I would avoid naming the Shades. Make it clear that there are factions, but don't name them or give their side of the story - make them an unidentified threat. It will preserve some mystery and force the reader to imagine something better and individual.
Hey, are you familiar with Sapphire And Steel? I'd recommend aiming for something like that - vague and existential, yet still sinister and personally trying.
Why not have their attacks take the form of inspiration? One faction creates art that forces another faction to think of their art differently, and the effectiveness of their attacks is not so much in what one creates as the effect the art has.
Take Dadaism. Imagine if that - or better yet, Duchamp's readymades! - became the "popular" style of the era and beyond. Imagine if the effect it had wasn't dulled down in surrealism or post-modernism, and what sort of after-effects it would have on an artist who specialized in one media or another that simply wasn't viable in the "popular" style.
Or pretend that you write books about werewolves, and suddenly there's a vampire boom. Your art is ignored, you become a has-been, your work suffers from having to alter your craft.
Etc.
Ok, i know the names are poorly chosen. I'm writing in French and it does not translate perfectly and they are a little dorky. I'll try to use them as a world building label and nothing more.
I'll check out the serie. Seems nice but i'm not that versed in British Scify (I liked Rivers of London though)
I already have this idea of the inspiration in motion. The Muses are gonna appear at some point ... The way painting was completely changed as a medium by the apparition of photography, the occult influences of a lot of artists, the Nabis, Austin Osman Spare, Joseph Beuys ... Why Picasso being an asshole altered the idea of what an artist is supposed to be. The shift from maker to creator in the Renaissance, and some compared mythology thrown in the mix.
But that remains art. It's not Magic to suffer a trend and making a trend requires more influence on society than magical powers. I see what you mean and in a sense, this will appear in my story but theirs a limit to what can be done against propaganda, publicity and Tv.
My so called heroes are supposed to inspire a want for revolt, a need for change, be a decisive force ... Maybe my love for comics must be tamed, but i have this damaged heroes i like, the speedster in a wheelchair, the guy that can fly and does nothing more than tv shows, the gumshoe that can steal fire ... Should i cut it all out ? I saw this as a way to balance all the theory in motion.
The aim for this story is about failure, trying to set people free without asking first, discovering how they chose their prisons, making my protagonists the only ones truly free and yet quite unhappy and lonely.
I have an inspiration coming from Rising Stars, Promethea, the World of Darkness and a lot of other stuff. Also Write what you know ...
I'm getting lost here ... Let me rewind. I need a clear idea of what characters can and can't do in order to play the game of chess in my mind. I need the Heroes to be Shades but a little different at the same time. But i'm stuck with this Magic A is Magic A type of logic that just won't work here. Art A is not Art A. You perform. You could be doing something shitty. Even Talent won't protect you from failing ...
Well, if you're on abilities and limitations...do you play video games? Those are all about limitations(the player can't do too much because we can't program all possibilities if we give them too much freedom. The obstacles and enemies have to have some identifiable weakness or pattern so the player can overcome them).
In Kirby, three boss characters come to mind. The Paint Roller, Adorine and Drawcia. Each of them have the ability to bring paintings to life, the applications and limitations of it being very vague. But there are clear differences. The Paint Roller is pretty strong, tough and agile but the things born of its paintings tend to be rather weak, easily destroyed by Kirby. The trick is to turn Paint Roller's creations against it, assuming you encountered it without means to harm its body. It's too stupid to stop painting things and simply rely on ramming Kirby(which, admittedly, is only a valid strategy if the player somehow encounters it without the means to hurt it, Kirby games are skewed heavily towards the player). Adorine is physically unimpressive, one nick from even the weakest of Kirby's attacks will defeat her, but the things born of her paintings are powerful. The trick is to keep defeating her creations until she runs out of paint, or just loses her temper.
Now Drawcia is physically superior to The Paint Roller and the things born from her paintings tend to be more powerful than Adorine's. In addition to this she has a form of reality warping by turning existing objects into paintings and altering them as she see's fit, erasing Kirby's limbs so that he can only ineffectively roll around. She's so powerful she turns an entire country into a painting and by the end of her game is starting to effect a great distance beyond the planet in outer space, so powerful that Kirby can't beat her through any established means. One of the paint brushes she summons for her tricks decides it doesn't like what she's doing and flies out to the player holding the game device for help.
I imagine the latter, literal Story-Breaker Power is what you're trying to avoid. Your art powers will be better explained to the audience, so I think you could apply something like the physically impressive but comparatively weak "art" abilities vs the physically laughable but powerful art abilities with Drawcia as the measuring stick for going too far to your own system and create lots of different possibilities.
Hi, i'm currently writing a novel and i'm starting to run into some troubles.
First, a pitch : After a terrorist attack on the Louvre, survivors (1%) from all over the world start to develop super-powers. The attack is made by an (so far) unknown terrorist organization by scheming to get a nuclear item into the Louvre particle accelerator called Aglaé (this is a real thing) used to date objects. A green mist started to invade the museum, animating statues, paintings (in a Harry Potter style) etc. and those artworks started killing people or taking them into the paintings like using portals. The super-powers in question are linked to the item you were next to when exposed to this green mist. A statue of Hercule, you get super-strength, Mercury and it's super-speed, stuff like that.
The protagonists get this feeling that something is really wrong about all this. First, in some ways, their powers don't respond to some laws of physics. Their seems to be something like magic linked to it, emotions can amplify a power for instance. They have brain cancer and must use their right brain not to die, making them impulsive and unpredictable. By investigating, they uncover a Masquerade. Artists, from the first guy to draw on the wall of a cave, have been fighting for centuries to prevent humanity from self-destructing. Battling on the frontier between order and chaos, both forces represented by the Pandorians, artificial creatures, living artworks who wish to enslave humanity and Dragons, spirits of dinosaurs who eat artists souls to get stronger and want nature to destroy humanity. Those artists call themselves the Shades, as opposed to the Greys, or Monkeys, the mere spectator, unable to perform art or magic. There is 7 courts of Shades : They are humans but their characteristics inspired gothic myths. The Vampainters (who prefer to be called Ceruleans), are painters using fear. The Archispecters, ghosts architects using sadness. The Verseskins, werewolf dancers using anger. The Scribomancers, sorcerers and writers using vigilance. The Coryfaes, Fairy musicians using joy. The Morpholiths, Demons sculptors using digust. The Histriogogues, Gods and actors using trust. (This is all based on the Putchik wheel of basic emotions)
Some rogue agents of those courts used the attack to open the Pandora Box, therefore setting free the Pandorians and the Metromens, poets and heros using excitement to fuel their magic. It was a despaired attempt to win a war going on for years ... The Dragons killed art by taking over the USA, called the United States of Chimerica (in the secret world) by creating their own art form : Cinema. And using the CIA during the Cold War in a ploy to destroy classical art to create modern art.
I want something epic in an ancient sense. The first part is in Paris where the Protagonists recover from the shock and discover their powers then a road trip through America to go fight the Dragons in their lair. A subplot would be the Pandorians taking control of a Google like company and conning people into false trans-humanism.
Ok so ... I like this idea of super-heroes discovering their just a part of something bigger ... but i'd like to avoid a Fantasy Kitchen Sink. I want to develop some ideas about art and magic but i can't have it make rewriting reality without being a story-breaker power ... I'm trying to be Genre Savvy but it's forcing me to give a lot of explaining. One of my goals is to rewrite the life of some major artists as assets in a Secret War, making their work into strategic moves. But i can't spend all my story in flash-backs or characters stating how better things were before. I want my characters to be politically involved, making a statement but Status Quo is God so a character trying to change the world soon appears as a fanatic. Beyond Art Attack, it's quite hard to represent Art in a Conflict. I have this idea of really slow magic ... "Ok, it hurts. Let me get a canvas and i will obliterate you" ... I want something subtle but still efficient ...
Any advice ? How do you find balance ? I think that's my question in the end ...