Mwynwen By Diana the Valkyrie Background and glossary Mwynwen's stories are very different from any that I've done before. Where did she come from, and why do I need to do a background and glossary? Background Mwynwen comes from Wonder Woman and Supergirl, of course. Or at least, they got there first. From the Aurora Universe and Mary Marvel, and from all the classical superheroines. But I wanted to do it differently. Instead of the magic of Wonder Woman, I wanted to use relativity and quantum chromodynamics. Instead of the strength and invulnerability and all the other powers of Supergirl, I though it would be a lot more interesting if Mwynwen had the one key ability - flight. And no gods-and-goddesses explanations, no aliens from outer space. So what we have here is a series of stories that explore the consequences of that single capability - flight. And that's why I feel the need for a glossary and explanations; none of my other stories needed them. Because people aren't flight-minded. All our thoughts and reactions are, without realising it, conditioned to the fact of living on the ground, not in the air. Mwynwen, however, would think quite differently about some things. She would have a different set of assumptions, and a different vocabulary. The most important different assumption, is that you know that if you let go of anything, including yourself, it will fall to the ground. You know this so deeply in your bones, that you don't realise how totally it affects you. When you think you're standing perfectly still, actually you're making tiny adjustments to stay upright, using your feet and leg muscles. It's so totally automatic, you don't realise you have to do it every minute you're standing. When you sit down, you can stop doing that; that's why sitting down is so much more restful than standing. Mwynwen doesn't have that assumption. Vocabulary When you're talking about something a lot, you have a short word for it. You don't talk about "The first derivative of distance with respect to time", you say "speed", even though that isn't exactly what you mean when you check the definition. The important thing about "speed" is that it's a short word. In a story, you can use a few words like this and let the reader figure out the meaning from context. I let people work out for themselves what a fluffer does. But some of Mwynwen's words might need explaining, partly because there are so many of them, and partly because they're so unfamiliar. Physics To Mwynwen, one of the most important parts of her environment the four-dimensional gravitational stress-strain tensor, along with its partial first and second derivatives with respect to the four dimensions of space-time. Mwynwen calls it "gravy". You can see why you wouldn't want to use the whole correct terminology. We call it "gravity". She calls the second partial derivatives "gravy slope"; we don't have a common word for this, because in our normal experience, gravity doesn't fluctuate, the gravy slope is zero. And we don't perceive any gravity waves (although they have been measured, with sensitive apparatus). She calls those "wavy gravy". At this point, I might have launched into the General Theory of relativity to explain that gravity is actually a mass-induced distortion of space-time, and wavy gravy is caused by a moving mass, but I won't; you can read that up for yourself. What Mwynwen does is mess with that distortion. How? Well, I don't actually understand the entire mechanism by which I'm able to lift an arm just by wanting to. And she doesn't really understand how she stirs the gravy. She's still bound by the same physical laws that we are (unlike, as far as I can tell, Wonder Woman and Supergirl, who routinely violate conservation of energy, conservation of momentum, the universal lightspeed limit and the laws of thermodynamics, plus lots more). But some laws that are unimportant in our everyday experience, turn out to be important for her. As an example, you might think about surface tension, which is something we barely notice, but which is key to the ability of small insects to run across the water without their legs breaking the surface. So, for Mwynwen, the square law of air resistance is important. And conservation of angular momentum. Conservation of energy. If she goes up 1000 feet and weighs 140 pounds, then she's got a potential energy of 140,000 foot-pounds. That has to come from somewhere. To get that high, she'll have to expend as much energy as if she'd climbed up many flights of stairs, about 120 stories. So you can see why she won't want to fly very high, unless it's really important. Sure, you can climb up 120 flights. It's hard work, though. Of course, the easiest way to gain altitude is the method that gliders use. Find an updraft. You'll find them by the sides of hills, when the wind blows into the hill and is deflected upwards. You'll also find them if you can find a patch of hot air, because hot air rises. A key aspect of the energy balance, is food. We eat for fuel; Mwynwen the same. One big difference here, is that she's a vegetarian, she explains why. Actually, she's a vegan, eats no animal-based products. Nothing special here; lots of people do that. It makes life a little bit more complex - you can't eat bread and butter, so Mwynwen eats bread with olive oil. If someone did give her a sandwich with butter in, she wouldn't make a fuss about it, this isn't a big religious deal. After a long flight, she's very hungry and needs to eat like a horse; she calls this "refuelling". The main fuel that people burn is carbohydrate; potatoes, bread, rice, that sort of thing. If you need a fuel that has an immediate effect, then sugar is best, or something that contains sugar. Air resistance. If you think about a cyclist, she'll get up to about 40 mph. The limiting factor is the wind resistance. Mwynwen has less wind resistance because she isn't semi-upright in the way that a cyclist is, so she can go somewhat faster than the cyclist. Wind resistance is proportional to the cross-sectional area facing the wind, and the square of the speed. Because she's going head-first, she presents quite a small cross-section, and she takes every precaution (lycra flying suit, smooth helmet) to minimise this. So she can get up to 120 mph; with a 20 mph tail wind, that would be 140. She's a lot more comforable at 100 mph. I thought about a cape; most superheroines wear a cape (why? I don't know, it's just traditional, probably for dramatic effect). Then I thought, no way. The wind resistance rules it out. Of course, when she isn't flying, a cape is no problem, and would be a good way to keep warm. While in the air, she's generating energy (to overcome air resistance), and so she'd stay warm. When she lands, she isn't getting that exercise, so she'd get cooler. So she'd behave differently from your classical superhero; no cape when flying, put it on when you land. Unless she's flying slowly, then wind resistance isn't a factor. So, a cape is a no-no. Except that it looks so dramatic, and so right, that it's a yes after all, except on long distance cruise flights. The things we do to look good to other people! By the way, where do you carry things? A backpack is the obvious way, but that's because you're thinking mostly about how to support it against the pull of gravity. For Mwynwen, that isn't the issue. The key factor with carrying something (apart from the mass and the impact of that on energy balance) is the air resistance it will cause. And once you've realised that, it's fairly obvious that you'd use a belly pack. Balance. When your centre of gravity (gravy centre) is inside your points of support, you're stable. When it isn't, you fall. Falling is a big deal for us, because it hurts when we hit the ground. So we have an enormous amount of stuff to stop it happening. Look around you, look around your living space, and look at how many things are there just to stop you falling, especially when there's a real possibility of falling more than a few feet. Falling isn't a big deal for Mwynwen, she's as casual about it as you'd expect. So, she's happy to sit on a high branch of a tree, without any guarantee that the branch is able to bear a load. She'll sit on a ledge that would barely be wide enough for a pigeon to roost. Because if she does topple off, it doesn't matter. Power. Can a human being generate enough power to sustain flight? The answer, clearly, is yes. Check out the Gossamer Condor; in 1977 it won the Kremer prize for the first sustained, maneuverable human-powered flight. Google it if you're interested. In 1988, the Daedalus 88 made a four hour flight. Human-powered flight is possible. Mwynwen can generate enough power for long distance flight. Mass and weight Most people would use these words interchangably, but they are actually very different. A thing that weighs one pound, would weight a sixth of a pound on the moon. But that thing has a one pound mass, and the mass is still one pound on the moon. Mwynwen can affect the weight, but not the mass. Because mass is unaffected by gravity, only weight is affected. To lift a one pound mass to a height of one foot, you have to put in one foot-pound of energy. After Mwynwen reduces the weight from one pound to one ounce, she *still* has to put in that one foot-pound to raise it by one foot. This is why, althought she can make things weightless, she still had to burn up energy to lift them. If she didn't, then you could build a perpetual-motion machine (she raises the weight at zero energy cost, you recover one foot-pound by letting it fall, and so on), and that violates the second law of thermodynamics. Acceleration and gravitation These are actually the same thing (General theory of relativity). So, if Mwynwen wants to accelerate, she tinkers with the gravy slope a bit. And if she wants to go faster than her normal top speed, she can dive slightly, and use the gradual loss of potential energy to overcome the extra air resistance. Just like a Sopwith Camel, she can go faster in a dive. WW2 RAF slang This is, of course, a bit of an affectation for Mwynwen. But you can see why she feels an affinity for the Brylcreem Boys. Tally Ho! - the expression that British WW2 fighter pilots used to mean "Enemy in sight". Angels is height, so "Angels 15" is 15,000 feet. Prang - crash landing. Eggbeater - helicopter. Brylcreem Boy - Royal Air Force fighter pilot. Brylcreem is a product you put on your hair to grease it down, popular in the 1940s. Dugga dugga dugga - the sound you make when you're pretending to do an air-to-ground attack, or when you ambush another airplane, it's the sound of your Vickers 303 machine guns. When you're practising air combat with a chum, and you get onto his six o'clock and buzz him up, you shout "Dugga dugga dugga" in the radio. "Piece of cake" was what you said about any mission, no matter how gut-clenchingly terrifying. Stiff upper lip, you probably know. "Mud" is the ground. Much of WW1 was fought in terrain so muddy that it would swallow up a mule team and gun, or a man. The infantry were called "Brown-jobs", and if you're being kind, then brown refers to mud. Auguring in - the worst sort of prang. Undercarriage - the wheels you land on. Or, if you land on legs, it would be your legs. Bandits - the enemy Bingo - the point at which you've got just enough fuel to return to base Running on fumes - almost empty petrol tank Aeronautical terms Pitch, roll and yaw. Imagine an airplane flying along. If the nose goes up or down, that's pitch. If the left wing goes up while the right wing goes down (or vice versa) that's roll. If the airplane twists to face to the left or right, that's yaw. In order to turn, an airplane has to do all three of these at once, in the right proportions. Thrust is what pushes you forward, drag is what holds you back. Mwynwen uses the gravy slope for thrust; air resistance is the drag. You might have noticed, she loves flying. And she's a bit of a collector of flying jargon. So she talks about "knots" when talking speed. A knot is one nautical mile (one minute of latitude at the equator) per hour, and there's 6080 feet in a nautical mile compared with 5280 feet in an ordinary mile. So, 100 knots is 115 mph. VTOL - vertical takeoff and landing (like a Harrier jump jet, as distinct from a rolling takeoff). Immelmann Turn - half a loop (looping upwards), then a half roll at the top so that you've now reversed the direction of flight and you're the right way up. It's a faster way to turn than the more obvious yaw. Thermal - hot air rises, and if you can fly into rising air, it lifts you up. So an easier way to climb (and the only way for glider pilots) is to find updrafts (rising air) and let them lift you. You'll find updrafts on the sides of hills as the wind hits the hill and slides up, and above hot patches of ground, because the hot ground heats the air, which rises. Birds, gliders and Mwynwen use updrafts a lot. Red herrings I've put a number of red herrings in. Or maybe they aren't. What's the smell of strawberry and apple all about, anything to do with the scent of honey and wildflowers? What's this about people not being able to lie to her, anything to do with Wonder Woman's lassoo? Why the stuff about truth and beauty, shouldn't that be top and bottom? And what about strangeness and charm? And so on, and so on. Maybe they're red herrings. Not everything that you see and hear gets explained, people are always doing things and saying things and you never find out what it's all about. Or maybe they're hooks for later explanatory stories. Mwynwen The first question is how do you pronounce her name? Well, Linda already told you, it's "Min". Mwynwen is aware that she's unusual, and she knows what happens to the nail that sticks out. So she tries to keep a low profile, although she doesn't go to the extreme of having a "secret identity" (which is, of course, totally obvious to everyone) or of wearing a mask. But she does try to avoid having people see her taking off or landing, unless it's people she's familiar with. Why? Because she's fed up with having to explain it to people, she's fed up with being regarded as a total freak, and she doesn't want people proving how tough they are by beating her up. She isn't into magic, but she's quite happy for people to come to the conclusion that it's all done with magic, that saves a lot of explanations. And she sometimes gives that theory a bit of help. Most people believe in magic already, so it doesn't need much help. Linda calls her Witch, but that's just a running joke between two old friends. She calls Linda "Fluff". It seems that they were at school together. Her appearance. Actually, she isn't that remarkable. Harry thinks she is, but remember he's biased. She is a bit taller than average at six-three, but not greatly so. And the reason for her height is that she spent a lot of her growing-years in what was effectively a reduced gravity environment. Despite what Harry thinks, her eyes are quite ordinary. She does have very long hair, though, and very big hair, and a great figure. Mwynwen's air characteristics are somewhat comparable to the Sopwith Camel, an important WW1 airplane (and Snoopy's favourite mount). The Camel has a top speed of 118 mph, an endurance of 2 1/2 hours and a crew of one. Mwynwen is the same in all those respects. But the Camel had to carry a heavy engine, twin Vickers machine guns and ammunition, so the gross weight of the Camel at 1400 pounds was ten times more than Mwynwen's 140. The Camel had a rotary engine developing 140 horsepower to give it a great performance, although the torque of that engine was what gave it the reputation of a pilot-killer. Mwynwen gets a similar performance with a lot less motive power because she's so much lighter, and has a much smaller drag. Torque is not a problem when your motive power is gravy. Mwynwen doesn't have any equivalent to the Camel's twin Vickers machine guns armament. Unless you count that and that, of course. References I thnik it's a nice literary device to sprinkle references in a story that you expect most people to miss. The ones that you do spot, you'll feel good about seeing. And different people will spot different ones. Some of the references in the first story, mwynwen01 are given below. I would expect most readers to have spotted 20% of them, at most. Read it again. And you'll find a similar bunch of stuff in the other parts of the story. I won't spoil your fun in finding the similar stuff in the other parts of the story. "Who's that a-knocking, a-knocking at my door" It's me, little Nellie, don't you know me any more? "Geheime Staatspolizei" Usually called "Gestapo" "trying to knock me up" Americans interpret that as "trying to make me pregnant" "a pint of strawberry yoghurt" Linda seems to mostly subsist on yoghurt, scavenged from the porn vids she works on. "the nuns of St Hilda's" read the St Hilda's stories. The whole St Hilda's thing is mixed up with the Mwynwen thing. "Sharon about eleven seconds to totally crush me" It took Sheila Burgess eleven seconds to get the first submission in the famous encounter with the TKO Kid. "Septadecaherbis" read the St Hilda's stories "great glorious grey-blue-green-yellow bruise" Kipling "the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River" "Harry the Horse" Damon Runyon, Guys and Dolls "even a fluffer doesn't get too many chances" To find out about fluffers, read the Linda Daventry stories "coax the limpest butterstick" A butterstick is what fluffers work on. "to disrupt the Sex Olympics" A Linda Daventry story. "You porked Evadne? She's not even a full nun" St Hilda's "Feydeau French Farce" a bedroom farce with people popping in and out of doors trying not to meet the wrong person. "cut me own froat" like Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, a Terry Pratchett character "The Wicked Witch of the West" A reference to the land of Oz "Please Look after This Bear" That's what Paddington Bear's label said. "Yeah, him and three billion others" The world population is six billion. About three billion are male. "Fluff" In an English school for girls, they give each other nicknames. Some of these nicknames can be a bit silly, since we're talking 12 year olds. But the nicknames stick, and so you can get a grown woman like Linda being called "Fluff". "Difference Engine" The first computer, built by Babbage, was called the Difference Engine. Harry's referring to his brain. "Cogito ergo sum." I think, therefore I am. "wotcha gonna do" who you gonna call? "Norwegian Blue" The famous Dead Parrot was a Norwegian Blue "pointed Percy at the precipice" Australian expression, to 'point Percy at the porcelain' "grinning fit to kill a possum" apparently, Davy Crockett could kill a possum by grinning at it. "couple of shakes to clear the bore" You can shake it twice to clear the bore, shake three times and you've sinned some more. "Harry, don't *ever* try to lie to me" One of the six quark properties is "Truth" "two-up on a broomstick" The classic witch flies on a broomstick. If she were giving someone a lift, it would be like two people on a motorbike. For all the other Mwynwen stories, go search out the references yourself.