I want to have it that she enters this fighting tournament competition, with fighters from across the globe, which is fights to the death and this particular female competitor would be a martial arts mixed, sanda fighter from China, who enters for a reason, to save her mother who is held captive by the sponsors. Her mother would be a marine biologist and wild life enforcer that would protect animals (mainly sea animals) from being harmed and she would be a descendant of a Chinese water dragon and she would have martial arts training with water manipulation. The father would be Sun Wukong himself resurrected. The reason this sanda kung fu martial artist girl enters this no holds death tournament is to save her mother and they are using her mother's powers to create something new. Would it sound better if I made it more grounded and just had this girls parents as normal humans and just say the mother is a wild life protector/marine biologist and the father instead of the Monkey King is just a zoologist? I'm just worried if I'm using an overused trope that sounds like a stereotype by having a female fighter from China, that uses any Chinese martial art mysticism will come off the wrong way. I'm also wondering if it would be better if I avoid her father being The Monkey King and the mother being related to a mystic Chinese water dragon. Does it already sound too cheesy? And this sanda professional martial arts girl would never hurt animals, she loves them as well as her family
To be honest, my opinion is that in an open, to-the-death competition like this (a.k.a. Bloodsport), the only way your heroine is going to have a chance is if she has mystical parentage and mystical attributes.
Ok but is it stereotyping? Or would she be better off having advanced cybernetics? I like the mystical attributes. I'm just concerned if it's overplayed for someone Chinese
What do you think? Ultimately you're the one who needs to answer this. If you ask other people, you'll get a mix of answers and still need to choose between them. If you're really afraid of stereotyping, then don't write anything that sounds stereotypical. Cybernetics sounds pretty cool actually. Or play around with it. Maybe she uses a publicity story that her dad is the Monkey King and her mom a dragon lady, but in reality she's a cyborg.
I don't know the back story to the Monkey King, how widley known it is, how often he's been written about (including tv etc) so I can't comment about his use. I only know he was born on a mountain top, has a cool theme song and that his nature is irrepressible. Making use of mythology is not stereotyping but you do have to be careful if you are writting about a culture you are not directly familiar with. Maybe you are chinese and you understand their culture and history, in which great, do what feels right to you. If not, its a minefield isn't it. One problem with stereo typing is that stereo types are often born from fact so if you write accurately about cultural behaviours you will inevitably stereo type someone. Can't be avoided. And there are positive stereo types. A chinese person following chinese tradition is a good thing. You would have a much harder time selling a foreigner doing it, or a chinese person learning a non chinese martial art as I understand they are very proud and defensive of kung fu and resentful of other styles, especially Japanese styles. What can be avoid is the cliche and exxagerated stereo type. All americans are gun nuts, all americans in the south are racist rednecks who sleep with their sister, everyone in england has a cockney accent except robin hood, the scots are shit at football - oh ok, that one IS true, the French eat cheese and surrender alot (and may also be related to the monkey king) and so on... Then you have the woke jokes who will want to take offence at any thing and every thing that they can and will scream all sorts of abuse at you if you write about a culture thats not your own, but as they are woke jokes, id say do it just to wind them up anyway. I dont think your idea is a negative stereo type, i dont think it sounds cheesy. If you want to go down the route of mystical dragon spirits then go the whole hog and get the monkey king in there.
I'm not of Chinese descent so this could cause problems? But I'm trying to avoid the kung fu stereotype where "all from China are all kung fu fighters" Yes these cliches are overdone, but does Chinese fighters who are kung fu experts become a cliche as well? So how do I do it without it coming off as a cliche of Chinese people are all kung fu?
But isn't sanda different than kung fu? And out of both choices, does it sound better if she was a fighter, filled with mysticism from her Monkey King dad and water dragon mom? Or better if she was a cyborg fighter that controls drones?
@SilentWaves55 I think you are asking good questions, but in my opinion you are overthinking it. For one, sometimes tropes can be very good and feel authentic. See Detective Miller in Leviathan Wakes/The Expanse. He is a walking trope, the alcoholic greased-palm lawman who finds a shot at redemption. But he's fantastic. So a trope or stereotype in and of itself isn't automatically bad. Second, and more importantly, it's okay to write bad shit! It's not okay to then ask people to beta read every damn chapter, but writing bad shit is part of the process. I know you really want this to be good - that's great, do your best. But I'd wager a week's pay it'll be better if you accept it might be shit, than if you try to make it perfect. Get after it and get writing!
I know, I can't expect this to be perfect, but what I'd like is to do the best I can and if I want this story to be less poop, would that work better if I just said this Chinese kickboxing fighter thinks her dad was the Monkey King and her mom was the water dragon lady but in reality she's a cyborg fighting machine? Or she is the actual daughter of the Monkey King and the water dragon lady reincarnated into the modern world, with the daughter having the powers of both parents?
Okay I got it I figured it out! I just want to clarify one thing, if the daughter's father is the Monkey King, who's been living for centuries, and her mother is a long line descendant of a dragon god, that would make the father old enough to be the great great great great grandfather of the mother. Meaning, the girls Monkey King father is technically 100's years older than her dragon descending mother. Is that creepy that her mother is extremely much younger than her 500+ year old father?
No, since it's mythology/gods. That just the way things are for them. It's only creepy when ordinary people do it.
Yes but technically the mother is not a god, she's a human but her long lineage of ancestors traces back to a dragon demigod, which have become more and more human over the centuries so she's pretty much a normal human, with some trace of dragon-god like powers
That's not a problem, as long as the other partner is a god. I think it's always the male, the impregnating partner. In all the religions I'm aware of there are many versions of this—the offspring are called demigods. A god takes some form and impregnates a human woman and she gives birth to a hero, like Hercules, or Perseus or Theseus. It's how Jesus was born. Zeus took many different forms and impregnated many Earthly women—Danae, Leda, etc. He took the form of a shower of gold for one (was that Danae?) and a swan for Leda, who I think was some kind of a swan-herd or something. A tender of swans or a lover of them (literally in this case). Poseidon took the form of a magnificent white bull and impregnated the wife of King Minos as punishment for his hubris, and she gave birth the the Minotaur, a deformed monster that eats human flesh. This stuff is literally all throughout mythology, it's where most of the heroes and monsters came from.
Exactly like this. Only difference being she's a human woman from the modern era and the Monkey god that impregnated her, is from the 16th century, where in most other literatures the god that has a demigod child with a human woman is usually from the same eras like Zeus and Danae, Leda, etc. My human woman is from our time and she's meeting with a God from centuries ago, won't seem strange?
Is the Monkey King not immortal? Did he die centuries ago? I'm not familiar with the story. Maybe she could be the offspring of a child of the Monkey King, who got much of his powers and lived for centuries, then impregnated the woman's mother.
I was going to say he was trapped somewhere in heaven realm, then released centuries later and that's how he meets the mother, who's a descendant of a dragon deity. The daughter would be an offspring of the Monkey King and the mother who descended from the dragon. This all takes place modern day. The mother is a modern descendant of an ancient dragon god and the Monkey King father is the one from ancient times. And I'm concerned an ancient character getting a modern woman pregnant might come off weird
