SKJAM!

For more inspiration, see the manga/anime/live action guest-starring Gene Simmons Detroit Metal City. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Manga/DetroitMetalCity While that page is mostly safe for work, the music is most assuredly NSFW, so use caution on Youtube.

For worldbuilding purposes, mention might be made of the first openly gay superhero. "Yeah, the 1970s wasn't a good time for that, but someone had to be first."

Conquest of Earth by Manly Banister, a 50s SF novel filled with manliness as the salvation of humanity. Not a good book for feminists. http://www.skjam.com/2015/01/17/book-review-conquest-of-earth/

Sebastian Quan, Esq. started his professional career as a hero-hater. He was convinced that these "masked hoodlums" were reckless lawbreakers that needed to be taken down, and used his considerable legal skills to that end. He didn't notice, though his friends and family did, that he was becoming steadily more irrational on the subject. Then came the night when he was kidnapped by a villainous group that wanted to gain access to the extensive database his office had created of dirt on superheroes. When the Champions attacked the baddies, Mr. Quan disregarded his own safety and strode into the middle of the battle to harangue the heroes. A mishap involving magical probability bolts, radioactive waste and an exploding Malvan hyperdrive component put the lawyer into the hospital. When he awoke several days later, Sebastian found his mind clearer than it had been for years. He now remembered meeting with a man who later became notorious as a mind-controlling supervillain, and being subjected to brainwashing. This same villain had repeated the process several times to keep him enthralled. That villain visited Mr. Quan in the hospital, but this time his powers had no effect, and the villain was captured. Under the circumstances, Sebastian Quan felt obligated to undo some of the damage he had caused, and his law firm now aids superheroes with legal issues. You accidentally blew up the mayor's car? Your trademarked catchphrase is being used without payment? You need zoning clearance for your hero base? You don't understand the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor, and the other heroes laugh at you? Angels' Advocate will help you out.

Large Charge has the ability to absorb electrical energy and store it as fat. He can then convert the fat back into electrical energy which he can use in multiple ways. While he has shown no upper limit to the amount of energy he can store, Large Charge has an upper limit to the amount of fat he can accumulate and still move. Also, zapping off his body's natural fat as a last resort is unhealthy in the opposite direction.

The being known as Pancake has a very simple motivation for its hatred of giants..It used to be a normalish human until a gigantic villain stepped on it. An adaptive mutation allowed Pancake to survive as a two-meter wide, one centimeter tall circle of flesh, but it can never be returned to its original form. It's not always useful in a fight with giants, but its hatred never wavers. ETA: Was typing while the above was posted.

Ah yes, the Sentinels. The team that had more people from actual France than it did Quebec.

Thor Thorsson (no relation), amateur spelunker and archaeologist, discovered a treasure trove of runestones in a remote cave in the Swedish mountains. They described recipes for potions of great power. At first, Thor considered it merely a curiosity. Then DEMON wiped out his home village in an effort to recover the runestones, not realizing they'd already been sent off to the Circle for safekeeping. Thor had memorized the recipes, and now uses the potions to battle against DEMON as Gift ("poison"). He is not above tricking civilians into swallowing berserker potions that make them nigh-unstoppable in battle...until it wears off and they die from the wounds. After all, everyone he actually cared about is already dead. Sometimes the Circle will arrive in time to undo the effects of Gift's potions, but you shouldn't count on that.

Ap-peale is Branda Parry, whose favorite book is How to Win Friends and Influence People by Norman Vincent Peale. She uses the power of positive thinking to convince people to be their better selves. It works best on normal individuals, but she can also calm mobs and find the nobility in demons. Next team: The Daytimers: This diurnal team's six members all can only operate from sunrise to sunset for differing reasons. They partner with nocturnal heroes to make sure that evil has no chance to rest.

It's more that you don't know until hindsight kicks in. Especially if, as in the Ferguson case, the authorities are sure acting like there's something untoward going on. Most of the evidence that convinced the grand jury not to indict was not available to the public until afterwards (and some of it is pretty sketchy) so the eyewitnesses that sounded credible were taken at more or less face value.

Motive was Ernestine Yokcor, a criminal profiler, before getting fired for planting evidence on an "obviously guilty" suspect and getting caught at it. Her specialty is figuring out from a person's profile what sort of crimes they might have committed in the past, in order to dig up dirt on them--but more disturbingly, what sort of crimes they might be willing to commit, and setting up scenarios that tempt them into those crimes. She's responsible for at least three murder-suicides, without ever going anywhere near the sites of the crimes. Motive covers "why."

"Picking their incident more carefully" seems a tricky business to me. From what I've seen of the "white guy with gun kills unarmed black person" protests, the incidents that spark the most outrage are those where the authorities seemingly go out of their way in the early going to make it clear that the killer is going to get off scot-free. And it only twists the knife if the authorities label the reaction to an outraging event as the problem to be solved, rather than the outraging event itself. And honestly, what would it take to convince a jury (grand or otherwise) that the white police officer (or wannabe) was committing murder of an unarmed black person? There's always some sort of excuse that could be used.

"You mean Secretary of Metahuman Affairs Doctor Annihilation." One of the things that made Marvel's registration plotline so silly was that about three months in-universe before that, it had been revealed that the U.S. government had made the Red Skull secretary of the Defense Department, so naturally the heroes aren't going to be thrilled about giving the feds all their personal info and agreeing to follow orders.

Saveed Diviljani grew up in the slums of Mumbai. His one escape from the horrible poverty and abuse of his life was the movies, and he vowed to become a great movie star in Bollywood. He stole, cheated and conned his way into enough money to get acting lessons, and then used every underhanded trick he could think of to break into the film community. He was a pretty good actor, decent singer and handsome enough, but try as he might, he could never make it past "hero's friend" or "villain's henchman." Finally, he resorted to blackmail to force himself into the lead role of his studio's next movie, based on the life of India's greatest superhero. The movie bombed, the studio went bankrupt, the executive he'd blackmailed committed suicide, Saveed's wife left him and even the hero the movie was based on repudiated the film. Distraught, Saveed wished that he had never been born. Somehow this wish became a reality. Saveed was not pleased with the results, however. A minor actor whose career Saveed had sabotaged years before had married Saveed's wife and given her three handsome children, and starred in the movie, which was a huge success and saved the studio. The hero was more popular than ever. Returning to Mumbai, Saveed was astounded to learn that his mother had pulled herself out of poverty and was now a successful businesswoman. Indeed, most of his childhood acquaintances had done much better for themselves in his absence. This would not do. Back at the studio, Saveed stole the equipment that allowed the stuntpeople to simulate the hero's powers and took off the safeties. He became a mercenary villain with a taste for destroying movies. Like the other members of Potter's Phantoms, Saveed can detect other "unborn" people; he is arguing that they should invite the villain Lucifer to join their ranks.

In the new manga Boku no Hero Academia, 80+% of the population has some kind of "quirk", so anti-mutant prejudice is not really a thing anymore. And secret identities are rare to non-existent because no one bothers to conceal their quirks. (There's one massive exception.) However, in order to be a professional super-hero and get government bennies, you have to pass tests and get a license. Thus our protagonists are attending a hero academy. There is no exam for becoming a villain, so far as we can tell--it's early in the story so we don't know if there's a bad guy school.

If you wanted to be slavish to pop culture, in your Agents of U.N.T.I.L. campaign the PCs are the ragged remnant left after it turned out that VIPER had infiltrated that agency up to the highest levels after UNTIL supposedly wiped it out years ago. PRIMUS is then a new U.S.-centric organization meant to be a local replacement for UNTIL.

Quite, but you can see why one person infers "presents as male" from the use of "he" for artificial intelligences, while you do not. The usage makes it ambiguous, and people see what they're expecting.

But that brings up that designating beings whose gender is unknown or lacking with male pronouns tends to imply that male is the "default" gender, the "normal", while female is deviant. Which is why many writers now are moving away from that.

The catch there is that generally male characters in comics are costumed/posed/framed for "power" while female characters generally are costumed/posed/framed for "sexy". Male readers may assume that this is equivalent, but female readers can spot the difference. (It's due to male creators thinking that "power" is what makes men sexy, it seems.) Each individual instance, of course, is the result of a valid creative choice, but the aggregate sends a message that the creators weren't entirely intending to send. Manga companies have picked up on this a bit more, resulting in things like "Bishonen Jump Syndrome" where over time the art styles have shifted to favor male characters that have designs, costumes and poses that also appeal to female readers for better sales. Which has led to a certain amount of backlash from more "old-school" readers who preferred the more "manly" look. (Exacerbated, I think, because this kind of character design used to be primarily used for ambiguously gay villain characters in the boys' comics.)

No one (almost) is saying you can't enjoy fanservice in a game, or trying to ban games with fanservice in them. However, if the fanservice is the primary selling point, or the most enjoyable part of the game, then you may want to consider what the priorities of the game company are in comparison to yours. And also whether, in this case, the fanservice (and possible problematic tropes) outweigh the main character's good points. It's worth keeping in mind that, as anyone who watches a lot of anime comes to realize, that there are different levels of fanservice. In no particular order: "Let's have a moment of fun for the lads before getting into the main story." "Yes, the women's costumes are kind of impractical and designed to show off their assets, but you get used to it." "I think there may be something neurologically wrong with the heroine, given how many times she 'accidentally' shows off her goodies." "I never thought I'd get bored looking at women in their underwear, but here we are." "I need a shower. With a steel wool pad and lye soap. Even then, I'm not sure I'll ever feel clean again." "Oh, just go ahead and make it a porno, already."

"You didn't follow up to make sure Mardon was actually dead?" "No, I had people to save from disasters, a day job to do, and besides, it's not like we live in a comic book, right?"

For years (but after the Weisinger Era) Superman's age was frozen at 29; this was an actual plot point once.

On a slightly more positive note, here's a history article on how we got to here. https://medium.com/@increment/the-first-female-gamers-c784fbe3ff37 I was a member of Lee Gold's Alarums & Excursions APA for several years.

The author may have used "do not link" to make the addresses not provide "views."

I liked that Skye at least mentioned Rising Tide, but would still like to see more of it.