EHawkins

Why drink this juice?

Added 2024-01-30 20:25:47 +0000 UTC

Or: hey so, why write a superpowers story anyway?

An ask I received made me think about this subject, and there are a ton of reasons. The easiest is that I've been a superhero fan since I was a kid. I got into Avengers volume 3 around when it started, and kept following those comics for several years. Some of the earliest stories I tried to write had superpowers.

That kept with me growing up, even though I stopped reading comic books in my teens (incidentally, I was also reading fighting fantasy choose your own adventure novels at this point, so there's my entrypoint into interactive fiction). In college I played a superhero RPG with friends, and I'd later get very into the Masks system.

Superpowers are also what grabbed me with the Choice of Games style of book. The Heroes Rise trilogy was just wrapping up, and I adored it. The opportunity to roleplay while reading and playing was something the old CYOAs had never done, and I formed rampant headcanons and even wrote a few fics. IF has come a long way since those days, but I'll always have a soft spot for Heroes Rise.

Back to Villain Juice: I've noodled around with this setting before, and when I got the urge to work on my own IF, it felt like a natural place to return to. Superheroes with an agenda. Superpowers that can be a blessing and a curse. Secrets and uncertainty. I chose to write about superpowers because it let me dip my protagonist (and their players!) into a dangerous world while still empowering them to do something about it.

Also there's this little gremlin in my brain that activates whenever I get the chance to write body horror.