About your last post ... there was a platoon of American soldiers in Africa WWII. One young soldier went in a private, and came out a 2nd lieutenant not much later, due to combat losses. It's not entirely un-plausible, ESPECIALLY in combat.
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Well, I doubt that Star Trek would react too kindly to my idea of intergalactic bridges that allow a typical starship to explore not just the Milky Way but other relatively nearby galaxies. It could be a concept for a distant future Trek premise, but I don't like the idea of stories being so very far removed from the present. It's just a personal quirk, I suppose.
Plus, I guess what really hampers me is that as far as my writing goes, I'm just too damn picky. I can easily write out an outline of what I play on telling the audience and get started writing only to come back the next day and scrap everything because I don't like it anymore.
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ive heard that story before upon making that comment, and recognize that things like that do happen. Maybe I'm just biased against Starship Troopers because i expected it to make sense like the book did (i still think it was a great night at the movies)
But then again, i've read fanfics where 5 characters do that at once. booyah. and then they kill Q and use his power to destroy the Borg. In their quad-vector assault vessel. OK, maybe I'm exaggerating. but not much.
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Pocket Books looked at Star Trek book submissions (excluding Strange New Worlds, and the occasional book written by a cast member) this way:
Don't bother submitting if you aren't already a writer. Writing for established characters in an established universe is harder than writing an original novel (because of the OOC problems mentioned above and other inherent limitations), plus getting a book published proves that you can at least write well enough and creatively enough to get a book through the editorial process successfully.
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quote:Originally posted by TSN: BTW, is it still considered a "Mary Sue" character if you actually base it on yourself? Like, the character sucks as badly as you yourself? :-)
AFAIK, the terms "Self Insert", "Author Created Character", and "Mary Sue" have all become mish-meshed these days, at least in my corner of the playing field. If you do a SI, they automatically assume it's gonna be a MS. Same goes for ACC, though not quite nearly the same extent, since anime fanfics usually stick to existing characters.
I've done a SI, he's just as useless, inoffensive, and ambigious as me. Probably the only reason why people haven't lynched me yet.
As for megaships... If I ever do a Trek fanfic, it's gonna be me on an Excelsior-B. I've had quite enough of ships that does everything a super-galactic spider can, and more. I don't see why people have to always write about the state-of-the-art ships, they aren't the real workhorses. Where's the sense of real danger, when you're behind two layers of regenerative shielding, two feet of advanced ablative armor, a self-sealing hull, and your own ego?
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quote:Originally posted by Siegfried: Well, I doubt that Star Trek would react too kindly to my idea of intergalactic bridges that allow a typical starship to explore not just the Milky Way but other relatively nearby galaxies."
I'm just curious, why explore other galaxies where there are on the order of 100 to 400 billion stars in our own?
Assuming the low figure of 100 billion, even if you had 10,000 starships each visiting one star every 4 days, that would be a total or 912,500 stars per year, and it would still take 109,589 years to visit them all.
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Well, the entire premise was that it takes place in the late 25th to early 26th century (approx 100 to 150 years past Voyager). By that time, I assume, our galaxy largely be explored and it was time to move out. It was basically an attempt to add a bit of life to The Original Series' and Enterprise's theme of early exploration.
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From what I can see, using self-created characters in an existing universes defeats one of the primary points of fan-fiction (and spin off stuff). People who read fanfic want to read about characters they know. If they wanted to read about new stuff, they'd read original books.
MinutiaeMan: You do realise you have still done several classic "Overdone and usually rubbish Trek fanfic cliches"?
1/ Setting it in the 25th century/aftermath of the Dominion War. Done to death.
2/ Having a powerful warship as the main ship. Usually with "Advanced Quantumn Torpedoes", "Advanced Ablative Armour", "Advanced Batman armour".
Those two usually go together too. A destabalised Alpha Quadrant allows for lots of shooting and stuff. Because Star Trek is about shooting. Yes it is.
Sorry, you're fanfic story series might be good. It really might. You can have stories full of cliches and overused ideas and still have it be really good. It just doesn't fill me with hope.
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Yeah, what's w/ putting different characters into a known setting? Who the hell is this "Pickerd" character? The captain of the Enterprise is Jim Kirk, dammit!
Personally, I think putting new characters in an old setting is a good thing. You don't have to go into great historical detail to let the readers know what's going on. And, since the characters are new, it isn't just the same old shite.
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I think the point Liam is making is that once you toss out familiar faces and substitute a new cast into fanfic, it ceases to be a tribute from a fan to a particular Star Trek show but instead a tribute to the various paraphanalia of the franchise, like ship classes and alien race archetypes and stuff. And that paraphanalia inevitably seems to hog the spotlight (generally easily superceding poorly-realized original characters or boring plots), so instead we get multi-page descriptions of non-commissioned rank structures or attempts to stuff in (and draw attention to) as many different classes of starship as possible.
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But, if that happens, isn't all that stuff the problem? Not the lack of known characters?
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The Star Trek universe is a 'character' in itself.. thats why pieces of work like New Frontier and Challenger are doing well (with me, anyway).. because they have the familiar setting, but new takes on the familiar topics of the ST universe... Justman's rule always applies.. he said that when they were trying to write Star Trek in the beginning, they tried to write it as a standard story (to get the realism), then add the sci-fi/Trek elements later.. and any story you get has to be judged on the basis of whether or not it could succeed as non-Star Trek.
For example, if you made "The Undiscovered Country" a present day assassination thriller on a Navy ship, the story holds up. The addition of the fantastic element only adds to the story.
If you take a piece of fanfic and subtract the Star Trek universe, none of it makes sense. Why would the Navy launch seventeen prototypes at once, whats their mission, what are these character's motivations, etc. Subtract the familiar Star Trek character and you are left with a child's crayon drawing interpretation of how things work in real life
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Totally agree with you. I once thought about that as well. I knew that most Trek writers before Voyager and maybe even DS9 took real life events as a basis for good stories.
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quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: 1/ Setting it in the 25th century/aftermath of the Dominion War. Done to death.
2/ Having a powerful warship as the main ship. Usually with "Advanced Quantumn Torpedoes", "Advanced Ablative Armour", "Advanced Batman armour".
I see your point there. That's true, the setting is not really that unique. However, I believe that approach that "Renaissance" approaches this from a slightly different angle. The average fanfic out there writes in the post-DS9 era in order to deal with the cool, military aspects of the story. Some new enemy that can be fought with all of the kewl guns and bombs and stuff after the Dominion War. "Renaissance," on the other hand, is attempting to address with the attitudes and philosophy and ethical questions that developed in the DS9 era.
For instance -- several times, DS9 seemed to portray the "we must do what's right" attitude versus the "the ends justify the means" attidude (notably Section 31, but also Sisko in "In the Pale Moonlight").
In the past, "Star Trek" has always been about "we must do what's right." The Starfleet heroes of Kirk's era and Picard's era were squeaky-clean, upstanding citizens, and noble explorers. DS9 ended up portraying Sisko as a tough fighter, a man who tried to sucker the Romulans into the war -- and even accepted the assassination of Vreenak in the end.
I see a serious conflict there -- the Federation could either maintain its squeaky-clean image of the TNG era... and likely suffer disaster in the face of alien invasion -- or they could take actions that are ethically dubious in order to preserve their society. Picard would never, EVER have gone along with Garak's plan to bring the Romulans into the war... but if that plan had not been initiated, the Federation would quite likely have fallen to the Dominion.
Now, the BIG question is what happens to the Federation in the years after the war. Starfleet's "noble explorer" attitude nearly got the Federation conquered by the Dominion. The combined "explorer-battleship" starship designs almost completely caved in under assault by the Borg.
The end of the Dominion War is therefore not the end of the story for the Federation. And the aftermath is what "Renaissance" is trying to explore. Just how can the Federation adequately defend itself in a hostile galaxy and still maintain its peaceful philosophies?
I'm sorry for rambling on so long here again...
Just a quick note about the super-technology. We had a big debate after "Endgame" aired about how to incorporate the cursed mega-torpedoes and Batmobile armor. Unfortunately, that show was canon so we had to include it.
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I've had quite enough of ships that does everything a super-galactic spider can, and more. I don't see why people have to always write about the state-of-the-art ships, they aren't the real workhorses. Where's the sense of real danger, when you're behind two layers of regenerative shielding, two feet of advanced ablative armor, a self-sealing hull, and your own ego?
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