SUPERHUMAN RATING SYSTEM

As an anime and manga fanatic, I noticed that some animes and mangas use a rating system when categorizing characters. For example, Yu Yu Hakusho used a rating system for demons and Tokyo Ghoul used a rating system for ghouls. These rating systems ranged from C class to S class with the C class being to lowest rating and S class being the highest rating. When I started writing The Young Guardians Series, a friend of mine wondered if I should use this rating system to categorize superhumans. I never did it, but now I am thinking of using it in my new superhuman series with C class being the weakest and most common superhumans while S class represents the rarest and strongest superhumans.

TOKYO GHOUL: CLOWNS MONTAGE

Here is a video montage I made regarding the Clowns from Tokyo Ghoul. It includes images of the Clowns from the manga and has the classical song “Send In The Clowns”. If the Clowns had a theme song I think it would obviously be “Send In The Clowns”. Enjoy!

NIGHT KING IMPERSONATION

As I watched Game of Thrones, I wondered how the Night King would have sounded if he could speak and what he would say. Here is my impersonation of the Night King. To add extra flare, I included the White Walker music from Season 5. Enjoy!

REAL SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH

Here is an example of real life superhuman strength where a man rolls up frying pans like tortillas and bending a wrench with his bare hands. Those items are designed to never bend and yet this man was able to bend them. Scientists ran tests and confirmed that this man was generating over five hundred pounds of gripping force in his hands. That’s insane! I will be looking for other examples of real life superhuman strength to get a better idea of how a real life Hulk can be seen on a believable level.

A WORLD WITHOUT RELIGION

In some of the darkest dystopian stories I have been exposed to, there is always an integral part of human nature and culture that was being stripped away. For example, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, possessing books were banned and any books that were found were promptly burned. Another example is the Christian Bale film Equilibrium, which involved banning human emotion and any items that would stir human emotion. In Equilibrium, feeling emotions and possessing unauthorized items were capital offenses punishable by death. In my superhuman series, I am considering raising the stakes by creating a world where religion was banned. Religion would still be used for creative and educational purposes, but actually believing and worshipping it would be capital offenses. This would be fitting since this world will be run by a totalitarian regime. I got the idea from things I heard on the recent news of people being persecuted for their beliefs and I wondered what would happen if that persecution persisted in the distant future. I can imagine it being a dark and cynical time ruled by dark and cynical people, which in my opinion would make a great dystopian landscape. One of my main characters and their family will secretly religious until their secret is leaked to the government and all hell breaks loose. This will serve as an integral part of this character’s origin story. Tell me what you think of this scenario.

GAME OF THRONES: EURON GREYJOY’S MASTER PLAN

In the books, what is Euron Greyjoy’s endgame? He won the kingsmoot, plots to marry Daenerys Targaryen and use his dragon horn to control her dragons, then he conquers the Shield Islands and gives them to his potential enemies. Euron said that he purposely gave the Shield Islands to his potential enemies so they would fail to hold them, destroying them in the process, which is pretty clever. However, now he is sailing his fleet up the Mander River and getting ready to face both the Redwyne and Hightower fleets. What is the Mad Kraken’s ultimate goal? He is surrounded by two enemy fleets with seemingly no hope of escape from the heart of enemy territory. However, he clearly has a plan for the warlocks and priests he captured including his brother Aeron. Does Euron plan to use the warlocks and priests in a human sacrifice in order to unleash some unholy magic upon the Redwynes and Hightowers? If that happens, what then? Aeron did have a vision of Euron on the Iron Throne with a mysterious woman by his side. Does Euron hope to use his ironborn as well as dark magic to pay the iron price and take the Iron Throne from the Lannisters? Also, who is the woman Aeron sees him with? Is it Cersei or Daenerys? I can’t wait to find out in the next book, The Winds of Winter.

GAME OF THRONES: HARREN THE BLACK

Harren the Black of House Hoare ruled the Iron Islands and the Riverlands for forty years, which is a curiously long reign for a famously cruel tyrant like him. How did he manage to keep his crown for forty years? If Aegon Targaryen and his dragons never invaded, what do you think would have become of House Hoare and their kingdom? Would they continue to conquer the Stormlands after finishing Harrenhal or would they conquer in another direction? Would Westeros become an ironborn empire instead of a Targaryen one?

GUERRILLA WARFARE

One of the most unpredictable and dangerous aspects of warfare is the use of guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare is when a smaller and more mobile force can defeat a larger army through sabotage, ambushes, and hit-and-run tactics. In my medieval research, I learned that the Welsh were prolific users of guerrilla warfare and were able to keep the English at bay until they were conquered by Edward I AKA Longshanks. Then in the Welsh Revolt that lasted from 1400 to 1415, the Welsh made good usage of guerrilla warfare before engaging the English in open warfare. In my second fantasy book, I will be featuring a rather frightening form of guerrilla warfare. With all of their fighting men gone off to war, a kingdom will be invaded by an Imperial army, who will receive fierce resistance from the locals. The guerrilla forces will only consist of old people, women, and children. The elders will serve as strategists and tacticians, the women will serve as shield maidens who are just as skilled in combat as their men, and the children will serve as assassins and saboteurs who slit enemy throats in their sleep and set fires to enemy camps. The locals will even burn their own farms and villages in order to reduce the number of resources the invaders could pillage, which will starve them out. Overall, even though their fighting men are gone, these locals are NOT to be underestimated!

FUTURE CRIMINAL UNDERWORLD

In a dystopian future, crime is bound to reign supreme and unchecked. No matter how advanced or sophisticated a society becomes, crime always becomes an integral part of it like a parasite feeding off its host. I am going to depict crime on an extreme level with drugs, arms dealers, mobsters, gangs, you name it. Crime is going to serve an integral role in the origin stories of my main characters. There will be five gangs, one gang per character’s origin story, and they will all answer to one supreme crime lord. I am thinking of basing these gangs on fads that have happened in recent years and give them a dark twist. The main characters individual battles with these gangs will ultimately lead to them meeting one another to face the supreme crime lord. It is going to be a story with even more moving parts than my Magnus Dynasty Saga.

ARTIFICIAL WOMBS

In a world full of sterility and infertility, this would be how humans would reproduce in the future: the artificial womb. The first work of fiction to introduce the concept of the artificial womb was Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. In Brave New World, human beings were being grown in vats and genetically engineered to serve a specific role in society’s caste system. What I am thinking of for my superhuman series will not involve a caste system, but it will include genetic engineering and eugenics to keep the populace at peak human conditioning. Unlike Gattaca and Brave New World, my futuristic society will not have genetic discrimination but political and financial discrimination. The picture above shows the blueprints of a crude artificial womb from 1955. I am thinking of an artificial womb that is sleeker and biomechanical in nature and there would be vast halls full of them in rows like books on a library’s shelves.