Anybody Night at Oscar's Egyptian Caberet

Fanfiction
Title:	Anybody Night at Oscar's Egyptian Caberet
Author(s):	The Enigmatic Big Miss Sunbeam
Date(s):	1997
Length:
Genre(s):
Fandom(s):
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External Links:	online here
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Anybody Night at Oscar's Egyptian Caberet is a Star Trek: TNG NC-17, P/Q, P/La, P/D, P/f, AU, PWP story by The Enigmatic Big Miss Sunbeam.

It is in the same universe as Promised Land.

Reactions and Reviews

Because TEBMS' stories are some of the best things I've read on this ng or any other.

I made DejaNews cough up "Anybody Night at Oscar's Egyptian Caberet," so that I could remind myself of why it was so extraordinary, and if you haven't read it or haven't read it lately I urge you to do the same. This is a peice of fanfic brilliance. It can be appreciated on many levels -- let me run through a few of them.

On the one hand there is the sheer exuberance of the prose. Ooh, the prose. So many good lines. Data described as presenting "an astonishing buffet of virginities, like Kasper Hauser" (I'm quoting from memory, which proves how good that line is.) The excellence of the pacing, the mood swinging from purely silly to smutty to serious in a matter of a few sentences. The delightful absurdity of Oscar's, where Bill Clinton and Walt Whitman are a thing.

Then there are the moments where the story goes translucent and you can see all the way to the bottom of it, all the way down to its depths. The end turns this story from a farce into a passion play in the same way that the end of, say, "Twelth Night" does. I won't spoil it. But I cannot read it without getting the shivvers.

I think a common problem of fanfic is that it tends to be -- boring. I hate to say it. But it's a formulaic genre (nothing wrong with that, formulaic genres also gave us Shakespeare's plays and Beowulf and Speigelman's "Maus") and it's easy for practicioners to get lazy and allow the formula to carry them, instead of putting it to work for them.

In short, not enough strangeness gets in, which is an odd problem for such an inherently strange genre as Star Trek smut. jonk's Prelude universe escapes this trap, but I have praised jonk's stories elsewhere (and incidentally, it's been too long, jonk, we have to get back in touch); the EBMS's stories also escape this pitfall. And perhaps it is their very strangeness, their creativity, which allows hir stories to cut so deep at times.

So, I raise a glass in Miss Sunbeam's general direction. We're lucky to have you.

REVIEW: _Anybody Night at Oscar's Egyptian Cabaret_, by the Enigmatic Big Miss Sunbeam

SPOILERS: In order to review the story, I had to describe it, but not very much. Trust me, this is a must-read.

WARNING: This review is kind of biased because I really loved this story, and so this little commentary consists mostly of saying *why*, exactly, I loved it.

So now that you know that, I loved this story for three reasons:

1. Angle of vision

2. Wildly imaginative prose

3. Allegorical fancy

Let me explain. Everybody knows how much I love P/Q. I will read anything that has P/Q in the header and love it, but as we all know, there is no one true way to write it. There's Ruth's hot S/M, or Varoneeka's tender love stories, or my emotional angst, or Robin's gritty realism, or... In other words, everyone has their own particular 'take' on the pair, translated through their personal angle of vision.

I thought I'd seen 'em all.

Until now.

Miss Sunbeam gives us tangled lust; a stallion and his brood of mares disguised as Jean-Luc and his band; an unhappy, irresistable attraction between Jean-Luc and Q; and a completely different way of identifying the Jean-Luc-and-Q dynamic. This is an unleashed, macho Johnny, eerily recognizable yet totally alien. What if Jean-Luc sang hillbilly music? What if Q was his longsuffering lover? What would they be like? It never even occurred to me to ask, but the answer is here in this story, and I simply had to figuratively stare at these old characters painted a completely new way. And I'm thrilled.

They still experience that push and pull of pain and attraction; Jean-Luc, hopelessly addicted to Q who needs him back just as badly, draws the eye like a pretty girl or a bad accident. He's refreshingly cold-hearted, even sociopathic. Q is vulnerable, easily hurt, easily broken, the kind of man who would waste phone cards on dial-a-psychic, begging the woman on the other end to tell him he is loved. Awful stuff. Loved every second of it.

Which brings me next to the prose. This is the part that got to me the most--the particular word choices that brought me right down into sensation or emotion. Even for us ASCEMers this is unique and original. At one point, for example, when Jean-Luc is cheating on Q yet again, the feel of a lady(?)'s vagina is described as glutinous, and I knew immediately that going inside her felt like sticking your finger into a bowl of pudding that's still warm but already has that skin over the surface so you have to apply just the least bit of pressure to get through, but then it yields to you, and you're inside the warmth and you don't know whether to pull your finger out and lick it or leave it in because it just feels *so nice*, and that took me five lines to say, but she got the sensation down in the single word. I am dumbstruck with awe. She described Data as possessing 'an astonishing buffet of virginities.' Yes! Exactly. Not only is that how this Jean-Luc would see him, but it exactly snapshots Data's innocence as well as the ugly gluttony with which this Jean-Luc would approach him. This is remarkable stuff. Run right out and imitate it? If you want, but savor it first, 'cause it's way tasty. And Picard's thighs... well, you'll have to read it for yourself, but the description makes me want to use words like lyrical and evocative. And sexy.

Almost as an afterthought, the shape of the story cocks it's pretty head and says, 'Don't you like me?'

'Why yes, little darlin', I sure do. You almost got lost behind everything else, but come on out here so I can see you.' It's a TIM, but it has a wonderful element of wild fantasy that is presented straight-faced and side by side with the gritty reality of Jean-Luc's selfishness, Q's pain, and the hardscrabble life they're leading. Jean-Luc betrays his lover to Lenin's girlfriend. As in Lenin the communist leader guy whose regime recently bit the dust. Oscar Wilde's nightclub (the Oscar of the title) caters to the likes of Walt Whitman and his boyfriend Bill Clinton (!), and Hollywoood Jack Vincennes, a character from the movie _L.A. Confidential_, and there's mention of a singing cat, and it's really funny, but the story is balanced out rather than weighed down by all the wit and irony. It works. It works really well.

I would have thought the allegoric form of a TIM would not stand up to magical realism, but she pulls it off. The humor and imagination take just enough of an edge off the rending love story so that the shock is bearable. I'm in awe because I have no gift for this and wouldn't have even had the nerve to try. Stories like this are the reason why slash is going to be considered a pivotal turn-of-the-millenium literary form. You watch. Read it, read it, read it.

Oh, and while I'm plugging Miss Sunbeam's story, I will immodestly mention that she and I are collaborating on a follow-up. I was delighted enough by _Oscar's_ to write a country song and send it to her, and she liked it and offered to use it in her next installment, and that was all the encouragement I needed, so I wrote more songs, and now we're working on the True Saga of Jean-Luc and His Magic Mountain Boys (running title). Coming soon to a newsgroup near you. Jeanita