You don't frighten me, Muse.

[elfs]

"Hey, Elf," Muse said.

"Yah?"

"How would the military treat Bastet? Does the knowledge that, so far, medicine has failed to find a way to extend their lifespans beyond 45 while everyone else is living to 70 affect the way people treat them? What's their relationship in the US with the gay community? How about with the black community, since they were both emancipated by Lincoln? Are prostitution laws in the Yowlerverse more or less strict because of them? Since Bastet males and females don't generally get along together, what is the basis of Bastet familial arrangements? Different states have different ideas about racial harmonization with abandoned infants and with foster kids: how do they treat Bastet foster kids, if there are any? Are there any Bastet politicians? What's the split among religious communities with regard to the Bastet? Are there any special social programs for Bastet? They'd congregate in cities even more than gay people do, would they have their own ghettos? What are the more popular insults humans use against Bastet, and vice versa? What has the porn industry done with the Bastet in the past twenty years? Any Bastet at the top of any corporations? Noteable Bastet newscasters? How do insurance companies treat Bastet? Since the Bastet were maintained by legal conventions in sexually suggestive indentured servitude in many states up until the start of World War 2, does the kink community have any special angst about Bastet in their midst? What does the range of Bastet civil rights activists look like? Are there Bastet terrorists? Back-to-Tanganyika types? What happened to the Tanganyika tribe after 1901? How do different Asian and Arabic cultures view the Bastet? What about Europe? Are there any unusual steps taken when a Bastet shows up in an ER? What happened to German Bastet during WW2?"

I stared at her, goggle-eyed. She giggled. I said, "Muse, that's not fair!"

"What? You need to answer these questions if you're gonna keep writing Bastet stories."

"But not all at once!"

Comments

[elfs.livejournal.com]

The Bastet series actually grew out of another series that I never quite got to come together. The idea was that over two thousand years ago, magic worked. Jesus was one of the last great magicians. A spell called Loyalty helped hold together the Greek-Roman-Etruscan empire. And then magic began to wane, and our hero-- a nasty slaveholding Mage-- fell in love with one of his slaves and had a change of heart, a lot of adventures, and with about 50 episodes planned out eventually cast the last great spell, Manumission, which made Loyalty invalid throughout the empire. There were some great scenes. Pross (that was the hero) tells Dariya (his beloved and slave) about his plans and there's this line whre she says, "If you cast that spell, I'll probably hate you until the end of days," and Pross says, "Yes, you probably will," and he casts it anyway because he believes that her freedom is more important to him than her love.

The Bastet appeared in all of two episodes. But they stuck in my head.

The idea here is that the human species has been lucky because the Earth occupies a region swept clean of magic by a recent (in astronomical terms) supernova, and the region of space it occupies does not allow consciousness to affect reality. We evolved naturalistically, and did not have the power to destroy ourselves prematurely. Sometimes, magic works briefly as we encounter a "patch" in the space-time continuum where will can change things; there's a story set in 1899 that does covers this time. During the years about 800 B.C to about 100 A.D, magic worked pretty darn well. A pharaoh wanted super-solidiers, but the plan didn't work; instead, he got the Bastet.

The Bastet series is set in the 20th and 21st centuries; we're living with these huge scars on the Earth, evidence of magic's power and providence, and people live in hope that it'll come back someday. Others fear it. Most of the time, it doesn't work at all, not because we fail at it, but because the astronomical region doesn't allow for it. And still we and the Bastet have to live with each other.

There's an enormous amount of backstory, alt-history stuff, that I've been pondering over the past year. If I ever get tired of the Journal Entries, it'll be my backup.

[(Anonymous)]

Huh... interesting backstory. I'm somewhat reminded of Niven's "The Magic Fades Away"

Time to go peruse your site, and see if there's any of your work that I haven't read already... :)

[(Anonymous)]

Even if you do get tired of the Journal entries, you should write this stuff and let us see it anyway!

Re:

[(Anonymous)]

Or rather, if you DON'T get tired of the Journal Entries...stupid typos...