The Cape (afterword)

And now the part I expect most people to skip (or should be skipping at least), the part where I talk about how I put this thing together - all those bulky, clumsy Lego blocks I used to build this story. And not those miniature, precise pieces you'd use to build The Death Star or a scale model of Disneyland, but those fist-sized blocks you stick together to make a sword/club that shatters after one good hit on your brother's head before your mom drags you around the house shouting about how your dad is going to beat your ass when he gets home even though he started it in the first place and you didn't even hit him that hard so you don't know why he's crying for.

This first came about a year ago, I think, or just about maybe. There was a Reddit prompt about a captured superhero stripping off his clothes while the bad guys laughed but, they didn't know that his powers were dependent on his clothing, or something like that (I can't find it anymore). My original story was just the ending part when the protagonist strips off his clothes to reveal the clothing of another. Actually, I think originally I had it as the clothing of a supervillain and then kills the bad guy. But then I started asking how would he get into the lair in the first place so I thought up that beginning part. Then there NEEDED to be multiple transformations and well from there it just got way out of hand.

Speaking of which, The Cape is currently one of three (not counting Emberwilde Comes, my pokemon fanfic) unfinished longer stories that just got way out of hand for a writing prompt response. I'm working on getting around to finishing the other ones eventually.

Several parts were really hard for me to put together. I finished the main story months ago (yeah, it's just been sitting on my laptop this whole time). I struggled for a long time on that fight scene at the end between The Talon and Tiny, especially after The Talon gets some of his lines undone. I actually went onto Youtube and binged MMA fight videos and read some articles on fighting, especially on ways to close distance against a larger opponent. The next hardest thing was names for the characters. I'm just not good at it. And now I needed six plus descriptions of their insignias. Finally came how to separate it all into pieces. If you read my last story, firstly, I'm sorry as Chicken or the Egg should've been broken into two parts. And I've seen some terrible editing especially on TV when it's time to add commercial breaks into movies. If you've ever seen "John Wick" on Paramount you know what I mean (who puts a commercial right in the middle of a fight scene, especially the first one). I re-read this a couple times to figure out where a natural break might be and, as you know, re-reading is so, so boring. It actually put me to sleep a couple of times.

In the aftermath of this, The Legion seems like a really good superhero to use if I ever continue on with The Sovereignty or with any other story about superheroes. Not written in the original story, The Legion is, yes, just one person who is able to use a variety of superpowers, the limits being he can only use the powers people believe he has. There was this superpower I thought up a long time ago called "What you see is what you get" that, based on how people perceived you, you could get a boost in abilities. Like, for instance, if you wore a stupid shirt with a fist donned with a crown and with the help of wires and a crane and camera angles, conned people into believing you were super-strong, from then on when people saw you in that stupid shirt you would be super strong because they believed you were super-strong.