I'm writing a story that revolves around people with subtle superpowers, a private investigator protagonist and something to do with kidnapping (will make sense later). The story is still pretty vague and I'm still working on the physics of it. (Usually, before I write a story, I have to get the fundamentals of the world down.
I cannot think of an antagonist group/organization to go in my story which hasn't got something to do with "Secret government experimentation" or "DNA stealers" or the generic "evil" organization plot. I need something different. Here are the points to consider:
- The world of the story is like our own except there are subtle abilities. These abilities could range from having a really strong tolerance of spicy food to having a photographic memory/ability to create deja vu. (I'm thinking these abilities could come from a gene everyone has and there are certain nucleotides that create them. Longer the sequence of nucleotides, stronger the ability)
- However, I could leave the origin of the abilities a secret and could add that as a motivation for the plot… and the villain…
- I don't know whether the public of the world should know about the abilities or not. It could a) be a big secret and later revealed, the less "powered" people could start creating prejudice. b) everyone knows but it's not been categorized as abilities. People know that some people have a great tolerance of spicy food or have the ability to always creep upon them, they just don't know it's because of "superpowers" nor do they know about the more obvious ones c) Everyone knows about the abilities, they've been categorized as abilities and the prejudice could already exist.
- There are about 9 main characters. Therefore it would make sense for the villain to be a group or of multiple aliases.
- I need this antagonist to somehow incorporate the need to kidnap people as that's a strong part of the plot. I know a father comes to the private investigator to help find his daughter and on this case, the PI finds an escaped "kidnapee"
- How would you react in a world where some people are more "heightened" than others?
Would you be jealous? Outraged? Or accepting? What if you didn't have any of these abilities? Do you think extremist groups would be formed in retaliation?
All the points listed are for context and assistance for the creation of an antagonist
This is super interesting - I really love your explanation for how the subtlepowers (that's what I'm going to call them lol) exist. I think I'd be accepting of the 'heightened' people, though some kind of discrimination would definitely arise from people being afraid. I'll come back to help you later, this is really cool, keep up the good work!
This is super interesting - I really love your explanation for how the subtlepowers (that's what I'm going to call them lol) exist. I think I'd be accepting of the 'heightened' people, though some kind of discrimination would definitely arise from people being afraid. I'll come back to help you later, this is really cool, keep up the good work!
I agree that there definitely would be some sort of discrimination from people. I think it would mostly come out of jealousy or the belief of being unequal in life. For example, people would most likely call for people with "subtle powers" to have their own separate schools and classes as they would "excel further" than in a normal school, making it unfair for the "normal" students. The same goes for sports events, getting employed, etc…
Definitely. Some kind of segregation would likely arise. Yikes.
I mean, it might be a little too basic, but what if that's your antagonist's motivation? What if they were bullied or neglected when they were a kid because of a lack of ability (or maybe their ability got them bullied?) And they got so bitter and hurt about it that they wanted to create a world where everyone was the same/equal, so that no one could ever be targeted just for being different, like they were. And at first the idea started out as well-intentioned, but over time they started going to greater and greater lengths to make their plan work, and over time they lost track of their morals and started hurting people just to make them fit into their grand plan somehow. Not sure how that would tie into the kidnapping, but I feel like there's a way to make it work. Idk if you'll like this idea, but it seems like it could make for a compelling villain with a strong enough argument (on the surface, anyway) to make others wonder if what they're doing is really so terrible. Just a thought!
I mean, it might be a little too basic, but what if that's your antagonist's motivation? What if they were bullied or neglected when they were a kid because of a lack of ability (or maybe their ability got them bullied?) And they got so bitter and hurt about it that they wanted to create a world where everyone was the same/equal, so that no one could ever be targeted just for being different, like they were. And at first the idea started out as well-intentioned, but over time they started going to greater and greater lengths to make their plan work, and over time they lost track of their morals and started hurting people just to make them fit into their grand plan somehow. Not sure how that would tie into the kidnapping, but I feel like there's a way to make it work. Idk if you'll like this idea, but it seems like it could make for a compelling villain with a strong enough argument (on the surface, anyway) to make others wonder if what they're doing is really so terrible. Just a thought!
I love the idea of them wanting a world where everyone is equal! Perhaps it can come from both good and bad intentions. It would be even more messed up if it were a group of people trying to find a way to inhibit people's abilities so that everyone was "equal". It would be even worse if they had the intention of doing it for the greater good and trying to prevent " further division and segregation within the human race".
Yeah, that was my thinking too! Glad to help ^^
This looks really cool, I hope to see more of your storyline in the future!
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