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dolariOne of the things that spurred me to write the Polychronicon, other than a dream, WAAAY back in 1987, was the idea of cloning and the soul. Does a copy get made of your soul if it's done? If you DID have the same soul, was it a distinct and seperate one? Or was there a link of some sort?
In books 3 and 7 I created a situation where we had a mother, and two clones, and how the three interacted with each other. They were distinct individuals who shared common traits, but they really weren't the same person. Three different copies of the same program on three different machines experiencing three different sets of incoming data. I did, though, have the idea that the closer they got to each other, physically, the more their minds interacted with each other. They'd finish each others sentences, or unconsciously mimic each other's little quirks and tics.
About half a year ago, I was trying to figure out what to do with Part 2 of AWFW in order to make it more personal. WE already had a protagonist, an antagonist...but the story was getting SO political, I was afraid we'd lose that human drama. I wanted to stay away from having The-Phantom-Menace-Style-Drama-By-Committee-Meeting.
About this time, I laid eyes on a pic of my friend Steph and her two sisters. All in the same pose, with the same pretty smiles, but with different hairstyles and clothing.
And then I thought about the main "Committee" The Celestial Exchange Agency. Andrea would need to be introduced to it, and would have been introduced to it by a character named Roger. Instead, I decided to go back to what I wanted to do with Book 7 of the Polychronicon with the two clones/one mother being linked. But while in Book 7 it was a neat little curiousity, here it would be their gimmick.
And so, Faith, Hope and Charity were born.
While Charlene and Julie were clones of the original Kristin/Susan, Faith, Hope and Charity have one soul, divided into three bodies.
And so I wrote these characters (with minor (ahem) requested cosmetic changes from the people I based them on) as if they were three seperate people, who, the closer they got, became one person. This would make it feasable for Andrea to not know their "secret" and not have the school they were at figure it out themselves.
So I wrote three episodes with them. The first just showed Charity, the next introduced Hope and Faith...and a "secret." The third was all about creepy girls being creepy and tlaking at once.
As I finished it, my head began to work on just HOW FH&C would explain who and what they are...so I asked for their backstory.
I didn't get backstory - I got a reason for why they were telling Andrea in the first place.
The happy "we're really one soul split between three people" has become "three people trying to deal with having one soul." When I asked them what they were going to tell Andrea in the next episode, they told me "We're slaves with no master. We're slaves to each other." Their lives are miserable. When they are together, they aren't individuals. When they're apart, they have a constant yearning to be back together. The three have individual wants and needs, but are so easily overpowered if any of the other two put any will into ANY action, that they have a compulsion to follow that will themselves. If one of them wants to eat, they ALL want to eat, even if the other two aren't hungry. If one of them is tired, all of them are tired, even if the other two just woke up. They other two can fight the compulsion, but it's always there, nagging at them.
Over the years, they have learned to give up personal identity in order to have a meaningful life. They work together, they live together, the know everything the other does...and if one of them goes away, the other two have to fight the compulsion to find the other and return to her. They're miserable...but have managed to forge a life connected to the other two.
It's worse if the three are together, where if they don't fight it, they will completely lose their individuality and become a gestalt mind. The way we see them in episodes #32 and 33. They're so close that they've completely lost any individual will, and are speaking, thinking, moving as one oganism. They work best in this form, but are the most conspicuous. And they're afraid to tell anyone about their secret for fear of being ridiculed.
And this is why the Sisters are where they are. This is why they have Andrea with them. They've known Andrea for a few months, and become best friends. FH&C know something is up with Andrea and have used her daydreams as an excuse to tell her about their little..."quirk."
And more importantly...they want a fouth "Sister." They want a Sister that knows them as well as they know each other...but without the constant compulsion to be one person, without the constant need to be together and without the constant need to mimic each other. They want a friend who really knows who they are.
Wow...
In books 3 and 7 I created a situation where we had a mother, and two clones, and how the three interacted with each other. They were distinct individuals who shared common traits, but they really weren't the same person. Three different copies of the same program on three different machines experiencing three different sets of incoming data. I did, though, have the idea that the closer they got to each other, physically, the more their minds interacted with each other. They'd finish each others sentences, or unconsciously mimic each other's little quirks and tics.
About half a year ago, I was trying to figure out what to do with Part 2 of AWFW in order to make it more personal. WE already had a protagonist, an antagonist...but the story was getting SO political, I was afraid we'd lose that human drama. I wanted to stay away from having The-Phantom-Menace-Style-Drama-By-Committee-Meeting.
About this time, I laid eyes on a pic of my friend Steph and her two sisters. All in the same pose, with the same pretty smiles, but with different hairstyles and clothing.
And then I thought about the main "Committee" The Celestial Exchange Agency. Andrea would need to be introduced to it, and would have been introduced to it by a character named Roger. Instead, I decided to go back to what I wanted to do with Book 7 of the Polychronicon with the two clones/one mother being linked. But while in Book 7 it was a neat little curiousity, here it would be their gimmick.
And so, Faith, Hope and Charity were born.
While Charlene and Julie were clones of the original Kristin/Susan, Faith, Hope and Charity have one soul, divided into three bodies.
And so I wrote these characters (with minor (ahem) requested cosmetic changes from the people I based them on) as if they were three seperate people, who, the closer they got, became one person. This would make it feasable for Andrea to not know their "secret" and not have the school they were at figure it out themselves.
So I wrote three episodes with them. The first just showed Charity, the next introduced Hope and Faith...and a "secret." The third was all about creepy girls being creepy and tlaking at once.
As I finished it, my head began to work on just HOW FH&C would explain who and what they are...so I asked for their backstory.
I didn't get backstory - I got a reason for why they were telling Andrea in the first place.
The happy "we're really one soul split between three people" has become "three people trying to deal with having one soul." When I asked them what they were going to tell Andrea in the next episode, they told me "We're slaves with no master. We're slaves to each other." Their lives are miserable. When they are together, they aren't individuals. When they're apart, they have a constant yearning to be back together. The three have individual wants and needs, but are so easily overpowered if any of the other two put any will into ANY action, that they have a compulsion to follow that will themselves. If one of them wants to eat, they ALL want to eat, even if the other two aren't hungry. If one of them is tired, all of them are tired, even if the other two just woke up. They other two can fight the compulsion, but it's always there, nagging at them.
Over the years, they have learned to give up personal identity in order to have a meaningful life. They work together, they live together, the know everything the other does...and if one of them goes away, the other two have to fight the compulsion to find the other and return to her. They're miserable...but have managed to forge a life connected to the other two.
It's worse if the three are together, where if they don't fight it, they will completely lose their individuality and become a gestalt mind. The way we see them in episodes #32 and 33. They're so close that they've completely lost any individual will, and are speaking, thinking, moving as one oganism. They work best in this form, but are the most conspicuous. And they're afraid to tell anyone about their secret for fear of being ridiculed.
And this is why the Sisters are where they are. This is why they have Andrea with them. They've known Andrea for a few months, and become best friends. FH&C know something is up with Andrea and have used her daydreams as an excuse to tell her about their little..."quirk."
And more importantly...they want a fouth "Sister." They want a Sister that knows them as well as they know each other...but without the constant compulsion to be one person, without the constant need to be together and without the constant need to mimic each other. They want a friend who really knows who they are.
Wow...
