So, here's the collaborative superhero project I mentioned on Facebook. The key here is small, okay? Let's not get overexcited and try to build a full cosmic universe like we did with Starsailer and Triterrus. We'll start small, and then get bigger over time. That should hopefully prevent us from getting burnt out and lost in development when the point was to write stories.

So for now, let's focus on one city, Crystal Falls. It's a metropolitan city slightly larger than Boston, and it's in Virginia. Other than that, it's open for development. Do we want to lean more towards Metropolis, or more towards Gotham? Somewhere in between? We can also just switch to NYC or another big city if people really want to.

The rest is all pretty open for people to write in. We might all want to do some more development on the city, like a map, list of important people in government, crime families, newspapers, charities, and so on. Then from there, maybe whoever wants to can work on a superhero and keep people updated on progress on this thread, or a thread specifically for the character in character development. People can team up if they want, on characters, teams, story arcs, and so on.

If you're stuck for ideas, here's a few hero names I came up with on the fly that people can toss around to figure out.
Invictus, Red Rider, Tetrahedron

So, let's get cracking, shall we? Or flying, as the case may be. Any ideas pop up while reading this?

I would definitely decide what the top government folks are like and lean more toward metropolis; a place that can be just as light as dark depending on the spot. Crystal Falls is a great name.

I have a super heroine that can walk through walls and fly, although she pretends she can only teleport through shadows. I'd like to use her here. Still working on a name though.

Yep. Inspiration struck. (And I really don't have time for this...)

*sigh* I'll get back to you. XD

I'm ok with it being either a real city or a made up city, but let's steer clear of NYC. Marvel's done too much with that. Now Memphis, Seattle, Houston, New Orleans....any of those would work fine, just not NYC.

And I think we need to figure out why one metropolitan area has multiple super-heroes. With the exception of teams like the Fantastic 4 or Batman and his crew, you most commonly see the whole one-hero-per-city idea. So if we're going to have multiple heroes in one city from the start, probably need to know why. I think it'd be cool if maybe Crystal Falls is like an unofficial training ground for heroes. Or maybe one of the heroes in Crystal Falls mentors younger heroes like Batman.

Also, we should probably decide on a basic range of power-sources. Since we're wanting to keep it small at the start, I'd say please rule out aliens-raised-on-Earth. Otherwise, we have other planets to deal with and that could get out of hand really quickly. Also....there's the whole "How can we explain superpowers without violating our Christian worldview?" issue. But I'm not that worried about that one. We'll figure something out.

Excellent! (I told you I'd spark some inspiration, Sui. Or at least, I tried to.)

Yep. That variance in the city is a good idea. It gives rooms for different types of heroes.

Hmm. Names. Well, Ghost would probably work for that character. Or some combination of colors/adjectives and Ghost. Phantom would work as well, but that's taken by a pretty high profile pulp/superhero character.

Yep. That's why I didn't really want to be in New York. For more than one, I had a reason for it in one of the earlier versions that Crystal Falls was a magnet for people with super-powers. Also, an Institute for Superpowered Learning is based there in the blog post that really sparked this idea.

I was mainly going to leave that up to character creators, because each power needs to have individualized sources for it to really make sense, unless there's something like Marvel's Mutant Growth Hormone pills. It's also hard to have superheroes without aliens, because eventually, there won't be anything left on Earth that can really pose a threat to the heroes, especially with teams. You are right though, no need to start out with alien heroes.

I'm not sure theology is really a major issue, especially at this point.

Me neither, but knowing
HW as I do, I figure once people start trying to figure out the source for their characters' powers they would promptly start beating themselves about how to explain it in a "Christian way" since we already had one HWSF member ask about how the theology of having mutants....

And in the spirit of random idea-generating, here are some possible super-powers to play with (btw I'm just coining the names for these abilities off the top of my head):

Tactile Metallic Adhesion - upon skin contact, metal adheres to person's skin in a semi-liquid state, creating a metal skin of sorts that can harden at will to act as armor. In the advanced stage of this ability, the metal can flow out from the person and solidify into desired shapes (still maintaining contact with the person/source) and then re-liquify and flow back to the person. How much metal skin the person has is directly connected to how much metal he/she touches. So a penny would not give him/her very much to work with. Also, in the beginning stages the ability would be involuntary so any metal the person touches would instantly "melt" to their skin without them knowing at first how to get it off.

Anemaudience - ability to hear sounds born on air currents. In a really powerful version, you could say that the person is able to manipulate/create air currents at will in order to hear what they want. But wind control can be really over-played so I'm a little cautious about that.

Geo-density - ability to draw on/channel/mimic/harness the earth's molecular density to render one's self impenetrable/immovable.

You could also draw on shadow-based names, Rin, since you said she wants people to think that she shadow-jumps.
Shadow Stalker would be a cool name.

I've never quite seen how it could be so complicated, actually. If it's an accident, it's an accident that God used to give that person their powers. Born with it, God gave them those powers from birth, or built the storyverse to allow people to be born with them. No need to make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Those are all good ideas. I've seen a few similar ones at times, but never identical to those.

Shadow names would be good for the character, too.

Just had an awesome idea, piggy-backing off your idea of an Institute for Superpowered Learning in Crystal Falls. What if said institute started off as a school for troubled inner-city youth, ran by a Christian individual who soon discovered that many of the "troubled youth" that came through the school were actually superpowered kids. So he/she decides to repurpose the school into a school to help young people learn how to cope with their abilities with an emphasis on instilling in them the understanding that the purpose of their abilities is to serve others/God. Also, I was thinking that we could have it that either the founder of the school or some other faculty member has the spiritual gift of discernment, which he/she discovers often (but not always) helps him/her to intuit the nature of a person's superpowers.

That could be a possibility, though everytime I try to include religion in a story a bunch of Klaxons and alarms going off telling me I shouldn't do that. I had it set up more as a secret university for superheroes.

I figured that's what you had in mind, but that idea has been done so many times before that I thought this would be a more unique route to take. *keys in code to shut off the alarms in Varon's head* And we can always go with your idea for a secret university for superheroes (Sky High anyone?) I'll probably use my idea for something whether we use it for this project or not, so either way is fine by me. I was just trying to think of new spins that we could put on a genre where just about everything that can be done has been. Alternately, we could combine both ideas and have it as a secret university for superheroes, with my idea being the back story of how the university came into being.

I understand that, and I wasn't intentionally trying to inject religion into the story, it just kind of popped up. It started with the school for troubled youth idea and from there the idea about it being run by a believer and all that just kinda came up. It was probably just the Bible college student in me getting all excited about the idea of a ministry to superpowered people. But like I said earlier, we don't have to use it.

I'm intrigued.

And I also don't have time...

But I'll follow along and if inspiration strikes maybe I'll pitch in.

Yeah, that makes sense. New takes are good, but so can a new approach to an old trope, but I'm not sure about it, though it is a good idea for a story.

Intrigued is good. Busy is not. Following is also good. Some crossovers might even be possible in the future.

I'm definitely interested as well. Problem is, what with college and crazy life, I'm probably too busy... and I don't want to risk having yet another instance where I say I'll pitch in and then end up fading away and feeling like a jerk for not actually helping at all.

Incidentally, when I was planning Supervillains I initially thought of setting in in either LA or Chicago.

That would be cool.

No worries. This isn't supposed to be really time intensive unless you want it to be.

LA gets in a lot of trouble too. Chicago, not so much actually.

Yep. I was wondering how Floyd would react to a world in which there actually were superheroes.

Some thoughts.

1. Fantasy curses upon all of you. I have enough ideas occupying space in my head without adding superheroes.

2. Crystal Falls: Maybe we can give it a good/bright side and a bad/dark side. What if there is a river running through town with some nice big falls right in the middle of downtown. On the nice side of town, the area right next to the falls is the heart of downtown civics, economics, and culture. On the bad side the falls are still prime real estate, so that's where the bars, nightclubs, and those sorts of things are, mostly. That side can also be the more impoverished innercity area. Just an idea.

3. I really like the superhero school/institute/counciling/thingy idea. But with all these bizzare people concentrated in one place, the police and the government are sure to notice. Maybe this school also includes an element where the heroes learn to work with law enforcement, and if they show that they can and that they want to, then they recieve a sanction from the government so that their activities are legalized. If they don't work and play nice with the cops, then the government sets the special forces on them. If their powers are uncontrollable/volatile, or really don't offer law enforcement or the millitary an asset, then they are taught to cope/mesh with normal life.

I imagine that a sizable number of heroes might choose this route...

I accept thy fantasy curses as restitution for my inspirationalness.

I like that idea for the good part and bad part. It'd probably be a fairly large river, then to really work as a barrier between the two parts. Definitely makes sense.

At this point in the timeline, they've all gotten used to having superheroes around. They've been there for several decades. But, superheroes don't often get along well with governments. That was the premise for Marvel's big Civil War event, so I could see it happening, and it probably is true that a lot won't work for the government, but most superheroes can take out even special forces soldiers without much difficulty. Hence the existence of S.H.I.E.L.D. Definitely adds for conflict and tension.

I had a thought! Which everyone else already figured out already, but whatever.

Earlier there were some comments about "why all the superheroes here". Well, if there’s a school, that will attract heroes. And if there are that many heroes, it's going to automatically attract villains. The school is going to be a #1 target for supervillains; especially ones who turned evil after attending there. Lots of setupt for school rivals here.

That's a good point. It would be a reason to bring more superheroes to the city, since a school training heroes is a pretty high priority target, especially with supervillain technology that can make unprepared people change sides. Definitely a lot of potential there.

*loves, loves, loves this*

Do you have any ideas?

So, I have some questions about how we're going about writing. I mean, can people write whatever they want within the boundaries created here, or is everything going to be guided through an approval system, or a story-arc system, or something like that.

Personally, I would prefer some kind of structure that prevents contradictions and guides everything into cohesive storytelling instead of chaos.

Yeah, but it's starting to get a bit too large for this charry. I'll need to take baby-steps in the right direction with a different hero -- I'm thinking Invictus or Red Rider.

*nods* I was wondering if we would go about things more on a "write whatever you want," but then in the editing phase the community would make sure the story fits. With stories that are more central we might want to go down a stricter route though.

Okay, Sui. That sounds like you've got good ideas then, if they can outgrow a character.

I was thinking write anything that fits into the guidelines here. Contradictions can be edited fairly easy to make it work, and knowing HW collaborative projects, the chances of us getting to a point where things get chaotic is pretty unlikely. Once we have stories written that gets the universe established and a cast of characters, then we could give story arcs a try.

My main problem is that I've been thinking primarily in story arcs. *keeps telling self "Baby steps..." in an effort to curb that*

I've decided on Red Rider. Now to figure out who/what she is...

I'm gonna take Invictus, if Sui doesn't mind. Basically looking for inspiraiton from this poem:

"Invictus" by William Ernest Henley
(Invictus means "unconquered" in Latin)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Powers-wise, I'm getting an idea of great strength/constitution and vast tolerance (or maybe acceptance or even welcoming of pain). Starting with the basic idea of great strength, endurance, and possibly some degree of immunity (hard to hurt, and heals/recovers quickly), maybe the worse he is hurt, the stronger he becomes?

I don't mind; it sounds great.

One question I have. With such an immense superhero presence in the city, why would anyone small time even try to do anything there? Unless he has a really good ace up his sleeve or bands together with other villains, wouldn't he be easily taken down? Does that limit us to natural disasters? Or does the school send its heroes out to help in other cities?

There's always a bigger villain. You just have to be creative.

And the city might think the way you do, which means small-time crooks might just falll through the cracks; overlooked as insignificant. Until they become very significant indeed. If the heroes are all busy fighting supervillains then you have no one to actually do ordinary things like rescue cats out of trees and stop purse-snatchers.

How long have superheroes been in existence and how wide-spread they are throughout the country? I think that question would determine to a large extent what the response of the government would be. It also would do much, I think, to frame a lot of other things about the story... Personally, I'm open to any options with regard to their past longevity and their extensiveness, but mostly want a definitive answer...

I have some ideas for a supervillain/anti-hero of sorts in mind, but I'm still playing around with the idea in my head before I am ready to post something...

Also, I haven't been to sci-fi for a while (and haven't ever posted), and was expecting the cool space-planet format, not the standard phpBB theme. Is there a way on my end to view it differently, or is sci-fi stuck like this right now?

Okay, I think I read through everything, but I might have missed something that answers this question: What is the school teaching? Just how to handle and hone superpowers, or how to work with the government? And is the school working to bring Superheroes together, or just teach and educate them as singles?
Also, are the stories in this universe to be short stories compiled into a Crystal Falls collection? Or more like full length novels just set in the same universe?

@Sui, It's like Hollywood. Everyone goes there to try to make it big. Maybe Crystal Falls leaves them a bit starry-eyed.

I definitely think Shadow (other half of name) isn't too fond of the law. I'll probably play her out as a wall-building, broken type. So if the school is an evangelism tool, that could draw her in, even though she'd still want to keep a distance from the law.

Ah, I think I get it now.

By the way, if anyone else is really interested in Red Rider, they can have her (or him if they so choose). School will start up again for me soon, and I won't have the time to do anything writing-related.

There's no rush, Sui. You can pretty much take as long as you need. Nothing wrong with story arcs right now either. You can toss some around if you want.
I might work on her a bit, since I actually have a professional picture for her. ( http://pinterest.com/pin/226728162463398229/ )

How long have superheroes been around? 60-70 years, maybe more as heroes that don't qualify as "super" so they've been a regular, if rather uncommon occurrence.

Seer, that sounds really good for Invictus, and a definite twist to the super-strong and resilient archetype. It gives it almost a darker feel, which is definitely unique.

Jaynin's right about small time crime. Who would stop to prevent a burglary when there's a giant robot attacking downtown?

Aratrea: Cool. Take as long as you need with the character.

Paz: Training on how to use their powers safely, leadership skills, first aid, search and rescue, how to push past exhaustion and injury. I guess it's really less of a college and more of a multi-year or so boot camp.
Either actually, depending on what stories people want to write.

Kitra: Yep. Sounds like a good description of Crystal Falls. She sounds like a pretty good character to have so far. Great job.

Um...that was Neil....

I actually think we're gonna quite a bit of unique challenges on this project as it now stands. The main one is that at the moment it looks like we're having individual authors writing about individual characters but all the characters live in the same city. I mean realistically, there's no way they wouldn't have at least some kind of interactions with each other...but we typically don't write about other people's characters... I think that's why in the beginning, a lot of the original comic book companies started off with individual heroes in individual cities who established themselves as characters before they mingled them with other characters. In those cases where there were teams of heroes, those teams were usually authored by one person. So what we're doing is pretty different from all that. Doesn't mean it won't work, it just mean it's going to take some pretty unique twists and turns along the way.

I also want to keep my school idea separate from Kaleb's idea. It can either be a separate school within Crystal Falls or a separate school in another city. I'm leaning towards the latter. I also have a handful of previously imagined characters that I can easily see incorporated into this project. One was a purple-eyed telepath who ran away from home and stumbled upon a group of superpowered misfits/runaways living in the woods. Then I had Nocturnal, my amnesiac shape-shifter who involuntarily turned into nocturnal creatures each night. He's middle-aged (like 30's or so) so I could see him as a teacher/staff member at one of the schools and/or a mentor type person for the younger heroes. And I had a pointy-eared teen with superhearing that could also fit nicely into this idea.

The more you develop this idea, though, the more your "secret school" doesn't sound very secret. But we can make it work. We could have a villains district where the wannabe supervillains stay as they try to make it big as villains and a heroes district where the wannabe heroes come to try and catch their big break as heroes. And of course, the rest of the city would be caught in the middle of the two....

Sorry. It was late and I'm still recovering from church camp.

Originally, most companies just had different titles for each character and treated them like newspaper comic strips. There wasn't really any continuity, nobody lived in the same universe, and so on. Marvel was the first to really establish a common universe for their characters, which is why the Marvel universe fits together so well.

I was going to sort of borrow the way Marvel worked early on. Characters did interact, but not usually in major roles. Carol Danvers (aka Ms. Marvel) worked at the Daily Bugle and ran across Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man) several times, and had equally confrontational encounters with the editor. Occasionally there would be team ups as well.

But yes, there will be some challenges. It'll probably take more collaboration than most stories, to really capture the characters right.

Those are all good ideas too, and would definitely work.

I'm not sure if secret is the right way to go anymore. It's still vague and ambiguous.

Yeah, but they didn't have potentially hundreds of characters living in a city full of superheroes and supervillains. That's my point. If the city is knowingly full of superheroes and supervillains, saying that they only interact in minor ways seems a bit unconvincing. See my point?

Hundreds is a bit more than I was thinking. Maybe a dozen and a half at most.

I do see your point though.

Good. That's all I was going for. 18 is definitely (that would be 1 1/2 dozen) a more plausible count, but still very unlikely that they wouldn't be majorly involved with each other. Unless they do localized work for small areas of the city (like Dare Devil and Hell's Kitchen). That would explain why they have limited interactions in the beginning. Or we can come up with something else.

Where in VA are we wanting to plop Crystal Falls, btw? That's kinda important. Also, just a heads up, but "Crystal Falls" sounds very similar to "Mystic Falls" which is the setting of The Vampire Diaries and is also in VA (I think). Don't ask how I know that.

It's a pretty big city, and with several operating at an international level, that leaves plenty for everyone.

I don't know. By the ocean and not too close to D.C. That's pretty much the extent of my geographical knowledge of Virginia.

I disagree on the whole "why wouldn't they interact" question. In a novel they would. But we're not talking novel here. I think everyone developing their own characters and arcs is a good place to start, and then they can start interacting with each other later. Someone gets an idea for a story involving some other characters and goes to those people and they come up with that angle. But starting out seperately is a good, solid way to get some actual worldbuilding down before trying to launch into any big collaborative project.

One thing we could do is create some stock characters, like the grand master of the hero school or whatever that doesn't belong to a specific author and thus can be used by all of them, lending some continuity. Maybe some regular ctizens of Crystal Falls as well, like the mayor or police force or some such thing. We could just compile known, canon facts into a "script bible" for reference, and anyone could draw from it.

That's what I was thinking, actually, just phrased much better. That will give time for everyone to get familiar with their characters and setting before we try anything big.

I agree that that's the best way to go about it. What I was saying is that in the past this has been done with each character/author starting off in their own city so that they don't have to worry about continuity or consistency (two things comic book companies are infamous for messing around with). Then, after the characters have been established, they start interacting with others. Starting off with all these characters being developed separately in the same city is a bit of a different approach.

And I'm not talking about "in a novel" vs "what we're talking about", I'm talking about making things make sense. And a bunch of super-heroes running around separately as individuals in the same city will kind of confuse most people who are used to heroes either being off away from other heroes and doing their own thing or working with the heroes around them as a team. It doesn't fit the standard models they're used to seeing for superheroes. That doesn't make it a bad thing, in some ways it makes it a great thing. But when you start breaking out beyond the constraints of the standard genre conventions, you want to be sure you do it well.

Actually, that's what Marvel did, I'm pretty sure, with NYC. Plus, it would be rather difficult for them all to start working together when they're all still not as well known. There'd be no way to contact them, and not yet any threats to draw them together.

That's not what you presented at all.
You had it that superheroes had been around 60-70 yrs, were an established presence in the city, and that supervillains were just as well-established.

That's a lot different then what Marvel did with NYC.

Super heroes are around, yes, but our particular characters would be less established.

I keep shifting depending on what I remember I posted or not and what other people add. I should probably stay off the internet until I'm off the antibiotics. But, nothing's really set in stone yet since nothing's been written down in a final draft yet except a little bit in the blog post that was written before things were finalized.

Plus what Lady Kitra said.