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Combat Value is Everything

MoeDantesMoeDantes
edited 2011-09-30 13:37:01 in Media
no longer cuddly, but still Edmond
Yeah this thread's a spinoff of a spinoff. What bothers me about "girls have to fight or they're useless" isn't so much the gender equality, rather that... it seems like nowadays, a character's value is judged solely on how much ass they can kick. So everyone has to be badass, everyone has to have some power that allows them to mop the floor with Thanos, or something like that. This is one reason I think fiction is getting worse. We lose the more subtle and nuanced clockwork that old teams, like the Old Who companions or the original Masters of the Universe have, in favor of a bunch of people who go around FIRIN' THER LAZARS. We even got weaponized regenerations, just so the writers could explain how "bad ass" the timelords were--when the fact that they are Time. Lords should have been enough. I've even seen this pop up in the Pony fandom. Whenever people role-play, they always want to be Unicorns or Pegasi. Why? Because "Earth Ponies can't do anything." This is in a show where 90% of the plots don't involve any form of physical conflict, mind. Personally, I blame RPGs and Comic Books. They've destroyed our collective imagination by turning everything into numbers.

Comments

  • SotiCotoSotiCoto
    RE-ANIMATOR
    Well.... straight numbers ain't so cool...  
    But I like it when abilities are thought out to the point of being overthought...  Totally love it, in fact. 

    Super-creative powers for pretty much wiping the floor with stuff in fancy ways are where the awesome is at. 
    The only reason 80s characters shoop-da-whooping all over the place is entertaining is because it is super cheesy, retro-kitsch silliness which makes no attempt to justify anything...  and thus automatically so-bad-its-awesome. 
  • BeholderessBeholderess
    Earth Ponies can't do anything? They are the strongest! Unicorn magic is not combat-useable anyway unless unicorn in question happens to be specialised in magic, which seems to screw everyone's perceptions.

    Ahem. Completely Missing The Point, yes, yes.
  • BeeBee
    edited 2011-09-30 13:54:19
    Anyone sufficiently awesome will be perfectly capable of kicking some sort of ass.  Even non-combat characters.  It's not even something you need to force into their character or give them absurd abilities.  It'll just kind of happen.

    Asskicking isn't a perk on the character sheet.  It's just a mindset.
  • MoeDantesMoeDantes
    edited 2011-09-30 14:04:19
    no longer cuddly, but still Edmond
    Actually, Beholderess, I think you highlighted part of the problem. People nowadays are incapable of judging characters by anything except the superficial and obvious. So "asskicking" becomes directly proportional to how flashy their moves are or whether or not they have any immediately-identifiable perks, such as having wings. Back in the 60s, 70s and 80s badassery could be more implicit ("the Vic Viper goes down with one hit but it still beat the entire Bacterion empire!"), but nowadays everyone has to have some flashy power or people just don't get it.

    It wouldn't surprise me if Captain America shoots lasers out of his eyes in the new movie.
  • BeholderessBeholderess
    Agreed here. Asskicking is more about result, for this one, and "cool" does not come as much from flashy moves as from attitude
  • SotiCotoSotiCoto
    RE-ANIMATOR
    This reminds me why whether I'm capable of making an awesome character in ANY P&PRPG is entirely dependent on whether the GM is a dick or not.  It bothers me deeply. 

    The most effective character I ever made was created as a deliberately weak joke character... but worked well because the GM was awesome (in case you're wondering, I was allowed to play a Janitor in a game of Inquisitor. Yeah. 40k Inquisitor, and I played a bog-standard janitor because I was feeling sullen during char-creation. He ended up being able to use Tyranid bioweapons because the secret to using them was to thoroughly clean them with bleach first.... Best not to ask, really). 
  • MoeDantesMoeDantes
    no longer cuddly, but still Edmond
    So you played as Roger Wilco, basically?
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