Between cobwebs and dust, it's not like yer gonna find gold.

[amanuensis1]

Oh my god. Look, look what I found in a stray notebook in the back of my childhood closet:

"Retief," Assistant Undersecretary Magnan muttered from the corner of his mouth, making waving motions at the obscuring cloud of grey smoke, "would you kindly extinguish that foul-smelling narcotic? Ambassador Grosgrain," he gestured toward the grey-haired little man lavishly bedecked in layers of gold braid, engaged in a severe coughing fit, "simply cannot tolerate the stench of that thing!"

First Secretary Retief removed the cigar from his mouth and exhaled, but made no move to extinguish it. "Is that the problem, Magnan?" he said in a tone just a little too audible for Magnan's liking. "It seemed to me that the source of Ambassador Grosgrain's coughing was this intolerably long preliminary speech of Ambassador Crodfoller's," he finished casually, heedless of Magnan's desperate shushing gestures.

When I was fifteen-sixteen, I evidently started to write Keith Laumer's Retief fanfiction. Snort. But, I mean, really, who wouldn't love Retief? Futuristic cousin to James Bond, spiritual predecessor to John Constantine. And it's not as sucky a sample of writing as I might have feared. (Notice how I am not sharing the Doctor Who Mary Sue scripts with you.)


(If you see me using my Jedi icon a lot the next couple of days, there's a reason; I'm in the mood for it. Last night I had the first pleasurable dream I've had in ages, and it was a doozy. Me as Anakin Skywalker, seduced good and proper by Obi-Wan*--I think it might have been my first slash dream ever. Eee!)

*(Though I'm still a Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan fan at heart.)

Comments

[melonaise.livejournal.com]

Feel free to rec yummy Jedi fanfic if you feel the need. ;)

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Heh, I don't really know the fandom at all. Read one of nimori's Q/O fics, which I loved, but...I think that's about it!

[seraphtrevs.livejournal.com]

Nimori writes Q/O? WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED? *wanders off to read*

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Go find it, it's wonderful! Let me know if you get stuck looking!

[florahart]

1. I have slash dreams with sort of alarming regularity--not like, weekly, but maybe every few weeks. Seriously explicit ones in which yes, I do have a cock. My husband finds this hilarious and somewhat bizarre. (yes, he doesn't know about fandom/fanfic, but does know that. this is probably all ass-backwards or something).

2. I KNOW where the Mary-Sue notebook of mine is. I can't bring myself to open the box or touch it or anything. It's from, good lord, 17 years ago, I reckon. I don't want to know what I wrote. So very much.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

1. I have not had pleasurable dreams in the longest time, and by pleasurable I don't just mean smutty. I mean fun in any way. These days my dreams are dull and plotless and the bad ones are all about me being late for my plane and unable to find my suitcase or the people I'm travelling with or the route to the airport...

2. As a matter of fact, a few months after I'd written the sappiest of fantasies in my diary at age, what, thirteen ("Our enemy?" "Dead. Our child?" "Safe."), I actually ended up cutting those pages out of the diary altogether, driven by some instinct that, yes, they were indeed too humiliating to Let Fall Into The Wrong Hands. But the stuff I left in there ain't much better.

[lirren.livejournal.com]

HAHAHA! OMG, I'm so very glad I'm not the only one who has slash dreams. It does always seem odd to have a cock though.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm not sure I remember the actual configuration of genitalia in the dream. But the kissing was AMAZING.

[josanpq.livejournal.com]

OMG! I haven't thought about Retief in years. I once had all the books. I wonder...Oh, dear, I foresee another Amazon bill in the future.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Some of them are only a penny plus shipping! Go, do! (Heh, I think all my copies have vanished into the ether since then too.)

[josanpq.livejournal.com]

I've never bought used from Amazaon. Is it worth it? I know they say one cent or two but don't they charge an arm and a leg for shipping?

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Amazon marketplace sellers generally charge media mail shipping, so, it's not bad! Like half.com, most things come to you for about two and a half bucks shipping.

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

"Though I'm still a Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan fan at heart"
There's room enough in that pairing for a solid threesome. Just because Obi-Wan didn't commune with him until later, there's no reason Qui-Gon can't hang with his boys before they got the hang of it.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I can be convinced! :D

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

Heh, Retief is yummy. :) Depends whose drawing him, of course, if you want a good visual -- my first exposure was an Ace paperback collection of short stories with a very yummy painting of Retief on the cover, with something rifleish slung over his shoulders. It's one of those series where the short stories are better than the novels, but luckily there are a lot of shorts.

And of course you're a Qui/Obi fan, because you have excellent taste and Liam Neeson is sex on legs. :D

Angie

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I HAD a coherent response, but then I saw your icon. Droooool, pretty man. Yes, Neeson is something else.

And I'm not sure I ever read a full-length Retief novel! Only the short stories are standing out in my mind.

[angiepen.livejournal.com]

Isn't he? :) I've had fun with him in a couple of RPGs, including one of my current ones. He's just soooo gorgeous, seriously. [dazed squee]

And you're not missing anything with the novels, seriously. They're relatively short, barely qualify as novels, but long enough to be too long. As is often the case, this is a series of funny short stories which don't expand well. I had the same problem with Wodehouse; the Bertie and Jeeves shorts are better than the novels. Humor is tough to do and it's doubly tough to sustain over a long period.

Angie

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

You know, I agree with you - the Retief short stories are better than the novels.

[ajat.livejournal.com]

Ah, you've always written very well, then. As for the flowery prose, yes, it happens at that time of life ... *remembers*

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

The flowery prose is, like, puberty. Everyone goes through it, and it's not pretty. ^_^

[ajat.livejournal.com]

Look, your flowery stuff had structure. Good structure. Think of the SE-s and the babb-chrons ... and think of yours. I liked your writing then, too ... Odd, I've always written straightforward ... I even checked the old scribbles, there's one rather nice story there ... no, no flowery prose.
Some prose poetry, though. But reasonably decent.

[eskimosatan.livejournal.com]

First slash dream ever? You poor deprive woman! I've been having slash dreams since I was eight (which was really confusing. My poor, uptight, Christian mother had the most dumbstruck look on her face when she I asked her why I kept having dreams that I was boy and kissing other boys and was that wrong and why did it make me feel funny?)

Here, go watch gay porn and have more slash dreams. There the best.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my dreams are never about kissin', much less about boys kissin'. I used to have cool plotty dreams when I was younger, but now they're all dull or nightmarish, boo. Erotic dreams are so rare they come maybe once every couple of years, that I can remember.

I read once that if you keep a dream diary you get better at remembering your dreams, and they get more interesting too. I did that once in my teens and it seemed to be true.

[fabularasa.livejournal.com]

I like this system, where I don't have to think of any posts of my own to make, but can just reply to yours. Works for me!

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's so cool! And you make me sound/feel like I've started off something profound, and the traffic to my modest little posts increases. Works out all around!

[seraphtrevs.livejournal.com]

Dude, you were writing that well when you were 15? O_o You should have seen my writing at that age - purple doesn't even begin to describe it.

And, heh, I found a fic I was writing during that time based on two NPCs in my D&D group. It was underage non-con. : P But then again, my group was made up of two gay men and another fellow female slasher, so it was kind of inevitable that there would be NPCs with UST.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

Now you have me remembering: I was writing stories from the git-go, when they set us to writing on that huge-ruled greeny paper, and I think I was ten when I was submitting things to the junior book competition...There was one about me aquiring a time machine that took me on mini-adventures, which were ALL based on media that I was mad for at the time. I met Darth Vader in one. Not joking. They gave me a prize. Those fanfiction-encouraging FOOLS, ha ha!

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, I ADORED Retief. I ought to go re-read it all. My father was the one who turned me on to that series, believe it or not. And it is from Retief that I learned the word 'puce'.

And I would SO read your Retief fanfic. Mary Sue or otherwise.

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't quite know where I was going with the Retief fanfic, but I don't believe I was planning to self-insert! I think I wanted to be Retief so strongly that the idea of putting some female in there for him to fall for seemed wrong. I just wanted him to be witty and dangerous and take all the pompous folk down a few pegs.