Say you really want to use a character who alters reality. Yet, you don’t want to lose all tension of the story. Hard to do when this character can change everything around them if they wish. What can you do besides jettisoning the character?
Keep it a passive power that the character is not fully aware of. This means they won’t always get an easy out of a situation. Come up with a specific trigger like them being stressed to a certain point or nearly dying. The point of this method is to have a way to prevent them from altering reality all the time and eliminating all tension.
Create a cost for using their power. It could be that they lose sanity or begin fading from the world they are changing. Maybe a sacrifice is needed for each use. The size of the sacrifice depends on what they wish to change. For example, giving up a favorite pen would allow them to win a raffle for a new washer/dryer, but they would have to give up the memories of their parents to rebuild the entire world.
Limited the scope of what they can change. Lesser forms of reality alteration exists such as luck manipulation. Even magic that allows one to transform one object into another can be used here. The full, unchecked power to change reality should be prevented as much as possible to protect the story.
If you really want to go full God power, you can temper this by giving the character a mild personality. A hero or villain that doesn’t really want to use the power because they’re okay with most things will restrain the usage. You can’t have them do whatever they want because they’re simply not that type of person. This runs the risk of them getting stale and people seeing no point in them, but it could work for a time.
Put the power on a supporting character who isn’t around all the time. This means the main character can’t depend on the power and will have to bargain for its use. The one who has it can simply say no if the requested change would cause too much trouble for the story. It can also be on a neutral character, so even the villains may have the opportunity to utilize it.
Prepare yourself for juggling a multiverse, which is a concept you’ll be accused of stealing from Marvel, but DC really did it first in comics and a pro-Socratic philosopher named Anaximander made the first multiverse theory without using the actual term.
Give everyone the power to alter reality, so it means absolutely nothing. If everyone can do it then there will always be someone to counter the changes. It would mean that the power is pointless, but it’ll be there.
There are many schools of thought when it comes to killing in fiction. I’m only going to go over four of the most common to give you an idea of the basic arguments you can run into out there:
All Necks on the Line– Readers and authors who believe this is the best way to write a story feel that every character is fair game. If the main hero dies then that’s where the story was meant to go and someone will take the mantle. These books tend to create a rather large body count in order to drive the point home, which could lead to plenty of fodder figures. People who argue for this method don’t have a big problem with this because it’s what they want. The only criticism would be to make sure the deaths mean something, but that’s not a deal breaker. There can be a maintained distance from every character since it’s expected that any of them can die at any moment.
Selective Deaths– This is probably where I fall most of the time because I feel that a character death needs to have a big impact. The argument here is that one shouldn’t kill heroes and villains with such ease. Each one is important to the adventure, which will be altered once they are gone. Eliminating someone early means the plot can’t reach where the author wants it to go. Stories like this can have a high risk of ‘plot armor’, but this can be minimized by having some deaths. Once the audience realizes that the author is being selective instead of avoiding killing entirely, they will be less likely to get annoyed at heroes surviving multiple encounters. Of course, this still requires that you kill characters or, if you can’t do that, make them fall back in their evolution at times.
Only Villains Die– This school of thought can be seen as naïve and uninteresting, but it’s common and fairly simplistic. Readers who gravitate towards these stories don’t want to see good people die while evil ones continue to thrive. Older stories work this way too because there was a period when it was believed heroes shouldn’t even bleed. There are legitimate reasons for doing this. Authors with very few or a single protagonist facing many villains don’t have the option of killing their hero, unless the adventure is set to end that way. The target audience could be children, which is a demographic typically given stories where good triumphs over evil without question. So, don’t think that this simplest of styles should be tossed out immediately.
Nobody Dies– There isn’t a single death in these stories, which one would assume is for very little children. Adults may be exposed to these types of adventures as well if the author refuses to kill a character. Even the villains survive after their plans are foiled. This does work in some stories where the heroes can’t take the life of a villain without being arrested for murder. Establishing that it’s illegal to kill someone in a fictional society does limit the amount of death you can include in an adventure. Those who do kill are clearly villains, but if the bad guys are not the murdering types then that leaves you with accidents to take anyone out. It’s when nobody dies in a story where there are constant death-dodging situations that it comes off as everyone having ‘plot armor’. At this point, it’s not even plot relevant, but simply that the author is refusing to take a fictional life.
As you can tell, each school works in specific situations, so there’s no right or wrong way to handle character deaths. It comes down to how well you set it up and the reason for why it happens in the story.
Wasn’t sure if I ever wrote about characters who alter reality, but something triggered the idea again. Wish I remembered what I was watching at the time since this came to me as I was falling asleep. The combination made me think of characters like Haruhi Suzumiya up there. Basically, those who alter reality without realizing it.
To explain this, I will simply describe Suzumiya. She is a teenage girl with the power of a god to alter reality. She can even erase reality and rebuild it if she wishes. The thing is that she doesn’t realize she has this power. Instead, she is interested in living an exciting life with aliens, time travelers, and espers being real. She has inadvertently conjured/attracted these things with her power, but they all agree that she can’t know about her own abilities. So, the story involves her having adventures while her friends make sure she never learns the truth about herself.
This differs from what people are into now where a character knows what they can do and directly use their power. For example, Scarlet Witch and her magic or whatever it is they’re calling it these days. This type of character can create a problem in that they are too powerful. Threats can be erased with a thought, so they are never seen to be in any danger. Many stories result in them being removed either by their own power or an actual God showing up to do the job. All other characters are unable to do anything about them, especially if they turn evil. I’ll get more into that on Wednesday though.
With a dreamer altering reality, you can be more subtle. They don’t really want to change the world, so not all of their desires will be met. It’s more of a ‘it would be nice if’ situation that they don’t think can really come to pass. This only happens when they develop a strong hope that such dreams can become reality. It still isn’t a conscious change, but comes off as a happy coincidence if they even notice what’s going on. Think of it like when you hope you hit green lights on the way to work or your favorite food is on sale at the supermarket. You’ll notice, be happy, and not think it had anything to do with you beyond some luck.
I think a key to a character with this power is subtlety. Being fully aware and in control is a mess for the story, but a dreamer with no conscious control can be useful. It still runs afoul of plot armor, deus ex machina, or whatever you want to call it. The reality altering can always be done at a crucial moment to help the heroes, which is what our instincts would tell us to do. For the power to make a mess, it would have to either go out of control or the author would need to give an explanation as to why it did something to harm the heroes. For example, a dreamer accidentally conjures a ramp during a car chase because they think it would be cool and they get launched into a river. Oops, but at least you can establish this through previous actions and thoughts.
Personally, I’m always nervous about writing a character with these powers. They carry far too much temptation to mess around and fix my mistakes without giving a good reason beyond ‘they changed it’. I also have trouble thinking up ways other characters can challenge those who can alter reality. Limitations can work, but then I start wondering why I gave them this power in the first place. So, I’d have to be really careful when using one of these outside of them being a God or go with this dreamer concept. Definitely having it be a power that is used occasionally and by accident feels like a safer way to go in terms of story and power scaling.
So, what do you think of reality altering characters?
Many people have heard about the thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger. Others have not, so I think a post on it will be helpful. Now, what happened to the thylacine?
On mainland Australia, the thylacine went extinct about 3,500 years ago due to environmental change, increased human activity, and increased dingo populations. It survived on the island of Tasmania until the 1930’s. While only around 5,000 thylacines estimated to be alive, farmers blamed them for the deaths of sheep. So, bounties were put on their heads. This was made worse when a picture was released of a thylacine with a chicken to create more anger. In reality, the picture was cut down to hide the fact that the animal in question lived in captivity. The appearance of humans also introduced a few diseases.
Before everyone jumps onto human activity as the sole reason, there was a study done that showed the thylacine was in trouble long before us. They suffered from a severe decline in genetic diversity nearly 100,000 years ago. This became increasingly worse as time went on, which is why only 5,000 were alive by the time humans showed up with dogs, diseases, and farming. While humans hastened their extinction, they were heading that way and all attempts to save them failed. The low genetic diversity may have been a reason why zoo breeding programs never worked.
All of this has made the thylacine a prime candidate for cloning to revive the species and reintroduce it to the wild. Unlike mammoths and dinosaurs, they did exist in our modern world and would be able to more easily acclimate.
Some thylacine facts:
It is a marsupial, which means it has a pouch for its litter.
Both sexes had a pouch. The female’s used theirs for carrying joeys while the males used it to protect their external reproductive organs.
The last known thylacine died in 1936 at the Hobart Zoo in Tasmania.
They would hop on their hind legs when scared and had trouble running at high speeds, which made them easy targets for hunters.
Thylacines were more than likely solitary ambush predators.
They could open their mouths 80 degrees, but had weak bite strength.
There are still sightings today, but nothing verified.
Thankfully, there are pictures and even video of the thylacine:
(Okay, this is a pretty big rant post about humans. Guess it was one of those weeks.)
That’s been my week due to exhaustion and weird health blips. I became so worn down by Monday evening that all attempts to edit were met with blank staring. I did manage to get one page of Darwin & the Beast Collector done. Hopefully, I can recover and get the rest of the chapter done this weekend. Need fresh air badly, so I’ll be taking a bunch of walks for Pokemon, my health, and socializing. Might not be enough to ward off the fatigue, but fingers crossed.
That’s if this is even fatigue. The whole experience is strange. I wake up feeling ‘odd’, but my blood-oxygen, pulse, and blood pressure are typically normal. Once I had really high BP for a minute after waking up in a panic. So, this could be anxiety, which wasn’t helped by me accepting a glass of wine last night. Ugh, I don’t drink much these days, but I still need to say no more consistently. Anyway, I did my best to rest when I could, but there were a lot of stressors.
First, it was a week long ‘Battle of the Classes’ at work, so a bunch of activities were going on. It’s a lot of fun, but the kids I work with can have trouble. Schedules are changed, so all of us are thrown off. I even found myself suffering from a little overstimulation, which is why walks after work were necessary. Next week won’t be as crazy, but we still have 4 to go before reaching spring break. I’m trying really hard not to succumb to whatever is beating me up because I don’t want to take a day off aside from a personal day in April. I don’t know why I’m determined to do so, but I am. Maybe it’s to make sure I don’t lose money even though I have enough sick days. Not making much extra money, which is also why I’m trying to convince people to give me Lego giftcards for my birthday in April.
I’m also tired of dealing with selfish people who see being fair as them being victimized and screwed. Maybe I give off a pheromone that attracts narcissists because the amount of people I’ve run into this year with this mentality is insane. Did I miss a memo where everyone is out for themselves? I’m typically down and feeling like the universe is out to get me, but these people are the types to punch you in the face and call you a monster for their knuckles getting bruised. They’ll pull a stunt and shriek in rage when you give them a taste of their own medicine. Exhausting to deal with such people.
Third, I’m also tired of . . . Okay, this might piss some people off. I’m tired of people who think empathy is a weakness and caring about fellow humans who aren’t from your ‘tribe’ is wrong. These are the same people who applaud while watching the rich and powerful turn people against each other and act like barely cloaked monsters. Why? Because the groups being targeted aren’t the same ones they hate primarily for existing or voicing a different opinion. The amount of times I’ve been insulted, ridiculed, and faced with anger by stating you should care about certain groups or that a person’s favorite billionaire is clearly a bad person is crazy. Even worse, I sometimes see kids emulating the public displays of rudeness and cruelty because the powerful are doing it with applause instead of consequences.
That was as vague as I could make it since I know a few people who watch this blog and will come at me in real life. Some probably will even if I’m not talking about them. Ugh, I don’t even know where to go from here.
Next week doesn’t have a going on, but I might be able to get a little editing in on Wednesday or Thursday. I still bring a chapter with me to work in case I’m the only one without a coverage at some point. Can’t edit when other people are around because I feel it might be rude. Definitely not a good idea this week because this is the hump for the stretch between winter and spring break. 3 weeks down and then 3 weeks left after this one, which is going to be grueling. On the plus side, the weather looks nice enough for most of the afternoons to give me some walking time after work. That’s been helping with my mood in spite of the exhaustion.
So, what are the goals of the week?
Edit more of Darwin & the Beast Collector
Daily walks . . . That came out weird.
Helping son with homework and life stresses.
Do a few May posts.
Puzzle time.
Continue planning dinners for a period of time I have the house to myself.
Try to avoid the above stressors. I know one of them is unavoidable.
Villain 1– We meet at least, great hero. Now you will . . . Why are you wearing all black like me?
Villain 2– You can’t trick me, hero. Pretending to be like me and . . . Are you riding a skeletal horse?
V1– I summoned it from the deepest depths of Hell.
V2– That’s where I got my demonic eagle mount from. Strange.
V1– What did you do to gain your great power of light?
V2– I use necromancy and I traded the souls of 100 orphaned puppies to get it. Is your castle built on an active acid volcano? I smell burning flesh too.
V1– Leave my lunch out of this. Why do you have a priestess’s shrunken head hanging from your belt?
V2– Follow your own advice. So . . . Are we both villains?
V1– It seems so. Makes me wonder why I bothered threatening your family.
V2– Thanks for forcing me to get rid of that weakness. You still angry about me killing your children last month?
V1– They were planning on betraying me anyway. I used their souls to gain immortality.
V2– I sacrificed an entire species to get mine. Probably a survivor out there planning to kill me one day.
V1– Oh, I’m sure I have a bastard child out there destined to do the same. Honestly, I thought that was you.
V2– Why would you think that?
V1– It was when you slaughtered one of my bases and made an altar out of my soldiers’ skulls. Reminded me of my younger days.
V2– Wanted to go classic with that attack since it was an old fort. It was sitting on a dragon egg nest that I wanted.
V1– I don’t see an army of dragons.
V2– I had them fight until only the strongest was left alive and now it guards my castle.
V1– Better idea than me using them for an omelet party.
V2– I roc eggs. Are we friends or enemies now?
V1– Allies until one of us betrays the other.
V2– Well, I don’t know of any heroes we can unite against. Seems like a pointless alliance until one shows up.
V1– Good point. Split the land and stay out of each other’s way until we’re forced into a conflict?
V2– Sure, but I’m going to push on your borders and jump at any opportunity to gain an advantage.
Legends of Windemere 