One military team. Ariel is in love with Tom. Tom is in love with Ariel. Karos is in love with Ariel. Ariel is in lust with Karos. Katrina is in love with Karos. Rosco is in love with Katrina. Katrina doesn't know.
Are you asking if that situation sounds dramatic or silly? Because from my impression, it sounds silly, but I can imagine it being presented in a dramatic way. If all of this is happening at the same time, I'd put it under silly. If these relationships and feelings slowly develop over time, that would make it more dramatic.
Is this for a series or for a book? It sounds over complicated for a book unless it's epic. By the end I was like who the heck is Rosco and why is his name so similar to Karos. Also what's your genre? You said military team so I'm assuming action, do readers of this genre like that much love interest melodrama?
I do write massive epics and it's a space opera. The war is a backdrop for a love story transcending death and time.
To me personally, romance clusterf***s where everyone is in love with someone who is in love with a different person definitely makes me think melodrama. I could easily see this being played comedic, though it's not inherently comedic. I have a harder time seeing it as truly dramatic just because it's so strongly associated with melodrama in my mind, and it's hard for me to take melodrama seriously, though that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it from time to time, like Greys Anatomy.
Tom isn't a name I'd have associated with space opera. Katrina, Rosco, Karos, Ariel and... Tom. I feel it wants an -ek on the end. Or maybe an -idon. What does it matter if the characters have convincingly-structured relationships if they're named after a 18th-Century piper's son?
If you add a bunch of doors, windows, and furniture to hide under, you have the makings of a staged French bedroom farce, so it might work for a space opera.
It depends entirely on your genre and your audience. That might fly with a teen audience but probably not for most adults unless you're writing some kind of genre romance.
Let's see: Ariel is in love with Tom. Tom is in love with Ariel. Ariel is in lust with Karos. Being an old prude, all that says to me is that Ariel is a slut. Sorry, but I had to speak up for the geriatric generation.
If its a military drama i tend to a large amount of who cares... one or two relationships fine, but all of them tangled up in a great big triangle is hard to buy... and the chain of command wouldn't wear it if it had potential to mess up their effectiveness... also soldiers don't tendto be the type to moon around about who's in love with who... they're much more given to uncomplicated shags with strippers and barracks rats while on leave and concentrating on the fighting while they are on duty
Goodness gracious, and here I thought it was us geriatrics who espoused making love and not war so many decades ago. Tsk. Just because Ariel lusts after the guy doesn't mean she has tumbled into the military version of a haystack with him. Jimmy Carter may've thought lusting in his heart was equivalent to adultery, but perhaps his imagination was better than mine. So I'm invested now: who does Karos love? Caerus was the Greek God of opportunity, so perhaps Karos is the slut and takes it wherever he can find it? And who the hell is Rosco? I know a dog named Roscoe. Oh, dear. Is this one of those books?
Karos is in love (more like a stalkerish obsession) with Ariel, his princess as making her love/desire him makes him feel better about himself (abusive childhood in poverty gave him a major inferiority complex) leading him inevitably towards a full breakdown and madness. Ariel does love Tom (and emotionally relies on his stable personality), but is fascinated by Karos. Think Phantom of the Opera. Rosco is just their strategist and can't get up the courage to confess to his crush-who's also infatuated with Karos.
Even more so - a band of knights who fight together would not all be lusting after each others partners, the whole thing is patently ridiculous. If you want to write a silly love and lust story with no grounding in reality then crack on... but in a military action story it'll be laughed off the page
...but is it space opera? In the interests of community cohesion I've deep-dived into the witterings of a dead liberal junkie. And this is what I found:- science fictional space warfare - no, it's just a spacewalk melodrama - arguable, but Major Tom and Ground Control use the words of cold detached professionals reporting the facts as they see them risk-taking space adventures - no, and it undercuts that by presenting the exercise as a PR stunt chivalric romance (i.e. like a knight on a quest) - no, and it sends that up: the papers want to "know what shirts" he wears, but there's "nothing he can do" So maybe that's why he's called Tom: it's an intentionally underwhelming name, to set him apart from e.g. Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon In case the music videos are felt to have added some space opera elements - with Space Oddity the promotional video surely isn't supposed to look like a slick television production (the cuts to Ground Control in his t-shirt puncture that), and the later official one either rejects all sci-fi imagery or considers David Bowie's face sufficient. Ashes to Ashes has some figures who might be aliens - but by that point he could probably have afforded better special effects than Star Wars. So I think the videos either continued the satirical attitude of the lyrics, or at least they didn't pivot heavily into space opera. I think Major Tom is polemic: he's a way of bringing the West back down to earth after its recent victory over the USSR in the space race, and the subdued characterization aims to get the listener to insert themselves into his helplessness and addiction.
That sort of works for Tom. He's the only one who's not from the warrior or scholarly class. He's just a good salt-of-the-earth type who advanced in the ranks through pure skill.
Only based on the information available, the concept seems very silly to me. More than silly, it appears very unrealistic from a character standpoint. I've written space opera before and I've gone beyond realistic with almost everything, as the genre allows for pulpy, silly fun. But the one thing I don't think can be compromised is the characters. I don't mean their skills, talents, badassery, etc, but how they interact and build their relationships. They have to be treated like people with real emotions and motivations. One military team. Ariel is in love with Tom. Tom is in love with Ariel. Karos is in love with Ariel. Ariel is in lust with Karos. Katrina is in love with Karos. Rosco is in love with Katrina. Katrina doesn't know. The above just doesn't suggest that to me at all
One thing I focus on when writing is helping the reader track the ideas I'm trying to convey. To be honest I don't have an opinion on whether the description is dramatic or silly. My brain shut down halfway through reading it. I made an honest effort to track what was written and followed it for a while, but with all the factors raining down I lost interest in expending any more mental energy on it. I'm a old fart, but maybe I've succumbed to the generalized condition of allowing my attention span to shorten to almost zero. Or maybe that's my badge of honor for living longer than I deserve. Ever notice that today's TV shows and movies are mostly comprised of scenes that last about one second, one and a half maybe?
