I’m writing a comic story and I have two ways I can take her origin: she’s born with her alien powers but never knew it and discovered them after a trauma/infodump from her parents, or she can be a normal human who stumbles upon an alien dohickey that gives her said gifts. Whichever one she picks, she decides to use them to do good. Which one do you feel is more heroic? I can’t decide.
I prefer the second origin story. In my opinion, it’s even better if she doesn’t just stumble on the doohickey, but the doohickey chooses to be found by her.
For example, Hal Jordan didn’t stumble on the doohickey (ring) that made him a Green Lantern. The dying alien recognized his potential to overcome his fear.
Hmm. And yes, of course I’m well aware that these are not ideas original to me. 
Now I have to figure out how the thingy I’m using could find her. It’s not a weapon, per se, but a defective alien craft.
And I’m sorry if Cafe Society isn’t the right place for this kind of thinking/brainstorming.
I think sci-fi, comics etc. suffer from an overabundance of “chosen one” type stories. I think I prefer it being by chance. So I’d go with “alien doohicky by chance”
Because it’s more heroic to take advantage of a fluke than a gift, do you mean? Interesting.
Are you human? Yes, you are. And if, upon acquiring something really cool, you use it for good – well, that’s heroism, isn’t it? You could aspire to that. Others could be inspired to do likewise; heck, a story along those lines could involve someone who sets a perfectly admirable example.
Were you born with alien powers? No, you weren’t – and you can’t really aspire to already having spent a very long time not realizing it. But if you could, and the story of your life revolved around it – well, it’d be a little less than perfectly admirable, wouldn’t it? It’s already not the most inspiring thing I’ve ever heard.
The “chosen one” cliche has been done to death. You’re better off doing something that’s not like any other origin you’ve ever read. Hard? Of course – but a writer has only one thing to sell – originality. Do something original
As a suggestion – have her powers just show up without a clue as to why she has them. That can be an ongoing theme of the comic – why me? why am I super? Is it a good thing or a bad thing for her?
Yeah, that also makes sense. I was already moving away from the Superman-esque origin, to be honest, but what ya’ll have said so far clinches that part of it.
I agree that originality is hard to create-I don’t know how many times I’ve come up with a great concept and found out it had been done before.
I slightly prefer the “alien heritage” to the “alien gadget” origin. I don’t see why the “chosen one” trope must be associated with the former. Sure, it’s something you need to be wary of while writing, but Hal Jordan is every bit as much “the chosen one” as Kal-El is.
(Of all the comic book origins, my favorite is Marvel’s “Spiral,” the six-armed villainess. She kidnapped herself and caused herself to be modified into…herself. Time-travel is involved…)
You might dig deep and try to find a variant that is…if not unique…at least “the road less travelled.” Be as creative and original as you can. Surprise your readers!
Alien doohickey origins are about choice. Special birth is elitist–“you were born better than others.”
Hi Power Pack.
I dislike the “chosen one” thing because it reeks of predestination, but I also view it as more linked to “alien doohickey chooses the bearer” than to “alien baby is raised by human parents/human woman has one-night stand with human-looking alien”. Skye in Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD is a “rarity” but not unique; Starlord (who?) is unique but not any kind of Chosen One.
Depending on where I wanted to take the story, I’d go either with randomly found doohickey or with “whatdoyoumeanI’mnothuman?”
How about she is constantly discovering things that she can use to perform superhuman acts, but it takes her a while to figure out how and what she is using. And, of course, her things periodically get damaged, lost or destroyed, so her range of abilities varies over time. It could be sort of like a personal voyage of discovery, with a light dusting of awkwardness and uncertainty.
I don’t get the “human woman has one-night stand with human-looking alien” trope at all. There’s no way in God’s Green Universe that Spock’s mum could have been interfertile with Spock’s dad. Any hybrid would need to be the result of a team of dedicated alien geneticists putting in years of man-hour-equivalents to make it viable.
If the alien is close enough to human norms to be mistaken for human (hence Mommy not knowing the sonabitch was an alien in the outer-space sense, not just in the funny-passport sense), then why not? The probability of the first is ridiculously low, but once you accept it, there’s no reason to deny the second. Literature aliens tend to fall into three groups: almost-human, looking like some Earth animal (these tend to be cat-like), and incomprehensible (which may also be similar to some Earth animal; insects are popular).
It could be a mix of various elements people have mentioned.
She stumbles across a wrecked alien ship with a long-dead pilot, on Earth for purposes unknown. The ship does something to her–perhaps trying to imprint her as a replacement pilot to continue its mission–but it’s too badly damaged. She gets knocked cold but otherwise does not seem too much the worse for it.
Later, she finds that seemingly ordinary objects do strange things around her. Unbeknownst to humans, the aliens once had a substantial presence on Earth, but abandoned a lot of stuff along with their base. The materials used in their equipment were nanotech/biotech/babbletech; even after the original equipment was broken down to its component parts, they retained a “memory” of their function. Man-made objects that incorporate residual amounts of these materials sense the interface the ship imprinted on her and attempt to respond to her will, with somewhat chaotic results. Sort of like traces if intelligent nth metal, if you will.
Some random thoughts on what you could do with this, assuming the aliens were hostile:
She’s taking things that were originally meant for war and using them to help people.
She doesn’t know what’s going on, and has the potential for eschereal’s voyage of discover.
There’s a built-in reason for her powers to vary.
There’s a potential for lots of surreal and comedic moments as she fights evil with an odd collection of knickknacks.
If she has neurological symptoms, like occasional blackouts, it could mean that some of the ship’s attempt at reprogramming her actually took. Plus, she’s trying to help people despite her own problems related to her powers, a nice heroic touch.
There’s a potential for a crowning moment when the aliens come back in force, and she discovers she can temporarily activate everything with even a trace of the material residue at once–which means nearly everything on Earth (maybe even people) get briefly imbued with powers to repel the invasion.
Well, yes there is. Marsupial wolfs might have looked like placental wolves, but they were not interfertile; but these were/are both mammals, and live/lived on the same planet. They are much more closely related than any alien species would be to humans.
To get a race of aliens that is interfertile with humans you need to have some sort of backstory to explain it (which, I admit, need not be explained in the story itself). For instance, humans could be the descendants of the alien race that they are interfertile with, or vice versa.
I think each possibility tells completely different stories; the difference to your tale between the protagonist being human or alien is huge. Pick whichever one is the vehicle for the story you want to tell.
Decide what overall story you want to tell that will interest a reader. Decide what superpowers you want the main character to have that will serve the narrative and captivate the reader. Then worry about an origin story. Origin stories are, by and large, the least interesting superhero stories.
What kind of tone are you looking for? If it’s going to be a comical comic story, then you have plenty of wiggle room. Something like a Green Lantern meets Life of Brian might be interesting. She wasn’t really the chosen one. The alien spacecraft is defective, right? It finds the wrong “Sarah Conner,” and she has to live with the consequences.
And yet at its best, like Superman, it’s about someone choosing to use their advantages not to lord over other people but to help others. To give rather than to take.