Aesthetics – Heroes Project

I hope you liked my first aesthetics post, because I wanted to share another one.

This is the one I made for the Heroes project:

A collage with 9 different squares.

First row, left to right:
Make-up pallettes with bright colours.
The Tower Bridge in London.
A rainbow flag made of glitter.

Second row, left to right:
A fox stretching with its tongue out.
The central square has "HEROES. Sol Vera" written in blocky letters directly on top of the royal blue background.
A black cat is hissing.

Third row, left to right:
A group of friends walking while hugging each other.
The "oso and madroño" statue in Madrid's Puerta del Sol.
A lonely man sitting down in front of the wavy sea.

I wanted to do this project next because it’s the one with the second lowest word count among those in the list, so I’m trying to think about it and write a bit more. I’m always surprised when I realize this project placed so high in the first of my word count posts, because I always had the feeling I’d barely started and would probably never finish it. The rest of the WIPs have surpassed it in the last year, but I’m still confused when I see it has more than 1000 words.

As you know, it was supposed to be a superhero short story set in Spain, but will probably end up being something longer. It’s contemporary, set mainly in Madrid, and the main characters have superpowers and use alter egos to fight crime and injustice. Depression and anxiety are very relevant to the story, maybe as much as in Fireflies or even more.

I’m very unsure about this project, since it covers very difficult subjects, but it’s supposed to be mainly fun. It’s hard to balance things out while treating the heavy subjects with the depth and seriousness they deserve. I may need more experience to make sure I don’t bungle things up. And a sensitivity reader or two.

At the beginning, this WIP was just a game. I was having fun imagining how Spanish superheroes would look like, how the stereotypes could be used or subverted, and what they would fight against. But would it make sense without a superhero that was more or less the opposite of the main character? That’s when things started to get complicated. I’m still wondering whether I should keep going forward or just revert the project to its early stages: a fun short story with lots of stereotypes that could be read as satirical by those who are familiar with the image of the American superhero.

I’ll have to think about it.

Disclaimers:

I’ve made all of these collages using free stock photos (and a couple of personal photos) on Canva, so to my knowledge all of them were free to use. Please let me know if that’s not the case for any of the photos.

All of these WIPs are still in progress, so everything is tentative. Things may change as the stories and the characters develop. Also, the images I’ve chosen might not be 100% accurate, but they have some elements that might be important within the story.