runsforcelery wrote:Actually, this isn't the first time I came up with a story idea that tracked really closely with another story/song. I wrote Path of the Fury back in 1989 only to discover later that many of the same story elements were involved in a filk song (which I cannot now track down, though I think it was by Leslie Fish) which is also about the survivor of a planet raid who was left for dead and stole a ship to go after the pirates. Indeed, IIRC, at the end, the heroine of the song fully intends to carry through with a suicide run on the flagship of her enemies. There are a lot of dissimilar elements in there, too, although I can't recall all the details of the song to mind right this minute. I do recall that I liked it --- a lot --- when my sister-in-law sent me a copy of it a year or so after Fury released. I don't have the copyright info on Leslie's song (hard to find it when I can't remember the durn thing's name!) and I don't know which came first. I know the book didn't release until late in '92, three years after I'd written it, but I'm hazy on the exact sequence. Even if I wrote the book first, though, I'm totally confident that she produced the song completely independently.
The song in question is probably Eumenides (YouTube). It's written by Mercedes Lackey and sung by Leslie Fish. The CD (Magic, Moondust, & Melancholy) is copyright 1989/1998, though I don't know what the song itself is. And I highly recommend the CD to anyone that likes filk.
This isn't even the best song on it. Some of the others are based on specific books, but this one is attributed to "a moment of self-pity and rage."What's packed in my hold
Is dearer than gold
Revenge is my cargo this day
Ya' think you have won
But when my job's done
The fury will force you to pay
My people weren't strong
They've done ya' no wrong
They just happened to be in your way
You take what you seek
Contempt for the weak
And your battle fleet came yesterday
Like the coward you are
You strike from afar
And death is the harvest you reap
For all we were brave
No warning you gave
My people ya' slaughtered like sheep
Alone in the dark
I lay near to my death
With hate in my heart and with my final breath
To whatever gods that
Would listen did pray
That they witness your crimes and they force you to pay
On Terra, long dead
Old gods it is said
Created the furies to fly
Grim justice to seek
And revenge for the weak
On those whom the law had passed by
Those gods heard my plea
And granted to me
The means of achieving my goal
Oh I think they are just
For to do what I must
The fury they placed in my soul
Transformed by her hate
Now I am your fate
The Gods' chosen weapon of right
The fury inside
Will not be denied
And I seek my vengeance this night
I've stolen this ship packed
With weapons of war
So you will not profit, as you have before
Eluding your fleet
Past your sentries I slip
And the fury has guided me straight to your ship
She steadies my hand
Her tools I command
Accounting you will not deny
Your ship is in sight
Of my fury led flight
And the fires of my vengeance burn high
[music]
What's packed in my hold
Is dearer than gold
As dear as my people who fell
When I ram in your side
At the end of my ride
This fury will send you to hell, to hell
This fury will take you to hell!