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  1. DarkPen14

    DarkPen14 Florida Man in Training Contributor

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    Is this cliche?

    Discussion in 'Plot Development' started by DarkPen14, Apr 8, 2019.

    A bit of background for this;

    The world has been flooded by melting glaciers. When humans realized we couldn't stop it, we began developing technology to deal with it. There is very little land remaining, and only the wealthy can afford to live on it. Most of humanity lives in floating communities ranging from artificial floating islands to a collection of houseboats tied together.
    The concept of individual nations has been completely erased. There is nothing to fight over anymore, and we have bigger problems than whether or not North Korea has nuclear weaponry. With a new world comes new threats. THe creatures of the sea have evolved and changed since the icecaps melted. Creatures like the Kraken are now very real threats that humanity must deal with.
    Enter the Guard. THe Guard is a global psuedo-military taskforce based on an island that used to be a part of the US (Old world maps have either been lost to the floods or replaced by newer maps to accurately show the world as is.) The Guard employ superior technology to protect humanity from the things that might destroy it, from sea monsters to pirates, you name it, the Guard is supposed to deal with it.
    The signature weapon of the Guard is a polymorphic weapon called a Khrikar'ra, which is essentially a sentient mixture of the Marvel symbiote, tech, and the human mind.
    The Khrikar'ra are alien technology, a sort of living weapon that humans have essentially domesticated over the few thousand years since they discovered the thing. They reproduce asexually, and they choose a host to serve, drawing from the host's body for nutrients in exchange for doing whatever the host needs, granting heightened physical abilities and senses, however at the same time causing the host to literally eat for two.
    Another thing about the Guard, only men can enlist, because the Khrikar'ra have extreme difficulty bonding to female hosts, extreme difficulty meaning that it is almost impossible for a Khrikar'ra to bond with a woman. THe public does not know that the Khrikar'ra exist, and is often told that the Guard just has awesome weaponry.

    Back to the story.

    The MC is a girl who dreamed of joining the Guard since she was little. When she found out that only men can enlist, she firmly believed that she can disguise herself as a man to join the Guard. And then puberty happened, and the physical changes that occur in a female's body during adolescence, in the MC's case, ensured that she could never conceal her gender to enlist.
    Just as she is beginning to accept that she will never be a guard and resigns herself to her job at the family fishery, her floating town is sacked by pirates. The Guard send agents to deal with the pirates, and one is killed near the fishery.
    The MC picks up his weapon, not knowing that it is not just a gun, and tries to shoot the man across the way who is currently attacking her mother. The Khrikar'ra bonds to her, and she loses consciousness. When she wakes up, she finds that she has been shanghaied and is being transported to the Guard base for questioning as to how in the hell she managed to use someone else's Khrikar'ra. She is interrogated and nearly tortured before the director of the Guard decides to step in and offer her that which she wanted most in life; to become a Guard. So the MC becomes the first female Guard in history.


    Obviously, this comes to a sort of reverse harem anime situation. There is one beautiful woman surrounded by dudes. The MC becomes a sort of symbol for the women of the world entirely accidentally, while at the same time facing the prejudice of being "Just a woman" doing a "man's job". There are those who believe she slept her way to where she is, those who believe her incapable of doing anything, and those who think she is just a fluke and her Khrikar'ra got insanely unlucky.

    But is this a cliche scenario?
     
  2. EBohio

    EBohio Banned

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    Yes, it is cliched because the story could be told without anybody noticing or caring what her gender is in your future world.

    ETA: Assuming this is a story set in the future, they have not progressed beyond caring about what someone's gender is, and have gender stereotypes still. So this would make this a cliched feminist story.
     
    Last edited: Apr 8, 2019
  3. John Calligan

    John Calligan Contributor Contributor

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    It strikes me as a kind of subversion of the feminist message.

    In Star Trek DS9, they had a long running story about symbiotic creatures bonding with people through ritual, but only a very small percentage of this alien race were capable of bonding. It turned out in one episode that there was nothing special at all about the bonding process, and the alien government was keeping it a secret in order to keep people from buying and selling the creatures.

    It was basically an anti-elitist message.

    So, if your story had the girl using the weapon, and then it turned out that women really could use it just as well, then you'd have a story about equality, possibly. But, if men are special and only men can use magic besides this one special girl, then you have a story about justified sexism and a unicorn that happens to be as good as men by luck.
     
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  4. DarkPen14

    DarkPen14 Florida Man in Training Contributor

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    I'm glad that response happened. @EBhio, I do appreciate your insight, but you could have put that a little gentler.
     
  5. John Calligan

    John Calligan Contributor Contributor

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    To your question, is it cliché, I don't know. Venom + Water World + Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet + Reverse Harem = cliché?

    What's the log line?

    An ambitious fisherman's daughter's dream of joining the guard comes true when she accidently bonds with a male-only weapon. Can she thrive in a man's world and become the beacon of hope for women everywhere despite her lack of privilege?

    Again, I don't know if it's cliché.
     
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  6. EBohio

    EBohio Banned

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    Sounds like you didn't understand what I was saying. I was saying that in your setting (future I assumed), that maybe no one would care about gender or gender stereotypes so the fact that you have them making a fuss about her being female makes it cliche. In other words, like what John said, a feminist message story.
     
  7. DarkPen14

    DarkPen14 Florida Man in Training Contributor

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    Oh... Yeah that came across a lot differently than what you're saying you meant. It sounded like you were saying that her gender had absolutely no impact on anything, and that was a sucker punch in the soul for me.

    Yeah, the whole LGBTQ+-/ whatever the acronym looks like at this point never really made any sense to me and it rarely has any impact on my writing. It might make an appearance or two when there's a trap character or something like that, but it's not even background noise to me.
     
  8. John Calligan

    John Calligan Contributor Contributor

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    [​IMG]
     
  9. EBohio

    EBohio Banned

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    So now I am confused. What were you asking about that sounded cliche? I thought it was gender. (A girl shows the guys she's just as good as them).
     
  10. John Calligan

    John Calligan Contributor Contributor

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    He was asking if Water World + Venom is novel enough to make Harem anime fresh again.

    Edit: You clued in on the gender stuff because it contained the actual conflict of the story, but I don't think that was the point.
     
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  11. EBohio

    EBohio Banned

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    So is that Fonzie jumping the shark? Dark Pen may be too young to get the reference.
     
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  12. EBohio

    EBohio Banned

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    Oh. I guess I better stay out of fantasy critiques since I don't read or write it. I'm an old fuddy duddy.
     
  13. Kalisto

    Kalisto Senior Member

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    This is a bit like Water World, except Water World dry land was considered a myth.

    Completely unrealistic. There is always something to fight over. Anytime there is scarcity, (ie land) there is fighting. This is a very much contradicting what you stated earlier that only the wealthy could afford land. Well, isn't that something to fight over?

    Now, I want to be careful when I say this. Because I am no means implying that it needs to be the central conflict at all. But I am suggesting that it has the potential to add a level of difficulty to what is already a difficult situation with the monsters by themselves. This would become a means of explanation as to why the MC isn't getting the support he needs from what currently passes as a government.

    And this is your problem. You turned a very interesting idea into a completely shallow one. We go from a potentially interesting commentary on the human condition to lazy writing of just writing out all the war so you can focus on some monsters. I mean, if it's intended to be brainless fun, sure. But then it needs to proudly embrace it's cliches and all its silliness. I really don't like it when people think cliche equals bad.

    If it's intended not to be cliche, then you need to add depth to the story.
     
    Last edited: Apr 8, 2019
  14. Reece

    Reece Senior Member

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    People are being jerks to you, which is one of the reasons I rarely post things like this.

    I think it sounds like an interesting idea. It doesn't sound terribly cliche to me. My only complaint is the apostrophe in the Khrikar'ra. It's been done to death, and I personally don't like seeing it unless there is good reason for it. What is it replacing, or is it just there for the sake of it?
     
  15. John Calligan

    John Calligan Contributor Contributor

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    As far as I’m concerned, “trap,” is a slur, so we’re way past the point of worrying about being jerks here.
     
  16. XRD_author

    XRD_author Banned

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    Stop worrying about what is and isn't cliche, at the outline/concept level.
    A work can be completely cliche at that level, and no one will care if you write it well.

    There's a reason cliches become cliches: it's because they are popular and therefor get used a lot. The trick is to write the cliche in a way that people don't remember seeing before. And given the limited attention spans and retention capabilities of most people these days, that's not as hard to do as you might think.

    Shakespeare took the plot of Romeo and Juliet from an Italian story. The divided-lovers plot is entirely cliche, and yet it gets done again and again and again. Did this make West Side Story bad, or unsuccessful? Heck no.

    Similarly, stop worrying about what others think of your idea/outline.
    Until it's written, no one can know if it's any good or not.
    It'll probably evolve as you write it anyway.
     
  17. Reece

    Reece Senior Member

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    :S I must have missed that.
     
  18. O.M. Hillside

    O.M. Hillside Senior Member

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    I would also add that it makes sense stereotypes would resurface/persist because in a world that dangerous, it would probably be men who were doing the dangerous work. That's how it's always been, in fact it's still like that. Women can join the army, but are very rarely, if ever, in real combat situations. Simply due to biology. Technology may be able to offset this completely. But since human societies have natural inclinations to protect women from danger, it would still be very unlikely for women to be encouraged to risk their lives. Especially since this appears to be a post-apocalyptic setting where societies would probably place a much greater emphasis on preserving the lives of women. You can still repopulate with one man, and many women. You can't if you have many men, but few women. Either way, seems like a cool setting. Good luck.
     
  19. Elven Candy

    Elven Candy Pay no attention to the foot in my mouth Contributor

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    I'm not familiar enough with post apocalyptic stories to know if this is cliche, but I wanted to point out to you a contradiction in your story description:

    directly contradicts:

    Very little land that is obviously desirable gives humans something to fight over, and if there was nothing to fight over why would there be pirates? I'm not mentioning this to be mean, but to help you notice it so that you can fix the problem before it becomes a problem. Overall, though, I agree with @XRD_author about not worrying if this story idea is cliche--cliches can be a lot of fun to read and write, so just write your story and have fun!
     
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  20. LoaDyron

    LoaDyron Contributor Contributor

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    Hello, friend! :superhello:

    Instead of asking if your story is cliche or not, why not asking important questions like which are the rules for this race? What is their culture like? What do they have in different from humans? How do humans see them? What impact do they present with humans? Why they are enemies? And of course, why did they choose your MC? Which qualities does she have that other women don't have? And probably much more questions you will have to ask yourself these are just examples.

    Cliches will always exist no matter how we try to avoid them the solution as a writer is you find a way to turn that in an interesting way that many never tried before, or it is poorly explored. I will post a video that I hope to give the answer you are looking for:


    I hope this helps you. Keep on good work and have fun with your project. :superagree:
     
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  21. Selbbin

    Selbbin The Moderating Cat Staff Contributor Contest Winner 2023

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    I think the biggest cliche is the fact that she dreams of joining the guard and is then magically bonded so she can. It seems so.... convenient.

    Personally I think she should have no interest in the guard, and the bonding is a burden, but the guard realizes it bonded to her for a reason and insist she be a guard. Therefore she must come to terms with her new role and what that empowers her to do....

    But that' also cliche. So just go with your story.
     
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  22. DarkPen14

    DarkPen14 Florida Man in Training Contributor

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    It's in an alien language humans can't fully understand. The Khrikar'ra can only communicate with the host through the host's own language, so the actual name of their species in the language it was intended probably looks like something out of AVP.

    It's sci-fi more than fantasy
     
  23. John Calligan

    John Calligan Contributor Contributor

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    Her wanting to join the guard has the advantage of putting her at the scene. If she didn’t want to join, it would be harder to justify her staying near the action to get bit or whatever.
     
  24. EBohio

    EBohio Banned

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    To get rid of the cliche and sexism she could already be in the guard. Maybe she wants a promotion and needs to fight her arch enemy for it.
     
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  25. John Calligan

    John Calligan Contributor Contributor

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    Depending on what other changes, yeah
     

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