The aristeia is a dramatic convention of epic poetry like the Illiad. Generally, it's a fairly self-contained scene where the excellence of the hero is made manifest through a great feat, typically hewing a path through their foes. Homeric aristeias usually followed a pretty set sequence that went something like:
- 1. The hero is inspired by a god(dess)
- 2. They arm and armor themselves (also usually done in a fixed formula)
- 3. They do whatever the thing is, awesomely
- 4. They suffer a setback, often an injury
- 5. They overcome it and do more awesome things
- 6. They either win or die gloriously
Essentially, the fembot's owner or her programmed directives (like the god or goddess) give her some goal to accomplish. There is a description of her mounting the task, but for some reason relating to flaws in her artificial nature, she suffers malfunctions and/or damage in the process (the inverse of the superlative performance of the hero in an aristeia). There is then a circumstance whereby it seems that she might be able to overcome the problems, but through some fresh expression of her flawed design or programming she spins off into an even worse set of failures and either breaks down completely, or is saved only by chance or outside intervention.
The aristeia is a naturally pleasing narrative structure, still showing up in action and superhero movies, comics, and other media thousands of years after its first appearance. The fembot version outlined above has some nice features too, like built-in narrative tension as the reader encounters the mid-scene tease at a reversal of fortune. Naturally, there's no need to slavishly follow a formula, but I thought it might serve as a nice skeletal framework to help other writers structure their stories.