Comic Pitch: Amir
Posted on | August 10, 2010 | No Comments
Two days late and this crappy. I don’t know what to say. I really had to struggle with this and all I ended up with was a collection of ideas (very few of them actually about pirates), three characters and a brief history of the future.
I figured I had to show you what little I hadn’t yet rejected, though.
The full title would be either “Amir the Wolf” or “Amir the Tiger”, depending on which way it would go.
The jumbled history of the future, unresearched and fanciful, follows.
They are in the cusp of the year 2300. Social progress has gone through several stages in that area. The trend went crosswise to liberal and conservative in the west for a while, with liberal slowly taking ground, but as the east rose to prominence it brought with it a new kind of traditionalism. Gender roles loosened and, in parts, reformed.
The west became synonymous with corporate supremacy even at the cost of human rights. America is overrun with corruption. China, which has shaken off any semblance of communism save for strong state involvement, has been through a humanities revolution and developed something of a mommy state mentality.
The U.S. falls into interstate warring while South-American civilizations have flourished save for a few countries razed to ground by American aggression. Eventually the eastern coalition of nations has to interfere. China heads a strong policy of embargo and supporting Canada in slowly winning ground from USA, temporarily adding to US suffering but eventually also crushing the global power of the corporations.
The policy was criticised as it left much of the US area in shambles, with people fleeing across the border to Mexico and through there to Central America.
Europe is doing much better, having pioneered the mommy state. Canada is considered Asia’s North-American ally, but they too experience issues with corporate bribery, and their influence was greatly diminished by the start of the ice age.
The earth entered into an ice age around 2100, leading to diminishing in human and animal populations in colder climates, but of course leaving the human race in no danger of extinction. The polar north also switched, with equally unimpressive consequences. The shape of the landscape has changed somewhat, and the seas have receded as polar ice reformed. Energy is now harvested from sunlight and nuclear fusion and energy supply is completely government-controlled in most “first world” countries (rationed by corporations and exchanged for labour in USA).
It was around this time that the first truly self-sustaining long-distance space-ships were completed and the first five year test launch took place, sending a ship manned with thirty scientists and technicians towards the nearest solar system. Quantum communication had already been perfected so tabs can be kept with all migrants. More and more ships left over the next hundred years, and the fabled space elevators were built. Life was discovered elsewhere in space, ending that discussion, though none of it was space princesses or UFO kidnappers so nobody cared all that much.
Africa took a long time to grow out the damage the west and dictatorships and lack of natural resources had done to it, but the warm continent’s eventual prominence in sun energy production helped things along. Migration north was commonplace, but the ice age ushered in more migrants from colder climates to Africa, too. Wealth and general well-being began to spread out more evenly. African influence re-normalized polygyny in the secular north. Polyandry and gay marriage did not become legal in many rich nations until mid-2200s, and they are still illegal in some areas – what you might call a development setback caused by the breakdown of the west.
True wealth has spread enormously across the planet, and many say that politics are the only reason wellbeing is not global.
The European Union was affirmed as a single nation with “country districts”, which has since then been redrawn many times, often along ethnic lines, except when wealth or school district distribution demanded otherwise. Some areas of Russia are now part of Europe, while others are independent Asian states. The breakdown of Russia has also redefined the continents of Europe and Asia.
So we arrive to today. Communication across the world still happens through the Internet, and it’s still called the Internet, but it’s either direct video/audio communication via earpieces that can be worn like jewelry, with physical or hologram control boards and screens. Music has gone back to its roots and gone around again and developed new styles and revisited old ones. Art continues to change and retract in all possible mediums. Schools are technology-driven, medicine has managed to stop effects of ageing in those who have access to the technology, there has been a backlash to age-control drugs in the form of moral debate and limiting laws. Sex reaffirmation surgery is much more advanced but third genders and non-operative trans people continue to fight for recognition. Some groups are doing better: ladyboys (as a specifically Thai transgender state that contains an element of masculinity) being an example of a recognized identity. Bisexual or woman-loving ladyboys face more discrimination than gay men; lesbians are shunned in the more patriarchal areas. There is still the idea of male supremacy. A second feminist revolution took place in China and Japan, but it still has its work cut out, and ftms have it pretty bad unless they’ve completed their sex affirmation surgery, and even then if they are outed. The crime here is thinking females can become men, that manhood is not a protected, sacred privilege.
And yes, we have robots.
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