Post by Catsmate on Jun 29, 2023 14:41:43 GMT
A quixotic little idea, inspired by a couple of filk songs, mainly this one¹, that have popped up in my recent listening. It's a bit more high concept than I usually attempt, straying perhaps into High Fantasy.
I'm not sure how far I'll take this one, feel free to comment or contribute.
The Bedlam Girls.
It all started with a war, as such things usually do; conflict does tend to drive change. Or perhaps not. Maybe the war will never have happened.
It was the Greatest War to many, the war across time and space, across multiple universes, between Us and the Enemy, whomever they were.
It might have begun when the universe was small and young, pitting order and reason against chaos and unreason in the days when the operating rules of the universe were still flexible. Or was it to exterminate the Things that had survived from the previous universe, hiding inside black holes?
Or maybe it happened aeons later, between the Great Lords and the Chaotics, different aspects of the fight between order and disorder, logic and paradox.
Or perhaps it fought when the Aristocrats were strong but heading towards decadency, and their weakness provokes a grab for universal power from one of the young er races.
Perchance it started when the universe was incomprehensibly old, heading towards the finality of the Big Rip (or whatever its fate was to have been) when both sides, and their remaining allies, tried to survive the final end.
Maybe it was all of these, a war fought during the entire span of the universe’s existence, with most observed unaware of what was happening, until it encompassed them, and then they changed without knowing they had. The story ever changing, but the ending staying the same.
But whenever it was fought, between whom, and for what reasons, things happened, allies were recruited, willing or not. Once, for a period the Nobles reached into the foam that underlies reality and plucked out people who never were, or would be, and made soldiers of them.
One group of these never-people called themselves the Lost Girls. Six humans, from a race that was known for its ability to fight and survive, and ability to make good tools, all female, none of them ever to have known a true life. Given form to fight for their masters. The seventh was what the lesser species called an ‘Artificial Intelligence’, a pointless concept after a certain level of development, when the differentiation between organic and inorganic, evolved and designed, becomes meaninglessly trivial.
And then the war was gone, had never been. And outside reality the Lost Girls and the others like them were needed no more. Their controllers could have returned them from whence they’d came, back to non-existence. But they’d been useful tools and they planned to grant them life.
Not together of course, that would be sentimentally foolish. Nor would they have retained their memories of service, and certainly not the abilities granted to them by quantum entanglement with black holes. No, they’d be given human form and dropped into history in suitable settings, to live out the short lives of such ephemerals.
However the instrumenta vocale had other ideas and some of their lesser masters sympathised with them; they’d fought and died together, and that experience builds odd loyalties that those who direct the conflict from afar can’t understand.
They escaped, fleeing into reality aboard a stolen ship, albeit one far less than the great Warships they’d known, served on and destroyed during the War That Hadn’t Been.
The ran and hid, and ran some more, and ran and hid. After a long time they felt safe and started doing more than looking over their shoulders for their former masters. They started to feel safe.
And bored.
They'd been soldiers, this they knew, even if who they'd fought for, and against, were a mystery. They had vague memories of deeds and purpose and meaning. But no longer.
They still had each other, and a need for purpose, so they decided to do something meaningful again.
They were going to fix the universe, one deed at a time. They were the Bedlam Girls.
Now they call themselves by names from the literature of a world they weren't actually born on;
Dorothy, Alice, Wendy, Jane, Susan and Lucy. And Tinkerbell of course.
Designer's Notes.
I wonder what a shrink would make of this little outpouring? Probably that I should stop listening to Seanan for a while and avoid the roller derby girls.....
There's also the webcomic Cheshire Crossing by Andy Weir, which also features the further adventures of
Alice Liddell, Wendy Darling and Dorothy Gale².
The basics have been sitting in my Notes file for a a couple of years at least, until the backstory came to me
I only noticed after I finished the parallels to Blake's Seven, they're unconscious at most. Though the idea of a group of seven was a moderately common one in literature even before The Seven Samurai was remade with six-shooters.
Seven is a number of power in most mythologies; seven hills, seven stars, seven virtues, seven seas, seven wonders, seven days of creation et cetera. Newton and Bartholdi knew, there's a reason for indigo and the rays on the crown.
So the Bedlam Girls are a classic Seven Girl Band. Now I wonder what they're going to get up to......
Right, I have no idea if I'm going to develop this so ideas and contributions are welcome. I may get around to some stats. Eventually.......
1. There's another version here and the lyrics are here.
2. Which makes me wonder about who was manipulating Ace's timestream.......
I'm not sure how far I'll take this one, feel free to comment or contribute.
The Bedlam Girls.
Dorothy, Alice, and Wendy and Jane
Susan and Lucy, we're callin' your names
All the Lost Girls who came out of the rain
And chose to go back on the shelf
Tinker Bell says, and I find I agree
You have to break rules if you want to break free
So do as you like—we're determined to be
Wicked girls saving ourselves
Susan and Lucy, we're callin' your names
All the Lost Girls who came out of the rain
And chose to go back on the shelf
Tinker Bell says, and I find I agree
You have to break rules if you want to break free
So do as you like—we're determined to be
Wicked girls saving ourselves
It all started with a war, as such things usually do; conflict does tend to drive change. Or perhaps not. Maybe the war will never have happened.
It was the Greatest War to many, the war across time and space, across multiple universes, between Us and the Enemy, whomever they were.
It might have begun when the universe was small and young, pitting order and reason against chaos and unreason in the days when the operating rules of the universe were still flexible. Or was it to exterminate the Things that had survived from the previous universe, hiding inside black holes?
Or maybe it happened aeons later, between the Great Lords and the Chaotics, different aspects of the fight between order and disorder, logic and paradox.
Or perhaps it fought when the Aristocrats were strong but heading towards decadency, and their weakness provokes a grab for universal power from one of the young er races.
Perchance it started when the universe was incomprehensibly old, heading towards the finality of the Big Rip (or whatever its fate was to have been) when both sides, and their remaining allies, tried to survive the final end.
Maybe it was all of these, a war fought during the entire span of the universe’s existence, with most observed unaware of what was happening, until it encompassed them, and then they changed without knowing they had. The story ever changing, but the ending staying the same.
But whenever it was fought, between whom, and for what reasons, things happened, allies were recruited, willing or not. Once, for a period the Nobles reached into the foam that underlies reality and plucked out people who never were, or would be, and made soldiers of them.
One group of these never-people called themselves the Lost Girls. Six humans, from a race that was known for its ability to fight and survive, and ability to make good tools, all female, none of them ever to have known a true life. Given form to fight for their masters. The seventh was what the lesser species called an ‘Artificial Intelligence’, a pointless concept after a certain level of development, when the differentiation between organic and inorganic, evolved and designed, becomes meaninglessly trivial.
And then the war was gone, had never been. And outside reality the Lost Girls and the others like them were needed no more. Their controllers could have returned them from whence they’d came, back to non-existence. But they’d been useful tools and they planned to grant them life.
Not together of course, that would be sentimentally foolish. Nor would they have retained their memories of service, and certainly not the abilities granted to them by quantum entanglement with black holes. No, they’d be given human form and dropped into history in suitable settings, to live out the short lives of such ephemerals.
However the instrumenta vocale had other ideas and some of their lesser masters sympathised with them; they’d fought and died together, and that experience builds odd loyalties that those who direct the conflict from afar can’t understand.
They escaped, fleeing into reality aboard a stolen ship, albeit one far less than the great Warships they’d known, served on and destroyed during the War That Hadn’t Been.
The ran and hid, and ran some more, and ran and hid. After a long time they felt safe and started doing more than looking over their shoulders for their former masters. They started to feel safe.
And bored.
They'd been soldiers, this they knew, even if who they'd fought for, and against, were a mystery. They had vague memories of deeds and purpose and meaning. But no longer.
They still had each other, and a need for purpose, so they decided to do something meaningful again.
They were going to fix the universe, one deed at a time. They were the Bedlam Girls.
Now they call themselves by names from the literature of a world they weren't actually born on;
Dorothy, Alice, Wendy, Jane, Susan and Lucy. And Tinkerbell of course.
For we will be wicked and we will be fair
And they'll call us such names, and we really won't care
So go tell your Wendys, your Susans, your Janes
There's a place they can go if they're tired of chains
And our roads may be golden or broken or lost
But we'll walk on them willingly, knowing the cost
We won't take our place on the shelves
It's better to fly, and it's better to die
Say the wicked girls saving ourselves...
We're wicked girls saving ourselves...
And they'll call us such names, and we really won't care
So go tell your Wendys, your Susans, your Janes
There's a place they can go if they're tired of chains
And our roads may be golden or broken or lost
But we'll walk on them willingly, knowing the cost
We won't take our place on the shelves
It's better to fly, and it's better to die
Say the wicked girls saving ourselves...
We're wicked girls saving ourselves...
Designer's Notes.
I wonder what a shrink would make of this little outpouring? Probably that I should stop listening to Seanan for a while and avoid the roller derby girls.....
There's also the webcomic Cheshire Crossing by Andy Weir, which also features the further adventures of
Alice Liddell, Wendy Darling and Dorothy Gale².
The basics have been sitting in my Notes file for a a couple of years at least, until the backstory came to me
I only noticed after I finished the parallels to Blake's Seven, they're unconscious at most. Though the idea of a group of seven was a moderately common one in literature even before The Seven Samurai was remade with six-shooters.
Seven is a number of power in most mythologies; seven hills, seven stars, seven virtues, seven seas, seven wonders, seven days of creation et cetera. Newton and Bartholdi knew, there's a reason for indigo and the rays on the crown.
So the Bedlam Girls are a classic Seven Girl Band. Now I wonder what they're going to get up to......
Right, I have no idea if I'm going to develop this so ideas and contributions are welcome. I may get around to some stats. Eventually.......
1. There's another version here and the lyrics are here.
2. Which makes me wonder about who was manipulating Ace's timestream.......