SCRIPTFRENZY + plot help, please!

[mr_eccles]

Perhaps stupidly, I signed up for script frenzy this year, as I decided to back out of nano last november.
I'm writing a screenplay for an animated film that I once envisaged actually making with puppets myself, and now kind of consider trying a hand at animating a much shorter version of. (If I am insane, anyway.)

the basic plot: a FAIRY TALE

Comments

[rhosyndu]

If there's no need for gender in their species then I'd be tempted to drop it completely; the being grown on a 'family tree' thing makes me think of them as a fruit or somesuch and so they would be a intermediary but fertilised stage, perhaps? (Sort of if they get really old they become a tree? But most don't for one reason or another. Just a thought.) But anyway, from a biological point of view then they'd have no reason to be gendered as the tree would be capable of both self and cross pollination.

And now I'm thinking that this would mean that they'd be tended for by elder siblings, maybe, born of the same tree sort of thing, so it'd be that they're raised by guardians rather than parents? Badly put, I know, but I can't think of a better way of differentiating between genetic and non-genetic parents. And that, I think, would free up the idea in people's minds of their being able to have as many or as few parents as possible, and if you choose a number like three then that is sufficiently alien that it may help distance them again

[mr_eccles]

thanks for the reply! Yes, the parent figure really would be more of a sibling biologically, that's how i thought too. But I really need to have just a small number of characters primarily responsible for the kid, privy to the secret tail, and making the decision to abandon them. I thought if I had 2, then there could be conflict and conspiracy, but with one its hard to even have dialogue... because it would be monologue. hem.
But I think i will have a single guardian, who just has a confidante, to provide conflict and conspiracy, without sharing the responsibility.

also, i love your icon!

[nixwilliams]

no gender please! i haven't seen wall e yet, but i watched the animated film 9 on the plane... and it was SO INCREDIBLY DISAPPOINTING. seriously, it could have been so good but it was SO CRAP, and in part that was because of the stupid gendering of the little beings and the stupid heterosexual, nuclear family vibe at the end.

the only issue with genderless characters is the pronoun thing. what pronouns do they use? any? or just names? i guess you can get around this in a film script more easily than in prose, though.

i like rhosyndu's suggestion of sibling/guardians.

and i think people falling in love is fine, just so long as it's not always hetty-mc-het-pants and not revolving around reproduction.

[mr_eccles]

yay for multiple replies! I haz halp

[dynonichus]

Wow, Kez, it sounds really really great! I'm struggling with how to deal with gender in my script too- although mine are humanoids in a two parent family, so it's a bit different, eh.

The biologist in me asks: how does the genetics work, if they grow on this tree? Are they all parthenogenicly derived from one parent (clones) or the tree? I don't think any verebrates have this as their only form of reproduction, although bacteria and many tiny planktonic things do. Or are they from a mating between an individual and the tree? In that case, the tree is the second gender. Their society would be like the aliens in gillian rubenstien's chasing the labyrinth.

And many animals have only one parent who provides parental care. Some care for young in family groups.

Removing the need to pair to mate could be an opportunity to explore what a world could be like without that. Could it mean greater social cohesion? Less?

But then it becomes about exploring *that* rather than the original story...

[mr_eccles]

yo! how's it going?! Is this script the one you told me about ages ago? With the colours and aura thingies? and depression and do I remember right

latest update!

[mr_eccles]

For anyone who cares

Re: latest update!

[nixwilliams]

cool! i was wondering how you'd gone with this!