On 21 Jul 2010, = at 19:07, tijlan wrote:

On 21 July 2010 04:41, Linda= r <lindarth= ebard@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Where is Alpha from? Does Beta have any particular e= thnic background, or is he
> a mutt? What is the ethnic background of the Lojban population?

Beta is a girl.
Alpha is not from anywhere in particular. I wanted it to be easily
dubbed into any language, and I didn't want the character to obviously
be of any ethnicity.

Is Alpha male? Scientifically= speaking, at least for humans, it's more like that female emerged before m= ale:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3D119799&page=3D= 1
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bang/ask_yan/which_came_first_man_or_woman

It's also worth noting that the Y chromosome is a variation of= the original, basic, a-sexual chromosome called "autosome", while the X ch= romosome is a direct successor to the autosome (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_chromosome= #Origin). XY makes male, XX makes female. Then it's safe to say that, = for all species with the XY sex-determination system, female is closer to t= he original neutral form, of which male is a derivative.

So I suggest Alpha be female.

It's like saying, "chickens are hatched from eggs, therefore KFC s= houldn't sell chicken-based food products, they should only sell fried eggs= !"

Hmm, I wonder what an egg fried in the secret b= lend of herbs and spices would be like. I digress.

My original thought was that the main character should be female too= (anyone who knows me will know I'm fiercely pro gender equality), but afte= r some discussions on IRC we, at the time, decided that it would be easier = to voice male characters due to the number of male Lojbanists, and that it = would be easier for males and females to relate to a male lead than it woul= d for both males and females to relate to a female lead - at least in the t= arget market as we understand it.

While on the sub= ject of sexism, please don't take the temporary naming of Alpha and Beta as= denoting some kind of superior-inferior quasi-social-position of the chara= cters in relation to each other - it's quite the opposite in fact, with Bet= a being a knowledgeable guiding light on Alpha's journey of discovery. &nbs= p;The temporary names are just to show who the story centres around; primar= ily it's seen from Alpha's perspective - at other times Beta will be carryi= ng the plot. The genders are in my opinion, pretty irrelevant, and th= e temporary names are for convenience and to add a slightly more human touc= h, rather than continually saying "the boy" and "the girl".

<= /div>

kozmikreis

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