Turning red in Britain

As I said before about Turning Red, it’s really a film about the Asian diaspora in the west and more specifically Canada, which makes you wonder what would happen if Turning Red were to be set anywhere else in the west. One would wonder what would happen if Turning Red were set in somewhere like Britain, would there be British references and perhaps a British sensibility had Domee Shi’s parents moved to somewhere like Croydon for instance? I kind of pondered and contemplated about what would happen if Mortal Kombat were made in Britain instead, wherein Jax would’ve been African-Caribbean instead among other things.

But this brings up an odder possibility of somebody like Ed Boon assimilating into the larger African Caribbean community, since the Latin American community in Britain isn’t that large and also if his own mum moved to Britain instead. Then another would be a stronger anti-Thatcherite streak in the earliest Mortal Kombat game, if it was made in Britain instead and possibly taking on a rather different tone or theme. Turning Red is very much a byproduct of a Canadian, it’s awash in references to Canadiana. Meilin Li doesn’t just live in Toronto, but also encounter an actual Canadian store and her parents eat food from a real Canadian restaurant, Tim Hortons, though it also has a branch in the Philippines.

British Turning Red would have a rather different sensibility, if not an entirely different feel and mindset, it wouldn’t be entirely different from regular Turning Red but more in the sense of having a somewhat different sense of humour. There are probably Asian Britons who relate to her without difficulty, like their Australian counterparts do, so a British Turning Red would turn out no differently in a sense. The only real differences would be the references, swap Tim Hortons for something like Greggs plc among other things. I actually have this story in the back of my mind that’s inspired by Turning Red, but where it’s set in early 1990s Britain.

Its versions of Meilin Li, Priya, Abby and Miriam are all into the rave scene and also tend to be late teenagers, this Meilin Li even has family in Hong Kong but that would mean it would’ve still been a British colony as it had yet to be returned to China. This Abby is from Myanmar, which was a British colony. India too was a British colony, well so are Jamaica, Barbados, Malaysia, Ghana and others and some of them even achieved true independence. Barbados recently became a republic, whilst Jamaica wants to become one itself. It would be the closest thing to what would happen if Turning Red were set in Britain, but being an original story it takes more liberties with the themes and leitmotifs.

It’s not a one-on-one copy of Turning Red, but rather something that has its own take on some of the same themes underlying it. Here’s the story that I wrote that’s inspired by Turning Red.

all-night-partyDownload

Time for a new take on superheroes

I feel if there’s ever a way to make the superhero genre actually relevant to a new generation, especially one involving entirely new characters at that, would be to accept and assimilate any new influence into such a work and then bring this story over to a video game. More and more people are playing video games these days, so it should make sense to create a new and different superhero universe but one made for a video game in mind. The habit of creating a shared universe full of superheroes has been done to death in comic books, with publishers like Wildstorm trying to recreate the magic their founders did over at Marvel.

The superhero concept can certainly work for a video game, especially one with original characters, but it has to work in a way that’s relevant to not only gamers but also any newcomer to this kind of story. It can’t be about building a superhero shared universe in comic books anymore, there are people who come up with original characters and stories in video games involving plagues (Resident Evil), birds (Angry Birds) and world mythology (Age of Mythology, God of War). Why not do the same with superheroes when working on a video game? No doubt this would be a little trickier to pull off and harder to make it stand out more from the well-established likes of DC and Marvel.

No wonder why Wildstorm didn’t last too long on its own, while it did have its own identity enough to easily be its own world but at other times some of the characters are riffs on more familiar faces. Voodoo looks like a black Jean Grey, Planetary has characters who are analogues to the Fantastic Four, both Midnighter and Apollo are based on Batman and Superman and Swift could be seen as an Asian female version of X-Men’s Angel. At some point they all got assimilated into the wider DC world, even if they risk becoming redundant by their DC counterparts at any point.

But this goes to show you how tricky it is to come up with a superhero universe without having a distinctive hook to last longer, admittedly this video game I’m proposing has characters who are analogues to their DC counterparts. But the hook here is that all the superheroes are actual police officers and detectives (truly part of law enforcement themselves), while there is also room for superpowered civilians especially as some like Mary Stilfox and Patricia Kyenge work in healthcare. None of the characters have codenames, since many crime fiction characters don’t have those either.

It’s familiar enough for others to call it home but novel enough to stand out very well from DC and Marvel, the two superhero powerhouses and the bar for what many superhero universes strive to be and do. Like I said before that this story does take inspiration from DC and Marvel, but does so in a very novel way due to additional influences and approaches. Just because a character has superpowers doesn’t mean they automatically become either villains or heroes, some prefer to keep a very low profile and be useful in some other way. Mary Stilfox has the ability to generate implants to replace organs with, she works as a surgeon.

Patricia Kyenge has the ability to restore anything and everything to their original states, get this she works as a hospital nurse and sometimes under Stilfox’s guidance. Alice Buquid has the ability to create folded creations that unsettle people in some way, but she’s a seamstress who works for a weaver with the ability to generate silk herself. No need to kill silkworms to get silk when she does the same thing, which’s something not a lot of Spider-Man writers have ever brought up in any way that I know of. Mamadou Mbodj is a pyrokinetic who works as a cook, which’s what many people historically did with fire.

Jemima Szary is an investigative journalist with an uncannily good sense of direction. You really need to have different experiences and interests to make these characters work, otherwise it would become another Wildstorm: interesting enough to gauge readers’ interests, but not distinctive enough to stand out from DC and Marvel in any way. In this game you have a variety of superpowered characters who either work in law enforcement themselves (such as Jean-Louis Lumiere), remain civilians (Patricia Kyenge, Alice Buquid, Jemima Szary and Mamadou Mbodj) or get involved in criminality.

Just like non-superpowered people, which’s something I noticed late in life. Just because a character has superpowers doesn’t mean they’ll either become villains or heroes, some would rather lead everyday lives as usual and some would pool their abilities into something that’s both different and useful. There are some superhero stories such as the Wild Cards cycle that have attempted this before, but doing it in a video game is something else altogether. Most superhero video games are adaptations of either DC or Marvel, which means they have the brand recognition to back up those stories.

But an original superhero universe made for video games would have to have its own hook and personality to stand out a lot from these two, sort of like how Mortal Kombat stood out from the other fighting games by being ridiculously gory. It’s not the best hook but one that worked to its advantage because it was one of the first games to indulge in this and granted it enough staying power to still have an edge and charm to some people, whether if you like it or not. For this game, a stronger mystery theme is needed. It might have been done before, but it’s also something that’s unprecedented in its own right.

A world where all the superheroes are actually involved in law enforcement and not vigilantism would necessitate it to be a puzzle game of sorts, where one has to solve a problem to the best of their abilities and sometimes where they come up with novel solutions to resolve things. I know this from experience, playing a certain game on PBS Kids. It might have been done before in superhero video games, but I feel that’s only ever done with familiar faces like Batman. Not so much new and different faces like Jean-Louis Lumiere, though he doesn’t have to be the only one as it could also be Jemima Szary.

I feel when it comes to coming up with a video game full of original superheroes, it has to be novel enough to stand out a lot from DC and Marvel. This is one of the pitfalls in creating the Wildstorm Universe, it didn’t have much of an distinctive enough hook to stand out from the crowd. This isn’t helped by that some characters are reminiscent of familiar characters, not that there’s anything wrong in taking inspiration from something you like. But it didn’t have its own personality to avoid being drowned out by these two giants, this is probably why Dark Horse gave up on having its own superhero universe.

The superhero universes that actually stood out the longest are those that have their own hooks and personalities, something like Astro City where the world of superheroes is seen through ordinary people’s eyes. Meanwhile the Wildstorm characters find themselves going to the DC universe back and forth, even if writers manage to tell good stories in that world it’s not enough to give them a major edge. So consolidation is their fate, it might be my opinion and a bit harsh but that’s how they come off to me.