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- May 18, 2014
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I’m kind of worried one of my projects is turning into a “white savior” kind of story so I would love some opinions and advice.
The POV character is a white guy who was cryonically frozen because he had a terminal disease, and wakes up 120 years late to find that there’s no cure waiting for him and that—whoops—his home country, the US, no longer exists/was probably destroyed. He wakes up in the city-state of Helios, West Antarctica, which is run by a government that they find out is secretly being puppeted by North Korea—which, 120 years previously, won a violent war against the south and took over South Korea and Japan.
He figures out their government is a puppet government, mostly because his knowledge of the past helped him realize that the new government was actually just North Korea with a different name. He and the other main characters—a disabled Korean girl and a Welsh expatriate—end up trying to overthrow a government that is about to complete its last phase of a takeover of West Antarctica. The Korean girl, Jinae, is the one who actually ends up doing this, though, and all the others would have died if she hadn’t saved them.
After that is they kind of unintentionally start a rebellion which carries over into the second book. The rebellion is mostly made up of Korean and Hispanic people (the two main demographics of West Antarctica) and cyborgs (who are most affected by the repressive regime.)
Alex doesn’t lead the rebellion (a Hispanic girl named Yaira does) nor does he become some kind of “master” of Korean culture like with some stories (by the end Jinae still makes fun of him for not being able to use chopsticks, let alone speak Korean fluently), but he ends up joining the fight and stuff.
I’ve considered making Jinae the POV character (since I consider both her and Alex to be main characters) but the first part of the story where they break the secret behind the government is kind of dependent on him and his history.
I mean I guess he’s not a typical white/cis/able-bodied protag since he is disabled. But I’m still worried the premise of this story is in weird territory. Any advice?
The POV character is a white guy who was cryonically frozen because he had a terminal disease, and wakes up 120 years late to find that there’s no cure waiting for him and that—whoops—his home country, the US, no longer exists/was probably destroyed. He wakes up in the city-state of Helios, West Antarctica, which is run by a government that they find out is secretly being puppeted by North Korea—which, 120 years previously, won a violent war against the south and took over South Korea and Japan.
He figures out their government is a puppet government, mostly because his knowledge of the past helped him realize that the new government was actually just North Korea with a different name. He and the other main characters—a disabled Korean girl and a Welsh expatriate—end up trying to overthrow a government that is about to complete its last phase of a takeover of West Antarctica. The Korean girl, Jinae, is the one who actually ends up doing this, though, and all the others would have died if she hadn’t saved them.
After that is they kind of unintentionally start a rebellion which carries over into the second book. The rebellion is mostly made up of Korean and Hispanic people (the two main demographics of West Antarctica) and cyborgs (who are most affected by the repressive regime.)
Alex doesn’t lead the rebellion (a Hispanic girl named Yaira does) nor does he become some kind of “master” of Korean culture like with some stories (by the end Jinae still makes fun of him for not being able to use chopsticks, let alone speak Korean fluently), but he ends up joining the fight and stuff.
I’ve considered making Jinae the POV character (since I consider both her and Alex to be main characters) but the first part of the story where they break the secret behind the government is kind of dependent on him and his history.
I mean I guess he’s not a typical white/cis/able-bodied protag since he is disabled. But I’m still worried the premise of this story is in weird territory. Any advice?