Purimgifts Reveal

For kerrypolka, I wrote the Bible space station bar AU.

Of All the Gin Joints Part 1 (Rebecca/Isaac)
Of All the Gin Joints Part 2 (Rachel/Jacob)
Of All the Gin Joints Part 3 (Zipporah/Moses)

The thought process that led to this was that kerrypolka had specified Rebecca as a favorite character and idly mentioned bars in space stations as a thing she liked. And I generally find writing Genesis stories easy because I know the characters so deeply, but Rebecca and Isaac are probably the blankest slates for me of Genesis characters. Somehow as I turned ideas over I drifted to the well scene, which is the most interesting part of Rebecca's story for me because the way the Bible uses well scenes repeatedly is so interesting. And I thought, "What if instead of meeting at a well, the met at a bar in a space station?"

I love space opera tropes and I love Bible tropes and mixing them together was so much fun because it was so illuminating of both. I was kind of obnoxiously over-literal in my translation of the Biblical narratives, partially because I was just rushing to write these stories and didn't have time for subtlety and partially because it really lets you focus on the tiny details of the Bible stories to see them translated so literally.

In my head, the key theme of the first story is relationship as transaction. Eliezer goes in place of Isaac, at Abraham's request, to seek Rebecca to continue the line of Abraham. There's no emotional connection there, at best there's affection and shared purpose, but creating Jacob and Esau isn't about love, it's about perpetuating genetic heritages. The space station stuff helped highlight the distances involved, the costs both physical and spiritual Eliezer paid to make this journey after Abraham left Ur swearing never to return. And I think that framework really casts the original story beautifully. This is almost purely mercenary, a deal selling a woman's genes to a near-stranger, and yet for both Eliezer and Rebecca there is something else at stake. For Eliezer it's about commitment to his master's vision, about the reasons Abraham left Ur for Canaan. For Rebecca it's about her fundamental humanity, which remains unwavering as she is asked to surrender her identity.

Meanwhile, the second well story is about love. Jacob, not a servant, seeks out the well, and he finds there a woman he shares chemistry with, on many levels. But it's also a story about the hazards of love, because Rachel can't possibly realize (though she may sense, and even be attracted to) that Jacob is a damaged person, cast off from his home, eternally paranoid and wounded and all the more dangerous for it. That's love for you, being drawn to a person even when it could be your ruin.

And the third story is about being on the run versus finding a home. My read on Moses/Zipporah has always been that neither of them really loves each other, so much as they love the idea of each other. Moses has escaped Egypt, but he is not at home among the Israelites. Midian and Zipporah give him a third option, a place he can settle and build a home for himself. Naming the son born in his Midianite exile Gershon shows us how he regards that land. Zipporah, meanwhile, is the daughter of a priest who doubts his own priestship. Moses gives her an escape without having to escape, lets her nudge her father into a place of certainty. She gets to rebel by marrying outside the tribe while remaining her father's daughter. It's a convenient arrangement for both of them, until God's call ruins everything.

Anyway, there are clones and genetic experiments and laser pistols and booze. It's a lot less cerebral than this rambling makes it sound.


It turns out my beautiful From the Sun to the Shade ficlets were written for me by daegaer, who also wrote my stories for Purimgifts last year. This is an arrangement that I wouldn't mind continuing. :P I love these stories, which are about a young Egyptian slave girl and her interactions with Judeans on the island of Alexandrine in ~500BCE. You should read them.