The next Red Line train to Braintree is now approaching
Now look. I'm all for keeping fanon as fanon and all that, and I've basically got it down to where the books and the TV show and the fics all have the same Jeeves and Bertie but with slightly different dynamics between them and that all three versions can exist simultaneously and I can leave them as that, but...well, see here! I'm only a simple fangirl, all right? And when the bally creator of the thing appears to be shoving it down your throat...well, this won't make a lick of sense without context, so here's the last page and a bit from The Inimitable Jeeves:
"I pushed on to the old flat, seething like the dickens. One thing I was jolly certain of, and that was that this was where Jeeves and I parted company. A topping valet, of course, none better in London, but I wasn't going to allow that to weaken me. I buzzed into the flat like an east wind...and there was the box of cigarettes on the small table and the illustrated weekly papers on the big table and my slippers on the floor, and every dashed thing so bally right, if you know what I mean, that I started to calm down in the first two seconds. It was like one of those moments in a play where the chappie, about to steep himself in crime, suddenly hears the soft, appealing strains of the old melody he learned at his mother's knee. Softened, I mean to say. That's the word I want. I was softened.
And then through the doorway there shimmered good old Jeeves in the wake of a tray full of the necessary ingredients, and there was something about the mere look of the man....
However, I steeled the old heart and had a stab at it.
'I have just met Mr. Little, Jeeves,' I said.
'Indeed, sir?'
'He - er - he told me you had been helping him.'
'I did my best, sir. And I am happy to say that matters now appear to be proceeding smoothly. Whisky, sir?'
'Thanks. Er - Jeeves.'
'Sir?'
'Another time...'
'Sir?'
'Oh, nothing... Not all the soda, Jeeves.'
'Very good, sir.'
He started to drift out.
'Oh, Jeeves!'
'Sir?'
'I wish...that is...I think...I mean... Oh, nothing!'
'Very good, sir. The cigarettes are at your elbow, sir. Dinner will be ready at a quarter to eight precisely, unless you desire to dine out?'
'No. I'll dine in.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Jeeves!'
'Sir?'
'Oh, nothing!' I said.
'Very good, sir,' said Jeeves."
Well, I mean, really! Now look, I know, different times, with all the Gilded-ness of the Age and the innocence and what not, but see here! There's only so far you can expect it go, and *this* just about crosses the line! Oh, dash it all.
Ok, now that's out of my system, Bertie really is too adorable for words. You just can't help but love the guy. And I made good on my (somewhat non-existent) promise to myself to hit up the BPL, so now I've got two more Jeeves books (in random order, mind, so I'm sure there'll be a fair bit of confusion over that) and a random one by Michael Chabon because they didn't have any copies of The Yiddish Policeman's Union even though the damned computers said they did, and I felt that getting just two by Wodehouse was well enough to be going on for now.
Have I mentioned yet how unspeakably wonderful Bertie!voice is? It's sort of taken over my brain a bit, as I've a tendency to think in "bally"s and "dashed"s and significantly more "whatsits"s than I used to. I'm doing my best to keep it from spilling over into actual speech, but no bets on how that's gonna go if I keep devouring the canon at this rate.
Oh, one last thing. When I was looking for the aforementioned Chabon book, I happened across a delightful tome titled, quite splendidly, A Century of Gay Erotica. I told myself not to laugh, as it was a library and all, but it was a very near thing. I know I was grinning a bit. Flipping it open, I was hoping I'd find some surely rousing discourse about art and literature and homosexualism (as Mr. Wodehouse himself put it), but instead I was confronted with a mere compendium of gay-themed short stories. I'm sorry, erotic gay-themed short stories. Of the gladiator-jerks-off-on-slave-boy's-face variety. I'm afraid I had to put it away at that point, because I would have lost all composure and broken into hearty laughter had I continued, but it was a rather pleasant surprise, I must say. At least worth it to see that what passes for gay erotica in the real world doesn't hold a candle to what you'd find on any random slash comm.
Argh, see? Bertie!voice is just far too easy to slip into. I've gotta say, though: between Boffle and Wodehouse, the language geek in me has been absolutely luxuriant these past weeks. It's the sort of thing you wish to drown in, you know?
"I pushed on to the old flat, seething like the dickens. One thing I was jolly certain of, and that was that this was where Jeeves and I parted company. A topping valet, of course, none better in London, but I wasn't going to allow that to weaken me. I buzzed into the flat like an east wind...and there was the box of cigarettes on the small table and the illustrated weekly papers on the big table and my slippers on the floor, and every dashed thing so bally right, if you know what I mean, that I started to calm down in the first two seconds. It was like one of those moments in a play where the chappie, about to steep himself in crime, suddenly hears the soft, appealing strains of the old melody he learned at his mother's knee. Softened, I mean to say. That's the word I want. I was softened.
And then through the doorway there shimmered good old Jeeves in the wake of a tray full of the necessary ingredients, and there was something about the mere look of the man....
However, I steeled the old heart and had a stab at it.
'I have just met Mr. Little, Jeeves,' I said.
'Indeed, sir?'
'He - er - he told me you had been helping him.'
'I did my best, sir. And I am happy to say that matters now appear to be proceeding smoothly. Whisky, sir?'
'Thanks. Er - Jeeves.'
'Sir?'
'Another time...'
'Sir?'
'Oh, nothing... Not all the soda, Jeeves.'
'Very good, sir.'
He started to drift out.
'Oh, Jeeves!'
'Sir?'
'I wish...that is...I think...I mean... Oh, nothing!'
'Very good, sir. The cigarettes are at your elbow, sir. Dinner will be ready at a quarter to eight precisely, unless you desire to dine out?'
'No. I'll dine in.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Jeeves!'
'Sir?'
'Oh, nothing!' I said.
'Very good, sir,' said Jeeves."
Well, I mean, really! Now look, I know, different times, with all the Gilded-ness of the Age and the innocence and what not, but see here! There's only so far you can expect it go, and *this* just about crosses the line! Oh, dash it all.
Ok, now that's out of my system, Bertie really is too adorable for words. You just can't help but love the guy. And I made good on my (somewhat non-existent) promise to myself to hit up the BPL, so now I've got two more Jeeves books (in random order, mind, so I'm sure there'll be a fair bit of confusion over that) and a random one by Michael Chabon because they didn't have any copies of The Yiddish Policeman's Union even though the damned computers said they did, and I felt that getting just two by Wodehouse was well enough to be going on for now.
Have I mentioned yet how unspeakably wonderful Bertie!voice is? It's sort of taken over my brain a bit, as I've a tendency to think in "bally"s and "dashed"s and significantly more "whatsits"s than I used to. I'm doing my best to keep it from spilling over into actual speech, but no bets on how that's gonna go if I keep devouring the canon at this rate.
Oh, one last thing. When I was looking for the aforementioned Chabon book, I happened across a delightful tome titled, quite splendidly, A Century of Gay Erotica. I told myself not to laugh, as it was a library and all, but it was a very near thing. I know I was grinning a bit. Flipping it open, I was hoping I'd find some surely rousing discourse about art and literature and homosexualism (as Mr. Wodehouse himself put it), but instead I was confronted with a mere compendium of gay-themed short stories. I'm sorry, erotic gay-themed short stories. Of the gladiator-jerks-off-on-slave-boy's-face variety. I'm afraid I had to put it away at that point, because I would have lost all composure and broken into hearty laughter had I continued, but it was a rather pleasant surprise, I must say. At least worth it to see that what passes for gay erotica in the real world doesn't hold a candle to what you'd find on any random slash comm.
Argh, see? Bertie!voice is just far too easy to slip into. I've gotta say, though: between Boffle and Wodehouse, the language geek in me has been absolutely luxuriant these past weeks. It's the sort of thing you wish to drown in, you know?