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Sep. 23rd, 2022 06:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsAs you all know, I love Phyllis Ann Karr's Idylls of the Queen, so when sovay told me that she had self-published a Gilbert and Sullivan fanfic novella about Sir Ruthven Murgatroyed of Ruddigore, I immediately purchased it for airplane reading.
Unfortunately, I got on the airplane, started reading Dangerous Persuasion (the book in question), hit Chapter 2, stared at it, turned togenarti, said "is this just the first chapter of Persuasion word-for-word but slightly condensed?", hit the third chapter, turned to genarti, said, "I'M PRETTY SURE THIS IS JUST THE FIRST CHAPTER OF NORTHANGER ABBEY WORD-FOR-WORD BUT SLIGHTLY CONDENSED?", and decided that it was not kind to either of us to continue before I could scream at other people about it in real time.
The actual plot of Dangerous Persuasions is: Persuasion and Northanger Abbey are both happening in Bath at the same time, using as much of the original text as possible, and every so often Sir Ruthven Murgatroyed from Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore kind of shuffles himself into their respective plots to help the romances get together a bit faster.
If you don't remember the plot of Ruddigore, Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd's problem is that he is comically cursed to commit a crime every day as soon as he inherits the baronetcy. In the big finale of this book, Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd gets challenged to duels by both Anne Elliot's father and by Isabella Thorpe's brother, for extremely stupid non-crime reasons, and ducks comically out of them, embarrassing everybody but unfortunately not technically committing every crimes, much to his disappointment. Then he exits the book to pursue the rest of the plot of Ruddigore. Everyone else gets married, in, again, word for word the exact same fashion that they did in their original books, while having skipped most of the middle sections. All of this happens in a brisk 150 pages of which approximately 50% is new content and the other 50% is word-for-word recountings of the events of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey but with Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd introduced into various essential scenes.
Now, I absolutely cannot cast aspersions on any of this. It feels very much in the vein of the kind of proto-fanfiction that I wrote when I was twelve, which mostly consisted of me copying out the entire text of books and then inserting my own name into it so I could feel like I was Experiencing Adventures, i.e. "Frodo and Sam and Becca crossed into Mordor --" and this book certainly makes better use of its time than that! It has a joke that it's building towards, and then it makes the joke, and then everyone goes about their business again. Now, if I were accomplished author Phyllis Ann Karr, and I was desperate to write the tale of how Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd sorted out everyone's love lives, I think I would probably have used my own prose for the whole thing, since Austen's prose is not easy to imitate seamlessly and it makes for a rather jarring reading experience to be constantly hitting paragraphs and thinking "oh this is Jane again! hello Jane!" But on the other hand writing books takes a lot of time and Jane Austen's works are all in the public domain and if, again, all you want to do is pad out the necessary 150 pages to set up your comical dueling farce, there is nothing stopping you! There is, also, nothing stopping you from charging me $2.99 for this experience instead of putting it on the AO3! And I paid the $2.99 willingly for my experience, and said experience did do a great job keeping me awake when I was really struggling after a red-eye flight -- a tiny jolt of adrenaline every time I hit another bit of word-for-word Austen prose! -- so I can't say I regret it.
My personal parts are:
a.) the second chapter begins with a cited epigram from Persuasion before proceeding to, uncited, quote the entire rest of the beginning of Persuasion. one does respect the chutzpah
b.) early on in Northanger Jane makes fun of the lady Catherine is staying with for having completely lost touch with a friend from school and then being excited to meet her ten years later; this shows their affections were both shallow. later on in Persuasion Anne Elliott is really excited to meet up with a friend from school that she'd lost touch with ten years ago; this shows her kindness and fidelity. really fascinating to see how fundamentally Northanger Abbey and Persuasion are different books! the jokes don't cross!
c.) a later chapter begins with a cited epigram from one of Phyllis Ann Karr's own earlier novels. truly, truly one respects the chutzpah
sovay told me that she had self-published a Gilbert and Sullivan fanfic novella about Sir Ruthven Murgatroyed of Ruddigore, I immediately purchased it for airplane reading.Unfortunately, I got on the airplane, started reading Dangerous Persuasion (the book in question), hit Chapter 2, stared at it, turned to
genarti, said "is this just the first chapter of Persuasion word-for-word but slightly condensed?", hit the third chapter, turned to genarti, said, "I'M PRETTY SURE THIS IS JUST THE FIRST CHAPTER OF NORTHANGER ABBEY WORD-FOR-WORD BUT SLIGHTLY CONDENSED?", and decided that it was not kind to either of us to continue before I could scream at other people about it in real time. The actual plot of Dangerous Persuasions is: Persuasion and Northanger Abbey are both happening in Bath at the same time, using as much of the original text as possible, and every so often Sir Ruthven Murgatroyed from Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore kind of shuffles himself into their respective plots to help the romances get together a bit faster.
If you don't remember the plot of Ruddigore, Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd's problem is that he is comically cursed to commit a crime every day as soon as he inherits the baronetcy. In the big finale of this book, Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd gets challenged to duels by both Anne Elliot's father and by Isabella Thorpe's brother, for extremely stupid non-crime reasons, and ducks comically out of them, embarrassing everybody but unfortunately not technically committing every crimes, much to his disappointment. Then he exits the book to pursue the rest of the plot of Ruddigore. Everyone else gets married, in, again, word for word the exact same fashion that they did in their original books, while having skipped most of the middle sections. All of this happens in a brisk 150 pages of which approximately 50% is new content and the other 50% is word-for-word recountings of the events of Persuasion and Northanger Abbey but with Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd introduced into various essential scenes.
Now, I absolutely cannot cast aspersions on any of this. It feels very much in the vein of the kind of proto-fanfiction that I wrote when I was twelve, which mostly consisted of me copying out the entire text of books and then inserting my own name into it so I could feel like I was Experiencing Adventures, i.e. "Frodo and Sam and Becca crossed into Mordor --" and this book certainly makes better use of its time than that! It has a joke that it's building towards, and then it makes the joke, and then everyone goes about their business again. Now, if I were accomplished author Phyllis Ann Karr, and I was desperate to write the tale of how Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd sorted out everyone's love lives, I think I would probably have used my own prose for the whole thing, since Austen's prose is not easy to imitate seamlessly and it makes for a rather jarring reading experience to be constantly hitting paragraphs and thinking "oh this is Jane again! hello Jane!" But on the other hand writing books takes a lot of time and Jane Austen's works are all in the public domain and if, again, all you want to do is pad out the necessary 150 pages to set up your comical dueling farce, there is nothing stopping you! There is, also, nothing stopping you from charging me $2.99 for this experience instead of putting it on the AO3! And I paid the $2.99 willingly for my experience, and said experience did do a great job keeping me awake when I was really struggling after a red-eye flight -- a tiny jolt of adrenaline every time I hit another bit of word-for-word Austen prose! -- so I can't say I regret it.
My personal parts are:
a.) the second chapter begins with a cited epigram from Persuasion before proceeding to, uncited, quote the entire rest of the beginning of Persuasion. one does respect the chutzpah
b.) early on in Northanger Jane makes fun of the lady Catherine is staying with for having completely lost touch with a friend from school and then being excited to meet her ten years later; this shows their affections were both shallow. later on in Persuasion Anne Elliott is really excited to meet up with a friend from school that she'd lost touch with ten years ago; this shows her kindness and fidelity. really fascinating to see how fundamentally Northanger Abbey and Persuasion are different books! the jokes don't cross!
c.) a later chapter begins with a cited epigram from one of Phyllis Ann Karr's own earlier novels. truly, truly one respects the chutzpah
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Date: 2022-09-23 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-24 06:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-23 11:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-24 06:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2022-09-23 11:45 pm (UTC)LOOK JUST @ ME NEXT TIME
as they say, lol
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Date: 2022-09-24 06:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2022-09-23 11:47 pm (UTC)Which one?
(I would also have expected Karr to use her own prose. I've read three novels and several short stories by her and it's worked in all of them. I feel somewhat responsible for your experience.)
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Date: 2022-09-24 06:30 pm (UTC)(as I've said, while it's been a wild experience, I regret none of it! but you see why I COULD not read it without access to the opportunity to shout about it)
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Date: 2022-09-24 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2022-09-24 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-24 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-24 12:48 am (UTC)but also: what the fuck
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Date: 2022-09-24 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-24 01:07 am (UTC)This is amazing. Thank you for writing it up.
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Date: 2022-09-24 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-24 06:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2022-09-24 01:56 am (UTC)I feel like there's a small but intense target audience for fic about Ruddigore, consisting of me plus three other people all of whom are friends of mine, but we REALLY want it. I wrote a short standalone many years ago about the Murgatroyd brothers as quasi-innocent kids, because no one else was going to write it and I wanted to read it. My hunger is as strong as ever, but this book sounds unsatisfactory, to say the least.
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Date: 2022-09-24 02:24 pm (UTC)She does have a LOT more Ruddigore fic available at Amazon, though I don't know if it would be any more satisfactory.
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Date: 2022-09-24 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-24 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-24 02:03 am (UTC)I didn't think anything could beat the second chapter begins with a cited epigram from Persuasion before proceeding to, uncited, quote the entire rest of the beginning of Persuasion, but then we got to a later chapter begins with a cited epigram from one of Phyllis Ann Karr's own earlier novels, and I see that I seriously underestimated Phyllis Ann Karr. One envisions an editor chewing on a cigar and telling her "You got moxie, kid."
Thank you for reading this for all of us! I don't think I need to read it but I am glad to have experienced it vicariously through you.
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Date: 2022-09-24 06:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2022-09-24 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-24 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-24 03:25 am (UTC)Aside from Idylls, the only Karr I've read is The Gallows in the Greenwood, which is a lot more like it in the sense of starting from "let us imagine a world that is exactly like the Robin Hood ballads, and that being established the Sheriff of Nottingham is a woman*."
* or more properly a fusion of three different ballad characters, which I rather respect.
ETA: OMG according to her Amazon page this is the middle book of a Robin Murgatroyd Trilogy.
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Date: 2022-09-24 06:49 pm (UTC)The thing that really blew me away was my discovery this morning of the SEVEN OTHER books featuring various Barons Murgatroyd! In one of them a Baron Murgatroyd fights Sweeney Todd!
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Date: 2022-09-24 12:14 pm (UTC)My goodness.
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Date: 2022-09-24 06:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-24 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-24 03:01 pm (UTC)Me too, and I thought 'that really is sovay writing out of her comfort zone'.
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