The Only One? Or the first one?
It's like this.
The moment of dread for any fanfic writer engaged in fleshing out the author's one-shot, underdeveloped or placeholder characters, is when new canonical information emerges about that character that all of a sudden renders their speculative fiction about that character fallacious or just plain wrong.
I've just hit that wall, and it's painful.
I went "ouch" and had an infra-black moment. Especially when I realised the information about that character had been out there in the public domain all along – I just never had access to it. The thing is, Terry Pratchett does an annual diary in the Discworld style that carries extra information about the Discworld that you don't get in the novels. Because it's by Pratchett and it's about the Discworld you have to accept it as Word of God – canonical. And the thing abut the annual Yearbook is that by its very nature, it's ephemeral. They don't get reprinted, the people who bought them seem to hang on to them, and you never see them up for sale on Ebay or in second-hand bookshops. And not everything in them makes it into the Discworld Companions, I have now realised.
I did not buy a copy of the Assassins' Guild Yearbook (Discworld Diary 2003) as I naively dismissed it as a Christmas cash-in with no real additional value. Well, to be honest, I was hoping that as it was billed as a 2003 diary, all I need do was wait till February and it would be remaindered at less than half its December cover price, as diaries tend to be. (But not those with Terry Pratchett's name on the cover, I discovered).
So I missed the additional information about one of my favourite characters, Madame Emmanuelle-Marie Lapoignard les Deux-Épées, which has been hiding in plain sight – until I got to locate additional extracts and quotes from the Yearbook in lost corners of the Internet.
Apparently she….
Well, read on. This is a new Emmanuelle story which is now in keeping with her canonical bio, such as is known of it. It also means I need to go back and rewrite The Graduation Class to get it to conform. Bugger. But it will be a better story for it.
This tale blends the Pessimal and the Pratchett versions. Enjoy.
Perhaps thirty years ago (she is fashionably vague on trifling matters such as age), in the Quartiere Quirmienne of the ancient city of Quirm, the swordsmith and armourer Réné-Artaud Les Deux-Épées and his wife were blessed by the birth of a daughter. Little Emmanuelle-Marie was a girl with a captivating character, and a keen intelligence that made her curious about all aspects of running the family business. Knowing he couldn't drive her out of the forge and the workshop for very long, and that she interpreted the admonishment "this is not a place for little girls" as if she herself were excluded, Réné-Artaud sighed a deeply philosophical sigh and at least ensured she stood a safe distance away from the forge while he handled the raw Toledan steel that was the foundation of his fame. He also made sure, as he taught his apprentices, that his daughter was wholly included in his teaching. Ma foi, he could do nothing else. It wasn't exactly as he'd planned it, but if the child was going to spend her free time hanging around the workshop, she might as well be educated properly while she was about it.
He had considered sending her as a day pupil to the prestigious and nearby Quirm Academy for Young Ladies, as after all, the business was prospering, he could afford it, and sword-smithing was not an occupation for young girls, when all was said and done. Indeed, she was clever enough to pass the entrance exam with quite a high mark - both Miss Delcross and Miss Butts seriously considered taking her as a scholarship pupil. (Ironically, had he succeeded in placing her there, Emmanuelle would have met Alice Band a lot sooner than she did, as at this time, Alice was a QAYL pupil.) But he was dissauded, and, with limited places, she was turned down, by the snobbery of the place and the time. The QAYL was viewed as an exclusive school for girls of good family, ideally the nobility and the royalty. The daughter of a mere artisan such as a sword-smith would have been well below the social salt. And for her to be a mere Quirmian... well, parents did not send their daughters to QAYL for them to mix with gutter native Quirmians. A daughter of a chevalier... well, Quirmian is an exquisite language from the mouths of the educated classes. A chevallieuse we can accomodate, a chateleaine perhaps, but une paysanne, jamais!
Emmanuelle-Marie nodded, having learnt a valuable lesson. Education is where you get it, and a large part of it consists of learning about the way the world really works, as opposed to how your wishful thinking would like it to work. And she had learnt that just because the best school in town is in your native town of Quirm, it does not necessarily mean that a Quirmian native would be welcome there. Eh bien. What else is there?
what else there was there involved working in her father's armoury, learning all about the properties of metals and how they might be worked and shaped into armour and weapons. From forging small fairly simple things like arrowheads - and even these require skill to shape into the various forms demanded by professional archers - Emmanuelle-Marie progressed to halberds, pike heads, bill-hooks and reapers, learning how to marry metal to wood in the process. From here it was a short step to knives and daggers, and then, when her father judged her ready, to her first formal sword.
Formal education was given for part of the week in L'Ecole Quirmienne, a co-operative venture subsidised by Quirm's artisan community for its sons and daughters. Here, Emmanuelle-Marie's probing intelligence saw her shoot well ahead of her peers, and her restless searching nature led her to discover other sports, such as fencing, where a distinguished chevalier who taught the art of the sword to young nobles recognised that the swordsmith's daughter, approaching thirteen, had a formidable talent. Emmanuelle-Marie, by then a wiry, sleek and fiercely pretty young girl, had been delivering a set of new-made practice swords to m. Le Chevalier's fencing academy. Up until now she had given little thought to the purpose the weapons were going to be used for, but, entranced, she watched a group of slender and somewhat attractive young men being put through their moves. That night she picked up an epée and shadow-fought in the armoury yard, using what she could remember of the poses and the moves and the thrusts as her guide.
As it happens in the best of narratives, Le Compte was in the family home, drinking a fine Quirmian brandy with the master armourer, negotiating for the purchase of more swords and miscellaneous equipment. Hearing a disturbance in the yard, both men looked out to regard the sight of the armourer's daughter, as she leapt and thrust and parried.
"I will discipline her, my lord..." offered Réné-Artaud Les Deux-Épées. "But she is a spirited and somewhat wilful girl..."
"No need, Réné." murmured the Compte, entranced by what he was seeing. He remebered she had lingered to watch his pupils earlier, and had been drawn to the hunger in her eyes. "She has but seen the inside of my academy of swords once, and her stance is perfect, her moves are good, and her swordwork, while needing improvement that will surely come with practice, has little to be reproached. Réné, I wish very much to teach your daughter. Mes dieux, She is a prodigy! A vertiable prodigy!"
And so Emanuelle-Marie found her first sword teacher, a man who respected her as a uncle should a favoured niece. He recognised there was more here than just a bright and gifted girl with a talent for swords. By agreement with her father - the Ecole Quirmienne having taught her all it could - he also supervised the prodigy's further education. He was liberal, this Count, and realised that the girl would likely ascend to the greatest heights had she been born a noble and not just as the fille d'un artisan. She was not just pretty, she was beautiful. She was possessed of a fierce intelligence and a graceful wit. She was born to swords, that much was clear. Feed her intelligence and tutor her in languages and the graceful arts, and she would go far, this Emmanuelle-Marie.
At first, she quibbled at the language teaching, finding Morporkian ugly to her voice and Überwaldean to be utterly harsh and graceless. But the Compte, who she respected, won her over, pointing out that Morporkian was the language of the world outside Quirm, and not to speak it was to be voiceless. As for Überwaldean, he shared her sentiments, but he pointed out that the destinies of Quirm and Überwald were somehow bound together. Occassionally, and certainly within living memory, it had become absolutely necessary to arrive at accomodations with Überwald and for Quirmian pride, regrettably, to be set aside. Emmanuelle had heard rumours that le Compte had, er, collaborated, in the aftermath of the last need to arrive at an accomodation, when Überwaldian armies had briefly been in occupation of Quirm. But she shrugged: that had been before her birth, and the nobleman had been selflessly kind to her. She was in his debt. Et bien, she would learn Überwaldian and Morporkian. Besides, having out-paced at least one tutor, Le Compte had mysteriously said he had a bon idée for her future teaching. One that dictated that her Morporkian had to be very good indeed.
But, hélas, it also required a degree of deceit and subterfuge. He, the Compte, feared that the Quirm Academy, run as it was by a pair of singular spinsters, would now merely bore and confine her. And the academic opportunities for our gifted girl-children are so very pitifully limited. How good an actor could she be?
"But surely, mon patron, you mean an actress?" Emmanuelle-Marie had queried him.
The old Compte had smiled.
"Non, ma petite. I most assuredly mean an actor. Ecoutes-moi, s'il tu plâit. Deception is distasteful, but it sometimes becomes necessary so as to advance oneself in life when all doors are closed, and I fear you are fast coming to the limit of what I may teach you. The best schools on this Disc are closed to girls. In the future it may not be so, as I hear the wise Lord Vetinari is giving thought to expanding education in his City. But that may be fifteen or twenty years hence and no use to one such as you now. I am giving thought to announcing that I am taking in a noble ward, son of a distant cousin whose parents, hélas, died in sudden tragic circumstances. I am undertaking to pay the costs of his upbringing and education and I will welcome him as a son, although a second son after my heir Maurice. This ward, I am sending to Ankh-Morpork to one of the best schools there is."
He looked appraisingly at Emmanuelle.
"Your figure is boyish and with a little deceit and art, you will not be too obviously feminine about the chest. Your hair must be shorn, and you must be taught to shave, or at least how to go through the motions of shaving. Other deficiencies… well, my valet suggested a rolled-up pair of socks will suggest a shape in the correct place. You have trained with men and boys in my academy, you are good at imitating their swagger and their walk, and your father René assures me, with frowns, that in the forge you swear and curse with the best of his prentices.
"I have discussed this with your parents, and they agree. You are going to the Assassins' School in Ankh-Morpork. Although not as a girl."
Emmanuelle took a deep astonished breath. Then she laughed.
"Pourquoi pas?" she said. "It will be most droll!"
Emmanuel-Martin, chevalier de Jeannedarc, passed the late-entry entrance exam to the Assassins' School with flying colours. His examiners said the young man had presented as a brilliant prospect and they were glad to be able to accept a clever, graceful, young gentleman of good family and background. Especially one so gifted in swordcraft of all kinds.
A place was not a problem: a late entrant at the age of fourteen will find there are plenty of vacant desks in Assassins' School classrooms. People starting at eleven drop out for various reasons. Maybe they decide the Assassins' School isn't for them and transfer elsewhere, maybe the School, with exceeding reluctance, expels, excludes or sends down unsuitable, unsatisfactory or otherwise intractible pupils; in some cases natural attrition has created a vacancy(1). One whose education has been on a par with the Guild School, one who is naturally good at swords and bladed weapons, one who in Metalwork lessons can even teach his tutor a thing or two about forging a blade, one who generously passes his skills on to less fortunate comrades, will always fit in, and little eccentricities can be made light of.
Showering with your kit on after Games, for instance, and changing under a towel; well, some boys, especially ones yet to be visited by puberty, are naturally shy. Emmanuel was relieved he was one of five in Scorpion House who were shy in the changing rooms. Emmanuel found himself in more danger when he realised he was looking too intently at the naked boys in the changing rooms, some of whom were well-built and well-proportioned for fourteen. Well, he'd never been in a room full of naked men before, and, zut alors, he was not one to pass up on the educational opportunity.
He found himself being whispered about, and wondered uncertainly if his secret was out. Conversations would begin in whispers and stop with uncertain glances as he walked past.
Disconsolately, he wondered if his disguise wasn't good enough. Ma foi, this is farce! How long will it be before I am discovered?
He could have cheered when he realised the truth – a big brash dorm-mate referred to him, off-handedly, as that Quirmian poof. He's got to be, the way he was looking at my todger in the changing room!
Emmanuel laughed it off with sheer relief, but boys who were well-disposed towards him, the ones who said in whispers It really doesn't matter, and Don't think you're alone, in a place like this a lot of that sort of thing goes on, you'd be surprised, also said, warningly Don't be too obvious. If they find out, it's an expulsion offence. They have a crack-down every so often and boys caught at IT get expelled!
He soon learnt to avoid predatory older boys of That Type. One day a sixth-former who was notorious in dorm rumour tried to get fresh, putting a hand on Emmanuel's bottom. A whole common room looked on, seeing how the Quirmian boy would react. Emmanuel realised it was a test.
If he carries on making a pass at me, he will discover more than he expects. Or, perhaps, less. On the other hand if I do nothing, I am the weakling, the runt, prey for bullies. This must not be so.
Emmanuel shrieked a surprisingly girlish shriek, whirled, and vey accurately kicked his offender in the fork, following it through with clubbed hands smashing down on the back of his neck, laying him out like a felled ox. He then turned, and addressed the room.
"I may be ze Quirmian poof." he announced, "But my body is still my own. Learn from this fool's example. We Quirmians are fighters!"
To his surprise, the Scorpion House Common Room erupted and he received a standing ovation.
"HWHAT is happening HERE!" demanded Lady T'Malia, rushing in, drawn by the noise and cheering. She gave Emmanuel a suspicious look.
"Benson fell over and hurt himself, my lady." said Noel Fforbes, Head of House. "We warned him about that rogue patch on the carpet before."
T'Malia looked around her.
"Is that true? You!"
"Yes, ma'am. It is."
Emmanuel realised that even people previously hostile were lying to a teacher for him. It was a good feeling. He'd been accepted.
"Very well, then. You and you, get him to his quarters. And tell him when he wakes up that I will severely punish any more "falling over the carpet". Whatever form it took!"
She swept out, giving Emmanuel another long hard look.
But Emmanuel had realised something fundamental about deception.
Because they believe they have detected I am a homosexual male, they will not now look further for the real truth. And as long as they see a funny Quirmian who is most of the time a friendly, courteous and helpful fellow, but a wildcat in a fight, they will be well-disposed. It will pay also to be more seemingly Quirmian than I am, the funny stage-Quirmian of the jokes and music hall.
And so her schooldays progressed. She returned to Quirm in the hols to see her family and the Compte and to report on her progress, glad to be Emmanuelle again.
Incredibly, the deception lasted three years. By this time, she had ascended to the Sixth Form, where privilege meant she shared a room with three other boys. She was worried about this. But when selecting room-mates - another privilege - three boys who had been huddled together in quiet conference called Emmanuel over and asked if he would consent to be the fourth to share with them, she agreed. For she knew all three were temperamentally suited to share together, being of the more fey sort who appreciated the company of men more than they would girls. and having a naturally broad accepting mind, she did not quail that two of them chose to share a bed at night, leaving only she and Julian in the other half of the room behind a modesty-curtain. In fact sharing with three young men who were seriiously experimenting with their sexuality was to make things easier, as everybody had a secret to conceal.
But when Julian got into Emmanuel's bed one night, she felt she had to gently disabuse him. The physical closeness was nice and warm and pleasant, and she was aware of what he wanted. It just couldn't be with her, that was the problem.
"Peace, mon ami" she said. "Then she took a deep breath. "There is something about me that you should know..."
After his initial shock and surprise, Julian, and to a lesser extent the other two Odd Boys, became her greatest friends and allies, keeping her secret and even helping her to refine the deception. It wasn't hard: everyone else dismissed the four as merely gay, and chose to look no further, taking the blue cat painted on their study-bedroom door as a huge coded joke at the expense of the masters. Julian even stayed with Le Compte in Quirm during holidays, relishing the chance to see Emmanuelle dressed appropriately as a girl and, in the privacy of her rooms, to experiment with wearing her clothes and make-up.
But it had to come to an end.
A month or two shy of her Final Run, she took ill and had to be isolated in the School Sanitorium with a crippling influenza. The School Doctor was universally thought of as useless(2), but when he the female bedder who worked overtime shifts as a nursing orderly came to him and said:
" I was bed-bathing the Quirmian boy in number four. He was putting up a hell of a fight to me undressing him… and you can see why…I think you'd better see this, doctor!"
Then even he could tell the difference between a naked boy and a naked girl. He wasn't that completely inept.
"Oh, shit." he muttered. "One of those".
And went to find Doctor Follett.
"I'm sorry." Dr Follett said, curtly. "This is an embarrassing situation, I hope you realise? The worst of it was, you fooled everybody. Everybody. You might even have graduated!"
Emmanuelle tried not to hang her head in shame, and instead tried to hold the Master's angry gaze.
"I don't see why we can't let her graduate." Lady T'Malia said, defending her. "She's shown great skill and style in keeping the act up for over three years. It was only bad luck that stopped her going the distance! Like I did, in my time!"
"Yes. You did." Said the Doctor. "But you were never found out, and it was agreed to allow you to graduate, so as not to embarrass the Guild!"
Emmanuelle looked at Lady T'Malia in surprise. Her tutor smiled back benevolently.
"My dear, did you never stop to wonder why I am the only apparent woman Assassin?" she asked. "Or how I got here? I performed a deception like yours too. And there are others." she added, mysteriously. "I am by no means the only one. Nor the first!"
Mr Downey, who had taught Emmanuel and quite liked him as a pupil, shook his head.
"We really have no alternative." He sighed. "The School Rules dictate."
And by a verdict of two to one, Emmanuel-Martin de Jeannedarc was expelled from the Assassins' Guild School.
Emmanuelle lesDeux-Épées felt shamed and embarrassed and hurt for him. But at least she'd had a Guild School Education.
Angry and cynical following the shame of detection and expulsion from the Guild school, she returned to the Compte in Quirm and discovered consolation, in that there were other little games that promised to make her later life full of adventure and empty of boredom. The Compte's eldest son, le chevalier Maurice Lapoignard, returned from his Army command to find his father acting as patron to such a lively, intelligent and vivacious young woman. Emmanuelle-Marie, her hair growing back fast, found herself equally drawn to the dashing and elegant young army captain, and things, as if fated, took their eventual course. The urbane Maurice, a man of the world, eight years her senior, showed her a whole new world in his bed. After close association with uncouth adolescent males at the Guild School, she had not thought this possible, but very soon became hooked on this new form of combat, coming into her own as his amoureuse with neither prompting nor persuasion.
The old Compte nodded and forbore from comment - an educated Quirmian and a man of affaires, he knew to allow the affaire to take its course, relieved that the fiery and beautiful young girl had chosen his son, as man of honour and chivalry, and not some accursed gigolo. Her education continued on all levels, and life took its usual measured pace, until L'Affaire Rodley blew up.
Certain exciteable elements in the old Quirmian nobility had been aggrieved for some time that the highest in the land were a family of Morporkians throust on them by the machinations of the great city. The thought had grown on some that if the Rodleys were to be assassinated or deposed, Quirm could be retaken by the Quirmians and the beginnings of rebellion to Ankh-Morpork would become as a fanned flame, sweeping all before it. So a half-baked assassination attempt was made upon the Rodleys, which failed: for they were rich enough, and far-sighted enough, to emply affiliates of the Guild of Assassins as their "security consultants."
Vengeance was not long in coming.
Emmanuelle and Maurice were awoken one night by intruders in the Chateau Lapoignard. Dressing swiftly and selecting swords, they surprised the team of black-clad Assassins who were intruding with the purpose of inhuming the old Compte. The subsequent sword-fight grounded Emmanuelle as a swordfighter, as she fended off and wounded two of the attackers; Maurice killed one and the fourth turned and ran for it, the wounded fighters staggering after him.
This did not prevent the death of the old Compte: a second attempt, made six months later through the dishonourable medium of poison, took him away, and Emmanuelle grieved: but at least her defence of him had lifted his disquiet about his son marrying a commoner. He had wished them both happiness with almost his last breath, and she realised she now had a second reason to despise the Assassins' Guild.
She was not aware that a report had been sent to the Guild in which her name featured prominently. The new Master, Doctor Cruces, read it, discussed it with his deputy Mr Downey, who recalled a name, a face, and a scandal, and it was analyzed in the light of certain long-term expansion plans the Guild was considering for its School. Lady T'Malia was called to give an opinion, and she said
"Do it. I was never happy about throwing her out, and I'd be relieved if a great wrong were to be put right. Besides, she is a natural!"
The report was attached to a folder with Emmanuelle's name on it, and filed as "Take action at the earliest opportunity."
For Emmanuelle, marriage and seperation followed on closely. Emmanuelle was now, technically, Comptesse de Lapoignard, but found herself prefering a simple "madame" in most cases. The reason for the "technically" was the continued life of the old Dowager Comptesse, Maurice' mother, who held suspicions over her daughter-in-law, esdpecially over the way she had captivated both father and son. A mother-in-law who, vielle beldame, delighted in blocking her access to family monies. She would gladly give to her beloved son; but not, helas, to her undesirable daughter in law. With the threat of retribution from the Assassins' Guild hanging over him for slaying one of their own, Maurice was forced to go where the Guild could not easily follow. First, he accepted a diplomatic posting to the Quirmian Embassy in faraway BhangBhangDuc. Emmanuelle joined him here, wondering at how well she fitted into the place and how much she loved being here(3). But this had to end. An Army officer for hire, he accepted a posting abroad philosophically, albeit one where his wife could not follow, and signed on with the world-famous mercenary formation, the Klatchian Foreign Legion.
Emmanuelle-Marie found seperation hard and although she had not intended to, she began taking lovers to console herself. One such was irrascible gambler and all-round bad boy, "Scrote" Jones. He taught her to play several common card games and noted she had both the taste and an aptitude for gambling. She became a Gamblers' Guild member and a nomad, going where the cards and tables were, establishing a reputation in Guild circles everywhere between Genua and Ankh-Morpork. More lovers inevitably followed on, and she realised she was getting a taste for thrill, adventure, and danger. Maurice returned on a rare leave and while she loved him as much as ever, she realised with dissappointment that her husband was somehow getting more vague. She presumed this was something to do with the nature of La Legion. Preferring to dress in black, this earned her the nickname of "The Black Widow" in gambling circles: a nickname that was soon going to echo in other places for other reasons.
Even the best of gamblers becomes unstuck and can go through a losing streak. If she is also one of the boldest, it can go hard with her, and one disaster of a night in the casino left her a hundred thousand dollars in debt to the troll Chrysophrase, who incidentally owned the casino. With a philosophical Quirmian shrug, she recalled the brief conversation she had had with a discreetly rich woman towards the end of the night.
"It looks as though you're in a spot of bother, dear. Why don't you come and talk about it with me?"
Emmanuelle knew her options were limited. She had no collateral of her own; and to draw on the not-especially-rich Lapoignard estates would have been unthinkable, and in any case needed her husband's consent. She sighed, and made arrangements with the so-sympathetic Mrs Palm to join the Seamstresses' Guild and, under its protection, repay the money that way. But she had also been careless: what might otherwise have been a formality, the medical examination, revealed a lesser but contagious social ailment that, from the point of view of Mrs Palm, would have been bad for business.
Shocked and ashamed by the Seamstresses' refusal to employ her - at least, not until a certain medical matter was cleared up - she was taken before Chrysophrase, who genially suggested a different way of working her debt off. With no way to refuse, and having been shown what happens to people who fail to show the troll crimelord the appropriate degree of respect, she became his personal contract killer, undercutting the Assassins' Guild for each inhumation as she worked off her debt.
This brought the Black Widow to the notice of the Watch and the renewed notice of the Guild. On the occasion of the seventh and last killing, the one that cleared her debt, she was assailed by waves of Assasins in a desperate rooftop struggle that herded her to a certain rooftop on Filigree Street. Seeking to escape to ground level, she entered a darkened room. The lights went on to reveal Cruces, Downey and T'malia, and behind her, several very pointedly-aimed crossbows.
"Emmanuelle Lapoignard les Deux-Épées. Or, perhaps, we catch up with the later career of Emmanuel-Martin de Jeannedarc, of Scorpion House."
She recognised an older Mr Downey.
"We have a certain proposition to put to you."
Lady T'Malia smiled at her as if meeting an old friend again.
"How long has it been now, my dear? Seven, eight, years? I'm so glad we can now belatedly set an injustice to rest. Please be seated!"
Sighing philosophically, Emmanuelle heard out the certain proposition, and reflected that she had bought her freedom from Chrysophrase only to have to surrender it again to the Guild. Being realistic, she knew the hatred of Assassins that she had nurtured over her ignominious expulsion from the School and the death of the old Compte had no place now,: she had effectively, almost finally, certainly belatedly, become an Assassin herself. All that was needed was for her to sign the appropriate forms and embark on the Mature Students Class. Rather be on the inside and have their friendship, than remain outside and have them hunt me down comme une chienne...
"And of course having got so close to graduating, albeit in a clandestine way, you should walk through the course, madame." Downey said, reassuringly.
And T'Malia had said there would be other women on this Mature Students' Course, and after that, girl students legitimately attending the School with no need to hide their gender. Good. She was no longer the Only One. And the tales she could tell the girl students when they arrived…
"I accept" she said, and signed the forms.
The alternative was the tender attentions of the Watch for serial killing. And besides, she could see a whole new sort of Assassin emerging if she had a hand in their teaching and training. A better, more ethical, yet more deadly when it called for it, female Assassin. Who would have community behind her and not be on her own.
It was something to look forward to.(4)
(1) It is famously said that the Assassins' School selects by means of very competitive examinations at the end of every year. This is perhaps an exaggeration, but attrition and natural selection of the lame, lazy, and unlucky do play their part.
(2) See Pyramids by Terry Pratchett.
(3) errr.. which 1970's French soft-porn movie is being homaged here? girl's name, it'll come to me eventually..
(4) Now go read my story The Graduation Class, if you haven't already done so!