Happy New Year, and Yuletide reveal
Jan. 1st, 2010 06:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI wish everyone a good new decade (why limit it to just one year? I'm feeling ambitious right now). As today the authors of Yuletide stories are revealed, I can confess I wrote this:
Spinning Fate
Which is Ovid fanfiction as well as my attempt to write a subversive myth. Now, I had seen Ovid's Metamorphoses listed as a Yuletide fandom (sidenote: considering parts of the Metamorphoses are, if you like, Ovid writing fanfiction about Homer and Virgil stories, is this more meta than usual?) and considering I love Ovid in particular and Greek myths in general, I signed on for this as well as for B5, Crusade, Sandman, the Marvelverse and RKO 281. What I got was an Ovid prompt, go figure. It went thusly:
Request 1: Ovid - Metamorphoses (Any)
Details: Anything, really, from a retelling from an unexpected point of view to a transformation (mythic or original) Ovid "forgot" to include. Bonus points for unexpected happy ending, given how few Ovid has, but if the Muses or the Pierides suggest another path, go down it. Extra bonus points for verse, but again, follow your inspiration.
This was excellent fodder for inspiration. (As evident by the fact several other people took up this prompt as well once the prompts went public.) At first I thought I might do something with the very last of the transformation Ovid describes being the one of the dead Julius Caesar. (Don't bother checking it up, btw, the end of the Metamorphoses is a bit embarassing in its Augustus compliment paying, and not really about Caesar; instead, lots of verses about how great Augustus is. Didn't save Ovid from exile.) But this idea would have either ended up as a one note thing or as basically history fanfic with some mythical allusions, so I abandoned it. And thought about the Metamorphoses some more. As well as about what transformations could mean, and happy endings.
Now, back as a child I read a version of the Greek myths retold by a man named Gustav Schwab which is one of the most popular book to give to youngsters interested in myths in the German language. As a teenager, reading Ovid in school when my Latin class got around to the Metamorphoses, I was somewhat surprised and, being a teenager, shocked and angry to find out good old Schwab had bowlderized the mythos somewhat. Take Arachne, for example. A gifted weaver admired for her skills who rejects any notion she might owe these to Athena and challenges the goddess herself to competition. In Schwab's version, Arachne loses said competition, hangs herself in shame and is transformed into a spider at the last moment by Athena as a gesture of mercy. Ovid's version goes somewhat differently. Arachne wins; Athena cannot help but see her art is flawless. It's also insolent, because Arachne has chosen as the subject of her tapestry all those times the gods screwed up, or just plain screwed mortals over. (In a word, she's Ovid's Mary Sue?) Athena in a fury destroys Arachne's work and changes her into a spider.
Mulling over my prompt, I thought about weaving as a metaphor of storytelling, the power of creation - and the fact Arachne was a creator - about that other creator (of mankind), Prometheus, punished by the gods, and about Niobe, forbidding worship of the goddess Leto, hubristically taunting her and being punished with the slaughter of all her children in front of her. And lo and behold, the muse did indeed speak and I wrote with a vengeance. (This is something of a bad pun, if you've read the story.)
The biggest problem afterwards was that my silly brain couldn't resist coming up with titles proving my fondness for a certain genre. I swear, I really had to fight not to call this one of the following:
Revenge of the Spiderwoman
Spiderwoman II
Spiderwoman: The Return
The Spiderwoman Strikes Back
Thankfully, sanity prevailed. The recipient liked the story, I got some nice reviews (all by people I don't know) and a respectable number of hits, which made me very happy indeed, because the resulting story is one I'm really proud of. Thank you, Publius Ovidius Naso.
Spinning Fate
Which is Ovid fanfiction as well as my attempt to write a subversive myth. Now, I had seen Ovid's Metamorphoses listed as a Yuletide fandom (sidenote: considering parts of the Metamorphoses are, if you like, Ovid writing fanfiction about Homer and Virgil stories, is this more meta than usual?) and considering I love Ovid in particular and Greek myths in general, I signed on for this as well as for B5, Crusade, Sandman, the Marvelverse and RKO 281. What I got was an Ovid prompt, go figure. It went thusly:
Request 1: Ovid - Metamorphoses (Any)
Details: Anything, really, from a retelling from an unexpected point of view to a transformation (mythic or original) Ovid "forgot" to include. Bonus points for unexpected happy ending, given how few Ovid has, but if the Muses or the Pierides suggest another path, go down it. Extra bonus points for verse, but again, follow your inspiration.
This was excellent fodder for inspiration. (As evident by the fact several other people took up this prompt as well once the prompts went public.) At first I thought I might do something with the very last of the transformation Ovid describes being the one of the dead Julius Caesar. (Don't bother checking it up, btw, the end of the Metamorphoses is a bit embarassing in its Augustus compliment paying, and not really about Caesar; instead, lots of verses about how great Augustus is. Didn't save Ovid from exile.) But this idea would have either ended up as a one note thing or as basically history fanfic with some mythical allusions, so I abandoned it. And thought about the Metamorphoses some more. As well as about what transformations could mean, and happy endings.
Now, back as a child I read a version of the Greek myths retold by a man named Gustav Schwab which is one of the most popular book to give to youngsters interested in myths in the German language. As a teenager, reading Ovid in school when my Latin class got around to the Metamorphoses, I was somewhat surprised and, being a teenager, shocked and angry to find out good old Schwab had bowlderized the mythos somewhat. Take Arachne, for example. A gifted weaver admired for her skills who rejects any notion she might owe these to Athena and challenges the goddess herself to competition. In Schwab's version, Arachne loses said competition, hangs herself in shame and is transformed into a spider at the last moment by Athena as a gesture of mercy. Ovid's version goes somewhat differently. Arachne wins; Athena cannot help but see her art is flawless. It's also insolent, because Arachne has chosen as the subject of her tapestry all those times the gods screwed up, or just plain screwed mortals over. (In a word, she's Ovid's Mary Sue?) Athena in a fury destroys Arachne's work and changes her into a spider.
Mulling over my prompt, I thought about weaving as a metaphor of storytelling, the power of creation - and the fact Arachne was a creator - about that other creator (of mankind), Prometheus, punished by the gods, and about Niobe, forbidding worship of the goddess Leto, hubristically taunting her and being punished with the slaughter of all her children in front of her. And lo and behold, the muse did indeed speak and I wrote with a vengeance. (This is something of a bad pun, if you've read the story.)
The biggest problem afterwards was that my silly brain couldn't resist coming up with titles proving my fondness for a certain genre. I swear, I really had to fight not to call this one of the following:
Revenge of the Spiderwoman
Spiderwoman II
Spiderwoman: The Return
The Spiderwoman Strikes Back
Thankfully, sanity prevailed. The recipient liked the story, I got some nice reviews (all by people I don't know) and a respectable number of hits, which made me very happy indeed, because the resulting story is one I'm really proud of. Thank you, Publius Ovidius Naso.
