on the topic of humans being the intergalactic “hold my beer” species: imagine an alien stepping onto a human starship and seeing a space roomba™ with a knife duct taped onto it, just wandering around the ship
it doesn’t have any special intelligence. it’s just a normal space roomba. there are other space roombas on the ship and they don’t have knives. it’s just this one. knife space roomba has full clearance to every room in the ship. occasionally crew members will be talking and then suddenly swear and clutch their ankle. knife space roomba putters off, leaving them to their mild stab wounds.
“what is the point?” asks the alien as another crew member casually steps over the knife-wielding robot. “is it to test your speed and agility?”
“no it doesn’t really go that fast,” replies the captain.
“does it teach you to stay ever-vigilant?”
“I mean I guess so but that’s more of a side effect.”
“does it weed out the weak? does it protect you from invaders? do repeated stabbings let your species heal more quickly in the future?”
“it doesn’t stab very hard, it gets us more than it gets our enemies, and no, but that sounds cool — someone write that down.”
“but then what is its purpose?”
“I don’t know,” the captain says, leaning down to give the space roomba an affectionate pat. “it just seemed cool”
this is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard but I thought about it for five seconds and realized that if I were, say, a random communications officer onboard this ship and someone taped a knife to a roomba it would take maybe three weeks before even I was inordinately fond of Stabby. I would be proud of Stabby when I met up with my other spacefleet friends for space coffee, I would tell them about the time Stabby got the second mate in the ankle five seconds before the fleet admiral beamed on board and she swore in seven different languages in front of high command.
also by the fourth day Stabby would be in the ship’s log, he’d have little painted-on insignia, people would salute him as he went by, and someone would hook up a twitter account to tweet maniacal laughter and/or a truly terrible knock-knock joke every time he managed to nick someone.
Omg so the ting I typed up might actually happen this is gold
I am suddenly astonished that Stabby isn’t Farscape canon. 1812 was weird enough.
Stabby’s little charging dock would start accruing cuddly toys and commemorative holo-vids of Stabby’s greatest stabs. Its insignia would start off at a fairly low rank, but soon, without anyone every discussing it, everyone would know that Stabby got to take the rank of the highest ranking crew member it stabbed. The ceremony for Flag Admiral Stabby was beautiful. The captain gave a speech.
Details: Six (6) members of a Mercenary/Pirate crew of little renown attempted to infiltrate ship in order to steal equipment and/or personnel.
Prior to being detained they had remained undetected for eight (8) hours and accumulated several high value materials (see attached log), and incapacitated and restrained several crewmen (see attached log) in dock #3, with the intention of using a life boat to exfiltrate.
Just prior to their would-be escape, the boarding party encountered the ship’s mascot. A cleaning unit which had been modified by crew members to mount a traditional Terran melee weapon, as well as an officer’s insignia (having been jokingly given a commission by the Captain the night before). Curious, one picked it up, before realising the mounted weapon had a nickel finish (highly toxic to their species) on the handle, and dropped it in a panic.
As the unit’s anti-impact sensors had been disabled, it immediately tried to right itself on landing. This caused it to flip over and slash the third knee of the boarder who dropped it, prompting the rest of the boarders to flee. In doing so, they tripped over a waste container, causing the unit to “chase” them, as it collected the trail of dust they left.
The security crew were alerted to the boarding party’s presence by an entry on “Sargent Stabby’s Hit List” – an account on an intership microblogging site which automatically logs any injuries caused by the cleaning unit in question – and quickly intercepted them.
Casualties: Four (4) crewmen treated for minor lacerations sustained after detaining boarding party, one (1) captured crewman treated for negative reaction to sedatives used by captors.
Belligerent status: Two (2) members of the enemy boarding party remain in stable condition in sickbay. Three (3) remaining surrendered peacefully and remain in the brig. One (1) refuses to leave the safety of a storage cupboard he went to ground in.
Recommendations/Actions:
All captured guards to undergo debriefing and possible disciplinary action for breaches of security protocol.
Remind all crew members to report missing colleagues immediately.
Retain a guard outside cleaning storage room 87 until the final boarder can be coaxed out and properly detained.
Cleaning unit D4.87 AKA
“Sargent Stabby” has been promoted to Quartermaster, and is now considered the superior officer of all autonomous drones on the ship. All Class #1 drones have been programmed to salute their superior with their effector, should it enter the room while they’re active.
Ok but what about that final bit – all the other space roombas respectfully standing to the side and saluting when Quatermaster Stabby comes past?
Quartermaster Stabby goes on to have many more adventures and many more promotions.
Quartermaster Stabby becomes a famous icon of the human race, proof that humans can and often are unintentionally terrifying, but maybe there actually IS something to their strange attachments to inanimate objects…?
Aliens are now convinced that humans have some weird psychic/aura powers or something. “Object Tamers” they call us. Humans are so amused that they adopt the term for themselves. They love it. They start printing it on bracelets and T-shirts. Aliens can’t tell if this is a joke or a confession.
Through a disturbing number of coincidences like the above, aliens begin to fear Quartermaster Stabby and are legitimately unsure if it has intelligence or not. It doesn’t help that humans refuse to break the joke to explain it to them.
Alien scientists try to explain the strange phenomenon that is Quartermaster Stabby. They cannot. Humans are delighted.
Quartermaster Stabby is eventually promoted to a position of authority over all autonomous drones in the entire human empire. It also escaped the ship once and managed to become the mayor of a small alien city. That city has since begun using the fact as a tourist attraction, and the episode has brought to human attention the fact that Mayor Stabby technically fulfills all of the criteria necessary to become a president or council member. (Minus the sentience.)
Humans are now trying to vote Mayor Stabby into office, using the aliens’ inability to determine its sentience level to their advantage.
They are successful. Counselor Stabby is most universally beloved representative of the human race. (Among humans, anyway. The aliens have mixed reactions, ranging from amusement, to fear, to outrage.)
Counselor Stabby goes on to somehow reveal a corrupt plot among several other counsel members and essentially averts a huge political catastrophe, all because one of the spies dropped her earring and Counselor Stabby ate it. The earring was bugged. Good call, Counselor Stabby.
Every time Counselor Stabby breaks down and has to be repaired, trillions of humans flood its social media accounts with ‘get well’ messages, and many flowers and gifts are sent to the repair bay or to its charging station.
Counselor Stabby has somehow blundered its way into receiving all of the highest honors that can be bestowed by human society. It helps run an empire. It saves lives. It cleans donut crumbs off of the floor without being asked.
All without a single sentient thought.
Counselor Stabby becomes legend.
The humans have started a campaign to use Counselor Stabby as a model to create better bots.
“Why does a human’s consideration for a ‘better bot’ mean more knives, sir?” the young ambassador said, staring at the contraption in front of him.
“ we are unsure of their purpose, we have many reports of these creations protecting their home ships. “ The advisor said also staring at the contraptions many spinning blades.
The residing human walked into the room squealing, quite to loud for the ambassador’s taste, at the contraption.
“ Aren’t you just a spinning bundle of death! “ The human cried out happily? (The ambassador was still unsure of humans deployment of emotions.) The delivery droid, with knife blades above its propellors, bobbed up and down before depositing it’s ‘gift’ (as the human called it) and leaving through the bot-hatch with a frightening scream accompanying it.
Thes humans, they were, well, humans. The ambassador would need to read more on their culture to even remotely understand them.
**STABBY**
*buzzes happily*
Good Ole Stabby
Stabby: Origins
Guys so I made stabby a son, Pokey, want me to post a picture?
omg I’ve been on vacation for a week and just saw this! I wanna see the picture!
Smol but deadly
It’s terrible. I’m in love. Thank you for your great service to all of humanity.
Are the amount of women in the military in the new Star Wars really
unrealistic? I saw a guy complaining about how the movie didn’t explain
why there were so many women in positions of power when I thought this
was unfair. We have Leia, Holdo, and Phasma. Leia is a Princess with a
lot of power and a great reputation— of she can make herself a general
even if she wasn’t good at it. Phasma might be the only high-ranking
woman in the First Order. That leaves Holdo. But is it really that
shocking?
We have way more than that. Even if we restrict ourselves to screen canon, that includes Sabine and Hera from Rebels, Jyn Erso from Rogue One, Ashoka from Clone Wars and Rebels. I’m also skimming over mountains of background characters from the original trilogy who, technically, have names. Even in 1983, the version of the Rebellion on screen had a substantial number of women in their ranks, and was led by Mon Mothma (Caroline Blakiston.) In the original films, Leia Organa was more than a princess. She was a politician in the Senate, a key agent and leader of the rebellion. She smuggled the Death Star plans and got Artoo off the ship at the beginning of A New Hope.
This is without dipping into the old Expanded Universe, which had loads of significant female characters, including Mara Jade. I’m still somewhat baffled that, if Disney was going to salvage anything from the EU, Mara wasn’t on the top of the pile, even ahead of Thrawn. Worth noting that in the Old EU, Leia was the New Republic’s Chief of State.
Important to remember that in almost all of the Star Wars media, women appear semi-consistently at nearly every cross section. There are leaders, support personal, junior officers, pilots, commandos, and soldiers, with a few notable exceptions. For example, I’m not aware of another female Stormtrooper aside from Phasma (outside of EA’s Battlefront games.) That could simply be a personal oversight.
Star Wars hasn’t always been extremely female friendly. There’s always the infamous metal bikini, and some of the stuff with Xizor was more than a little rapey in the old EU. I’m also not inclined to wave this off; it is a problem, and something that needs to be considered in the larger discussion.
However, complaining about fairness is a trap. It tries to derail the overall discussion with irrelevant minutiae. “But, it’s not fair, because it should have been [insert male character who hasn’t appeared in print since 1996 and is probably no longer in canon here] instead of…”
It’s not that there can’t be an intelligent discussion on fairness, it’s just that in this context, the discussion would be pretty damn short: “Is it fair to evaluate the competency of a candidate based on their genitalia?”
This also doesn’t mean that everyone in a position of power is the right person for the job, or even the best qualified. There’s nothing fair about it, but their genitals are irrelevant to that discussion. Someone whining about how “it’s unfair there are so many women in positions of power,” is deliberately conflating these two threads.
So, is the number of women on screen realistic? Maybe. I’d argue that, if anything, it’s still a bit low. Slightly over half of the human population are women, so it’s entirely reasonable to have a setting where your military is pretty evenly split. Is it realistic for women to hold positions of power in a setting where modern day gender discrimination doesn’t exist at all? Yeah.
The person you’re reacting to has no interest in an honest discussion. They’re not shocked, they’re throwing a petulant tantrum, because they see female representation as a zero-sum loss of prestige for themselves. Realistic? No. Fair? No. Shocking? Only in so far as they can milk it. They’re horrified of the idea that they might need to engage with women as human beings, and as a result, they’ve gone to the internet in search of a venue to cry about it, where they hope someone will toss some concessions their way.
Also worth noting, on average, people like your example here will start complaining about, “over-representation,” when the number of female characters exceeds ~30%. Long before you’re actually including a greater than average number of women to your story. Just, something to consider, the next time someone starts crying about how there’s too many women in a story, when more than half of the cast are male.
So, let’s move on to world building: It’s entirely possible that a resistance or other underground organization would include disproportionate female membership. This time with 20th century examples:
During World War II, the French resistance (the Maquis) made extensive use of female operatives for both support and combat roles. This was in part because the French military had been decimated prior to the occupation, but it was also pragmatic, because women would draw less attention from the Nazi occupation.
Similar examples occurred with German Intelligence operations in the United States during WWII, where the vast majority of the adult male population was subject to the draft, and as a result, men were far more conspicuous. This strongly incentivized the use of women as spies.
Another example, this time after World War II, is slightly more ironic. During the Algerian revolution, the rebels made extensive use of female operatives because the occupying French forces were resistant to interact with them, and as a result, they had easier access through, and around, security.
The Maquis are particularly relevant when discussing Star Wars, because there are intentional parallels between the Rebellion and the French combination of surviving military units mixed with and reinforced by civilians with limited combat training, engaging in guerrilla hit and run tactics.
When you’re making your own setting, there’s no reason you should think you need to adhere a specific quota of characters by gender. Except, maybe, to check yourself, and make sure you’re not being biased. Otherwise, yes your character’s gender is an important part of their identity as an individual, but that doesn’t dictate what their jobs can (or can’t) be, unless you’re baking rules like that into your setting. Star Wars doesn’t, and it’s stronger for that.
Diversity is an important part of your media consumption habits. It helps you see the world from new perspectives. Seeing how other people look at the world and respond to it. The guy you found was, quite literally, complaining about being exposed to a perspective he didn’t want to have, because he might accidentally empathize with a member of the opposite sex.
Context: my teacher translated the verb “to grasp with one’s hand” as “to fist” since that’s kinda what it literally means, but you can’t translate it like that into English because “to fist” means something ENTIRELY different, but she doesn’t know that.
So she was explaining how they use the verb to describe the angel of death taking your soul — he rips your soul out of you with his fist. Now that’s pretty damn metal, but she said word for word “the angel of death fists you, and then you die” which is the single most terrifying and powerful sentence to ever grace my ears
FantasyBoudicca 