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raspberryhunterThis Yuletide I wrote three full-length fics and one Madness fic! Two were for my assigned recipient, seekingferret: Moses und Aron/Tanakh fics. Moses und Aron is an opera by Schoenberg that I mention a bit more about here. The assignment was complicated because I had these ideas for writing about women and community and music, and then I randomly went and wrote this complete crack AU (Interactive Complexity as Indigenous to Human Systems) and then I went back and poured everything I had into what I was calling the "serious" fic (For in the Wilderness Shall Waters Break Forth). Anyway, with one exception, I'm quite pleased by how both of them turned out, particularly "Waters," which is about Miriam, Elisheva, and Zipporah despite the fact that none of those characters appears in the opera. (Although if I had to do it again I might change it back to one chapter instead of two, which I think would make it a little more accessible.)
Both, I think, are readable if you don't know the opera and only know the Biblical story. "Waters" I think it would probably help to know the Biblical story. For "Complexity," you don't need to know either the opera or the Bible story, really, although you'll miss some of the bad puns if you don't know the Bible story. ...This may be a good thing?
"For in the Wilderness Shall Waters Break Forth" is my love song to Miriam, Zipporah, and Elisheva, as well as to the community-family of women that I'm part of and to the way that this community has played into my vexed relation with faith.
It will come as a surprise to approximately no one that I love these women a lot and came to love them very much more while writing this. Where women are concerned, I find the Bible really fascinating, because it has all these interesting little threads that hint at a much larger world of personalities and relationships hiding under the text that we never get to really see. It's exciting; compare, say, Beowulf (which I also love), where all the women could be replaced by robots and you'd never know the difference. You couldn't do that with Miriam. She follows Moses but still gets annoyed with him when she thinks he's being a jerk to Zipporah; she worries about Moses as a baby and sings triumphantly at the Red Sea; she's present and vibrant throughout the whole story. The people of Israel stop for seven days for her sake.
(I wrote, like, four more paragraphs on this, which I am sparing all of you, because I don't imagine any of you really care -- and it's all in the fic anyway: music, and community, and how our relationship with God is all of a piece with the weaving of relationships with each other, and the intertwining of real-life with philosophical approaches to God.)
"Complexity" was the Office-esque crack AU where Moses is the Chief Scientist, Aaron is his sales guy, and God is the CEO -- well, I find I have a lot to say about this one (and some things I might have done differently), as seekingferret has already opened a dialogue on it; I have posted separately on it here.
For these two fics, I relied heavily on my awesome betas. My several awesome betas, who poured time and energy into this while juggling work-school-family-holidays-ficwriting-AGH.elementals_ao3 beta-picked my word choices with her lovely podfic-honed skills. Two of my betas were complete strangers who nevertheless graciously agreed to help out: kass checked my assumptions/assertions about Judaism in "Waters," and mithrigil did a wonderful opera/music/actually-knowing-seekingferret beta. And then there was ase, who was familiar with neither the Bible story nor the opera, but who gamely read a number of random links and wikipedia articles so that she could critique the structure and fix the key paragraph of both fics (all of this over several drafts), and there was this one hilarious moment when I was all "I don't think so, that's an uncanonical idea," and then thirty minutes later had to email her back with a "Umm... why is it that you understand canon better than I do??" THANK YOU SO MUCH, YOU GUYS.
I also wrote a Greek Mythology treat: Thirteen Views of a Labyrinth.amo wrote this prompt pointing out that Ariadne and Icarus might well have known each other, and the idea got stuck in my head and would not go away. So. Beta credits and much thanks for this one go to elementals for lovely wordsmithing, ricardienne for being my Classics beta, pointing me to Ovid and Catullus (which I drew details from and then summarily ignored), and patiently and awesomely answering all my totally random questions about anachronisms ("Did they have red dye back then? What about embroidery?"), and ase for multiple draft structure-fixing and generally being entirely awesome at not letting me get away with anything :)
And I wrote a little Madness treat, For She Desires Questioning More Than Sacrifices, foryasaman on the song Abraham's Daughter, because yasaman asked for a story in which the song is the founding mythos of the Abrahamic religions, and that sounded really cool. I really wanted to expand on it, and if I'd had three more months and no music drama, I might have (it would have taken quite a bit more thought and research, and would have been super fun), but as it was, the fic also surprised me by turning out to be a fix-it fic for William Tyndale, because I think he was cool and he deserved better than being executed asking the Lord to open Henry VIII's eyes. Uh, apparently that is how I roll.
seekingferret: Moses und Aron/Tanakh fics. Moses und Aron is an opera by Schoenberg that I mention a bit more about here. The assignment was complicated because I had these ideas for writing about women and community and music, and then I randomly went and wrote this complete crack AU (Interactive Complexity as Indigenous to Human Systems) and then I went back and poured everything I had into what I was calling the "serious" fic (For in the Wilderness Shall Waters Break Forth). Anyway, with one exception, I'm quite pleased by how both of them turned out, particularly "Waters," which is about Miriam, Elisheva, and Zipporah despite the fact that none of those characters appears in the opera. (Although if I had to do it again I might change it back to one chapter instead of two, which I think would make it a little more accessible.)Both, I think, are readable if you don't know the opera and only know the Biblical story. "Waters" I think it would probably help to know the Biblical story. For "Complexity," you don't need to know either the opera or the Bible story, really, although you'll miss some of the bad puns if you don't know the Bible story. ...This may be a good thing?
"For in the Wilderness Shall Waters Break Forth" is my love song to Miriam, Zipporah, and Elisheva, as well as to the community-family of women that I'm part of and to the way that this community has played into my vexed relation with faith.
It will come as a surprise to approximately no one that I love these women a lot and came to love them very much more while writing this. Where women are concerned, I find the Bible really fascinating, because it has all these interesting little threads that hint at a much larger world of personalities and relationships hiding under the text that we never get to really see. It's exciting; compare, say, Beowulf (which I also love), where all the women could be replaced by robots and you'd never know the difference. You couldn't do that with Miriam. She follows Moses but still gets annoyed with him when she thinks he's being a jerk to Zipporah; she worries about Moses as a baby and sings triumphantly at the Red Sea; she's present and vibrant throughout the whole story. The people of Israel stop for seven days for her sake.
(I wrote, like, four more paragraphs on this, which I am sparing all of you, because I don't imagine any of you really care -- and it's all in the fic anyway: music, and community, and how our relationship with God is all of a piece with the weaving of relationships with each other, and the intertwining of real-life with philosophical approaches to God.)
"Complexity" was the Office-esque crack AU where Moses is the Chief Scientist, Aaron is his sales guy, and God is the CEO -- well, I find I have a lot to say about this one (and some things I might have done differently), as seekingferret has already opened a dialogue on it; I have posted separately on it here.
For these two fics, I relied heavily on my awesome betas. My several awesome betas, who poured time and energy into this while juggling work-school-family-holidays-ficwriting-AGH.
elementals_ao3 beta-picked my word choices with her lovely podfic-honed skills. Two of my betas were complete strangers who nevertheless graciously agreed to help out: kass checked my assumptions/assertions about Judaism in "Waters," and mithrigil did a wonderful opera/music/actually-knowing-seekingferret beta. And then there was ase, who was familiar with neither the Bible story nor the opera, but who gamely read a number of random links and wikipedia articles so that she could critique the structure and fix the key paragraph of both fics (all of this over several drafts), and there was this one hilarious moment when I was all "I don't think so, that's an uncanonical idea," and then thirty minutes later had to email her back with a "Umm... why is it that you understand canon better than I do??" THANK YOU SO MUCH, YOU GUYS.I also wrote a Greek Mythology treat: Thirteen Views of a Labyrinth.
amo wrote this prompt pointing out that Ariadne and Icarus might well have known each other, and the idea got stuck in my head and would not go away. So. Beta credits and much thanks for this one go to elementals for lovely wordsmithing, ricardienne for being my Classics beta, pointing me to Ovid and Catullus (which I drew details from and then summarily ignored), and patiently and awesomely answering all my totally random questions about anachronisms ("Did they have red dye back then? What about embroidery?"), and ase for multiple draft structure-fixing and generally being entirely awesome at not letting me get away with anything :)And I wrote a little Madness treat, For She Desires Questioning More Than Sacrifices, for
yasaman on the song Abraham's Daughter, because yasaman asked for a story in which the song is the founding mythos of the Abrahamic religions, and that sounded really cool. I really wanted to expand on it, and if I'd had three more months and no music drama, I might have (it would have taken quite a bit more thought and research, and would have been super fun), but as it was, the fic also surprised me by turning out to be a fix-it fic for William Tyndale, because I think he was cool and he deserved better than being executed asking the Lord to open Henry VIII's eyes. Uh, apparently that is how I roll.
