User blog comment:Krayfish/Omniverse Nexus Site Specifics/@comment-5870856-20150324191911/@comment-5870856-20150326182544

Anyway, the superhero verse. I'm thinking of calling it Heroic Ages (which might be a slight rip-off of Marvel's Heroic Age thing, but I like it). I don't really have much in the way of world-building, but I've got characters and potential story arcs. So far, my core superhero team is the League of Liberty (I could change that, it just sounded fun and slightly cheesy), which is made up of 7 team members at present - Angel, a kind, optimistic but very inexperienced girl with a magic bird tattoo that allows her to transform into an angelic, winged being; the Reaper, a dark figure with a mysterious backstory I'll go into later and who defends a dark, totally not Gotham-inspired city from evil; the Reaper's as-of-yet unnamed sidekick, who's sort of like her adopted daughter and is her best friend as well; the Grey, an alien survivor of the Roswell crash with crazy psychokinetic/psionic powers forced to work for the government; Sauros, a sapient dinosaur person who was once worshipped by a Mesoamerican tribe and a cliche supervillain who later goes through character development, a la |Megamind, into an antihero; Cave-Man, literally a caveman and sort of a play on heroes which are called x-Man, who's a mystical shaman from prehistoric Europe that gets transported into the future by a spell gone awry; and Amazon, a female member of an incredibly strong race (Kryptonians meet the Amazons) and a victim of Hellenic-style gender bias who becomes a totally not Wonder Woman-inspired crusader for justice and feminism. Phew.

If you want, I could describe them here, but that would be a lot of detail to go into. Suffice it to say that they're atypical heroes, who are originally forced to work for a group of more typical heroes, essentially the Justice League of America meets S.H.I.E.L.D. post-Superhuman Registration Act and post-Civil War, though a lot darker than the former. In the first main story arc I've come up with, they are sent to hunt down the Grey, who's gone rogue, but end up allying with him, forming their own superhero team and rebelling against the big guys. After they take them down, it is revealed they were working for the Illuminati, who become major supervillains. If you haven't noticed yet, there's a lot of conspiracy theory stuff going on. I intend to make all conspiracy theories true in this universe. And viciously mocked >;D

Anyway, the revolution, which will be detailed in a couple story arcs, Dawn of Liberty and Shadow War, serves as the Chaos Crisis/Shattering of this verse, and the League is the main team. One thing I've tried very hard to do with these characters is demolish gender stereotypes, advocate for ethnic diversity and favourably portray multiple sexual orientations, such as having four of the core seven heroes be female and have at least two black characters (the Reaper and her sidekick), as well as making Angel bisexual or lesbian, imply Sauros' species can change gender at will (a la Jurassic Park) and have the Grey be a member of a genderless species. I'm concerned I might have gone overboard with this, though I'd like to know what you think.

Anyway, I've got multiple heroes and teams planned. The League is the JLA/Avengers equivalent, the core team, the moneymakers if/when we start making money, but there are a bunch of Guardians of the Galaxy/Fantastic Four/Defenders satellite teams and non-team player heroes out there too. From what I can recall, I was aiming for one team which mixes animanga and tokusatsu elements, which includes a robot dude, a magic girl and a kind-hearted kaiju, and I had a Victorian adventure/pulp fiction one planned that took place in the 1800s. There were also these space heroes so I could explore the larger universe of HA and I was considering a fantasy-oriented team from some sort of fantastical demiplane/demirealm, though I guess I could just move those into Myth Galaxy and Erudite Tales, respectively. Since several of these teams were found in different time zones and even slightly different universes, I was also considering having an interversal/time travel team for which I was borrowing elements from this world some friends and I made up a while back, if only to allow crossovers to take place. Finally, I had two individual heroes which I thought up, or more accurately borrowed from the public domain. The first was |Heracles, guardian of Olympus and champion of the gods, who ultimately goes through character development and realizes the Olympians suck, either leaving to join the human world or helping Athena lead a revolt to depose Zeus. The second, a slightly more controversial idea, is Devil, aka Satan or Lucifer, whom I was thinking of portraying as a more antiheroic figure like in Paradise Lost who wasn't the overlord of Hell, but rather a fellow prisoner along with the other condemned souls. However, I feel like if I tried to actually use that idea, I'd start a religious flame war, so maybe I should put it in cold storage? You probably get the idea that I'm not a huge fan of god-like religious figures :P

So, is that enough information? Do you want to know more about the characters, or the world(s)? Do you think it might fit the Nexus? Give me ideas, give me critique, give me suggestions, I need them all.