Playing morally repugnant superheroes
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remember one of my favorite superhero characters i ever played who was mostly a psychopath fighting villains/psychopaths. he Lobotomized one villain going through his eye socket, gutted another and put his fist through another's chest.
What is it about superhero media that attracts such edgelords? I swear every time I visit /co/ there's a new comic about "hey guys what if the superheroes were actually villains aren't I clever and deconstructive".
I agree, but Iredeemable is actually pretty quality, because rather than just make him a psychopath, they go a lot into what has made him reach the point where he's roasting people with laser vision.
Because hackjob authors have discovered that "deconstruction" has a market in edgy teens and contrarians, and it basically writes itself.
He might have started that way but it turned into loledge porn pretty soon.
tearing down something established is significantly easier than writing something new
I'm running a superhero game and one of the players keeps fucking making friends with the villains. The new one's a filthy-rich "I am a god because I have powers do what I say lowly plebs" randroid, and she's trying the same damn shit. How do I get her to stop besides "She doesn't listen and hits you" DM fiat?
You could have just said
>Has a market on Veeky Forums
instead
He was a biology and bio engineering major that was enrolled as a researcher in a genetic experimintation program. He became an unwilling participant after the company faked his death in an accident they covered up and he was injected with the mutagen he was working on by the corporation. He became an amalgimation type creature that would absorb and replicate people or animals like john carpenters the thing. He was very efficent at saving people for many years but no matter what he did people were deathly afraid of him because of his grotesque appearance when in combat. He killed or outright absorbed his enemies into himself gaining all their knowledge able to make perfect copies of them. People had ptsd from seeing him transform and he was being sued for causing irreparable psychological trauma to lots of people, constantly on the run and hunted down by super heroes and the government. The giant monopoly corperation was trying to hunt him down claiming he was grown in a lab and had no human rights. He was so angry and upset that he decided that they would treat him as a villan regardless so he might as well become the villan they think he his. Eventually it split itself into many human forms and began assimilating major cities around the world forming large nearly industructible nightmarish fleshpiles absorbing everything in its path. He wiped out many third world countries and absorbed ny, la, Brussels, Paris, Beijing along with many other cities and populated areas. Many famous superheros died or were absorbed while fighting him. He lived until after the campaign was over hiding in plain sight and assimilating victims all over the world spreading in secret.
Let the villain become his "friend" and then betray him. When PC makes puppy dog eyes and asks why - make her point at a giant neon sign that says "EVIL".
Wow when did Freddie Mercury become a super hero?
>People had ptsd from seeing him transform and he was being sued for causing irreparable psychological trauma to lots of people, constantly on the run and hunted down by super heroes and the government. The giant monopoly corperation was trying to hunt him down claiming he was grown in a lab and had no human rights. He was so angry and upset that he decided that they would treat him as a villan regardless so he might as well become the villan they think he his.
Trying to genocide humanity seems like a bit of a stupid reaction to an unethical megacorp being unethical and people being afraid of what is basically body horror. I can't imagine he was a very good person to begin with.
>playing heroes of justice
That's no a super hero that's Space Tyrant Ruler of the Universe, thank you very much.
With great power comes great edge. Given the amount of edgy "heroes", it makes capes like Superman and Captain America all the more sweet and inspiring because they're not only exceptional in abilities, but in personality where it seems everyone else is a superpowered freak. Hell, even Judge Dred is an improvement and I've seen so much edge heroes that its hard to see Judge as the pargon of Lawful Neutral he supposedly is when he acts like a saint compared to all the other templars of that alignment.
Just go with it, clearly friendship is her superpower
>With great power comes great edge. Given the amount of edgy "heroes", it makes capes like Superman and Captain America all the more sweet and inspiring because they're not only exceptional in abilities, but in personality where it seems everyone else is a superpowered freak.
From what I've seen the Injustice comics have been incredibly popular.
Yea, playing one now.
Let me first say that the powers and/or drawbacks were all decided by the gm, we rolled some dice and were given superpowers...
I rolled high, very very high, in all categories. The results were interesting.
Kid who grows up in a bad part of town, as you do he joined a gang as a wannabe-prospect for a local smalltime villain until he gets caught by a rival and beaten to within an inch of his life and then promptly beaten beyond that, landing him in a coma at the local hospital.
Somewhere during all this he gained his powers, without which he probably would never have woken up, or even managed to survive getting into the coma in the first place.
The guy is tough as all hell, can regenerate injuries... Or with a touch transfer any damage taken to someone else, to make it worse if he isn't injured then said touch will basically set the victims nervous system on fire.
Further complications include that since waking up he's effectively in a permanent state of chock, physical and emotional stimuli basically don't exist outside a neutral baseline.
Guy was then recruited into a young-heroes kind of thing with the argument of "You got medical bills to pay and also we are gonna jail you if you don't agree"
So yea, you got a person who might not be particularly evil by himself but is slowly losing touch with humanity and is relying more and more on the moral codes and insight of his teammates to remind him of what an acceptable response/level of violence is.
It's a fun game and I really do like the character, but by god is he a built like a horror movie villain.
He was an average joe, not a paticularly good or bad person. When almost everbody in the world thinks your terrifying even after you save them from certain death your going to have huge trust and self image issues. Minor level super heros, mercenaries and military units want to kill you or capture you for money and fame. Major league super heros dont trust your intentions because you arent part of the "in" crowd and view you as a crisis inducing terror who could wipe out humanity. He had to disguise himself as new people or animals daily staying on the run for over 10 years. Eventually the only thing he wanted was revenge, thats all he had left inside him. He even stopped saving people all together because he was so demoralized towards the end, he just wanted to be left alone and they just kept hunting him.
Because that’s how modern writing works. Everyone wants to be subversive because they think it’s unique
And once a genre has been done for so long it has to branch off into things like parody, deconstruction or reaffirmation of the myth
Kind of like westerns or superhero movies with Logan and Deadpool
Injustice is popular because it’s a big dumb shounen comic basically
It’s Superman vs everyone
The early volumes are enjoyable but volume 3 onward is a slog and the Injustice 2 comic is just bad
>These people think I'm a bodyhorror monstrosity who needs to be stopped before it commits genocide
>I just wanna be left alone
>instead of using my perfect shapeshifting powers I'm just gonna prove them right!
Well, just because villains like you doesn't mean they'll stop being who they are. Maybe there's a *reason* they're so quick to become friends with her. A reason she hasn't figured out.
SO USE HER. Let the villain see just how far the player can be manipulated or twisted. Whether she wakes up from her naivety or falls, either moment should be a hell of a ride.
>Activate Hero Shield!
Dread often tries to embody the spirit of "the law". That's where the 'disconnect' is: He's being fully Lawful Neutral, but without as much Lawful Stupid or Lawful Asshole.
So he often doesn't OVERpunish the slightest violations of a truly massive code of law like some of his peers if a milder lesson would get the point across, and he's even once or twice let things slide despite minimum mandatory guidelines for shit like coerced or truly desperate "criminals" who'd clearly had no choice in the matter.
Basically he's the diametric opposite of jeff sessions.
They were tracking him via telepathy and they had nearly unlimited resources, he couldnt throw them off the trail just try to stay two steps ahead of them. He had nobody to help him whatsoever and whatever money and supplies he could carry.
Yeah, keep it in /pol/, mate, we don't need another derailed thread.
If they were tracking him via telepathy, how'd he manage to "infiltrate" several large cities?
How was this in any way a surprise to anyone if they could simply follow him wherever he went?
These two do not seem like compatible storylines, either he is able to hide, in which case the events simply don't unfold, or he cannot in which case there's no way the'd let him go into major cities and begin assimilating.
He split into multiple people to confuse and scatter the team that was after him. It was only after several forms were captured, tortured, and experimented on that he began to infiltrate the cities and attempt to exterminate portions of humanity as revenge. He was in multiple places at once for a majority of the storyline, if they were all captured he would be a science experiment for the rest of his life. He went and assimilated entire towns before infiltrating the cities, one of the main goals for assimilating the cities was to lure out and kill the telepaths that had been aiding the corperation in tracking him, he eliminated the most powerful among them so he actually can hide some of his forms now. Telepathy is based on range and their were five of them that could track him from continents away, he killed them all and most of the minor ones too.
It wasn't remotely justified, though. He could simply have stopped being a superhero. Hell, even the whole sound-plague thing wasn't really his fault.
I heard some really good commentary about this somewhere, I'll try to paraphrase
>'modern comic-book deconstruction feels so empty and 'edgy', because readers have grown up with it and aren't already wedded to more 'traditional', wholesome superheroes. When Alan Moore wrote Watchmen, it was interesting and significant because that was a very new way of looking at superheroes... and it worked because Moore also understood and appreciated the old way, he'd written things like Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow.'
>'[analogy about evolution of classical music that I'm too smoothbrain to remember]'
This is probably why Garth Ennis' deconstructive stuff, even when it's working, feels edgy and ridiculous rather than actually shocking or interesting. Ennis, as he keeps telling everybody, hates traditional superheroes and doesn't understand their appeal at all.
Does Gravel count as a superhero?
alternatively, just roll with it.
Let the player befriend as many villains as they can, let them de-escalate situations and sometimes get a free win by convincing a villain to just stand down.
Alternatively, introduce mindless foes or have the heroes actually encounter villains doing truly irredeemable stuff.
But honestly? I don't get punishing someone for wanting to befriend antagonists. Heck, I personally would let it be clear that the player is making the world a better place in little ways throughout the game.
...... are you guys playing Weaver Dice? Because that sounds like Weaver Dice
I'm going to post some morally questionable "heroes".
I love Moon Knight because he is basically a superhero serial-killer. Dexter on a mission from the moon god.
Isn't that literally a thing superman did once?
Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow is still one of my top ten comics.
Actually, this one's a bit better: youtube.com
Has the earlier bit, and cuts off the bit at the end where Superman reveals he was just bluffing. Which... doesn't make things too much better?
I prefer REAL heroes
You know, some people actually wrote good Moon Knight comics instead of this shit for teenage kickass fans.
>Thatcher
>getting cowed by anyone
The hell with superpowers, -THAT’S- the most unbelievable thing in those panels .
The six issues of Ellis were fun and made him a pulp hero again. One strength of MK is that he can be nearly anything a pulp hero, a serial killer, a hardboild investigator, a mental patient or a self-made hero.
What makes it a good story is that once something goes wrong, once he makes one mistake, he thinks he is Irredeemable. That everyone will just see him as the Wolf-Boy again, and that there is no going back. By hiding that he was involved with the sound plague, and the shame of that, everything kicks off.
It is only because he thinks that, that he actually makes everything so much worse. His parents (such as they are) even reject him because he they think they cannot undo the damage (they probably could). In the end he is finally redeemed, by becoming the idea of Superman.
Plus, the side characters are pretty good.
Because playing heroes straight is for naive children and the Japanese
After shit like that, she would cow.
I think this scene was better in the comic.
I wouldn't call Supergods evil, at least not capital E Evil. They were Alien, that was the whole point. No one knew why they were doing what they were doing.
Also, the British one was wrong, people are more than capable of coordinating or cooperating without religion.
I dunno...
If that was Liverpool, it probably would have been fine.
youre not really a super hero then, just superpowered
Well yeah, also there are plenty of fungi that grow on living things. It even happens earlier in the story, so the whole "mushrooms grow on dead things" idea was a bit silly as well.
>"Oh wow, thank's Superman
>"Batman's hiding in the tree, tubby"
gentarou is such a treasure
You're trying to explain the difference between a well-written deconstruction done by a man who genuinely loves Superman and all the purity that goes into it to explore the moral failings of a character in a similar situation to people who genuinely think the only reason it exists is because Mark Waid is an edgelord.
I applaud the effort but this way leads to madness.
Sort of. I'm not sure it really counts as a lobotomy if all you're doing is taking away an asshole's telekinetic and telepathic powers but otherwise leaving them perfectly fine. It's not like Manchester's personality was affected.
In the comic, he didn't even do that much, just temporarily swelled that part of Mancheter's brain so that he couldn't access his powers, but it would come back in a few hours/days. Although he still TOLD Manchester that he'd lobotomized him. Superman was pissed and trying to make a point.
Because we've already heard the story of the heroic hero defeating the villainous villain about ten thousand times over.
Power fantasy.
Hmm.
>morally repugnant
Just ask yourself, what would a Marvel comics "hero" do?
>angry bat noises
>hey guys I heard you weren't talking about SJWs, let's fix that
Fuck off retard
>
What's morally questionable about killing in self defence? Especially when you know the guy attacking you has murdered people.
And at this point we've heard the villianous hero beat the x villian about the same amount.
can i get a quick run down of what I'm supposed to be mad about and how females are ruining comics based off this image? Possibly with you breaking some global rules in the process?
Nexus attacks them because an alien god tortures him otherwise. The only proof Nexus has that they are murderer's is this god and some murderer are trying to atone for their crimes, ut Mek does not care. Also what is the definition of mass murderer ? Nexus would have killed Bomber Harris for example
I don't understand the problem with this comic, but then I have no idea who this character is. The teacher seemed to have an appropriate response, though.
They'd be mostly concerned about assessing the villain's placement on their hierarchy of oppression so they know whether or not it's 'problematic' for them to fight him / her / xir / xi / so /sa / m'bob dip-a-do-down-dowop.
I wouldn't say they're morally repugnant, just morally stupid.
The little black girl in the comic wants to grow up to be like Tony Stark
The teacher, and old white woman, supports her dream and tells her she can achieve it
The little black girl gets mad because she wanted the teacher to tell her she can't do it because she's a black woman, a minority, she was expecting, and hoping, to be put down
Thus the little black girl refuses to sit down and participate until the teacher fakes putting her down for being a black woman, just so the little girl can achieve her dream to "prove her wrong"
So basically she wanted a reason to spite someone with her personal dream, rather than being supported.
And we’ve heard the deconstruction edgelord shit about a million times over.
Please, the few issues Warren wrote were the best things Moon Knight has ever been in. Not that he's never had good runs before.
The teacher isn't an old white woman did not read the rest lol.
A young child does a stupid thing. News at 11.
I guess when you're far enough to the right, everything looks like the hard left.
Thatcher was just as cowardly as any other cold-blooded toff. She never faced anything truly frightening or any real opposition. Even the war she fought was a steamroll she could safely play for easy popularity points from the lowest common denominator.
A little girl's dream is to be oppressed and discriminated against.
Are you human? How can you not notice something so strange? I have a feeling that you would fail a Turing test.
In the example provided he's just standing there and the guy comes at him with a knife. He says it's always self-defence like that.
The problem is, adults think like this.
It's a weird forced "oppressed minority" scenario. The character is basically the new Tony Stark in modern Marvel, she is smarter than Tony and can easily replicate his tech and built her own Iron Man suit and all that, and this is her young self.
It angers /co/ because of how stupid the whole thing is and how it's literally a forced "oppressed minority" as a characters driving force
The problem is it's written by an adult, in an era where SJW shit is being forced into Marvel stories, and this child grows up to be the new Tony Stark, who is better than Tony in every way possible.
>Marvel comics
The guy who wrote this is at DC now.
>A child actively wants to be ostracized and oppressed
That isn't just a kid doing something stupid m8, that's just shit writing trying to force the oppressed angle.
>stupid
You don't know anything about children. Eating crayons is stupid and normal. Iron Riri is a freak show. If you defend wanting to be discriminated against, then you are just as bad, you weirdo.
I think you'd fail most tests.
>Iron Riri
A normal well balanced person wrote this post who doesn't have latent racist opinions.
Her name is Riri Williams, and she is the new Iron Man
>It's a weird forced "oppressed minority" scenario.
It's a JOKE. It's FUNNY. The left wasn't trying to say anything other than "this is funny". It's not meant to be a forced repressed minority. The joke is in the banal mundanity of her childhood.
Not that me explaining the joke helps, because explaining a joke kills it in the first place, and your head is too far up your own ass to have ever even considered that anyway.
Jesus Christ, you remind me of the rabid feminists who tried to claim that "man-spreading" was some kind of dominance gesture trying to take up space when in reality it's just that balls are sensitive to heat and pressure so it's more comfortable for a guy to sit with legs at least a little spread. Not everything is the patriarchy. And by the same token, not everything is a leftist screed.