One theme that I favor, although it would alienate a lot of audiences, is the virtue of shutting up and multiplying. I like the idea of a character whose moral strength is characterized by their ability to consistently be pragmatic to the point of ruthlessness (tvtropes link) without compromising their commitment to doing what’s right.
Would this be a superhero story (or effectively so, with a protagonist who wants to help everybody)? A rational character in a superhero story seems quite hard, since normal superheroes are barred form doing anything either too boring or too disruptive. You can build a super-jetpack and use it to fight crime, but you can’t sell it on the mass market, revolutionize travel, and donate the proceeds to charity.
One other way is a more small-scale story, like some sort of suspense setting. Protagonist is a financial regulator or surgeon or something, and has to resolve some situation that is smaller than world hunger. Heck, this probably wouldn’t even be a break from genre if it was done with a hard-boiled cop.
Another way is to make the “superhero” start with only a small advantage, and have other people with bigger advantages competing with/against. Sort of like Batman racing Superman to end world hunger.
If I were writing it, I’d probably invoke a fantasy setting, because that makes it easier to avoid Reed Richards Is Useless (tvtropes.) It’s easier to get the audience to buy major changes to the status quo if you don’t start with something that’s basically an analogue to modern society.
When I recently played Fable 3, I considered playing my character as one who wants to spread their “heroic genes” as much as possible.
The basic story for the game is that long ago a “great hero” became king and brought peace to the kingdom with sword and magic. Generations later, he has two remaining decendents. The king in charge now is basically ruling with an iron fist and working everyone to death in the secret hope of preparing their defenses to repel an ancient evil that will invade the realm in a years time (he doesn’t tell the population about this for morale reasons).
His younger sibling (the protagonist) is given a vision by an ambiguously divine oracle who tells them they have to wrest control of the kingdom from their older brother to save it from the coming attack, both because he’s mentally traumatized from the knowledge and he can’t make the right choices. Younger sibling then starts unlocking their “heroic destiny” which results in (among other things) them getting access to powerful magic in a world where nobody else seems to have any magical ability. Incidentally, the combat system in this game is pretty much broken to nonexistance due to normal melee and ranged attacks being slow, unwieldly, and prone to getting blocked by every other enemy you encounter.
Basically, Heroes in this game seem to consist of a single bloodline whose members can spam area-of-effect attacks at will with no mana cost when everyone else is stuck with weapons that blocked at every turn.
My particular character was of the opinion that the world was in pretty bad shape if she was apparently the only person who could do anything to stop the apocolypse and was rather interested in finding a way to “shut up and multiply” and thereby increase the number of potential AOE spamming heroes in the future. Assuming she can survive the current crisis and save the world so future generations can exist at all.
I guess it would kind of be like living in a world where everyone is a “muggle” and one select bloodline of mages exists. Said bloodline then has to do everything in its power to multiply and form stable populations to fight all the monsters and horrors the setting throws at it. Then maybe fast forward a few generations when there is a stable and decadent elite ruling over the muggles and someone has to rise up against the “AOE spamming oppresors”.
I guess its that alot of the “Rational” fics I’ve seen before have one super brilliant Rationalist come across a civilization of entrenched non-rationalists and beat them all at their own game because they can rapidly exploit all the magical loopholes that nobody else in the setting apparently noticed despite living in it for centuries. Imagine seeing the person who had to build that whole magical civilization and was probably trying to spend their time producing an heir instead of designing the next magical atom-bomb.
If we require that people actually be interested in this story, I think small scale corresponds to a small thing that a character in the story cares enough about to make the story interesting. Though we also can’t forget small “universal” scale—no cheating by choosing things that the character finds boring but audiences find interesting. Winning a single hand of euchre, perhaps.
One theme that I favor, although it would alienate a lot of audiences, is the virtue of shutting up and multiplying. I like the idea of a character whose moral strength is characterized by their ability to consistently be pragmatic to the point of ruthlessness (tvtropes link) without compromising their commitment to doing what’s right.
Would this be a superhero story (or effectively so, with a protagonist who wants to help everybody)? A rational character in a superhero story seems quite hard, since normal superheroes are barred form doing anything either too boring or too disruptive. You can build a super-jetpack and use it to fight crime, but you can’t sell it on the mass market, revolutionize travel, and donate the proceeds to charity.
One other way is a more small-scale story, like some sort of suspense setting. Protagonist is a financial regulator or surgeon or something, and has to resolve some situation that is smaller than world hunger. Heck, this probably wouldn’t even be a break from genre if it was done with a hard-boiled cop.
Another way is to make the “superhero” start with only a small advantage, and have other people with bigger advantages competing with/against. Sort of like Batman racing Superman to end world hunger.
If I were writing it, I’d probably invoke a fantasy setting, because that makes it easier to avoid Reed Richards Is Useless (tvtropes.) It’s easier to get the audience to buy major changes to the status quo if you don’t start with something that’s basically an analogue to modern society.
When I recently played Fable 3, I considered playing my character as one who wants to spread their “heroic genes” as much as possible.
The basic story for the game is that long ago a “great hero” became king and brought peace to the kingdom with sword and magic. Generations later, he has two remaining decendents. The king in charge now is basically ruling with an iron fist and working everyone to death in the secret hope of preparing their defenses to repel an ancient evil that will invade the realm in a years time (he doesn’t tell the population about this for morale reasons).
His younger sibling (the protagonist) is given a vision by an ambiguously divine oracle who tells them they have to wrest control of the kingdom from their older brother to save it from the coming attack, both because he’s mentally traumatized from the knowledge and he can’t make the right choices. Younger sibling then starts unlocking their “heroic destiny” which results in (among other things) them getting access to powerful magic in a world where nobody else seems to have any magical ability. Incidentally, the combat system in this game is pretty much broken to nonexistance due to normal melee and ranged attacks being slow, unwieldly, and prone to getting blocked by every other enemy you encounter.
Basically, Heroes in this game seem to consist of a single bloodline whose members can spam area-of-effect attacks at will with no mana cost when everyone else is stuck with weapons that blocked at every turn.
My particular character was of the opinion that the world was in pretty bad shape if she was apparently the only person who could do anything to stop the apocolypse and was rather interested in finding a way to “shut up and multiply” and thereby increase the number of potential AOE spamming heroes in the future. Assuming she can survive the current crisis and save the world so future generations can exist at all.
I guess it would kind of be like living in a world where everyone is a “muggle” and one select bloodline of mages exists. Said bloodline then has to do everything in its power to multiply and form stable populations to fight all the monsters and horrors the setting throws at it. Then maybe fast forward a few generations when there is a stable and decadent elite ruling over the muggles and someone has to rise up against the “AOE spamming oppresors”.
I guess its that alot of the “Rational” fics I’ve seen before have one super brilliant Rationalist come across a civilization of entrenched non-rationalists and beat them all at their own game because they can rapidly exploit all the magical loopholes that nobody else in the setting apparently noticed despite living in it for centuries. Imagine seeing the person who had to build that whole magical civilization and was probably trying to spend their time producing an heir instead of designing the next magical atom-bomb.
.
If we require that people actually be interested in this story, I think small scale corresponds to a small thing that a character in the story cares enough about to make the story interesting. Though we also can’t forget small “universal” scale—no cheating by choosing things that the character finds boring but audiences find interesting. Winning a single hand of euchre, perhaps.
Another alternative is to give the superhero powers that are not conducive to reproduction, or to somehow limit him from having the gift of greatness.