*spits blood* Round two!

The following rant is in regard to some of my views on what I call ‘Space Epics’ stories that have lots of interesting alien races that clash amongst the stars in epic battles such as Warhammer 40k or Star Wars. My series falls into that category. Some of the following will derail into fantasy because it’s a mixture of the two, a “Sci-fi Fantasy Space Epic” or SfFSE… let’s just leave it at Space Epic.

Destroy the overdone.

I begin with my biggest issue with Space Epics and just Sci-fi in general, Humans. There has never been a more overdone race than Humans; they’re abundant in both Sci-fi and Fantasy. It’s almost as if writers think they’re required for a fictional story… but they’re not. I had Humans in my series once because I used to follow the ‘established code’ as most do before finding their own path. The problem I ran into was, they don’t fit and they’re hard to make fit. Humans carry a lot of baggage with their history and you have to decide where to break off the timeline and say ‘here’ is where they developed starships and battle suits and space travel, etc. Then there’s the government, did the world eventually unite or are there separated factions and… blah. I scrapped them and I’m glad I did. Humans put in such settings feel more alien than the aliens do. And which Humans are we talking about, the ‘actual’ Humans with the look and history or a race that’s called ‘Human’ but doesn’t have anything to do with actual humanity? And why exactly would you want the latter? Why do creators add Humans to fill a race slot in their stories that specifically attract viewers for the alien aspect… and then make the main characters Human?!

“Oh, but we have alien sidekicks.” Well that fixes everything. Humans have no powers!! Giving them powers makes them not Human! They can’t compete with races like the Psions that can telekinetically snap every bone in your body or the Chians that can crush tanks with their strength alone, or the Haluur who can shoot down frigates with their energy. And isn’t it interesting that Humans are always portrayed as ‘balanced’ without any major strengths or weaknesses, any unique racial traits other than “they can aspire to be whatever they put their mind to.” Well that’s awesome, that’s just great, because no other race can do that. Thanks. Thanks for making one of the widest spread and universe shaping races a generic powerless boring race like Humans.

No, why would I want to see Plo Koon fight? Just give me more Obi-Wan. Good thing the only real screen time he got was when he was being blown up. That’ll teach him for being an interesting alien race in a Human centered universe, good one Lucas.

Race diversity.

When aiming to create a ‘new’ property, the universal lore is often to some degree original in fantasy settings, writers can usually get a cool world going. And then they burn all that originality away by adding Elves and Orcs and Goblins… really? You really want yet another world with all those races and creatures? Why? What’s so hard about creating an original race? Get your hands out of Tolkien’s bag of critters already, make something new! Else your story and world that you love and have poured so much time into isn’t going to stand out, it’s just another clone. It’s just another “WoW”, a horrible adaptation of what has been done.

I’ve looked through countless galleries on dA and other sites and there’s a lot of creative concept art out there race wise. There’s no excuse to reuse old races. I think that’s one of the reasons people turn to sci-fi, unless its 40k because they have Elves and Orks and whatnot; though the 40k Orks are definitely my favorite of the greenskin variety. 40k is also heavily focused on Humans, look at all the sub armies of Humans compared to the other alien races. But back on subject, if you can’t seem to create an original race then maybe you should hire a writer. Star Wars has a lot of great alien races (and a lot of dumb ones) Yuuzahn Vong, Kel Dor… even Wookies are cool. That’s what makes the series interesting aside from the Jedi and the force. Replace those unique races with Tolkien clones (hah, clones!) and is it still as interesting?

So even if this series never sees the light of day at least my conscience will be clear for ‘trying’ to make a completely original sci-fi universe. I know these views are shared by others and that most could care less, but if people keep supporting uninspired properties then don’t expect to see something new down the pipeline. Feel free to challenge anything I posted above.

A tree without wind will die.

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Updates,

Things have been going kind of slow as of late, a shortage of cash means less to spend on artists. Added a few new concepts awhile back, the Eefin Thirster and Gomm concepts. I’ve also been (for a good while now) thinking of changing the title for my series, Haven has been used in so many properties, just wiki Haven and you’ll see what I’m talking about. So yeah, I think I’ll end up changing the name and I have a good one in mind that hasn’t really been used. I guess you can call that a tease because I’m not revealing it now.

Also once again, thanks to everyone who took time to comment/favorite art.

More to come, thanks for visiting!

~Franklin