Kevin's Watch

Which character did you feel was most pointlee. I thought it was that pilot who goes after Trumpet, er I think It's called Freelaunch. The Captain of that was just a loser.

Most unnecessary character? Easy: Blaine Manse, the Member for Betelgeuse Primary. About the only thing she does is get a walk-on at various GCES meetings, at which it's revealed that her chief interest in life is making sexual conquests. So she wants to be Bill Clinton without the political skills. We needed to know this?

I wrote Free Lunch out of my synopsis when I was planning a film trilogy of The Gap, but that was just for time limitations. Actually, I found the captain rather likable. He was reliable and good at his job, and took care of his crew like family. It wasn't his fault Hashi overstepped his bounds on that one job assignment.

There were a lot of politicos and their aides who could have disappeared and not even left a hole in the air. Blaine Manse was the most obviously obnoxious of the nonentities. But who was Tel Burnish, for heaven's sake?

Joy wrote:I wrote Free Lunch out of my synopsis when I was planning a film trilogy of The Gap, ...

I would LOVE to read your synopsis....any chance of that?

Deeply regret, that synopsis was only in my head, not written down. Too big a project for me.

Variol Farseer wrote:Most unnecessary character? Easy: Blaine Manse, the Member for Betelgeuse Primary. About the only thing she does is get a walk-on at various GCES meetings, at which it's revealed that her chief interest in life is making sexual conquests. So she wants to be Bill Clinton without the political skills. We needed to know this?

Well, SRD wanted to create some couleur locale... it would be rather bland if Hashi and all the other just faced a nameless and faceless mass at the meetings.
Free Lunch played a critical role in the swarm when she engaged Soar which allowed Trumpet to escape.

amanibhavam wrote:Well, SRD wanted to create some couleur locale... it would be rather bland if Hashi and all the other just faced a nameless and faceless mass at the meetings.

amanibhavam wrote:Free Lunch played a critical role in the swarm when she engaged Soar which allowed Trumpet to escape.

True on both points. In fact, finding a way to create the same effect in the asteroid swarm with fewer ships is one of the reasons I stopped working on it. Now I think about it, maybe Soar could be suddenly distracted by a huge asteroid hurtling at her?

Then there is no singularity grenade, and it is an important element in the story.

Variol Farseer wrote:So she wants to be Bill Clinton without the political skills.

What political skills? Did I miss something?

amanibhavam wrote:Then there is no singularity grenade, and it is an important element in the story.

There were two ships in the area at the time, Free Lunch and Soar, though Angus didn't know that. I'd hate to think Angus could miss Soar if he aimed a singularity grenade at her, though. Anyway, it's not an idea I'm wedded to. I'm perfectly happy to let Darryn and his crew and Free Lunch stay in the picture. Since I'm not the one having to make The Gap fit into 9 hours. <g>

The main problem I had with leaving out Free Lunch is what Hashi's transactions with her showed us about Hashi. Very illuminating indeed. It could be left out of a movie, because I think it would be near impossible to make an audience understand Hashi's moral conflict there, when his thinking has so little in common with the majority of movie-goers. Harder still to make them care.

dAN doubted Farseer:

What political skills? Did I miss something?

Heck with Clinton's morals, he decreased US personal bankruptcies by roughly 80% in a few months. The only reason his opponents went after his personal life is, he compromised so well that his government policies made voters of both parties happy. They had nothing else to attack him with. (As his worried political manager predicted would happen. ) So many cheers for party politics.

Fully aware that I'm going off topic, pulling in my horns,

Variol Farseer wrote:Most unnecessary character? Easy: Blaine Manse, the Member for Betelgeuse Primary. About the only thing she does is get a walk-on at various GCES meetings, at which it's revealed that her chief interest in life is making sexual conquests. So she wants to be Bill Clinton without the political skills. We needed to know this?

I dunno. Blaine Manse (Betelguise Primary), Tel Burnish (Valdor Industrial), and Punjat Silat (Combined Asian Islands and Peninsulas) were important in that they joined Captain Vertigus to become the resistance to Holt Fasner within the GCES. Without this resistance, the GCES scenes would have been absolutely useless. The fact that people thought that Blaine only cared about sex when she didn't is important as it makes people like Fasner and Fane overlook and ignore her, and that makes her dangerous. It was also used to point out the fact that Koina Hannish was far better at her job than Godsen Frik ever was. I thought that the most un-needed character was possibly Sen Abdullah. All he did was give his permission for Maxim Igensard to speak of his behalf, and Igensard could have been given the right to speak anyway.

Sum sui generis
Vs

The bloke who scratches his chest, and his ship.

Liete Carregio. The. Most. Useless. Character. Ever.

And Alba. Parmute, was it?U. S. E. L. E. S. S.

Give Liete Corregio a break, ok? She inspired SRD to some of my all-time favorite writing.

Hmmm...it's been too long since I've read the Gap...can someone remind me who Liete was?

Someone started a game here once I think getting us all to try to name all the staff of Captain's Fancy and their respective roles/posts, along with whether they were on first, second or third watch. Liete was amongst them, I'm pretty sure.

And the attempt begins on page 2 of kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=21&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15, where the following was posted (and probably added to by later posts) :

robo wrote:O.K. This is what I got:

COMMAND
1. Nick Succorso
2. Mikka Vasacsk
3. Liete Corregio

SCAN
1. Carmel
2. Arkenhill
3. Allum

COMMUNICATIONS
1. Lind
2. Scorz
3. ?

TARG/WEAPONS
1. Malda Verone
2. Karster
3. Simper

HELM
1. ?
2. Ransum
3. Pastille

DATA
1. Orn Vorbuld
2. Sib Mackern
3. Alba Parmute

ENGINEERING
1. Vector Shaheed
2. Pup


It's interesting that first helm is mentioned many times and even does
stuff but is never named.

Edit: found Arkenhill early in book 3.

Liete was the Captain's Fancy watch commander who made the ultimate sacrifice to save Nick, just before Billingate blew up.

right, thanks