2/4/10 -- New Stories Posted!

THREE -- count them, THREE -- new stories from GeekSeven now up in the storybank. Truth be told, they are far from new (case in point: New Year's Girl"). SWM apologizes for the delay in posting them, G7!! Thanks for the contributions!

ElF

Thank you for posting these, lfan. Don't worry about the delay. 'New Year's Girl' wasn't submitted until three weeks after new year's eve! There were script problems from the start... Then Stupendous Girl wouldn't come out of her trailer...

By the by, it probably doesn't matter too much, but 'Hammer and Sickle' takes place before 'Typhoon Clara', chronologically. They are both set in the same universe as 'Liberty Belle', etc.

Thanks for those three stories. It's good to see these universes continuing, especially the Liberty Belle one. I did like them all, especially Typhoon Clara.

Stupendous girl certainly had some fun this time around, and she dealt nicely with that poor Russian (not that he didn't deserve it). I feel sorry for Iona - it looks like it will take her a long time to get used to how easily she can kill people by accident. At least the carnage on the space station was not her fault. And like her, I wonder how the impostor knew her name. By the way, has she settled on a super name of her own yet?

I'll deal with both Liberty Belle stories together. Poor Nagasaki still gets it in this reality I see. The first victims of superwomen from outside of direct combat. I'd bet that Liberty Belle and Amber Waves will feel quite guilty about that at times. I wonder, was Sickle always a mute or is that a side-effect of the Soviet Superwoman program? And given Angela's analysis of Hammer, I wonder how long it will be before she stages a coup. I would guess that the Russians found out about her visit through their spy network, specifically their spies in British intelligence. I'm wondering how Skylark knew to be on hand to help out.
With regards to Typhoon Clara, I really like Clara. She seems to be very level headed and has quite a feeling of responsibility. I wonder if that's down to Turing and co having selected women with those characteristics for Project Isis (and I'm happy to see Turing getting a better deal in this reality than in ours). Hellion, on the other hand, seems to be a little bit unhinged. I could certainly see her causing trouble down the line, especially given that she's so powerful. Interesting to see Skylark in the role of teacher. I guess that's a role the more experienced women have been taking on since the new recruits started to come in. I suppose the reason the Russians enhanced Chinese women rather than sent in their own supers is because it's a bit harder to disclaim somebody like Hammer than it is to claim that your jets are not being flown by your pilots.
I'd say you did a good job of making the world seem a more dangerous place, despite the preponderence of allied superwomen. And that's even before the escaped Nazis get in on the act, which I'm sure they are doing their best (or should that be worst?) to do.

Once again, thanks for the stories.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: I really love the Stupendous Girl series

It began as accidental murder and mayhem but has grown into so much more. Looking forward to more of these! We need more holidays!

Good work on the new stories GeekSeven, your writing is really improving.

New Year's Girl was a good little laugh, well done in particular for some of the more unusual uses of superpowers (like sucking up the oil spill). Though you do have to wonder why NASA would even bother with the space shuttle when there is a superwoman who can lift whatever they want into orbit. One small comment, how come no one seems to have commented on the fact that there are suddenly two superwomen flying around? While Iona’s family might keep quiet about her suddenly gaining powers, surely her friends, classmates, teachers etc would be able to recognise her?

The two Liberty Belle stories are also very good. I like your choice of Alan Turing to run the superwoman program, at least we don’t have to worry about him trying to take unfair advantage of all the pretty young girls he’s working with. And if his secret ever does get out, I doubt he would end up being punished for it (quite apart from his importance to national security, the objections of half a dozen superwoman would properly ‘persuade’ the authorities to drop it). I do however have a few more comments about these stories.

Firstly, there are a few mentions of atomic bombs in the stories, but in this version of history, atomic weapons were never developed. The appearance of the Russian superwomen defiantly makes things more interesting, I just hope it is not going to turn into the same sort of ‘all Russians are evil, all Allies are good’ stories that Hollywood has turned out so much in the past. That sort of thing gets very boring very fast. My main complaint however is to do with Skylark. While I wouln’t complain about her large role in the stories (good to see the Brits riding to the rescue for once), the main thing I liked about her original story was how well developed her background was. After her heroic (and slightly tragic)actions I was looking forward to hearing about how she coped waking from her coma to find out that her dad was dead and how much the world had changed. But we heard nothing about this at all. It might have been good to at least mention it at some point.

One more thing. I have noticed in several of your sorties accurate descriptions of some fairly obscure historical information (the presence of Polish troops at Arnhem, the Defiant fighter etc). Would I be correct in assuming that at some point you have studied history, or at least a considerable intrest in it?

Thank you all for the feedback on these stories. Writing has seemed like a bit of a slog, lately, so it's nice to know that somebody enjoys the end result.

The references to atom bombs were a goof on my part. In the first draft of "Hammer and Sickle", Liberty Belle delivers an atomic bomb to Hiroshima, at which point Japan surrenders. After some discussion with my trusty beta reader, I decided that the superwomen should use their powers to unleash mass destruction. Unfortunately, I forgot about the later reference to the bombs.

One could argue that 'Liberty Belle' knows about the theoretical possibility of atomic weapons, and that is what she was referring to...

'Skylark' and 'Amber Waves' have gotten pretty short shrift since their debuts, I'll admit. I've focused each story on one character, but maybe that will widen in future installments. When I get around to it, the next 'Liberty Belle' story will reveal what the hidden Nazis have been up to in South America.

My intention was that 'Sickle' became mute and slightly crazy when she became super. The idea being that the early years of the Russian superwoman program are rather brutal in their execution and hit-or-miss in their results. The U.S. program is not much better in some respects.

Whenever I do research into the background of a story, I usually end up following some random tangent that ends up in the story.

Iona has not settled on a super name yet. I keep meaning to write that process into a story. The leading contender at the moment is "Goth Girl", but maybe I should open it up to the floor for suggestions.