Based on an exercise outlined in the book "Thinkertoys"
Ladies and gentlemen! Children of all ages! But mostly young adults I guess, since this post will be of particular interest to you. Today I have decided to design my ideal superhero, whom I'm sure you'll see immortalized on the silver screen within the decade.
In order to accomplish this, I am going to use the Brutethink method of creative rumination, which unfortunately does not involve the Hulk smashing things. Instead, I am going to pick a random word, examine this word and everything it connotes, and then force connections back to my original creative obstacle.
I decided to employ the highly scientific method of messaging a number of friends with 'gimme a random word' and choosing the first viable one some surprised friend spit back, which leaves me with: "plethora."
Alright, then, let's examine plethora. What are the aspects of this word?
1. It means "an overabundance of something"
2. It's uncommonly used
3. It can also refer to a depressive condition brought on by excess blood
4. Well that just made me think of depressed vampires, which amused me
5. It stems from the Greek term for "fullness"
Now to force relations between these components of my random word and superhero creation!
1. In the comic book universe, there is certainly an overabundance of super-powered people. This also puts me in mind of a Doppleganger power where the hero could generate additional copies of himself (yes, I'm making a male superhero, I'm not touching the portrayal of women in comic books with a ten foot pole).
2. Well, the most uncommon type of superhero is the completely non-super kind such as Batman, though arguably most "tech" heroes do not have superpowers. Since I've never actually seen a non-super nearly as awesome as Batman I'm going to steer clear of that archetype, leaving me with technologically-assisted.
3. Recently (more-or-less) there has been a trend toward humanizing heroes by giving them character flaws and emotional and social issues, though comic book writers seem to take this too far sometimes and dip into sudden-onset psychosis. There are enough depressive superheroes, so I'm going to take "issue caused by excess blood" and draw the inverse "anemia" from it. Weakness!
4. Well I think a vampiric superhero would be verging on the anti-hero category. I'm going to pull it back a bit and say that energy vampirism is totally on the level, which fits with the tech theme; so, the character could leech from ambient magnetic fields to power his devices, and directly siphon off energy from machines to fuel more impressive things.
5. I see a superhero name in this one. Fullness requires ample food, and one of the definitions of "amplitude" is related to electricity. Bam!
Let's see, that leaves us with the fragile, anemic hero Amplitude, alias Miles Reinhardt. An engineer at a weapons manufacturing company, Miles discovered a way to magnify the strength and agility of an individual by creating what he dubbed "resonant copies," energy-based Dopplegangers centered on their creator. An intricate device housed in an innocuous watch harnesses the power of ambient magnetic fields to generate these copies. The watch can extrude a metallic spike that when embedded into any machine can draw off energy to temporarily supercharge the device and its pilot.
Awesome! Now I just need an artist and a publishing company and I'm set to go.
Closing thoughts on this exercise:
This exercise is a little more unwieldy than most, since there's a pretty big temptation to just go with a word related to your problem instead of something truly random. I think my method of asking a non-informed, confused bystander worked out pretty well though. I'd read that comic.
A short note about my creative environment:
I actually moved from one place to another while writing this, which is a first, so I suppose I get to give both and a comparison. Initially I was working in a friend's room, sitting on his bed and leaning against the wall with a pillow. It was light outside, and some sunlight was streaming through the window. I was sufficiently distracted that I still hadn't made any progress after a few hours, so I went back to my dorm room to work, threw on my noise-isolating headphones and immersed myself in an eclectic Gothic metal, rock, and pop music. It's dark outside by now, though the room light is on and a reading light on my desk as well. My roommate's here, but doing something silently behind me.
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