Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Posted: **Thu Nov 16, 2006 1:46 pm**

Putting it like that, it's almost kind of immoral that he would even think of running off to a fortress of solitude to escape his problems. I mean, while he's away, tons of people are probably being splatted right now!

To answer your "who do you help" question, here is how I would handle it.

1. Save the kid. I value a child's life over an adult's any day.

2. Stop the beating. This is an intentional criminal act, and the thing about those is that they're not random, they're planned, and as long as the criminal is around it can happen again.

3. The old man in front of the bus--Superman might have time to accomplish this if he acts fast enough, but if he doesn't, well, accidents happen.

4. The woman in the shower--lowest priority because chances are, even if Superman went for her immediately, she would probably already be hurt or dead by the time he got there. And again, accidents happen. You can stamp out crime, but you can't stamp out accidents.

Posted: **Thu Nov 16, 2006 1:53 pm**

JamesEightBitStar wrote:Putting it like that, it's almost kind of immoral that he would even think of running off to a fortress of solitude to escape his problems.

Well, it has been firmly established that Superman is a dick

Posted: **Thu Nov 16, 2006 1:59 pm**

TheRedPriest wrote:A bit off topic, but one of the best musings about superheros I've heard is Bill's monologue near the end of Kill Bill, Vol 2.

I always hated that spiel because 1: Bill was a sociopath. His concept of what makes superheroes super is going to be pretty well f--ked up. 2: Superman's "disguise" had nothing to do with Superman secretly hating the little guy or thiking all humans were puny and weak and nebbish. Superman's disguise (as was his name) was a metaphor - albeit an unsubtle one - just like his behavior. I think it's best summarized by Jor-El's line from the '78 movie "They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be."

Superman represented the latent greatness, the ability to do acts of good, acts of decency, acts of kindness, acts of heroism, that we all have in us. Within us, within the everyman, beneath what we might seem to be.

Bill's assement that Supes' disguise was all about "I HATE THE MUNDANES LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!111oneone" was the product of a diseased brain, curdled black by decades of merciless homicide.

Posted: **Thu Nov 16, 2006 2:55 pm**

T. Foster wrote:
JamesEightBitStar wrote:Putting it like that, it's almost kind of immoral that he would even think of running off to a fortress of solitude to escape his problems.
Well, it has been firmly established that Superman is a dick

That could be subtitled, It Sucks To Be Jimmy Olson If Your "Friend" Is Superman.

Posted: **Thu Nov 16, 2006 3:03 pm**

thedungeondelver wrote:
TheRedPriest wrote:A bit off topic, but one of the best musings about superheros I've heard is Bill's monologue near the end of Kill Bill, Vol 2.
I always hated that spiel because 1: Bill was a sociopath. His concept of what makes superheroes super is going to be pretty well f--ked up. 2: Superman's "disguise" had nothing to do with Superman secretly hating the little guy or thiking all humans were puny and weak and nebbish. Superman's disguise (as was his name) was a metaphor - albeit an unsubtle one - just like his behavior. I think it's best summarized by Jor-El's line from the '78 movie "They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be."

Superman represented the latent greatness, the ability to do acts of good, acts of decency, acts of kindness, acts of heroism, that we all have in us. Within us, within the everyman, beneath what we might seem to be.

Bill's assement that Supes' disguise was all about "I HATE THE MUNDANES LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!111oneone" was the product of a diseased brain, curdled black by decades of merciless homicide.

I didn't get it as Superman hating people, just realizing that to blend in he had to seriously nerf himself.

Probably a poor choice of words on my part. Instead of stating it was the best musing I'd heard, it was more about being entertained by it. I didn't grow up on comic books, so I don't really care one way nor the other if his description was accurate, but to me, it was very entertaining. I like to see paradigms turned on their heads, and sociopaths do that all the time. It's probably why actors like Nicholson and Walken are so popular. They present us with very entertaining whackjobs. In fact, Walken as Bill may even have been better than Carradine.

Posted: **Thu Nov 16, 2006 3:26 pm**

TheRedPriest wrote:
thedungeondelver wrote:
TheRedPriest wrote:A bit off topic, but one of the best musings about superheros I've heard is Bill's monologue near the end of Kill Bill, Vol 2.
I always hated that spiel because 1: Bill was a sociopath. His concept of what makes superheroes super is going to be pretty well f--ked up. 2: Superman's "disguise" had nothing to do with Superman secretly hating the little guy or thiking all humans were puny and weak and nebbish. Superman's disguise (as was his name) was a metaphor - albeit an unsubtle one - just like his behavior. I think it's best summarized by Jor-El's line from the '78 movie "They can be a great people, Kal-El. They wish to be."

Superman represented the latent greatness, the ability to do acts of good, acts of decency, acts of kindness, acts of heroism, that we all have in us. Within us, within the everyman, beneath what we might seem to be.

Bill's assement that Supes' disguise was all about "I HATE THE MUNDANES LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!111oneone" was the product of a diseased brain, curdled black by decades of merciless homicide.
I didn't get it as Superman hating people, just realizing that to blend in he had to seriously nerf himself.

Probably a poor choice of words on my part. Instead of stating it was the best musing I'd heard, it was more about being entertained by it. I didn't grow up on comic books, so I don't really care one way nor the other if his description was accurate, but to me, it was very entertaining. I like to see paradigms turned on their heads, and sociopaths do that all the time. It's probably why actors like Nicholson and Walken are so popular. They present us with very entertaining whackjobs. In fact, Walken as Bill may even have been better than Carradine.

Oh I get where you're coming from and cinematically it's very entertaining and all (and yeah, Walken as Bill would've been awesome but given Taratino's ouvre, you know he had to go with the cheeseball '70s actor...). I just hear that spiel from hipsters a lot and it grates on me.

Kind of like how I find the movie fight club blackly hilarious, sinister, and subversive and yet I run across nerds who take it stone-faced seriously sometimes. :-/

Ah well!

My impressions of Bill's speech are probably heavily tainted by the fact that he is a sociopath, and if it occured to him to kill his daugther to keep her away from Beatrix, he'd have done so.

Posted: **Thu Nov 16, 2006 3:39 pm**

JDJarvis wrote:I think it'd be horrible to be superman. He has superhearing. How many people in metropolis are in need of help at any one moment? He can't possibly help everyone. Who do you help, the old women slipping in the shower, the kid tumbling out the 4th story window, the women being beaten to death by her husband or the elderly man stepping in front of a bus? He'd have to deal with that sort of thing almost constantly, it'd make me a little twitchy and certainly in need of a fortress of solitude.

Like this?

Posted: **Thu Nov 16, 2006 3:42 pm**

TheRedPriest wrote: I didn't get it as Superman hating people, just realizing that to blend in he had to seriously nerf himself.

The real secret is that "Superman" is Clark Kent's disguise.

Posted: **Thu Nov 16, 2006 3:52 pm**

JamesEightBitStar wrote:Putting it like that, it's almost kind of immoral that he would even think of running off to a fortress of solitude to escape his problems. I mean, while he's away, tons of people are probably being splatted right now!

To answer your "who do you help" question, here is how I would handle it.

1. Save the kid...

2. Stop the beating...

3. The old man in front of the bus...

4. The woman in the shower... out accidents.

I'd make a terrible Superman.The kid would be the last one I'd save unless I was flying past to help someone else. Adults can always make more children.
I'd also be prone to go visit the U.N. a bunch and hang out with world politicians as much a spossible, and slowly kill the ones I didn't like by giving them brain cancer with careful use of my x-ray vision.

Of course I'd probably go nuts and end up more like Captain Hero from "Drawn Together".

Posted: **Thu Nov 16, 2006 4:49 pm**

JDJarvis wrote:The kid would be the last one I'd save unless I was flying past to help someone else. Adults can always make more children.

Not really, and there's no saying the next child is going to be half as worthwhile.

Way I see it, children are basically, people who have yet to be tainted. Adults, on the other hand, are tainted. If something happened that caused everyone over the age of twelve to suddenly die off and only the children were left, the result would be a new world order (or disorder) that is entirely unpredictable. But if all the children in the world were to die off, the world would be the same as it always was, just a little less fun.

Posted: **Thu Nov 16, 2006 5:01 pm**

thedungeondelver wrote:if it occured to him to kill his daugther to keep her away from Beatrix, he'd have done so.

Absolutely right. In a kung fu second he would.

Posted: **Thu Nov 16, 2006 5:16 pm**

Super heroes are a lot of things, depending on the context...

Superman was pretty clearly a sci-fi Christ.

Spider-man was an extended metaphor for puberty.

The X-men were a critique on racism.

It all comes down to the fact that human beings are different and go through changes, and our literature and art tends to be focussed on the clash of differences between us and the changes that people go through.

The super heroe genre is just about amping up the differences between people, and in that respect, isn't particularly different from ancient myths and their deities, horror stories/movies and their monsters, and sci-fi/fantasy lit and its various different sentient species.

To me, superheroes are just a short leep from the pulp action heroes of the 20's and 30's. It's not a huge jump from Conan to Captain America, from the Shadow to Batman. It's just that comic books (and later movies) took advantage of the visual part of its medium and gave the heroes distinctive looks and costumes that wouldn't have come across on radio or in print.

R.A.

Posted: **Fri Nov 17, 2006 1:03 am**

rogatny wrote:Superman was pretty clearly a sci-fi Christ.

To me, superheroes are just a short leep from the pulp action heroes of the 20's and 30's. It's not a huge jump from Conan to Captain America, from the Shadow to Batman.

Or a comic book overman everyman.

And Superman is pretty much Doc Savage in tights, right down to the Fortress of Solitude. Though he's more of a loner, which works better IMO as while I like aspects of the Doc Savage stories he tends to make his team pointless or comic relief. He can do everything and better and does.

Posted: **Fri Nov 17, 2006 6:26 am**

Yea, but at least Doc Savage had to go through strenuous excercise and years of study to reach his level of perfection! ^__^

Someone mentioned The Shadow earlier, and I seem to remember he was also a superhero who had built himself up from the bottom instead of being naturally gifted, as well.

Posted: **Fri Nov 17, 2006 3:44 pm**

Interesting that you think Americans have begun to think in deterministic ways and that could be a reason (I don't think it is) for D&D hate. It always struck me as an outside observer that D&D is a kind of fantasy reflection of the rags to riches "American Dream" since all PCs start out very weak and then rise in levels, almost irrespective of their attribute scores, to be very wealthy and powerful.

Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Sick of Superheroes