Eiko-chan

I think someone's spent a little too much time looking at Superdickery.

Spider-Man excepted, I find I really don't like the "flawed" heroes. The flaws always seem to be things holding them back from being heroes, rather than them being heroes despite the flaws.

Superman is, and always has been, a paragon. The definition of paragon is "an ideal instance; a model of perfection". A paragon cannot change, for if it changes, it ceases to be a paragon.

I consume my modern myths through TV and movies, rather than printed pictures, and in those media Supes serves a vital purpose - he is the rock, the unchanging ideal around which the rest of the mythos revolves.

Without Superman, we would not have the ideal towards which all other superheroes strive. Without Superman, the Watchmen would have nothing to counter. Without Superman, all the modern dark, edgy, "real" mythos would mean nothing, because we would not understand what it is that the rebels are rebelling against.

Without Superman, the rest of the mythos means less, because we have lost the golden light at the centre around which the rest of the dark balls of matter revolve.

Like I said, without light, darkness means nothing. The "deep", soul-searching, flawed and failing heroes would have no significance in a world without Superman. We need Superman to remind us what heroes are supposed to be, even if we are currently mired in examining how unrealistic that example is.

So your problem with Supes is basically just that he's old, and you want him to go away?

What about Batman? He's nearly as old.

I recall they tried killing Superman back in the 90s, when Batman was getting broken by Bane and going all Dark Knight-y, but I don't recall that working out too well for Superman sales.

I don't read comics, but I personally love Superman because he is a Boy Scout. It's something you don't see much any more: a paragon, someone you can truly look up to and want (your children) to emulate.

The real world has enough flawed heroes. Fiction is just that - fiction. It's supposed to be unrealistic. If we can't have perfect paragons of purity in our fiction, where can we rest our ideals? Upon what pedestal can we place our hopes and dreams for the future, if not our fiction?

Super heroes are modern-day myths. They serve the same role for us that stories of Hercules and the gods did for Ancient Greece, or that so much folk-lore, fairy-tale, and even religious iconography has done for people throughout time. There is room in that myth for the darker tones and themes, but why does it all have to be that way?

Without light, darkness means nothing.

I'm just going to pretend you didn't post this.

My bad. I totally gave the Count the plague.

I'm fairly certain it's well established in the Superman mythos that he stands up for truth, justice, and humanity because he views himself as the protector of Earth. Especially after conversations with the memory of his real father that more or less said just that.

Maybe it's a modern invention that didn't come around until the 70s and the first Superman movie, but Superman's reasons have never seemed nebulous in my memory. Superman sees so much to be valued and praised in the human spirit, so much so that he longs to be human himself, but since he shall ever be Kryptonian, the least he can do is defend humanity from those that would prey upon it (even those that are human themselves.)

With the state of PvP in this game, I simply cannot imagine what would keep someone playing for years if not RP.

"Any means necessary" explicitly excludes "Good". Good will not employ "any means necessary". Good will only employ "Good" means.

A strict upholder of society and civilisation will torture to save the lives of millions. He is lawful neutral.

A Paladin will never torture, no matter the outcome of not torturing. He will not cross the line past good to stoop to an evil act, no matter how many it will save. He will find another way, or he will die trying. He is Lawful Good.

That's the problem with modern heroes (and Alan Moore may, in fact, be the instigator of this downfall); they no longer cling to "Good", viewing their moral code and fibre - the very things that made them heroes, that made them worthy of the name - as weaknesses, rather than strengths. A true hero knows that his morals are more than a crutch; they're the very foundation of his being.

A hero without morals, without a code, is a villain.

I believe you are saying it takes more than super power - and, for that matter, more than fighting crime and villains - to make a hero.

I play a "super" model, who works modelling fashions for Icon. I've always figured that super heroes probably did replace sports stars in nearly all respects (with the added bonus that the work a super hero does is, generally, actually praiseworthy.)

Weatherby slightly exaggerates our uptime; even including the previous incarnation of the Secret Syndicate, I don't think it's been that long (my involvement with the group that grew into the Society only recently hit a year of time, and I was one of the founding members of the actual Society VG).

But we are going strong, have two solid days of activity and folks spread out over alts but still in contact the rest of the time. And we do have a nice big plot going on.

As for RPing outside of the group, we try to do this all the time, but other than light fluff sort of RP, we haven't had a lot of success. People just won't commit (either to the game or to putting aside the time to RP). I'm not sure if it's just there aren't many groups actively RPing still and we're oddballs or if we just haven't contacted the right SGs/VGs.

The flight poses are beastly to use. You have to be moving forward, you have to implement the pose emote, and if you stop, you'll have to do the emote again to change to the pose you want once more. I think that, more than anything else, is why they aren't used. If it was easier to implement a different flight pose (via a menu, a variable set via /command, or some other method other than what we currently have), they'd probably see a lot more use.

*runs off to make Floorwax Man in game RIGHT NOW!*

Uh, no. If I wanted that, I would have asked for it.

Peregrine and Grandville are horrible zones. They should have little in them as possible.

I should probably also mention that part of the goal here is to limit how many times you have to zone to get to where you're going. Some days it takes two or three minutes for a zone loading to complete for me, which makes Bases, Ouroboros, and other such "short cuts" a huge unneeded time sink to get where I am going. I would much rather load a single zone that has the tools I need to use in it than have to bounce between two or three.