User blog comment:Rorek I/Untold Legends/@comment-1705775-20170921222048

I've struggled for years with cosmic stories and figured out a problem I and most other cosmic writers have, we often try and get to action fast - I like to think I've learned something recently.. the best stories focus more on slice of life, with action occuring when and if needed.. the characters come first and the action comes second.

we used to be all about the action as a brawling fiction - a style I've started to realize just doesn't work when you are writing decent stories.. events like Warcry should be an exception, occuring only after we've had a good few "issues" of getting to know protagonists and their settings, the everyday lives.. then we can get attached to them and thus hate villains more.

so a new start may well be helpful for a new respect on the balance between action and development of characters / setting - can't really be invested in saving the multiverse if said multiverse doesn't feel somewhat "organic" : a place where characters spend as much time sitting around, making fun with friends, trying (and failing) to get some romances and all the simple stuff of living as they do combatting super-villains and giant space-gods.

so.. yeah.. making heroes is easy, making villains is even easier.. making them function in a world that can be "organic"? that comes with age, I think.. I'm just at that level of maturing to start realizing the importance of things outside the "who saves who" or "which planet gets destroyed" aspect.

if we make a new world I think it should evolve nice and slow with plenty of slice of life, comedy, drama and "organic" storytelling - which we can then work some adventures around.. let the characters play and the story feed off the interactions.. I mean with Nebula and Inferno alone there's some serious potential for a lot of stuff to occur, like:


 * the comedy of their weird friendship, combined with the fact said friendship confuses / angers a few of the heroes (let alone the villains)


 * possible romance (or attraction) that would piss off Ruichi and Red (drama, without actual end of world villainy - also ethical questions for readers etc)


 * that inevitably tragic scene when either Nebula or Inferno kicks the bucket, leaving the other with a lot of "what ifs?" and conflicting memories of both happy times and all the bullshit that comes with just living together on a semi-daily basis (also if they are closer there's the chance Neb has to raise Sangria in this reality, with Red abandoning her after Inferno's death (providing Inferno dies before Neb) ).


 * Nebula, the eternal pacifist and "cute" one of the group, giving a "reasons you suck" speech to Equis, Arodnap or similar Pendragon villain - much to everyone's surprise and establishing she's much smarter and brave than her sometimes "silly" nature implies, especially when those she cares about are harmed or in danger.

these are all just little examples of how I think successful universes are formed, now I have looked back, form stories around the characters and how they react with each other.. rather than putting characters into a warzone and saying "let's go".