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Superhero Story

Agamemnon

Dreamer
I just wanted a little advice on something I'm writing. I'm doing a superhero story in my own modern day setting. I've already worked out a lot of things about the main heroine, but at the same time I want to avoid a number of genre cliches. The hero and her arch-nemesis are sisters, I know this trope has been used a lot but I was trying not to be too generic about it. The two have identical powers and when they begin the superhero business they work together, but the hero and villain eventually split over issues of brutality and excessive violence.

Again I know this has been used, where I'm trying to do something different is the villain isn't crazy, power mad, or out to rule/destroy the world. The villain sees the world as broken and the only way to fix it is by destroying governments and hitting the big reset button. The goal I'm trying to work on is moral ambiguity I suppose. The villain considers herself a hero and her sister a blind idiot. However she also has no qualms about collateral damage and killing people she deems deserving of death. They both want a better world, but they take vastly different approaches to it.
 

X Equestris

Maester
I like the idea. There's certainly lots of room for moral ambiguity here. Having governments be deeply corrupt and having genuine criminal threats who've killed lots of people will add to the ambiguity.

My advice is to make sure that the audience can see where your villain gets her worldview from, probably by the means I mentioned above. If the governments are efficient at their jobs and criminals aren't a big threat to the population, her reasoning will probably come off as unfounded. You might run into logic issues then.
 

Agamemnon

Dreamer
I've already thought about that and I've tried to see both points of view. Here's a little sample of opposing ideologies between the two of them. Mind you this is a roughly mapped out thought, I haven't actually written this part of the story yet.

Gifted with incredible power by the birthright of mutation, Mercedes and Daria stood on the rooftop facing one another. Though seperated by less than four feet, the distance between them was a world apart. All their lives Daria had always been the more violent, ready to solve a problem with her fists rather than words, but this, it was unlike anything that could ever have been imagined. For Mercedes it was almost like looking into the eyes of a stranger who had stolen her sister's face. The sheer brutality and violence Daria fought with horrified her, how could she not feel anything for the people who got hurt, not see the fear in their eyes. It was with that same fear that many looked at Mercedes and it hurt her so deeply.

"How could you?" Mercedes said.

"Oh don't give me that self-righteous indignation, what I did should have been done a long time ago," Daria said.

"You had no right to murder that man in cold blood!" Mercedes said.

"Didn't I? Didn't I?! Blackmoon murdered twenty-seven people before he was arrested and then they put him in a nuthouse. After he escape he killed another thirteen people, so what did they do, just put him back and big surprise, he escaped again. This time he murdered four people before I found that piece of trash," Daria said.

"That doesn't give you the right to play judge, jury, and executioner. We're suppose to uphold the law and protect the world against criminals too powerful for the police to handle," Mercedes said. At this point the argument was becoming heated and the sisters were almost nose to nose. Mercedes was becoming more angry by the moment, the one person who was be by her side through all of this was turning into the very thing she fought against. More than anything she wanted to persuade Daria to stop, to keep her from going down a path too dark to follow. They were sisters, family, they should have been fighting side by side, not face to face.

"So what do you do when the system is broken, when pseudo-science and high priced lawyers buy freedom for the most depraved examples of humanity. I killed Blackmoon to save lives. He murdered forty-four people, how many more lives would he have ended, how many families would have been torn apart if I hadn't put him down like the mad dog he was. He deserved his death forty-four times over," Daria said.

"You can't fix the system by breaking the people!" Mercedes said.
 
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Agamemnon

Dreamer
I've also read that when it comes to writing a story someone needs a solid opening line to hook the reader. This isn't always easy to come up with, but I think I may a good one.

No matter how confident or strong she tried to be, there was still one weakness Mercedes always seemed to fall victim to.
 

Reaver

Staff
Moderator
I've also read that when it comes to writing a story someone needs a solid opening line to hook the reader. This isn't always easy to come up with, but I think I may a good one.

No matter how confident or strong she tried to be, there was still one weakness Mercedes always seemed to fall victim to.

Just my opinion but the opening didn't hook me. It's a little too ambiguous. If I were writing an opening line for this story I'd probably write:

We all have weaknesses. For Mercedes, it was ______________.


***EDIT***

Check out some of these books for research into superheroes (if you haven't already, that is).
I highly recommend "The Psychology of Superheroes" and "Batman and Psychology".
 
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Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
I'd suggest you check out the comic book Watchmen or the movie made from it. It deals in a lot of gray. The villain isn't crazy. Their plan isn't for conquest or personal glory. It's for the greater good of humanity, but the cost is a lot of innocent lives.

That's the one comic that I think links closest to what it appears you're trying to do.

It's admirable that you're trying to do something different, but I'm afraid you have over 70 years of comic history to contend with. Watchmen came out in the '80 and since then--and even before--there have been many comics that delve into the moral gray. So don't worry about being different. Just worry about telling a good story, because if you can think of it, you can be sure someone in the comics industry has too.
 

BWFoster78

Myth Weaver
No matter how confident or strong she tried to be, there was still one weakness Mercedes always seemed to fall victim to.

I'm assuming that the presumed "hook" is what weakness?

To me, the sentence isn't a very strong opening:

1. You need to give me a reason to care about the character before I can care about her weakness.
2. Lots of weak words - seemed, was, tried.

Maybe try to show her in a situation where the weakness is about to bite her?

Good to see other superhero writers on MS.

Brian
 
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