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Military Maverick: Difference between revisions
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* Isamu Alava Dyson from [[Macross Plus]]. Reckless, insubordinate, short tempered and not even punishment details wanted him. Eventually transferred to Project Super Nova as a test pilot since the only thing keeping him in the military was that he was ''that damn good''.
* Elizabeth Beurling of [[Strike Witches]] fame is a maverick herself, taking little heed to the brass and disobeying them at almost every turn (from simple things like smoking and going to the pub late at night to more complex things like refusing to use the new striker units), she is rather skilled in combat and has no ranged weapons instead just uses her kukri and cuts up enemy soldiers, grant she does have a rather gloomy personality to her. The girl has got issues but she can hardly care less.
** Not surprising given she was at least somewhat based on the real life maverick George Beurling; although he was rather a different kind of Maverick. After failing to join the Canadian Air Force, and the Finnish air force, he hopped on a ship and went to England to try and enlist in the RAF in which he was successful. He was regarded as high strung, brash, and outspoken, and he also never smoked or drank (which when you're a fighter pilot makes you a maverick...). He was a skilled pilot but rejected a commission at first and was reprimanded for attacking targets without permissions several times. He was also known as a loner in the air and was written up for stunting as well. He was eventually discharged even before the war ended more or less for being a pain in the ass.
== Film ==
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== Video Games ==
* Maniac, from ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]]'', is generally agreed to have earned his [[Code Name|callsign]]. At times, the protagonist, Christopher "Maverick" Blair, has as well. Some say he's a subversion.
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== Film ==
* [[MI 6]] Agent 007, aka Commander [[James Bond]]. Spies tend to play things by ear as a rule, but Bond seems to revel in doing things that will give Q, M, and the British government a heart attack. The fact that he [[Saving the World|saves the world]] with clockwork regularity tends to offset this.
== Literature ==
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Miles thought this over. "Why don't you assign me directly to yourself, sir?"
"Thanks," said Illyan dryly. }}
** It helps that Illyan knows Miles literally ''since birth'', being his father's long-term aide and then principal political ally.
** Miles' operating philosophy can be best summed up by this quote, from ''Brothers in Arms:''
{{quote|'''Miles''': No, no, never send interim reports. Only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must then either obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.}}
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* Ender Wiggin from [[Ender's Game]] was a ''deliberate'' [[Military Maverick]] - he thought he was being a rebel, but they figured he was [[Child Prodigy|smart enough]] to know better than the rule-makers, and actually intended him to break the rules.
* Inverted in [[Jack Campbell]]'s ''[[The Lost Fleet]]''. Captain Geary is thought of as crazy ''because'' he uses reasonable and not particularly noteworthy tactics. Which baffles his fleet, who are used to simply rushing into the enemy and counting how many ships are left over to determine a victory.
* Willard Phule of ''[[Phule's Company]]''. He gets ''promoted'' as a result of accidentally strafing a peace conference after the war had already ended. It [[Blessed with Suck|wasn't a reward]]. He was only not fired because the Space Legion never fires anyone, wasn't demoted only because of politics, and winds up in command of an "Omega Company", a [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits|dumping ground for troublemakers too stubborn to quit]].
* In a rare example of someone at the top flouting convention, though actually very [[Affably Evil|cultured and refined]] in a way most Imperial fleet officers only hope to be, [[The Thrawn Trilogy|Grand Admiral Thrawn]] spits in the face of conventional strategic and tactical wisdom. He is confident to the point where he bases entire planetary assaults around esoteric uses of obscure or rare technology and other ''extremely'' unusual ideas--ideas that are so odd that he and the captain of his flagship once had a barely-civilized argument over his use of a particular tactic. That particular tactic was in fact outright reasonable (and became ''routine'') compared to some of his more inventive concepts. Then again, Thrawn is only one step down in the chain of command from the Emperor: so long as he remains loyal to the Empire and continues to succeed in his assigned objectives, he has the authority to do whatever he damn well feels like. Thrawn was a military maverick among his own people, too. In ''[[Outbound Flight]]'', he was the one making preemptive strikes, to the consternation of, well, just about everyone. He actually got exiled for that.
** Similarly, General Garm Bel Iblis is a ''slightly'' more conventional commander, but despite his cunning and ability to make do with less is often politically ostracized. He even resisted an upgrade to his aging flagship's comm center so that secure messages would remain more secure. This has more to do with his time as an independent rebel, as opposed to capital-R Rebel, than his behavior, but he seems quite content to let matters remain as they are.
** Thrawn's old student and second-in-command [[Hand of Thrawn|Pellaeon]], having picked up a bit of that genius and becoming Supreme Commander in time, also manages to utterly frustrate [[Commander Contrarian|his poor captain]] with tactics that seem counterintuitive at best and stupid at worst.
** A sort-of inversion comes in the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]] where the Rebel Alliance fleet, now the legitimate military arm of the New Republic, has to adopt the tactics they once so desperately yet handily worked around. Some try to make the change, but find themselves psychologically hamstrung by being unable to convert to the necessary way of thinking; others take to their new roles with gusto, but forget how to anticipate unconventional tactics. (Operation Emperor's Hammer resulted when New Republic officers took to the ''Empire'''s tactics very, very well.)
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== Live Action TV ==
* John Sheridan of ''[[Babylon 5]]'' was such a maverick that {{spoiler|he participated in a conspiracy against the (increasingly dictatorial) civilian
** Averted when, during the pilot episode remake/movie, he refused promotion to be second-in-command of the first ship being sent out to investigate Minbari space. He did so because he knew the CO was known to be overaggressive during tense diplomatic situations and he did not want to be in a position where he'd have to stand up to him for the ship's own good. The ship instead left for Minbari space with a much more jellyfish-spined XO, the captain got into a tense diplomatic situation where he became overaggressive, and we all know what happened after that.
* In the classic (if short) German SF series ''[[Raumpatrouille]]'', Commander McLane and the crew of the ''Orion'' are this to the extent that the series ''starts'' with their being reassigned to 'boring' patrol duty for a couple of years and saddled with a security officer who's supposed to ensure they tread the straight and narrow from now on. Needless to say, that's not quite how it works out.
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