In the Space Girl Adventure novels every girl is part of a Rainbow. Let me explain how this works.
Why?
This whole thing started with a photoshoot, and the creation of Space Girl Red. We called her that because the model was wearing red, had unnaturally red hair, and the background coloring was red. Then I did it again with another model, and her background and hair were blue. Now I had two Space Girls named after colors. I searched for a long time for a Green, but never made the shoot happen.
Jump forward to 2020 and it is time to write a story about these Space Girls. I decided to only give them a color and not a name. Then I wanted to include all the colors of the spectrum, or colors of the rainbow.
As I started thinking about them going through Space Girl school, I realized they’d be in some sort of unit. That was when the Rainbow as a social collection was first born. In my world building it spread to the whole culture. Every daughter of Home was put into a Rainbow as some point in their lives.
The Details
When a girl is born on Home – and there are no boys born – she has a ‘family’ name. It is what she is called until she is put in a Rainbow and given a color. I didn’t know how this worked until I wrote a prequel in 2021. Then it became obvious her name had be from the family member who didn’t have a color as her name. So daughters are named after their fathers.
This is ironic because the men of Home are a very small part of the population, and have little to no political power of influence. (Spoiler, at the beginning of the prequel they had none, but have some by the end.) The name is discarded when she gets her color.
When you are writing a book, you have a tendency to rework your world canon as you go to make your story work. I’d originally thought they would be put in to Rainbows at like 12 and given a color after a few years. But it ended up being better to do it at the same time and put it together.
Daughters of Home are put into a Rainbow when they are 14. It is actually during year 8 of Rainbow School. That is the school every daughter goes to starting at age 7.
As an aside, my children went to day care at a school called Rainbow School here in Abilene, so I had to work that into the story.
The Educators of Rainbow School watch the girls and put them into groups. To quote the Head Mistress of Rainbow School when talking to our mothers in Growing Up Rainbow:
Then the General said, “How do you do it, Educator? I have to put troops into units, but you set girl’s destiny.”
“Most of the time it isn’t that difficult,” smiled the Educator. “I’ve been watching them for years and mostly they do it themselves. They find like-minded girls while discovering their passions about.” She took a deep breath of the carefully selected plants in the garden. “Not that powerful women aren’t above trying to influence us.”
Rainbows are groups of girls that are going to have the same Vocation. Healers are in medical rainbows. Forest Girls are in agricultural rainbows. Space Girls are in Space Girl rainbows.
Naming Is Hard
When I was writing a book about one Space Girl the fact she had a color name wasn’t a big deal. But the second you have two Rainbows interacting, only having six names is a problem.
That’s when Rainbow names were invented. Every Rainbow gets a name, which acts like a surname. Forest rainbows are named after trees. Warrior rainbows are named after weapons.
Space Girls are named after the signs of the Zodiac. Did you know the Zodiac is a legitimate astronomical scale. It is just one we don’t use any more. But the names are cool and they do refer to space.
Hopefully this gives you a greater understanding of why Rainbow Capricorn exists.
Footnote
I was explaining this to a woman at a party and she told me she’d been a Rainbow Girl growing up, and still active in their leadership. My Rainbows have nothing to do with that organization, any more than Home’s Scout Girls are based on the Girl Scouts of America.
It also has nothing to do with the symbol of the Gay Pride movement. Some might think I’m trying to imply all the women are lesbians. A justifiable assumption on a planet of all women, but not what I implied with the name.
Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash
