[Leumeister]

Sci-Fi Tips Part 15 Random Sci-Fi Character Types Deconstructed The Lone Gunslinger As you may have guessed, the Lone Gunslinger is a character type borrowed from Westerns. The character type works well in science fiction, specifically space operas, because there are many parallels between Westerns and science fiction space operas including the discovery and exploration of new lands, indigenous people, and rampant lawlessness. The name “Lone Gunslinger” fits the character type well, because he is both isolated from society and a highly skilled combatant. A bleak backstory is optional, though some stories embrace him as an outsider in a fun, quirky way. At his core, the Lone Gunslinger is a drifter who wants to do good. I understand when others say this character type is clichéd. The Lone Gunslinger has crossed over to many different genres with little variation. But I believe that’s why this is a convention, not a cliché. Since the Lone Gunslinger works so well in different genres, there must be a strong appeal for this character type. Of course, the widespread use of this convention attests to the opinion that it’s a tired trope. That may be true, but I will still enjoy this character type as much as I can. Rebellious Youths You’ve heard the story before. A (usually unqualified) youngster steps into a dangerous environment in which only the elite survive. All the odds are stacked against her. However, using just her wit and will, she rebels against authority and sidelines rules resulting in a shocking triumph. Bonus points if she proves herself to always be right. Add sci-fi bonus points if she has a fling with an alien or is excessively serious (or snarky, just as long as they’re excessively something). This character type has grown in popularity in the past couple years. And I’m sick of it. It seems that every young person must start a rebellion and prove to be right. It’s as if authors are scared that teens won’t identify with a young person who isn’t rebellious know-it-all. Maybe they are. Hopefully, storytellers can prepare this clichéd convention in a unique way. Add pinch orthodoxy. A dash of humility. Age her a decade or two. Place the character into the heat of trials until she becomes multifaceted. And there you have it. Enjoy your restyled rebellious youth. Strong Military Women Strong military women are the classic well-muscled heroes of action movies, but re-imagined as females. Except they aren’t. They are literally male action movie heroes but with a female name. The problem is twofold. The military action genre relies on bazookas and blood to attract the reader. Therefore, while the plot may be an exciting rollercoaster ride, one-dimensional characters abound. In defense of the genre, characters of depth aren’t really needed. The closest you get to a complex character is the hero’s three-dimensional muscles. Science fiction storytellers are also to blame. The male action hero can use brawn and bullets to solve problems. However, a change in gender must lead to a change in story, because women are not men. They approach problems differently than men. This does not mean that women cannot sprint towards the enemy with guns blazing. They can do that if necessary, but their motivations, mindset, and sentiments must vary at least a little bit. Including Strong Military Women in a science fiction story used to be a profound statement. Now it’s just falling into the cliché that a woman in a man’s world must think like a man and act like a man in order to win like a man. It’s insulting to women . . . and men too. Mad Scientist Just like the Lone Gunslinger, the name of the famed Mad Scientist describes the character type quite well. He is mad and he is a scientist. The mad aspect of this character is not as one-dimensional as it seems. The madness of the scientist may be subjective, reasonable, obsessive, or just plain crazy. When combined with the brains of a scientist, madness yields serious, far-reaching repercussions. This is the appeal of the convention: the danger that appears when madness affects a genius, and the puzzle of a crazed mind. Unfortunately, the Mad Scientist character convention, after many years of dilution, is usually written as a caricature. Very few stories capture the layers and depth this convention provides. I believe that is why most see the Mad Scientist as a cliché. However, if more authors infuse this convention with its original essence—the mystery of what lies in the mind of a mad man—the Mad Scientist will prove to be the great convention it truly is.

Apologies for dredging up this dinosaur, but what you described here are two examples of tropes:

Single biome planet, and Planet of the Hats.

Basically a planet that is labeled “Jungle,” “Ice,” “Rock,” “Water,” etc. is a single biome planet. Tatooine, Hoth, Felucia, Kamino, and Endor are (seemingly) examples of single biome planets.
Sometimes it’s justified, like a rocky planet being rocky because it can’t support life, or an ice planet being icy because it’s far away from its star, but otherwise, it’s just unbelievable. Even if a planet is predominantly a certain biome, E.G. Jungle, it would probably have a few mountainous regions, oceans, volcanic regions, grasslands, and ice caps. Planets should be a patchwork quilt, not a white bedsheet.

Planet of the hats is where you take a certain “hat” (can be figurative or literal) for anything, whether a culture or an alien race, and make it their defining trait. E.G. Klingons are a Proud Warrior Race (another trope), Asians are good at math, humans are idiots, or everyone on Kingdom Pen is a girl. 😛 …When in reality, Klingons can also be good scientists (sometimes treating discoveries as a victory in battle), not all Asians are good at math, not all humans are idiots, and me, Daeus, and Mark are not girls. 😛

So… Aliens/other cultures should be a patchwork quilt, not a white bedsheet… 😛

And those are things I want to go out of my way to avoid in my writing.

[Leumeister]

Oh, we’ve got a new one now! XD Man, it grows so fast. 😛

[Leumeister]

@rochellaine

I was pinged. That’s cheating. 😛

@emma-flournoy is beta-reading a story for me (Thank you, dudette! ^_^), and she’s really helping. It’s also nice to go through my story and see it through someone else’s eyes.

[Leumeister]

@rochellaine

Well, in Pandora’s case, she would rather have no guests for a year. She’d gone without them for more than that, so she’s used to it. 😛

[Leumeister]

@rochellaine Yes, I am asking that. 😛 Now I’m here, I may as well participate. 😛

[Leumeister]

So now that I’m here, what do we do? 8) 😛

[Leumeister]

@seekjustice

I’m in Western Australia

[Leumeister]

@rochellaine

He’d better. 😛 Joking aside though, I’d be quite surprised, considering what you’ve told me about him. 😛 Would you be permitted to sneak a peek? 😛 Oh,well, that’s fair enough. You said yourself you pay more attention to the acting and stories more than the visual effects.

It’s this circular dome with four domes coming out on either “corner” The central dome was the main section, the saucer section if you will, and the other four were like engines. I used it as a dimensional shifting vehicle, that could be flown through space, the atmosphere, fluid, or the space between dimensions.
Yours sounds more like a stationary device. Is it mobile at all?

Yeah, it is, and I exhort you to continue looking into it! 😀 It can be used to make a variety of things, like characters, vehicles, tools, landscapes, even abstract art! 😀 Well, continue looking into it once your less busy, anyway. Lookin’ forward to it! ^_^

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by Leumeister.

[Leumeister]

@seekjustice

XD

[Leumeister]

The one I was referring to would rather live forever in a computer sim.

[Leumeister]

@seekjustice

I’ve got a character who wanted to be a musician, actually, but circumstances prevented that from happening. So she’d rather be a musician.

 

Would your character rather be forced to die, or to live forever inside a computer simulation?

[Leumeister]

@rochellaine

Haha! Nice! XD I think I have a dramatic reveal in my most “active” projects (one project is more active in my mind… I really should start writing it…).

That might be it. There was probably a lot of post-processing as well. I actually don’t like the DIS Klingon makeup very much. It looks too…artificial? The Klingon makeup in TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT looks a lot more organic. Oh, that’s it! It’s the skin color! XD

Let’s leave it at “He’s got good taste.” 😛 And I don’t like it because the rapid evolution was quite freaky… I mean, poor Tom lost his tongue! If that’s not squicky, I don’t know what is! :s
Wait, was Babel the one about a race from the Gamma Quadrant that thought Bajor was some prophesied planet or something? If so, then I’m kind of disappointed. :/ 😛

Ahh, I see. Not enough womanness. Yeah, I can see that. But it could be part of her backstory, as well as her Klingon heritage. She was bullied a lot for being a hybrid. … Thinking about it now, it actually makes me kinda sad, which is good, because that means they wrote a good character! ^_^ So maybe her “toughness” is a front she puts on to protect herself… Have you seen the episode where the Vidiians separated her human and Klingon DNA and cloned her Klingon side, to try and find a cure for the… Ugh.. Fayge! … It’s not Fayge, it’s phage (phah-jh)… But I digress….
Writing “strong” woman characters is a very fine line. Go too far in the strong direction, and you’ve basically got a male character who’s actually a girl. Too far in the other, and you’ve got SJWs breathing down your neck. 😛

I am? … Okay. Thanks! 😛 (Mind explaining what you’re talking about? XD) Yeah, I’m an animation nerd. 😛 I appreciate plots and characters, acting and emotions too. There’s this show on Netflix called ReBoot: The Guardian Code, and it’s got a lot of animation, and it’s rendered with Unreal Engine, a triple-A game engine that has graphics that are, if ReBoot is anything to go by, good enough for TV shows (it looks kinda flat to me, but it’s in a computer, so I can forgive it). However, the story’s kinda… Ehh… Good VFX shouldn’t carry a movie or show, it should add to its story.

Okay, I’ll have to give it chance then. The first episode with Kirk in it was interesting… I liked the costumes for the girls better in that one. 😛 I also liked Trouble with Tribbles. I haven’t seen many others… at least any that I can remember… Oh, I saw Mudd’s Women. Interesting premise. It had visible morality. I’ll be honest, I haven’t seen many episodes. But I also know that the budget in the 2nd and 3rd seasons got slashed, and the more interesting stories didn’t really have a chance to air.

[Leumeister]

@rochellaine

Hey, thanks! 😀 I just winged it with the shape, taking into consideration a few design inspirations. I actually fixed the front of the ship a few months ago, taking into consideration window-size to ship-size ratio. Basically, putting it into the model ship context, the more “little lights,” and the smaller the lights are on a ship, the bigger it is.
That collection sounds really cool, by the way? Does he have the Defiant and Voyager? Those are my favorite ships! ^_^

Ahh… I’ve actually got a unique design for a possible time machine. It’s inspired by the shape of the Cranium Conga game… 😛 That’s probably not what you have in mind. I would love to see a drawing of it. And if you’re able to, try and draw technical drawings of it, like a front view, side view, top view, and an isometric view of it as well, as well as an interior.
Blender… Ohh, ho-ho-ho-hohh, Blender! XD You got me started, Rochellaine, look out! XD Blender is a free and open source 3D modeling and animation program. And. I. LOVE it!! It is so powerful, and if you know how to use it, you can make some truly amazing things! I actually modeled and rendered the Aquila in Blender, and I’m in the middle of retopologizing it, to make it a bit more artist-friendly. What you see here is only the rough design. It’ll have all sorts of greebles and nurnies on it, which are the little details that make it look less like a block and more like a Borg Cube. And if you’re able to draw, or think in pictures, you can translate the pictures from the drawing (or your mind) into 3D space. That spaceship started out as a simple cube. Four faces, twelve edges, and eight vertices. The Aquila model now has 1,164 faces, 2,378 edges, and 1205 vertices (the model is actually mirrored along the X-axis, so I’m manipulating less, but drawing the same amount).

I use Blender almost every day, and I love animation. If you’re even a little bit interested, I HIGHLY recommend you give it a try. Also, if you get to the point where you’d use it a lot, learn the shortcut keys. It will speed your workflow up so much! 😀

[Leumeister]

@rochellaine

Ahh… XD Yeah, I write a lot of sci-fi. I’ve even come up with dramatic reveals that turn a story into a sci-fi story. 😛 I even have modern-day fiction with science fiction elements, like sentient androids. XD I like other genres, but I am almost obsessed with sci-fi! XD I think my love of animation and electronic music contribute to it. 😛 So, yeah. Sci-fi! 😀 😛

Yeah, it’s amazing. Yeah, I agree with you on the Klingons from TNG/VOY/DS9. I thought the Klingons from DIS were makeup as well, though? :/
But remember, if you need something _a lot_ more exotic, like Species 8472, the Founders, or the Tholians, CGI, especially if done well, helps a great deal. The effects in DS9 and VOY show their age, but I am able to appreciate that, at the time, they were absolutely stunning and groundbreaking. I actually kinda like old computer animation. The lack of visual fidelity has some form of aesthetic quality in my opinion. However, I also love photorealism.

Ah yeah. 😛 Sick days are good for TV… And for video games, if you’re into that kind of thing. ^_^

Ahh, I see. 😛 Is he on Kingdom Pen? Good call on his part. Yeah… I didn’t like that episode at all, and probably not for the reasons he suggested against it. 😛 Yeah, I liked those three, especially The Niners. I don’t remember the one where they all spoke gibberish… What season was that one in?
Yeah, Trials and Tribblations! XD That one was brilliantly well done. Amazing for the technical limitations of the mid-nineties! 😀

Yeah. 😛 But I liked ’em. Oh, I think I forgot to mention Tom Paris. 😛 Why was B’elanna Torres annoying? Was it her Klingonness?

Oh yeah, I liked that episode. And relativity is the one where the Time Police (or whatever they’re called) enlist Seven of Nine, right? Oh, and Timeless had some amazing VFX for Voyager’s crash. It looked like it came straight out of a movie! 😀 Ah, counterpoint was the one with the Devore Imperium, who were quite xenophobic, and especially distrusted telepathic species, and they had to hide them in the transporter buffers.

Yeah, it’s quite creepy, but it’s actually kinda cool at the same time. I think the other episode was called Back to Basics, or The Basics. It was a 2-parter.

Yeah, I enjoyed Voyager as well, even if it did have very creepy parts that stuck in my mind for longer than they should have… :/ I haven’t seen much of ENT, but I think I’d like it better than TOS (that just seems to not take itself seriously enough for me, for some reason. I mean, it tries to, but there’s just something…kind of…cheesy about it? IDK). Possibly because of the low budget, and the fact it was made in the 60s. 😛 IDK, I’ve only seen a few episodes, and I did enjoy them.

[Leumeister]

@ingridrd

Nice! Interesting art style… Not sure it fits how I envisage the characters, but you did a great job! ^_^ Thank you. 🙂

Echo looks pretty nice somewhat shabby, and yeah, sorry for not specifying an age. She’s a mid-teen.

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