Character Based II Long-Term II Advanced
As mentioned in the title, this RP will focus on the deconstruction of the Captain Planet series. Picture a bunch of teenagers with elemental powers trying to save the day, without the cheesiness and technicolor of the original series. With the shortest possible explanation, this RP is "What would Captain Planet be like in real life?".
With a longer explanation, I'll go ahead and give you folks a quick recap on deconstructing fiction. Sometimes you'll hear this referred to as being "played completely straight", and it can be thought of as taking a work more seriously on its own terms than even the work itself does.
"Deconstruction" literally means "to take something apart." When applied to aspects of fiction, deconstruction means to take apart a work so as to better understand its relevance to real life.For example, in Dungeons & Dragons, when a cleric reaches fifth level, he gains the ability to cast create food and water. Normally, the impact this would have on a society (especially a medieval or pseudo-medieval one) is completely ignored. A deconstruction would explore how a society would realistically react to that ability.Note that while deconstructions often end up darker, edgier, and more cynical than the normal version, there is no reason they have to be. Expanding on the Dungeons & Dragons example above, a cynical deconstruction would involve the food-creating clerics either being enslaved for their powers or becoming the ruling class in a dystopia, while an idealistic deconstruction would involve the alleviation of scarcities and hardships based on class. Either one's perfectly valid.
In this RP, I'd like to have a more deconstructed Captain Planet and The Planeteers -- Focusing on how a group of teenagers would go about saving the earth and protecting humanity. Namely, I'd like to focus on character development, as well as interpersonal relationships and other character-related things (Maybe The Planeteers won't immediately like each other because they're from cultures on different ends of the globe? Just spitballing here.) I like element-fights as much as the next guy, and we'll have our fair share of them, but I'd still largely like the RP to be character-based. I'm all for hearing about your character's personality and possible future arcs, but please leave your characters who exist to be exclusively used in fight scenes at the door.
A fair deal of the deconstruction present is only the tone, though there have been changes to make the setting its own, whether or not they are more or less realistic than the original source material. Read up! If you're still interested when you're done, cast in some interest and we can get this show on the road.
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