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[BlueCon] - Super Hero Discussion


Red2111

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Posted

In this thread we;ll be discussing Super Heroes and Super Powers.  Each day i'll post a new topic of discussion in this post for use to discuss :)

 

 

Day 1 -

If you could choose 1 super power, what would you choose and why?  How would you use your super power?  Would you be a good guy, a villain or a merc?

 

 

Day 2 -

In the debate between DC versus Marvel, which universe is better in your opinion.  Also, who is your favorite: X-men, Avenger, Justice Leauger, favorite DC & Marvel hero/villain?

 

 

Day 3 -  

do you think the willingness to kill, to do what ever needs to be done to get the job done, is what makes a villain; or do you think that in certain scenarios, its okay for the good guy to use the last resort of killing.

 

take the recent Superman movie, where Superman kills in the end.  for a hero that basis his entire code around "i'll not kill" seeing him snap the neck in an un-avoidable situation was jarring to many fans.  Do you think this makes him less "Superman" and just a Vig with a moral compass.

 

Adding onto that, reading the "Mutant Registration" comics, a shield agent asked Captian America this question:

 

"Spiderman locks up Doc Oc 100 times a week, only to have Doc bust out again and go out and kill hundreds of people.  At what point is the blood of those innocents on Spidermans hands because he doesn't do what needs to be doing?"  (by "needs to be doing" the shield agent is implying killing Doc Oc)

 

this is a great philosophical question, especially in a realm with such super hero's and super villains.   at what point does the refusal of the heros to kill the villains put the blood of the innocent on the heros hands?

 

 

Day 4 -

 

Brandon Sanderson has written a series called "The Reckoners" which deals with every day people developing super powers (some people but not all people).  Steelheart came out last year, and last month Firefight came out.

 

what is your opinion on the world that Sanderson has created?  How the societies in that world have evolved (or devolved)?  How Sanderson treats the powers of the Epics (some having one one power, while others have layers of powers)? 

 

Adding onto this, if Mutants and Aliens and Gods and Super Intelligent people started coming about, like what we see in the DC and Marvel universes, how do you think it would effect our society?  Would they be our overlords, like in Sandersons series? would we fear and respect and cheer for them as vigilantes like in Gotham? would we hold them up as the symbol of our society and rever/worship them like in Metropolis?  Use them as the worlds police like in Avengers?  Or the route that Xmen takes, where we try to "cure" them and eventually Register them and imprison them?

 

How do you think the citizens and governments would try to keep a balance of power? Extermination, Legislation or Immunity?

 

 

Day 5 -

 

in Disney's "The Incredibles" super hero's were eventually shunned from society because society got fed up with cleaning up their messes.  The movie Hancock also showed how a populace can grow to hate a super hero that causes unnecessary damage to property.

 

At what point, or how long after the imergence of a super hero, do you think it would be before the good will and tolerance of the people run out?

Posted

They say you can tell a lot about a person by the power they would choose.

 

If i could only have one super power i think i'd chose either Invisibility or Telekinesis.

 

 

Telekinesis because it would be awesome to be able to do my work without having to lift a finger ...  and Invisibility because ...  well i could go anywhere and do pretty much anything i wanted :laugh:

Posted

Healing would be a cool super power. :)

 

Otherwise I'd like to have the power to be invisible. For all those moments I wish I could have been the "fly on the wall"!

Posted

I vote for Red to have the power of Spellcheck :wink:

 

because the title is just hero

 

I'd like to have the Gateway type thing ... or the ability to communicate directly with pooters and the internets - like R2D2. He could do just about anything.

 

Maybe telepathy ... as long as it was turn on and offable

Posted

And the Power of Spellcheck!

 

Like Greyskull.

 

 

Flying super fast would be great, but would you have to wear the thermal lycra outfit? If you were a hero, would you be super fit and body shaped to suit lycra.

 

Personally, lycra is NOT a good look for me.

Posted

i would want the ríastrad/contortion like the one cú chulainn does, that would be badarse. basically berserk/invincibility/super strength and magic. heres a translated part of an old irish epic that describes what it is:

 

 

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Posted

I would choose teleportation, without a doubt, being able to go anywhere I want and maybe take people with me, to hide where ever I want at any time. Sit up in a tree in the remote areas of China and back home in time to get the fish out of the oven.

Posted

I'm so Un-Red these days ... ugh ... I'd pick Healing! I guess because I fell ill myself and was forced to go to government hospitals. I couldn't NOT try to ease the suffering I saw there (and experienced myself), if I had the Power to do so.

Posted

Teleportation would be awesome, but I would also like invisibility, just because there are days when I don't want to relate to the world AT ALL...

 

Healing would be good too.. 

Posted

The bad thing about invisibility is that you could walk in on a conversation and hear something you may not want to hear.

 

Teleportation would be cool.  Instantaneous travel to anywhere you wanted to go. Although this could be easily abused by bad guys and gals (and probably would be) . . .

 

Healing would be awesome. 

 

Or how about the unconscious superpower that would instantaneously transport anyone and everyone who was about to intentionally hurt/maim/kill an innocent to a deserted island where they could all work on killing each other off instead.  Yeah, if there was a superpower like that, that's the one I'd want.  I'd probably be pretty tired from that superpower being tapped in to so often but it would be worth it.

Posted

unintentionally, whether by mere indifference/ignorance or by act of passion, is a lot more often and so a lot more devestating in effect than those who premeditate to specifically hurt/kill another so wouldnt be very useful. 

Posted

a lot of great answers :)  teleportation would be awesome *nods* its on my top 5 for sure. Though most of you answered this already,  How would you use your super power?  Would you be a good guy, a villain or a merc?

 

 

and for Day 2 - In the debate between DC versus Marvel, which universe is better in your opinion.  Also, who is your favorite: X-men, Avenger, Justice Leauger, favorite DC & Marvel hero/villain?

Posted

to quote my favorite superhero "i'd be the hero the need, not the one they want."   so essentially i'd be a merc, in the sense that i would dictate who the bad guys were and would issue justice blindly via espionage and info trafficking.   my moral code would be my own self sense of karma and the US constitution.

 

 

 

as for question 2.

 

DC has the better villains imo, so even though Marvel has a better spread i would have to go with DC being the better universe.  more of the characters are grounded in reality in this universe where as Marvel tends to be grounded in the unreal (mutant powers, ect).

 

X-Men - Gambit.  hands down the Ragin Cajun is my and has always been my fav x-men :wub:

 

Avengers - Tony Stark.  from his attitude, to his toys to his charisma and smarts.

 

Justice League - Batman, hands down.  i'm a sucker for an anti-hero

 

 

Fav Marvel Good Guy & Villain -  Goodguy would be Deadpool, bad guy would be Venom.  Deadpool is just awesome, and i've always been attracted to Venom's concept and costume design as a kid.  i recall going through my best friends card collection and being drawn to the character not even knowing who he was.

 

Fav DC Good Guy & Villain - Batman and Joker (though Lex Luther is a close runner up).  Batman because he's an anti-hero.  Joker because he's an epic villain, he's so complex and insane.  one of my goals, as a hobby writer, is to eventually write a character that comes close to being Joker-esque.  to me, he's what every villain strives to be and he sets the bar for supreme badassery.

Posted

Even through passion, an act to hurt someone is intentional.  It's a choice, regardless of how angry one is, to lay hands on someone or pick up a weapon and harm someone.  Lose your temper and in a fit of rage, put your hands around someone's neck and start strangling them?  BOOM!  Instantaneous transport to deserted island.  Gang-banging and shooting into a home occupied by kids to try to get a rival or even scare someone?  BOOM! Instantaneous transport to deserted island.  Boko Haram blazing into a village to kidnap/kill/pillage?  BOOM! Instantaneous transport to deserted island sans weapons.

 

Unfortunately, we'd quickly run out of deserted islands . . .

Posted
  On 2/23/2015 at 4:36 PM, Red2111 said:

a lot of great answers :)  teleportation would be awesome *nods* its on my top 5 for sure. Though most of you answered this already,  How would you use your super power?  Would you be a good guy, a villain or a merc?

i would use mine to cleanse the world according to my ideals - whether thats good or bad is a matter of perspective.

 

 

  On 2/23/2015 at 4:58 PM, Daruya said:

Even through passion, an act to hurt someone is intentional.  It's a choice, regardless of how angry one is, to lay hands on someone or pick up a weapon and harm someone.  Lose your temper and in a fit of rage, put your hands around someone's neck and start strangling them?  BOOM!  Instantaneous transport to deserted island.  Gang-banging and shooting into a home occupied by kids to try to get a rival or even scare someone?  BOOM! Instantaneous transport to deserted island.  Boko Haram blazing into a village to kidnap/kill/pillage?  BOOM! Instantaneous transport to deserted island sans weapons.

 

Unfortunately, we'd quickly run out of deserted islands . . .

 

if we are defining choice as a conscious decision, it is not - emotions and especiallly rage can be extremly powerful and combine that with a predisposition for impulse problems then when something happens, there is scarcely if any conscious choice, its automation based on instinct plus any subconscious process/motifs, anyone who has experienced it knows that. the only example you cited  that could have been act of passion woulld be the strangulation - everything else is clearly intentional because you dont reactionarily go over to someones house and start shooting at it to scare someone you dont like and most of the time people who go raiding planned that out before hand whether or not it was originally inspired by emotion.

Posted

Being a do-gooder seems like a lot of stress. I hope I could help sometimes, but I doubt I would be a wonderful super hero. Maybe if I can just keep some people safe, the world will be a better place. (I don't work well under pressure.)

 

I love Marvel like crazy. DC is okaaaay, but Marvel has the most fascinating characters, and they have Loki and Deadpool, so...yeah.

 

As a kid, Storm was my favorite x-man, and she still is honestly, but Nightcrawler is awesome, too. Mistique isn't an x-man unfortunately. OnO

 

My favorite Avenger is Hawkeye! I don't know why. He's just neat I guess.

 

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As a kid, I watched Justice League a lot, the cartoon, and Wonder Woman is the best. =D Yay, amazons!

Posted

thats the thing though, isn't it.  bad and good; or at least the concepts of it, all boil down to perspective.

 

this brings me to the discussion for Day 3.

 

 do you think the willingness to kill, to do what ever needs to be done to get the job done, is what makes a villain; or do you think that in certain scenarios, its okay for the good guy to use the last resort of killing.

 

take the recent Superman movie, where Superman kills in the end.  for a hero that basis his entire code around "i'll not kill" seeing him snap the neck in an un-avoidable situation was jarring to many fans.  Do you think this makes him less "Superman" and just a Vig with a moral compass.

 

Adding onto that, reading the "Mutant Registration" comics, a shield agent asked Captian America this question:

 

"Spiderman locks up Doc Oc 100 times a week, only to have Doc bust out again and go out and kill hundreds of people.  At what point is the blood of those innocents on Spidermans hands because he doesn't do what needs to be doing?"  (by "needs to be doing" the shield agent is implying killing Doc Oc)

 

this is a great philosophical question, especially in a realm with such super hero's and super villains.   at what point does the refusal of the heros to kill the villains put the blood of the innocent on the heros hands?

Posted

Walking all over the gray area right now.

 

I don't know what the "point" is, if there is an exact number of people needing to be killed before the hero is blamed. Super Heroes are all about fighting the villains, without them there would be no epic comics or cartoons, just some stories. In a realistic sense, if you can't keep a person locked up and rehabilitated, then the only thing to do would be to end them. A human being, in real life, can't break down brink walls or murder an entire city with their eyeballs, so this doesn't necessarily apply to them.

 

But, at what point does Doc Oc stop being a confused and hurt human being and start being a plague needing a vaccine?

Posted

its all relative. it can vary from individual perspective (for example, someone can think its ok for the hero to kill or whatever else if there was no other way of stopping an extremelly harmful antagonist, while another person can think violence is almost never or never the answer so its inexcusable whatever the motive, etc.) and it can vary from entire cultural perspectives. the hero (or, since i guess talking specifically the modern manifestation of "superhero") is after all supposed to be a paragon of what that culture values most or, if not quite a supreme embodiment, then a tool in which many of the values and concerns of the culture can be explored through him. the hero of one culture can be seen as anothers villian. going back to cú chulainn just as  an example, he embodies everything tribal celtic society would have admired, which includes extreme, suicidal, and generally indiscriminate violence, a strong sense of honour and duty, and a promiscuous hypersexuality, but in light of modern western culture he would mostly be regarded as a villian/someone shouldnt look up to because he doesnt represent much that is promoted by that culture.

 

me, personally, id say there are no limits when its done in the name of honour but thats probably not intelligible/translatable exactly to the western concept of "superhero"

Posted
  On 2/24/2015 at 10:07 PM, Aniere said:

Walking all over the gray area right now.

 

I don't know what the "point" is, if there is an exact number of people needing to be killed before the hero is blamed. Super Heroes are all about fighting the villains, without them there would be no epic comics or cartoons, just some stories. In a realistic sense, if you can't keep a person locked up and rehabilitated, then the only thing to do would be to end them. A human being, in real life, can't break down brink walls or murder an entire city with their eyeballs, so this doesn't necessarily apply to them.

 

But, at what point does Doc Oc stop being a confused and hurt human being and start being a plague needing a vaccine?

 

 

this is a discussion about super hero's, so the argument of "well in IRL" isn't exactly apt ;) lmao

 

the moral question is this.  Spiderman knows prison wont contain Doc Oc, because Doc Oc keeps breaking out of prison and going back on killing sprees.

 

because Spiderman knows this, but refuses to kill Doc Oc and instead continues to send him to prison (ie lets the cycle continue and the death toll get higher).  at what point is it Spidermans fault that Doc Oc is still taking innocent lives.  at what point, if ever, is the blood of those innocents on Spidermans hands; because he refused to go against his moral code and just kill Doc Oc.

Posted
  On 2/22/2015 at 9:01 PM, Red2111 said:

Day 1 -

If you could choose 1 super power, what would you choose and why?  How would you use your super power?  Would you be a good guy, a villain or a merc?

 

I would fall like the Kings of men. I would take this power and start for the greater good.............but I would fall. To convenience and the pursuit of vices. 'Because i can' would definitely take me over. I would totally be ruled by the dark side of the force. Seduced, I would be. 

 

As to what form that would take is soooooooooooo hard. I've always been a fan of Marvel's Kurt  Wagner and Piotr Rasputin aka; Night Crawler and Colossus.  Also, DC's Wally West and Hal Jordan aka; The Flash and Green Lantern. As Wally or Kurt I could never be contained. No prison would hold me but I would be physically week. As Piotr I would be a juggernaut. Unstoppable. But still human when I tire. As Hal, I could create a frickin SPACE STATION and live there. Calling it New Oa for the lost planet of the Lantern Corps. I could be like a god but the power of the ring is finite.  

 

 

Day 2 -

In the debate between DC versus Marvel, which universe is better in your opinion.  Also, who is your favorite: X-men, Avenger, Justice Leauger, favorite DC & Marvel hero/villain?

 

I have always leaned towards DC. I can't really express why though. IMO DC just seems to be.......heavier. Xmen is awesome and has some pretty stellar story arcs and Marvel is broad. There's a lot going on there. I just can't remember the last time I got goose bumps when hearing them. Not like I did for Infinite Crisis, or Kingdom Come or The New 52 from DC. I think I am drawn to the variety of characters' abilities and sources of their abilities in DC. Marvel is 'mutation' 95% of the time. DC is aliens, and magic and intelligence. There is more of a snese of an Other with DC. Marvel's mutants builds on a sameness we can identify with. Anyone of us could have been a mutant. We could be related to a Mystique right now and not even know! We'll never be a last living alien from a destroyed planet but we could TOTALLY become an adamantium skeletoned vig. 

 

Favorite Avenger, hmmmmmmm........I would have to go with The Hulk. Waitin for him to go off in a Gamma Rage is awesome. 

 

Fav Marvel Villain.......... Apocalypse. Most definitely. The Next step in the history of the evolution of man and mutant. His is the will and the ability and the psychotic need to be the one to cull the heard.  He looks awesome. Has the greatest villain name of EVER and the personality that goes wayyyyyyyyy beyond both. 

 

Fav DC villain.................Funny enough, Darkseid who lives on Apokolips. lol One of Superman's main villains and Mr Mxlptlk. 

 

 

Day 3 -  

do you think the willingness to kill, to do what ever needs to be done to get the job done, is what makes a villain; or do you think that in certain scenarios, its okay for the good guy to use the last resort of killing.

 

take the recent Superman movie, where Superman kills in the end.  for a hero that basis his entire code around "i'll not kill" seeing him snap the neck in an un-avoidable situation was jarring to many fans.  Do you think this makes him less "Superman" and just a Vig with a moral compass.

 

Adding onto that, reading the "Mutant Registration" comics, a shield agent asked Captian America this question:

 

"Spiderman locks up Doc Oc 100 times a week, only to have Doc bust out again and go out and kill hundreds of people.  At what point is the blood of those innocents on Spidermans hands because he doesn't do what needs to be doing?"  (by "needs to be doing" the shield agent is implying killing Doc Oc)

 

this is a great philosophical question, especially in a realm with such super hero's and super villains.   at what point does the refusal of the heros to kill the villains put the blood of the innocent on the heros hands?

 

I cannot say how disappointed i was by Superman killing Zod. That's a core issue of Superman that should not have been changed. He isn't just unwilling he is incapable of it. Also, to have it be such an integral character to the story of Superman being killed is just dumb. lol IMO at least. 

 

As for metahumans killing in general? Terrible idea. As a regular human I would be afraid of "super heroes" havin the ability to make that call. It should be left to the justice system. If Doc Oc had been arrested x amounts of times and WE haven't killed him, it's just as much our fault. If I had the ability to I'd offer it. "Look, I just caught this dude AGAIN for you. You want me to end it because only my super power can, let me know. I got you. ;) " Then again, that's Doc Oc. Human threat. If you're talkin some intergalactic/demonic/future-war-comin-into-the-past where we are grossly underpowered? Let the meta humans do what metahumans do. Kill'em all. 

Posted

very good discussion so far ^_^  thank you everyone for participating and i'm glad that you find the questions well enough to respond to.

 

 

Million makes a great point about in that philosophical question that it would be equally our part depending on the villain  (people like Joker, Luther, Doc Oc ...  these are normal people whose "powers" come from their intelligence and psychosis)  So its just as much of societys fault as it is the Hero's fault.

 

but i think we all know who society would blame, if blame ever came into the picture xD

 

 

which brings me to the next question.

 

 

Brandon Sanderson has written a series called "The Reckoners" which deals with every day people developing super powers (some people but not all people).  Steelheart came out last year, and last month Firefight came out.

 

what is your opinion on the world that Sanderson has created?  How the societies in that world have evolved (or devolved)?  How Sanderson treats the powers of the Epics (some having one one power, while others have layers of powers)? 

 

Adding onto this, if Mutants and Aliens and Gods and Super Intelligent people started coming about, like what we see in the DC and Marvel universes, how do you think it would effect our society?  Would they be our overlords, like in Sandersons series? would we fear and respect and cheer for them as vigilantes like in Gotham? would we hold them up as the symbol of our society and rever/worship them like in Metropolis?  Use them as the worlds police like in Avengers?  Or the route that Xmen takes, where we try to "cure" them and eventually Register them and imprison them?

 

How do you think the citizens and governments would try to keep a balance of power? Extermination, Legislation or Immunity?

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