Help with an idea for an animated series

[TransformerRobot]

Um, didn't this start out as sex with aliens? None of these girls look extraterrestrial...

 

Well somebody's gonna have to move this topic somewhere and help me rename it.

[anotherfilthyape]

Well somebody's gonna have to move this topic somewhere and help me rename it.

 

I agree... I was thinking this many posts ago but I dont know much about the way the forums are organized to suggest where it should go so I did not ventured to say it should move there... Actually I entered quite angry at the idea that something as important as ethics was being discussed over something that is not really a problem in real life... Until it became a discussion of literature and let me tell you... I am in this forums both because I love philosophy (and thus sciences) and because I love literature (sci fi and such) and I do my best to be filled with facts when I write and I rely on wikipedia and forums and contacts and fb and every mean I can (I dont know good libraries in my country, if I knew I would use them) and I try to take lengths to justify anything I think I need in the story but betrays my findings or guesses exploiting the fact that I write science fantasy rather than science fiction, science fantasy is like soft sci fi but magic has altered facts... I wish I could write hard sci fi but it demands resources I do not have...

 

Well I'm very happy to have gotten your input on the matter.

 

With that in mind, I've come up with this rough-draft of her character:

 

-An expert at karate.

-Fast runner.

-Wide hips and a big butt, don't let those fool you.

-Has a plain accent but fluent in Spanish.

-Never been to Spain.

-Can easily break someone's arm.

-Able to trip people who are bigger and stronger than she is.

-Works helping to protect the Mexican rainforest.

-Very good hoverbike racer and driver.

-Never needs somebody else's help in a fight.

-Very good at sports.

-Comes from a family of botanists and wildlife rangers.

-Her great great grandmother helped get rid of the smog in Mexico City.

 

If I've hit anything stereotypical about Mexicans there let me know. I'm not trying to be offensive.

 

Also, another idea I had was to make her descended from the Taino Indians (the tribe Columbus encountered when he first reached America).

 

http://jamaica-glean...2TAINO200AM.jpg

http://insidejourney...03/dsc02938.jpg

http://www.gonomad.c...es/ceremony.jpg

 

Taino indians are very beautiful... Hope your library has good data on them...

 

What's your age and what resources are you willing and able to use on getting your facts straight?

 

I think I heard Mexico City has for about a decade, take or add 5... started to clean its air through great machines they have in the city check that...

 

So far you do not seem to have fallen into stereotypes although a fast mexican makes me think fo Speedy Gonzales and the architecture used in speedy Gonzales toons and the cacti and the man that is drunk with a clay jar with three exes is very stereotypical so you should avoid it (I do not know if accurate but stereotypical, google earth probably has people that have hanged pictures in panoramio through Mexico and I dont know if they have street view of Mexico, you might also investigate about modern architecture in Mexico and guess that in the future there will be fewer antique architecture than in the present)...

 

I am Peruvian and I have mexican friends on msn but I don't really know Mexico on its own... You would like to mention the myth of "la malinche" a mexican friend/lover(kinda of)-etc. which I had kept mentioning her importance to Mexican myth and she makes me think of "la llorona" literally "the weeping woman" which I think is derived from the Irish banshee and has extended to as far south as Peru, I do not know if it has extended to Chile and other Peruvian countries but I heard of the urban myth of "la llorona" from independent sources... Also...

 

Mexico has its own dialect of Spanish but Mexican television has made it popular through Hispanic America as much as argentina has made it popular, not used but understood, at least some words, in the future the dialect can have suffered a lot of change, maybe with more use of Spanglish because English and Spanglish are popular in the spanish speaking world... By dilaect think that it is much like Canada and Australia and South Africa have different dialects of English... The dialect is different than the Spanish you hear in the US and the dialect you hear in other countries through hispanoamerica... But in the time that it takes from now to your setting Mexican television may have lost its position... I mean... Chespirito and mexican telenovelas of the past century would be two centuries old...

 

Hopefully bullfighting is no longer legal in that future... The current drive is a struggle to supress bullfighting... But rodeo and other games are possible... You must find out what is the terminology Mexico uses for their equivalent to wildlife rangers, I know different countries use different names... I recommend you to visit a forum dedicated to english-speaking Mexicans and ask them what they consider polite or, if your resources allow, traveling to Mexico yourself or, less expensive thatn visiting Mexico but more useful than asking in a forum, to search Mexicans willing to speak to you about their national identity and inspire your character.

 

Now... I think Karate is too mainstream, I recommend you searching for a less famous martial art, or complementing Karate with a less famous martial art or making it that Karate has lost popularity by that time... Being skilled in something others are not often skilled gives you an edge to defeating them.... Personally my favourite martial art is aikido and shaolin kung fu (shaolin kung fu is actually a bunch of martial arts). Also she could have experience in mixed martial arts (it is a current trend where people that studied different martial arts fight against each other, over time fighters develop their own style which has features of different styles and maximises their own abilities)...

 

You can even give your character an edge by having her adicted to an experimental drug that gives her short boosts of power but may turn her erratic, or affect her concentration or her temperament or her heart rate or make her feel very tired after the boost ends or whatever or the benefit can be higher endurance and pain tolerance... If you want her to be a role model the drug most be experimental and treated like a medical decision by her allies, if you dont care if she is a role model or not the drug can be illegal and she can be a sort of antiheroine a la Dr.House... You can make it that few test subjects can take the drug as often as she does and survive, or even take the drug and survive... But I have already gotten too involved in your story, it is your work... I'm just making sugestions...

 

And the big but thing... That is somewhat feasible... Specially if you want to explain her taino ancestry via dominican ancestry that often has african and taino ancestry mixed (afrodescendant people are known for big buts, as a good thing) or maybe taino have big buts too or Spaniards (I guess she is part Spaniard, it is the most common ancestry in Mexico other than amerindian but as I show you some have arabic and lebanese and like Ludwicka Paleta, polish ancestry, she might even have a blond mexican friend just to pass the point that Mexico is as multiracial as the US, something that western media seems to never acknowledge)

[TransformerRobot]

You know, I just realized that to keep with the science fiction themes of the story I should keep her an alien, but it turns out that her extreme displays of affection towards the main protagonist are only as a friend (they played together a lot on her home planet as children), and not the desire for a romantic relationship. Also, I should give her a boyfriend of her own species to further emphasize the fact that she's NOT in love with her human friend, she just loves him in a friendly way.

 

As for her human friend, I'll just give him a human sweetheart, obviously, with the description I gave you of my possible Hispanic/Taino girl.

[TransformerRobot]

Various sex doll are available in market. It can ease our sexual excitement, but we can not fully satisfied mentally or physically.

 

Well that's not the main reason I'm thinking of him having a human girlfriend instead of an alien one like I originally planned, it's because it might not work and wouldn't be realistic.

[anotherfilthyape]

You know, I just realized that to keep with the science fiction themes of the story I should keep her an alien, but it turns out that her extreme displays of affection towards the main protagonist are only as a friend (they played together a lot on her home planet as children), and not the desire for a romantic relationship. Also, I should give her a boyfriend of her own species to further emphasize the fact that she's NOT in love with her human friend, she just loves him in a friendly way.

 

As for her human friend, I'll just give him a human sweetheart, obviously, with the description I gave you of my possible Hispanic/Taino girl.

 

It is your work, do it as you wish... But science fiction does not need aliens to be science fiction, Gattaca, Planet of the apes and Eureka are all examples of alien-less science fiction... So is Robocop (planet of the apes has a non-human sentient species but it is still science fiction... so is the case with Sanctuary where mythical creatures are presented as evolutionary doubles, Sliders also applies this non-alien sci fi thing... Karel Čapek the man that coined the word "robot" and who wrote many works of sci-fi wrote the sci-fi book "War with the Newts" which involves a subspecies of sentient newts being enslaved by humanity and reveling, these are not alien but sentient sea water creatures... I never finished the book because I did not had time but it was a good read).

 

Whatever be the case consider that every country has high and low class... And it would be easier to represent someone from high class that someone from low class... Remember Tolstoy saying ""Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Well... Now consider these words I give based on Tolstoy's model; "People from the high class are mostly alike. Every person from the poor class is tortured in his or her own way"; The idiosincracy of a country is stronger in its low class than in its high class... This does not mean that being high class means being happy and being low class is being unhappy, sometimes it is the opposite, but it relates to similiarity... if you have any people from private schools consider this; "People from that are far from popular, like freaks, geeks, shy people and nerds, are mostly alike. Every person from the popular clique is popular on the way that reflects the predominating spirit of his or her school". The later I relate to two school experiences; in my British school the popular cliques were preppie boys, that is somewhat like slightly cultured jocks, they were dumb but they knew what was necessary to pass as high class and be good students, they often cheated on examns but they managed to learn a thing or two without being ashamed of that; the predominating spirit of the school was "having class" which is compatible with having knowledge. then I went to a Jesuit school, there the popular cliques were all bullies and jocks, they were jerk jocks, the predominating spirit was "passing as a regular Joe" which is compatible with misology, the hatred of knowledge, an exception were two popular guys that were prepies and were like a male version of a girl posse; cring about appearance and such shallow subjects. At university the folk from those popular cliques become more homogeneized and former nerds gained popularity as their knowledge came to be respected and they learnt to fit better with the in-crowd as both schools were high class and cliques were no longer as important as class identity, hipocrisy increased and people became more mature and since I am speaking of high class people became more right winged and interested in politics, but only in as much as it allowed them to keep their shallow lifestyle. sidenote; I was a freak, a freak is like a nerd but while a nerd allows bullies to bully them at every chance a freak is willing to fight back if it is possible to do so without having problems with any pertinent authority... From my experience Peru has less nerds than freaks in relation to the dynamics shown in US television but nerds do exist. I think the way this fiction has impacted on culture on Lima's high class (from which I have got experience despite not being a typical high class person myself) is that it has set goals for children to follow (children are prone to follow the roles they see in fiction) and that is why I guess that the US has also been affected by this fiction, my point here is that fiction tries to reflect reality but in telling people what is reality they influence how people make reality be in the near future so after a time it seems that fiction did not fail in representing reality... This is a feedback I am interested in studying and that is why I am so interested in being accurate in representing reality and why I was so much willing to help you... I think stereotypes are detrimental to society unless they are inherently positive and set realistic ideals to people (realistic ideals because some stereotypes set impossible ideals or ideals that follow illogical religious ethics, for example the asexual girls or the sexist concept of the prince charming that is a preppy and there is nothing good about preppies).

 

http://tvtropes.org/...n/PopularIsDumb

http://tvtropes.org/.../Main/GirlPosse

http://tvtropes.org/...n/GangOfBullies

http://tvtropes.org/...ixStudentClique

http://tvtropes.org/...p/Main/JerkJock

http://tvtropes.org/.../Main/GirlPosse

 

Well that's not the main reason I'm thinking of him having a human girlfriend instead of an alien one like I originally planned, it's because it might not work and wouldn't be realistic.

 

It can be realistic, it depends how human she looks, how normal your character is and how common the event happening is (and thus how society looks at it)... We look down at men having sex with orangutans but in some countries they are used as sex slaves because they do not have that perception of it... We look down at people banging goats but it is obviously that if they do so is because they see it as normal... We look down at banging corpses but in some muslim countries it has been determined that sharia law allows men to bang their dead wife's corpse... I look homosexual sex between men as disgusting and painful but not as wrong while I look at lesbian sex as arousing and beautiful... On the other hand fundies see all homosexual sex as wrong and even disgusting, on the other hand ancient greeks saw homosexual sex between men as an elevated pleasure, heterosexual sex as a necessary evil and lesbian sex as a disgusting practice. Perspectives vary, from an ethical perspective only rape and cheating and deceit is wrong but the problem must be observed from a psychological and a pragmatic perspective; Necrophilia and zoophilia are not good for health, they are a public safety issue in this way they are immoral... Necrophilia, zoophilia and other paraphilia are signs of mental ilness because they involve objectifying the whole of the sex partner (an animal is not a subject as a sex partner, a corpse is never a subject, and so on)... So the question on whether sex with aliens is realistic depends on how much the alien can be a subject... It also involves how much human the alien is and how high is the interfertility between the human and the other species (because the sex drive exists towards reproduction, that is why it can be argued that homosexuality, as it does not seeks reproduction, is a sort of paraphilia, however unlike other paraphilias it does not relates towards a person that is objectified, except in the case of priests raping boys and other cases of pederastry and pedophilia where there is an homosexual practice that objectifies the sexual partner through means of highlighting a power difference between the two parts as pedophiles and priests that rape boys often enjoy that their victim is being humilliated and abused). This I am telling you is an expansion of what I told you earlier...

 

However I do not favour aliens in fiction because they often complicate things too much, unless their world has the same volume and mass as ours and their star is identical to our sun they would have a different concept of passage of time and a different concept of strength and weight and may even have a different atmosphere... It can be entertaining to create a fictional planet to justify your differences between your alien species and humans but other than convergent evolution you would have a hard time explaining similiarities... And may go the star trek route to justify interfertility... But hybrids are always cool... You can justify interfertility as a break through in genetics (making all hybrids a matter of genetic tampering, that is, making them artificial, whether they are sterile, fertile, interfertile or whatever, it depends on your own whims)... You can have the best of all worlds by having your alien as a superman-ripp off, raised by natives, as a Tarzan rip off, raised by apes, or wolves, or raised by amerindians... A Wild child (tv tropes has an article on them). The most complex thing about alien creatures is their culture... Unless you belief that convergent evolution can justify their culture being akin to ours you have to think that their culture must reflect their differences to us (better hearing, higher strength, higher speed, lower endurance, etc. aliens do not need to be superior to humans, or they can be superior to us in some things but inferior to us in other things)...

 

edit: if you return to the idea of having the alien and a human make a pair you better remember that green skin, blue skin, purple skin and any dark skin other than real black skin is not aesthetically appealing and the relationship can be looked down because people tend to look down at people showing different tastes...

Edited May 13, 2012 by anotherfilthyape

[TransformerRobot]

You have once again given me a lot to think about for the show, especially on the stereotypes aspect of things (I just wish you wouldn't have such big walls of text).

 

The main protagonist is Native Canadian descent (I'm Canadian myself, writing what I know), and so far the only stereotypical things about him are that he's kind, helpful, and likes pancakes and maple syrup. There aren't enough non-white main heroes in cartoons, so I'm adding my own main protagonist who's not Caucasian.

 

His best friend you might say is a deconstruction of the Mighty Whitey trope. He's white, very good at hoverbike racing and sky diving, but he's book dumb, suffers short-term-memory loss, gets beaten up a lot, and is occasionally a useless girl chaser. Girls are even the ones who usually beat him senseless for being such a creep.

 

Then there are the main antagonists; a fat British crime boss and former hoverbike racer who secretly had the protagonist's father killed, a vicious racer driven insane by the loss of his parents at a young age, a hammy French-descent mad scientist who suffers at the former's abuse, and a hulking idiot with a Scottish accent. Yes, they're all white, and they're the team representing the Southern United States.

 

However, there is a hoverbike team representing Northern Europe, each of them is white, but they're quite nice people. They consist of a gentle folk magician, a lovable Italian chef, and an eccentric archaeologist who explores ancient ruins on other planets. This way I have villains and heroes who are Caucasian.

[TransformerRobot]

I apologize for the double post, but I have another problem:

 

How long should I make each episode? I was thinking of 12 minutes for each episode because it's a web series, and when people watch viral videos they have shorter attention spans than they would watching a movie in theaters or a television program.

 

So, would 12 minutes be long enough for each episode? I've mostly been working on this show myself, so I wouldn't be able to get too many episodes online in under a year.