Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 30

[cahn]

In which, despite the title, I would like to be told about the English Revolution, which is yet another casualty of my extremely poor history education :P :)

Also, this is probably the place to say that RMSE opened with three Fritz-fics, all of which I think are readable with minimum canon knowledge:

The Boy Who Lived - if you knew about the doomed escape-from-Prussia-that-didn't happen and tragic death of Fritz's boyfriend Hans Hermann von Katte, you may not have known about Peter Keith, the third young man who conspired to escape Prussia -- and the only one who actually did. This is his story. I think readable without canon knowledge except what I just said here.

Challenge Yourself to Relax - My gift, I posted about this before! Corporate AU with my problematic fave, Fritz' brother Heinrich, who's still Fritz's l'autre moi-meme even in corporate AU. Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with the corporate world and the dysfunctions thereof.

The Rise and Fall of the RendezvousWithFame Exchange - Fandom AU with BNF fanfic writer Voltaire, exchange mod Fritz, and the inevitable meltdown. (I wrote this one and am quite proud of the terrible physics-adjacent pun contained within.) Readable without canon knowledge if one has familiarity with fandom and the dysfunctions thereof :P

Comments

Re: Challenge Yourself to Relax

[selenak]

OK, selenak, now I want to know (since I suspect you're between mildred and me in terms of space the LOTR movies take in your brain): did it jump out to you?

Here we have another linguistic problem. I read Lord of the Rings first as a young teenager, which means I read it in the classic German translation. (There is since a few years a new one, which is why I specify.) To this day, I haven't read it in English; when I go back to the book, I always return to my green three volumes of yesteryear.

Otoh, when the movies were released, I was living in Munich with its three cinemas showing movies undubbed and in the original language (in addition to the dozens of cinemas showing them dubbed), and I had long since started the habit of watching in the original to keep my own English fluent. So I watched the movies in English and never in German. Thus, unsurprisingly, I associated "You have my sword!" with the films, and didn't think whether or not the scene goes this way in the book, not least because in the book, Frodo Beutlin aus dem Auenland who does not quite sound like Frodo Baggins from the Shire gets talked to in language slightly associating Jacob Grimm's version of some German myths anyway but a sentence like "Mein Schwert sei Euer!" was not addressed to him.

Re: Challenge Yourself to Relax

[mildred_of_midgard]

I think the question was: did it jump out to you that "you have my sword" in my fic was a LOTR reference, just like "Denethor and Gandalf" was a LOTR reference in her fic, and thus that 2 Frederician fics this RMSE had LOTR references, or is "you have my sword" an internet meme divorced from its LOTR origins for you (like it is for cahn)?

(You're the one I actually got "You have my sword" from, since I *don't* hang out much in most non-DW corners of the internet and thus it is purely a LOTR thing to me. If you hadn't said "You have my pen" when I suggested someone should write me a broccoli test fic *cough*, I don't think I would have come up with that solution for Wilhelmine's final line. So I owe you that one.)

Re: Challenge Yourself to Relax

[selenak]

:) Well, yes, I got at once that it was a LOTR reference, though of course I'm familiar with the fandom meme as well (the broccoli incident being a case of evidence, now that you mention it). But a present day Wilhelmine would definitely have read books, watched the films, argued about same and have opinions on the soundtrack as well, complete with regular "which movie has the best song for the final credit" debates.

Re: Challenge Yourself to Relax

[mildred_of_midgard]

I got at once that it was a LOTR reference

Which Cahn did not, apparently! :D

But a present day Wilhelmine would definitely have read books, watched the films, argued about same and have opinions on the soundtrack as well, complete with regular "which movie has the best song for the final credit" debates.

Oh, most definitely. :)