Commentary: Another Drink (Seinfeld, George/Elaine)
Read the fic sans commentary here.

This was my pinch hit fic. Or rather, it was one of the six assignments that didn't have a match that got shopped around early on, so I actually did have the full amount of time to work on it (though since I had all those other fics to get done first, I didn't end up starting it til the 20th; still managed to turn it in on the 21st, though, just a couple hours after the deadline).

As soon as I saw "Seinfeld (Elaine Benice/George Costanza)/ Embarassing awkward het? Please? I will love you forever, really I will." I was like ooooooh. See, this is why I love Yuletide (and especially the NYR fics where we can see all the requests), because I never would have thought of this on my own and yet...yes, yes, a thousand times yes! So I emailed and no one else had snatched it up yet, so it was mine. My precious. :D

Even though I didn't start writing right away, I was thinking, and I had a vague idea about George and Elaine at a party. I've seen almost every episode of Seinfeld; it was always one of my favorite shows. Now I might otherwise have been a wee bit worried, because since I don't watch TV anymore, I'm not seeing it in syndication or anything so it's been years. However, I got seasons one and two for Christmas last year and had never got around to watching them. I figured now's my chance, and when it came time to write the fic, I just put on the DVDs and watched episodes that featured George and Elaine heavily (whether together or apart) just to reacquaint myself with their voices and that of canon in general.

I wanted it to really have the feel of an episode because the request felt like it could easily be one. I mean, is there really no episode where George and Elaine get drunk and end up in bed together? How is that possible? Over all, I'm immensely pleased with this fic. I got gushing praise from the recipient, but I want to thank her just as much for making me realise this needed to be written.

Whew! Now with that all out of the way, on to the actual fic!

It's entirely possible this is the worst party Elaine has ever been to. Any party where the bulk of the evening is spent talking to George is by definition a bad party.

This was the basic idea that had been percolating since I saw the request. Elaine and George stranded at a party together. No Jerry, because this is definitely not something that would happen with Jerry around. As I was watching the season two DVDs, there was an episode where George takes Elaine to a party in order to get revenge on his boss, and they were huddled in the corner drinking. I had already written over half the fic at that point, but it's what I was picturing.

You never know who you might pick up at a party, but it's hard to imagine anyone being worse than George. Well, maybe Kramer. Kramer might be worse than George. Elaine sips her wine and tries to tune him out. Definitely a toss-up.

Definitely a toss-up, indeed.

The problem with George is that he's a...the opposite of a magnet. An anti-magnet, if you will.

I really liked this sentence. It has the feel of Seinfeld dialogue to it, so IMO works well for Elaine's inner dialogue.

He drives people away, and not just the normal way, by interacting with them. It's like he emits some sort of force field that keeps them away. Every once in a while Elaine will see a guy across the room, catch his eye and smile, and then he'll get halfway over here, see George, and just sort of wander away.

I can totally picture this.

George is not having any better luck with women, but that's to be expected. By now surely even George expects it, which would explain why he's clinging so tightly to Elaine. Metaphorically, thank God, but clinging nonetheless. George is like a black hole, she realizes. A black hole and an anti-magnet. Elaine can't escape, and no one else can get close. It's her and George for the long haul.

I really liked the whole black hole/anti-magnet thing, and from the feedback I've gotten so far, everyone else did, too.

Waiters are exempt, apparently, as there's one heading their way and he doesn't turn aside when Elaine hails him over. This definitely calls for another drink.

It calls for another soon after, and another after that. Eventually Elaine loses track. If only she could lose George this easily, but no, he's still right there, munching on hors d'oeuvres and grinning like a fool as he natters on about something, a plan he and Kramer have come up with to win the lottery. Maybe. Elaine nods and "uh-huh"s when it seems appropriate, but she's not really paying attention. Apparently it involves Newman, a pet store, and thirty-six cocktail wieners. Or wait, no. Cocktail wieners are what George is eating. What are those called, then?

Two things. One, I love the cocktail wiener thing. Am very pleased with that and feel it gets the drunkenness across without resorting to slurred speech or anything. Two, it took me a while to think of a scheme that felt wacky, in-character, and yet wasn't something that had been used on the show. This was probably the hardest part of the whole fic, actually. A lot of work for just a few lines, but I'm glad I spent the time to think of something because it works really well carried through the rest of the party scene.

Oh, there's the nice waiter again, and he's brought her another drink without even being asked. Or maybe she's asked and forgotten.

More getting the drunkenness across subtly?

Elaine takes the glass, smiles at the waiter and downs half of it in one gulp as George says, "So that's when we make a grab for the parrot."

"Uh-huh," Elaine says automatically.

This wouldn't happen if Jerry were here. He wouldn't abandon her to the anti-magnetic black hole that is George Costanza. Why doesn't she have a policy of no Jerry-less parties? Or at least no Jerry-less parties with George. Jerry-less and George-less parties would be fine. Preferable, even, really, but at least Jerry is capable of mingling. No George without Jerry from here on out, she decides,

I just really liked this bit, despite the awkwardness of Jerry-less and George-less. I like the rambliness.

"uh-huh"ing at George's "because, you see, the parrot has already picked three winning numbers, that can't be a coincidence."

I like that I wove the scheme through these last few paragraphs here, being vague and yet dropping enough hints that you can pretty much form a picture of what they're trying to do. I didn't want to just be completely vague and say "George was nattering on about some scheme" and leave it at that, despite how tempted I was to take the easy route. I think this really adds a lot more of that Seinfeld flavor to it.

Make that no George, period.

When she drifts awake the next morning, the sun is shining brightly through the window.

I kind of wibble a bit over whether this jump is awkward, but I think it fits with the sort of blacking out from dunkenness thing.

Too brightly, even with her eyes mostly closed.

Yargh. Two -ly adverbs in such a short sentence. I'm not a hardcore adjective hater, but it kind of stands out there.

Tugging the sheet up over her head, she rolls in towards the middle of the bed (and how'd she get off on the side, anyway? She always sleeps in the middle) only to find there's someone in the way.

I actually struggled a lot with the whole second half of the fic, where (aside from working out the parrot scheme) the first half just flowed. I worried that it showed, and that the second half wasn't as funny as the first, but my canon beta reassured me that it was witty to the end, so I took her word for it.

Her first thought is that at some point either the black hole or the anti-magnet stopped working, and she managed to escape George. Somehow she escaped from George and met someone - tall, handsome, doctor, a little voice in the back of her mind says, if you're dreaming, you might as well go all out - and brought him back to her place.

Poor Elaine. About to have her hopes dashed...

An arm flops out then, hitting her square in the nose, and - tall, handsome, doctor, Elaine chants silently - she shoves it aside and peeks out from under the sheet.

I liked the aside there a lot.

It's the sunlight blinding her, it must be, because the man in her bed is neither tall, handsome, nor a doctor.

<Coffe Talk lady>Discuss.</Coffe Talk lady>

In fact, he looks suspiciously like George.

He snorts and mutters something in his sleep and he sounds like George, too, all nasal and whiny. Elaine inches away, trying not to wake him, and stumbles out of bed. This definitely calls for another drink or three. Possibly ten.

Easier said than done. She manages to sit up and swing her legs off the side of the bed, but every time she starts to stand the room starts tilting and she narrowly escapes throwing up on the crumpled lump of blue fabric between her feet that she assumes is her dress.

That sentence feels overly long and rather awkward, but I couldn't figure out how else to do it.

Okay, so standing is out of the question, which means unless she suddenly develops psychokinesis, so is a drink. Time to take stock of the situation. She's wearing her slip still. Good. Bra...hanging from one arm inside her slip. Neutral. No underwear. Bad. George in bed with her. Worse, worse, worst.

So many people quoted that taking stock snippet in their feedback as their favorite line. *beams* I like it a lot, too, and figured it was a good way to get in a description of how she was dressed without breaking POV.

This is not just one of those things you can laugh off in the morning. This is the sort of thing that makes you swear off drinking forever.

In the hazy recesses of her mind lurk jumbled snippets of what she'd like to think is a bad dream, but are almost certainly memories of last night.

Another awkwardish sentence. Feels like too many words squished together.

Flopping down on the bed giggling. George's fumbling hands tugging off her dress, her panties. Had sex with George actually seemed like a good idea at the time? Could sex with George ever seem like a good idea to anyone?

I debated on whether to go into more detail of the night's activities, but in the end figured a couple lines would do. After all, she doesn't remember much. If I had been short on the minimum wordcount, this is probably where I would have come back to fill in a little, though.

"Elaine?"

George sounds half asleep still and just as confused as she was. Without turning around, she hears him feeling for his glasses on the nightstand. He doesn't say anything else and eventually Elaine can't stand it anymore. If she throws up, she throws up. It can't be worse than sitting here. She pushes herself up, wobbling a little on unsteady legs.

I wibbled about that last sentence some. Still don't know if both wobbling and unsteady legs are necessary, but I left it in anyway, and neither beta blinked an eye, so I guess it wasn't horribly redundant.

Pulling her bra off the rest of the way, she drops it on the floor and stumbles out of the bedroom. "I'm going to make coffee."

When George joins her, he's dressed. Thank God. If there's one thing she's grateful for, it's that she was too drunk to remember what George looks like naked. And really, right now, she's taking all she can get.

Hee. I liked that bit.

She shoves a cup of coffee into his hands. The problem now is to keep him from bragging to Jerry. Or anyone else, for that matter.

The ending was actually really hard. I think I rewrote from her shoving the coffee into his hands to the end five or six times until I got something I was satisfied with. The first couple tries were her telling George not to tell Jerry, but even as I was writing that I knew it wasn't right, and it wasn't what I wanted, either. I wanted a mutual omg don't tell, not just from Elaine.

"I, uh...you're not mad I fell asleep, are you?" George says hurriedly. "I must've had a few too many drinks. I don't usually... Not before, I mean."

And that's when I hit on this idea. If the sex had been anywhere near decent, you know George would have been bragging to Jerry. This way he's just as embarrassed as Elaine, and it actually gives Elaine a bit of an upper hand, which felt right to me. George has always got to come off worst. It's one of those universal constants.

"Before," Elaine echoes, hiding the beginnings of a smile behind her mug. Suddenly things are looking up.

"Just don't tell Jerry," George pleads. "He'd never let me live it down."

"Don't worry," Elaine says, "I won't tell a soul."

And then tada, I had my perfect ending, plus I was well over the minimum word count (ended up being nearly 1200 words, IIRC, and minimum was 1000).

Overall, I am immensely pleased with this fic. I think I did a good job of keeping the feel of the show, staying in character for Elaine and George, and getting a good voice for Elaine. This is my favorite of all the fics I wrote for Christmas exchanges and I'm so thankful for the recipient for providing me the opportunity to write it.