"Realistically" insofar is this topic can be realistic, I think superpowers would completely topple the concepts of equality and democracy. How many people would be able to resist the temptation to take charge of society if they had the strength of Superman or the intelligence of Iron Man? The world would probably be parceled up and ruled by thousands of benevolent or not-so-benevolent superhumans.

>>98472432
>Since the Marvel idea of people randomly gaining superpowers in freak accidents is stupid,
it isnt any more or less stupid than randomly being born with an engine block for a face because of magic DNA

>>98472432
>Says marvel is stupid
>Mentions the X-men, a marvel property
The only stupid thing ITT is (you), OP. Also, those "freak accidents"? they create mutations. Called Mutates. Which are different from Mutants. Which are different from Inhumans.

Basically if we're treating "realistic" as "heroes start appearing in our real world" then the world is uber-fucked.

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>>98472449
> I think superpowers would completely topple the concepts of equality and democracy
Agreed. If they existed, I could see the government rounding up "dangerous" superheroes and either taking away their powers or limiting them so they don't have to worry about someone being able to glass half the country when they feel like it.

>>98472467
Electro being able to gain electricity powers from getting struck by lightning while holding onto some power lines is infinitely more silly than magic DNA. At least with the magic DNA excuse you don't have to deal with people being able to just recreate accidents like that and walk away with superpowers.

>>98472522
>Agreed. If they existed, I could see the government rounding up "dangerous" superheroes and either taking away their powers or limiting them so they don't have to worry about someone being able to glass half the country when they feel like it.
Fat chance that would happen unless all the powers are incredibly lame like "Good luck" or "ankle wings" or whatever other bullshit, if someone got superman powers what the fuck is a government going to do against invincibility, heat vision, frost breath, super speed, super strength, and x-ray vision and super hearing to see them coming?

>>98472522
>If they existed, I could see the government rounding up "dangerous" superheroes and either taking away their powers or limiting them.
If superhumans were 1% of the population, sure, but if they were as common as they are in MHA, where 80% of the planet has superpowers, regulation would be impossible. How do you put 80% of your population in an internment camp, or get them agree to not use their powers whenever they feel like it?

>>98472547
Just have a team of supes that are government bootlickers to deal with the ones who resist.

>>98472559
I think you'd have a hard time finding goons who wouldn't overthrow you when they got the chance. Even in real life, ambitious guys without superpowers like Caesar and Washington betrayed their governments when they saw the opportunity to seize power.

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>>98472449
>>98472432
Nothing would change at all. There are already millions of people superior to any given world leader in any and every way including strength and intelligence that could kill them on a whim and even get away with it. And yet strangely enough none of those people are in governance. Because that shit has never been a question of merit or any kind of ability or talent.

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>>98472432
>let's just say rules are similar to MHA or X-Men and people across the world are able to spontaneously develop powers through some sort of gene or mutation.

Where it's basically just happening to everyone? Progressive escalating unmanageable chaos eventually leading to a bronze-age-style total societal collapse... With, hopefully, an eventual reconstruction period where everything is different, but better. I'm gonna assume for the sake of the argument that nobody is getting reality bending powers or really "cheap" overpowered abilities (like weather control, matter creation, time travel, etc) and it's just more grounded stuff like superhuman physiology, mild psionics, animal/plant/mineral physiology, etc.. It would be nothing but social darwinism for like 78 years before people get tired and eventually re-realize, "oh, actually, even if I have superpowers it is still just better to, like, pay for things and go to work than live every day like an animal where I have to fight and kill and die for everything all the time."

I also agree with first Anon: >>98472449 but only in the regard that the "new world" they create would probably be an unfamiliar novel mixture of incredibly socially progressive values, held together by a massive authoritarian surveillance-welfare-state. Everything would need to be "consciously" handled. Constantly. Think massive civilian databases with all your medical information, personal details, updated every year, but amazing public services. Think no freedom of movement, but you're entitled to housing.

To think of it in another way: societal barriers and responsibilities would dramatically increase, but so would societal benefits and resources. A normal person has to put up with a lot of shit, but they in turn also get to live in a world where the quality of life is constantly improving due to so many different people cooperating.

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>>98472597
>There are already millions of people superior to any given world leader in any and every way including strength and intelligence that could kill them on a whim and even get away with it.
There's a big difference between being smarter or stronger than someone vs being able to fly or topple a building with your fists.

>>98472627
We can already fly and topple buildings. It doesn't make any difference. The cattle will never act up.

>>98472632
>We can already fly and topple buildings
How many civilizans have access to fighter jets or nukes? The governments of the world rule because they monopolize violence and keep any weapon capable of changing the status quo to themselves. In the scenario proposed above, the public would suddenly have an equal, if not greater, capacity for violence, all without the justifications of democracy that modern governments use to legitimize their authority.

>>98472646
They already have said equal capacity, they just don't use it. You don't need a fighter jet to blow up government buildings or assassinate leaders. And you especially don't need fucking super powers.

>>98472651
Are you retarded?

>>98472651
>The key here is "any weapon capable of changing the status quo."
Many people have murdered politicians, and it never caused meaningful change. Killing Lincoln didn't cause the South to rise up, killing JFK didn't prevent communism from failing. Similarly, even the largest terrorist attacks like Oklahoma City and 9/11 didn't affect the US government, if anything it benefited them because it gave them an excuse to sieze more power.

>>98472659
I didn't mean to greentext the first sentence.

>>98472659
9/11 affected the US government bigly and still affects it to this day and it didn't even hit any politicians.

I also don't see why you believe that using super powers for those assassinations instead of guns would have somehow changed those outcomes.

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>>98472627
Even nuclear weapons haven't actually changed anything about the way the world is governed. We don't have nuclear physicists for presidents, nor bomber pilots for senators, not even any kinds of engineers in any political positions.

Superpowers likewise wouldn't change anything. They'd just be another weapon on an already endless list.

>>98472597
>>98472632
>>98472651

Different Anon: people DON'T have the ability to fly or topple buildings, COMMUNITIES have that power and they lend that power to individuals. Every time a powerful individual does something in our world that decision is made possible by convincing, or otherwise placating, thousands, sometimes millions, of people. Nuclear bombs, jet airplanes, and border conflicts, aren't cottage industries.

Now, you're not entirely wrong: even if you gave people superpowers they "probably" wouldn't overwhelmingly turn into mindless murderous psychopaths; people value their lives, they care about what other people think of them, etc.. The problem you don't seem to appreciate, or understand, is superpowers would enable and allow asocial individuals a level of power that's typically a result of cooperating with others.

>>98472699
>The problem you don't seem to appreciate, or understand, is superpowers would enable and allow asocial individuals a level of power that's typically a result of cooperating with others.
So does a gun.

>>98472669
>9/11 affected the US government bigly and still affects it to this day
As I said, it gave the government the excuse they needed to make themselves stronger.
>Even nuclear weapons haven't actually changed anything about the way the world is governed.
If everyone had a nuke they could fire at any time things would certainly change.

>>98472706
Even with a powerful gun you can only kill a couple dozen people before you'll be killed yourself. You can't implement meaningful change that way.

>>98472720
Same goes for superpowers.

>>98472432
>>98472467
Lorelets. The Celestials put an egg inside earth and in order to ward off dangers like Galactus or Phoenix gave humanity "magic DNA". That's why Banner and the first family turn into the Hulk and F4 instead of just dying to radiation poisoning.

>>98472724
You know that isn't true.

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>>98472706
>>98472720

No, no, the gun is a good example. I don't know why he thought that was a "gotcha" because him saying gun means he implicitly understands the argument - he's just being argumentative or stupid for some fucking reason.

Antisocial people use guns to shoot up the people they think they can get away with. It's also created a culture into itself where as society gets shittier more and more people become convinced this is something appropriate to do.
Superpowers would make gun violence look like a joke because now you're dealing with people who can command insects, or gravity, or hydration.

>>98472737
>Superpowers would make gun violence look like a joke because now you're dealing with people who can command insects, or gravity, or hydration.
It makes 0 difference whether the proverbial school shooter uses a gun or a psychic power to assassinate via ranged nipple twister.

>>98472755
Of course it does. A psychic would be much harder to catch, for one thing, and they have the potential to kill far more people.

>>98472784
No, he wouldn't be, and he doesn't. Guns are actually really good unlike what comic books may have led you to believe.

>>98472755
under rational choice theory, crime would be drastically more common if every person had superpowers because everyone has more capacity to commit crime

simply having a power that could be used to commit crimes on your person would mean you are more likely to do it
even if your power is as lame and useless as controlling spoons, just having that power makes you more likely to turn into a spoon thief

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> Mutation or some gene thing
Just begging for one of the shittiest plots ever devised. The all-spectrum power nulifier.

WHY powers are happening isn't really the question you want anyway. Ignore it.

Establish how common this is and the baseline power level of supers. This is what will dictate how your setting works in reality. I'll frame the issue like this. If the terrain your characters fight in becomes meaningless, you've made writing anything in the setting magnitudes more difficult in an instant. Characters being above common concerns is a CORE CHOICE. Similarly, something like if guns are even meaningful is a core choice.

I know people love flying at mach 1000 and basically being intergalactic to match up against the jupiter sized supervillain from outerspace, but going that far will make a general strain on everything else that'll tear the narrative apart.

Something more like the one bullet proof guy who can walk through a brick wall being particularly scary will make your setting easy to manage.

>>98472802
Every person has access to a gun and crime is still only as bad as it is. Superpowers wouldn't change a thing.

>>98472824
>Every person has access to a gun and crime is still only as bad as it is
gun ownership illustrates just how much access alone leads to crime
simply keeping a gun out of sight drastically reduces the odds of it being used, either for a crime on yourself
guns, or any weapon, are opt-in, you need to make a conscious decision to buy one before you decide to do a crime with it

super powers in this frame work are universal, everyone has them at all times and from the moment they are born
this is a level of access guns would never have, short of handing babies a gun the moment they are born

>>98472834
You are only ever a single google search away from having as many guns and bombs as you want.

>>98472834
>gun ownership illustrates just how much access alone leads to crime
No, it doesn't.

>>98472844
even a simple inconvenience like waiting a week to get your gun reduces gun crime
most crime is spur-of-the-moment and simply not having a weapon on you reduces the odds of a crime being committed

if you had laser vision, then you could commit a crime at any moment the thought comes up
this would increase the likelihood of crime simply because people with offensive powers now have 24/7 access to weapons

>>98472857
When laser vision is outlawed, only outlaws will have laser vision.

>>98472865
you cant really pre-emptively arrest someone for using laser vision, you can only do so after they already reveal their power
which, if you are lucky, is in a benign setting which allows you to keep tabs on them afterwards

but for people who do not reveal their power, then an arrest is only possible until after they reveal their power
this means that emotional crimes cant realistically be stopped, increasing punishment for the crimes doesnt provide a deterrent against irrational actors

>>98472879
>you cant really pre-emptively arrest someone for using laser vision
and you think you can pre-emptively arrest someone for using gun? you should be a politician

>>98472842
>>98472844
The anon you're arguing against is correct though. Everyone has knives of various lengths and sizes at home. Few people walk around with fuckhueg knives all the time. Few knife incidents. Think about this instead of reflexively going "nu-uh".
In OP's hypothetical world many people run around with knives in hand 24/7. These are potentially untraceable knives. Perfectly silent, permanently cold, guns without serial numbers. This is a different meta.

>>98472883
if we're talking about "potential crimes" we might as well ban opposable thumbs and a functioning brain

>>98472724
There are superpowers that make you drastically better at not getting killed than the average person.
>>98472659
There are also superpowers that can cause meaningful change outright by just mind-controlling people.

Might as well say that magic has no effect on a fantasy setting because people already have spears.

>>98472883
The local psychic is on the payroll to stand at the crime scene and peer back in time to see who did it. Problem solved.

The real problem no one seems to grasp is exactly that. Enforcement. People don't do crimes casually not for lack of super powers or easy gun access or something like that. They don't do it cause they can't get away with it. In situations where people think they won't get reprisal, the chance of crime rises significantly.

>>98472885
>There are superpowers that make you drastically better at not getting killed than the average person.
So does kevlar and situational awareness.
>There are also superpowers that can cause meaningful change outright by just mind-controlling people.
So does money.

>>98472884
rational actors will always commit a crime as long as they have a means, a target, and think that the reward outweights the risk

under this framework, a large number of people being endowed with powers overnight would result in a large amount of crime
the crime levels would eventually normalize after a brief spike as laws are setup and law enforcement are made aware of super powers and can implement better monitoring

but it would always be higher than it was before super powers were made public because everyone simply has more opportunities to commit crime

>>98472901
under that framework we might as well just kill everyone and get it over with since everyone is just a criminal in waiting

>>98472891
>it's his word versus mine
Boom. Psychic is useless and now needs to prove that what they've seen or read actually happened. Hell, maybe slip in a "the psychic mind controlled me" if you're feeling cheeky.

>>98472912
>>it's his word versus mine
you do realize that that's exactly how witnesses work, right? and they still use them

>>98472919
I'm starting to realize that anon doesn't know how the world works.

>>98472903
under that framework, we can either reduce the means with which people commit crimes (make lethal weapons harder to obtain) and reduce opportunities to commit crime (as simple as simply putting up street lamps in dark alleys)
most crime is not meticulously planned in advance, bank robbers are exceptionally rare compared to muggers

it focuses solely on outcomes rather than motivations, why a robber chooses to rob is irrelevant, but if you want to stop robbers then you just make it less likely for them to think about robbing
if their knife is at home, then they will decide not to rob people that day

while you cant stop all crime you can still reduce it
putting up streetlamps will not stop a hitman from blasting a politician, but it will stop a potential mugger who would realize his face can be seen

hence, universal superpowers would just cause more crime in general
people who otherwise would not have thought of shoplifting might decide to do so if they had invisibility or mind control

>>98472432
I think superheo comics are so unrealistic they wrapped around to being realistic , so copy them.

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Since it seems the answer to, "How would superheroes work while being realistic?" is kind of boring since it doesn't lead to the setting having any of the cool stuff that comes with superhero media (e.g. people with cool superpowers fighting each other), I'd like to ask instead: how could YOU make the incredibly stale superhero genre interesting, fun, or unique again?

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>>98472903
>under that framework we might as well just kill everyone and get it over with since everyone is just a criminal in waiting

Not that Anon, but this is "kind of" the motive behind things like complete gun bans, knife bans, that some countries have. People can't be trusted with "x", and we can't remove people's capacity or motives for violence, so we're just going to remove "x".

>>98472926
except as things currently stand in our world anyone can easily make a gun or a bomb and go through with as many crimes as they want, and under your framework literally everyone would be doing this nonstop until we're all extinct

in other words you're fucking stupid

>>98472933
real world data suggests that making it easier to own guns correlates to more gun crime
or, very simply, having a gun on your person makes you more likely to use it at some point

which stands up to real world data, even mild inconveniences like forcing people to fill up a form or even just waiting a week to get their weapon, results in reduced crime
because a lot of crime is not well-planned heists but people acting on intrusive thoughts
if you have to buy a gun online and wait two weeks to get it before you commit a crime with it, then the criminal in question might just decide to do something else with their time
and having to order 2-tons of fertilizer and then justifying why you need that much ammonia to the FBI is very likely to stop a bomber if they realize that they are being monitored

> and under your framework literally everyone would be doing this nonstop until we're all extinct
the framework simply suggests that people will commit a crime if they have the means to do something
if people carried knives with them all the time, then knife crimes would go up
if people left their knives at home, knife crimes would go down
thats all it suggests and it is a fairly accepted framework in criminology for profit-driven crimes

>>98472929
Just kitchen sink it with several power sources instead of "in this world everyone has powers"
Are they magic? Do they have the superpower puberty gene? Are they an alien? Did they science up an accident? Do super serums exist and are they easy to get? Are there bored billionaires with grappling hooks?

>>98472956
or maybe there's some other mysterious explanation for why we aren't just killing each other nonstop

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>>98472929
If we're being perfectly honest...

Supers only worked back in the day when writers understood the point of supers was them being unrealistically good. Moral power fantasy. They got those powers by mishap PRECISELY because they are the one person, if given a chance, who would use their powers unselfishly. Out of love for others. The horror of the supervillain precisely revolves around the idea of the wrong person getting them for once. Not just evil but willfully malicious and ambitious about that malice. Now that things are treated as a kind of random seeding of abilities with no rhyme or reason among the normal populace, yes, things are super lame. Superman is just now just some jackass flying around and Lex Luthor is using his literal 1000+ IQ to steal office supplies and scam your local store out of big screen TVs.

The moral fantasy meeting it's antithesis was the whole point, and removing that means there's no over arching theme or plot or reason.

>>98472963
because most people are rational actors
most people do not rob convenience stores because they do not have a weapon with which to rob the convenience store and because they do not think they can get away with it

robberies go up when more people have a means to rob a store and think they can get away with it

>>98472971
rationality has nothing to do with it because under your retarded framework the rational thing would be for everyone to commit as many crimes as possible so we can all get away with them

which wouldn't even require that big of a spike since most crimes go unsolved as is

>>98472963
Jesus Christ preserves the earth so people may live to repent and receive mercy and payment for their sins via the Cross. Which will continue till God makes good on his promise to say enough is enough and put in and death away forever.

>>98472979
should be SIN AND DEATH away forever.

If God did it now, a lot of people would still perish.

>>98472977
>the rational thing would be for everyone to commit as many crimes as possible so we can all get away with them
that is actually observed, crime can cause more crime as it makes it clearer that law enforcement cant respond to all cases
so your example is actually borne out by observation

the outcome of treating criminals as rational actors is almost trivially true
if more people have knives, more knife crimes will occur
if you have more witnesses, then fewer crimes will occur

>>98472990
it means that your framework is fucking nonsense because evidently rationality plays no major role

>>98472995
>because evidently rationality plays no major role
it treats people as too rational, hence the disclaimer that it only really applies to profit driven crimes
but it does bear out in practice, brightly lit streets result in lower crime because people have fewer opportunities to commit crime

>>98473002
it doesn't bear out in theory nor practice

>>98473007
>it doesn't bear out in theory
the theory is sound, bordering on being trivially true
people will commit less crimes if they perceive the punishment too high, the risk of getting caught too great, or if they dont have the tools to commit the crime

the main parts it doesnt bear out are in emotionally-driven crimes, where the criminal is not thinking rationally and is not considering the risk of getting caught or wants to get caught

>>98473016
the theory isn't sound, it's completely retarded as has already been demonstrated

>>98473019
>it's completely retarded as has already been demonstrated
your only counter-argument is that everyone acting rationally would result in infinite crime
which rational choice theory neither says nor predicts

>>98472548
>or get them agree to not use their powers whenever they feel like it?
isn't that literally the setting of MHA? public use of quirks is forbidden, only heroes get a permission
yes, it's a terrible, oppressive system

>>98472597
We did question it and we did fix it for a hot minute, but then there was a whole war about it.

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>>98472432
IMHO the power thing isn't the problem.
The question is less "how do we introduce powers" or even "how do we keep everyone to start going bananas" it's "how do we go from powered individual to crime fighter or supervillain".
Realistically Robin would eventually just go back to the circus.
Realistically Zatanna would have to be dragged to stop grinding her performer career.
Realistically Batman would harass the Penguin & Luthor through a mix of shell companies, audit Spam, legal battles and introducing competing product.

>>98472931
Not really, it's to reduce how easy is for criminals to a get guns and people shooting others/themselves because they have a gun close to them while they're angry/depressed. But most people aren't psychos that would kill if they got away with it

>>98473031
>isn't that literally the setting of MHA? public use of quirks is forbidden, only heroes get a permission
>yes, it's a terrible, oppressive system

Not that Anon, public use is prohibited, yeah, but there's exceptions:
-People can earn a loicense to use their power in public if it's for work. This is something people typically get during high school (it's what most of the class are training for), but can apply for any other time.
-There are parks, grounds, "not!ymcas", where people can freely use their powers.
-A lot of people's power is just having a weird body type like being part frog, part dog, part centipede, has wings, etc.. I don't think they need a permit in the same way the other people do, but if I remember I think they're "legally" police profiled.

>>98473057
>it's to reduce how easy is for criminals to a get guns and people shooting others/themselves because they have a gun close to them while they're angry/depressed
that is literally rational choice theory
by reducing the accessibility to a means with which to commit a crime, you reduce the likelihood of the crime occurring

>>98473069
>by reducing the accessibility to a means with which to commit a crime, you reduce the likelihood of the crime occurring
Like during the prohibition?

>>98472810
>>98472967
good posts, unfortunately crowded out by disingenuous argumentation in this thread

>If the terrain your characters fight in becomes meaningless, you've made writing anything in the setting magnitudes more difficult in an instant.
this is particularly insightful, since it applies to more than just superheroes
I feel like most game systems treat terrain like an abstract concept, with maybe a set piece or two if you're lucky

>>98472548
>How do you put 80% of your population in an internment camp, or get them agree to not use their powers whenever they feel like it?
There’s a 9 foot tall blonde man with a really positive personality and a huge ass who can literally flex so hard that all the bones in your body turn to jelly from twenty feet away

>>98473188
>unfortunately crowded out by disingenuous argumentation in this thread
It's really just two liquor store-robbing jigaboos in here that have been arguing back and forth for the past four hours.

>>98473198
True but surely there are a few guys just as strong among the people in the camps.

>>98473212
There was until he got his face literally punched off by that same blonde man.

>>98473188
It's something I realized when considering the problem behind shonen. Then realized it applies to anything with super powers. Power creep. When does power creep undermine your narrative? Strictly speaking, when your characters no longer have to mind WHERE they are fighting. When walls are fake and distances don't matter, you lose a LOT of cool things you can actually do with a narrative.

Even something like "can leap up the side of a tall building fast" should be a competitive and extreme power. And scaling characters out of this being an impressive feat changes everything.

Sensory powers are also worth a note. They can seem minor, but you'll stumble over being able to sense people through objects or long distances. The number of mundane challenges they remove can be extreme. This is probably also why you see characters suddenly not using theirs at weird times.

And to fix any of this requires lots of hoop jumping you'd rather not do.

>>98472726
That’s Earth X, a different continuity. The original one is that the Celestials came to Earth and played mad scientist with the local hominids to get three different sub-species to observe it over the centuries to observe evolution in real time

Homo descendus, The Deviants, the experimental elevated species with constantly evolving and adapting genetics
Homo immortalis, the genetic peak of the species and protector of the experiment
Homo sapiens, the control group instilled with latent genetic traits that could manifest in either direction of Eternal or Deviant

That last one is how humanity not only has the X-gene that gets X-men style mutants, but also how the Fantastic 4, The Hulk, Spider-man, and nearly every character that could be called a “mutate” aka someone who gained super powers through exposure to something gets those super powers instead of just dying miserably of cancer or something. Though lately, Marvel has tried to insinuate that the X-men style mutants are somehow special via retcons like the Celestials preoarer for mutants being the pinnacle of the Homo sapiens species or that the X-men are the refined descendants of the Deviants, but history and the alternate universes have made it clear that of all the experiments, baseline Homo sapiens and their mutate descendants come out in top compared to the Deviants, Eternals, and X-gene mutants.

>>98473069
No, it's to avoid people having a magic contraption which can easily kill someone when they're not being rational and to reduce how dangerous is the average criminal and overall interactions between people

>>98472659
My dogg, killing Lincoln directly led to the gutting of meaningful reconstruction in the South. Just because something doesn't cause violent uprising doesn't mean it isn't "meaningful change."

>>98472787
In a world where 1 in 100 people have super powers that make them grab their temples or crotches and weird light shoots out of them to do anything from boiling water to speaking to their grandpa; it would be like arriving to a school shooting at the International School of LARPing and trying to find the guy in military gear with a gun who's not a student.

I'm rolling up to the school with my boys in blue, and I know there's an active mutant. Out of the door runs a mutant who's glowing red and is completely nude, screaming about the end of the world. Active threat or scared student? What about the guy on the roof suspending down with his extendo-limbs? What about the guy flying around the building shooting it with sonar?

Motherfuck it's hard enough to see a gun in a crowd, now I have to see the right kind of weird science in a crowd of cartoon characters? Fuck me I'm becoming a dentist.

>>98472956
>having a gun on your person makes you more likely to use it at some point
I'm sure that the statistics do indeed suggest that people who don't have guns do not shoot anyone.

>>98473031
>isn't that literally the setting of MHA? public use of quirks is forbidden, only heroes get a permission
>yes, it's a terrible, oppressive system
A terrible oppressive system in a country like Japan. How the fuck will you stop a red-blooded American from using their superpowers to do dumb shit

You cant

U!S!A! U!S!A!

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>>98472432

>>98472432
Check out Wild Talents and Mutants & Masterminds Paragons setting. Even to a decree the Champions Universe. Laws would change, the definision of what consitutes lethal force against people with abilities. Expect cops and armies to get their own supers and black ops programs. Expect governments to be paranoid about superpowered people enough to go full J. Edgar Hoover and keep files and blackmail material to keep them in line. Laws on superpowers and how they are used like X-ray vision. Titles like world's fastest man or world's strongest man would lose their meaning in the face of a world where someone can lift 25 tons or 75 tons or 100 tons and run at 200mph. You better believe there will be investigations and government teams to keep any rogue supers in line and stockpiling weaknesses in case a supe with a weakness to a metal gets out of line and they need to Ol' Yeller them. The very appearance or knowledge publicly that people with these abilities exist should cause panic among the population and governments. In any case society, governments and everything would change just knowing they exist.

>>98473856
Other supers? Why do people keep presenting this as if it’s complicated. We live in a society

>>98473905
I think there would be a cate blanch on anyone with supers to look into them, find them, find out who they are and who their loved ones etc are to keep them in line. I also don't think there would be much protest about it because of the danger they pose with superpowers i don't think there would be much backlash against investigating them or keeping tabs on them. Government agencies are no incompetent as superhero stories they will dig into your financials etc. Comics either remove this because it is inconvenient to the plot or they have to explain how the IRS hasn't hunted down a billionaire vigilante or the ATF hasn't taken down the Punisher etc. In a realistic setting they'd get them. international jurisdiction and superpowered people causing diplomatic incidents would be a problem especially if countries take their sovereignty seriously and not want someone going to another country and throwing their weight around with their powers. Probably enough to become a UN resolution.

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>>98472432

I think the fear over people who have superpowers would be justified among the population who would call for stricter controls. Especially when examples of the worst of the worst offenders of abusing their powers comes to light and there will be. That goodwill will be hard to get back when everyone is thinking what if someone out there will try to mind control me into doing something and they will be justified in doing so. Someone who just happened to have telepathy won't be above it even if they never used it on other people willingly. The more outward obvious examples will become examples of how people with powers are to be feared. Governments, law enforcement etc will step in and they will go hard. People with powers would be a existential and societal threat at least those who can't prove there's a leash on them and even they will probably not be trusted. They won't be trusted to always be "good" in the public eye and there will always be that thought of how can we trust they won't use it against us or use their powers for nefarious purposes, especially when it puts them on a level above normal average people.

>>98474334
There's lots of people i wouldn't trust normally, let alone superpowers. Ask yourselves if there are people you don't trust let alone superpowers, would you trust anyone here with superpowers? Why would you trust some guy you don't know who has superpowers even when they claim they're "good".

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>>98472432
Venture Brothers does it best, not only they tackle a realistic world of superheroes, they also find ways to JUSTIFY the tropes.

>super science and magic exists
>its often impratical as large escale, and dangerous, which attracts weirdos and causes accidents that make people weirdos
>they all end up as richfucks with superpowers
>rules and agreements are put in place to keep them in check and in a "larp", because otherwise the world would be doomed

>THE REAL DEAL of super villains and super heroes still exist tho (like The Monarch, Blue Morpho and Brown Spider) but they are forced to deal with this envirement of larpers and rules

https://youtu.be/AHoVsAjTeAM?si=r9uRPN_D3RBYu-5M

https://youtu.be/GKrvTnh-GC0?si=GeWwJCYU1YhLN8y5

https://youtu.be/E4HyemBkLQk?si=f6HG3zIzSDUWrcYW

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Every character acting like a hyper optimised "I would spawn puppies in the bad guy's lungs" Redditor sociopath is a bit cringe but the setting of Worm does the whole realistic superhero society pretty well.

>>98473941
there's never enough enforcers to police the entire population
order works because it is accepted
and for that you need societal approval
I agree with anon that muricans would probably fight for more personal liberty than nips

>>98472522
>At least with the magic DNA excuse you don't have to deal with people being able to just recreate accidents like that and walk away with superpowers.

It's at least implied that most of the superpower giving accidents are impossible to replicate, like for example in the origin stories of the Flash or Dr Manhattan.
Usually in comics when they try to actually replicate these accidents they go horribly wrong.

>>98472891
>These are potentially untraceable knives. Perfectly silent, permanently cold, guns without serial numbers. This is a different meta.
So you haven't read my post but are agreeing with me.

>In situations where people think they won't get reprisal, the chance of crime rises significantly.
Exactly.

>>98473565
thats literally rational choice theory in action
to reduce crimes committed with guns, you either reduce access to guns or make it more likely for people to be caught trying to commit crime with a gun
if its harder for people to access a gun, then its harder to commit a crime with one
thats not rocket science and nothing you have said disagrees with modelling criminal behavior as a rational choice

irrational crime is a different model thats used to explain emotional rather than profit-driven crime, but reduction of access also conveniently reduces irrational crime as well

>>98477448
I'm arguing that the rational choice is to be a decent human being and not to become a criminal because you won't get caught

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>>98472432
>How would the concept of superheroes work in a realistic setting?
In a realistic superhero setting, physics would
- contain multiple unlimited free energy sources one can tap into at close to zero cost
- lossless energy to mass and mass to energy conversion, but things are still stable enough for stuff to not combust spontaneously
- the energy requirements for reaching the speed of light would peak well before attaining a fraction of C and only drop there after

Given that all of those are true, you can have X-Men.

>>98479480
Go home Kant. It didn't work on account of the difference between Ought and Is.

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>>98472432
The Chinese and Indians would dominate the planet, simply because they have more supers than anybody else while also having a semi-functional nation state.

The Africans would have a lot of supers, but Africa isn't exactly known for their ability to be functional.

The X-Men and the Brotherhood wouldn't just be one and the same org on paper, because there's no way that any nation would tolerate a group of violent, sentient nuclear bombs that are very open about how they want to give the planet a glow up, either by actively blowing it up or by passively irradiating it all.

Those nukes will also attack you, because they strongly agree that nuclear arms control should be the sole purview of their organizations of sentient nuclear weapons.

>>98479720
>The Chinese and Indians would dominate the planet, simply because they have more supers than anybody else while also having a semi-functional nation state.

Actually they would likely collapse into feuding kingdoms constantly at war with each other rather quickly if you consider their media and cultures.

If the Chinese population got superpowers they would start killing each other at such a rate that the population would crash to near stone age levels.

If the Indians got superpowers they would fight amongst the castes until a new superpowered caste came into being to rule from above.

>>98472659
>Oklahoma City didn't affect the government
they sure stopped doing shit like waco and ruby ridge for a long time

>>98480706
A few years ago, the NYPD raided a dude's house and killed his pet squirrel because he didn't have the right squirrel license.

test

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>>98472432
What are some supers settings that do a good job of applying “realistic” consequences to the existence of heroes and villains then?

>>98472449
Yeah, it's just not a grounded concept. I mean could you imagine if a select few uniquely powerful people put on a public-facing persona (hiding their private lives from the world at large) while they used feats of intelligence and violence orchestrated at scales unimaginable and unattainable to the common man to reshape the world as they see fit?

>>98472720
That's why no president or world leader or anybody at all has ever been assassinated. It's meaningless.

>>98472627
Also context from that comic, Ms. Miracle or whatever they call her has extreme control over people's emotions or minds. She's not mad at him for snapping, she's mad at him for lowering himself to think he had to explain himself to the ants.

>>98473941
That might work in the Tristate area, but far too much of the USA is too big and too sparsely populated for that kind of oversight to work.
>We finally got some due cause to pick up jeb for unregistered power usage, but ahh turns out his power was being able to fuck trees and now he has roughly 10,000 superpowered tree descendants willing and able to defend him there. He came out and from a safe distance explained that he just wanted to live and prosper with mother nature but if anyone with three letters on their ID came to his woods again they wouldn't be leaving.

>>98486888
>That's why no president or world leader or anybody at all has ever been assassinated. It's meaningless.
Lincoln, just off the top of my head.

>>98472432
>. In a setting like that, how would heroes, hero teams, and villains function while being realistic?
They wouldn't. Supers would be hunted down and exterminated by every government everywhere because no government is willing to give up their monopoly on power.

>>98483937
>What are some supers settings that do a good job of applying “realistic” consequences to the existence of heroes and villains then?
null set

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>>98472432
All I know is that there’s no fucking way Batman is getting away with a secret identity when modern facial recognition software exists.

>>98495559
We are talking about Batman here.

>>98472971
>because most people are rational actors
Literally all studies suggest otherwise. And it's not even just a sub-Saharan thing; Europeans are also irrational actors, just not prone to crime due to evolutionarily favoring long-term outcomes (partially due to eugenic pressures most noticeably during the middle ages).

The human brain is not a rational machine, but it is exceptionally adept at rationalization. These are different things.

>>98495559
Or the FBI and IRA going after Bruce Wayne after figuring out he's Batman. It's why you don't see these organizations in the comics because it would cause problems with the plot if actually competent agencies as capable as Batman in investigating put two and two together. There's no way he's getting away with it like he does in the comics.

>>98473002
>brightly lit streets result in lower crime because people have fewer opportunities to commit crime
This is a clear-cut case of confirmation bias. People are more likely to commit crimes in areas that aren't brightly lit. But the crimes will be committed.

>>98473016
>people will commit less crimes if they perceive the punishment too high
There is not a single study that has ever shown this to be true. In fact, harsh punishments have been shown to have the opposite effect, making people go "In for a penny, in for a pound" when faced with the potentiality of punishment, committing far more heinous crimes in an effort to get away from the closing trap.

This is not to say that I do not favor harsh punishments, I am just saying that your statement is bullshit.

>>98495653
Batman only exists because it depends on the plot making everyone else incapable or incompetent. Where the cops are just plain dumb at investigating and capable federal agencies don't exist. Let's be honest Bruce Wayne would be in prison if not having Wayne Mansion raided by federal agents and a police SWAT team and filled with lead if he tries to resist.

>>98495958
>Where the cops are just plain dumb at investigating
Yeah, that's definitely wacky comic plots at work.

>>98494635
Considering that every time someone asks for a “realistic” superhero setting and someone immediately goes with how an abnormally hypercompetent government will just murder every one of them in existence, there’s a good reason people stopped asking why superhero settings aren’t more “realistic”. Cause people always come up with the most boring scenarios imaginable.

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The genre is stale because everything has been done. It is like asking us to fix cowboy movies. If the mine has been depleted, move on.

The only fun superhero movie that I have seen lately was Masters of the Universe because the superhero is actually a schizophrenic who imagines he is he-man.

I hope the sequel with King Hiss will be good but it will be very difficult to pull it off without repeating the first movie. Skeletor will need to return and help He-Man by doing more psychoanalysis on He-man's broken penis err I mean sword. To clarify, He-man is a virgin and therefore cannot grow up. Skeletor is the PUA. King Hiss is a hostile man who actually has a huge penis -- he in fact is a penis.

As for fixing the genre, the only thing we have not seen enough is clever puzzles and ploys to defeat the bad guy. The heroes are a bit dumb. Sometimes they use a trick, but often it is simple. Batman was a good example. He was supposedly a clever detective but actually just a midwit retard.
>>98472432

>>98496905
Pre-Knightfall Batman used to do detective stuff.

>>98472929
Premise: Superheroes
Development1: the protagonist (and his friends/allies) gets to know people and villains and interact a bunch and we get to know each character a bit
Development2: the protagonist has character development through this in form of challenges to his previous opinions, knowledge or just plain straight firepower issues
Climax: the character arc setup through Development1+Development2 pays off in a finale confrontation
Epilogue: we resolve remaining threads and allow a bit of downtime for the protagonist and allies/enemies to bounce off each other more peacefully

Return to Development1 or END.

I'm so starved for just actual storytelling I'll take fucking generic with moderate art. It's why I read manga, most suck and none of it is colored but they do stick to traditional structures more closely (with a penchant for "what a tweeest" curveballs though, hate those).

Comics don't need to learn from manga though. They just need to fucking look at archetypal books.

>>98497526
The main issue is that people still view the Big 2 aka Marvel and and DC as the only game in town when it comes to cape comics. Cape comics that are less reliant on being written and sold in perpetuity are a lot better written on average since they have a possibility of ending and consequences mattering, though that’s not a guarantee.

>>98496208
It's because it relies on lazy PIS to work. No one figuring out their secret identity, everyone else being incompetent, so much lazy plot has to happen for superheroes to work in the comics.
>>98496905
Japan is doing some interesting things with the genre, Choujin X (horror), Tiger & Bunny (drama), Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World (comedy), Love After World Domination (romance between the hero and villain) etc. The problem is western not eastern.

If you got rid of the capes and tights you could do so much more with the genre, like what if they didn't wear capes and tights? What if they didn't have secret identities? What if instead of it being called superpowers they were ninja techniques that allowed them to do those things? What if they didn't have secret identities and lived in a single village together? What if instead of saving people they protected that village from threats? You get Naruto and you can do the same with so many other stories, make them fight supernatural threats in the modern world you get Jujutsu Kaisen, make them aliens martial artists who can fire energy beams you get Dragon Ball.

>>98499247
Yes, Naruto and DBZ are capeshit, keenly observed.

>>98499260
Except without the capes, tights and masks and without the cliches and conventions of rescuing people etc they are free to do things differently they're cape stories without the cape and i find that frees them up to do things differently while still being superhero stories. I think the genre conventions are what holds the genre back at least in western comics.

>>98499247
>so much lazy plot has to happen for superheroes to work in the comics.
Yeah, but that doesn’t mean the alternative ps or solutions have to be equally as lazy and cliche

>>98499247
> What if they didn't have secret identities? What if instead of it being called superpowers they were ninja techniques that allowed them to do those things? What if they didn't have secret identities and lived in a single village together? What if instead of saving people they protected that village from threats
That’s tokusatsu, dude. All you’d need to do is give them tights and a giant robot, and you’d have like at least three different Suoer Sentai series. Each doing a different thing.