Developing a couple drafts for a creative project that's been simmering in the back of my mind for years and it's very much a pretty standard genre fare in military sci-fi with characters that are in a specops fireteam doing wetwork operator shit fightin' evil aliens that want to wipe out humanity

posad astronaut-1

The more I flesh out the plot and characters in my head, the more I feel like I'm relying on trope-y plots and character types, and was wondering if anyone has advice on how to write characters that fulfill the role of a stock character type in that kind of story that still have some depth and personality that isn't just "the no nonsense leader," "wiseass with a heart of gold" "gentle giant" "stoic man of few words with a tragic past" "bad bitch that's got something to prove" "antsy pessimist that's worried the Intel's off and the op's gonna go sideways" etc

I'm working on names and personalities and character designs and they're starting to feel like they're starting to come together and I have a sense of their interpersonal dynamics, but I keep feeling like it's starting to get too derivative or predictable and feel like the beats for bringing out some characterization naturally with incidental dialogue as the plot unfolds or little character details or moments seem too shoehorned and was wondering if any writers have some tips for how to add some of that color to a script that feels natural to the genre and momentum of a story without being like "and NOW I'll add some depth to character x before we move on"

Thanks in advance

    • LocalOaf [they/them, ze/hir]
      ·
      17 days ago

      Halo universe, UNSC Beta-5 unit under ONI Section 3, a fireteam of Spartan-IIIs doing raids on Covenant HVTs deep into Covenant controlled space in an ONI stealth prowler

      Augmented human supersoldiers in power armor

      Halo's UNSC is basically space-NATO nato-cool astronaut-1

      • buckykat [none/use name]
        ·
        17 days ago

        Spartans are basically raised as government owned soldiers from birth/childhood, right? How does that kind of child abuse and brainwashing interact with their milsf archetypes?

        • LocalOaf [they/them, ze/hir]
          ·
          17 days ago

          S-IIs were kidnapped and trained from 6 years old

          S-IIIs are older orphans from glassed human planets basically given an offer they couldn't refuse to get vengeance on the Covenant for their families and home worlds

          S-IVs are normal people that were exceptional soldiers like ODSTs and Delta operators that got augmented and MJOLNIR armor post-Covenant War after the UNSC worked out some of the augmentation complications of the IIs and IIIs

          • buckykat [none/use name]
            ·
            16 days ago

            Clearly there's a lot of Halo lore I didn't pick up only playing Halo 1 and 2.

            So your characters have some variation in how much actual human childhood they had before being orphaned and put in the halo guy making machine. You can use that to complicate the characters and their relationships with each other and with UNSC command.

            • LocalOaf [they/them, ze/hir]
              ·
              16 days ago

              Clearly there's a lot of Halo lore I didn't pick up only playing Halo 1 and 2.

              I'm obviously a huge nerd for it, but the old novels by Eric Nylund are legitimately pretty good fun little milsci novels. The first one actually released before the first game came out and built a ton of the lore for the future of the franchise. Halo 1 is actually kinda sparse with the later world building details of the universe, a lot of it really came from Nylund and Joe Staten's writing for Halo 2 and 3. It's kinda like how A New Hope doesn't really give you a lot of details about the Star Wars universe by itself and a lot of it came from ESB and ROTJ.

              So your characters have some variation in how much actual human childhood they had before being orphaned and put in the halo guy making machine. You can use that to complicate the characters and their relationships with each other and with UNSC command.

              Thanks, that's helpful. I want to make some tension between them and the UNSC's brass and protocol (especially ONI, who are space-cia)

              Halo special interest dumping sry

              Spartan-Is (called Project Orion officially? idk) are just dudes who were good soldiers and got sooped up with experimental steroids basically but aren't quite supersoldiers like the later Spartans. Sargeant Johnson from the first 3 games is an S-I but it's only mentioned in the books

              John Halo the Master Chief (and Blue Team, his since 6 years old siblings essentially that are important characters in the extended universe and books but only show up in the games in Halo 5 which kinda sucked) are Spartan-IIs

              Spartan-IIIs are in Halo: Reach as the members of Noble Team (except Jorge, who's a S-II, and an absolute unit and a big "gentle giant" trope character. Also his name's pronounced "George" but spelled Jorge? And he's like, ethnically ambiguously British I guess but speaks Hungarian fluently too? Idk)

              Spartan-IVs are the NPC ally Spartans in 4, the player character for 4's multiplayer and Spartan Ops (cool idea, poor execution and writing) and 5's Fireteam Osiris in campaign

              also the master chiefs suit jacks him off automatically so he's volcel volcel-kamala

              not really but that's funny

              the-more-you-know

              • buckykat [none/use name]
                ·
                16 days ago

                Special interest dumping is cool to do.

                I read a site which calls itself "halopedia" a little bit and found some more tension points. It claims the Spartan program up through S-II was originally started to fight against human insurrectionists rather than the Covenant, and also that the S-III Spartans were intended to be cheap disposable shock troops sent on suicide missions. Also, this is my own speculation but it seems likely that the planets the Covenant attacked first, and therefore the planets the S-III Spartans would be drawn from, would be the same ones which had been hotbeds of the insurrectionists, both probably tending to be the furthest out colonies. So maybe some of the ones who had been orphaned when they were older would remember their parents' broad black brimmers so to speak.

                • LocalOaf [they/them, ze/hir]
                  ·
                  16 days ago

                  There are also human space comrades (Koslovics) comrades and human space fash (Frieden) pigmask-off who fought a major war with each other prior to Earth getting a unified (lib? socdem? never really expanded on) government prior to humans gaining FTL tech and colonizing near-Earth exoplanets (and the moon and Mars)

                  Idk if the Koslovics and Frieden made it to far off colonies (they and their conflict are incredibly tertiary background lore) but that's also a potential angle for some plot points with the UNSC and United Rebel Front (human separatists who want the colony worlds to be independent of Earth and the UNSC, even after the Covenant discovered and starting wiping out humanity. No united human front even when there's genocidal aliens I guess.)

                  The URF briefly come up in Halo: Reach when your player character (Noble 6) and Jun (Noble 4, the team's sniper/spotter/designated marksman) run into rebels with a stash of stolen UNSC weapons and team up to protect their homes and fight the Covenant together (temporarily)

                  (Rebel) "We've got caches of weapons and supplies all throughout this valley"

                  (Jun) "You know this stuff is stolen, right?"

                  (Rebel) "What, you're gonna arrest me?"

                  (Jun) "No... I'm gonna steal it back. >:) "

                  michael-laugh