[Will Wildman Wrote:
I'm calling 'globetrotting adventurer' for the next out-of-left-field mass market boom. Sort of a Young Indiana Jones type of thing. And it's not easy to justify a teenage archaeologist, so I'm predicting a very wealthy family (with archaeologist parents) and, thus, the series' major fail will focus on class issues rather than gender.
My response was to extend the prediction into absurdly specific, certain to be wrong, detail.]
I say that the series will be overly male centric and feature not a rich family but a rich looter and his teenage protege.
A young man left home the moment he was 18* and thus a legal adult. He was hoping to strike it rich by finding a long lost treasure briefly rediscovered by a German immigrant to the US sometime in the 17[high numbers]. Almost everyone who knows enough obscure history to have even heard of said guy dismisses him as a fraud**. Young future globe trotter found out about him on the internet.
On the night of the first full moon after the [whatever] he shows up to a quarry with notes in hand and somehow gets injured. He wakes up in a mansion. His benefactor was in the quarry for the same reason he was. He's told to get a good night's sleep, the kitchen is open to him, and they'll talk in the morning.
That night bad guys break into the house and young future globetrotter stops one of them with a frying pan. Rich looter is impressed and, since they have a common interest in the German riddle leaver, takes him on as apprentice.
They trot the globe dealing with Indiana Jones type things, teenager always keeping a frying pan handy.
Areas of fail include that class, gender, and american exceptionalism, a preponderance of mighty whitey plots, and a total failure to even remotely respect archaeological sites. At all. Though occasionally a lampshade is hung on the last one, as it was in Indiana Jones ("I'm sure everything you do for the museum conforms to the International Treaty for the Protection of Antiquities.")
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*Though part of me wants to claim that that's what he says but he's actually younger. No one bothered to check so they only found out he was younger when he announced that it was his birthday and he just turned 18 for real.
** An annoyingly hard to interpret fraud at that. His marginalia is in German, of course, but his primary writing is in Latin and, as a tribute to his new home to truly understand the Latin writing you have to sometimes translate it into English because he hides meanings in plays on words in the English translation. Of course since any Latin writing can have multiple English translations it's a massive headache where you have to try to make a comprehensive list of every single English word that could be used to translated a given Latin one, and the only hints you'll ever get are occasional notes to himself written in German. It is generally agreed in the academic community that even speaking his name is a waste of time.
A young man left home the moment he was 18* and thus a legal adult. He was hoping to strike it rich by finding a long lost treasure briefly rediscovered by a German immigrant to the US sometime in the 17[high numbers]. Almost everyone who knows enough obscure history to have even heard of said guy dismisses him as a fraud**. Young future globe trotter found out about him on the internet.
On the night of the first full moon after the [whatever] he shows up to a quarry with notes in hand and somehow gets injured. He wakes up in a mansion. His benefactor was in the quarry for the same reason he was. He's told to get a good night's sleep, the kitchen is open to him, and they'll talk in the morning.
That night bad guys break into the house and young future globetrotter stops one of them with a frying pan. Rich looter is impressed and, since they have a common interest in the German riddle leaver, takes him on as apprentice.
They trot the globe dealing with Indiana Jones type things, teenager always keeping a frying pan handy.
Areas of fail include that class, gender, and american exceptionalism, a preponderance of mighty whitey plots, and a total failure to even remotely respect archaeological sites. At all. Though occasionally a lampshade is hung on the last one, as it was in Indiana Jones ("I'm sure everything you do for the museum conforms to the International Treaty for the Protection of Antiquities.")
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*Though part of me wants to claim that that's what he says but he's actually younger. No one bothered to check so they only found out he was younger when he announced that it was his birthday and he just turned 18 for real.
** An annoyingly hard to interpret fraud at that. His marginalia is in German, of course, but his primary writing is in Latin and, as a tribute to his new home to truly understand the Latin writing you have to sometimes translate it into English because he hides meanings in plays on words in the English translation. Of course since any Latin writing can have multiple English translations it's a massive headache where you have to try to make a comprehensive list of every single English word that could be used to translated a given Latin one, and the only hints you'll ever get are occasional notes to himself written in German. It is generally agreed in the academic community that even speaking his name is a waste of time.
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