Chapter 219 - 100 Facts About Spectacular World
Hello! Normally, I don't write Chapters like this, but I think this is sort of special. We've been on this ride for over a year and a half now, which is kind of scary. What's even scarier, though, is how far from done we are. As it stands, I'd say we're about 60-70% done with part two, out of a planned three parts that I've thought of for this novel. Because of that, there's a good chance this story will still be worked on for another year and a half, or even two more years.
That's a little scary...
It's been a fun ride, though. I've learned a lot about writing and planning, I think. I consider this novel to be a good step forward for me. I know it has a lot of flaws. Like a crap ton, but I like to think I'm also a better writer now than I was back then. Since we've come so far, I thought it would be fun to have a nice little Chapter talking about the story as a whole and how far we've come.
So, let's talk about one hundred different facts about Spectacular World.
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1. Sub Enforcers- Spectacular World as a novel has existed in my head for a long, long time. I first had the seeds of what would become this novel back in 2019. Back then, the story was actually going to be called the Sub Enforcers! As the name suggests, it would have focused a lot more on the Sub Enforcers. Hope, or at least the closest thing that existed to Hope back then, would have joined the Sub Enforcers, which was going to be run by Myth. The Sub Enforcers were a lot different from what they are now and existed more or less as a rip-off of the Enforcers team. Instead of there being several Sub Enforcers like in the current story, there would just be one, which Myth created as a way to try and leech off the fame of the Enforcers. This ended up being scrapped, though, since the more I thought of plots, the more I realized that the team as it existed wasn't going to work out since eventually the team was going to get broken up, just like how it is now, and naming the story after a team that would end up only being a small part of it seemed silly.
2. Spectacular Wolrd's Spectacular Name- As I stated above, the story wasn't always going to be called Spectacular World. So, just where did I come up with the name Spectacular World? Well, I sort of stole the concept from Spider-Man. Spider-Man is often called spectacular, and is one of my favorite heroes, and since I'm a dirty thief that steals, I decided to take the word 'Spectacular' from that. As for why World got added to it, I knew at that point that the story itself was going to be more a look into a world of heroes and the nature it had on them, so I decided to call the story Spectacular World. Hope is the main character, but the tale itself has gone beyond her, following dozens of different characters and cities. Truly, it's a Spectacular World.
3. Shelly Moore- Hope Lauren is the main character, but that wasn't always the case. Before Hope existed, the story followed a girl named Shelly Moore. Shelly was in a lot of ways what Hope would become. She was a teenage girl that liked heroes, rock stars, and anime. As the name suggests, she was also related to Armin. In a lot of my early scripts, Shelly and Armin were going to be siblings. Shelly was going to awaken her powers like how Hope did, and Armin would serve as the role of Kyle, being the guy in the chair. Shelly was going to look a lot different from Hope as well. Her hair would have been dyed pink, and her hero name was actually going to be Ruby Admiral, which, as some people might know, is now the name of the Victorian, back when she was a kid. Shelly also would have used a series of magical rings that gave her her powers. Her relationship with Armin would become tense as the series progressed, since he didn't have powers and would get jealous. In the end this ended up not happening since I just couldn't get the ring powers to work in a way I liked. I also didn't like the start I had created, and so I scrapped it. A year or two later I returned to the project and created Hope Lauren.
4. A Different Start- Spectacular World has had dozens of different starts. The one we have now is an obvious rip-off of Superman, since you have a strange alien pod being found, which has a baby inside, but that wasn't always how the story was planned to begin. In some starts, I had it following a girl named Shelly and her brother Armin robbing a store. That's right, the story was going to start with our main character committing a crime. Basically, we'd follow Shelly and Armin as they head to a pawn shop. We'd find out they were down on their luck and in a bad crowd. The two only had each other, and they made do by committing crimes. They both made sure to never hurt anyone, though. They'd rob the store, and it was here that Shelly would find a magical ring that once belonged to a long-dead hero, and the plot would really kick off. I was afraid this would make Shelly and Armin not likable, though, and so I ended up getting rid of this idea.
5. Hope Lauren's Name- After I decided to not use Shelly Moore, I settled on naming my character Hope Lauren for one simple fact. I wanted to make a lot of 'have hope' jokes with her. Hope, the concept, is a big part of the series, and people running out of it, or refusing to give up on it, so part of my brain thought it would make sense to name the character Hope. As for how Lauren got added on, I tried a dozen different last names but settled on Lauren because I liked the way it sounded. Hope Lauren was a phrase I'd say a lot, and it settled on my tongue well. I also redesigned Hope in my head. Shelly was sort of a punk. She had dyed hair and piercings and was kind of a goth chick. For Hope, I wanted her to be more reserved and average. Normally in a lot of aspects.
6. Superman- It shouldn't be shocking that Hope is based on Superman/Supergirl. Full Monarch was a concept that had always existed in my head since I started the project. He was always going to fulfill a Superman-like role; I just didn't know for sure how far he'd go in that regard. You might be a little shocked that at one point Shelly used magic rings since that has nothing to do with Superman, and it's because for the longest time Full Monarch and Hope weren't going to have a connection. Full Monarch did exist in the world, or at least a version of him, but he was sort of an idea meant to be conquered rather than a beacon of hope or something the current Hope has to live up to.