It doesn't really matter too much to me if the protag and several other characters are ordinary, but I always found non-fiction to be a bit boring unless its a mystery novel. An ordinary human character would need some kind of skills to make the story interesting. Skill with handguns is one example of what would make them efficient in a combat situation, but would be more interesting is if the character was only skilled with electric repair or was a decent chemist and he or she used those kinds of skills which were surprisingly useful in a situation where people were shooting at them. For a superhuman character, you would need to give them weaknesses to make it more interesting. Like said in a post above, a telekinetic person would need to keep total control over their emotions or chaos could result. If you are making a supernatural anti-hero like a vampire or a werewolf, it would be more interesting if their skin started burning just by being within three feet of a silver object, but they were immune to crosses and other holy items. You would need to work each superstition into the story, so if you had a vampire, for example, you might have them walking into a church and splashing their face with holy water, to show holy items have no effect on them, then later you may make a scene where they eat dinner at a persons house, but start puking cause the pasta was cooked with garlic. Point is, if you don't work each superstition into a tale about a supernatural character, you leave questions, too many for the story to be enjoyable. So personally, it doesn't matter to me if the protag and their group is human or not, so long as the story is kept interesting by mystery or the world the story takes place in has significant differences from the world I live in, which is rather boring.
In my opinion, it depends on the story. I don't mind either way, but if the story would be more appealing with a superhuman character, then I'd probably be more pleased with it. I enjoy Marvel superheroes and I created a superhero of my own--actually a few--and wrote out their "coming-of-age" stories. I think it depends on what you want as a writer and what you think your audience would want as well.
In a case like this, I think it's less about what your audience would want and more about what is best for the story. Take movies, for example. Would you leave it up to general movie goers to decide who you cast in your movie? You'll probably get a few different names, but if you're the professional casting director, producer or w.e , you have a more invested and trained eye. Similarly, would you leave it up to fans to decide what characters go into a movie? If producers did that, all Marvel movies would probably have Loki in them some how and that may hurt the movie. It is the same with written works. You can take opinions to see what people are interested in, but at the end of the day, you--the writer--must decide what the story needs. You're absolutely right in that it depends on the Story, but it also depends on the POV character. Who's the lead? Who's story is it? The characters will determine the course of the story as well as the type and intensity of conflict we see; therefore, it is entirely up to the writer to make the decision early on. You just have to know what kin of story you want to tell, or what kind of story fits the character you decide to use. You have to make it interesting to readers regardless. Once again, neither superpowers nor the lack thereof will save an uninteresting character. (BTW, I love your last name @J. McGrath. One of my favorite teachers in high school is named Ken McGrath. He's too cool. )
To be honest, my real concern is whether superpowers would make my otherwise interesting characters (to me at least haha) boring, not the opposite. But I definitely understand your point!
It all depends on your writing skill. If the character doesn't have them, adding them won't make them less interesting unless you don't know how to handle super-powered characters (e.g. they always get the right answer, their powers always save them, their powers distract you from writing a deep character). If the character has them, it's the same deal; although, taking them away won't make them more interesting. Ya dig? Reader preference regarding what makes a character interesting (in this particular case) doesn't matter much because some readers will like superpowers and some won't. If your other characters have superpowers and the world you created allows for this, then you can assume you're writing towards the former audience. In that case, you won't gain or lose (many) readers by giving/taking powers to/from this one character, especially if there are 5 other POV characters who do have powers. So it is in your best interest to write according to your vision of the character. If you don't like what turns up, you can always rewrite them, and the part of the story they manipulate. Hopefully I'm not beating a dead horse here. I'm just a stickler for being absolutely clear about my intended meaning. Hopefully that helps some
I see your point about the audience bit. Knowing my sister and her friends alone, everything would revolve around Loki the trickster god. *rolls eyes* And thank you. I love my last name also. One of the many perks of marrying my husband.
I think in the fiction stories I have to use some unknown beings which are amazing for readers. Against ( or along with) these existence I have to use some human characters with the noticeable , knowledge, experiences, ability, equipments and so on. I usually use the fictional superhuman character seldom.
Human, all too human. I never could relate to Superman. The kryptonite weakness was just too contrived, and too obviously tacked on because there was no dramatic tension without it. The whole point of Superman is he transcends human weakness. He comes out of the sky and saves people too pathetic to save themselves. It's condescending. It's like religion at its worst. Unless you identify with Superman, which would make you delusional. A hero that grabs me is one that I can aspire to be. If I can aspire, I'm inspired. I want to be able to think: I could become that if I wanted to badly enough. Or: I could do that if I really had to. But no underachievers. I want a hero who is pushing the envelope of the possible. I've got no use for antiheroes or passive victims as main characters. In real life, these people disgust me. Why would I want to try to identify with them? Arthur Dent is an idiot.
Well none of my characters have Superman level strengths. I have about five races in total, including humans. For example, I have a race of psychic characters whose abilities range from one to all three of telekinesis, telepathy and precognition. My main psychic character is merely telekinetic but basically has spent no time developing this skill due to laziness. This ultimately threatens the safety of himself and those closest to him when the village he lives in is infiltrated by advancing armies of a region of people who persecute non-humans. He gains an enemy who is also psychic but happens to possesses two of these skills and is very adept at them as well. He also has basically no skills with weapons, the best he can do is swing an axe pretty hard. No finesse with a sword, no aim with a bow, and he's up against enemies who possess more advanced technology like firearms. Based on what I've said, he's basically screwed. He's a lot of fun to write My story is a mix of a sort of medieval world and a more advanced one like our own. In a way, I suppose the weapons of the human race could be considered "superpowers" when up against some of my main characters.
My thoughts on Superman: He will win a one-on-one fight against anybody in the world, so the best stories are about villains who make sure that it is not a one-on-one fight. If Superman just needs to beat one guy to the ground, then it's boring because we already know how it ends. But if he needs to find and then save the hostages over here, then find and disarm the bomb over there, and then find and destroy the missile silo somewhere else … Superman might be the most powerful individual in the world, and he might be able to do everything somewhere, but Lex Luthor has so many people under his employ that he can do something everywhere. Superman gets his power from himself, but he uses it for everybody else. Lex Luthor gets his power from everybody else, but he uses it for himself. With story lines like that in mind, focusing on Superman's legitimate weaknesses, adding Kryptonite becomes unnecessary. Ultimately, I find stories about human characters AND superhuman characters to be more interesting than stories about one or the other. That's one of the big things that Man of Steel did right: the military couldn't have won without Superman, but Superman couldn't have won without the military. … Granted, this assumes that writers respect the character enough to not go overboard on [CENSORED] like having him fly to Alpha Centauri and back in 20 seconds
