Frederick the Great reveal post / discussion post 8

[cahn]

In the last several months, as anyone who reads this DW knows, mildred_of_midgard and selenak and I have been part of this quite frankly amazing Frederick the Great fandom, and I sort of assumed that the two people in this fandom who actually knew anything, mildred and selenak, were going to write fics for Yuletide, and I (who know nothing except what they've told me in the last several months) was going to awesomely enjoy reading them. In fact, mildred wrote a Fredersdorf fic for selenak's prompt which I betaed, but then mildred's medical issues got bad enough to interfere with her writing fic (making the beta edits would have involved a substantial amount of rewrite), and she wrote a post lamenting she wasn't going to be able to produce any yuletide fic. Meanwhile, I had two fics that I was pretty sure were from selenak, and I thought it would be a shame for her to write us fic and for her not to get any :(

So then mildred and I had this (very paraphrased) conversation (mildred_of_midgard has her own account here, and she has promised to reproduce the actual conversation in comments to this post):

me: You know, we should really write something for selenak! Now that I've read what you wrote about Fredersdorf, I think I could take a stab at her Fredersdorf prompt, if you edited and otherwise helped me out with historical stuff and also if you don't mind it being way more about music than something you would write.
mildred: YES GOD YES and also oh you sweet summer child thinking you know enough to write this. [Mildred was far FAR nicer than this in real life.] For starters, here are 3500 words [really!] of things I know for a fact you don't know about Fredersdorf.
me: ...I was clearly overoptimistic. But I can work with this. Um, also, all the creativity-generating bits of my brain are already being used for my assignment, so can you also come up with an idea for the fic and also answer all my historical questions?
mildred: Sure! While I'm thinking about this, have 2k more words of historical grounding! Ok, and here are some ideas too. In fact, here's a whole plot for you!
me: Great! *writes 4k words of the plot*
mildred and me, more-or-less in unison: You did all the hard parts!

Then mildred fixed all my extensive historical errors and was fortunately able in between various medical woes to add various parts like the entire Wilhelmine subtheme and the entire last scene, and we deleted some of my words, and then I wrote some more paragraphs about music at her request and edited some of her stuff. I estimate that I probably ended up writing ~4.5k of the final fic, and mildred ended up writing ~ 2k of it (does that sound about right?) Of course that does not count the... I have no idea how much historical consultantcy stuff mildred ended up writing in the end, but I imagine it was significantly upwards of 10k :P And of course she wrote the detailed endnotes :D It also does not count all the words written in comments to the google document where we argued things like that Fredersdorf should be more zen than mildred wanted to write him and less zen than I wanted to write him :)

Although mildred and I mostly agreed on things, I had final veto power (and I did wield it a couple of times), so any remaining problems should be thought of as mine :) I'm very curious, though, as to how evident the collaboration was, and how evident the seams were, as I think mildred and I have very different writing styles, but it went through enough editing passes and discussion that I suspect much of the differences got at least somewhat smoothed out?

Counterpoint for Two Flutes

Comments

Catt

[selenak]

Here's hoping for linguistic and summary assistance from Beginning_Returner!

OMG, I noticed this, and I noticed the "Fritz wants to talk to me first about his siblings' deaths!"

Seems Catt couldn't resist the embellishment there. I'm assuming the actual content of what he records Fritz saying about his dead siblings isn't too different in the diary vs the memoirs, or German editor of the diary would have remarked on that as well. But the change in circumstance - one conversation four days after the news in AW's case vs immediate soul-spilling, regular conversation at the usual hour after a condolence letter vs being woken up in the middle of the night and dragged for soulspilling again and again - does make for, if not falsification, and a significantly altered perspective on what the relationship was like.

German editor also says that when in the memoirs Fritz asks Catt to tell him what he, Catt, has heard about his fallout with AW, Catt replies with an almost exact summary of an anonymous pamphlet/ short book about AW which presumably he'd looked up for the memoirs when writing them, since there is no equivalent statement of his in the diary. This, I'd ascribe most to the need for exposition to the intended reader who decades after Fritz' own death and even more decades since AW's might not even remember anymore how many brothers Fritz had, if any, let alone what happened with AW.

What I really want someone to check is how complimentary Fritz is about young future FW2 in the diary versus the memoirs, because all that praise for his future successor he gives to Catt is very much in contrast to all I've seen quoted and reported otherwise. Granted, this is really young FW2 - he was born in 1744, so in 1760 when Catt has Fritz gush over him he's 16 - , and he might still have a guilty conscience because of AW, but still, it does not sound like the uncle who told everyone to tease kid and teenage FW so the later should get over his shyness, and complains about young FW not doing enough of his scholarly homework in his letters.

Conversely: all those dreams Catt reports must be a psychonalyst's catnip. Iin addition to all the dreams you already mentioned, the late in the 7 Years War one where he dreams about his father and the late old Dessau and asks "did I do well?", telling old Dessau their approval means the world to him is sooo telling. Fritz in 1760: still hoping for a "well done, son" from dead FW1 and busy traumatizing the next generation as part of his personal therapy.

On a lighter note, all those instances of "Voltaire is the worst! Did I tell you how Voltaire is the lowest of the low characters yet today, Catt? OMG A LETTER FROM VOLTAIRE!!!!" are awesome. (Am not surprised Catt backs up what I already read in the actual correspondance, i.e. Fritz feeling let down by the first ode to Wilhelmine as not being immortal poetry to make all of Europe weep.)

Re: Catt

[mildred_of_midgard]

Catt replies with an almost exact summary of an anonymous pamphlet/ short book about AW which presumably he'd looked up for the memoirs when writing them

That is super interesting, especially in the context of the textual criticism I'm about to post. Because I can find no mention of Katte in the diary, so either he's going from memory, or he looked something up. And his and Voltaire's accounts being so similar, I wonder if they both looked up the same account, relied on the same oral account floating around, or if (this seems unlikely, but) Catt looked up Voltaire's, fleshed it out, and put it into Fritz's mouth. If so, he was writing some historical fiction, because Voltaire's account reads like a summary of Catt's and not vice versa, but...if they didn't both get their account from Fritz, I sort of feel like they may have gotten it from the same place.

Anyway, you'll see what I mean shortly.

Iin addition to all the dreams you already mentioned, the late in the 7 Years War one where he dreams about his father and the late old Dessau and asks "did I do well?", telling old Dessau their approval means the world to him is sooo telling.

I did in fact mention that one, but it was long ago and far away, so it bears repeating. I must mention that I even linked to TV Tropes for the "Well done, son" remark, though! Behold:

"And also that dream where Fritz asked his father what he thought of what he'd done with the kingdom he inherited, and FW said 'Well done, Son,' and Fritz told his father that his approval meant more to him than anything in the universe, UGH, Fritz, please get a therapist that hasn't been invented yet. Also *hug*."

On a lighter note, all those instances of "Voltaire is the worst! Did I tell you how Voltaire is the lowest of the low characters yet today, Catt? OMG A LETTER FROM VOLTAIRE!!!!" are awesome.

I KNOW RIGHT? Hopelessly smitten. The thing is, this isn't actually surprising, or shouldn't be, because even before Voltaire came to stay with him, he was telling everyone how Voltaire was the lowest of the low, and "OH GOD I WANT HIM SO BAD, freaking Émilie. Freaking indissoluble bonds. *pouts*"

And yes, it was fun (I mean, interesting in a tragic sort of way) seeing the ode come up in your summary of their correspondence, having seen Catt's perspective. :(

Re: Catt

[selenak]

I KNOW RIGHT? Hopelessly smitten. The thing is, this isn't actually surprising, or shouldn't be, because even before Voltaire came to stay with him, he was telling everyone how Voltaire was the lowest of the low, and "OH GOD I WANT HIM SO BAD, freaking Émilie. Freaking indissoluble bonds. *pouts*"

Question: in your "Katte lives" AUs - does Fritz still have that type of relationship with Voltaire? And if so, what on earth does Katte make of it?

Also: who was it again that told Voltaire of Fritz "he's like an orange, I'll squeeze him dry" remark? (That even ended up in Mein Name ist Bach.) Not also Maupertuis?

Re: Catt

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ha, well, my AU work was done back when my creative brain still worked, which was before we (or at least I) quite grasped the intensity of that relationship. So no work has been done in that direction. When my brain last saw our heroes, I had just started trying to work out the Katte-Fredersdorf dynamic. Also, there's only one "Katte lives" AU of the 4 in progress where this may become relevant, but depending on how it develops, that question may become very relevant, so if I ever expand that fic, that problem's going to have to be solved. (I would like to be able to write fic again, sigh.)

In Voltaire's memoirs, he says that Fritz said it to La Mettrie, who was Fritz's reader at the time. MacDonogh says that recent research has cast doubt on this episode, but gives no source. He does point out a passage that I think I had mentioned to you, where Fritz wrote to Algarotti that Voltaire was the worst, the ABSOLUTE WORST, but that that was irrelevant to why Fritz was desperately trying to get him at his court.