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Mar. 22nd, 2011 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI wrote stories for PurimGifts.
Ted Mosby and the Shiksa Goddess - How I Met Your Mother: Ted/Zoey
Toby Ziegler and the Shiksa Goddess West Wing: Toby/Andie
Jamie and Every Shapiro in Washington Heights (And One Shiksa Goddess Last Five Years: Jamie/Jewish Girls
Aria Merchant of Venice: Jessica/Lorenzo
Variation 1 Merchant of Venice: Jessica/Lorenzo
Variation 1 Merchant of Venice: Jessica/Lorenzo
I suspect my main recipient knew who I was because of an accident involving AO3 being stupid when I was just test-posting. But I don't mind too much. Shaloch manos don't have a tradition of being anonymous, quite the opposite, because as my Rabbi explained the other day, the point of them is to strengthen communal connections. I hope![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kindness_says liked my stories, surprise or not.
This year for PurimGifts I themed my three stories, with Shiksa Goddess being the theme. This came because Kindness had expressed interest in "The Last 5 Years", which is a marvelous musical featuring a song called "Shiksa Goddess", and because the other two fandoms I wanted to write don't have Jewish female characters. At all. Maddeningly. I askedroga when I got my assignment how it's possible that a fandom as semite-friendly as The West Wing has zero Jewish female characters. Gah, Aaron Sorkin and your issues.
hannaH is responsible for me first hearing "Shiksa Goddess", when she played the Last 5 Years soundtrack as I drove her back from a reunion somewhere. But I first really listened to it when my college roommate, an NYU dropout working in musical theater in New York, sat down at his keyboard and played the song for me the night after getting together with a former classmate who was very, very non-Jewish. It was a brilliant performance, the best I've ever heard him play. He was jubilant to the point of near-exhaustion, yet managed to bring out ironies in the song I've never heard on the recording. I was incredibly struck by how my roommate had found the words in that song to give expression to the emotions he was feeling. It was a moment that's stuck with me, and the reality of the song, the way it speaks truths that are of our time, has always impressed me. That notwithstanding, it's a goofy song.
I hope that the structure I constructed holds together and I especially hope that its subparts cast reflections on each other. Toby is very different from Ted, and Ted is very different from Jamie, but what I wanted to grab onto was that besides these differences, the three of them inhabit shows that tell stories in very different ways. West Wing is fairly linear and it likes to reveal its truths through literal, rhetorical dialectic. How I Met Your Mother is less linear, more manic, and it tells its truths in flashbacks and detailed self-inquiry. The Last 5 Years weaves its story through two interfering linear strands exposed through the poetry of song. Yet despite these differences, this same question lurks in all three texts: What does it mean for a Jew to date a non-Jew? Who will be hurt by it, who will be healed by it, who will be raised up by it, who will be brought down by it? How do you answer these questions?
As usual with my fic, the answer to the last question is Struggle. But the other questions are, it follows, harder to answer. Toby and Andie have something together, a family of sorts, and Judaism has a lot to say about family. Not all of it is for the best. Ted and Zoey don't seem like the type of people for whom religious difference would construct a wall, but people evolve and grow and change and sometimes what can seem like no more than a question mark can grow into the figurative fly in the ointment. I know people who married non-Jews when they were not religious and as they discovered their Jewish faith, it became a wedge between themself and their spouse. And Jamie... about Jamie I just wonder what was so bad about the Handelman Twins. I wonder whether it was necessary to seek out someone so different from him, when he would have had enough trouble already just trying to build a solid relationship with someone he had more in common with.
I didn't want to say with these stories that the answer is not to date a non-Jew. The relationships I depict here are real and meaningful, and that's not something I would scoff at. When you can find love, I think you hold on to it as long as you can, wherever you find it, and sort out the details later. But these are stories about sorting out those details.
And then I picked up a pinchhit, despite repeated efforts to restrain myself from something so stupid. And it was a pinchhit where the main fandom I intended to match on was Merchant of Venice. Of course, I saw the play just the other week and its language and themes are fresh in my head. And hey, another chance to try to be anonymous. But still, stupid. It's a difficult play.
But I couldn't resist the chance to rewrite Jessica, especially since I recognized that the Jessica/Lorenzo story mirrors Ted/Zoey, Toby/Andie, and Jamie/Cathy. Lorenzo is a Sheigetz God. He's an interesting character to me because of what he's not. He's not clever like Antonio. He's not sincere like Bassanio. He's not entertaining like Gratiano. He's just in love, and that's all that matters to Jessica. She can deal with the fact that she's going to have to be the one to plan the escape, find money to support them, guide them through the world, because she knows he won't abandon her no matter how offended he is by her Jewish soul.
So I wrote 3 Jessicas. One's a spin on the original. The next is a space station AU. And the third is a modern day high school AU. Because this is fandom, and that's what we do to characters we love. Jessica deserved a space station AU, is all I'm saying. And I labeled them Aria and Variation 1 and Variation 2 in honor of my favorite set of variations on a theme, the Goldberg Variations, and I would love it if I could write 30 more variations.
A final note. Purimgifts is interesting in that it requires graphics, and I'm not particularly good with graphics. I just cast my three Jessicas on the pinchhit, a quick and dirty way to come up with three graphics. For the other three stories, I wanted to do more, especially after my beta told me she struggled with the HIMYM story with my attempts to do quick HIMYM-style jumpcuts. I think the effect I came up with works reasonably well, but I think further experimentation is called for. The fact that fic exists on the internet offers a lot of opportunities to tell nonlinear stories effectively.
But yeah, that's Purimgifts. I had a lot of fun again. I'm going to post a few bonus things in the next day or so, pieces I almost used this year but rejected for various reasons.
Ted Mosby and the Shiksa Goddess - How I Met Your Mother: Ted/Zoey
Toby Ziegler and the Shiksa Goddess West Wing: Toby/Andie
Jamie and Every Shapiro in Washington Heights (And One Shiksa Goddess Last Five Years: Jamie/Jewish Girls
Aria Merchant of Venice: Jessica/Lorenzo
Variation 1 Merchant of Venice: Jessica/Lorenzo
Variation 1 Merchant of Venice: Jessica/Lorenzo
I suspect my main recipient knew who I was because of an accident involving AO3 being stupid when I was just test-posting. But I don't mind too much. Shaloch manos don't have a tradition of being anonymous, quite the opposite, because as my Rabbi explained the other day, the point of them is to strengthen communal connections. I hope
kindness_says liked my stories, surprise or not.This year for PurimGifts I themed my three stories, with Shiksa Goddess being the theme. This came because Kindness had expressed interest in "The Last 5 Years", which is a marvelous musical featuring a song called "Shiksa Goddess", and because the other two fandoms I wanted to write don't have Jewish female characters. At all. Maddeningly. I asked
roga when I got my assignment how it's possible that a fandom as semite-friendly as The West Wing has zero Jewish female characters. Gah, Aaron Sorkin and your issues.hannaH is responsible for me first hearing "Shiksa Goddess", when she played the Last 5 Years soundtrack as I drove her back from a reunion somewhere. But I first really listened to it when my college roommate, an NYU dropout working in musical theater in New York, sat down at his keyboard and played the song for me the night after getting together with a former classmate who was very, very non-Jewish. It was a brilliant performance, the best I've ever heard him play. He was jubilant to the point of near-exhaustion, yet managed to bring out ironies in the song I've never heard on the recording. I was incredibly struck by how my roommate had found the words in that song to give expression to the emotions he was feeling. It was a moment that's stuck with me, and the reality of the song, the way it speaks truths that are of our time, has always impressed me. That notwithstanding, it's a goofy song.
I hope that the structure I constructed holds together and I especially hope that its subparts cast reflections on each other. Toby is very different from Ted, and Ted is very different from Jamie, but what I wanted to grab onto was that besides these differences, the three of them inhabit shows that tell stories in very different ways. West Wing is fairly linear and it likes to reveal its truths through literal, rhetorical dialectic. How I Met Your Mother is less linear, more manic, and it tells its truths in flashbacks and detailed self-inquiry. The Last 5 Years weaves its story through two interfering linear strands exposed through the poetry of song. Yet despite these differences, this same question lurks in all three texts: What does it mean for a Jew to date a non-Jew? Who will be hurt by it, who will be healed by it, who will be raised up by it, who will be brought down by it? How do you answer these questions?
As usual with my fic, the answer to the last question is Struggle. But the other questions are, it follows, harder to answer. Toby and Andie have something together, a family of sorts, and Judaism has a lot to say about family. Not all of it is for the best. Ted and Zoey don't seem like the type of people for whom religious difference would construct a wall, but people evolve and grow and change and sometimes what can seem like no more than a question mark can grow into the figurative fly in the ointment. I know people who married non-Jews when they were not religious and as they discovered their Jewish faith, it became a wedge between themself and their spouse. And Jamie... about Jamie I just wonder what was so bad about the Handelman Twins. I wonder whether it was necessary to seek out someone so different from him, when he would have had enough trouble already just trying to build a solid relationship with someone he had more in common with.
I didn't want to say with these stories that the answer is not to date a non-Jew. The relationships I depict here are real and meaningful, and that's not something I would scoff at. When you can find love, I think you hold on to it as long as you can, wherever you find it, and sort out the details later. But these are stories about sorting out those details.
And then I picked up a pinchhit, despite repeated efforts to restrain myself from something so stupid. And it was a pinchhit where the main fandom I intended to match on was Merchant of Venice. Of course, I saw the play just the other week and its language and themes are fresh in my head. And hey, another chance to try to be anonymous. But still, stupid. It's a difficult play.
But I couldn't resist the chance to rewrite Jessica, especially since I recognized that the Jessica/Lorenzo story mirrors Ted/Zoey, Toby/Andie, and Jamie/Cathy. Lorenzo is a Sheigetz God. He's an interesting character to me because of what he's not. He's not clever like Antonio. He's not sincere like Bassanio. He's not entertaining like Gratiano. He's just in love, and that's all that matters to Jessica. She can deal with the fact that she's going to have to be the one to plan the escape, find money to support them, guide them through the world, because she knows he won't abandon her no matter how offended he is by her Jewish soul.
So I wrote 3 Jessicas. One's a spin on the original. The next is a space station AU. And the third is a modern day high school AU. Because this is fandom, and that's what we do to characters we love. Jessica deserved a space station AU, is all I'm saying. And I labeled them Aria and Variation 1 and Variation 2 in honor of my favorite set of variations on a theme, the Goldberg Variations, and I would love it if I could write 30 more variations.
A final note. Purimgifts is interesting in that it requires graphics, and I'm not particularly good with graphics. I just cast my three Jessicas on the pinchhit, a quick and dirty way to come up with three graphics. For the other three stories, I wanted to do more, especially after my beta told me she struggled with the HIMYM story with my attempts to do quick HIMYM-style jumpcuts. I think the effect I came up with works reasonably well, but I think further experimentation is called for. The fact that fic exists on the internet offers a lot of opportunities to tell nonlinear stories effectively.
But yeah, that's Purimgifts. I had a lot of fun again. I'm going to post a few bonus things in the next day or so, pieces I almost used this year but rejected for various reasons.
You can call me Kat now. =)
Date: 2011-03-23 06:18 pm (UTC)Though, now that I look again at some of the lyrics, I think there probably is also an undercurrent (that I'm not sure JRB is even aware of) of...well, the same reasons racial intermarrying is still significant, and that it's different when the woman is white than when the man is white. How we perceive beauty, specifically mainstream beauty. How historically you take a culture by taking its women. How until you can do that and not have people look askance at you on the street or be surprised on their television - and in some parts of the US with various groups this is done, and in other parts it'll be another century coming at least - you're not really an equal part of the society.
HIMYM method: I might want to borrow it in the future...if that's okay...
Re: You can call me Kat now. =)
Date: 2011-03-23 06:51 pm (UTC)I like what you say about JRB not necessarily being aware. "Shiksa Goddess" is a song so laced with irony, but really not very self-aware. Like, when he mentions the Gotti Clan... I think JRB is just going for outlandish family relation, but if the girl he's talking to actually has Italian relatives (and dear lord, it's not that uncommon in the NY area, even I have an Italian aunt and my family's as Jewish as they come), that line comes out horribly offensive. And I think that adds to the sense the listener gets that Jamie is a total ass, but I don't think that's part of what JRB intended.
HIMYM image gimmick is yours to borrow. I pretty much stole it from
Re: You can call me Kat now. =)
Date: 2011-03-23 07:24 pm (UTC)YES. She is a mythical goddess. In at least two songs.
Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah. This is the part where I feel like I should mention that JRB himself is a little bit of a total ass. XD I don't know him super-well or anything, but I have some RL familiarity with him and while I hate to "chalk it up to biography" I think since we already know that L5Y is based off his real life it's not exactly hard to imagine how the kinds of things I [mostly have heard from friends] about him apply to Jamie and Cathy. Though admittedly he doesn't sound that much like Jamie really. But I think they share some issues, obv.
Re: You can call me Kat now. =)
Date: 2011-03-23 07:44 pm (UTC)"CJ?"
"Yes, Sam?"
"Remember that time when I explained the census to you?"
"Uh... When I admitted that despite being the White House Press Secretary and one of the most influential women in America, I didn't know the first thing about how the census worked? And in your magnanimity you explained it to me and only made fun of me a little?"
"Yep. That time."
"Yeah, I remember it. I was sort of hoping you didn't."
"I did."
"Drat."
"I mention it only because I find myself now in the position that you were once in. I need you to explain Purim to me, CJ."
"Purim?"
"The Jewish holiday? That I'm told is tomorrow. I'm invited to a party at Congresswoman Wyatt's house. And I don't know the first thing about Purim."
"Ask Josh. He's Jewish. I'm Catholic."
"I would ask Josh. Only I can't."
"Why not?"
"He'll laugh at me."
Re: You can call me Kat now. =)
Date: 2011-03-23 07:58 pm (UTC)Re: You can call me Kat now. =)
Date: 2011-03-23 07:58 pm (UTC)Re: You can call me Kat now. =)
Date: 2011-03-24 12:22 am (UTC)I asked [personal profile] roga when I got my assignment how it's possible that a fandom as semite-friendly as The West Wing has zero Jewish female characters. Gah, Aaron Sorkin and your issues.
Er, yeah, I was gonna say. Answered your own question, there. :)