Ghyll:Jemima and the Square Do-Gooders
Written by Meldersen before he turned to more scholarly pursuits, Jemima and the Square Do-Gooders is widely regarded as the worst fantasy novel ever written due to its flimsy and badly thought out construction. Every time the Odlucian Library procures a new copy, it's defaced within a week, causing the book to have ironically been reissued more times than any other popular novel.
Plot Summary
So that you don't have to read it:
Jemima Panderlock is a go-getting city girl living in a tall well-kept building in the east of Iganefta. Decisive and courageous, she knows what she likes and she knows how to get it. One day, she's approached by a mysterious stranger who she tells to get bent. She decides to go on a quest against the Five Do-Gooders to prevent her homeland of Middle Ghyll from falling into the hands of politically correct brazen idiots. Faced with having no companions apart from her non-identical twin sister Jelena, and having no special skills to help her along the way, she enlists the help of a wise and extremely useful guide, Rogbert the Wizzlard. Jemima prepares for a long and arduous trek with Jelena and Rogbert in tow, and orders provisions for seven months' travel across the seven circular lands of Middle Ghyll before finding out that the Five Do-Gooders actually live next door. "Shit!", she exclaims. The Five Do-Gooders' power is severely limited by them having to conjure up a set meal for five every night, so Jemima effortlessly fulfills her task. Here's an excerpt from the most intense "battle" scene:
Groll the Do-Gooder turned his grisly head and raised the black shaft to strike. "Use the Gnarlstone!" cried Jelena. "No worries" said Rogbert and the venerable wizzlard raised the orb and muttered the Arnian words "haster-le-vister". A bright flash flared and the Do-Gooder slumped into a pile of grey-green mush. Suddenly Jemima sprung forth from the lavatory with a mighty battle cry*, whereupon Jelena and Rogbert explained to her that the battle was already over.
Some Toasters came around and had a party as Jelena and the others all got pissed out of their heads and lapsed into unconsciousness. They decided to hold a mighty and expansive tea party the next day with the neighbourhood kids. Groll the Do-Gooder wasn't actually killed, merely maimed, and lived a long happy life as a pile of grey-green mush. Jemima and Jelena were both sexually promiscuous (though never with nerds or geeks, whom they considered almost as an inferior species), but that's purely incidental.
Citations: Iganefta, Meldersen, Odlucian Library.
--Sean B. Palmer 16:38, 14 Nov 2004 (EST)
Here's a somewhat longer quotation from one of the "romantic" passages, in quite a different style from the above. I copied it from the original manuscripts on display at the Odlucian Library at the risk of my own sanity:
During those evening hours it seemed that with the soft touch of Jemima's hand there ran through Rogbert a current of infectious dreaming which kindled his soul till thoughts of beauty came to his mind and words of music sprang to his lips such as he had always considered not to be in him. It was not he who spoke; it was Jemima who saw with his eyes and spoke with his voice. To his vision, swayed by Jemima's subtle influence, the landscape became a thing of moving beauty and of life, and the floating clouds became a panorama of ever shifting pictures.
Rogbert, inspired by her, described so eloquently the wonders he saw that she, too, could see them. Po Mountain grew before his eyes, and he plainly saw Sarfl sitting before his cave, while gods and goddesses floated at his feet and revelled on the fleecy mountain sides. Then mountain, gods, and goddesses dissolved -- as in fact they did dissolve ages ago before the eyes of millions who had thought them real.
Again, Rogbert saw Jemima herself in flowing white robes made of the stuff from which fleecy clouds are wrought. All these wonders he described, and when he came to tell her of the fair cloud image of herself he seized the joyous chance to make her understand in some faint degree how altogether lovely in his eyes the vision was. Then she smiled and softly pressed his hand said:
But enough, or we will all be mind-wrecked. --John Cowan 23:52, 28 Jan 2005 (EST)
Footnotes
* It was that time of the month.
