makes wild, possibly false and almost certainly biased claims and then says they relate in some way to actual information imparted by the dead, and yet somehow still draws huge audiences from doing this, all of whom would probably be slightly distressed to learn of the biases and open guesswork the performer will, if they are honest, freely admit goes into their work. Under these circumstances it's easy to see how the two may slightly resent each other. Anthropologists sometimes see archaeology as too open to manipulation by the archaeologist's own biases, too vague, and too full of speculation. All of this is true, but the same could be said of anything, as archaeologists are keen to point out. In the other direction there is the slight but persistent belief by archaeologists that anthropology is, somehow, too easy. After all, they mutter, you only have to travel half way around the world, slum in, get threatened by the locals, try to learn how to understand and study a culture completely alien to you whilst the same culture, if you realize it or not, studies you, weed out your own bias and try to maintain scientific objectivity despite the fact you're cold and tired and dirty and have no clue what's going on, and then writing it up with bugger-all funding. Easy! The people you're struggling to understand aren't even dead yet!
There is also the problem that as well as being an archaeologist, and therefore a charlatan (at least when it comes to applying for research funding, but who isn't?) there is the fact I'm also male, ands therefore prone to the dreaded "anorak effect". When looking at a strange and wonderful culture carrying out a beautiful and deeply spiritually symbolic ritual, I'm sure that would be what Ursula would focus on. I, however, would be wondering how exactly they made that strange and beautiful idol and would, if I could get away with it, be poking around it, opening it up, taking the ancient ancestral relics out from inside and checking the bones for signs of osteoarthritis and generally focusing on how people do and build things, including beliefs and their own bodies, and not on why. So rather than a love-poem delivered accurately by a postal worker, my writing is closer to a medium channeling the spirit of the most boring person in the universe, who is spending their afterlife cataloging vintage VCR instruction manuals.
That said, apparently I write this crap up in a way
that makes it sound passably interesting, so there you
go.
Link to PDF of the Fanfic, by chapters, below. New
chapters comming at one a week,
hopefully.
Chapter One.
Chapter Two.
Chapter Three.
Chapter Four.
Chapter Five.
Chapter Six.