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 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.

Hello all! Today the RemixRevival 2021 archive has opened, and I would like to tell you about the fic someone wrote for me. :D

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A Magical Mishap (or, Nephews and Nieces; the Aunts and Uncles remix) (1349 words) by Anonymous
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Polly Plummer, Digory Kirke, Letitia "Letty" Ketterley
Additional Tags: Book: The Magician's Nephew, Magic, Remix

Summary: "As so many things did, it all began with Polly and Digory quarrelling." The tale of how Aunt Letty acquired two new apprentices.

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This is based on Aunts and Uncles, a tiny ficlet I wrote for this year's Three Sentence Ficathon. My mystery remixer has taken my idea and run with it to glorious effect!

I have many and various things to do today (not to mention I am still making my slow way through this year's NFE archive), but I poked at the Remix archive a little. There are dozens of excellent stories from a vast array of fandoms, and you should go check them out.

Apparently remixes have been revealed? Cool. :)

Here is the story I wrote:

Pay Attention (The Peacock and the Pickpocket) (1583 words) by Elizabeth Culmer
Fandom: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Sasha Racket & Oscar Wilde
Characters: Oscar Wilde (Rusty Quill Gaming), Sasha Racket
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Summary: The first true illusion Oscar creates is a peacock in his tutor's window. The bird cocks its glorious, brilliant head, and adjusts its feathers. Then it screams like a dying train.

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It's a remix of The Pickpocket and the Peacock, by Nemainofthewater, which is about Sasha spotting and occasionally spying on Wilde over the years and then takes a sharp turn away from canon to set up what looks like a really intriguing spy!AU.

My remix is not terribly deep; I just flipped the POV so it's about Wilde. Well, and I came up with a new opening scene because Wilde's not even aware of Sasha in the opening scene of the original story, and I changed the closing scene for... honestly, a combination of thematic reasons and because if I'd mirrored the original story more closely I could just tell the remix was going to spiral off into that implied spy!AU and I did NOT have time to write a novella-length secret agent adventure. *wry* But fundamentally it's a straightforward POV flip, plus a bit of a thematic musing on the sleight-of-hand, attention-directing (or attention-misdirecting) skills that Sasha and Wilde share, though they approach that skillset from very different directions.

Also, this is a pretty niche fandom! I expect most readers of this journal have no idea what on earth is going on here. To very briefly summarize, Rusty Quill Gaming is an actual-play RPG podcast, whose main story is a Pathfinder game in a homebrew setting that's sort of a steampunk D&D alternate 19th century, wherein a small band of mercenaries get hired for a job that turns out to be a LOT bigger than they anticipated. Sasha Racket is a rogue from Other London (the remnants of the original London that got flooded/destroyed during a pre-canon steampunk disaster and then buried/built over by the posh Upper London) and Oscar Wilde (not the actual historical Wilde, but based on him) is an agent for the Meritocratic world government, and also a bard specializing in illusions.

You should give the podcast a try -- it's frequently hilarious, often moving, occasionally heartbreaking, and always entertaining.

Things done today:

1. Attempted to renew my Celexa and my prescription-strength extra fluoride toothpaste this morning, since both will run out in the next week or so. This worked fine for the toothpaste, but I forgot (I was only half-awake and this was a sudden "oh shit I've been forgetting this!" impulse rather than a planned to-do list item) that I was out of refills on the Celexa and should have done a new prescription request through my doctor rather than a refill request through my pharmacy.

So I got a call from my doctor's office and I now have an appointment next Tuesday morning to go talk about my prescription and stuff.

...I think I will also bring up my hand/wrist numbness-tingling-pain issues, which came to nothing the last time I mentioned them but that was because we couldn't adequately reproduce the problem on the spot. But it's been getting worse, so. (The trouble is that I think my carpal tunnel-ish symptoms may be at least 60% because of a shoulder nerve pinching thing rather than entirely a wrist thing, because I've been pretty good about my wrists for the past several years but the problem has done the opposite of go away. *sigh*)

2. Deposited a check.

3. Returned a library book I kept not getting around to reading. I have not really been in a "let's read a book!" mood this summer -- instead I am reading a lot of fic, reading a few specific blogs, and listening to a lot of podcasts. That's just how it goes sometimes.

4. Bought some vodka, some Kahlua, and some box wine, because reasons.

5. Bought groceries. I also picked up both my Celexa and my toothpaste while I was there, because I use my grocery chain's pharmacy for convenience and such. I was mildly surprised the toothpaste was ready, because it has usually taken a day or two in transit for previous refills to arrive.

6. Used a one-off tiny tube of superglue (a grocery purchase) to repair a couple of dollar store apartment staging knick-knacks that got slightly busted during the epic video tour session on Saturday. It's frankly less annoying to fix them than to go buy a new batch of stuff from the dollar store, though I do want to hit the place up for some novelty magnets at some point.

7. Watered my container garden because my peppers looked sad and droopy.

8. Did some minimal Board of Trustees stuff, but I have additional items I need to get through either tonight or tomorrow.

9. Signed up for Remix Revival 2020, which I kept forgetting to do this past week due to general Overwhelm. I love remix exchanges/challenges, and this is one of the highlights of my fannish year. You should come play too! (Signups close in only a few hours.)

Now I am going to go fold and put away Sunday's clean laundry, after which I will... hmmm... I think the Board stuff is more immediately important, because deadlines, so I'll take a whack at some of that, and then if I have a bit of time left over I will try to finish the still tragically untitled Narnia bridge fic because I've been making progress there and it's so close to done I can taste it; I'm just not quite sure how to get from Point T to Point Z, you know?

But that's for later. Now it's time for laundry (and podcasts, because podcasts and chores are a match made in heaven).

I got the bus version* of my NFE fic up by Snacky's belated 9am deadline (I was actually aiming for midnight but decided I would write better if I slept a full night and got up at 6:30am than if I tried to write coherently after just a two-hour nap starting at 8:30pm, so), and the bus version of my remix up by the actual deadline (thank you, Colorado, for being two hours behind me). So this week is mostly for editing -- both my fics and one NFE fic somebody else wrote, and which I have high expectations for based on past experience. :D

Anyway, today I drove down to NJ. It was a slightly weird drive, since I straight-up missed the exit to Dunmore and Throop where I usually get off for a bathroom-and-leg-stretch stop. So I basically drove nonstop from the NY/PA border to the Delaware Water Gap, which is not normally that long in the grand scheme of things but today I hit a whole bunch of traffic... not jams, precisely, but definitely slow-downs. And of course they started about two miles after I missed my usual mid-trip stop. *sigh*

But I made it to Madison, I raided my parents' fridge and freezer for a makeshift dinner (a microwave chicken pot pie and some box white wine; yum, I guess?), and I think my first load of laundry is about ready to come out of the dryer so I'll have pajamas to sleep in tonight.

Tomorrow I have my final session of both my Cancellation of Debt and my Vehicle Expenses tax courses, and then Susan and I plan to do some as-yet unspecified Thing in the evening. I'm thinking maybe going out for sushi? I mean, we always seem to end up with either sushi or takeout pizza, but what the hell, I like both those options. I also get to pick up and sort through my parents' accumulated mail and drop of their next stop-mail order, which I believe will take effect on Friday or Saturday. So I think the plan is as follows:

1. Get up and have breakfast.
2. Pick up mail.
3. Cancellation of Debt course at 10am
4. Editing and lunch and maybe a walk
5. Vehicle Expenses course at 4pm
6. Do a Thing with Susan, probably involving dinner
7. Water Mom's plants at some point in here

That seems like more than enough for one day. :)

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*The bus version of a story is one that may not be all that you would like it to be, but that would work as something that fulfills the assignment in case you get unexpectedly hit by a bus and can't make any edits before the reveal. I think this is a wonderfully useful bit of fannish jargon. :DDD

Remix Revival 2018 is live (as is the 2018 Madness archive), and I would like to tell you about what somebody did with one of my old fics!

It's Always About the Family (Blueprints Remix) (4963 words) by CoffeeWithConsequences
Fandom: Inception (2010)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Ariadne (Inception), Eames (Inception), Original Female Character(s), Arthur (Inception)
Additional Tags: Remix, Family, mentor Eames, sister Ariadne, Sister-Sister Relationship, Siblings

Summary: This story is a remix of Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)'s wonderful story, Blueprints. Ariadne's sister, Penny, is (mostly) grown up and comes to visit her in Paris while she's working on the Fischer job. Unlikely as it seems, Penny leads the team to the clue they need to get into Robert Fischer's psyche.

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"Blueprints" is a story I wrote very belatedly for Femgenficathon 2011, and which never got much attention because it's slice-of-life speculative backstory on Ariadne's childhood. I have always been okay with that -- I wrote the fic for myself and that anyone else has paid attention is a happy accident.

Anyway, my remixer took the basic idea of Ariadne having a much younger half-sister and ran with it, weaving Penelope into Ariadne's life up through and including the inception job. Also includes bonus Eames as a surprisingly effective mentor and mediator. :)

If you like stories about families, you should go read this and leave the writer lovely comments. ♥

Things and stuff:

1. I bought a bus ticket to NJ today, which I will use on Tuesday the 14th. The plan is to go out for dinner and whatever with my friend Susan (as a slightly belated birthday thing -- her birthday, not mine), then breakfast or lunch with my parents on Wednesday, and then I return to Ithaca with the family's spare Camry in my care until 2019. I have also acquired a new set of Great Courses CDs in preparation for the drive. :)

2. I dropped off the rest of my church recycling sale donations, which is a nice thing to check off my to-do list.

3. I finished the beta-read I'd promised the_rck, which is another nice thing to check off my to-do list. :) (The story is another creepy-fascinating Sky High AU installment. If you like that sort of thing, you will like it a lot!)

4. I bought two five-pair-packs of sterling silver fish-hook earring hooks online last week, which arrived on Saturday. You see, I am hypersensitive to trace metals in earrings, to the point where I often have allergic reactions to surgical steel or titanium earring hooks even though they're supposedly hypoallergenic. Apparently my ears can still sense traces of nickel or whatever, and I get sore, red ears for several days after wearing some of my favorite earrings. This is annoying, and it finally occurred to me that it's also completely fixable. So I am fixing it, one pair of earrings at a time -- with the help of some fingernail scissors, a smallish set of needle-nose pliers, and a bunch of determination.

5. I wanted to get a haircut on Saturday but my hair place was tragically closed. I need to check tomorrow to see if they're just on vacation or if I need to find a new hair place. (I do not want to find a new hair place. I like my hair guy. ...Fortunately, having short hair means I can go to barber shops rather than salons, and they are so much cheaper.)

6. My fall Spanish professor STILL has not posted her textbook list online. She is also unreachable via email; every time I've tried, I get a "this email address doesn't exist" error message. *headdesk* I am going to call the TC3 advising department tomorrow to ask them what's going on and whether I need to switch into a different class, because this is getting worrisome.

7. New Hire called out on Tuesday and Wednesday last week, but she did show up on Saturday and the absence was due to her child being sick, so I am still moderately confident that she's going to work out. I'm not entirely sure why she wants the job -- she lives over half an hour away in non-rush-hour traffic, the hours are weird, and it's part-time so there aren't any benefits -- but hey, her choice. (I want her to work out so badly, you have no idea.)

8. I have my Remix Revival assignment and my Narnia Fic Exchange assignment. I know what I'm doing for the first; I just need to hash out a few details and then sit down to write. It shouldn't take too long since it's not terribly lengthy or involved.

I am less certain of the NFE assignment. I like the request! I even have three workable options off the top of my head. But all three would be relatively long and complicated, and require a bunch of background outlining and worldbuilding, and while August is my good writing month (no classes for two and a half weeks, yay!), I don't know that I have enough time. But I do want to write all three of those stories -- they are all things I have at least tangentially mentioned before, and in two cases written some exploratory snippets that I then set aside for later -- and the only shorter things I can think of that fit the prompt are things I have already written. (And now that I say this, I have thought of a fourth story option... which again is long and complicated and requires intensive background work. *sigh*) So... dilemma!

I guess I will poke at the options some more tomorrow, and try to get the Remix assignment out of the way so I will have more mental time and space to devote to whatever NFE fic I end up deciding upon.

Remix reveal day! I wrote Turn the Page (Don't Fear the Ending) for gramarye.

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Turn the Page (Don't Fear the Ending): Sometimes, when a storyteller tries to wring every last drop of Stories out of themself before ever coming to an ending, the storyteller is not the only one squeezed dry. (1,500 words, remixed from The Monster at the End of This Book, by Gramarye)

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So, funny story: in 2015, I adjusted my "willing to write" choices near the end of the Remix Redux signup period so as to match fandoms that currently had no offers. And because of that, I got matched to Gramarye. I did the same thing this time, for the same fandom (Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence), and had a feeling this might end up generating the same match.

I was right. *wry*

I wanted to try doing something different this time, though, so while I dug up the couple drabbles I'd marked as potential remixes (but not wound up using) the last time around, I also poked through the rest of Gramarye's archive to see if we had any other fandoms in common. The answer, mostly, is no... except for a couple one-offs. And one of those was "The Monster at the End of This Book," a gorgeous Yuletide fic for Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

My remix does not have anything to do with Gramarye's story on a plot level. Instead, what I ended up doing was taking a couple of key lines and writing something completely different based around those themes: the power of storytelling, the importance of endings, and how those are both vital and dangerous channels of power and control.

I also continued what has become a bit of an accidental pattern that might be described as "taking your story and making it about women," which I swear to god is not intended in any way as criticism of the stories I keep doing it to. I just have some issues that keep expressing themselves through this particular outlet. *hands* And also Rushdie's treatment of Soraya Khalifa has always annoyed me -- it is a slightly flat/sour note in an otherwise wonderful gem of a book -- so I wanted to give her control of her own story and see what happened.

Random trivia note: I gave Soraya the maiden name of Khan both because it's a Muslim-associated name rather than a Hindu one (to go with the Khalifas' general theme), and because khans arguably outrank caliphs, or at the very least are temporally equal. So that is symbolically important and was absolutely on purpose. :)

I got my Remix Revival assignment this morning and let's just say it is exactly what I half-suspected it would be, and also HILARIOUS. Not because of the person or their fics, I hasten to add! Just... the circumstances in general.

I am now going to ignore my assignment until nearly September, because I have other things with much closer due dates that obviously take precedence. *wry*