What are you doing right now?

[EndOfTheEarth]

Besides posting on here and replying to this thread. Original credit for this goes back to Fate and Nathan on MX.

[EndOfTheEarth]

I think HP7.2 was an excellent demonstration why you can't have a movie that is nothing other than a 90-minute battle scene; as a standalone film it is dry and anticlimactic--no background development means no reason for the audience to care. Also, a theater attendee who hasn't read the books is screwed--even if they have seen the last seven movies.

 

I give it a 3/5.

 

P.S., Rowling now has 2-3 years to extend her series before the audience loses interest.

[Fake Fang]

The new thing she's got planned has me worried...

[EndOfTheEarth]

The survivability of anything else she tries is questionable. Applegate sold hundreds of her Animorphs series, but her Remnants series nearly flopped on the same fanbase.

[o0_flying high_0o]

1. I can't imagine why someone would try and start watching them in the second half of the seventh movie, I mean really. As an adaption and a continuation of the book series, I quite liked it.

 

2. Anything she does from here on out will be purely for her own enjoyment. It doesn't matter whether it succeeds or fails. And while I knew Animorphs, I never actually bothered to take note of Applegate's name, people love Rowling and would buy anything with her name on it. 

[EndOfTheEarth]

The person I and several other oldies were debating with deleted their thread.

Such a shame, I don't get to quote my criminal psychology textbook often enough. It was also the closest I'd seen to one of the old Anti arguments in a long, long time.

 

You people know who you are. Kudos to you guys.

[Fake Fang]

Hmm.

 

Just had an idea for a story.

There are all sorts of speculative fiction stories where the main character has some superpower they're hiding from the world...and plenty where everybody knows about the supernatural...but what about what would happen if something supernatural were discovered in real life?

 

In other words, if somebody randomly woke up with, say, pyrokinesis, how would their classmates react? Their parents? How would it affect their lives? I'm not talking about some story where there's an evil protagonist that they have to defeat--I mean a slice of life regarding the discovery that the main character (Not neccesarily the narrator...) has some form of preternatural influence in their life?

 

Thoughts? Also, what should I give the lead character? Some form of elemental control? Psychic powers? Some mundane ability, such as the ability to clean things in the snap of a finger? Maybe they're a vampire?

 

Just to clear things up...I don't mean that there's some masquerade going on, or that there is a great abundance of superpowers in the world and nobody knows--I mean that there's this one guy--one single individual--who suddenly becomes Supernormal. No aliens, no magic, just a single person.

[EndOfTheEarth]

That exists already. Look up "celebrity"

 

[Fake Fang]

...Unless, "Celebrity," is the name of some novel or story or something, I'm more referring to the impact an actual superhuman mutation thingy would have on a person's life, and the reactions of the people around them.

 

This isn't wish fullfillment, by the way--I'm just fascinated by the concept of how a society of (mostly) rational, science-trusting, sane people would react to something science can't explain. A lot of anime and YA novels show some random kid randomly gaining random superpowers of randomness--but what if that happened without an enemy to fight? And what if they weren't secretive about it?

[EndOfTheEarth]

An actual superhuman mutation would be noting other than a visual spectacle, same concept as Elvis, Lady Gaga, etc. I'd bet a fair deal that you would get an identical story from Rebecca Black's autobiography.

 

And if they had no enemy to fight, then you run into two problems: what would the character be struggling with, if not a typical antagonizing force, and, once you have that figured out, the fact that the superpowers have no real function.

Let me explain that second part.

I've run into several dozen novels where they try and paint a dystopian future "where gene editing runs rampant" (I kid you not, several dozen use similar words in their teasers). However, in the books in question, the genetics involved are, to borrow two terms from Bioshock, "Sportsboost" and "Instant piano prodigy" and as a result do not affect the characters or plot any more than being a stereotypical jock or nerd would. As a result, did the author really need to even mention gene editing? Typically, no. It's completely worthless.

Therefore, my concern with a superpowered human with nothing to act upon is that without anything to act upon, the superpower loses its function and novelty.

[Fake Fang]

While I admit that the character could potentially be nothing more than a circus freak media sensation, I'm less concerned with the fame and fortune and more with the actual day to day life.

 

As for what the character would be struggling with...well, both regular slice of life things and trying to figure out where they and their (Ugh, this is getting annoying. From now on, the main character is a he, even if I don't really care what gender he's going to be) power fits into the world.

 

And the difference between my story and their story would be, quite simply, it would not be some background detail that could be ignored: It would be the driving force of the plot.

 

Simply put, the function and novelty of it would be him trying to find function and novelty.

 

Also, this gives me another idea: You ken those stories of heroes who are sucked out of our world and brought to another one, given a magic sword or something, and told to defeat the evil empire or whatever?

 

After that. Guy just saved the day, the girl, the world, and has been sent back home with a talking claymore. Now has to explain to everyone just where he's been for the past year, why he suddenly has more battle experience than the most hardened of soldiers, and why he has a talking friggin' sword.

[EndOfTheEarth]

Guy just saved the day, the girl, the world, and has been sent back home with a talking claymore. Now has to explain to everyone just where he's been for the past year, why he suddenly has more battle experience than the most hardened of soldiers, and why he has a talking friggin' sword.

 

"Mom, dad, I've been fighting evil for the past year with a talking sword. As evidence, here's the talking sword."

Then the novelty wears off. To everyone. A protagonist that isn't working towards something isn't particularly interesting, is he?

And "Finding meaning in life" isn't something that you work towards. You work towards a representative item; a job, a goal, a position of power. Typically, this is filled nicely by "ridding the world of evil," but you wish to avoid this. So now it's up to you to develop a goal that will force the protagonist to utilize these abilities, but still be difficult enough that he can't fulfill the goal immediately.

[Fake Fang]

You don't have me convinced. :/

 

For one thing, I'd personally be interested in reading--or writing, for that matter--about a hero who has to deal with adjusting to his old life after the whole, "Sword and sorcery," style of existence. But I'm not going to debate with you about opinions.

 

Basically, what I'm getting at is that a slice of life about someone who's developed superpowers would be, in my eyes, fairly interesting. But each to their own.