mildred_of_midgard: (Default)
mildred_of_midgard ([personal profile] mildred_of_midgard) wrote in [personal profile] cahn 2021-01-16 04:11 pm (UTC)

Re: The Adventure of the Time-Traveling Valet - and Heinrich/Grind

With a little more time, we could have done SO many things! As it is, I'm just relieved (and very grateful to you) we finished in time at all.

I think you (selenak) can see how this got to be 30k!

Oh, lol, I'd forgotten Louise. Yeah, you can see how I'm a long-fic writer by nature.

her idea to put in Amalie's Mental Health Day was brilliant and I'm really glad to have it :)

I'm really glad it worked out! As you can see (selenak), it was added very late in the process (only the Voltaire scene was added later, I think), because the fic was just being brutal to Amalie, and she kept taking everything in stride like she was Hercule Poirot investigating the lives of strangers and didn't have stress-related illnesses or anything, when canonically she did, and that was without Fritz being assassinated in 1758 and Wilhelmine dying with Amalie at her bedside!

So I wanted a way to give the reader some sign that Amalie is struggling, and also give her some hurt/comfort (hence the Louise idea). The Tiergarten (poor former administrator Peter Keith is dead, alas) was perfect in allowing me to introduce her adopted waifs and give Frau Fredersdorf a plot-advancing cameo!

Which reminds me: I am almost SURE that you told us that Amalie had an interest in anatomy, but I couldn't find it when I went to research it. I kept her bird dissection lesson for the kids anyway, as it was too good not to include, even if I dreamed the part where her interest was canon. Is my memory correct?

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