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Authors were revealed for the main Remix collection today; the Remix Madness collection will be revealed tomorrow.
Anyway, let me tell you about the story I wrote!
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Doxa/Episteme (The Fate and Free Will Remix) (1219 words) by Elizabeth Culmer
Fandom: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Cassandra & Helen of Troy (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Characters: Helen of Troy (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Cassandra (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Additional Tags: Female Friendship, Gods, Fate & Destiny, Grief/Mourning, Trojan War, Remix
Summary: In the early days of the siege of Ilium, Helen and Cassandra meet.
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This is a remix of![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
Nemainofthewater's story Doxa/Episteme, which is amusing to me because I remixed Nemainofthewater last year as well. I suspect we matched on the same fandom this year (Rusty Quill Gaming), but I wanted to do something different and Doxa/Episteme snagged in my mind and kept rattling around, which is generally a good sign of a story that wants to happen. *wry*
This is a pretty straightforward remix, stylistically -- it's a basic POV flip, so we're following Helen's thoughts instead of Cassandra's. The thing is, though, that changes a lot of the interactions because Helen is A) not a seer, and B) just as caught by Cassandra's curse as everyone else, so she assumes Cassandra can't actually predict anything and is instead reacting based on extrapolation and emotion. The funny thing is that Helen is just as fatalistic in her own way. Both women are playthings of the gods, after all -- tossed about by whim, and seen more as sexual objects than as whole people with their own hopes and goals and needs. They are also both very isolated figures.
I also had a minor bit of fun with bronze-based imagery, and Helen's understanding of the power of surfaces/images to smooth over harder truths, both for good and ill.
...
On another note, writing this story is what finally moved me to read the Iliad in full poetic translation rather than the abridged prose passages from Lattimore that I think we read in 7th or 8th grade English. (Unless that was the Odyssey? It might have been the Odyssey, come to think of it. Or perhaps both. It was definitely an abridged version of Lattimore, though.)
The Iliad is an astonishingly violent poem, but also surprisingly ambivalent toward that violence -- there's a lot of glorification of courage and slaughter, but also a lot of dwelling on the pain and horror of wounds, and the cost to families of dead fathers, brothers, and sons. It is also surprisingly ambivalent toward the gods. There's a lot of respect for their power, and a textual attitude that what the gods do is by definition right, but also... hmm... a definite sense that having a god take interest in one's life is a dicey proposition at best, and some of the textual stance that the gods are definitionally in the right is undercut (deliberately?) by their obviously conflicting, selfish, and underhanded actions.
Then again, some of that may be me bringing my own cultural baggage and assumptions as a 21st century CE American rather than a 5th century BCE Greek.
It's an interesting work. I am glad I read it. I think it will repay a lot more thought.
Anyway, let me tell you about the story I wrote!
-----
Doxa/Episteme (The Fate and Free Will Remix) (1219 words) by Elizabeth Culmer
Fandom: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Cassandra & Helen of Troy (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Characters: Helen of Troy (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Cassandra (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Additional Tags: Female Friendship, Gods, Fate & Destiny, Grief/Mourning, Trojan War, Remix
Summary: In the early days of the siege of Ilium, Helen and Cassandra meet.
-----
This is a remix of
This is a pretty straightforward remix, stylistically -- it's a basic POV flip, so we're following Helen's thoughts instead of Cassandra's. The thing is, though, that changes a lot of the interactions because Helen is A) not a seer, and B) just as caught by Cassandra's curse as everyone else, so she assumes Cassandra can't actually predict anything and is instead reacting based on extrapolation and emotion. The funny thing is that Helen is just as fatalistic in her own way. Both women are playthings of the gods, after all -- tossed about by whim, and seen more as sexual objects than as whole people with their own hopes and goals and needs. They are also both very isolated figures.
I also had a minor bit of fun with bronze-based imagery, and Helen's understanding of the power of surfaces/images to smooth over harder truths, both for good and ill.
...
On another note, writing this story is what finally moved me to read the Iliad in full poetic translation rather than the abridged prose passages from Lattimore that I think we read in 7th or 8th grade English. (Unless that was the Odyssey? It might have been the Odyssey, come to think of it. Or perhaps both. It was definitely an abridged version of Lattimore, though.)
The Iliad is an astonishingly violent poem, but also surprisingly ambivalent toward that violence -- there's a lot of glorification of courage and slaughter, but also a lot of dwelling on the pain and horror of wounds, and the cost to families of dead fathers, brothers, and sons. It is also surprisingly ambivalent toward the gods. There's a lot of respect for their power, and a textual attitude that what the gods do is by definition right, but also... hmm... a definite sense that having a god take interest in one's life is a dicey proposition at best, and some of the textual stance that the gods are definitionally in the right is undercut (deliberately?) by their obviously conflicting, selfish, and underhanded actions.
Then again, some of that may be me bringing my own cultural baggage and assumptions as a 21st century CE American rather than a 5th century BCE Greek.
It's an interesting work. I am glad I read it. I think it will repay a lot more thought.
