 Well, if your mask works, then why do I have to- Okay, fine. Fine. Fine. Look. I'm putting it on. Military sci-fi is a pretty simple genre when you get down to it. It's basically just an excuse to watch manly men fight other manly men with futuristic weaponry. Sometimes you can substitute a group of manly men for a group of insect aliens or lizard people. The technology level can vary anywhere from barely above modern weaponry to full-on space battles across the galaxy. That's not the important part. The battles are. Military sci-fi started several decades ago when soldiers returning home from World War II designated Robert Heinlein as the man who gets to speak for all of them. He decided that he needed to invent a new genre of writing to show off how cool and epic war is in order to convince more people to utilize it as a means of political leverage. This gave birth to titles like Starship Troopers, Honor Harrington, The Lost Fleet, Arrow Manga Sensei, and other stuff that your dad likes to read. This has spread outside the realm of books as well to include things like movies and video games. The modern Call of Duty series is arguably military sci-fi. Unlike other genres with more complex storylines and world-building that leads into the conflict, military sci-fi exists solely to show off cool battles. Okay, I'm not- I'm not doing this anymore. All right. I had it on. You're just gonna have to deal with it the rest. Yeah? Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh. Context and perspective are unneeded. In fact, throw them out the window entirely. The conflict must exist purely in a vacuum. Eh, get it? Vacuum? Cuz like it's in- it's in space. I'm hilarious. Despite this, there are still some rules you need to follow if you want to make any of the oodles of cash that military sci-fi will guarantee you. And so that's why I've made this helpful guide to teach all of you the basics of doing the thing. Simply follow my rules and whatever you crap out will be guaranteed to make money. Number one, rules are stupid. Ignore them at the first opportunity. Many of you might be under the impression that the military is an organization of discipline, procedure, and strict hierarchies. I'm here to tell you that that is false. If anyone tells you otherwise, they're filthy liars. The only things you learn in basic training are how to shoot and how to stab communists, unless you're from one of those countries that aren't America, in which case you learn how to stab good, God-fearing Americans. There's no further training after basic either, which means you have to squeeze in how to do stuff like driving tanks, flying planes, even piloting spaceships or mechs depending on the technology level of the setting. Specialization is a myth. Everyone can do everything. Under normal circumstances, the average soldiers are required to follow the orders of those above them, and that goes all the way up to the top. However, this only implies until those lower on the hierarchy feel that those in charge are incompetent, then they can just do whatever they want. Make sure your work reflects this. The protagonist of the story, whatever their rank at the start, needs to break at least one order from those higher up at some point. When the fighting gets heavy, maybe the general will give them some terrible advice, like telling them to retreat instead of fighting to the last man. If they're high up in the command structure themselves, then they should go against what the politicians tell them to. What good are they anyways? All they want is to bring the conflict to a swift end. They forget that killing people is desirable for its own end. If they're told to avoid attacking a certain region to avoid dragging a neutral party into the war, they need to remind those pussies who's in charge by bombing the shit out of neutral territory. It works great for Douglas MacArthur. The exact commands they don't follow are unimportant, only that it leads to them saving the day. After all, it's important to always believe that you're the correct one and no one else could ever know better than you. And nothing bad has ever come from the military doing whatever it wanted instead of acting as a tool of the state. Number two, the protagonist must run everything. Whether the main character starts off in charge or they get there over the course of the story, they need to be in charge of the good guy armies eventually. You might think that military sci-fi would be a good opportunity to show war from the perspective of a grunt on the front lines, someone who has little real power to affect the outcome of things. You might think that this would be a good way to showcase the horrors of war and how society can feel like an overwhelming, monstrous force that no individual has any real power over, not even those at the top, but no, it's pure power fantasy. And like any good power fantasy, your hero has to be a perfect, implacable Superman figure with no flaws of any sort. All other characters should only be there to do what they say, get in the way so the hero can look cool, or just stare in awe of them. Your character might start off as a low-level soldier and they might be at the top of the command structure to begin with. The important part is they have to be in control by the end in order to fit in with the power fantasy. Whatever their level of education, the hero must be a military genius who can predict the enemy's actions with unerring accuracy. They should never have their plans blow up in their face or have to think on their feet when something unexpected happens. Genius doesn't mean you learn about a subject faster than the average person, it means you're born with the information already inside of your head. If you don't feel like researching military theory or crafting a world with clear rules so that you can tell how technology would affect warfare, then no need. All you have to do is have the good guys hide while the villains charge into a trap. That won't get old quick. But your hero can't be one of those armchair generals who stays far out of the way so he can properly command without the possibility of being taken out of commission and throwing his side into chaos. It's best for him to be a mech pilot or something so that he can go out and kill those lizard communists like a man. No, I'm not, I'm not redoing it. Keep going. Remember, specialization is a myth. Leadership equals badassery. Number three, there are only six character archetypes that the cast can fit into. When writing in any genre, there are a number of roles that characters can fill and you need to always stick to those without any deviation whatsoever. Other than the perfect protagonist, there's the feckless evil leader of the villains who occasionally overrides the plans of his more competent lackeys, the smarter lieutenant who might be sympathetic to the heroes, a politician on the good guy's side who gets in the way, a regular soldier, a special forces soldier who may or may not have genetic modifications, a pilot of some sort of special future vehicle, and some sort of artificial intelligence. All characters can only be some variation on those six stereotypes. If you ever feel like deviating, please take the nearest glass object and hit yourself over the head with it until it breaks. For that matter, there's no girls allowed, unless she's also the person in charge of the good guy army. In that case, make sure she acts exactly like all the men around her. As we all know, that's the only way women can be successful. Number four, politics is dumb. Ignore it. War and politics have nothing to do with one another. I mean, look at who declares them. Presidents, prime ministers, kings, parliaments? Nothing political there. The reasons war starts are completely apolitical. One side is evil and wants to rule over everything so they go off to wipe out anyone who stands in their way. The other side is good and wants to rule over everything so they go off to wipe out anyone who stands in their way. Totally different. There's never any concrete reasons to fight, like needing resources, trying to stimulate the economy, tensions between various factions boiling over, or distracting from problems on the home front by turning the attention of your citizens outward. Nor are there complex ideological reasons about who should run things and how that would lead to conflict. The bad guys are evil, and if you question that, we're going to have to re-educate you before you infect your neighbors with subversive thoughts. There might be a politician character who tries to do something crazy, like bring the fighting to an end without further bloodshed, but he has to be looked down upon to understand what it takes to win. The protagonist definitely understands what it takes to run a massive space empire properly, though. The good guys are either America or America in space. Even if the government is a holy fictional one, it should still take its structure from the American one because there's no improving perfection. That goes for the economy, too. Technology will never change anything about the way money works or what sort of careers are available to your average person. When the Cold War ended, history ended as well, and now everything is going to be great forever. If you feel the need to include a political discussion or two, make sure that the views of your protagonist are the standard of the setting, and that other points of view are never sincerely entertained. Anyone who disagrees with him must be shown to be evil, stupid, incompetent, or selfish by the end in order to discredit their entire ideology. Remember that political views are just like accents. Yours is the standard, and any deviation from that is rocking the boat. Shut down that rabble-rousing ASAP. The important part is that the bad guys are both ugly and evil without ever really making any points. That's how real wars start, because the good guys get attacked out of nowhere by the bad guys. Look at World War One. Wait, who are the good guys there? Um, whoever America sided with, I guess. The important part is that we killed those filthy Kami Russians. What's that? We were on the same side? In both wars. Wow, you learn something new every day. Number five. Descriptive prose? How about you suck my dick? In the realm of written fiction, there aren't any illustrations, audio, or video to supplement the experience. Everything comes from the way it's described in words. With that said, military sci-fi is here to strip away all that pussy shit and get to the real meat of the story, which are the parts where things go boom. And just like meat, it should be the only part of every meal. Never describe anything about anything except for the weapons. Ships, guns, bombs, and power armor should get pages of explanation about how they work and what they look like. The characters shouldn't even get a hair color. It would distract from how they're all interchangeable. Is your protagonist tall? Skinny? Black? White? Who cares? It's not like we need information to craft the scene in our minds. Except for the awkward sex scenes, of course. Those are crucial. They're very crucial. When the fighting begins, be sure to take one of two paths. Either switch the POV around between as many characters as possible, following pilots, soldiers, commanders, civilians caught in the crossfire. We have to show what all of them are doing and thinking, even if each only gets a single paragraph. Don't worry, the jumping around will not be confusing. That, or show the whole thing from the point of view of the commander, e.g. the protagonist. That way the fighting will be far away and we don't see any of it and only hear about it secondhand. That way it's like watching somebody play a board game rather than an intense matter of life and death. Occasionally, you should throw in a passage or two about a different subject you're passionate about. Maybe you're a nerve about international banking, or the way work drives might work, or woodworking. The subject itself isn't important. Only the audience members wondering where this came from and why it's here. The parts dealing with this should be as long and as in-depth as possible, to the point where your readers will either skip it or get bored and read something else. Forget about them. We don't want quitters here. And that's all that should be described here. Action. The way missiles and lasers fly through space is crucial, if not the only thing. Some will say action is meaningless if the audience doesn't care about the outcome. Those people are dumb. Number six. War crimes aren't real. Ever since wars began, those who fight them have set up rules and taboos about what sort of wartime conduct is acceptable. The basic thought process was that you shouldn't be too cruel or harsh when you win because one day you might lose and you wouldn't want to be treated that way. And as a general rule, war has gotten more civilized since you can actually be punished for breaking certain laws. But that's just an example of how society has gotten far softer than the romanticized vision of the past I made up in my head. The only ones who think rules apply in war are peace-loving hippies who don't have what it takes to win. If you want to show off how your heroes are not only smart but willing to do whatever it takes to win, then have them break a few of those pussy rules. Want to scare civilians into submission? Just kill a bunch of them from orbit. Want to avoid the cost of feeding a bunch of prisoners? Just execute them all. Unless you want to test your chemical or biological weapons, then feel free to use them as guinea pigs. If a particular race or ethnic group is giving your heroes a bunch of trouble, then they should feel free to ju- But remember, if the bad guys do the same thing, it's an act of irredeemable evil. Why is it different? Because we're the good guys and they're the bad guys, duh. Our actions don't determine whether we're good or bad, only the motivations behind them. So long as you can justify bombing that children's hospital, it's a-okay. And if one of your super soldiers ever gets caught murdering prisoners and shooting at random civilians, you should pardon him. That way your enemies will be scared and totally not even angrier than before. Number seven, tactics and strategy are the same thing. Some people will tell you that tactics are the way you win an individual battle while strategy is how you win the war. Those people are wrong. All wars are is a series of battles, and whoever wins more battles wins the war. Don't worry about things like trade routes, political concerns, or winning popular support. All you have to do is kill more of the other side. Nothing else matters. Winning individual battles is guaranteed to win you the overall war. No, just go- Winning individual battles is guaranteed to win you the overall- Overall- Come on. Just ask Hannibal Barca, or Charles XII. The only thing you need to worry about is how your protagonist will ambush the villains this time. Because remember, that's all that fighting is. Ambushing. No matter how many times you do it, the enemy will continue to rush straight into whatever trap you lay. After all, if they were smart, they wouldn't be bad guys, and only bad guys want to fight us. What's that? There's more to battles than that? It's impossible to hide in space? You know what? You write the fucking script then. The goal of all battles is not to capture important locations or put your side into a favorable negotiating position. The goal is to kill as many of the enemy as possible. Once all the bad guys are dead, you win, because as we all know, bad guys never get spooked into surrendering. Number eight. Weapons manufacturing and development are super easy. Think about how long it took to go from having spears to having modern guns. With that in mind, your military sci-fi should showcase extremely fast technological advancements. It's totally normal for a country's armed forces to go from being armed with muskets and horses to assault rifles and tanks over the course of a few years. Or the space equivalent, which I guess would be having clunky Gundam ripoffs to having sleek and powerful Gundam ripoffs. And every commander should immediately understand how to effectively utilize all this new technology. That way, when the heroes get in a bind, you can write them out easier. That's immensely satisfying. In addition, never worry about how these weapons are manufactured. That's unimportant. No one should ever try to cripple their opponents by destroying their industrial base or restrict their access to needed materials. Like I said in number seven, battles only. Wait, these two are similar. Don't you- should we combine these last two into something? And that's all the advice I have to give. Some of you might want to criticize me and say I don't get war, but remember, I skimmed a few Wikipedia articles from my education and I'm a proud Vietnam veteran. Anyone who claims otherwise is a liar. In addition, I'm the foremost expert on writing military science fiction you can tell from all the bestsellers I've written. Some others might even claim that the art of making something entertaining and the art of making something realistic are different. They're not. If you're one of those people, fuck you. Arts and entertainment have objective quality. It's not a matter of opinion. And because I'm someone with an audience who can get my thoughts across in a semi-coherent manner, everything I say is objective. If you disagree, you're stupid and deserve to have my fans harass you. Now subscribe to my channel for more advice on every- just- Now subscribe to my channel for more advice on military sci-fi. You guys are the best. Let me tell ya. Anyways, thanks for watching this far. Please like the video, comment on it, and subscribe if you haven't already. And check out my channel for more of these. Bye.