Saturday, July 13, 2013

Girl Power!

Last week I started working on a story that borrows elements from the Chances Are series and Tales of the Scarlet Knight series.  The idea is:  what happens when the world's greatest male superheroes become female?

So I created four heroes who are loosely based on Superman, Batman, Aquaman, and the Flash.  Here's what the girl versions look like:

And now the before and after pictures!
Apex Man/Apex Girl

Midnight Spectre

Lord Neptune/Mermaid
Velocity Man/Velocity Girl


The Velocity Man was the trickiest.  I made one version with blue skin and one with peach skin and then copied the peach mouth/chin onto the blue-skinned one to make it look like the type of mask the Flash wears.  And I cut off the ears and replaced them with a couple little ovals, which for some reason makes it look better to me.  The girl version just looks damned sexy; that's one to put up on my wall.

Anyway, at first it was probably going to be a short story but since it's already over 3000 words and not even got to the turning part yet, I suppose it'll end up to be more like a novella.  I figure I can have some fun making light of the inherent sexism in comic books.  You can see some of that in the female costumes.  Note the Apex Girl and Velocity Girl ones have a spot where skin is visible to show off the cleavage.  The Apex one should have a really short skirt like Supergirl but the superhero costumes in the Sims were all one piece, so just use your imagination.  And note the Mermaid one doesn't have any pants!  Those are just bikini drawers, leggings, and tall boots.  Also the idea they get called Apex Girl and Velocity Girl as opposed to something more PC.

And then since I'm a serious writer each one has to have a serious issue to deal with.  Apex has to deal with her complicated relationship with the Lois Lane-type character.  Velocity has a wife and kid and so now what the fuck happens to that?  Midnight has to deal with the problem that she's lost most of her physical strength and that the government snubs her from rejoining the superhero team because they think she's too wimpy now.  For Mermaid the problem is that before he was a closeted homosexual ruling a very conservative kingdom and while now she can shag all the guys she wants and no one will care, what about her boyfriend who's still gay and thus not interested in women?

You can read what I have so far on Wattpad.  I realized I had a problem in the first chapter where I started in 3rd person-present tense and then for some reason shifted to 3rd person-past tense.  I went through to fix that; hopefully there aren't any more instances of that left.  For some reason I can write 1st person-present tense easily and 3rd person-past tense easily but not 3rd person-present tense.  It's weird.

5 comments:

Michael Offutt, Phantom Reader said...

They call that visible skin part a "boob window"

stephen Hayes said...

I would think third person, present tense difficult to pull off. I never fail to be impressed by your creativity and inventiveness. How many novels have you written?

Briane said...

I bookmarked this when you first posted the link and then didn't read it, but I'm going to go now. Having harangued you about not writing anymore, I'd really be remiss if I didn't then go read the stuff you wrote. Not that that's the only reason, but never let it be said that I do not understand my role in/contributions to a society.

"Yes, George, because of society." -- Jerry Seinfeld

klahanie said...

I considered this all rather kinky. Perhaps I should start to worry. You have reached the very apex with this one....

Cindy said...

That opening question made me smile. At least you're doing something about the shortage of female superheroes.

You don't see too many books in third person present tense. Probably best to avoid it unless there is a good reason not to.

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