"It was so obvious! How could they have missed it! This story makes no fucking sense!"
I don't know. A couple weeks ago our system was down at the store I worked at so we could only accept cash. We had signs plastered all over the front door. Our greeter was telling each customer as they came in. We had signs throughout the store. We had signs where customers went to get into line at the various registers. We were periodically making announcements over the PA system...
and still about 40% of customers made it all to the register with 'no way of knowing' the store was only able to accept cash. 🙃
It's The Little Things (That Make the World Feel Lived In)
Nothing in life is ever perfect. There are little quirks that make our day-to-day lives just a little more unique. So today I ask you, what's a little janky in your characters' lives?
Do they live in an old house where no one can use running water if someone else is in the shower? Is one of the doorknobs on one of the doors missing so they jury-rigged a solution? Did they live on the same street as the school and therefore have a habit of never trying to leave the house at the same time school is let out?
I confess two of those are from my own life. The other is from that of a family friend. Other such things could be the fact that we can't use the microwave if the coffee maker's heater is running because it'll trip the breaker.
My uncle had a car where he could not use the key on the driver's door or else it'd set off the alarm. (A shady mechanic (also my uncle) tried to do some electrical bypass and that was one of the side effects.)
It also doesn't have to be something that affects everyone. Maybe the character refuses to use a specific dish in the cabinet because every time they've used it in the past something 'bad' happened and therefore they think the dish is bad luck. Maybe there's a chair in the house that they hate the feel of, so they never sit in it.
Maybe one of the dining room chairs is known as the 'rickety' one. Maybe there's a spot in the yard/house that always attracts the big scary bugs.
Of course these are all examples from real life. My life or the lives of people I know. It's not hard to put a fantastical spin on it though.
Maybe there's a control panel that's a bit glitchier than the others. A bag that the character refuses to use because it makes everything they gather smell like this one specific herb that they hate.
So on, and so forth. These little things just add a bit more life to a world. A touch of history to the objects that surround your characters.
Honestly you would think I'd be better about writing characters that wear glasses. Considering I wear glasses. Instead, I typically forget about the glasses.
Because I am the type of person who will step into the shower and realize only once droplets have landed on the lenses that whoops, I forgot to take my glasses off.
Part of expanding the Star Fox world for my series involved diving into some of the different technologies they would have. Including the oddly storied food synthesizer.
This is basically the replicator from Star Trek. You make a request for any kind of food/beverage, it recreates it. By Cornerian Federation regulation all vessels that travel between planets are required to be equipped with at least one.
I also took a bit of inspiration from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Which is wild considering I never actually watched the movie. I just learned a lot about it through osmosis because my little sister would play the movie constantly) in that the food synthesizer uses water as its basis. It uses other elements and processes to create the food item in question, but water is essential.
Synth food, as it's called, is an imitation. It still has nutritional value, but it is generally considered not as good as the 'real thing'. Many interstellar vessels with crews that spend the majority of time out in space will establish a garden to grow fresh food even if the ship is equipped with perfectly functional food synthesizers.
Lack of true flavor is not the only issue synth food faces, however. There are some who have turned out to have an intolerance to synth food. Why this happens - what it is in the synth food the people are intolerant to exactly - is still being worked out. In fact, synth food intolerance is a relatively unknown condition still, due to its rarity.
Fortunately, it's generally not a serious condition. Provided the person has an alternative to synth food - another reason for interstellar ships to have gardens for fresh food as well as a good stock of non-perishable food.
The Great Fox, of course, does have a food synthesizer per Cornerian Federation regulations. It's in the corner of the galley/kitchen and mostly goes unused. Partially because Great Fox is equipped with a garden and keeps 'real food' in stock at all times. Partially because Peppy hates it and would rather cook for everyone than have the boys rely on that infernal contraption. (Falco is also a bit of a food snob and only eats 'the real stuff'.)
That's a brief overview of the food synthesizer. This post is getting a little long. So, I'm going to put its history and key role in a character's story (which might be spoilers for the series), below the cut for those who are interested.
The food synthesizer is a relatively recent invention. Being created and circulated - then becoming required in interstellar ships by regulation - during the childhoods of many of the older characters. Such as Peppy, James, and Beltino.
However, there is a dark side to the synthesizer's history that has largely been forgotten/swept under the rug. One of the first prototypes of the food synthesizer ended up poisoning the volunteers that tried it. The incident resulted in fifty casualties. Among them, Marnie and Lewis Oikonny - Andross' adoptive parents.
Remember how in the SNES comics Andross hated Corneria because his adoptive parents were killed in a military experiment? Yeah, that's how I worked that into Star Fox Restored.
Yet three years after, the refined and now perfectly safe food synthesizer was put on the market. Andross was furious.
Then came the incident with Project Glados some years later. The unstable zypher drive exploded and resulted in civilian deaths. The council shut the project down.
And yet, when the food synthesizer killed people, it was a 'regrettable accident' and 'science must continue to move forward'. But Project Glados was 'too dangerous' and 'must be shut down'.
That was the final straw for Andross. When he decided, he was going to form an empire that would take Corneria down. (There's more here, but I'm not going to spoil everything.)
Random Facts About the Planets in Star Fox Restored:
Eventually I'll make posts going into the details of each planet, their own government, etc. but for now, here's some random fun facts:
Macbeth is the only planet that currently has a monarchy.
Katina only just recently gained enough of a population to have a representative on the Council.
The majority of Aquas' population lives in underwater cities.
Venom was once the core home of a system-spanning civilization. What became of them when Venom became uninhabitable is unknown.
Ruins of the ancient civilization are mostly found on Venom, Titania, Aquas, and Fortuna. The correlation between the ancients having a strong presence and the planet being difficult to inhabit has been noted.
Evidence has been found on Fortuna to suggest that it would have become home to a civilization of dinosaurs. Scientists still do not know what caused the halt of the dinosaurs' evolution and their subsequent extinction - or perhaps, disappearance?
Sauria is a planet from a neighboring solar system that brushes against the edge of Lylat once every eight years. Its close proximity lasts about eleven cornerian months.
Unlike Harriet, Bernard's development isn't that storied. I knew I was going to need another member of Star Wolf for the series. The Star Fox team is going to end up with seven members total, Star Wolf is going to need some additional members to make up the difference.
Rivals Arise was actually written after War's End. While writing it I knew I couldn't mess with Pigma's reveal, but I still needed Star Wolf to be a four member team. So enter Bernard Drakoon.
He's a bearded dragon, because I saw the bearded dragon in A Fox in Space and went... 'ooh that looks cool!'. Also, it was a type of lizard we hadn't seen in any official media. It also worked with venomians seemingly being either lizards or monkeys.
I decided that Bernard would be an older character - in the same age bracket as Peppy, James, Pigma, and so on - and that he would be Andrew's bodyguard. This is why we meet him along with Andrew in Rivals Arise, and how he ended up on the Star Wolf team to begin with.
Now, the way it works with Star Wolf and Star Fox is that they are rival teams and each member has a counterpart. Wolf and Fox, Leon and Falco, so on and so forth. When Krystal was added to the team, Star Wolf got Panther.
Bernard was created to be the 'rival' of a Star Fox member. However, he is not Harriet's rival. Given she is a support member and will very rarely be seen in an arwing, I don't think Harriet will have a Star Wolf rival. (Also Star Wolf has a doctor in the form of Leon, who studied medicine in order to be a more efficient assassin. He has absolute shit bedside manner, but he can keep his teammates from dying... if he feels like it.)
This is why Bernard is an older character. Also why he is from Papetoon - not only from Papetoon but the exact same village James was from.
Funnily enough, he won't be the last member of Ta'ton we meet. There is one more character who left that village and made it to the stars. One who will be important later in the series.
But wait, isn't Bernard dead? Nope. He won't be seen again for a while, but he still lives. Something he has in common with his rival.
