Makin' my blorbos smooch is what gets me through the hard times

[socksuke_uchiha]

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Comments

[(Anonymous)]

asking on anon because i don't want to be seen as judgey -
what is the appeal of superhero canons, genuinely? as someone who's just never enjoyed them i'm perplexed as to how/why they became (arguably) dwrp's bread and butter as opposed to (to me) more relatable ordinary people. if you consume a lot of comics/MCU/dctv/etc, why? is it just the one canon or is it multiple hero canons?

[(Anonymous)]

Escapism. I know growing up I used to think about getting hit with radioactive cat magic powers or something. Especially if you have a shitty home life or traumatic upbringing, escaping through books and media is one of the main ways I had of keeping myself sane. I didn't just get into comics or superhero (I was more into gothy vampire/urban fantasy/fantasy stuff), but the idea is all the same. To escape your boring/hurtful life and imagine what it'd be like to be like that. To fly. To be invincible. To go from normal or pathetic to more. Peter Parker's a big one that gets attention because he was a bullied geek and he kept that face on for his day to day, but he used what he'd gained to do good. He was what a lot of people wanted to be like growing up.

So there's a little 'I want that' mixed in, and in rp, it gives people the chance to take the driver's seat of IP that's already been created and has a basis to work off of.

+1

[(Anonymous)]

i'm a bit of an outlier because MCU/DCU are my least favorite iterations of superheroes, but basically if not to be super strong for yourself, to be super strong for others. There's empowering fantasy in getting to do something for someone else that you couldn't do IRL. There's also empowering fantasy in getting to be the one who saves the Hero, whether that's through romance or friendship or anything else you can get out of rp.

[(Anonymous)]

They're usually larger than life characters doing heroic and interesting things. I don't think there's much complexity to it, it's fun watching people do good things and be badass and win the day. I genuinely care about the characters too, I think they're interesting and sometimes well-acted/well-written and I don't care that people think it's fun these days to hate on something popular (not you, to be clear, but in general).

Escapism for sure too is a part of it, I've had some shitty times and yeah I like to just imagine having super powers and being someone greater than myself, it's nice to live in their shoes in RP. To be able to write out that power and the interesting stances they sometimes take as heroes. It feels good to take the humanity from these characters too, to understand how I feel they tick on the inside, what makes them special, and writing it for myself.

It's just fun, honestly. I don't enjoy writing relatable ordinary people because that's already my life, I want to do something that's different when it comes to creative pursuits.

[(Anonymous)]

+1 as somebody that doesn't even rp from superhero stuff necessarily but still plays from some other fantastical canons in general and rly jives with the last paragraph here: basically all my characters bear very little resemblance to me and my life, and i enjoy it that way. rp gives me a chance to divert my brain thinking about what makes these characters tic, and how their strange surroundings and/or powers affect that; as a hobby it's a great way to not be thinking about rl for awhile. this kind of escapism makes it fun for many people

+1

[(Anonymous)]

I don't enjoy writing relatable ordinary people because that's already my life, I want to do something that's different when it comes to creative pursuits.

this is it for me. i already live that, why would i want to write about it too? that's also why i'm just not interested in slice-of-life canons that don't have something fantastic going on. my current main is an ordinary human but he lives in a world where things like magic and monsters and demons exist, so even though HE may be ordinary he lives his life surrounded by things that are very much not ordinary and part of his narrative is how he deals with all of that.

[(Anonymous)]

For me, it's less the power and more the character I like. I do like a variety of media, so maybe I'm not the exact target of this question, but I have played superheroes or just heroic characters with powers in general and often I just like writing the struggles they have with bonus powers. There are things in games you can't really do with characters who have no powers, or at least will be very difficult to do (particularly in games where there are battles involved), so the abilities are more of a perk than a necessity.

I like reading (in superhero comics) the struggles they have about doing the right thing, what the right thing is, and when people push back when they don't agree with their methods. DC and Marvel admittedly aren't always the best at this because a lot of the writers just don't have good stories or worse, they have godawful characterization, but some storylines that I like tend to focus on the struggles of integrating in society, found family, friendship, struggles with wanting their own life versus the greater good, and the responsibilities of having dangerous abilities.

I don't think they're unrelatable personally. There's a lot of overlap with real life struggles with some of them. When the stories are well thought-out, they can feel good to read too.

[(Anonymous)]

i think the fact marvel does it bad a lot actually does come into play a lot, too. Sometimes people just want to give those characters better stories than they got in canon.

[(Anonymous)]

what canons do you consume? do you not consume any sci fi, fantasy, or action in general at all? the tropes are different but it's just the same thing at the end of the day, people going on an adventure to save the world.

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt but for me personally, I consume a wide variety of stories and themes because 1. there are very few count-on-one-hand genres I actively don't enjoy and 2. broadening horizons generally will help you be a stronger writer. But sometimes what media I consume doesn't always translate to "I want to RP that character".

Sometimes I just consume media for the sake of enjoying a story being told and move on, or I'll enjoy it in other, non-rp ways like diving into its production or discussing meta with other fans in ways that never make it to dreamwidth or dwrp so it probably looks like I only consume specific types of stories.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not really into superhero canons but I have liked some shonen manga in my time and it's about the big stakes, the big personalities, the unusual stuff I can rp with them. While I enjoy some canons that follow the lives of normal people in rp I like getting fanciful and silly with stuff. My life is a normal one after all, I live it every day. I don't need to rp it all over again (though the contrast of these weird characters dealing with mundane irritations can be a great source of comedy too).

[(Anonymous)]

I like having a lot of canon material to pull from, and superheroes give you that. Between having 20+ movies in the MCU to having literally 40+ years of comics for certain characters, there's a lot of material to help me get a full picture of who a character is. I'm someone who has a hard time with minor characters or characters who need a lot of headcanon to fill in the gaps. With a series that's been going on for as long as some of these have, there are rarely any gaps left to fill.

Granted, there's also the opposite issue of having conflicting comic runs and and movies written by different people which take the character in different directions, but you get to choose which version you want to focus on.

Plus, as other anons said, lots of superheroes are ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstances. I sorta see them as regular people but with the added power/potential to do more than what a normal person could, so it gets into morals and personal ethics, which I personally really enjoy exploring.

[(Anonymous)]

What are these "more relatable ordinary people" canons that you'd prefer to see in dwrp?

[(Anonymous)]

SOL anime, maybe? 🤔

The Love Hypothesis?

the extended Hallmark Christmas movie universe?

[(Anonymous)]

NA

I can easily think of some very popular "ordinary" canons that lots of people know but aren't really DW popular:
The Bear, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Fargo, Baby Reindeer, Fellow Travellers. Sitcoms like The Big Babg Theory (I know, sorry), The Office, or Friends. Hospital or crime serials like Grey's Anatomy, Bones, House MD, How To Get Away With Murder, CSI. Teen netflix romance (eg Love Simon, To All The Boys I've Loved Before). Classic novels. Slice of life anime, non-powered stuff like NANA or K-on!, I think sports anime is a little more popular here - honestly the more I think about animes the more I feel like maybe paradoxically that's where all the No Powers players are.

[(Anonymous)]

heat (1995)

[(Anonymous)]

Sitcoms, plenty of movies, plenty of series, all the slice of life content under anime including idols, sports, school, office etc. There are tons of non-powered content that focuses on regular people.

[(Anonymous)]

imo this is kind of a strange question because the characters are intended to be relatable in some way - all characters are. like you can't relate to, for example, wolverine's mutant powers, but surely the pressure of high expectations, relationship problems, drinking/adrenaline-chasing/other vices as a means of taking the edge off, and parenthood issues are ordinary people things, no?

[(Anonymous)]

it's fine if you don't like them, no judgment there, but that is one weird question because 90% of rp characters aren't not "ordinary people", unless you only play from sitcoms and romance manga

[(Anonymous)]

yeah I also was surprised at this framing, and wondered if anon slightly misspoke, since it is kind of a false dichotomy.

personally, I don't play from superhero canons, and also have become increasingly fond of games that strongly nerf or outright remove characters' canon powers—even though the characters I do play almost universally have something supernatural in their canons/backstories. that is because what draws me to these characters is specifically the more extreme events in their lives, rather than the powers themselves (which are more like enablers for those backstory elements). stuff like personal tragedies, unhealthy coping mechanisms, "alien"-seeming moral codes, and more positive traits like courage or determination in impossible circumstances.

in "real life" I don't want to have tumultuous romance drama where one character killed the other's brother or something and now we’re not communicating properly because of deep personal pain combined with the weight of old secrets. but getting to immerse myself in that perspective and add those melodramatic songs to my rp playlists? that's the shit.


…but all this probably isn't that surprising to OP, because I doubt they're exclusively playing Everyman Protagonist from slice-of-life sitcoms. maybe rather than the "ordinary" and "relatable" elements, they actually meant something more like the literal vulnerability that less powerful characters might have?

[(Anonymous)]

+1

I'm in a game that has a relatively small superhero cast but there's no way I'd call the vast majority of the characters "ordinary people." Even the ones who are just random man with no special powers have extraordinary things happen to them. Or, because of the nature of the canon, they'll be seen as extraordinary compared to the rest of the game (from the past, from a different world, etc.)

[(Anonymous)]

Relatability has always been the most overrated metric of character worth.

[(Anonymous)]

A. Conventionally attractive white celebrities for smut
B. Easy CR becauss everybody knows them
C. Shiny superpowers and snarky quips for winning every thread
D. All of the above

[(Anonymous)]

the good superhero conflict is real world conflict written in spectacular fantasy language

same as magic in the good fantasy.

(note that 'real world conflict' doesn't mean '1:1 allegory for specific political issues,' which usually sucks even when i agree with the writer)

[(Anonymous)]

dwrp is generally focused on exploring character psychology, interpersonal relationships, SoL and shipping. plot is typically a mechanism to achieve that.

superhero canons are generally more plot-centric and supply you with a blueprint for a character's personality along with an inventory of their Big Hero Moments (or their defining ones). dwrpers therefore have just enough arsenal to get to play the 'off-time' SoL and shippy moments they love with a skeletal character without treading into canon territory or overlapping with it.

it's not that dwrpers don't like the character-focused, 'relatable' canons you list - it's that those canons are designed to show exactly the kind of scenes that dwrpers would typically like to invent. there's less creative fun in it.