Okay, taking into account some of the things said, I've done a little revision. How about this one: Two thousand years into the future, and we have destroyed our world. The glaciers of the world have melted, flooding most of the globe. Land is a precious resource that only the wealthy can afford to live on, and individual groups frequently fight over unclaimed islands. What is left of humanity lives in floating communities ranging in complexity from artificial floating islands to groups of boats strung together. Seafaring is a way of life for most humans. We attempted to colonize the planets within our solar system, but the end result came to be that it was too expensive to set up colonies that could support themselves on planets that were hostile to human life. The concept of individual countries has all but vanished. Groups under a single flag are the closest thing that remains to nationality. They fight over land and other resources, but their numbers are rarely large enough that they are capable of launching full-scale wars. Most of the human population exists outside these groups, scratching a living from the fish in the sea and salvaging junk from the ocean floor. Creatures of the sea are now one of humanity's greatest threats. Sea predators competing for food often attack human settlements where possible for an easy meal of a diver or stray child too close to the water. Pirates rule the high seas where there are no clans. Land means nothing to them, they raid for supplies, loot, and other necessities or commodities before vanishing back into the ocean. To protect humanity from these threats, the Global Guard was formed. Based on an island in what used to be the US, the Guard is a male-only pseudo-military task force that exists under no flag save their own. THey serve all of humanity, protecting them from the sea creatures, pirates, natural disasters, anything that could come to destroy a floating community, or in some cases a sunken one, as some humans prefer life below the waves and have underwater colonies similar to the myth of Atlantis. The Guard employ as a weapon the alien organism called the Khrikara, a polymorphic entity created from an alien goo found in a meteor. Originally tested to determine if it had commercial use, the ooze was discovered to grow and change when exposed to a sentient organism. Over time, it was learned that the ooze was a symbiotic organism that was evolving to be better suited to the possible host creatures on this planet. Upon beginning human trials, humans learned that the ooze was sentient, and communicated with the host, calling itself the Khrikara, a being that exists to serve. The Khrikara revealed very little about where they came from, only saying that their home planet was destroyed and their creators are presumed dead. The Khrikara that survived clung to space debris, entering a hibernative state until they came in contact with another sentient organism who could become their host. Knowledge of the Khrikara was never revealed to the public. Due to hormonal and physiological differences between men and women, the Khrikara are generally incapable of bonding to a female host, hence why the Guard only allows men to enlist. The Khrikara are a constantly changing species, each one being essentially a blank slate until it is bonded to a host, where it then develops in ways that it believes will best suit the host. How it may change to suit the host varies depending on the host itself. A violent person’s Khrikara may learn from the host’s memories the shapes and functions of various weapons, and change its form to suit the weapons it believes its host most capable of wielding, whereas a host who prefers the simple lifestyle of fishing for a living that is so common to humans nowadays may have a Khrikara who changes shape to forms that a fisherman would find useful, from a fishing rod to a net or other implements used by fisherman. When the host dies, the Khrikara enters a hibernative state and forgets the functions of any of the forms it may have taken for its previous host, reverting to the blank slate it had been previously, preparing to serve a new host. Each Khrikara’s natural form is a viscous dark substance, however they possess the ability to manipulate their shape and coloration to camouflage themselves against their host or disguise themselves as whatever tool the host needs. Often they hide by spreading themselves across the epidermis and matching the skin pigmentation, however as they grow and evolve some become too large to fit over the host’s skin thinly enough to go unnoticed, and disguise themselves as clothing items instead, such as large jackets. The gooey creatures tap into their host’s body nutrients to sustain themselves, which causes the host to require twice as much food to feed themselves and their Khrikara. A Khrikara that forms into a gun does not make bullets, the host must insert a magazine with bullets for the Khrikara to fire, but if the Khrikara takes the form of a bow and arrows, then the arrows can be retrieved to restore the Khrikara’s mass. A Khrikara who takes the form of a melee weapon has the ability to goo through the substance it hits, if the host so desires. The Guard generally employs hosts whose Khrikara are adapted to more adverse scenarios, such as weapon or armor forms. The story follows a woman named Jacqueline. As a child, she dreamed of joining the Global Guard and saving people. When she learns that only men are able to enlist, she is upset, but eventually resigns herself to the fact that she will never be a Guard. Then strap on a little plot armor and throw in a fallen hero passing on his sword cliche, and she becomes the first female Guard, with all the problems that come from being the only female in a formerly male-only position.
its still fairly water world - but so what everything has been done before - it will come down to how you write it
The definition of a plot cliche that I use is “an idea that is so thoroughly overused that it has lost all of its real meaning.” I don’t think this is cliché. “Gender A tries to do thing that only Gender B is allowed to do” gets the closest, but that is just a regular facet of our everyday lives given current (albeit improving) cultural stigmas. This idea doesn’t lose meaning to people because they have to deal with it every single day. I’d say water world is a trope, not a cliche.
It sounds intriguing, and unique enough to not be considered cliche. Just do your best to steer it away from any and all Waterworld similarities. Have you read Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small quartet? It's about the first girl to be allowed to train as a knight and all the issues she goes through. Might give you some ideas. Good luck!
This doesn't make sense to me. If women absolutely can't bond with these things, then sleeping with someone isn't going to make her able to bond with them. I feel a bit too much coincidence in the idea that one and only one woman, who's always wanted to do this, can do it. I feel like I need another reason for it to work for this woman--maybe something as simple as the discovery that bonding is enabled by testosterone OR adrenaline, but nobody knew the adrenaline part until a woman grabbed a weapon in a battle situation?
Agreed. The coincidence is the biggest cliche. Destiny type stuff. But I like the idea that there is a particular factor for success overlooked for centuries that no one tried because of ingrained assumptions / prejudice, paving the way for many women to join the guard.
