Originally posted by mikhael:
I want my Shivans to be complex, powerful and disturbingly familiar. I want them to be so human that I identify with them a little, even whilst they drop out of the inkyblack and rip my wingmen to shreds. Villains are always better when you can see the good bits about them and still see them do horrible evil things anyway.
Yeah, I can see what you mean. Like the quote "The most dangerous man, is the man who believes he's doing the right thing."
But you've reminded me of that tv series that was on a couple of years ago, called Space: Above and Beyond. Actually, come to think of it, the plot in that series is really quite similar to the FS plot. For those who have not seen Above and Beyond, the plot in a nut shell is this:
A deep human colony is attacked by an alien threat. Soon afterwards, the attacking alien force heads towards Earth, and an all scale war breaks out between the humans and the "chigs"(aliens). Yada yada yada, a bunch of recruits join the army, learn how to fly in hammerhead fighters (damn cool, tried to start a campaign on FS on it, but had little support. Still have a couple of ship renders though) and take on the chigs. Actually, many episodes are done as if they were ripped out of a game, lots of briefings, detail instruction, and then kickass space battles. Ofcourse they had other developments in the series, but the dogfighting had to be the best.
http://www.alphacompany.com/images/kschig5.jpg As you can see these Chigs are covered in armour from head to toe, so you're only left with you're imagination as to what lay inside. Also, very little, is known about them, social wise and biology wise. HOWEVER, in the end of the season a ground braking discovery is made. First, the Chigs did not
attack. They deffended themselves, because the planets that were being colonised were all ready inhabited by Chigs, and Earth Intelligence knew this, yet said nothing. Second, the Chigs happened to be very similar to humans after all, having the same genetic makeup as a human(I forgot why). Third, you get to see what one looks it, kinda ugly, but nothing like you'd expect.
Before, when you didn't know what they were like, you knew them to only be evil and didn't mind seeing them getting shot to hell... But after this event, it became clear who and what they were, and most importantly Why they were doing the things they did.
Anyway, we discover that the Chigs are not evil, which is not the case with Shivans, I think. But I understand what you mean, if they are like us, and WE know what WE can do, yeah, I'd be running scared. But I dunno, I like to think that we are still better than them.
