Perfect
Tens is a Bunty story in all but a few crucial details! Bunty always had
stories about girls entering gymnastics competitions. And there was always
a twist of some sort. The artificial lifeform girl actually originated
from another Bunty story idea, which involved a flesh and blood Human
girl who had been ‘programmed’ using hypnotism and drugs to
be a brilliant tennis player. Bunty also did tennis and horse riding stories!
The rest is all my own work, honestly.
The Cardiff International Arena was not my first choice of a venue. I considered a few other places. But then I found a picture online of the CIA being used for a tournament and although I had never been there it was quite easy to locate on multimap in relation to places in Cardiff I DO know, so I decided it would do. There is a certain irony about a Theta Sigma story set in Cardiff, anyway!
Now, I gave up gymnastics about the age I stopped reading
the Bunty, so I don’t claim to be an expert at it. Chrístõ
certainly doesn’t. But the whole thing of technical marks and style
marks is important in each of the disciplines, and the problems that Julia
and the lady coach pointed out with Nadine’s practice would make
a difference to medal placings. 
Of course, in a Bunty story the medal placings are a foregone conclusion. The put upon heroine has to triumph against the odds. Julia isn’t quite that put upon. But she does keep up with the strange Nadine in her chosen disciplines.
Just how nasty Mr Cole should be was a question I gave a lot of consideration to. Originally he WAS going to be totally ruthless and seriously try to kill Chrístõ, but I decided to make him a bit more tragic, a man doing the wrong thing for all the right reasons. He never intended to cause Chrístõ real harm, and so when he returns to the Arena after his near miss in the dumpster, Cole gives in and reveals the truth. Artificial lifeform Nadine wins the gold, Julia settles for Silver, but then Nadine ‘dies’, her computer brain having been fried, going out in glory. Chrístõ keeps the secret.
The intimate interlude between Chrístõ and
Natalie that takes place in the beginning of this story was the first
part of it to be written. The conversation about whether Chrístõ
would still love Julia if she should grow up to be a fat girl is crucial.
I want to establish him as a really nice guy who doesn’t judge by
appearances. The fantasy dance between the two of them settles that. But
then there is the promise Natalie makes him keep. Now, this story was
originally going to go online around November of 2006, but I actually
had too many stories and they wouldn’t all fit. So this and Grandmother
Paradox were shifted until the beginning 
of
2007. However, that meant that several stories that WERE online before
Christmas had references to a promise not yet made. These have now either
been removed or made a lot vaguer so it is not obvious what the promise
is. But at Christmas Julia knows that she will be spending the next Christmas
far from Earth, for example. I should probably look at putting this story
back into the pre-Christmas stories where it makes more sense.
Nadine Cole, incidentally, is named after two girl I knew at school. The first name of one and the surname of the other. A lot of water under the bridge since then, but since I had wandered down memory lane with the Bunty storyline, it seemed appropriate.
Why the 2014 championships? Originally it was going to be 2011 with the talk being of London, 2012. But then the 2006 story, Fear Her, came along and that was set at the 2012 Olympics. The only trouble was they hadn’t announced where the 2016 Olympics would be, so I had to be vague about that. Hopefully, when they DO announce the venue I can add in a bit of detail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gymnastics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff_International_Arena
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunty
