Fanfic Thoughts

[tuftears]

I read a really impressive original-universe superheroes webfic series earlier this year, Worm. (warning, some triggery- stuff, very dark, epic in length) Wanting more, I eventually found a link from Harry Potter: Methods of Rationality to Cenotaph, a fanfic series that explores a large chunk of the series told by changing just one thing and extrapolating how that might have affected the story as it goes on. And then I noticed it was just one of a number of fanfics by various people all centered on this superheroes thing.

So, I read some more of them. Some I liked, some I didn't. In general, I really appreciate how Worm places so much emphasis on thinking, working out both new and better ways to use powers and when and where to use them for best effect. Worm also does a great job at capturing reader interest through a gradual but always intense escalation of power levels and conflicts. With that as a basis for comparison, some random thoughts:

* It's actively irritating when fanfics take various means of 'allow the protagonist to do a better job' and sap the tension from the original story. Sometimes it's that the protagonist gets to 'go back in time' with her memories and redo her life, knowing how things play out. Sometimes it's an outside character, a 'self-insert' character who knows the whole story by heart and suddenly finds himself in the midst of the action.

* I like First Law of Fanfiction from HPMOR: whenever you give the protagonist new weapons or information, that has to be matched by a compensating gift to the protagonist's enemies. Does Taylor suddenly have intensely detailed knowledge of the future? Surprise! At least one of her rivals or enemies does too, and worse, is in a better position to start making use of this.

* Giving Taylor alternate power sets also seems to be popular. Some of these verge on overpowered or gamebreaking. Part of the reason she was so much fun to read is because she had such a weak-sounding power to begin with-- the ability to control bugs-- and yet she was able to think through things so well that she could defeat rather strong villains. I don't especially like these fanfics.

* Tinkers! Taylor has a lot of unkind thoughts for the inventors and gadgeteers who can basically whip up a solution to any given problem, given a day or two with their lab full of super-high-tech equipment. Personally, I like the general idea of being a superhero who could invent stuff but I have to admit it seems unrealistic that they can do so much with so little. If you took a modern-day engineer and set him back in the 1900s, how far could he get?

* I wonder if it makes more sense that the technological trappings are wrappers around basically magic invocation of superpowers. Tony Stark's super-light yet super-durable armor suit that can fire powerful blasts? There's no way it houses all that technology. Maybe his arc reactor houses a supply of some wish-fulfilling power that needs to be directed through appropriately *shaped* foci; it could reinforce his armor, providing structural integrity and shock absorption, create an antigravity lens, and so forth. Those flying drones he manufactures by the hundreds? Each of them might house a spark of that power. If he dies, they'd all stop working or start to run down.

This stuff does make me want to work on my own superheroes story. -_- Well, I have some ideas but I'm not sure if it's better as a RPG or serial story.

Comments

If You Knew the Story

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User rowyn referenced to your post from If You Knew the Story (http://rowyn.livejournal.com/514910.html) saying: [...] mentioned in this post on fanfic [...]

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

Regarding getting sent back to 1900, it turns out that a common hobby among a subset of engineers is thinking about the "minecraft" scenario - asking yourself how far you could get if you had to bootstrap technology from nothing.

I, personally, could go from stone age to early space-age (vacuum tubes, rockets, primitive jet aircraft). Someone with a better knowledge of polymer chemistry and medicine could get even farther.

The main stumbling block is that it's a _huge_ amount of work. Sure, I might know _how_ to build a skyscraper, but that doesn't help me with the thousands of man-years of effort needed to produce the materials for it and hundreds of man-years of effort needed to put it together.

Regarding technological wrappers around magic, someone pitched this as a rather convincing explanation for the "Reed Richards is Useless" trope. Their proposal was that Richards maxed out _both_ his "conventional science" stat and his "weird science" stat (one-off, impossible to duplicate inventions that are allowed to break physics). Anything he builds tends to rely on both, which is why he doesn't just take an afternoon off to cure cancer.

"Genius the Transgression", a fan-extension for World of Darkness, runs on a similar idea too.

In any event, thanks for the fic recommendations; they're duly bookmarked!

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

"Genius: the Transgression" indeed. ;)

Yeah, that's the thing about tinkers/inventors: not only can they invent all this amazing stuff, but it takes them next to no time to do it. It'd be like you taking a typical blacksmith shop and working all night and in the morning, you have a car!

[xyzzysqrl]

(Here via Rowyn.)

As a note, "technological trappings are wrappers around basically magic invocation of superpowers" is how the late lamented MMO City of Heroes handwaved it. All superpowers, be they Tony Starkian power armor, Barry Allen-esqe science accident, or Hawkeye-esqe "I trained for years" mastery of a basic discipline, stemmed from a basic magical source that enhanced them all to the point of working. Without that magic, the power armor wouldn't boot, the science accident would just burn your skin and make you need a shower, or the training and inner resolve wouldn't be enough to let you shoot a quarter from a mile away.

Naturally the fanbase hated and ignored this revelation because it kind of undermined all THEIR carefully written backstories.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I was unaware of this! How did they explain this bit of lore? In game or outside writing?

I actually did play City of Heroes, though I stopped subscribing after a while since I just wasn't doing anything with the game. I played Lagkitten, a catgrrl who had the amazing power to slow things down. (radiation/electric defender)

[xyzzysqrl]

Something along the lines of Statesman doing something with Pandora's Box, although... I dunno, I never delved too deeply into that bit of lore. I believe it started out as a plot in the novels and tie-in comics and gradually crept into the game, although it may have always been planned.

I played CoH/CoV for -years-, from day one 'til the last days, with a slew of characters (most of whom never crossed level 20). It was astoundingly easy to miss, since it started with an optional mission ("Origin of Powers" or somesuch I believe) and then only got haltingly elaborated on -- and then people backlashed, so they downplayed it. Such is writing for a group audience.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Weird. They had a comic-book subplot (as in web-released comic strips and things) where someone took away all hero powers, and only the natural heroes still had all their abilities.

...but the natural heroes still had all their abilities. Maybe it was a less fundamental level of power drain. 9.9

Not to mention the 'Pandora's Box' thing was sort of implied to be behind *all* human endeavor, not just superheroes. They were just the 'gods'.