Fixing Genre "Norms"

[cherrystark]

In terms of writing - what are some genre "norms" that you would like to change in your work?

For me - I would change the concept of superheroes and bring them back down to a "personal" level. While it's fun to imagine heroes like Batman and Spiderman patrolling the night, it gets boring and frankly a little "sad" when you consider the fact they have their day persona that takes up 8ish hours of their day, 8 hours for their superhero persona, they have to fit the rest of their "life" into the remaining eight hours, so they're operating on little to no sleep. They either have crappy relationships or they're mentally/physically exhausted.

I would take nods from series like "H20: Just Add Water" and "Witches of Eastend" where the drama is closer to home and the MCs are busy trying to learn how to adapt to their new circumstances. I don't think a superpower series needs to high drama to be interesting. I want more "real" life interactions and storylines.

[TroyVSTheWorld]

IDK but the main character in my comic is a punk with a green mohawk, because punks with green mohawks are ALWAYS oneshot characters that get droppped like total chumps, every freakin' time, which is a good metaphor for my comic that does everything it can to put a spin on a classic webcomic formula.

[Lensing]

I´m writing my first super hero comic script right now and I try to change some genre norms.
More humour, erotic, politically not correct and no violence, so it´s pretty much the opposite
of the average superhero comic. I don´t know if it will work but I´m having fun writing the script
so far. It´s also challenging because of the no violence part

[Inspector]

I totaly agree. I have a series w/ a superhero but it's more about his actual life than being a superero. Like he feels a lot of pressure to save the world and he develops bipolar depression. It's like---being a hero seems all fun and games but when you really think about that job must be really soul crushing in a way.

[joannekwan]

It seems that in most fantasy romances, the female protagonist always ends up with magic or powers in some capacity. Either they discover they come from a special bloodline, the power was in them all along, or they gain powers through an event like being betrothed to their supernatural love interest.

I know it's part of the escapism, but I like the idea that you can still be special without magic or powers. So in my own romantasy, the protagonist is just a regular human. She won't ever get magic or discover she's from a particular bloodline even though witches and magic do exist in the universe. Her true power lies in her empathy and just her being herself.

[NickRowler]

Secret identities never made much sense to me in superhero stories. I guess if the story was very silly and for kids, maybe I would understand it more. But I feel like a lot of superhero stories want to be more serious and for adults. I did like in the comic Runaways, they didn't wear costumes, just their normal clothes. I think I personally like that more. But then again, I am not really the target audience for superhero stories and maybe their are fans who love the costumes.

As for my work...
I want to have characters with magical powers but they are just living normal lives. I always loved magical realism and that is sort of my approach. I know most people turn kids with magical powers into superheros and I don't want that in my story.

[cherrystark]

I agree with you on this one. It feels like deus ex machina when the female lead "magically" gets extra powers on top of her natural abilities. I really liked Ella from Ella Enchanted because her fairy blood only gives her tiny feet and a couple other minor characteristics. You know if the story was written today, her "fae" blood would have been the key to resolving the entire conflict in the book.

[river121693]

I would change "the chosen one" trope, where the MC is given more innate power to save the world than everyone. Similar to that is the protagonist who's only just joined a group of good guys, yet somehow becomes wiser and more skilled at fighting baddies than even the leaders of such group by the climax of the story.

In real life, fighting evil is a group effort that requires a lot of organizing and cooperation from multiple people within a community. It takes years of experience and a lot of failures.

While my MCs shift the plot with their movements in the story, they're never leaders or even heroes. They are kids with their own goals. They can be naive, they can be selfish, they do bad things by accident, they get help and learn from others with more experience than them on how to do what's right.

[cherrystark]

Definitely go for it. I wrote a satire on the superhero genre. The MC operates the only childcare agency geared toward superpowered folk. She's sleeping with her superhero crush, who is super protective of her. It's fun because she's low-key the safest person in the city since not even the super villains are willing to give up quality child care.

[Lensing]

That sounds good.
I´m writing my stories in a 12 panel format like a cartoon book.
That´s the challenging part but it also makes a lot of things easier for me.

[Hipiticus]

My MC does villainous stuff to meet his goals

[DasIstWunderblyat]

The "muggles" aren't powerless, nor they're ignorant about magic and the supernatural*. I try to make them, while some are still better at fighting than other, capable of holding their ground against or defeating similarly-leveled magical people/beings.

*) I always find it a tad too unrealistic, given the nature of people and their love for conspiracy plus the supernaturals. People are much keener about their surroundings, we have senses and "gut feelings" evolutionary wired on us to detect things that "can harm" us.

Though, I personally never intend to "fix" things. It is not broken nor automatically make things bad when played straight, just mostly used in line of certain expectations way too much.

[abigaillmartin]

That’s why I left out the entire secret identity trope for my steampunk superhero story Elsie. The characters are just normal Victorians living their lives, only with big brains and ideas to help everyday people. (And fight against the unordinary)

[YS_og]

For mine, I am trying to fix three but nothing too outright or overt. Hopefully just enough so that it doesn't repeat tired tropes.

Mecha story lines tend to have a definite bad guy you can't argue isn't bad or evil (regardless of their back stories or motivations). With mine, every line is blurred. In reality, which side is ever the actual good side in any war with the exception of Hitler for example? So with that in mind, I definitely try to focus on the individuals and not the sides.

Mecha story lines also tend to have mass destruction left and right like civilians never existed. Avoiding civilian infrastructure damage is one of the big protocols observed in my story, and it can be taken advantage of when you get someone in a bad spot and cant return fire etc.

Last, main protag pilots are either born super pilots without knowing and just FALL into their main character role by fate, or they were already aces to begin with and find themselves in perilous situations to start. For mine, it was more of a simple matter of surviving early on and earning the spot with no gifted or guaranteed top treatment. Also, no ace factor, either, having to gain experience/level up as anyone else would have to.

Maybe I am trying too hard to break norms, but that was the only reason I ever wanted to write the damn thing, to prove a point

[darthmongoose]

With Errant, I tend to call it a "Feminist Deconstruction of Shounen Manga" because shounen manga, or really just action comics in general, and superhero comics tend to put a lot of faith in the idea that one special, powerful person with a sense of virtue, can make the world a better place, and that if they do not have enough personal power to do that, it is justified to seek out more. There's often this idea that destiny favours the right person getting the special power and that their flaws and the damage they do to ordinary people are ultimately forgivable, because they achieved great things. The idea that it's not the entire concept of having a king that's bad, but rather that there are good Kings and evil Kings, as so long as you have a Good King, the kingdom flourishes.

I call bullcrap on all that.

One individual having the power to do what they like and being justified in using it based on their own judgement is a horrible idea. Yeah, it can be made to work in fiction, where the ends can be contrived to work out so that everything they did resulted in all the problems being neatly solved and everyone being happy, but it's a damaging idea. The power fantasy of exceptionalism and that some people matter more because they have more power is one that authoritarians have used to commit great evils, or in a more everyday sense, it's what allows absolute fools to stay in positions of power, propped up by stans who think anyone who managed to make a lot of money must be really smart in the face of all evidence.
The people who get success and power are almost never just people who were innately more worthy or who actually worked harder or were smarter than others; they were usually just opportunistic and lacking empathy enough to be willing to trample over others to get what they want.

The core message of Errant is that conflating power with worthiness and importance is BAD, and concentrating yet more power into a single person believing that they are some sort of "hero", better than other human beings, is BAD. It's only through understanding, teamwork, accountability and responsibility for your actions that positive change can be wrought.

...And also it doesn't just blindly decide all the people worthy of power or importance in a narrative are cishet dudes, or that women exist only to be a reward for heroism or to die or get hurt to provide motivation or character growth. I guess that's another very dull aspect of a lot of Action genre comics I don't indulge.

[TheLemmaLlama]

Idek if this counts as a genre (I guess most slice-of-life of the 'cute girls doing cute things' variety falls under this criteria), but I find a lot of stories with ensembles where the main cast has found family vibes ends up with everyone just being one big happy family and it's like 'I've found my people'. And I totally get the appeal, but I also have trouble buying into it so a lot of my works will have an ensemble cast, but at least two of the members will end the story with some sort of irreparable rift between them. And so the whole group can't all be together without tension.

Because friendship is not transitive.