Cimorene

Re: this post - I really had no hope of finding any files I left on my parents' computer in 2003, when the hecticness and depression of my dad's injury left me completely disorganized and I lost most of my data.

But I should've remembered that, even though my parents are incredibly disorganized, they also never throw anything away! (Although apparently my mom gave away one of the family computers and her parents had taken it out of state before my Dad found out, without any opportunity to recover the data from the hd. LOL win! It's not like she doesn't know how computers work, either; she's just so completely absent-minded that she's capable of giving away a computer on a whim without it occurring to her that there might be informashuns on there even though, you know, the sole purpose of a computer is to store data.) ANYWAY, I'm just lucky that she didn't give away the one I was using that summer. My dad logged into it and performed an Excavation resulting in both of K'Sal's lost WIPs. o_O!!!!!

So there was flailing and rejoicing over here. It was such an unexpected windfall that I didn't really know what to do with it. Even better, one of them was actually mostly finished, which I had totally forgotten. (She posted it at one point, and then changed her mind and added some more and didn't finish the revision.)

Ahahha. So his excavation also uncovered writing by me whose existence I had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN ABOUT, including

• A horrible rhyming poem written about Wax which, thank Enya, I never showed to her. As Eliza Bennet says, a good poem is the surest way to kill off young love.



• 3 pages of a Pirates of the Caribbean Regency AU set in England where Jack and Elizabeth are married and live on an estate adjoining her parents'. I presume that Will was supposed to be the stableboy or something, because the filename is "POTCOT3AU", but he makes no appearance, and everything cuts off very abruptly with no explanation. It's dated from June of '04.



• A file named "Jeeves & Wooster shipwrecked" that doesn't involve any shipwrecks, just a scene where Jeeves and Wooster seem to be... purchasing liquor by the case from a redneck liquor store in Alabama and an unrelated snip of dialogue. Alabama??? WHY, TEENIE SELF? WHY?



• A really bad Han/Luke story that, hilariously, is both a) missing at least half of each scene and b) so strongly reminiscent of the overwhelmingly popular writing style of Han/Luke that I could almost believe it was written by someone else except that I sort of remember writing it now. I think the fragments were originally embedded in a longer story where my protagonist was reading or writing fanfiction, and the parent story didn't survive because it sucked.

So... there was that.

Every time I pick up a Wodehouse book I'm struck anew by how good it is. The difference between the best Wodehouse pastiche I've ever read and the real thing is as evident after a few paragraphs as the difference between designer shoes and plastic knockoffs from Payless, and there are a few very talented pastichers out there. The voice is simply sublime, and sublimely difficult to imitate. Wodehouse is a comic genius with an incredibly fine-tuned ear for language. He's witty, always on-tone but always novel - for example, he rarely repeats his own humourous turns of phrase as often as the fanfic makes use of parodies of the "e. and b." style of abbreviation.

I read in an afterword-essay somewhere that when writing, Wodehouse would pin the typed pages of his manuscript all round the walls of his room, and then move the less-funny pages down a few inches, and then go back rewriting until each page had an equally funny peak. You can distinguish this easily as you're reading along. There aren't valleys. The valleys in the story action are still filled with clever turns of phrase, funny asides, rimshots, and subtle jokes. It makes the deftly understated sentimental moments between Jeeves and Wooster in the canon more affecting than the best-rendered of the expliciter slash in fanfiction.

On an unrelated note, I have about a litre of leftover charoset from Passover still. Somebody, please, help me eat this.

pg wodehouse was captured by the germans in ww2 and held prisoner for a long time (although maybe it was under house arrest?).  he wasn't released until he had done some kind of... radio announcements or something for them (my reading about this has been sketchy to say the least).  after that, a lot of other british people made england too hot to hold him until he finally permanently relocated to america, a fact he was somewhat bitter about.  he was fond of america before that too, but the references increase in the later jeeves & woosters. 

one of his biggest detractors in england was aa milne, a writer whose work, particularly winnie the pooh, wodehouse held in some contempt.  i love the pooh books, but he mocks them to great effect in the mating season (which hasn't been re-issued with the cartoony cover yet, so for those of you who haven't obtained a copy let me say that madeline bassett is a big fan of "christopher robin poems"). 

the mating season was the last novel i was certain i didn't have.  i'm not positive about jeeves in the offing/how right you are, jeeves--i've got it marked off as already ordered on a list i was keeping but i can't for the life of me remember actually holding it in my hot little hands.  and then again, on the numerous occasions when i've cracked it open in the bookstore, the prose has looked familiar (but then, it would anyway, wouldn't it?).  perhaps i have it in an omnibus.  i can't check until my parents mail more books to me. 

jeeves and the blessed indiscretion, by shalott, pg.  the story is charming and adorable, if one accepts a few premises which are perhaps not entirely supported in canon--like a jeeves off his game, and an unsual degree of competence from bertie.  the voice is pretty good. 

jeeves lends a hand by jane davitt, rated r.

really cute, more graphic than usual, but these stories where bertie doesn't know what masturbation is try my suspension of disbelief a tad. not that it wasn't amusing. and cute!

why shouldn't 'guilty pleasure fic' also be well-written?

gah. i'm reading this shit anyway! ::introduces head forcefully to nearest wall::

i had a jeeves/wooster dream last night, or rather a dream that i was writing jeeves/wooster. i wrote down what i could remember when i awoke. it's not really in character--nothing like so solid a foundation as the kernel of the holmes/watson recently completed--but i live in hope that i may beat it into shape.

i intend to write something though.

1. look! bertie wooster had a prototype!

2. having read thank you, jeeves in one giant orgiastic gulp today i was left thirsting for more and looked online for the complete works. with the bibliography i discovered there are seven volumes i have and seven i haven't, plus one omnibus that's made out of three volumes i have plus two short stories available nowhere else. so i caved and ordered four more novels because i found them cheap ($2 for one; and $4 for an omnibus containing the other three).

3. so therefore, NEW JEEVES/WOOSTER SOON YAY.