The initial setting is less important than what you do with it and the stories you tell that develop from the setting. It does sound like you see their wealth as an easy way to get around story telling hurdles. That's not necessarily a bad thing but you need to come up with more for me to care about these characters if you're giving them easy lives from the start.
this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2025
-8 points (27.8% liked)
Keep Writing
1618 readers
1 users here now
A place for writers to encourage and inspire one another.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you see their wealth as an easy way to get around story telling hurdles
An excuse for me to draw nice mansions, exotic cars and locations. His family is actually alive, and so it's about him juggling his double life between being a superhero and doing "high society" stuff. All of his love interests come from wealthy families, so sometimes he's not there for their parties, events or galas due to superhero stuff.
Do his parents know about his superhero activities?
It could be a good source of dramatic tension keeping his secret identity from his superhero-disapproving parents, who might cut him off if they found out what he is up to.
Yeah maybe he secretly hates how they made their money and the wasteful lifestyle. But it they find out they will cut him off from the resources he needs to fund the superhero stuff. He wouldn't necessarily see a supercar but a resource to get around and fool his parents. The yacht is just a platform to launch his operations from etc. When he was younger he always tried and failed to convince his parents to reduce their carbon footprint and help people with their wealth and improve the world.
Why would a rich young person, who unlike Bruce Wayne still has their parents, want to become a costumed vigilante instead of drowning their sorrows by overconsuming drugs/alcohol/buying shit and luxury travel on their parents' credit card?
There just seems to be a lack of believable trauma needed for a superhero origin.
Now, if he were to use rich-guy means to gain revenge on the girlfriends' killers: Hiring lawyers to harass them, private investigators to snoop around and find vulnerabilities of the presumably ordinary-to-poor killers, and hiring thugs, paying cops, or whoever to make the killers' lives impossibly difficult, that might be interesting...
He'd be kind of a monster, but then again aren't all 1-percenter rich people monsters, and superheroes too for that matter.
Following along the lines of "why rich person go violent costumed vigilante" you could frame it as a mental health issue with violence that even influences their day-to-day interactions with family and friends around him, with his fashion sense possibly influenced by being fed too many cosplay TikToks.
There just seems to be a lack of believable trauma needed for a superhero origin.
You seem to not like superheroes, which makes me wonder why you even replied to my post. But to answer your question, my character is traumatized. His girlfriend was murdered, and that’s more traumatic than anything in the world. Also, just because his parents might be shitty doesn’t mean he is.
" and superheroes too for that matter."
Again, you don't like or understand superheroes; you aren't even a casual fan, so why respond to my post?
Oh I love superheroes: I've read a ton of comics, watched a ton of superhero TV live action, animated and non-US foreign through the decades.
But there are legitimate criticisms of the genre, and there are problems with the general idea of super-powered, costumed vigilantes as well.
Maybe I got it wrong, and with the concept you've got inside your brain, you can pull off the story in a way that surprises and pleases readers beyond what you've briefly described.
Since it seems to be a common theme in your ideas, maybe you've got a personal understanding of what it's like to be young and have a significant other murdered, and I'd love to see you put that insight into your story.
I encourage you to get writing and lay down those words!
All I have to say is: If it isn't working, don't be afraid to revise, revise, revise: Move scenes around, drop scenes that aren't working, change the whole concept if that's what the story is telling you.
I don't blame you for getting mad at my post actually.
Looking back at it, it does read pretty inflammatory. My sincere apologies.
When I wrote "Why would a rich young person, who unlike Bruce Wayne still has their parents, want to become a costumed vigilante instead of drowning their sorrows by overconsuming drugs/alcohol/buying shit and luxury travel on their parents’ credit card?"
I wasn't questioning the concept, I meant that you need to answer the question of why the character takes that path of costumed vigilantism instead of overconsumption, which would be more expected behavior IMO.
just because his parents might be shitty doesn’t mean he is.
You do have to explain why not though. It's pretty hard for people to go in their parents' opposite direction without additional outside influence.
Also, maybe read some meta-discussions on superheroes (or even just Watchmen for starters, I suppose), then you might understand where "superheroes are monsters" is coming from (spoilers, it's not "superhero comics are dumb"). Might also improve your writing to be more nuanced.
You do have to explain why not though
Ok, for context, his parents aren't shitty, unlike Succession. The family is mostly chill. His sisters aren't mean and bitchy; his dad might be emotionally distant, but he still loves his kids, but his mother loves him more than anything, and he loves his siblings. Even if in the story I put it where they are corrupt or maybe working with one of the villains, the parents still love their kids and want their kids out of danger. Even Darth Vader loved Luke.
I never said his parents were shitty; the guy I was responding to assumed that.
But to answer your question, people have choices. Just because your parents are shitty people doesn't mean you are going to be a shitty person. Just because your parents are good and loving doesn't mean you won't grow up to become an asshole.
There are a bunch of liberals/Democrats whose parents were hardcore conservatives.
People have choices, and just because you have past trauma doesn't give you a free pass to do horrible shit.
Yeah, sure. Now go and explain that in your story and build on it to tell a story, not just a setting.