Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 22 (or: Yuletide 2020 edition)

[cahn]

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 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.

Comments

Rheinsberg

[mildred_of_midgard]

Happy birthday to our community rheinsberg, which is one year old today and one of the best things we've done! The idea may have been mine, selenak, but almost all the content is yours, and as always, cahn, you were the unwitting catalyst. <3

Here's to year two!

(We also have a couple birthdays for key antiheroes in our fandom coming up in the next few days.)

Re: Rheinsberg

[selenak]

I salute our community with my favourite vid of the place.

And Mildred, you're exaggarating - just think of all the Katte execution (and Katte family) posts of yours! The Keith family contributions (Peter specifically)! Suuuuuhm!

re: birthdays, zomg, so we do. Both of them.

Re: Rheinsberg

[mildred_of_midgard]

Me writing code and manually tagging the contributor of each post (can't easily be done programmatically, because I post so many of your long write-ups):

~/Documents/fritz_projects/word_counts/rheinsberg$ ./author_breakdown.sh 
Selena: 322,810
Mildred: 121,940
Gambitten: 4,611
Felis: 4,514
Cahn: 3,250
Total: 457,125

The numbers are not totally precise, but they should be good approximations.

And yes, I have a whole (private!) GitHub repo named "fritz_projects". :P

Speaking of Rheinsberg, I notice that your Der Vater write-up isn't there. Would you like me to add it, or would you prefer to do it when you have time?

I'm still meaning to add my Diderot write-up, and it occurs to me that I should add gambitten's list of sources as well. Bayreuth pictures as a holdover until you're able to go in person would still be great! I had to track them down in old comment threads during Yuletide research.

P.S. You're awesome, and over 70% of the content is yours, as I have numerically proved. :D

Oh, hey, cahn, you have a Candide write-up now! You should post it.

Re: Rheinsberg

[selenak]

Der Vater: I'd prefer to do it myself, both because I'd add a bit about the author's Protestant background (which is important to how he presents FW) and because since writing it I've read all the Hervey stuff and Beuys' SC biography which gave me some answers to wondering what JK had or had not invented about young FW. However, I'd appreciate a link to my original write up.

Bayreuth: Okay, I'll do a "Wilhelmine's burial place" post, to be later extended to a proper Bayreuth picture post once it's possible to go there and take pictures again.

Re: Rheinsberg

[mildred_of_midgard]

I'm definitely chatty in salon, though, no question:

User	Words	Comments
mildred	811,995	3,169
selenak	791,848	2,008
cahn	179,355	1,792
felis	20,098	84
gambitten	11,782	28
prinzsorgenfrei	10,955	58
Everyone else	19,705	94
Total	1,813,858	7,121

cahn, I'm amused by how very close the word count of your average post is to exactly 100. selenak, your comment count being 2/3 of mine and your word count nearly the same is exactly why you have so much more rheinsberg content: you do more meaty write-ups.

Re: Rheinsberg

[cahn]

lol! At first I was thinking "cool, I write drabble comments!" but then I realized that it's probably a rather bifurcated distribution :)