First off, happy tenth anniversary to my blog! For more information about this fanfic project, check out the earlier posts in the category “Sense and Sensibility and Placage.” This was a good example of why you can’t turn your back on the LLMs. Claude’s initial draft had the Villarreal-Mendoza wedding happening in March, and frost on the River Road. I haven’t been to South Louisiana in a long time, but I remembered enough of the climate to be pretty sure frost was not a routine occurrence, and I’m Catholic enough to know that Lent was not considered to be an optimal time for weddings. What is below is the draft that resulted from my polite discussion with Claude about these issues. I hand-fixed some logistics issues related to the carriage and as usual trimmed the more overwrought bits.

The Fever

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For more information about this project, check out the earlier posts in the category “Sense and Sensibility and Placage.” There was an Alejandro POV scene before this in the outline, which I decided we didn’t need. Marianne’s intense navel-gazing suits Claude’s style down to the ground, so this is a lightly edited first draft. I did add the reference to Alejandro possibly pursuing Marianne as a mistress or “sidechick.” I feel that this is consistent with Marianne’s social standing and the 1810s New Orleans environment, but I probably got the idea from Kandukondein, where the Willoughby analogue briefly attempts to take the Marianne analogue as a second wife.

A Letter from Alejandro

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For more information about this project, check out the earlier posts in the category “Sense and Sensibility and Placage.” The original outline used a trip upriver into plantation society to stand in for the the Dashwoods’ visits to London and Cleveland. I became dissatisfied with this. Claude under my guidance reworked the outline so this stretch of scenes about the Alejandro-Marianne subplot took place in New Orleans itself. Below is Claude’s first draft with minor tweaks. I reworked the Anne-Marie Acier reference to make it clear that this character was not a professional seamstress. I added Marianne’s impression of Lucie Acier’s pursuit of Edward, to help justify Marianne’s interpretation of the business between Alejandro and Sofia. I also added the final line. All other changes were me (slightly) trimming down Claude’s general wordiness.

The Villarreal Ball

Continue reading “Fanficcing with Claude: Sense and Sensibility and Placage, Scene 19” →

For more information about this project, check out the earlier posts in the category “Sense and Sensibility and Placage.” Claude was particularly dumb with this scene. Inspite of repeated instructions to ignore a spot in the outline for this scene, which had Elise telling Eleonore who the father of the former’s child was, the AI just kept doing it. I finally edited it out of the fourth draft. That one was my fault for not fixing the continuity of the outline better. But the transportation logistics were all on Claude. It started with Eleonore commuting up to the Morin property by steam ferry (in 1813, Claude?) in the first draft, and continued in later drafts with her occasionally traveling there in her mother’s carriage (yeah, no, they’re not wealthy enough to have one anymore) and having her ride fifteen miles to the Morin home only to turn around and go back the same day (yeah no). On the plus side, when I spelled out the parameters for what the story needed the Morin home to be (farm worked by free labor, manageable distance from town, but considered a healthier place to live, and far enough to be a discreet place to give birth to a love child, plants compatible with Creole medicine), Claude offered sound advice. We also had a productive discussion about the slave uprising of 1811 in the German Coast, which you will see some references to below. Eventually, as you can see, I decided this needed to be Marianne POV instead of Eleonore, and that is reflected in the version below.

Caring for Elise

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For more information about this project, check out the earlier posts in the category “Sense and Sensibility and Placage.” This is the second draft, which I prompted for because a prior connection between the Edward/Lucy characters didn’t work with what we had so far. Apart from that, I have trimmed some of Claude’s usual excesses, and changed the exit line.

Lucie’s Revelation

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For more information about this project, check out the earlier posts in the category “Sense and Sensibility and Placage.” In the first draft, Claude followed the character sheet on a point I had decided against and forgotten to correct (Anne-Marie Acier/Nancy Steele as seamstress) and ignored the same document on a more important point: that the Acier sisters are pretending to be richer than they really are. The redraft was to address these points, and add the idea that the Aciers had been eavesdropping on Eleonore’s conversation with Edward. The version below has a few rewordings by me and continuity tweaks.

Acier

Continue reading “Fanficcing with Claude: Sense and Sensibility and Placage, Scene 14” →