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I like nothing more than to natter on solipsistically about my own fics, and [personal profile] ollipop requested, so!

The Family Business is this Greek Myth SF-virtual-reality AU in which the Olympian gods are the executive management team for a large virtual-reality ("simspace") corporate entity. The story's about Minerva and her (and her family's) involvement in this simspace business, including a retelling of the Arachne story.

Cut for lots of talk about writing this fic, and themes, and things I thought were themes but maybe weren't so much. Spoilers for the story, of course! Artistry. Truth. Family. )
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Muuuuuch beta credit to [personal profile] sprocket and [personal profile] elementals_ao3 and [personal profile] seekingferret, because they are awesome and wonderful and these fics would not be nearly so good if not for them. (And special awesomeness credit to sprocket, who probably wrote at least the number of words I did in her betas, and was very gracious when I said things like, “So I need this done tonight, is that okay?”)

My assignment was Norse Myth, Who Gathers All Things Mortal (1504 words), which drove me completely bonkers to write — despite it being the shortest of the three, I spent way, way more time in canon review and in writing/edit than probably both of the others combined -- but which I think turned out well, mostly because my betas showed me how to beat it into shape when I was despairing of how to fix it properly. The prompt was Hel and Angrboda. I really liked the prompt; I don’t think there’s enough on mothers and daughters in media in general.

My pinch hit was SGU - Camile Wray, Enhancing Organizational Productivity (2245 words). The thing about Camile is that, with the exception of maybe one or two episodes, she gets completely wasted on SGU. As [personal profile] sprocket kept reminding me, she has this HR background which ought to be really really useful on the Destiny for all kinds of things, but it never actually is. Probably partially as a result of this, I haven’t ever read any SGU fic where she gets a chance to win. And she’s awesome! So, yeah. Camile gets to use her skills to win, yay! (But not win everything, because this is SGU.)

And then there was The Family Business, the 5100-word near-future SF-VR-corporate Greek Myth AU that I gifted to [personal profile] ollipop, who asked for 1000-5000, mentioned catholic tastes in her letter, and also mentioned not liking dubious SF tropes in another venue. (Uh, I still want to have that conversation!) I allllllmost didn’t post it, but I sneakily asked her about AU’s, and she said it was okay for general things like myth, and then the big theme turned out to be Families and How They Mess with Your Mind, which coincidentally turned out to be the big theme of ollipop’s awesome fic (Lotus Durona! Jackson’s Whole!), so I risked it after all. She seems to have liked it! :)

It did lead to this hilarious beta exchange:

Me: So Beta B told me the theme was X, and it’s really not.
Beta A: Yeah, the theme is obviously Y.
Me: No, the theme is Z!

(All three of us were right, but Beta A was more right.)

Someday I will have recs (besides my awesome Aeneid presents I squee about here; you need not know the Aeneid to read it; all that you need to know about Dido is here and here), when I get around to reading the whole rarewomen archive, but there are lots of goodies in it! Go read!

ETA: links fixed, I think. If not, let me know.
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This Yuletide I wrote three full-length fics and one Madness fic! Two were for my assigned recipient, [personal profile] 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?

Read more... )

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. [personal profile] 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: [personal profile] kass checked my assumptions/assertions about Judaism in "Waters," and [personal profile] mithrigil did a wonderful opera/music/actually-knowing-seekingferret beta. And then there was [personal profile] 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. [personal profile] 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 [personal profile] elementals for lovely wordsmithing, [personal profile] 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 [personal profile] 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 [personal profile] 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.

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