Musings of the Obsessive Kind

I have just found a fic which is Luna Lovegood/Mike Jackson (from Psmith books). Which is the most bizarre cross-over I can imagine but the story is short and sweet. How weird is that.

I am in the minority because it's not Blandings or Jeeves books that are my fave, it's Psmith ones (Mike, Mike and Psmith, Psmith in the City, Psmith Journalist, and Leave it Psmith).

Maybe because it's the best (IMO) blend of early Wodehouse, with gay (old sense of the term) young girls and smart young men, so there is genuine feeling there, and later Wodehouse, with its polished style and verbal play.

It's probably because I really like Mike (one of the rare normal Wodehouse characters. He is not brilliant and eccentric, nor an amiable nitwit) and because I adore Psmith, my favorite Wodehouse character hands down. Plus Eve Halliday, Psmith's eventual OTP, is probably my favorite Wodehouse female.

Jeeves & Wooster and Blandings books are superbly polished but the characters are either morons or clever Godlike dei ex machina. Which is fine, but I like caring for my characters and early Wodehouse people are a lot more 'human.'

Psmith is fully as clever and witty as any Wodehouse character but he also has a heart, which is an early Wodehouse thing. It's not just all amusing glib talk.

In fact, the only time I've ever felt any connection with 'real' world in Wodehouse was in Psmith in the City and Psmith Journalist. The only time I've seen any social indignation in Wodehouse is in PitC, when Mike and Psmith wander into the slums. Psmith is apalled at the conditions and that is how the whole book really gets going, isn't it? Him trying to bring down the slumlord through his rewamped paper. This being Wodehouse, it's all very funny and light of course, but still a huge rarity. I suppose that means Psmith is the only character in Wodehouse to possess a social conscience. Well, somewhat, and not to be mocked for it, I suppose. Later Wodehouse, after all, takes place in the delightful alternate universe entirely.

Psmith in the City is the only Wodehouse book that made me sad. It is in the beginning, where our POV character is Mike, Psmith's best friend, and always a more reality-bound character. Mike has found out he cannot go to college after all, and has to work because his family is in financial trouble. The scenes of Mike moving into his dingy joyless flat, and realizing his schooldays are all gone, and he has to work at a bank for the rest of his life, are the only time I felt sad in Wodehouse. I wonder how much of it was his own experience of having to give up going to college and having to write ledgers in a bank, seeping through. But then of course Psmith shows up and the world goes topsy-turvy in the right way again.

I think that is why I like Psmith so. He is funny, and sharp-tongued and fantastical. But he is an amazing friend and he does care, underneath the demeanor. In the very first book, Mike and Psmith, he does get Mike to reconcile with his new school and is totally willing to be expelled to protect him, but would never admit it. In Psmith in the City, he gets himself into the same bank with Mike, even though he certainly has no need to work, and makes him move in with him into his nice flat, and takes him out to theater and what not, something Mike could never afford on his own. And he ends up talking his father into paying for Mike's college education (!!!). And of course in Psmith Journalist, Mike needs no help, but he helps out the slum people instead. The last Psmith book (and the first I read, ironically), 'Leave it to Psmith' is once again the same. All the capers are utterly hilarious, but after all, he is doing all this craziness in order to get Mike some $$$ so Mike and Phyllis can buy the farm they want.

It's funny, because Eve and Psmith are both OK with being joyfully impecunious (Eve has always been so, and Psmith's father lost all his $$$ before he died) and adventurous, but Mike and Phyllis (who is Eve's friend) are both not at all and so they sort of take care of them...

I have seen a bunch of Mike/Psmith slash around and I suppose I can see that, but I adore Eve much too much to be into it myself.

Oh, and apparently, according to Wodehouse himself, after the last book: "If anyone is curious as to what became of Mike and Psmith in later life, I can supply the facts. Mike, always devoted to country life, ran a prosperous farm. Psmith, inevitably perhaps, became an equally prosperous counselor at the bar like Perry Mason, specializing, like Perry, in appearing for the defense."

I can so see that.

This was really rambly and pointless...

Sample dialogue from Psmith in the City. If you don't want to read the books after this, I despair of you :)

( Quotableness here )

I have just found a fic which is Luna Lovegood/Mike Jackson (from Psmith books). Which is the most bizarre cross-over I can imagine but the story is short and sweet. How weird is that.

I am in the minority because it's not Blandings or Jeeves books that are my fave, it's Psmith ones (Mike, Mike and Psmith, Psmith in the City, Psmith Journalist, and Leave it Psmith).

Maybe because it's the best (IMO) blend of early Wodehouse, with gay (old sense of the term) young girls and smart young men, so there is genuine feeling there, and later Wodehouse, with its polished style and verbal play.

It's probably because I really like Mike (one of the rare normal Wodehouse characters. He is not brilliant and eccentric, nor an amiable nitwit) and because I adore Psmith, my favorite Wodehouse character hands down. Plus Eve Halliday, Psmith's eventual OTP, is probably my favorite Wodehouse female.

Jeeves & Wooster and Blandings books are superbly polished but the characters are either morons or clever Godlike dei ex machina. Which is fine, but I like caring for my characters and early Wodehouse people are a lot more 'human.'

Psmith is fully as clever and witty as any Wodehouse character but he also has a heart, which is an early Wodehouse thing. It's not just all amusing glib talk.

In fact, the only time I've ever felt any connection with 'real' world in Wodehouse was in Psmith in the City and Psmith Journalist. The only time I've seen any social indignation in Wodehouse is in PitC, when Mike and Psmith wander into the slums. Psmith is apalled at the conditions and that is how the whole book really gets going, isn't it? Him trying to bring down the slumlord through his rewamped paper. This being Wodehouse, it's all very funny and light of course, but still a huge rarity. I suppose that means Psmith is the only character in Wodehouse to possess a social conscience. Well, somewhat, and not to be mocked for it, I suppose. Later Wodehouse, after all, takes place in the delightful alternate universe entirely.

Psmith in the City is the only Wodehouse book that made me sad. It is in the beginning, where our POV character is Mike, Psmith's best friend, and always a more reality-bound character. Mike has found out he cannot go to college after all, and has to work because his family is in financial trouble. The scenes of Mike moving into his dingy joyless flat, and realizing his schooldays are all gone, and he has to work at a bank for the rest of his life, are the only time I felt sad in Wodehouse. I wonder how much of it was his own experience of having to give up going to college and having to write ledgers in a bank, seeping through. But then of course Psmith shows up and the world goes topsy-turvy in the right way again.

I think that is why I like Psmith so. He is funny, and sharp-tongued and fantastical. But he is an amazing friend and he does care, underneath the demeanor. In the very first book, Mike and Psmith, he does get Mike to reconcile with his new school and is totally willing to be expelled to protect him, but would never admit it. In Psmith in the City, he gets himself into the same bank with Mike, even though he certainly has no need to work, and makes him move in with him into his nice flat, and takes him out to theater and what not, something Mike could never afford on his own. And he ends up talking his father into paying for Mike's college education (!!!). And of course in Psmith Journalist, Mike needs no help, but he helps out the slum people instead. The last Psmith book (and the first I read, ironically), 'Leave it to Psmith' is once again the same. All the capers are utterly hilarious, but after all, he is doing all this craziness in order to get Mike some $$$ so Mike and Phyllis can buy the farm they want.

It's funny, because Eve and Psmith are both OK with being joyfully impecunious (Eve has always been so, and Psmith's father lost all his $$$ before he died) and adventurous, but Mike and Phyllis (who is Eve's friend) are both not at all and so they sort of take care of them...

I have seen a bunch of Mike/Psmith slash around and I suppose I can see that, but I adore Eve much too much to be into it myself.

Oh, and apparently, according to Wodehouse himself, after the last book: "If anyone is curious as to what became of Mike and Psmith in later life, I can supply the facts. Mike, always devoted to country life, ran a prosperous farm. Psmith, inevitably perhaps, became an equally prosperous counselor at the bar like Perry Mason, specializing, like Perry, in appearing for the defense."

I can so see that.

This was really rambly and pointless...

Sample dialogue from Psmith in the City. If you don't want to read the books after this, I despair of you :)

( Quotableness here )

I keep wanting to make a long, long post on my Wodehouse crush, R. Psmith (who is witty, and intelligent and cool and actually has a heart, which is a Wodehouse rarity) but I am so lazy. Is anyone on the flist a Wodehouse fan?

Also, I started watching Generator Gawl which I like (Gawl looks a bit like Howl, oddly enough), but which is going to have the distinction of being the first series I watch dubbed, not out of any love for the dub itself (it seems OK enough, even if I find Gawl's voice a tad annoying) but because whoever subtitled this thought it was a good idea to leave half the dialogue out. This, while it leads to fun games of guessing 'what did he/she just say?' and trying to come up with the likeliest scenarios, has the disadvantage of leaving me hopelessly lost. Not to mention frustrated. And it also leaves some pretty important bits of info (like the fact that Gawl was made (aka not reallly human any more?) is one of the many times the subtitles decided to die).

Oh, and the scene in Saiyuki where Hakkai calmly started gouging his own eye out to the demon (from the clan he eradicated) who wanted him dead? And told him "you want to kill me? I don't really care for living anyway. Here, I'll start by giving you my right eye, and then my left and then my right ear and then..." as he was pulling out his eye. That man is SO fucked up. I also liked that the clan he killed because they delivered his OTP to the monster to rape and torture, was a clan that would have been allowed to live if they had done so. Because I don't blame Hakkai for going berserker on them, but I could understand their position too.

I am going to start to use "anime2" tage because the "anime" tag is way over a hundred entries and thuse anything really far back gets scrambled and inaccessible through tag system. In fact, I actually recoded a whole bunch, both to make 'anime' tag under a 100 entries so it could be searcheable, and to keep series together as much as possible (e.g. all Kenshin posts, even the really early ones, are now tagged 'anime2' and all FY posts, no matter how late, are tagged 'anime')

ETA: Damn. For some reason, even with retagging, my earlier anime entries don't show through the system. Argh! I coded them by series too, but it's annoying I can't pull up any of Escaflowne or Trigun and half of HYD by using the anime tag. Yes, I am anal, why do you ask?