09-28-2018, 05:43 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Revolutionary Supers
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? |
09-28-2018, 06:31 AM | #2 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Revolutionary Supers
This is a bit of a minefield, so we'll want to tread carefully. One method would be to come up with something you feel is wrong with the modern status quo, then create a superhero to combat it and a supervillain to champion it. This need not be something you personally oppose, of course. In fact, I think we should open this with a disclaimer that opinions expressed by heroes do not necessarily match those of the poster, and that we should avoid political discussion like the plague here - by necessity, the villains are extreme caricatures of supporters of the status quo, and should not be taken as an indication of how those supporters actually are.
As an example, let's use abortion (told you, minefield). You could actually do this with the hero being on either side (you can oppose the status quo of abortion being available, or you can oppose the status quo of access to it being restricted in some areas; note just about anything you choose could have a hero or villain on either side, and you could even have two different hero/villain matchups where the two heroes are on different sides of the issue), but I think it's easier to make a hero who opposes availability and a villain who champions it, in no small part because availability is more the status quo than restrictions thereof. The villain's actually easier - he (or she) is racist and elitist, purposefully trying to use abortion as a means of ethnic cleansing to rid the world of the "unfit." If your Supers world is one where magic is a thing, he may be using a ritual to turn the pain and death of the unborn into mana or similar. The villain would have a chain of seemingly-legitimate abortion clinics (all seemingly unconnected, so that one getting discovered doesn't result in the whole chain getting shut down), but they'd all be run similarly to Gosnell's "House of Horrors" clinic. Indeed, worse - they'd probably abduct pregnant women of minority races (either through physical means or magical compulsion) and force them into abortions, and they'd also corrupt, defame, or assassinate those who oppose them. The superhero, then, would attack these clinics as they sprung up, freeing the women forced there against their will and restricting their violence to the staff that's "in the know" in some way in the scheme. He'd probably be a religiously-themed super, although that's not strictly necessary. I feel I should reiterate it at this point, but I'm not at all implying those who are pro-choice are anything like the villain above. Again, he's a caricature for the purpose of creating an evil villain for the hero to oppose. Of course, you could also take a different route - Captain Planet sort of follows the model you're looking at, with the Planeteers being something like a superheroic version of Greenpeace or similar organizations. EDIT: Something else a bit less controversial, but somewhat leaning toward dystopianism, would be the webcomic Indefensible Positions. There's a lot more going on there, and the heroes are less revolutionaries than you might want, in no small part because they oppose both the status quo of extreme Order and the counterpoint of extreme Chaos. Oh, and because their primary antagonists are arguably more well-intentioned extremists than true supervillains. EDIT2: Forgot to mention, but while the comic is itself roughly PG-13 in terms of art and language, many of the themes are inappropriate for children. The first real chapter (chapter 1's just a very basic introduction) involves the main character disrupting a ritual to kill a room full of sexual deviants in order to reduce general sexual deviancy in the world.
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GURPS Overhaul Last edited by Varyon; 09-28-2018 at 06:59 AM. |
09-28-2018, 07:08 AM | #3 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Revolutionary Supers
I'm not going touch the abortion example (Varyon managed to step on a couple of mines despite their evident care), but it takes two to start an unproductive political argument.
Instead, I'll wander blithely into a slightly more obscure minefield of my own: Ireland in the 1910s. Our villain is a simple English patriot, who sees no issue with using violence and threats to keep the United Kingdom together, regardless of what the Catholics (always said in the tone of voice reserved for slurs) might want. Beating people up for their political opinions is illegal, but no more so than beating up people for their crimes. Our Hero is a Irishman who refuses to use their powers to fight against the English, but they believe that using super powers against the Crown will inevitably escalate the conflict and they still have hopes for a peaceful resolution. They are willing to use super powers to protect people from the villain however, and so has to walk a fine line to avoid the ire of the government while still engaging the terrorist the government appearently lets operate freely for political expedience. |
09-28-2018, 07:25 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Revolutionary Supers
I'm going to point you at Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. The protagonists are highly capable ordinary people who are trying to figure out why their society is falling into ruin; but the true heroes of the book are super normals who have decided that socialist ideology needs to come down, and will do whatever it takes. No masks, no costumes, no colorful names, but consider that you have an incredibly wealthy man posing as a playboy to cover up his revolutionary activities (who at one point is described as walking as if he had a cape streaming behind him in the wind), a philosophy turned pirate whose warships outperform those of any navy on earth, and a mysterious figure whose name has become a household word for despair and who has command of the most advanced technology on earth. Whatever you think of their cause, the literary method is right there.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
09-28-2018, 07:26 AM | #5 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Revolutionary Supers
If we're allowed to set things in the past, things get a lot easier. A KKK villain during the days of Jim Crow laws and the like practically writes itself, and it's none too difficult to create a hero to oppose him.
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GURPS Overhaul |
09-28-2018, 08:36 AM | #6 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Revolutionary Supers
Quote:
In earlier generations, the natural course for aristocrats of subjugated countries was to become bandits; that's where we get the romantic highwayman myth.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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09-28-2018, 09:03 AM | #7 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Revolutionary Supers
Quote:
That... makes a lot of sense. I wasn't aware those were the origins of that particular trope.
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GURPS Overhaul Last edited by Varyon; 09-28-2018 at 09:20 AM. |
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09-28-2018, 09:45 AM | #8 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Revolutionary Supers
Quote:
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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09-28-2018, 10:00 AM | #9 |
Join Date: May 2012
Location: New Hampshire, USA
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Re: Revolutionary Supers
Someone I know once posted on facebook a question of, "If you could have one super power what would it be and what would you do with it?" It got over a hundred replies, ranging from super power fantasies that were pretty admirable to pretty scary. However, with only a few exceptions the vast majority of answers were motivated by either personal gain or political convictions, and (again with only a few exceptions) the vast majority of people seemed to think of super powers as a "free pass" to break the rules (i.e. the law, social ethics, etc.)
The most common choices by far were: 1. Kill, mindcontrol, or otherwise eliminate the leaders of the opposing political party. Sometimes it was targeted at a specific very prominent individual, other times it was just the entire political party. This choice wasn't just common, it was fully the majority. Now, you said you don't want to place them in a dystopia, in the real world instead. But I think this would lead to a dystopia very quickly, and if I follow the guidelines of Hero = revolutionary, Villian = status quo, then things are quite dystopic!2. Steal money or other valuables. This was a pretty large minority. Mostly people chose stealth and infiltration powers for this: insubstantial or permeation to go through walls, teleportation to just go there and grab it, invisibility, impersonation, etc. The most creative individuals chose things like computer control for hacking internet finance hacking, or precognition for gambling and stocks. I feel like, just based on common sense, that would be more successful at getting away with it. But idk.3. Acquire fame and success, especially social status. This was a slightly smaller but still large minority. This isn't inherently villainous or heroic, so it's a good for making heros and villians that fall on both sides: you could have a hero using super powers to make it as a indie music star, fighting against big labels that try to rig the system and rob the artists; or a musician using mind control rather than talent to try to gain popularity and make money, brainwashing the masses into listening to their terrible music to fulfill their fantasies, at the expense of literally everyone but also the talented artists who actually deserve to be recognized (who might be the heroes fighting them.)4. Truly altruistic objectives, which were mostly too unique to the individual to catagorize. Out of more than a hundred answers there were only a half dozen or so in this category. I don't remember all of them and they did not have any sort of unified objective. There were a couple people that basically said, "if I had super powers I'd have to go join the police or the fire department and become a superhero."5. there was also one person whose objectives weren't really... like... villainous or heroic at all. They wanted computer control powers in order to make whatever video games they could imagine as easily as they could imagine them, not so that they could make a profit off of them, but so that they could then enter into them and thereby explore other worlds and lives. They said that there were alternatives to video game powers, such as book powers that let them enter into books or pull things out of a book, or something similar with board games, etc. But basically they wanted to use games to become a wizard in a tower apart from the world exploring the extents of their imagination without being confined by reality. |
09-28-2018, 10:12 AM | #10 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Revolutionary Supers
Quote:
In the review I read, it says that in Tess an innocent girl is shunned for being a victim of date rape and her boyfriend is to cowardly to stick up for her. I don't think it is implied that that is supposed to be a GOOD thing.
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