They isn’t fatigue of the hero theme. It’s just people that are lazy. I mean authors.
In my opinion since 2017 this theme became boring 'cause the authors don’t take pleasure writing them.
This is an immanis subjet. For exemple there are a youtube channel that only talk about it.
Nerdrotic is the name. They have hours and hours of arguments and laughting stock material on the subjet.
But the complains remain the same. Its the authors that are afraid of those social movements or are part of them. Authors limit themself to the same elements. And that all laughable when u realize it.
Lucha_Markre is totaly right its just art. How can u over saturate an art ?
Those stories need to be more creative if they want people to read it. Authors now can write with AI (automate intelligent - tools) and is the same boring stuff. They will just be less good superhero stories.
I definitely agree with you on the front that when authors lean too heavily on the same formula without genuine passion or innovation, it shows. It’s not the theme that’s the problem, it’s the execution and a lack of variety can make even good story feel stale.
And I’ll definitely be giving this “Nerdrotic” channel a look through, got a particular video you’d recommend I check out first?
No particular, just scroll and take your peak. Mind that he is a person that love hero comic and theme. And he read and buy them on industrial rate, know a lot of the in and out of it. You will definitively understand his points.
Actually, the more the better for me. Ofc you can’t expect every single superhero story to be good lmao but when the story is really good, it’s like really good.
Yes, and I thank you for your input. But for clarity sake, do you have anything to add onto the statement, like a suggestion on what exactly makes a story “like really good” for you?
I’m just poking fun at you by the way, not trying to mock or make fun of your phrasing in any way.
I have to clarify that just on the off-chance my humor failed to land, because I can see how it might come off rather different than intended.
I like super hero stories too much to ever get bored of it. U can release 50 superhero WIPs tomorrow, I will finish all of them by a week. But some topics can be repetitive, like origin stories, the government trying to control heroes, some kind of anti powered sentiment , some of them are understandable like if it’s ur first book on it u wanna start with an origin story and government trying to control powered folk seems like a legitimate thing they will try to do if superpowers were real but still it can kind of gets repetitive. Maybe some ideas can be explored where the main character is actually magical hero <like fate/Strange> which would make you both extremely strong and also vulnerable as u can probably get off really strong spells off but if caught off guard a bullet to the head is all it takes to take you down. Another idea is u being someone who already starts out super powerful like say Thor from marvel who comes to a world where heroes are a thing. (Broken fable WIP) kind of does this. Also it would be better if a lot of writers followed the principle of super powers were already a thing since known history but was less prevalent in the past, but the protag gains their powers recently that would be better than what a lot of stories do which is one event suddenly provides super powers to a part of the population.
I’d say fantasy stories were always a much bigger victim of oversaturation - that is, of course, pseudomedieval largely high fantasy stories, not rarer subgenres. Superhero stories are second in both sales and saturation compared to fantasy stories CoG publishes. They are more noticeable because superheroes are a genre that’s more eye-grabbing in current sphere.
I’d say not for myself. I like them. Love Drink your Villian Juice and Fallen Hero series. In my favored list not just like. Though ones not to be released and I shouldn’t say it is favored. But. It is.
There are other ‘superhero’ likes I have that havent been in the making too long yet. Looking forward to those.
The fatigue is ones done willy nilly, not done right or without thought on implications. I gotta check an update on one I wasn’t that impressed with for an ending.
The thing is, though, even if you only include those pseudomedieval fantasy stories, fantasy IF stories still seem to be quite a bit more varied than superhero stories in terms of story beats. Fantasy IFs released under the HG or COG have included both adventuring party-style stories(whether also being quests or not), magic school-style IFs and IFs where you play MC nobles or royals and the adventures about their way to rule and/or their actual rule. You also have more unusual story beats such as IFs standalones or series about the life of a Wizard(Life of a Wizard), solving mysteries in a fantasy setting(Evertree Saga), portal fantasy(The Last Wizard) and a story where the MC is the damsel in distress(Kidnapped! A Royal Birthday, and whether or not the MC is female or male).
And that’s not even taking into account the IFs set in a a fantasy alternative history medieval setting. And the approaches used include both rpg-y IFs like The Lost Heir trilogy, romance/relationship-focused IFs like The Soul Stone War series and managment style IFs like War for the West and Daria:A kingdom simulator. Except for outliers like Fallen Hero, that steers away from many of the most common story beats, I can’t see that there’s anything close to the same variety when it comes to the superhero IFs. So I don’t think fantasy as a genre is really oversaturated in terms of overusing the same old tropes, though the number of IFs set in the Magic School without really doing any thing new with that setting, might mean that that particular fantasy setting is oversaturated.
I have to admit that I’m also a bit disappointed that so few of the as yet released superhero IFs let you choose the actual powers of the MC, since that is one of the areas where superhero IFs have the most potential, at least for someone like me who loves choosing the abilities and skills of my MCs, not least when that means them getting some powers.
So, although I don’t know if superhero IFs are oversaturated in terms of potential readers, I do agree that it may very well be that most of it needs more fresh ideas and/or fresh approaches. You don’ necessarily need to break with all the usual tropes for it to work either, if you, have a certain knowingness about and/or sort of ironic distance to them and maybe even allow them to be subverted a bit, like Unsupervised, which do all of this(and also allow you to choose the powers of the MC).
I’m hardly an unbiased observer when it comes to this subject, but I’d have to say I hope the genre isn’t over-saturated! I suppose, as with any kind of genre fiction, sometimes the repeated tropes and themes are half of the fun. I really enjoy Westerns, for example, and while I like the ones that play around with the genre a bit, in the end I still really enjoy stories about a stoic but honorable gunslinger making his way through a violent and lawless world.
In the case of super heroes, the funny thing (and I may be dating myself a bit here) is that in much of the pop culture of my youth subverting the classic tropes was much more common than playing them straight. You had a lot of tv shows like “Heroes” where the classic elements of a super hero story are present (incredible powers granted to otherwise ordinary people, sinister villains, etc), but then the story goes out of its way to avoid things like costumes, characters actively deciding that helping others and fighting injustice are important, and so on. So it’s kind of refreshing for me to see stories that embrace the classic elements of the genre, even if there’s still a more modern slant to everything. That’s something I tried to do with “The Last Scion”, which of course is a very classic super hero story that I tried to balance out with modern story telling sensibilities.
As far as the presence of superhero stories in IF specifically, I suspect that part of the charm of IF is that you really don’t have the same limits as you would in a more “conventional” game like an FPS or an action/adventure game like Zelda. Making a protagonist with genuinely incredible abilities like a super hero doesn’t have the same balance restrictions as you would need in a game in which the player’s technique and skill with a controller is a core element of progression. An FPS in which the player character has an invulnerable suit of armor would probably get pretty boring pretty quickly, but an IF in which you play an Iron Man-type who has to struggle to decide where and how to use their technology for good could be very exciting and challenging.
i find the superpowered story to be one of the few genres that can constantly evolve and move in to new directions, like even aside from the typical superhero v supervillain story there are many that blur the line between which is which with super powered people running mafia like organizations and things like that
This topic hits a little close to home, seeing as most of the feedback is somewhere in my story I’m writing.
In my case, I’m writing a superhero story because I had an idea for one and they say your first story is your worst. The main story I want to write is a fantasy story, so I decided to write this superhero story instead. However, over time, the story grows and now I have a larger plan for my hero story that makes me want to write it more than my fantasy story. That’s where it started.
Also, when I started writing my WIP, I felt like all of the “super teams” felt off in IFs. They seemed less like a team and more like people who were just friends (Community College Hero) or just popping up for a moment (Hero or Villain). This made me even more want to write a story that is focused on the formation of a super team. As it turns out, I read very few superhero IFs.
At this point I’ve been avoiding reading other superhero stories in hopes to avoid them influencing my stories. Which may be a reason why there are so many WIPs with the same beats. Because people read a story and have an idea for how they would have liked the story to go.
The fact that many of the complaints in this thread are things I plan to cover in my future stories means I can only hope for two things: that my approach is different enough to still be interesting and that people will want their characters to live out scenes they watch or read about in the genre.
Really, I don’t believe that superhero fatigue is a real thing, but over-saturation is. I think the issue is that the stories are mediocre. Sure, part of it is that the same story beats pop up, but another part is that the execution is flat. (Not to say my work isn’t mediocre, I know I’m not standing out in the masses)
First off I really appreciate you sharing your perspective on this subject. And honestly, this thread is exactly for people like you, writers who are passionate about their stories and want to explore ideas that resonate with both readers and themselves.
Just a reminder though, you definitely don’t have to take every point brought up in this discussion into consideration. At the end of the day, write what you want to write. I mainly wanted to shed some light on the topic in hopes that we as a community can avoid burnout from the genre, if there was ever any burnout to be found in the first place that is. But by a lot of the comments I’ve already seen on this thread that seems to be the furthest from the case from being the case.
That said, your superhero story sounds like it’s coming from a really thoughtful place. I’m curious on what’s it about and what’s the core idea that made you go from “this is my warm-up project” to “okay wait, this might actually be the story”?
Oh, this game has a long and messy history. You asked for it. By the time I figured out what I was doing with it, this first project was left being a Frankenstein’s monster of a project, but here is the history of my project.
History of Dawn of Heroes
It started with me reading Hero or Villain and thinking “Oh I like this, but would have preferred if they focused more on X”. At the time I was writing an IF FanFic of Fate/Stay Night, creating my own engine to do it. I had no knowledge of the greater CoG, Hosted Game, or the IF community. I was just working on the FAnFic because of love for the setting.
Once reading Hero or Villain and finding out about Hosted Games, I dropped the FanFic and started to learn ChoiceScript because while I love the setting, I would rather at least make a little money, even if it is just some extra change. It didn’t take long to start working on Dawn of Heroes.
Now I play a lot of table top RPGs (TTRPGs) and I had ran an original superhero story and decided to adapt that story into an IF. Mechanically speaking, Hero or Villain was the basis for my project but I wanted to have a different approach to customizing powers, one inspired by the TTRPGs power creation system. The TTRPG I ran was using Hero System (formally known as Champions).
At first there was vague ideas for future projects, but I was mainly focusing on this first story. I started to figure out the cast of the team which were heavily inspired by DC characters (with a couple of exceptions. It also had a lot of branching stories.
Over time as I realized how crazy I was over the branching, I cut things back and started to figure out the future beyond this story. This came about from @Eiwynn convincing me not to hold my planned character twists for the sequels and instead put them in this story. The fear was some of these twist would be poorly received since they can rewrite people’s perception of them dramatically.
So I started to plan the future of the series since these twists were being pushed forward. At the same time I started to cut out a lot of the inspiration of Hero or Villain’s open world approach and instead focus on telling a story. I cut chapters, moved events to happen sooner, and rewrote events. All the while, I figured out the general direction of the whole series to make sure I could plot events that would set up these later events and choices.
So, Dawn of Heroes (my WIP) is a patchwork of a project that started one way and is now heading in a specific direction.
As for the thoughtfulness and “core idea” it is a mix of “I want a story where the reader can create their heroes’ powers”. However, the inspiration for the direction I’m going is me hoping to use tropes in the genre to give emotional responses and/or tough choices. The tropes I want to use, I don’t see enough of in the couple of IFs I read.
Example for the future of the series: EDITED
For example, in my second story in this series, I plan on focusing on a new main character who is to become the side kick of the Main character in this first story. However, this story does not focus on the first main character, it is an origin story for this second character.
This comes from me not seeing sidekicks in IFs or not seeing ones given justice. Another inspiration for this second story is that comic/superhero stories cross into almost every genre. My second story is more of a sci-fi murder mystery than a superhero tale. This new MC won’t get their powers until we get to the climax of the story.
From there, the third story will focus on both the main character from Dawn of Heroes and the teenage main character from the second story. Then there will be one final story dealing with the fallout.
These first two stories are about choices. The third story is about the consequences of those choices. Then there will be a final story about the MCs learning to cope with those consequences.
This means that my current story and the next one has a lot of setup for what is to come, but I also had to make sure it had a lot to say on their own. It’s with all of this that I am looking forward to my superhero series.
Story 1: Dawn of Heroes - Standard Superhero Story, centered around the formation of a super team. It’s to set up future stories and the choices. It is about the rise of superpowers. Story 2: Carousel Paradox - Sci-fi Murder Mystery, exploring the versatility of a superhero setting by not allowing the (new) main character to have power until the end. It’s to set up future stories and the choices. Story 3: The War on Peace - Superhero story about a hero (MC from Story 1) and their sidekick (MC from Story 2) trying to navigate a changing world as it adjusts to the existence of superhumans. The choices from the first two stories return with consequences. Will also address corporations and government responses to superheroes. Story 4: Brighter Skylines - A superhero story following the heroes as they deal with the fallout of Story 3. It’ll explore overcoming grief and doubts in a way unique to the genre.
I’m not sure I properly explained it, and I might rewrite this explanation. But this is the history of the project and why I’m looking forward to the future.
Be sure when you release the demo in the site , I will be there to read it. And even the main superhero media (comics) deals with this problems of repetitive topics. See X men and thier problem with the governments or Justice League vs Amanda Waller . There have been hundreads of variations of this 2 plot points in the comics. And with good execution they can still be pulled off.
Yes, I plan on doing this in a later story. It’ll be some years before I’m on that story. I’m still trying to completely wrap my head around that story and the government’s involvement.
I edited my last post to add bird’s-eye view of the four stories as I currently have them planned. In there you’ll see when the government enters.
By the time I figured out what I was doing with it, this first project was left being a Frankenstein’s monster of a project, but here is the history of my project.