TLV Application
User Name/Nick: Rafe
User LJ: blackletter
AIM/IM: Aidnos
E-mail: blackletter_ajo@hotmail.com
Other Characters: Narvin
Character Name: Bertie Wooster
Series:ITV's Jeeves and Wooster series (supplemented by the P. G. Wodehouse books)
Age: eternally in his mid-20s
From When?: Just after “The Ties That Bind”
Inmate/Warden: Warden. Bertie Wooster doesn’t have an evil molecule in his body. About the worst that can be said of him is that he’s a bit lazy, a flibbertigibbet, a ditz. He lives by the Wooster Code (which amounts to “Be A Doormat For Everyone Always”), tends to see the best in everyone (except Aunts, because Aunts are fierce, deadly, and overall bad for one’s health), is loyal to his friends, and generous to strangers.
Item:A hard-boiled mystery. (Not the sort of improving book Jeeves would approve of.)
Abilities/Powers: He has the ability to somehow become engaged to every unattached female within a 50 foot radius. He is protected from the evils of the world by a powerful bubble of obliviousness, which not even the First World War and The Great Depression could pierce. He’s also a very snappy dresser (at least he thinks so).
Personality:
The most important thing to know about Bertram Wilberforce Wooster is that he lives by what he calls “The Code of the Woosters.” (He sometimes refers to himself as a preux chevalier.) What this appears to entail is never hurting a woman’s feelings, even when she’s engaged to him against his will; never let friends down even when they’re abusing him; and never back out of an agreement even when the terms of the agreement are changed from under him. What this actually *means* is that everybody uses Bertie as a doormat. Need someone to loan you a 100 quid? Ask Bertie. Need someone to break into your prospective father-in-law’s house to steal a silver cow creamer? Ask Bertie. Need to take over someone’s posh flat and pretend it’s your own? Ask for Bertie’s.
He’s also very flighty and gives one the impression that he’s a complete nitwit. And yet he’s not unintelligent. He’s able to translate Jeeves’ high vocabulary and complicated syntax into simply English for his friends. He has a love of language that comes out in his attempts to reach for the right word (he gets there eventually), and his whimsical metaphors. He quotes widely, but usually remembers only half the quote. Rather than unintelligent, what he is is unfocused. He’s got a magpie brain that picks up bits and pieces of information that appeal to him, stores them in a totally unorganized fashion, and then drops them willy nilly into his conversation. He does not, however, have a lick of common sense or much worldliness.
Rich and unambitious, he’s led a very sheltered life and has difficulty even making his own tea. He has never held a job in his life and spends his days walking about the metrop., visiting friends at his club, playing piano, and drinking whisky and soda. (And getting bullied/blackmailed/conned into helping his friends/family/near strangers in ways that require him to put his life, freedom, or dignity (or all three) at risk.)
Bertie will initially be surprised that the Barge is not more like sailing on a cruise ship from London to New York. This will be a bit of a disappointment. That said, he’ll get over it quickly. Bertie gets over most things quickly. He will try to make friends with everyone. And in fact, after he’s talked to you once, he’ll consider you an old chum. He will probably quite honestly not notice a lot of the darker things that go on in the Barge. Rosy-tinted glasses are all but welded to his face.
He will try “think like Jeeves” and use “the psychology of the individual” in his attempts to redeem his inmate. This is likely to lead to strange and hilarious schemes to try and put the inmate in positions where their inner goodness, which Bertie is sure is there, will burst out like a budding flower and the inmate will renounce his or her evil ways forever.
Path to Redemption: N/A
History: Bertie Wilberforce Wooster was born into a well-heeled English family sometime around the turn of the twentieth century. He was orphaned at a young age and sent to live with a series of aunts, each one more terrifying than the last. The worst being the dreaded Aunt Agatha who breathes fire and viciously chews glass bottles (and hapless nephews) and spits them out.
He was educated at Malvern House Preparatory School for boys and there won a prize for Scripture Knowledge. He’s very proud of this still and brings it up at every opportunity. Then he went to Eton and from there to Magdalen College, Oxford and studied a subject unknown but probably Litterae Humaniores. He seems to have spent more of his time at Oxford stealing policemen’s helmets than studying, however. Occasionally he will pull half-remembered (or mis-remembered) fragments of literary quotes out of his mind, but don’t expect a scholar.
Bertie lived through the First World War as a young man and seems not to have noticed. Presumably this means he didn’t fight in the war.
At some point, Bertie’s old valet, Meadows, was caught stealing Bertie’s socks and was therefore given the mitten (ie fired). It was then that Jeeves came into Bertie’s life.
Bertie then spent the next five or so years getting accidentally engaged to every other woman he encountered. Far too noble to tell the beazles the truth about his lack of affection for them, it was only through Jeeves’ genius that Bertie was spared the dreaded fate of holy matrimony.
At the moment he makes his deal with the Admiral, he is still happily not-married (although the chances that he was accidentally engaged to someone or another is high) and has done nothing of importance with his life. He has a friend who *thinks* about working, though. It’s almost like having an accomplishment.
Sample Journal Entry:
What ho, what ho!
I say, this is a dashed peculiar sort of ship, isn’t it? I mean, when I was approached by this Admiral chap I knew I’d be on some boat or another, but I rather expected it to be more of a sea-going affair, as is, I think, a natural conclusion to come to when the word “ship” is uttered. Instead, inside, I find a replica of my Berkeley Mansions flat, so perfectly perfect I half expect Jeeves to come biffing in through the kitchen door at any moment, and outside, I find all the starry universe.
Well, this is a rummy whatsits, it is. Dashed peculiar. All the same, this Wooster shall not yield to brooding or despair. Oh no. Did the Wooster who fought at Agincourt look around that stormy and troubled hill and say, “Dash it all, this wasn’t on the cards,” and go home? Oh no. A Wooster always keeps his word, you know.
...
Where does a chap go to get a whisky and s. around here?
Sample RP:
The very best thing about this ship, Bertie decided, was that there was not a single Aunt in sight. Oh, some the beazels might, technically, be aunts, but they did not display their auntliness vis a vis him, and therefore were safe enough. In addition to the splendid lack of Aunts, there were no Madeline Bassetts, no Florance Crayes, and no Honoria Glossips. Therefore, in Bertie's eyes, the Barge ranked up there next to Eden before the Fall as far a paradises went. All it was lacking was the Drones club, a good tailor, and Jeeves. If the ship would only accommodate the addition of those three things, Bertie thought he could be content to stay for a very long time indeed.
The verdant-skinned girls were a bit unnerving, however. He wondered just how many leafy greens one had to eat to achieve that hue.
Still, odd colours, bumpy foreheads, and terrible suits aside, the shipboard guests didn't seem half-bad at all.
Special Notes: