Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I'm joking. Host the web commentsyou're using interviews today, we're all about
the opposed to sit back, relax, and let the geek fast begin.
In most literary works, I don'tcare if we're talking comics, novels,
even movies and television, it's prettyeasy to figure out who the bad guys
are, you know, straight up. Sometimes it's because they wear black.
(00:20):
Sometimes it's because they do all thebad things. Sometimes it's just because they
literally when the hero throws garbage intothe recycling bin. The key here,
though, is that the villains arepretty obvious. You know, you've got
to be bad evil guy. You'vegot the guys henchman who pretty much view
all the stuff or I'm there,this literal right hand man. They do
(00:42):
all the assassinations, they view allthe leading of the troops, they do
all the mechanics stuff, they viewall the evil research. Then of course
you've got the looks, who arepretty much just the ranking file and the
agents, you know, the onesthat the heroes tend to go through really
easily. But it seems to bepretty much everywhere. This is why to
be the poor stormtrooper. But firstoff, I need to a step back
(01:07):
I'm going to be making fun ofBatman a lot in this podcast. This
is not because of a disrespect towardsBatman. I love the guy. I
actually do to him to model likecharacters after him, there's a definite respect.
However, Well, once you understandwhat this podcast is value, it's
basically he's the easiest one to bringup as an example, and so yeah,
(01:30):
he I can make fun of hima lot this podcast. I make
no apologies, just sit back andenjoy it. So what's that basically mean.
It means that there's a lot ofcharacters that are going to be opposing
the heroes. And it's not becausethey're evil or mean usually or for that
(01:51):
matter, because they're just simply lazy. It's just they're doing their jobs and
the heroes, for one reason oranother, interfere with doing that job.
I mean, straight up, lookat Batman versus meter maids everywhere. If
the guy cannot park, if theguy cannot you know, guy has a
lot of traffic violations. I haveno doubt if he has no problem going
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to count with a broken headlight ninetimes out of him, he doesn't know
about until he gets back to thebat gave the key here is that Batman
and screened, you have the policescrewing up against him just because of who
he is. You know, youcan't have via major vigilante and not have
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the police against you. All thatunlicensed tech, all that unregistered weaponry,
so on and so forth. Batmanis a person who if basically the local
government decided to go after him justin terms of tickets alone, yeah,
that would be a major income source. But then you've had other issues.
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You know, basically had a characterwho dresses up as a bat which is
in most areas a protected species.You know, some of the ecological people
are going to be hating him forthat. Then of course he's got a
boat, he's got a plane,he's got a car. He usually has
several of them, and we won'tget into all the smaller vehicles, all
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of which are well not electrical vehicles. They all use bossil fuels. That's
a lot of stuff viewing into theatmosphere. So you know, the ecological
groups are after him that if nothingelse. And when it comes down to
it, you just have people thatare just simply going to be making fun
of Batman. You know, thecomedians, you're gonna have some people to
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trying to actually get one up onhim, and because he's you know,
Batman easy at Tony of the skilledcharacter, because that you know, there's
a lot of disillineous challenges out there. And then of course there's times when
Batman pretty much goes into a turfor not really trying to just trying to
(04:01):
break it up without actually understanding whatthe situation is. At that point,
I hate seeing the games are justsimply doing what the games do, and
then all of a sudden you havethis guy and this big rich guy in
a doubt that coming in and tryingto break things up. But you get
the idea. The key here isthat there's a lot of smaller groups that
are perfectly legitimate in doing what theynormally do, and they're going to be
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opposing heroes, not because they hatethe heroics or anything like that. It's
just they need to do what theyneed to do in the heroes or basically
being idiots. Because of this,you're going to have a lot of regular
people opposing them, and that's notnecessarily a bad thing. Sometimes you need
those small people to show basically howthe real world works in your world.
(04:51):
Sometimes you need those smaller people toflush things out just a little bit.
Sometimes you can even be used fordramatic purposes. You know, you have
a parents group that doesn't like thefact that your vigilane is going around maiming
teenagers, and let's get real,a lot of vigilantie to do exactly that,
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because that you see a lot ofyoung men ended up in wheelchairs.
It just simply shouldn't have if thevigilante have been a little bit more careful.
And it's pretty easy to see alot of parents groups going after vigilante
shore exactly that. Yeah, Iknow this is the weird stuff that some
of those writers think about late atnight, But at the same time,
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it's little things that help read alittle bit of reality into our stories,
and that's not necessarily a bad thing. So we're going to be exploring a
lot of these opposing forces. Yeah, I know I'm going to to miss
over a couple of them here andthere, But at the same time,
I think I'm going to get enoughof them that everybody's going to sort of
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like it. So let's have somefun, shall we. Obviously, the
first place we need to stop ata is government. Now, for a
lot of writers. This obviously makesa lot of sense, because well,
they don't like government, that's fine. I really don't care about dark and
gritty virgins of government here, becausewell, let's get real, that kind
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of government is usually the villain andof themselves, especially we having to be
dealing with deep, dark, dystopiatype situations where the government has become just
a little bit on the fascist side. And by a little bit, I
mean nineteen eighty four had nothing onthem. You know, we're talking basically
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hunger games on steroid type situations orcyberfunct stuff. That's fine. You want
to have a government where it's easilycorruptible and all you have to do to
get something done is bribe the rightperson, that's fine. However, for
our purpose tonight, that's not thekind of government I'm looking at it.
I'm looking at the government that's actuallytrying to basically make laws to make life
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a lot easier for as citizens.In other words, there actually are trying
to actually well govern the people anddo a good job at it, good
their job at it. And Iknow for some of you that might be
a little impossible to think of.Just indulegs me a little bit here Okay.
The problem we have here is thatwhile the government is trying to create
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and enforce laws that are for thegood of the people, well, let's
just sort of really, are alot of heroes ten to well flout the
law, sometimes hardcore. Some ofthese heroes, supposed heroes, have absolutely
no problem ignoring the law whenever ithappens to make them happy. If they
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feel they need to break the lawin order to get the bad guy,
nine times out of ten, they'regoing to break that law. The problem
with this, obviously, is thatif you're trying to bring the youth criminal
up on charges, and all ofthe evidence has been hampered with or otherwise
destroyed or rendered unused, otherwise unusable, then all of a sudden, the
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heroes of efforts to take somebody offthe streets permanently, all of a sudden,
they're going to go pretty much fornot This is obviously willing area where
the government's going to have a problem. The other problem is that some of
those vehicles are being used to illegally, some of the weapons are not exactly
by the local code, and Idon't really think of any superheroes that really
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follow THEOSHA guidelines, which is sortof weird when you think about it.
But the key here is that heroes, by their their nature are not always
going to be following the laws,and sometimes they're going to flagrantly break them
and not really care about the consequences. Obviously, if you're a government official,
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which is a problem, especially ifyou had a certain wing individual any
who keeps coming into your cases toget some of the best evidence and runs
off with it. Seriously, andthis is your hero that of course,
it's a make the police's job alot harder. So you know, obviously
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the first thing you're going to usefor your heroes are going to have some
sort of conflict with the government.It's just inevitable. Government's like roles,
heroes like breaking up. It's sortof like oil and water that way,
or more accurately, matchin gasoline insome cases do you look for. Government
has even gone to the extreme ofactually creating a special task force that who
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is stacistically set up to deal withless Yes, say they're going to put
it as enhanced individual law enforcement ofsome sort of another, when basically we
all know they're basically there just todeal with superhero issues. Seriously, you
know, the Punisher has these squadsdevoted soul will to himself. But and
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I really wish they showed this inmore comic books. I mean, straight
up, a group of regular people, civilians, task to the local police
that are there to take out thesuperheroic element world more superhuman because you know,
not all superhumans are nice. Butif AHD does have this task force,
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yeah, they're going to be naturallyopposed to the heroes. Again,
we serious tend to break laws,police tend to enforce them. That It's
pretty simple. This means you're goingto have a group of individuals who have
extremely high tech weaponry, high techarmor. I mean we're talking armor and
arms and armor. They can prettymuch take out a regular platoon of regular
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soldiers. It's not an entire regadno problem. They're going to have access
some of the best training, andworse than that, they're going to have
essentially a bad attitude when it comesto you're superhumans, perfectly legit. Some
of them have lost friends to thesuperhumans. Some of them have and we're
not just talking, you know,they were killed, they were completely taking
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off the force be because well accidentslike you know, destroying their entire lower
spine, so all of a suddenthat the person who was walking around normally
is now in a wheelchair. Somepeople are going to be in commas for
the rest of their lives. Sothe bad attitude when it comes to superhumans
is definitely understandable, and of coursethe technology they have access too and the
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attitudes they have aren't bad enough.These are also people that are very well
organized. We're talking people who takefull advantage of their communis to basically keep
track of where everybody else is,and you know there's going to be a
lot of just cracking down by signs. So in essence, these are people
who are very well organized, whohave the arms and armor to take down
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the superheroes and basically don't like themin the first place. Yeah, this
is definitely going to be a sourcewith some interesting drama, especially if you
decide you want to show what thecost the human lives of superhuman activities are,
which is not a bad thing todo every so often. Of course,
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you're also going to have more specialistgroups like say Damage Control and Marble,
where they deal with insurance in reconstructionof superhero damage. You know,
there was a fight downtown, Hey, damage control is on from rebuilding things
and checking everybody's insurance. Yes,this is a group that has actually caused
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Doom himself to that quake. Justa little bit, but just a little
bit. So when it comes downto it, your government agencies are going
to be a little They didn't conflictwith your superheroes. I don't care how
good they are, it's just theyare they're waiting for him to break the
law if they don't do it alreadyon a regular basis. And that conflict
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between the need of the government torule and superheroes to deal with the supervillains,
it's going to definitely be in there. And don't think that this applies
just to groups like the Avengers orthe Defenders or the Justice League. This
definitely applies to if you're doing afantasy setting and you have a group of
adventurers. I mean, straight up, there are actual classes that are designed
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specifically for stealings. If that doesn'tbreak, definitely, that's not the definition
of breaking the law. Something isseriously wrong there. And this applies to
just about everything. I mean,even if you're doing James Bond. I
mean, let's get real, JamesBond specifically has the license that allows him
to break certain rules and regulations,and in fact he even expect to do
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so if I am. But that'sa side point. The key here is
that any group in any genre canbasually run a foul of the local government.
It's really not that hard, andit's entirely possible that the local government
even has people are specifically set upto take down these individuals. So just
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something to consider. If you mighthave a little bit of fun, Like
you said, you want to sharethe costive actions of the heroes on regular
humanity, you now have a reallygreat way to do that. So,
and of course there's a problem thatwill always arise between any group that is
trying to actually set be fair andgood and any group that occasionally has to
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ignore that in order to basically getthe job done, which is sort of
an interesting predicament when you deal withsomebody like say Superman, and you realize
just how many rules he breaks ona regular basis. Heck, the fact
that he is essentially an illegal alienin and of itself sort of an interesting
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point. All right, let's fearaway from that and look over at your
various political activists. Like you said, there's going to be a lot of
times when your heroes are going tocome into conflict with regular people just because
of the way they do the job. Again, you have Batman who has
all these fossil field based vehicles,and he's not really coming into having problems
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with you know, ecological groups.It's straight up, this is some of
the times where I'm going to sidewith Poison Ivy. She has a point.
There's a lot of ridiculous issues whenit comes to Batman and the ecology.
He just really doesn't care, orat least he doesn't act like he
cares. I mean, even ifhe had all those electrical vehicles, still
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you're looking at the problem of producingthose batteries and others and other materials.
You're also, of course going tobe looking at a lot of victims rights
groups. I mean, straight up, some of these heroes are not nice.
They're just straight out They're trying toget the job done. They don't
care how it gets done, andthey're going to take the most expedient route
possible. If this means that theyhave to put a poor, a little
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agent in Becoma for the rest ofthe next twenty years, no problem.
If it means paralyzing them from thewaist down, no problem. Now imagine
all this is a from the victims'rights perspective. These are this is a
group of people that has absolutely noproblem essentially destroying lives left and right.
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From I know it sounds sort ofsilly, but this is a legitimate point
if you had in real life.I mean, I hate going political,
but look at the flact of thepolice departments. They're coming under fire.
For yes, this is something thatI regular police officer can potentially has to
worry about. Imagine what happens whenyou've got somebody who can go nuclear or
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can freeze everything within a two mileradius. Even if we start looking over
at the fantasy genre, you know, if two majors get into a spell
fight, besy a lot of fireand ice going all over the place.
Fireballs have a radius, as alot of players unfortunately find out. You
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know, you've got all these people, all these heroes that are causing a
lot of damage to the environment,either because a pollution or because of destroying
property, or because you're going afterpeople's lives just in order to make sure
that the bad guy gets caught.You know, there's got to be some
get back on that and of courselet's not forget that if we have people
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that have legitimate colleges to be goingafter the heroes, then we have the
extremist. I mean straight up,if you have people that have major problems
with homosexuals and the entire LGBT thing, not to mention women running around in
standhoney clid stuff on TV, thenwhat happens when you've got somebody coming out
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of the sky wearing pretty much nothing, you know you're going to have because
of the very nature of who theyare that is that the biggest hit in
the area. They're going to beunder a lot of scrutiny. Some of
the scrutiny is just because the fanworship, but let's get real. You've
got along people that are out totake out on the superheroes because the superheroes
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essentially go after they feel that superheroesare going after their belief systems. I
following Midnight, you know in reallife, with being a lot of flat
because they're at homosexuality. Obvious keyhere is I'm definitely a supporter, but
I'm just trying to point out thatif you've got way too many radical groups
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that would definitely be going after themon one level or another even something.
But he likes the Starfire who runsaround in pretty much a bikini. This
is a problem to some people.We won't talk about power Girl here,
but you know, you've got alot of heroes who, because they are
invulnerable and they have force fields andthey have this, that and the other
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thing, have absolutely no problem runningaround with as little clothing as possible.
Clothing to them doesn't make sense.Yeah, just basically means and at an
extense. I mean, straight up, if I'm a Starfire who happens to
have a degree of invulnerability, Iwould be running around in the bikini too,
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because otherwise I'd be paying how mucha month? How many fights does
she get into? And how youknow those clothes being torn almost every time.
It's not like say Superman, whohas a force field around him.
On the other hand, what's sowhat happens to is apes. You know,
the guy's going through capes like hundredsof yards of material every month.
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And I had a point when itcomes to capes, it and have nothing
to do with personal safety, butyou know, it's just and on top
of that, you've got a wildof the heroes who are running around and
basically Spandex showing off what they've got, and you're not going to And there's
no way you're going to convince methat a good percentage of those mail super
heroes aren't running around and no wonder, we're not even an apolitic support or
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they're span Dex. That's gotta createssome interesting issues in and of itself.
And yeah, I know this istaking it to an extreme, but the
point here is that if you havetroops that're going after the heroes for legitimate
reasons, you know, the victimsrights, the ecological issues, so on,
so forth, you're also going tohave those that are going after the
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heroes simply because they fill that thoseheroes are offensive to their personal beliefs.
And it's going to be interesting tosee when all those groups basically collide.
More importantly, it's going to beinteresting to see the pr nightmare of the
heroes have to face because they can'tgo out and you know, i'mlike Homelander.
They can't go out and basically meltan entire group of people. They
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have to actually deal with it likea regular politician, and some superheroes are
just not well equipped for this.Yeah, Wilverine, we're looking at you.
We're not talking Batman, who definitelyhas the PR squad. I don't
care what to Colling Poots say.He's got a social media thing going somewhere.
He has to. Of course,it's sort of would also amuse me
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to think of Batman addicted to Facebookjust to make sure he takes out the
fires. But you get the idea. You're going to have just regular political
groups that are going to be againstyour heroes for one reason or another.
And this presents an interesting challenge becausesome of them are legitimate, I mean
their concepts of legitimate. But thehero can't take care of them the same
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way he would the supervillain. Hecan't go in there and basically lay waste
to the entire group. It justwouldn't work. Just something to think about.
Now, let's take that to threeinteresting extremes franksters, intellectuals, and
well, secondary vigilantes. The secondaryvigilantes sort of make a certain degree of
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sense. You're going to have peoplethat are going to be offended by whatever
the heroes are doing or into selfprotection, and they feel they need to
take the heroes out because of this. They have the best armor they can
buy from the internet some of thebest weapons they can get, which we're
looking more at small rat specials.I mean, straight up, a lot
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of these people are going to havereally great machetes and the other weaponry.
But then you're going to have theseidiots that you know, are going out
there in the you know, withthat sword that has absolutely nothing but edges,
you know the one I'm talking about. It's bright blue neon. It
is a nightmare from every possible angle, and this is their favorite weapon.
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Seriously. But the key here isthat you have these people that are going
to be going after the heroes,and yeah, some of them are going
to be backed by richard people.Some of them are going to have actually
formidable arms in armor. Of course, the fun part is nine times out
of ten they're not very well organized, so they is sort of a plus
for the heroes. But at thesame time, like I said, you
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basically have a weird situation that you'vegot people that phil they have all legitimate
cause, even if visually the waythey're pursuing it isn't sort of look the
victims right problem. You know,you've got somebody who's cousin was putting the
coma buy a hero, you've gotanother one who is missing an arm in
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a leg because having to be inthe wrong area when a leisure blast went
off, or several leisure blasts wentoff, and so on so forth.
You know, you basically have allthese heroes basically creating a lot of damage.
So you're going to have groups theyare going to be opposing these characters
as much as possible. Some ofthem are going to be a legitimate some
I they're just pursuing it and possiblythe worst possible way. On the other
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hand, you will have those thatare just simply saying, hey, I'm
the biggest battestself in the universe andSuperman is trying to take my spot.
I need to do something about that. Not the brightest idea in the universe,
don't get me wrong, but youstill got somebody who's going to be
going after Batman or Superman just tobasically prove that they can. And that's
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somebody you need to basically think ofwhen it comes down to your character.
You know you're opposing force. Willthe wealth for lack of a better term,
will he's read now basically go afterthe superheroes, and how will they
fare. I know the obvious answeris not good, but you know,
it's still something to consider, andsometimes the hero is going to have to
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think about the ramifications of his actions. Like I said, most of the
Rednecks are not going to be gunningbecause of United Charity reasons, but enough
will then. Of course, likeI said, you've got the pranksters.
This is going to be one ofthose dreaded catchall territories. The basic ideas
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that you have people who will justsimply go out to make fun of the
heroes. I don't care if we'retalking stand up comedians, late night news
personalities, it's so on and soforth. You know, you basically are
going to have people who are goingto make fun of the heroes as much
as they possibly can. Adding tothe fun is that some of these guys
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are going to be fans the heroes, and we basically see this as a
teasing. On the other hand,you'll have some people that see heroes as
an absolute worst thing that ever happento humanity. I mean, let's get
real. We have people who whothink Grignola is the worst thing that ever
happened to humanity. Now try thatin a superhero world. And as much
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as he's saying, again, thisdoes apply to pretty much everybody. I
mean, you know, people knowabout James Bond, and he's got to
have a lot of parodies in thatworld. I mean it would be hard
not to. And we're talking,you know, mister Bean type situations.
It's just you're basically are going tohave a lot of heroes that are going
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to be made fun of just bythe nature of being in the spotlight.
And of course you wouldn't have somepeople who are trying to take them down
and some people just think it's funny, and you're going to have heroes that
are not going to take this well. I really again would not want to
see Wolverine as an improv night.That would just be that would be horrific,
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I think. And of course you'regoing to have your chess players.
These are intellectuals that have decided that, yes, those superheroes are whoever are
the people that I need to takedown in order to show that I am
the intellectual superior. Strangely enough,this is when you're actually going to see
more in fantasy worlds. You know, you when your mind is literally your
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the worst possible weapon you can comeup with. I mean, let's get
ill. Some of those high levelspells are pre sary, you know,
So you're going to have people thatare going to be playing chess just to
see what they can pull off,and yeah, they're going to be about
County Coup all the time. Unfortunately, sometimes this County coup is going to
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be a little bit more dangerous becauseagain, rather sure of magic and various
superpower so on, so forth,it's entirely possible that the only way that
the chess player can get an edgeon the hero is by taking it to
an extreme, and sometimes this meansthat the hero isn't pretty much a solid
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jeopardy. So that's sort of aninteresting concept though. I mean in comics
we're looking at people like say,you know, Calendar Man, something more
interesting people, and I mean evenSpider Man has a couple of people who
are just there to see what theycan pull off in terms of basically annoying
Superman. First sorry, in termsof annoying Spider Man. You get the
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idea, though, you're going tohave people that are going to try to
oppose the heroes just to show thatthey are the superior intellect. And sometimes
the only way they can really dothis is by killing off the hero.
Sort of sad, but it doessort of add an interesting layer to it.
But of course sometimes you will havethe intellectual who has set up something
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that looks like a nuclear warhead thatwhen it goes off, it is nothing
but confetti. That's sort of cooland is great for comedy purposes. So
using some types as possible as youpossibly can, Yeah, you're going to
be seeing a lot of possible humorvalue in the vigilantees, the franksters,
and the chess players when it comesdown to how they can be used both
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for a comedy drama and just straightout feeling the hero is a hard time
so you someone have a little bitof fun with them. Now, if
those are the people that purposely putthemselves in the way of the heroes,
you are going to make a point. I guess we've ever look at the
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street games just a little bit,because these are people that we're put in
that position of naturally opposing the heroes. The problem you've got here is that
you have the real to the we'rethe problem that well, the hero is
going to be a posing street gamesbecause he doesn't like crime. That's fine,
he's going to be seeing trying tofigure out ways to take out the
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street games, and nine times outTendac is going to involve violence. This
is a trope is oldest time.I mean literally, you start going all
the way back into say the Greekness, you start seeing that they were dealing
with teenage toughs back and then justas they were dealing with them now and
of course a little bit older,because let's get real, not all street
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games or fifteen to twenty year oldat lessons. The problem you have here,
though, is that you've got thesituation where the street games were put
into that position where they only seeone way out of their area, and
that's too basically do the crime.And that's not necessarily a good thing.
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You rarely see in the comics herois actually taking time out to deal with
street crime, at least in apositive manner. It's always you have a
couple of street game there used tobe as low level looks. You know,
they're us as obstacles or other problemsin order that the heroes have to
deal with in order to get tothe name bad guy. And in the
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line of see they don't really careabout the street games. To then they're
just people doing crimes, so theydeserve whatever they get. This is why
when you start doing your stories,we really want to have fun with this
concept. You need to figure outways to deal with this street level crime
that will actually are positive. Imean, I know it's a weird concept,
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but it'd be sort of interesting tosee a hero specifically go after street
crime from a more solid, moreprogressive stance. And this is sort of
why the street games are in theopposition the most heroes. You know,
if your only way out of yourpredicament is to raise funds and only you
(32:00):
can rease funds is by doing crime, and you've got somebody who keeps putting
themselves in the way, if youbasically attaining whatever it is you're trying to
attain, yeah, you're going tohave the heroes industry games are naturally going
to be at odds. But whatwould happen if, say Batman said just
pouring a little bit of money intoit actually went full for on it.
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What would happen if you had ahero who was specifically trying to eliminate street
crime and by doing you know,by figuring out ways to get people off
the streets, and actually improve theirlives. You know, you just don't
feel a lot of heroes doing that. You see way too many of them
who think the only way youll streetcrime is to basically pummel it and until
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it's unconscious or dead. And I'mnot sure just how satisfactory that is anymore.
So that's another conflict you need tokeep in minding your stories, is
you have these people that are doingthe best that they possibly can. Unfortunately,
in order to do it, theyneed to break the laws and to
(33:07):
do it, and then all ofa sudden you have the heroes coming in
and any insult injury. So yeah, that's just another another opposing force the
heroes are gonna have to deal withan into the fund of course, are
these, shall we say, thelessons favored If you're looking at say the
(33:27):
accidents being the mutants they got allthe good stuff. What about the mutants
that didn't get all the good stuff? They got a lot of the bad
stuff. They say, Beak,You know, he looks like a bird,
but he doesn't get need the flight. He has a hall of bones,
but no additional healing abilities. He'syou know, actually weaker than regular
people because of affected the mutation,and this is not something you have just
(33:54):
in the superhero genre. You havesome of the human relates and fantasy realms
that basically are being shown to beless than bright but all physical or just
too small to really do anything with, like coballs. And in the science
(34:14):
ficiing realm you have radiation based mutants, people who are a little bit too
close to radiation and suffered for it. The problem here is that you're going
to have these people that are goingto be in pretty much the same situation
in the street games. They havepretty much a screwed up situation. They
(34:35):
have no idea how to get outof it, and nine times out of
ten, the one avenue they aregiven it is the less than legal route.
I mean, a lot of thesemutants tend to be physically well impressive.
You know, they've pretty hard todamage, They've got a lot of
natural strength. Some of them havemore interesting abilities. Heck, even with
(34:57):
a cobalt, you've got somebody youcan sneak around pretty much everywhere, and
so, you know, committing crimesin order to make money all of a
sudden, it makes a lot ofsense. Heck, some of these people
are created specifically for the sake ofcreating committing crime. They may not realize
it and it just so happens.But you know, then you've got worse
(35:22):
than that. You've got situations wherethese people were being naturally you know,
collateral damage, somebody decided to throwa bomb in an area, and all
of a sudden, they've got allthese commutations they need to worry about.
And like I said, not allthese muntations are going to be good.
Some of these mutations are going tobe you know, things to shorten their
(35:45):
lives. They're going to make themblind death, They're going to have problems
getting around. They're probably going toalso being incredible pain all the time.
And the only way out of theirsituation is to either visually go out in
the plaze of glory or to figureout a way to get enough money to
(36:05):
get themselves healed. And it's basicallynot a really good situation. Vinian comes
to superheroes and or the fantasy heroesor these you know sci fi wanderers and
decides that, hey, you looka little bit different. You must be
evil, and I'm going to visuallyyou go through and destroy you real nice
(36:30):
heroes. So just I know,this is a weird way of looking at
sometimes, but throughout this you needto sort of keep in mind of the
concept here is these are regular peoplethat are having to deal with the heroes
in a slightly different way than everybodyelse. Is we're not talking people that
(36:50):
are actual criminals. That is,they didn't decide I'm going to go on
to a life of crime and that'smy path to glory, just as much
as these heroes decided to take theirpath to glory, which happened to be
fighting crime. Of course, aswe've start pointed out, sometimes the heroes
are crimmitting crimes left and right.We're not talking like the big bad ones
(37:12):
like murder or sexual assault. We'retalking just ridiculous numbers of unpaid parking finds.
Seriously, Batman work on that.But the general, just the opposing
forces concept is that you need tolook at how the heroes affect the lives
of those around them, and they'renot always in positive ways. In fact,
(37:35):
usually that's negative. I mean,look how many cities and superhero comics
have you know, crime fighter insuranceor something equivalent. It's just straight up
there got to be the one placewhere force of God applies literally because you
know that some of these gods arecoming down just the destroy things. So
(37:58):
when you start looking at your storyand trying to be a little bit more
life into it, these are theareas you need to look at. These
are areas that show that the heroesaren't necessarily seen as a positive light.
There are people that oppose them evenbecause they feel that the heroes need to
(38:20):
be opposed, going all the wayback to the vigilante groups and the frankier
types. Sometimes you can chess playersor you've got to have no choice but
to oppose the heroes. Again,street gring things and those aren't haven't exactly
been favored by mutations or other scientificdevelopments. Well, just something you can
(38:46):
consider and if you like what youhave here, Like you said, point
out that we are restarting the commentaryusing the interviews podcasts, I hope you
enjoy it. We do have aPatreon at petreon dot com, Slash two
Sparrows, and of course we havesome merch over at Zazzle. I hope
(39:07):
you've enjoyed this podcast. It's goodto be back. Have a good day.
I'm joking. Host the web commentsyou're using interviews today, we're all about
the opposed to sit back, relax, and let the geek fast begin.
In most literary works, I don'tcare if we're talking comics, novels,
even movies and television, it's prettyeasy to figure out who the bad guys
are, you know, straight up. Sometimes it's because they wear black.
(00:20):
Sometimes it's because they do all thebad things. Sometimes it's just because they
literally when the hero throws garbage intothe recycling bin. The key here,
though, is that the villains arepretty obvious. You know, you've got
to be bad evil guy. You'vegot the guys henchman who pretty much view
all the stuff or I'm there,this literal right hand man. They do
(00:42):
all the assassinations, they view allthe leading of the troops, they do
all the mechanics stuff, they viewall the evil research. Then of course
you've got the looks, who arepretty much just the ranking file and the
agents, you know, the onesthat the heroes tend to go through really
easily. But it seems to bepretty much everywhere. This is why to
be the poor stormtrooper. But firstoff, I need to a step back
(01:07):
I'm going to be making fun ofBatman a lot in this podcast. This
is not because of a disrespect towardsBatman. I love the guy. I
actually do to him to model likecharacters after him, there's a definite respect.
However, Well, once you understandwhat this podcast is value, it's
basically he's the easiest one to bringup as an example, and so yeah,
(01:30):
he I can make fun of hima lot this podcast. I make
no apologies, just sit back andenjoy it. So what's that basically mean.
It means that there's a lot ofcharacters that are going to be opposing
the heroes. And it's not becausethey're evil or mean usually or for that
(01:51):
matter, because they're just simply lazy. It's just they're doing their jobs and
the heroes, for one reason oranother, interfere with doing that job.
I mean, straight up, lookat Batman versus meter maids everywhere. If
the guy cannot park, if theguy cannot you know, guy has a
lot of traffic violations. I haveno doubt if he has no problem going
(02:15):
to count with a broken headlight ninetimes out of him, he doesn't know
about until he gets back to thebat gave the key here is that Batman
and screened, you have the policescrewing up against him just because of who
he is. You know, youcan't have via major vigilante and not have
(02:36):
the police against you. All thatunlicensed tech, all that unregistered weaponry,
so on and so forth. Batmanis a person who if basically the local
government decided to go after him justin terms of tickets alone, yeah,
that would be a major income source. But then you've had other issues.
(02:58):
You know, basically had a characterwho dresses up as a bat which is
in most areas a protected species.You know, some of the ecological people
are going to be hating him forthat. Then of course he's got a
boat, he's got a plane,he's got a car. He usually has
several of them, and we won'tget into all the smaller vehicles, all
(03:19):
of which are well not electrical vehicles. They all use bossil fuels. That's
a lot of stuff viewing into theatmosphere. So you know, the ecological
groups are after him that if nothingelse. And when it comes down to
it, you just have people thatare just simply going to be making fun
of Batman. You know, thecomedians, you're gonna have some people to
(03:40):
trying to actually get one up onhim, and because he's you know,
Batman easy at Tony of the skilledcharacter, because that you know, there's
a lot of disillineous challenges out there. And then of course there's times when
Batman pretty much goes into a turfor not really trying to just trying to
(04:01):
break it up without actually understanding whatthe situation is. At that point,
I hate seeing the games are justsimply doing what the games do, and
then all of a sudden you havethis guy and this big rich guy in
a doubt that coming in and tryingto break things up. But you get
the idea. The key here isthat there's a lot of smaller groups that
are perfectly legitimate in doing what theynormally do, and they're going to be
(04:27):
opposing heroes, not because they hatethe heroics or anything like that. It's
just they need to do what theyneed to do in the heroes or basically
being idiots. Because of this,you're going to have a lot of regular
people opposing them, and that's notnecessarily a bad thing. Sometimes you need
those small people to show basically howthe real world works in your world.
(04:51):
Sometimes you need those smaller people toflush things out just a little bit.
Sometimes you can even be used fordramatic purposes. You know, you have
a parents group that doesn't like thefact that your vigilane is going around maiming
teenagers, and let's get real,a lot of vigilantie to do exactly that,
(05:15):
because that you see a lot ofyoung men ended up in wheelchairs.
It just simply shouldn't have if thevigilante have been a little bit more careful.
And it's pretty easy to see alot of parents groups going after vigilante
shore exactly that. Yeah, Iknow this is the weird stuff that some
of those writers think about late atnight, But at the same time,
(05:36):
it's little things that help read alittle bit of reality into our stories,
and that's not necessarily a bad thing. So we're going to be exploring a
lot of these opposing forces. Yeah, I know I'm going to to miss
over a couple of them here andthere, But at the same time,
I think I'm going to get enoughof them that everybody's going to sort of
(05:57):
like it. So let's have somefun, shall we. Obviously, the
first place we need to stop ata is government. Now, for a
lot of writers. This obviously makesa lot of sense, because well,
they don't like government, that's fine. I really don't care about dark and
gritty virgins of government here, becausewell, let's get real, that kind
(06:17):
of government is usually the villain andof themselves, especially we having to be
dealing with deep, dark, dystopiatype situations where the government has become just
a little bit on the fascist side. And by a little bit, I
mean nineteen eighty four had nothing onthem. You know, we're talking basically
(06:38):
hunger games on steroid type situations orcyberfunct stuff. That's fine. You want
to have a government where it's easilycorruptible and all you have to do to
get something done is bribe the rightperson, that's fine. However, for
our purpose tonight, that's not thekind of government I'm looking at it.
I'm looking at the government that's actuallytrying to basically make laws to make life
(07:01):
a lot easier for as citizens.In other words, there actually are trying
to actually well govern the people anddo a good job at it, good
their job at it. And Iknow for some of you that might be
a little impossible to think of.Just indulegs me a little bit here Okay.
The problem we have here is thatwhile the government is trying to create
(07:23):
and enforce laws that are for thegood of the people, well, let's
just sort of really, are alot of heroes ten to well flout the
law, sometimes hardcore. Some ofthese heroes, supposed heroes, have absolutely
no problem ignoring the law whenever ithappens to make them happy. If they
(07:45):
feel they need to break the lawin order to get the bad guy,
nine times out of ten, they'regoing to break that law. The problem
with this, obviously, is thatif you're trying to bring the youth criminal
up on charges, and all ofthe evidence has been hampered with or otherwise
destroyed or rendered unused, otherwise unusable, then all of a sudden, the
(08:11):
heroes of efforts to take somebody offthe streets permanently, all of a sudden,
they're going to go pretty much fornot This is obviously willing area where
the government's going to have a problem. The other problem is that some of
those vehicles are being used to illegally, some of the weapons are not exactly
by the local code, and Idon't really think of any superheroes that really
(08:37):
follow THEOSHA guidelines, which is sortof weird when you think about it.
But the key here is that heroes, by their their nature are not always
going to be following the laws,and sometimes they're going to flagrantly break them
and not really care about the consequences. Obviously, if you're a government official,
(09:00):
which is a problem, especially ifyou had a certain wing individual any
who keeps coming into your cases toget some of the best evidence and runs
off with it. Seriously, andthis is your hero that of course,
it's a make the police's job alot harder. So you know, obviously
(09:22):
the first thing you're going to usefor your heroes are going to have some
sort of conflict with the government.It's just inevitable. Government's like roles,
heroes like breaking up. It's sortof like oil and water that way,
or more accurately, matchin gasoline insome cases do you look for. Government
has even gone to the extreme ofactually creating a special task force that who
(09:46):
is stacistically set up to deal withless Yes, say they're going to put
it as enhanced individual law enforcement ofsome sort of another, when basically we
all know they're basically there just todeal with superhero issues. Seriously, you
know, the Punisher has these squadsdevoted soul will to himself. But and
(10:09):
I really wish they showed this inmore comic books. I mean, straight
up, a group of regular people, civilians, task to the local police
that are there to take out thesuperheroic element world more superhuman because you know,
not all superhumans are nice. Butif AHD does have this task force,
(10:30):
yeah, they're going to be naturallyopposed to the heroes. Again,
we serious tend to break laws,police tend to enforce them. That It's
pretty simple. This means you're goingto have a group of individuals who have
extremely high tech weaponry, high techarmor. I mean we're talking armor and
arms and armor. They can prettymuch take out a regular platoon of regular
(10:54):
soldiers. It's not an entire regadno problem. They're going to have access
some of the best training, andworse than that, they're going to have
essentially a bad attitude when it comesto you're superhumans, perfectly legit. Some
of them have lost friends to thesuperhumans. Some of them have and we're
not just talking, you know,they were killed, they were completely taking
(11:18):
off the force be because well accidentslike you know, destroying their entire lower
spine, so all of a suddenthat the person who was walking around normally
is now in a wheelchair. Somepeople are going to be in commas for
the rest of their lives. Sothe bad attitude when it comes to superhumans
is definitely understandable, and of coursethe technology they have access too and the
(11:43):
attitudes they have aren't bad enough.These are also people that are very well
organized. We're talking people who takefull advantage of their communis to basically keep
track of where everybody else is,and you know there's going to be a
lot of just cracking down by signs. So in essence, these are people
who are very well organized, whohave the arms and armor to take down
(12:07):
the superheroes and basically don't like themin the first place. Yeah, this
is definitely going to be a sourcewith some interesting drama, especially if you
decide you want to show what thecost the human lives of superhuman activities are,
which is not a bad thing todo every so often. Of course,
(12:28):
you're also going to have more specialistgroups like say Damage Control and Marble,
where they deal with insurance in reconstructionof superhero damage. You know,
there was a fight downtown, Hey, damage control is on from rebuilding things
and checking everybody's insurance. Yes,this is a group that has actually caused
(12:48):
Doom himself to that quake. Justa little bit, but just a little
bit. So when it comes downto it, your government agencies are going
to be a little They didn't conflictwith your superheroes. I don't care how
good they are, it's just theyare they're waiting for him to break the
law if they don't do it alreadyon a regular basis. And that conflict
(13:11):
between the need of the government torule and superheroes to deal with the supervillains,
it's going to definitely be in there. And don't think that this applies
just to groups like the Avengers orthe Defenders or the Justice League. This
definitely applies to if you're doing afantasy setting and you have a group of
adventurers. I mean, straight up, there are actual classes that are designed
(13:37):
specifically for stealings. If that doesn'tbreak, definitely, that's not the definition
of breaking the law. Something isseriously wrong there. And this applies to
just about everything. I mean,even if you're doing James Bond. I
mean, let's get real, JamesBond specifically has the license that allows him
to break certain rules and regulations,and in fact he even expect to do
(14:00):
so if I am. But that'sa side point. The key here is
that any group in any genre canbasually run a foul of the local government.
It's really not that hard, andit's entirely possible that the local government
even has people are specifically set upto take down these individuals. So just
(14:24):
something to consider. If you mighthave a little bit of fun, Like
you said, you want to sharethe costive actions of the heroes on regular
humanity, you now have a reallygreat way to do that. So,
and of course there's a problem thatwill always arise between any group that is
trying to actually set be fair andgood and any group that occasionally has to
(14:46):
ignore that in order to basically getthe job done, which is sort of
an interesting predicament when you deal withsomebody like say Superman, and you realize
just how many rules he breaks ona regular basis. Heck, the fact
that he is essentially an illegal alienin and of itself sort of an interesting
(15:07):
point. All right, let's fearaway from that and look over at your
various political activists. Like you said, there's going to be a lot of
times when your heroes are going tocome into conflict with regular people just because
of the way they do the job. Again, you have Batman who has
all these fossil field based vehicles,and he's not really coming into having problems
(15:31):
with you know, ecological groups.It's straight up, this is some of
the times where I'm going to sidewith Poison Ivy. She has a point.
There's a lot of ridiculous issues whenit comes to Batman and the ecology.
He just really doesn't care, orat least he doesn't act like he
cares. I mean, even ifhe had all those electrical vehicles, still
(15:56):
you're looking at the problem of producingthose batteries and others and other materials.
You're also, of course going tobe looking at a lot of victims rights
groups. I mean, straight up, some of these heroes are not nice.
They're just straight out They're trying toget the job done. They don't
care how it gets done, andthey're going to take the most expedient route
possible. If this means that theyhave to put a poor, a little
(16:21):
agent in Becoma for the rest ofthe next twenty years, no problem.
If it means paralyzing them from thewaist down, no problem. Now imagine
all this is a from the victims'rights perspective. These are this is a
group of people that has absolutely noproblem essentially destroying lives left and right.
(16:44):
From I know it sounds sort ofsilly, but this is a legitimate point
if you had in real life.I mean, I hate going political,
but look at the flact of thepolice departments. They're coming under fire.
For yes, this is something thatI regular police officer can potentially has to
worry about. Imagine what happens whenyou've got somebody who can go nuclear or
(17:10):
can freeze everything within a two mileradius. Even if we start looking over
at the fantasy genre, you know, if two majors get into a spell
fight, besy a lot of fireand ice going all over the place.
Fireballs have a radius, as alot of players unfortunately find out. You
(17:30):
know, you've got all these people, all these heroes that are causing a
lot of damage to the environment,either because a pollution or because of destroying
property, or because you're going afterpeople's lives just in order to make sure
that the bad guy gets caught.You know, there's got to be some
get back on that and of courselet's not forget that if we have people
(17:53):
that have legitimate colleges to be goingafter the heroes, then we have the
extremist. I mean straight up,if you have people that have major problems
with homosexuals and the entire LGBT thing, not to mention women running around in
standhoney clid stuff on TV, thenwhat happens when you've got somebody coming out
(18:15):
of the sky wearing pretty much nothing, you know you're going to have because
of the very nature of who theyare that is that the biggest hit in
the area. They're going to beunder a lot of scrutiny. Some of
the scrutiny is just because the fanworship, but let's get real. You've
got along people that are out totake out on the superheroes because the superheroes
(18:38):
essentially go after they feel that superheroesare going after their belief systems. I
following Midnight, you know in reallife, with being a lot of flat
because they're at homosexuality. Obvious keyhere is I'm definitely a supporter, but
I'm just trying to point out thatif you've got way too many radical groups
(19:00):
that would definitely be going after themon one level or another even something.
But he likes the Starfire who runsaround in pretty much a bikini. This
is a problem to some people.We won't talk about power Girl here,
but you know, you've got alot of heroes who, because they are
invulnerable and they have force fields andthey have this, that and the other
(19:22):
thing, have absolutely no problem runningaround with as little clothing as possible.
Clothing to them doesn't make sense.Yeah, just basically means and at an
extense. I mean, straight up, if I'm a Starfire who happens to
have a degree of invulnerability, Iwould be running around in the bikini too,
(19:42):
because otherwise I'd be paying how mucha month? How many fights does
she get into? And how youknow those clothes being torn almost every time.
It's not like say Superman, whohas a force field around him.
On the other hand, what's sowhat happens to is apes. You know,
the guy's going through capes like hundredsof yards of material every month.
(20:07):
And I had a point when itcomes to capes, it and have nothing
to do with personal safety, butyou know, it's just and on top
of that, you've got a wildof the heroes who are running around and
basically Spandex showing off what they've got, and you're not going to And there's
no way you're going to convince methat a good percentage of those mail super
heroes aren't running around and no wonder, we're not even an apolitic support or
(20:32):
they're span Dex. That's gotta createssome interesting issues in and of itself.
And yeah, I know this istaking it to an extreme, but the
point here is that if you havetroops that're going after the heroes for legitimate
reasons, you know, the victimsrights, the ecological issues, so on,
so forth, you're also going tohave those that are going after the
(20:52):
heroes simply because they fill that thoseheroes are offensive to their personal beliefs.
And it's going to be interesting tosee when all those groups basically collide.
More importantly, it's going to beinteresting to see the pr nightmare of the
heroes have to face because they can'tgo out and you know, i'mlike Homelander.
They can't go out and basically meltan entire group of people. They
(21:18):
have to actually deal with it likea regular politician, and some superheroes are
just not well equipped for this.Yeah, Wilverine, we're looking at you.
We're not talking Batman, who definitelyhas the PR squad. I don't
care what to Colling Poots say.He's got a social media thing going somewhere.
He has to. Of course,it's sort of would also amuse me
(21:41):
to think of Batman addicted to Facebookjust to make sure he takes out the
fires. But you get the idea. You're going to have just regular political
groups that are going to be againstyour heroes for one reason or another.
And this presents an interesting challenge becausesome of them are legitimate, I mean
their concepts of legitimate. But thehero can't take care of them the same
(22:06):
way he would the supervillain. Hecan't go in there and basically lay waste
to the entire group. It justwouldn't work. Just something to think about.
Now, let's take that to threeinteresting extremes franksters, intellectuals, and
well, secondary vigilantes. The secondaryvigilantes sort of make a certain degree of
(22:29):
sense. You're going to have peoplethat are going to be offended by whatever
the heroes are doing or into selfprotection, and they feel they need to
take the heroes out because of this. They have the best armor they can
buy from the internet some of thebest weapons they can get, which we're
looking more at small rat specials.I mean, straight up, a lot
(22:52):
of these people are going to havereally great machetes and the other weaponry.
But then you're going to have theseidiots that you know, are going out
there in the you know, withthat sword that has absolutely nothing but edges,
you know the one I'm talking about. It's bright blue neon. It
is a nightmare from every possible angle, and this is their favorite weapon.
(23:15):
Seriously. But the key here isthat you have these people that are going
to be going after the heroes,and yeah, some of them are going
to be backed by richard people.Some of them are going to have actually
formidable arms in armor. Of course, the fun part is nine times out
of ten they're not very well organized, so they is sort of a plus
for the heroes. But at thesame time, like I said, you
(23:37):
basically have a weird situation that you'vegot people that phil they have all legitimate
cause, even if visually the waythey're pursuing it isn't sort of look the
victims right problem. You know,you've got somebody who's cousin was putting the
coma buy a hero, you've gotanother one who is missing an arm in
(23:59):
a leg because having to be inthe wrong area when a leisure blast went
off, or several leisure blasts wentoff, and so on so forth.
You know, you basically have allthese heroes basically creating a lot of damage.
So you're going to have groups theyare going to be opposing these characters
as much as possible. Some ofthem are going to be a legitimate some
I they're just pursuing it and possiblythe worst possible way. On the other
(24:23):
hand, you will have those thatare just simply saying, hey, I'm
the biggest battestself in the universe andSuperman is trying to take my spot.
I need to do something about that. Not the brightest idea in the universe,
don't get me wrong, but youstill got somebody who's going to be
going after Batman or Superman just tobasically prove that they can. And that's
(24:49):
somebody you need to basically think ofwhen it comes down to your character.
You know you're opposing force. Willthe wealth for lack of a better term,
will he's read now basically go afterthe superheroes, and how will they
fare. I know the obvious answeris not good, but you know,
it's still something to consider, andsometimes the hero is going to have to
(25:12):
think about the ramifications of his actions. Like I said, most of the
Rednecks are not going to be gunningbecause of United Charity reasons, but enough
will then. Of course, likeI said, you've got the pranksters.
This is going to be one ofthose dreaded catchall territories. The basic ideas
(25:34):
that you have people who will justsimply go out to make fun of the
heroes. I don't care if we'retalking stand up comedians, late night news
personalities, it's so on and soforth. You know, you basically are
going to have people who are goingto make fun of the heroes as much
as they possibly can. Adding tothe fun is that some of these guys
(25:56):
are going to be fans the heroes, and we basically see this as a
teasing. On the other hand,you'll have some people that see heroes as
an absolute worst thing that ever happento humanity. I mean, let's get
real. We have people who whothink Grignola is the worst thing that ever
happened to humanity. Now try thatin a superhero world. And as much
(26:23):
as he's saying, again, thisdoes apply to pretty much everybody. I
mean, you know, people knowabout James Bond, and he's got to
have a lot of parodies in thatworld. I mean it would be hard
not to. And we're talking,you know, mister Bean type situations.
It's just you're basically are going tohave a lot of heroes that are going
(26:48):
to be made fun of just bythe nature of being in the spotlight.
And of course you wouldn't have somepeople who are trying to take them down
and some people just think it's funny, and you're going to have heroes that
are not going to take this well. I really again would not want to
see Wolverine as an improv night.That would just be that would be horrific,
(27:11):
I think. And of course you'regoing to have your chess players.
These are intellectuals that have decided that, yes, those superheroes are whoever are
the people that I need to takedown in order to show that I am
the intellectual superior. Strangely enough,this is when you're actually going to see
more in fantasy worlds. You know, you when your mind is literally your
(27:36):
the worst possible weapon you can comeup with. I mean, let's get
ill. Some of those high levelspells are pre sary, you know,
So you're going to have people thatare going to be playing chess just to
see what they can pull off,and yeah, they're going to be about
County Coup all the time. Unfortunately, sometimes this County coup is going to
(27:56):
be a little bit more dangerous becauseagain, rather sure of magic and various
superpower so on, so forth,it's entirely possible that the only way that
the chess player can get an edgeon the hero is by taking it to
an extreme, and sometimes this meansthat the hero isn't pretty much a solid
(28:17):
jeopardy. So that's sort of aninteresting concept though. I mean in comics
we're looking at people like say,you know, Calendar Man, something more
interesting people, and I mean evenSpider Man has a couple of people who
are just there to see what theycan pull off in terms of basically annoying
Superman. First sorry, in termsof annoying Spider Man. You get the
(28:41):
idea, though, you're going tohave people that are going to try to
oppose the heroes just to show thatthey are the superior intellect. And sometimes
the only way they can really dothis is by killing off the hero.
Sort of sad, but it doessort of add an interesting layer to it.
But of course sometimes you will havethe intellectual who has set up something
(29:03):
that looks like a nuclear warhead thatwhen it goes off, it is nothing
but confetti. That's sort of cooland is great for comedy purposes. So
using some types as possible as youpossibly can, Yeah, you're going to
be seeing a lot of possible humorvalue in the vigilantees, the franksters,
and the chess players when it comesdown to how they can be used both
(29:27):
for a comedy drama and just straightout feeling the hero is a hard time
so you someone have a little bitof fun with them. Now, if
those are the people that purposely putthemselves in the way of the heroes,
you are going to make a point. I guess we've ever look at the
(29:47):
street games just a little bit,because these are people that we're put in
that position of naturally opposing the heroes. The problem you've got here is that
you have the real to the we'rethe problem that well, the hero is
going to be a posing street gamesbecause he doesn't like crime. That's fine,
he's going to be seeing trying tofigure out ways to take out the
(30:10):
street games, and nine times outTendac is going to involve violence. This
is a trope is oldest time.I mean literally, you start going all
the way back into say the Greekness, you start seeing that they were dealing
with teenage toughs back and then justas they were dealing with them now and
of course a little bit older,because let's get real, not all street
(30:33):
games or fifteen to twenty year oldat lessons. The problem you have here,
though, is that you've got thesituation where the street games were put
into that position where they only seeone way out of their area, and
that's too basically do the crime.And that's not necessarily a good thing.
(30:55):
You rarely see in the comics herois actually taking time out to deal with
street crime, at least in apositive manner. It's always you have a
couple of street game there used tobe as low level looks. You know,
they're us as obstacles or other problemsin order that the heroes have to
deal with in order to get tothe name bad guy. And in the
(31:15):
line of see they don't really careabout the street games. To then they're
just people doing crimes, so theydeserve whatever they get. This is why
when you start doing your stories,we really want to have fun with this
concept. You need to figure outways to deal with this street level crime
that will actually are positive. Imean, I know it's a weird concept,
(31:37):
but it'd be sort of interesting tosee a hero specifically go after street
crime from a more solid, moreprogressive stance. And this is sort of
why the street games are in theopposition the most heroes. You know,
if your only way out of yourpredicament is to raise funds and only you
(32:00):
can rease funds is by doing crime, and you've got somebody who keeps putting
themselves in the way, if youbasically attaining whatever it is you're trying to
attain, yeah, you're going tohave the heroes industry games are naturally going
to be at odds. But whatwould happen if, say Batman said just
pouring a little bit of money intoit actually went full for on it.
(32:22):
What would happen if you had ahero who was specifically trying to eliminate street
crime and by doing you know,by figuring out ways to get people off
the streets, and actually improve theirlives. You know, you just don't
feel a lot of heroes doing that. You see way too many of them
who think the only way youll streetcrime is to basically pummel it and until
(32:45):
it's unconscious or dead. And I'mnot sure just how satisfactory that is anymore.
So that's another conflict you need tokeep in minding your stories, is
you have these people that are doingthe best that they possibly can. Unfortunately,
in order to do it, theyneed to break the laws and to
(33:07):
do it, and then all ofa sudden you have the heroes coming in
and any insult injury. So yeah, that's just another another opposing force the
heroes are gonna have to deal withan into the fund of course, are
these, shall we say, thelessons favored If you're looking at say the
(33:27):
accidents being the mutants they got allthe good stuff. What about the mutants
that didn't get all the good stuff? They got a lot of the bad
stuff. They say, Beak,You know, he looks like a bird,
but he doesn't get need the flight. He has a hall of bones,
but no additional healing abilities. He'syou know, actually weaker than regular
people because of affected the mutation,and this is not something you have just
(33:54):
in the superhero genre. You havesome of the human relates and fantasy realms
that basically are being shown to beless than bright but all physical or just
too small to really do anything with, like coballs. And in the science
(34:14):
ficiing realm you have radiation based mutants, people who are a little bit too
close to radiation and suffered for it. The problem here is that you're going
to have these people that are goingto be in pretty much the same situation
in the street games. They havepretty much a screwed up situation. They
(34:35):
have no idea how to get outof it, and nine times out of
ten, the one avenue they aregiven it is the less than legal route.
I mean, a lot of thesemutants tend to be physically well impressive.
You know, they've pretty hard todamage, They've got a lot of
natural strength. Some of them havemore interesting abilities. Heck, even with
(34:57):
a cobalt, you've got somebody youcan sneak around pretty much everywhere, and
so, you know, committing crimesin order to make money all of a
sudden, it makes a lot ofsense. Heck, some of these people
are created specifically for the sake ofcreating committing crime. They may not realize
it and it just so happens.But you know, then you've got worse
(35:22):
than that. You've got situations wherethese people were being naturally you know,
collateral damage, somebody decided to throwa bomb in an area, and all
of a sudden, they've got allthese commutations they need to worry about.
And like I said, not allthese muntations are going to be good.
Some of these mutations are going tobe you know, things to shorten their
(35:45):
lives. They're going to make themblind death, They're going to have problems
getting around. They're probably going toalso being incredible pain all the time.
And the only way out of theirsituation is to either visually go out in
the plaze of glory or to figureout a way to get enough money to
(36:05):
get themselves healed. And it's basicallynot a really good situation. Vinian comes
to superheroes and or the fantasy heroesor these you know sci fi wanderers and
decides that, hey, you looka little bit different. You must be
evil, and I'm going to visuallyyou go through and destroy you real nice
(36:30):
heroes. So just I know,this is a weird way of looking at
sometimes, but throughout this you needto sort of keep in mind of the
concept here is these are regular peoplethat are having to deal with the heroes
in a slightly different way than everybodyelse. Is we're not talking people that
(36:50):
are actual criminals. That is,they didn't decide I'm going to go on
to a life of crime and that'smy path to glory, just as much
as these heroes decided to take theirpath to glory, which happened to be
fighting crime. Of course, aswe've start pointed out, sometimes the heroes
are crimmitting crimes left and right.We're not talking like the big bad ones
(37:12):
like murder or sexual assault. We'retalking just ridiculous numbers of unpaid parking finds.
Seriously, Batman work on that.But the general, just the opposing
forces concept is that you need tolook at how the heroes affect the lives
of those around them, and they'renot always in positive ways. In fact,
(37:35):
usually that's negative. I mean,look how many cities and superhero comics
have you know, crime fighter insuranceor something equivalent. It's just straight up
there got to be the one placewhere force of God applies literally because you
know that some of these gods arecoming down just the destroy things. So
(37:58):
when you start looking at your storyand trying to be a little bit more
life into it, these are theareas you need to look at. These
are areas that show that the heroesaren't necessarily seen as a positive light.
There are people that oppose them evenbecause they feel that the heroes need to
(38:20):
be opposed, going all the wayback to the vigilante groups and the frankier
types. Sometimes you can chess playersor you've got to have no choice but
to oppose the heroes. Again,street gring things and those aren't haven't exactly
been favored by mutations or other scientificdevelopments. Well, just something you can
(38:46):
consider and if you like what youhave here, Like you said, point
out that we are restarting the commentaryusing the interviews podcasts, I hope you
enjoy it. We do have aPatreon at petreon dot com, Slash two
Sparrows, and of course we havesome merch over at Zazzle. I hope
(39:07):
you've enjoyed this podcast. It's goodto be back. Have a good day.
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