If real people got powers, do you think they would all become corrupt, evil psychopaths?
The Boys is barely even satire, they pull so much from reality.
Do you think The Boys is an accurate representation if real people had superpowers?
Submitted 2 weeks ago by Grimreaper@sopuli.xyz to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
JeSuisUnHombre@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
4am@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I used to think it was over the top for expositional purposes. Used to.
Corporal_Punishment@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
The only thing stopping Homelander from going on a rampage, killing tens of thousands of people and seizing control of the world is that he cares what people think about him. He wants to be loved, not feared.
He kills innocent people but he does it discreetly or when it looks like he can justify his actions.
But can you imagine an absolute piece of shit like Stephen Miller getting super powers? He’d be far, far worse.
Lemming6969@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This is one of the only issues I have with the show… Homelander’s leash appears to be super hamfisted in, or in general it makes little sense why corporate has so much control with so little relative power. Lots of people in that world have powers, and it would be total anarchic chaos in reality.
theneverfox@pawb.social 2 weeks ago
Isn’t that like his entire arc? He slowly realizes his leash is only as strong as he believes it to be
herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
In the comics Vaught does have a real fail-safe against Homelander.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
They haven’t told us yet how Vought controls Homelander.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
He already shoots spray on hair from his finger tips.
je_skirata@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
The realistic thing about The Boys is that it isn’t a world where normal people get superpowers, it’s an evil company making superheroes into celebrities for profit.
Godort@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
No. I don’t think The Boys would be an accurate portrayal.
I think it would be much worse. Like apocalyptic.
MudMan@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
No, it's much more interesting than that.
It's an accurate representation of Garth Ennis being mad about having to work with superheroes despite not liking that at all and being a bit of a petty bitch with a bit of a dudebro sense of humor that, frankly, we all overrated at the time because when you were a teenager in the 90s you thought Preacher was hilarious and it got to his head a bit.
And then it's an accurate representation of Eric Kripke who was very much the right age to have gone through that, taking the material and going "well, that Trump guy sure was a thing, huh?" and "aren't you kind of over all those MCU movies, also?" because superheroes in film were at the same point in 2019 than they were on comic books in 2006.
Don't be the teenager we all were in the 90s and assume that "edgy and mean and over the top" is the same as "smart and realistic". It's not.
I'll say that the show is at least less callous than the original material and it's at least trying to be political, which makes it slightly more plausible and internally consistent than Ennis' HR complaint of a comic book. Hollywood has a history of taking this edgelord crap (see also: every single Mark Millar adaptation) and making it palatable by applying the same mainstreaming and dumbing down that kills every Alan Moore adaptation. Turns out if the original material isn't that smart to begin with that's actually a good thing to do.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
It’s an accurate representation of Garth Ennis being mad about having to work with superheroes despite not liking that at all
I’m slightly confused… Are you suggesting that Jeff Ennis, the creator of The Boys, previously worked alongside actual superheroes?
MudMan@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
No, no, Jeff Ennis worked as an actual superhero briefly in the 1970s you're thinking of John Ennis, who created The Boys as a musical in the 90s, but he was mad about his working conditions.
magnetosphere@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
I like how Vought is (among other things) so much like American professional sports organizations, the NFL in particular.
boolean_sledgehammer@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Watchmen was a pretty good depiction of this as well.
Someone with literal godlike powers would probably lose touch with human concerns eventually. People who put on masks and start fights with criminals are deeply unwell.
They aren’t paragons of society. They’re deeply fucked up people.
Doubleohdonut@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Are superpowers analogous to money IRL? If so, I think you have your answer.
GrayBackgroundMusic@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
One hundred percent. If you liked that show, then you might like the Wildcards series or Aberrant rpg.
Have you ever seen someone poor get a lot of money and they go from being a normal person to a psychopath? Not everyone does, but enough do that you can notice. Being rich is a super power irl. If you’re a billionaire, you can crash a 100k car and just go get another one. A middle class person cannot comprehend having a 100k car.
There’s a reason the phrase “fuck you money” exists.
devfuuu@lemmy.world [bot] 2 weeks ago
Yes, absolutely. I’ve seen people. They would be even worse than the show.
Cruxifux@feddit.nl 2 weeks ago
It’s not a direct comparison, but look at what happens to people that have money and power in our society. They become evil monsters. I think superpowers could have a similar effect. Although getting money and power requires you to be a monster already on some level, I don’t think suddenly gaining superpowers would have the exact same effect.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 2 weeks ago
They become evil monsters.
Most, sure, but far from all. The list of historical benevolent dictators isn't very long, but it's not short either.
Cruxifux@feddit.nl 2 weeks ago
That’s true. The list of benevolent billionaires is zero as far as I’ve seen though.
Paragone@lemmy.world 1 week ago
You’ve identified the key, though, right there: “suddenly gaining” is the problem.
You know how caterpillars form themselves a coocoon, & then inside it they are essentially reduced-to-biological-slag, & … smashing themselves against the sides of their coocoon, unable to escape the process, they are re-formed into something that we call a moth or butterfly?
The process has to make someone’s character match their “powers”.
Which is what we, globally, rejected.
Want a gun?
Who says you need to become competent to respect others’ lives ( any species ) AND you need to become competent to respect just how destructive-of-life guns are?
Just provide money, & in many jurisdictions, you’ve now got a gun!
( & people wonder why there were around 700 mass-shootings in the US of A, a couple years ago, in a single year )
IF the process of gaining superpowers forced evolution-of-character, THEN it shouldn’t be a problem.
IF the process of gaining technological superpowers-over-nature/ecology isn’t forcing character-evolution to equivalent degree,
THEN expect the whole human-evil dimensions … narcissism/machiavellianism/sociopathy-psychopathy/nihilism/sadism/systemic-dishonesty/displacing-considered-reasoning-for-ideology/displacing-objectivity-for-ideology/etc to opportunistically wield technology for their-faction’s supremacism.
IF the good have difficulty being machiavellian, but the evil don’t, THEN the evil win, right?
Natural Selection.
Same with ALL those dimensions.
That is why having the spine to make authority only available for the accountable+responsible is a requirement, of true civilization.
We haven’t done that, & we may not allow it to happen.
Universe has no obligation to allow us to survive this-century, though: The Great Filter is an actual thing, & our “entitlement” is just our unconscious-ego’s fantasy.
Toddler-character with nukes isn’t infinitely-viable.
Universe corners such idiocy into exterminating itself.
That, too, is Natural Selection.
_ /\ _
Cruxifux@feddit.nl 1 week ago
I just think there are certain levels of authority and power over other people that no human is actually responsible enough to be trusted with.
Strider@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s been proven that power corrupts humans and just recently even in a medical / biological way that empathy is lost.
So, absolutely.
glitchdx@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Depends on who gets superpowers, and how such powers are acquired.
The broad strokes of The Boys makes some degree of sense if we start with the premise that some megacorporation controls the manufacture and publicity of all supers. However, if supers can come from other sources, then what limitations are we putting on the premise?
I am of the opinion that most people are inherently good. Most people are also inherently stupid and cowardly, but keep in mind that these circles on the venn diagram are independent of each other despite some overlap. However, if given an opportunity to choose between helping and hurting, without any fear of repercussions either way, most people would choose to help.
There’s a popular quote: “power corrupts”, which is a shortened version of “absolute power corrupts absolutely”. I think this quote misses something fundamental: “power attracts the corruptable”. In a world without gods, no one I’d ever trust to be one would ever actively make the choice to become one unless it was forced on them somehow.
If superpowers were distributed more randomly, then the odds of us getting a superman instead of a homelander improve greatly. Still a dice throw though.
dil@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Nah, I think itd be 60% good people but the worst 10% would be in power pretending to be better than those good enough people
rollerbang@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Isn’t it about the same in the series?
Bazoogle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yes. They just dont even cover most people
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I think people would still be people, but the monsters would be unstoppable. Psychopaths and corporations would be just as bad as depicted in the show.
However, normal people would still be normal. See extraordinary for more info. In this series, people have their mundane problems on top of whatever problems the powers cause.
snooggums@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
It isn't the super powers that make them assholes, the seven just draws in assholes who abuse the ones that aren't.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Further especially with powers granted from an injectable serum, the kind of people naturally drawn to it will already be the kind of people seeking power for their own ends.
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Nope, cause pharmaceutical company would produce a drug that you take for a short time and never need again. Not enough profit. And they would have no actual control over the superheros. In the boys, all of the sups seemed to care what the public thought of them so much, they would do what the corp wanted. In reality, the ones who didn’t care would outnumber the ones who did. And they would just kill whoever they wanted, and threaten to kill others to get what they wanted. Kinda like the oligarchy we have today, but with far less constraint, and no need to even try to hide things like being pedos and racists and such.
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
In reality, the ones who didn’t care would outnumber the ones who did.
That’s not true. Most people care about public perception. From dictatorships to narcissists to normal people
Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There are certainly people who do. But I think they are the minority. They do sort of bunch up though. So if you are one, you probably don’t realize you are the minority.
herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
The comic series, yes. The TV started similar, but I think it has been very gradually Marvelizing.
madcaesar@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Season 4…was…absokutr garbage 1 was solid I enjoyed 2, 3 was fun because of soldier boy… Then the finale was like wtf… And the season 4 is some of the worst television ever made holy shit…
P00ptart@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sounds like you’re of the group that thought homelander was the good guy. When you realized that homelander is trump, you got mad and decided you hate the show.
DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I expect a viltrimite scenario
cmbabul@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
If it were an X-Men sort of world then no, otherwise absolutely
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
x-men under xavier, is too goody two shoes, basically toeing the line of the us, realistically its more like Magnetos side that would be more realistic.
cmbabul@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
No i meant superpowers arose as a natural mutation and not the result of a chemical compound. Not ideologically
baatliwala@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s somewhat exaggerated but I would definitely say yes
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
it parodies trump alot, i think kripke made hints about that when he was writing the shows.
njm1314@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The show or the comics? Cuz those are two vastly different things.
Jarix@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
No. If it’s just the getting powers and it’s not like a toxin thing that actually corrupts/poisons.
Absolutley there will be those that need to be put down hard, but I don’t think it would be as set up in The Boys
Part of why that world works the way it does is Vought. The other is that Homelander is tiers above the other characters and he is a psychopath raised by an evil organization. Given that no one was able to compare to Homelander he couldn’t be challenged. His treatment of other supes is a large reason why that is.
There would still be chaos, but it wouldn’t be like that show, I don’t think because there are many people that would actually just want to be helpful
Fame and fortune already makes people nutty, or rewards bad behavior maybe, but I don’t think the powers themselves would corrupt people and make them evil.
Bazoogle@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Part of why that world works the way it does is Vought
You act like we don’t have Vought in the real world already. Vought is literally just a parody of Amazon, and not just because it’s made by Amazon Prime
Jarix@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I didn’t say we didn’t. Not sure why you think I’m ignoring companies like Amazon. If they operated as freely as Vought does then yes it would look the same, but Vought created supers in The Boys and controlled access to them. Thats where I was pretty clear about establishing my opinion and how the real world is different from the world of The Boys.
Spesknight@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If the super were Americans yes, probably.
AlecSadler@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
If people had superpowers, vats of trauma and ego issues, and megacorps wanted to wrangle it for profit and control… absolutely yes.
This would totally happen in the US and other countries. 100%. No doubt.