#freelancer project

Its appears to be a plot-driven show, because our main characters have no real stakes, or the stakes are ultimately impersonal.

Normally in a story, it can get boring when a character is just reacting to events rather than participating. But that’s the thing about comedy, comedy doesn’t necessarily have to be funny, it just has to be light hearted, and comedy breaks the rules.

Its plot-driven in a way where the very plot of the show gets fucking annoyed that its main characters don’t have personal stakes or drives. It tries, repeatedly, to get the characters invested, and then they don’t. It is, in a sense, a Comedy of Errors.

Its plot-driven because our Main Characters are technically Side-Characters to a story that isn’t theirs. In fact, one of the most arc’d questions is literally asking, “What the fuck are we here for?”

The Freelancer Drama is the Sci-Military plot you would expect out of a major films series-- Red vs Blue is just typical military stories. Freelancers play the idea of the super soldier badass from films, and Red vs Blue is just real-world military stories, with all the idiocy, the bizarre commands, the wondering what the fuck are you doing and what the fuck were you thinking.

The Freelancer stuff is basically Halo meets Mass Effect, with galaxy ending stakes and weird powers and weapons. Red vs Blue is MASH, being a lighter end of what can be summed up as “Space Vietnam War”.

Even Church, the closest we have to a main character in the cast, has this dynamic-- real-world side, he’s a highly traumatized asshole who struggles with apathy and self-worth, which tends to be more real than naught-- but epic-plot side, he’s just the background MacGuffin you hear about, but only shows up about 2/3′s of the Movie in when most of the important shit is done and then he dies because he’s not important anymore.

So when the plot comes poking, Our Main characters (The side-characters, the typical campfire story grunts) ultimately tell it to fuck off half the time.  RvB looks you straight in the eye, and basically asks “Are you seeing this shit? That’s kinda fucked up, man.”

Meanwhile, the Freelancer drama is a bunch of unique characters that could all fit the Hero role of an epic space drama, with all their personal stakes, all the plot triggers going on and how they actively affect the world around them...

... and it sucks. Turns out, being a self-centered individual with super armor powers who is trying to get what they want at all times, like a typical story-character in name any movie / book / show, is absolutely fucking Miserable and Destructive. They’re the deconstruction of Main Characters, where each person is a Main Character who holds their own focus the plot-- and most of them die in the end to needless dramatic nonsense, trying to compete to be that Main Character at all times, to a severe “Narrator” (The Director).

And ultimately, it could’ve all been resolved with everybody living, if they hadn’t given that much of a shit.

Dropped the character-arc and just, sit down and talk. React to shit, you don’t have to be that important.

There’s very few times that our man RvB Cast, the Blood Gulch Crew, flips the switch from Reaction to Action. And it usually means, if ts the loss of a Squadmate.

The Galaxy is too damn big, and they’re a tiny group on the front lines, its impossible to care about every little thing and its impossible to believe that one small odd circumstance or one overly dramatic and angsty super-soldier can end everything, but you can at least ensure the bastard next to you gets to live to see the next planet-rise. Because that’s kind of a fucked up thing to let happen.

And that...

... is where the real Character Drive is. Its based on real-world like characters, people you would see or meet randomly and they’re always “That One Guy”. Any personal stakes are purely their own, and not really any of the plot’s damn business. Frankly you’re there to just do a job and hopefully not die, because real people don’t normally put their goals so grandiose.

Grif just wants comfort and doesn’t bother pushing himself to any lengths if there’s no point, Simmons wants to be appreciated for his intellect and be supported under pressure, Donut wants to be expressive after a life time of repression, Sarge wants purpose any purpose, Tucker wants physical comforts but he has no social skills, Caboose wants to be happy, Doc wants to help people in general, and Church is just looking for a decent enough change where he’s not in the pit he is now.

And the “Plot” is annoyed, because it views these things as unimportant. It wants to push, shove, drag kicking and screaming, until the characters do what it wants them to do... and then they continue not to, because any sane person would look at the plot, and run away screaming.

The Plot drives the Freelancers Drama, and events happened it fucked up everybody involved, because no matter the stakes or the arcs, the Freelancers all wanted one thing-- to basically be Space Super Hero Soldiers (Because you help people and that’s cool as hell). And you can’t really be character-driven when you all have the same goal and no real agency on how to reach it that isn’t reactive and doesn’t end in someone being dead.

All of it was the machinations of a malicious narrator who couldn’t get over his personal demons, and so inflicted them on everybody. S’bit like bad drama.

When our Cast finally could not ignore the Plot anymore, they confronted it and did so successfully-- so successfully that, in typical RvB fashion, they looked at it and then they abandoned it immediately, cos it was pointless from the start.

So in summary.

Plot-driven is actually Character-Driven, but its still simply not their plot. Real people do just sit around and talk until something interesting happens, and then don’t change very much afterwards. That’s real life, and you’d think that it wouldn’t work in a story.

On a military side, RvB in its first 14 seasons, is exactly how a military service is. The point of military is that there isn’t any unique character that’s not uniformed to the whole-- its plot-driven because you are told “Soldier, go here” and you’re trained to not ask questions (discover more plot) and be professional (be impersonal).

RvB takes the realistic route (Likely by incident-- but there were Vets in the original cast) in that a military attracts all extremes and the high stress gets to people-- so you end up with severe quirks, malpracticed coping mechanisms and plain apathy, trying not get shit duty, and following orders that simply do not makes sense if you think too hard about them.

Like I said, Space ‘Nam.

The moment that RvB tried to turned it around into a Military Space Drama, like what its been avoiding for Years, well, fucking yeah it was going fall to pieces. Because that was the exact antithesis of how RvB runs.

You do find the answer though, to one of Life’s greatest mysteries.

“Ever Wonder why we’re here?”