power outage causes ramblings about Jeeves and Wooster and Dr. Wu.

[derien]

(At 6:40 this morning we had a power outage, so I did stuff and then wrote all this crap.)
edited to add: Sorry about forgetting to LJ-cut. I even powered down my computer, so am having to use Eor's computer to edit this. Feels so weird.


I was just nearly falling asleep over wondering what I could respond to bravecows meme question asking us all to tell her something about ourselves.  (That is the core of every successful meme question - everyone likes to talk about themselves.:))  I hadn't yet read her Discworld/BLEACH crossover shorts - I was saving that to read over breakfast.  And then all the computers turned off.  Argh! 

I do love how she says everything crosses over with Discworld, and camwyn says Harry Potter fandom is like that.  (Actually she said something along the lines of Harry Potter fandom being to every other fandom like Earthwomen to every type of aliens in old sci-fi B movie.)  I suppose if I had my way I'd want to crossover every other fandom with Sherlock Holmes, but I dread crossovers.  I'm not that good a writer. 

Internet inaccessibility always gives me time to concentrate on other things.  Today I got my stretching done before 8AM.  No back spasms since day before yesterday, everything's getting much better.  I'm working downstairs, today, and need to be careful.  I'm in charge of the station, which makes it a little harder, because when I'm in charge I have an urge to do whatever I don't want to, on the assumption that nobody else wants to do it, either.  Which means lots of resolving alarm bags.  Which means lots of lifting those bags up onto the resolution table, which I'm sure is what pulled the muscle in my back in the first place. 

I'm being evil and underlining things in pencil and writing notes in one of my Jeeves and Wooster books.  It's a softback, not great paper, and I'm trying to be light so hopefully it can be erased if need be.  I started out looking for examples of where Bertie uses the phrase 'as of even date,' because it's common enough so I remember it, but other people don't seem to.  I know he uses it in "Right Ho, Jeeves" when he's talking to Madeline over the buffet, just after she sends him the note saying she'll marry him, but I wanted a few other references where it's used in context. 

I've had this song running through my head, the one which goes: "Are you with me Dr. Wu / Are you really just a shadow of the man that I once knew / Are you crazy, are you high, or just an ordinary guy..." - you know the song.  Who did that?  I hate having no web access!  I strongly suspect that the Dr. Wu mentioned in that song is the guy who did the popular English translation of the Tao Te Ching, but I started singing it because there was a story I read in a recent Asimov's with a Dr. Wu as a background character.  And, it seems to me that I've read several other stories with characters named Dr. Wu - I recall going through the same musing late last fall or early winter, so there must have been a Dr. Wu in a story around that time period.  I blame it on that song - the name hangs around in the subconscious, and when someone's looking around for a nice name for a scientist it just pops out there. 

Comments

[bravecows.livejournal.com]

That is the core of every successful meme question - everyone likes to talk about themselves.:)

Hee! True. Which is why I'm wishing vaguely more people on my flist would do it, 'cos talking about oneself, yay.

Discworld is one of those fandoms you sort of don't expect to be crossoverable, I think, and then you try it and it works. with everything. 'Cos the nature of the Discworld unimultiverse allows for all sorts of crack, and then the style is flexible -- it encompasses all kinds of characters and minds.

I wouldn't consider HP a universally crossoverable fandom, but it has some things going for it -- for one thing, most people are familiar with the props and main characters, which is useful when you're crossing over something, because you have to explain less. (-- Of course, I don't generally explain at all when I do crossovers, but y'know. If you were the kind of writer that did explain, HP would allow you to do less 'splainin'.)

I think Sherlock Holmes would be a pretty tough fandom to crossover with, for any writer (though I am by no means in agreement with your judgement of your mad skillz) -- the style would be difficult to work with; it's so distinctive, and it doesn't really work with a lot of fandoms.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Which is why I'm wishing vaguely more people on my flist would do it, 'cos talking about oneself, yay.


Alright, you twisted my arm - I'll post it. (That was easier than making me eat ice-cream.)

You're probably very right about Sherlock Holmes being a hard fandom to cross over, but I have seen it done. With mixed results.