Athena Minerva
One tiny change...
Scope
The motivation behind building Athena Minerva
The goal of the project
I expect to feel that completing each of the separate stories will be more rewarding, more of an accomplishment if they are all building on the same world.
I want to animate stories for general audiences and for exclusively adult audiences, sometimes raising pornography to an art form without forgetting the joy of simple stories of the power of friendship.
Athena Minerva's Unique Selling point
- The society in which I was raised insisted that women cover their bodies modestly to prevent adolescent males (who are universally believed to have the worst judgement of the entire human race) from falling into temptation to rape them, or coerce them into having sex, against their better judgement. Males of earlier genereations were expected to overcome any embarassment from public nudity because that was considered to be a character flaw and a weakness. Males were expected to be able to defend themselves against physical attack. Males publicly swimming nude was the norm. In my generation, males were expected to cover up in fairness to the ladies who had to do so for their safety, and to exhibit civility and manners. In latter generations, the public became aware that potential rapists can target males, not just females. And a lack of self-confidence in men appears to have been caused by the idea that everyone would judge a nude male's penis size and give him less respect.
- I am also a costumer at science-fiction conventions, so I expect a good costume to have flapping wings and a wagging tail. If I appear in a T-shirt and jeans, I really feel like I am just "phoning it in".
- I hope that Roman fauns and Greek satyrs are metaphorical representations of a certain personality type, and I believe that I am that type. I'm told my grandmother found me at two months old standing atop the safety rail of my crib, pressed against the window pane looking out the window, because I presumably wanted to see out the window, so I crawled up the rails and the window frame all by myself. After that, my mother and grandmother joked to me that I was half mountain goat. So, I feel most natural in a costume with horns, hooves, and a tail, (and no other clothing if it does not offend anytone viewing me), as the Romans and Greeks portrayed us, frolicking happily.
- To me, being a nude adult male is technically a "drag" costume. If one takes RuPaul as the authority, the definition of "drag" costuming is to notice the absurdity in one's own life and celebrate it in costume. (Similarly, an effeminate man dressing in hypermasculine black leather and denim like a member of a tough and cruel biker gang is wearing "leather drag".) Dressing to meet the expectations of people who died long before I was born is absurd. Pretending there is some threat from people learning what a phallus in general looks like or what a particular man's phallus looks like is absurd. A man being embarassed by his penis size, whatever it may be, is absurd; he should be proud of his own good behavior and embarassed by his own bad behavior, not embarassed of the genetics that grew his phallus. That brings me to another point.
- Judeo-Christian religions revere the story that humans only feel embarassment of their own nudity when they have misbehaved and sinned against God's plan for them. When they are without sin, they are proud of their skin the way God made them, each individual and unique. Yet, absurdly, some of those cultures condemn nudity even in private.
Theme
Genre
Space Opera and Interplanetary Romance are my goto genres. The world of Athena Minerva is as bright as the Original Series of Star Trek. Ignorance, hate, and fear of other human beings are things of the past. Humans can largely trust what another human says once again, and can always look it up if they need. So what is left?? Nature is still a Mutha, and Gravity is still a harsh mistress, and there are plenty of risks to take and dangers to explore out there.
I have stories that draw from other fun genres like Mystic Superhero, Gumshoe Detective, and Victorian Murder Mystery Super Sleuth.
Every event in the World of Athena Minerva is based on the author's understanding of hard science. As time progresses technology progresses, so in the modern and futuristic stories eventually technology can pack a great deal of energy, information, and automation into very small packages, much like the mechanical tiny ballerina dancers attached to wind-up music boxes of over 500 years ago with their microscopic joints and smoothly moving parts. Even when characters believe they are using "magick", the author has a psychological, biological, or technological cause hiding behind the scenes.
Even among aliens, people are people regardless of what toys are available to them.
Reader Experience
The world is meant to feel like endless high adventure. Competent characters work together and against each other to explore the unknown, to help a fellow in need, or just to have good clean or dirty fun.
The world has a positivity harking to SteamPunk and SolarPunk. The human race will survive, and although villiany remains, most of the worst potential of the human animal remains unrealized, while most of our best and most humane possibilities eventually become real.
Reader Tone
Recurring Themes
People of non-binary genders might find little gender-bending aside from a great deal of traditional role-reversal. The extreme distinctions between male and female are just utensils for exploring how people of widely varying viewpoints can not only coexist but can form powerful teams.
All characters in all societies in the world of Athena Minerva dress as they choose to express themselves. Some characters express their personal style through clothing and gadgetry they carry. Others express themselves by getting back to basics, allowing themselves to be vulnerable, and trusting their ability to improvise as the situation demands.
Character Agency
Focus
Drama
Around A.D. 1000, an alien advanced technology deliberately mutates and in other ways alters many life forms to learn whether the presence of creatures of myth and legends would have dramatically altered the survival of human beings. It turns out it would have really messed us up.
Fortunately one woman leads a fighting force to stop the malignant experiment, but not before its less genocidal creations have spread across the world.
For the next thousand years, anthropologists hunt to find bird-women, goat-boys, snake-women, and bull-men. Mystics struggle to command (if only for a moment) microscopic organisms with the power to alter light or even warp space.