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Old 09-28-2018, 10:30 AM   #11
David Johnston2
 
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Default Re: Revolutionary Supers

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
While superheroes are traditionally seen as patriots who maintain the status quo and supervillians are criminals/revolutionaries/terrorists who seek to change the status quo, I see no reason why you could not reverse the traditional stereotypes. In that case, the supervillians would be the patriots wanting to maintain the status quo while the superheroes would be the revolutionaries who want to change the system. In order to preserve the hero versus villain dynamic though, the supervillians would still be willing to commit crimes and use terror against innocent targets to maintain the status quo while the superheroes would limit their actions to avoid harming innocents.

Now, let us not place the supervillians and superheroes in a dystopia, that would be too easy. Instead, let us place it in our contemporary world. How would patriotic supervillians and revolutionary superheroes function in our world? What would they be willing to do? Who would they be? Can you share your examples of such characters?
Here's the issue. If the bad guys are the champions of the status quo and yet are willing to commit crimes and commit acts of terror against innocents to preserve it, then that strongly implies that the status quo is some kind of regime that doesn't respect civil rights. Now in the Marvel how they got around that without turning the United States into a dystopia in general was to have them decide not to specifically respect the civil rights of people who had powers and that was...kind of a mess frankly.

Alternatively of course you set the action in a real world oppressive regime. North Korea. Uzbekistan. Egypt. But that would make it really hard to make a complete set of heroes and villains who fit into the setting when you aren't from there.

Alternatively you could just make the premiere super team of the country just...corrupt. The national government is not all that oppressive in itself but either the superheroes are secretly committing plausibly deniable crimes, or are openly out of control and too powerful to rein in. In either case the "revolutionaries" aren't out to overthrow the nominal government but rather the regime they want to overthrow is that of the "superheroes" themselves.

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Old 09-28-2018, 12:54 PM   #12
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Default Re: Revolutionary Supers

I played a Champions character who I ported into my GURPS Supers setting as an NPC that was a hero of Green Peace but also an international terrorist.
Hes a killer whale with extreme hydrokinesis and weaker levels of TK that attacks whaling ships and takes waste dumped into the ocean and plops it back on land.
Another less known and more controversial guy is a teenager that assaults and even kills cops accused of racist shootings. Info redacted as I may use him in an upcoming game.
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Old 09-28-2018, 01:06 PM   #13
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Default Re: Revolutionary Supers

Does it occur to posters on this thread that a superhero might be revolutionary by accident? The hero of "To Kill a Mockingbird,"Atticus Finch was never meant to be seen as either a man free of racism or a radical challenging Jim Crow in the South. He was simply s decent man warped by the society he lived in but striving to be just within his limitations. But his actually conservative actions had radical implications.

Picture right of center man with superpowers that allowed him to create nexus gates to worlds humans can live on. He decides to set up an agency to allow refugees the chance to resettle on worlds of their own. He finances his project by selling real estate on still other worlds to anyone who wants to buy. He sets up refugee camps and offers homesteading equipment either at low prices or free depending on circumstance.

His actions would seem laudable and middle of the road. Myself, I'd defend such a course of action as moral and worthwhile. However, any mass movement of people changes the society left behind. If an African nation that had spent the time since independence fighting over which of two ethnic groups shall rule suddenly gains a solution. Mainly that group B the smaller of the two will leave for another planet and group A gets the nation left behind. Then that nation will undergo radical change simply because it has a total change of internal politics. Group A virtues and flaws with define that nation entirely. Also, since the infighting is over, Group A has the option of expansion and/or interference with their neighbors.

Just setting up alternative societies that follow new paths and thus show that certain political ideas might work transforms the older societies the founders of the new societies left. That the USA strove to remain a democracy and tried throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to be a better democracy was a constant irritant to European conservatives. Many 19th and 20th century European conservatives take largely pointless swipes at the USA for seemingly no reason. But the reason was simply that the USA was always visible as an alternative.

Because superheroes would always by their very existence challenge the status quo, they would always have radical implications. These implications could be either right or left wing but they'd never be neutral.
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Old 09-28-2018, 01:40 PM   #14
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Default Re: Revolutionary Supers

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Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
Does it occur to posters on this thread that a superhero might be revolutionary by accident? The hero of "To Kill a Mockingbird,"Atticus Finch was never meant to be seen as either a man free of racism or a radical challenging Jim Crow in the South. He was simply s decent man warped by the society he lived in but striving to be just within his limitations. But his actually conservative actions had radical implications.
Well no. They didn't. He changed nothing even on the local level. And no, it didn't because that's not what the question was asking. Look if my character Valence uses his powers to produce room-temperature superconductors in job lots so much that the room temperature superconductors go on the open market, or the Clone Arranger goes into business offering "life insurance" policies to the public at large where if they die a duplicate with a recording of their memory will be activated then in a sense that this would be revolutionary. It would change the way things work in massive ways if they had the capacity to take their businesses from cottage industry to mass production.

But that's not the kind of revolution the original question was asking about. The job of opposing Valence and the Clone Arranger...if anyone felt that was needed...would fall to lawyers and politicians, and possibly shadowy cabals out to steal the capability for their own exclusive use. Super patriots in tights would not be relevant because neither of them would be threatening the national government.

(In case you were wondering the capacity limit derives from the facts that Valence will get hemorrhages if he turns out too much valencium without resting and producing one of the Clone Arranger's life insurance policies requires hours of work from a highly skilled telepath and trying to copy his telepath...well it didn't turn out well There were feedback issues.)
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Old 09-28-2018, 02:30 PM   #15
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One possible scenario would be Native American supers who would use their powers to regain a measure of the land stolen from their ancestors through treaty violations in the USA, Mexico, and Canada. Even if they were just using their powers to educate the common people on the truth behind the suffering of their people, it would be highly inconvenient for the governments involved to even return ten percent of the land that was involved in treaty violations, so there would be an economic incentive for governments to allow supervillians to 'take steps' to 'deal' with the issue quietly. Of course, with supers, things are rarely quiet, and superheroes could quickly be labeled as terrorists when they defend themselves against lethal attacks.
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Old 09-28-2018, 06:19 PM   #16
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Default Re: Revolutionary Supers

Try this idea. Picture a super, we'll call her Utopia, her power is a blend of Affliction and Empathy. She can cause masses of people to see the other person's point of view. She can also make people analyze whether or not they are being fair.

She doesn't always change people's minds. However, younger people and children exposed to her develope both Empathy and the habit of trying to respectfully figure out the other person's viewpoint.
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Old 09-28-2018, 06:56 PM   #17
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Default Re: Revolutionary Supers

There are early Superman stories that can easily be stolen for this, http://www.cracked.com/article_20069...o-be-dick.html
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Old 09-28-2018, 08:40 PM   #18
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Default Re: Revolutionary Supers

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Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
Does it occur to posters on this thread that a superhero might be revolutionary by accident? The hero of "To Kill a Mockingbird,"Atticus Finch was never meant to be seen as either a man free of racism or a radical challenging Jim Crow in the South. He was simply s decent man warped by the society he lived in but striving to be just within his limitations ...
I don't concur with your general take on Atticus Finch. In TKAM, he is written as a paragon of ethics (of the classical liberal and republican citizen type). He is not ambiguous, and even verges on wish-fulfillment.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Astromancer View Post
Try this idea. Picture a super, we'll call her Utopia, her power is a blend of Affliction and Empathy. She can cause masses of people to see the other person's point of view. She can also make people analyze whether or not they are being fair.

She doesn't always change people's minds. However, younger people and children exposed to her develope both Empathy and the habit of trying to respectfully figure out the other person's viewpoint.
I love that! It reminds me of a villain idea of mine: The Wrong One, an immortal spirit of great malice, a master of insinuating himself at the table where important and historical decisions are made and cunningly guiding everyone to the utterly worst, most murderous, horrific and stupid choices. Might have been the real serpent in the original garden.

Last edited by Donny Brook; 09-28-2018 at 08:46 PM.
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Old 09-29-2018, 12:43 AM   #19
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Default Re: Revolutionary Supers

X-Men is this depending on the writer. It's pretty prominent for Cyclops' faction from say Utopia until he dies.
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Old 09-29-2018, 08:48 AM   #20
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Default Re: Revolutionary Supers

It also occurs to me that this goes back to the proto-superhero day’s. Zoroaster is exactly what the OP asks for.
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