Concept Corner #6

Concept Corner #6 - Outliers
This is a superhero story, but it's not like most you've likely heard of. In this world, everybody has some sort of power - most of them are negligible compared to others, but everybody has a power. Furthermore, this ubiquity of metahumanism has created a social structure where your role in society is determined by your power (it takes place on an Earth-like world, probably sometime in the fairly near future). 

At a certain age, you and your power are tested and analyzed, and you're stuck in whatever job the Powers That Be feel would suit you best. Then you do that until you die. There's an element of classism to the process as well; people from wealthy or powerful families can often choose what they'd like to do, and certain "lesser" roles such as menial labor are frequently discriminated against, even by similar castes. 

Or you can become a superhero, which allows you to defy the caste system regardless of what you're capable of - although the process is rightfully difficult and most who try fail. 

The story centers on a young man from an elite family who, prior to his test, sees someone from a "lesser" caste being discriminated. Interest piqued, he opts to join this caste, unaware that in doing so he may one day spark a revolution...

This started as some sort of poorly defined story idea about a group of people competing for the mantle of "hero." Some kind of fantasy or sci-fi story - like I said, poorly defined - that would have gone into what being a hero meant by digging into the motivations of each of these characters to become a hero. It eventually mutated into this, and I think this would make a much better story.

I was inspired pretty heavily by the present-day Transformers comics, and their use of the Functionist system which is similar to this, but with alt-modes instead of powers. I've also got another story idea in this same setting, about a newcomer to a  metahuman military unit.

Writing this series would require a lot of preparation - it's shaping up to be more political than my mind's used to handling - but I think I could do a lot with it. We'll see.