Entry tags:
Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 22 (or: Yuletide 2020 edition)
ETA: Whoops, I missed my cue -- this might as well be the next discussion post, I guess! :)
This is about the fic I didn't author (I have another reveals post for the fics I did author).
So my goal this Yuletide was NOT to write any historical fandom (because hard!) and just enjoy the excellent stuff that other people wrote. And... that sort of happened? I didn't end up authoring anything history-intensive? Buuuuut I ended up spending a lot more time than I did on any of my own fics working with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mildred_of_midgard on her fic, which she was worried about being able to pull off because she had had this completely insane idea to write a long casefic about Frederick the Great that every time I turned around had another twist put in :P :) She supplied me with what we called a "rough opal in matrix" bus pass casefic, and I cut away the matrix that remained and in some cases carved the opal -- that is to say, writing additional text for some of the scenes, what we liked to call "putting in feels," and in at least two cases entirely rewriting and/or restructuring the scene she'd written. She didn't always keep what I wrote (which we'd agreed upon in the beginning), but when she did (which was most of the time :) ) she then went in and rewrote/restructured what I put in to wordsmith (some of the words I gave her were really rough) and match her style, adding even more scenes -- that is, polishing it up and adding some gold and diamonds -- and voila, a beautiful pendant, I mean, story :)
I'm really proud of it and also it was really fun and also what I could handle this year, especially because mildred did all the parts I thought were hard and also wrote all the parts involving actual history or subtle AU before I was brought in so I didn't actually have to know historical stuff (though I guess I will never forget the battle of Leuthen now), and took full responsibility for how the whole thing turned out, so all I had to do was be like "Here, I'll write some rough feels for you for this scene!" The funny part was that I would often then write a paragraph justifying why I *had* to write the scene the way I did, and more likely than not mildred would be like, "yeah, I was sure you would do that, of course it should be written like that." (The most glaring example of this was where I inserted the Letter of Doom at the climax. I was worried there was some reason she didn't want it there, but she said, no, she just didn't have time to put it in herself and was just trusting me to do that :) ) She started jokingly calling me her "other self," to which I replied that it was with 1000% less angst and frustration -- as Frederick the Great's brother was his "other self" (which actually comes up in the fic) that he could trust to do all kinds of competent things, but they had a relationship that was, um, fraught? radioactive? Whereas this was just fun :)
Mildred did so much more than I did (we estimated a 90%/10% word ratio, not even counting the part where she wordsmithed a lot of my text) that I felt very uncomfortable being listed as a co-author, but hey, ~3000 words is a respectable Yuletide fic length :)
Yet They Grind Exceedingly Small (30384 words) by mildred_of_midgard
Chapters: 5/5
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Anna Amalie von Preußen & Wilhelmine von Preußen, Anna Amalie von Preußen & Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen, Wilhelmine von Preußen & Elisabeth Friederike Sophie von Brandenburg-Bayreuth, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia
Characters: Anna Amalie von Preußen (1723-1787), Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758), Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802), Elisabeth Friederike Sophie von Brandenburg-Bayreuth (1732-1780), Wilhelmine von Hesse-Kassel (1726-1808), August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758), Alcmene 1 | Frederick the Great's Italian Greyhound, Voltaire (Writer), Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dysfunctional Family, Suicide, Alternate Universe - Dark, Siblings, Canon-Typical Violence, Mystery, Tide of History Challenge
Summary:
This is about the fic I didn't author (I have another reveals post for the fics I did author).
So my goal this Yuletide was NOT to write any historical fandom (because hard!) and just enjoy the excellent stuff that other people wrote. And... that sort of happened? I didn't end up authoring anything history-intensive? Buuuuut I ended up spending a lot more time than I did on any of my own fics working with
mildred_of_midgard on her fic, which she was worried about being able to pull off because she had had this completely insane idea to write a long casefic about Frederick the Great that every time I turned around had another twist put in :P :) She supplied me with what we called a "rough opal in matrix" bus pass casefic, and I cut away the matrix that remained and in some cases carved the opal -- that is to say, writing additional text for some of the scenes, what we liked to call "putting in feels," and in at least two cases entirely rewriting and/or restructuring the scene she'd written. She didn't always keep what I wrote (which we'd agreed upon in the beginning), but when she did (which was most of the time :) ) she then went in and rewrote/restructured what I put in to wordsmith (some of the words I gave her were really rough) and match her style, adding even more scenes -- that is, polishing it up and adding some gold and diamonds -- and voila, a beautiful pendant, I mean, story :)I'm really proud of it and also it was really fun and also what I could handle this year, especially because mildred did all the parts I thought were hard and also wrote all the parts involving actual history or subtle AU before I was brought in so I didn't actually have to know historical stuff (though I guess I will never forget the battle of Leuthen now), and took full responsibility for how the whole thing turned out, so all I had to do was be like "Here, I'll write some rough feels for you for this scene!" The funny part was that I would often then write a paragraph justifying why I *had* to write the scene the way I did, and more likely than not mildred would be like, "yeah, I was sure you would do that, of course it should be written like that." (The most glaring example of this was where I inserted the Letter of Doom at the climax. I was worried there was some reason she didn't want it there, but she said, no, she just didn't have time to put it in herself and was just trusting me to do that :) ) She started jokingly calling me her "other self," to which I replied that it was with 1000% less angst and frustration -- as Frederick the Great's brother was his "other self" (which actually comes up in the fic) that he could trust to do all kinds of competent things, but they had a relationship that was, um, fraught? radioactive? Whereas this was just fun :)
Mildred did so much more than I did (we estimated a 90%/10% word ratio, not even counting the part where she wordsmithed a lot of my text) that I felt very uncomfortable being listed as a co-author, but hey, ~3000 words is a respectable Yuletide fic length :)
Yet They Grind Exceedingly Small (30384 words) by mildred_of_midgard
Chapters: 5/5
Fandom: 18th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Anna Amalie von Preußen & Wilhelmine von Preußen, Anna Amalie von Preußen & Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen, Wilhelmine von Preußen & Elisabeth Friederike Sophie von Brandenburg-Bayreuth, Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great & Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia
Characters: Anna Amalie von Preußen (1723-1787), Wilhelmine von Preußen | Wilhelmine of Prussia (1709-1758), Friedrich Heinrich Ludwig von Preußen | Henry of Prussia (1726-1802), Elisabeth Friederike Sophie von Brandenburg-Bayreuth (1732-1780), Wilhelmine von Hesse-Kassel (1726-1808), August Wilhelm von Preußen | Augustus William of Prussia (1722-1758), Alcmene 1 | Frederick the Great's Italian Greyhound, Voltaire (Writer), Friedrich II von Preußen | Frederick the Great
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dysfunctional Family, Suicide, Alternate Universe - Dark, Siblings, Canon-Typical Violence, Mystery, Tide of History Challenge
Summary:
January 1758. Prince William is dead, some say of a broken heart. Frederick wants to absolve himself of blame for William's death. Henry schemes to end the Third Silesian War on his terms. Amalie and Wilhelmine team up to find out what really happened to their brother. Alcmene just wants to be told she's a good dog.
Strange historical fiction among other things
Namely, I found a pdf of that "Katte - Ein Schauspiel in fünf Aufzügen" stage play from 1914 (my university apparently owns three physical copies as well and I just want to ask WHY). I don't know if any of you have read it already, but it's... wild. It is also an earlier example of the "Katte was totes in love with Wilhelmine"-trope found in the musical and has his last words be "Long live the King"... And SD is actually all for Wilhelmine marrying Fritz of Bayreuth and only worried for her happiness. Some interesting decisions were made.
I could try to make a post summing everything up for you if that is of interest. It is definitely fun, in a weird way :'D
Another strange thing I've found, luckily not in my university library, is that there is, apparently, a digital anime trading card game where you can collect people from history, mythology, and literature in... anime-girl-form. Among the people featured as anime-girl trading cards are Fritz, Voltaire, Peter the Great and Stalin. Stalin has bunny ears. I do not wish to type that sentence ever again.
Away from weird stuff and onto more scholarly things: I got myself an exhibition catalogue from a 1994 Rheinsberg exhibition on portraits of Heinrich. It has some fun images that I have not necessarily found online (including a carricature which I love dearly) as well as contemporary descriptions of him and is quite fun to read. I could try to scan/photograph it and send you a pdf version, if you'd like that :D
Re: Strange historical fiction among other things
Re: Strange historical fiction among other things
Re: "Lang lebe der König" in a Katte drama from 1914 - the date is almost too perfect, because that's the mentality which got us into WWI all over. (I'm now imagining the ending of Heinrich Mann's novel Der Untertan, also published in 1914 before the publisher had to stop because of war censorship, and the film version by Wolfgang Staudte culminating in a mightly thunderstorm blowing all the Wilhelminians away while "The Subject" Diederich Heßling clings to holding his Hohenzollern-praising nationalistic speech...
Otoh, I wouldn't be surprised if the Katte/Wilhelmine trope shows up even earlier than that. Not only does historical drama love its invented love stories in general, but the male code of behavior changed in the 19th century so much (no more 18th century emo, and definitely no more high heels and colorful fashion!) while simultanously the cult of Fritz reigned along with censorship that I could see people coming up with this to premptively remove the slightest suspicion that the big national hero could have been romantically attached to a man (and vice versa). I mean, we're talking about a country where Voltaire's memoirs weren't allowed to be reprinted until after WWI. (They had been translated into German and printed in 1784 already, but post Napoleonic Prussia and then Germany certainly did not allow any more of this French slander of The GREAT to be sold.)
Re: Strange historical fiction among other things
...I... think I might need to see these anime-girl trading cards, now that I know they exist. Wow.
Re: Strange historical fiction among other things
First: the Russians
"A Russian enlightened monarch. As a curious person, she is a reformist and tries to renovate anything that she thinks is necessary. Sometimes, being too curious, she disassemble things. So, it is wise to hide valuables from her."
"The World strongest dictator and Mother of Soviet Union. Her child-like physique raised many doubts from other people. But those who badmouthed about her, ended up being purged by her."
"An empress of Russia who is encouraging cultural renaissance. She became an empress by driving out the old, incompetent regime. By a surprising radical reformation policy, she takes care of people and tries hard to make Russia a powerful nation. But, this is followed by a growing counter force, which worries her."
Now Voltaire...
"An eccentric philosopher, known for her practice of Tolerancia. She is cheerful and welcoming to everyone. Wild and rebellious at heart, her defiant stance against the system garnered many followers."
And the the one and only...
"An enlightened monarch who likes to lead her military forces. As a boyish queen looking natural in her military uniform, she’s always energetic like a man. With a mission to protect her country from neighbours, she’s interested in modern military technology."
Honestly, if they looked a bit more like their historical counterparts it would have been a lot more fun. Why did they not attempt to make Peter the Great kawaii? Why not give Stalin big sparkly eyes?
Re: Strange historical fiction among other things
I agree it would have been more fun to make them look just a tiny bit more like their historical counterparts! (Voltaire??)
Re: Strange historical fiction among other things
This. WOW.