Title: The Rakudo; Being an Answer to the Challenge Posted in a Relatively Obscure Corner of an Ongoing Discussion Thread on ASC
Author: Jane (jat_sapphire)
Contact: [email protected]
Series: VOY
Type: filk, Xovers with ASC thread, a theorist and media star who shall remain nameless, and Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado
Rating: [PG]
Codes: N, Tu
Summary: Response to Raku’s challenge for a xover story involving Neelix, Tuvok, and Cam**le P**lia. I added Gilbert and Sullivan and Bubba.Archive: Oh, be serious!
Disclaimer: Paramount in its glory owns the Voyager, its crew and the space it flies in. I just visit, and I don't make any money while I'm here.
Gilbert’s librettos are now in public domain.
And the typical novel’s disclaimer: any resemblance between any character portrayed in this story and any person living or dead is purely coincidental.
Author’s note: The actual "challenge" was posted on the discussion thread loosely (very loosely) connected to Wildcat’s fine TOS story, "Seed of Retribution." In the course of this thread, [email protected] said raku wanted, "a funny 5-page Cam**le Pag**a/ Neelix story" and later added Tuvok:, "a Tuvok/Cam**le Pag**a story, one that involves a mind meld gone horribly, horribly wrong." (The asterisks are mine--you never know who does the Mr. O name-search thing.)
And I was caught. Oh God, I can’t believe I wrote Gilbert and Sullivan *filk*! Raku, this is all your fault! (That's why it's named after you.)
The libretto of The Mikado is available online in ASCII format --though you’ll have a better time if you listen to a recording, or better yet, see a production. Various quotations from Paglia were collected at a site belonging to one of her fans.
The Rakudo; Being an Answer to the Challenge Posted in a Relatively Obscure Corner of an Ongoing Discussion Thread on ASC
(The following are fragments of a lost Gilbert and Sullivan Multiversial Operetta, recently recovered from a compromised data solid. There are, therefore, several lacunae. These are marked in the text with this symbol: ***.)
Dramatis Personae:
Bubbah-Pooh: Son of *** Disguised as a wandering poster
Nee-Nee: Lord High Talk-Show Host
Tu-Bah: Lord High Everything Else
Yimmer-Yammer: ward of Nee-Nee
Kami-Sha: Postfeminist Extraordinaire, scheduled guest on
"Breakfast with Nee-Nee"Act I: Courtyard of Nee-Nee’s Palace. ASC posters discovered hunched over computer terminals.
Chorus of Posters:
If you want to know who we are,
We are posters on ASC:
With many a tale bizarre
And many a scene kinky,
Perhaps you suppose this throng
Can't post it up all day long?
If that's your idea, you're wrong, oh-ho! Oh-ho!
If that's your idea, you're wrong!***
Bub.: A wand’ring poster, I,
a man of condescension,
I sow as much dissension
as trolling a thread can bring!My messages are long,
Through every passion ranging,
And to my humours changing
Adjust my messages’ sti-ing!
Adjust my messages’ sting!Your tales are slashy, sexy brew?
I’ll strive with you
Oh, sorrow, sorrow!
On Kirk’s sexuality you brood?
I’ll break your mood!
Oh, sorrow, sorrow!
I’ll blast unwilling ears
With het’rosexist fears,
While crocodile tears
My cheeks bedew--
Oh, sorrow, sorrow!***
Bub.: So Nee-Nee, the short-order cook, is now Lord High Talk-Show Host of Voyager! Why, that's the highest rank a citizen can attain!
Tu.: It is. Our logical Captain, seeing no moral difference between the cook whose ineptitude condemns a crewmember to heartburn, and the talk-show host whose garrulity renders the recovery time hideous, has rolled the two offices into one.
Bub.: But how good of you, honeybunch (for I cannot see over the modem whether you are a man or a woman, and therefore will adopt my default setting), to tell all this to me, a mere wandering poster!
Tu: Don't mention it. I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and masculine person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my Vulcan pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born raising my eyebrow. But I struggle hard to overcome this defect. I mortify my pride continually. I talk to...well, I am talking to you. And I appear on "Breakfast with Nee-Nee" for a moderate fee.
Bub.: Oh, you don’t!
Tu.: Well, not yet, no. That was merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
[Music; Tu-Bah recitative]
But here he comes, equipped as suits his station;
He'll give you any further information.[Exeunt Tu-Bah and Bubbah-Pooh. Re-enter Chorus of Posters.]
Chor.: Oh, now behold the Lord High Talk-Show Host!
A personage of noble rank and title--
A rank above the proudest officer,
Whose functions are particularly vital!
We boast, we boast, of the Noble Lord High Talk-Show Host!
We boast, we boast, of the Noble Lord,
of the Noble Lord
High Talk-Show, Talk-Show Host!Nee.: Gentlebeings, I'm much touched by this reception. I can only trust that by strict attention to frivolity I shall make you a little more comfortable in our home away from home, Voyager. If I should ever be called upon to actually interview anyone on my show, I am happy to think that there will be no difficulty in finding plenty of people whose loss of reticence will be a distinct gain to society at large.
[Song]
As some day it may happen that an audience may tune in,
I've got a little list--I've got a little list
Of writers on and offline to add to my bulletin,
So it never should be missed--it never should be missed!
There’s the pestilential nuisances who write us full of filk,
And make up aphrodisiacs from mistletoe to milk,
And then there are the trolling fellows full of something else,
And those who think of symbols when they see our warp nacelles,
And others who that one cigar is one cigar insist,
I’ve got them on the list, I’ve got them on the list!Chor.: He's got them on the list--
yes, he's got them on the list;
And they'll none of 'em be missed--
they'll none of them be missed.***a particularly long gap here. The next piece seems to come
from the close of Act I.***[Song, Ensemble]
Bub.: The threatened cloud has passed away,
Yim.: And brightly shines the dawning day;
Nee.: What though the end may come too soon,
Yim.: There's still a show this afternoon!
All: Then let the throng, then let the throng of joy advance,
With laughing song, with laughing song and merry dance,
Then let the throng of joy advance
With laughing song and merry dance,
With laughing song and merry dance, with laughing song--[Chorus of posters joins in]
Cho.: With joyous shout, with joyous shout and ringing cheer,
We all log on, log on to post and read you here!
We all log on, log on to post, to post, to post and read,
And read and read and read you here![Ensemble dance. Enter Kami-Sha melodramatically.]
Kam.: Your revels cease! Assist me, all of you!
Cho.: Why, who is this whose evil eyes
Rain blight on our festivities?Kam.: I claim my perjured contractual appearance on "Breakfast with Nee-Nee"!
[Music stops.]
Nee.: That’s not in the libretto.
Kam.: I don’t care. I’m on the Internet, so I’m doing guerilla theater.
Nee.: Gorilla theater? Where’s the gorilla? Great! Where’s the camera? I need tape for the show!
Kam.: I regard the Internet as a new form of guerilla theater attack against the forces of political correctness, against the feminist establishment.
Nee.: Oh. Never mind. Look, Kami-Sha, why do you think I took you off the show? Postfeminism, it’s so--twentieth century.
[Music restarts at a gesture from Kami-Sha.]
Kam.: Oh, fool! to shun delights that never cloy!
Cho.: Go, leave thy deadly work undone!
Kam.: Come back, oh, shallow fool! come back to joy!
Cho.: Away, away! ill-favoured one!
Kam.: Our idea of the pretty is a limited cataclysmic realm of chthonian violence.
[Music stops again.]
Nee.: What? I mean ... what?
Kam.: Our idea of the pretty is a limited cataclysmic realm of chthonian violence.
Nee.: No, it didn’t make any sense that time, either.
Kam.: Our idea of the pretty --
Nee.: Stop! Stop, please, I guess we’re just not, um, up to your level.
Kam.: True. At this point, I'm the leading woman intellectual in the world. There's no one else.
Nee.: [slaps head] I know! Tu-Bah! The very man!
[Tu-Bah emerges from crowd, reluctantly]
Nee.: Tu-Bah, old fellow, can’t you translate her or something? Isn’t there that thing you Vulcans do, with your hands--
Tu.: Tal-shaya?
Nee.: Um, I don’t think so. Is that the putting-your-hand-on-her-face and making-sense-of-her-thoughts thing?
Tu.: No, it’s the breaking-her-neck thing.
[Both look at Kami-Sha. She glares back.]
Nee.: I’ll keep that idea in reserve, I think. I wouldn’t want to be too hasty, or anyway not until I know what effect it would have on my ratings. For now, just please tell me what she’s trying to say.
[Tu-Bah not consenting.]
Come, come, Tu-Bah, do it as a favor to me!Tu.: Are you suggesting that I have a particular reason to do you a favor?
Nee.: No, this is a PG-rated post.
Tu.: [disappointed] Oh.
Nee.: Well, later on.
Tu.: [brightens] Oh.
Kam.: Homosexuality is not "normal."
Bub.: All right!
Kam.: On the contrary, it is a challenge to the norm; therein rests its eternally revolutionary character. However, my libertarian view, here as in regard to abortion, is that we have not only the right, but the obligation to defy nature's tyranny. The highest human identity consists precisely in such assertions of freedom against material limitation. Gays are heroes and martyrs who have given their lives in the greatest war of them all.
Nee.: [paling] Given their lives? Really?
[to Tu-Bah]
You never told me about that.Tu.: She exaggerates the material limitation. I think. I am also experiencing some difficulty in parsing her utterances.
Nee.: So do the mind-melting thing, and then you can tell us what she’s getting at. It might make a good show, you know. Someone might even watch it. Voluntarily.
Tu.: It is not mind-melting--oh, never mind. I shall try if you wish it.
Nee.: Please, Tu-Bah.
[Tu-Bah approaches Kami-Sha.]
Kam.: Whenever sexual freedom is sought or achieved, sado-masochism will not be far behind.
Tu.: Then I shall look forward to it. My mind to your mind...
[Both cry out simultaneously, then burst into song.]
Kam.: There is beauty in the bellow of the blast,
There is grandeur in the growling of the gale,
There is eloquent outpouring
When the lion is a-roaring,
And the tiger is a-lashing of his tail!Tu.: Yes, I like to see a tiger
From the Congo or the Niger,
And especially when lashing of his tail!Kam. Volcanoes have a splendor that is grim,
And earthquakes only terrify the dolts,
But to him who's scientific
There's nothing that's terrific
In the falling of a flight of thunderbolts!Tu.: Yes, in spite of all my meekness,
If I have a little weakness,
It's a passion for a flight of thunderbolts!Both: If that is so,
Sing derry down derry!
It's evident, very,
Our tastes are one.
Away we'll go,
And merrily marry,
Nor tardily tarry
Till day is done![Rest of company look on aghast. Nee-Nee first to find
his voice.]Nee.: We’ve lost the filk! Those are the original words! This mind-melt has gone *horribly, horribly wrong*!
***end of recovered fragments***