I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
And so the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're goin' through

Monday, April 9, 2012

Story Bone

Okay, so you all know the issue with "Dances with Wolves" and it's SF evil twin, "Avatar." The short hand is, "White man arrives to save disadvantaged but noble savage/magical negro community from complete annihilation."

What if, for an invasion story, humans became that "noble savage/negro community" but couldn't win until one of the aliens (or a group of them) defect to help them. Only slightly covered by many stories, but in those cases it's mostly "alien gives human the key to winning, mostly unwittingly." Or the "two alien species fight for Earth, one species realizes it won't win unless it co-opts the humans onto their side." No no no. Do a full on alien goes "native" for their love of the "simple/magical" life that is being a human, and leads us to victory against their own race. Add in a romantic "human" interest (for double bonus points, make the alien nominally "female" and the love interest a guy, and "she" has to convince him, no Capt. Kirks boning anything green and in a skirt).

2 comments:

Eric said...

What if that's a perfect description of E.T.? I mean, why were E.T.'s people here on Earth in the first place, unless they were the advance scout force for the alien invasion? But then one of their raiding party goes missing and goes native, falling for a local sentient (not realizing that the human is, ahem, underage in his own culture).

It's a fine thing for young Elliott there's no interspecies genetic/chromosomal compatibility whatsoever, and that it's absolutely for the best he had no idea whatsoever of the significance underlying his friend's attempt to transfer a luminescent spermatophore to his dorsal orifices.

(Sorry. For some reason I just had to go there. Will you ever watch that movie the same way again?)

Steve Buchheit said...

So E.T. was a child molester? Yeah, I won't be able to look at that movie the same way again.