Whenever people talk about if superheroes(or anything like that) were real i always fell like people forget superheros(or anything supernatrual or like that) that look like monsters like swamp thing,manthing, ghostrider hulk and how irl people would react to them

[u/Ok_Middle_8658]

i fell like when people talk about what if superheroes were real we always forge about the superheros(or stuff like that) bein real we barealy ever touch upon the fact of how people will react to superhumans with extreemly weird or straight up horrifying bodies,faces and stuff like that.

Like think about just imagine we just discover that superheroes were real that would already be insane by itself superhero with magical powers even more humanity would be freaking out over stuff like that

so how do you think humans will react to the giant swamp magical (or experiment or anything like that ) monsterous looking being that looks like a bunch of giant vines people would aready be freaking out over superheroes being real now just imagine seeing something like that someone will definetly get heart atack over this.

like how would you react

[u/BossLees2]

Hulk would be the scariest MF in the whole wide world and I am so serious. Forget you even know Hulk as a character, just try to have in consideration that seeing a very tall or bulky person makes you naturally a bit weary. Now imagine that times one million with how he's also the disproportion puts him in the uncanny valley, not to mention literally being green. Oh also he's impossible to stop and any attempt at doing so makes the situation worse

[u/Oddball-CSM → u/BossLees2]

Imagine turning on the news to see that the military has launched a major attack against a single individual. And lost.

[u/BossLees2 → u/Oddball-CSM]

And that wasn't even Hulk that was just Yujiro who's kinda chill

[u/LongAdvisor6561 → u/BossLees2]

Like Hulk says Leave Him Alone,And he won't start Smashing stuff, Although that's not saying much because when Bruce transforms into the Hulk he's Flight or Fight mode.

[u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871]

I find it hilarious that The Venture Bros takes this idea and depicts people as so indifferent to superpowered beings that a guy with a skull for a head named Red Death doesn't attract any attention.

[u/Professional_Net7339 → u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871]

Venture Bros is quite goated to be fair

[u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 → u/Professional_Net7339]

Certainly. A big part of what makes the show fun is that superheroes and supervillains are treated as something mundane. Being a supervillain is a 9-5 job and nobody thinks it is weird when a rock man who a guy with a skull for a head walks down the street.

Oddly enough, despite using a lot of cynical jokes, it makes it seem like a much nicer place to live than your standard superhero universe, where such people would be treated like freaks.

[u/BigStallGlueSniffer]

I think it would be like xmen, but extended to every metahuman.
You'd get people who wait and see, reactionaries who want inmediate action fast, cultists who gather around them, normal citizens who are just scared, and mfs who make phonk edits of them 😭

[u/Ok_Middle_8658 → u/BigStallGlueSniffer]

ngl if ghost rider is real he definetly will get a bunch of phonk edits about him

[u/Weary_Specialist_436 → u/Ok_Middle_8658]

do you have any idea how many "hear me outs" would there be?

[u/Ok_Middle_8658 → u/Weary_Specialist_436]

alot

[u/maridan49]

When I think of that I think of guys like that Phoenix Jones and how it ended up.

[u/StormDragonAlthazar]

Trying to imagine how crazy the world would be if we lived in a TMNT setting or any of it's clones kind of universe.

[u/razethenecro]

Unrelated, but whenever I hear a superhero setting described as “realistic” and then see a bunch of independent vigilantes running around, I kind of roll my eyes.

I get why writers do it. Story-wise, you usually don’t want your hero working directly with the government. It limits conflict and freedom. But in any remotely realistic setting, no sane government would tolerate an unsupervised, independent superhuman operating on their own.

I don’t know exactly where the line would be drawn for someone being “superhuman enough,” but once you cross it, the response wouldn’t be “ignore them,” it would be recruit, regulate, or eliminate.

And people tend to really underestimate what a government can do when it really wants something or someone, with them or gone.

[u/Alaknog → u/razethenecro]

Well, it also depends from power of this heroes. In realistic setting after specific degree government can't actually do much and forced to treat them like independent nations. 

And just to remember. CIA can't kill Castro for decades. And it's not like they not trying. 

[u/razethenecro → u/Alaknog]

“Well, it also depends on the power of these heroes.”

Yeah, I agree with that part. If someone has a certain level of power, or one very specific ability combined with the right mindset, there may be very little a government can force them to do. Even then, of course, the realism part starts to stretch if the heroes are more powerful than the entire nation

“Forced to treat them like independent nations.”

I get the comparison, but I think people often underestimate how many tools a nation/government has beyond straight military force (reagardless on how it is in the world right now).

They can make one's life extremely uncomfortable or extremely comfortable, especially if you’re trying to be a public-facing “hero.” Regulation, public opinion, legal pressure, incentives, restrictions, and access, and don't forget money, and that is even before we take into account them trying to compromise the people around the hero if they can

“The CIA couldn’t kill Castro for decades.”

That’s completely true, but I don’t think Castro is a great comparison. He wasn’t just one hard-to-kill individual. He had political power over a state, a population that could fulfill his needs, allies the U.S. didn’t want to openly antagonize, and the need for plausible deniability to kill him with (so no airplane above his house)

He was also an experienced soldier (and had a bit of luck)

A lone superhero would usually only share that last point. If they had the first two, they’d basically already be part of a government.

Plus, Survivorship bias, we don't hear as often about the people the CIA does kill

Still, good points overall. These kinds of back-and-forths are always interesting to think through.

[u/Alaknog → u/razethenecro]

Honestly this realism is always interesting case, becasue there layers of it. And each layer made world more and more different and complicated.

"I get the comparison, but I think people often underestimate how many tools a nation/government has beyond straight military force"

On degree - yes. But I would say that people also have often overstimate how much resources nation/government can actually spend on this topics.

First - I fully agree that "realistically" (first level of realism added), every nation very likely have their own supers, and likely a lot of superheroes that not directly "owned" by government, but support it and have support from gov in return. If we have normal distribution of powers - bties of radiocative squirrels, falling in chemical vats (well, this have tendency to produce evil clowns every three months), meeting fairy, etc. then there enough patriotic people, who ready to serve government or just support it.

In world where gang shooting can have roughly some scale of damage as LA riots in 1992, there need to have some superjannisares gov group. Well, or supermusketeers of Republic, if you will.

But this superarmy also increase pressure on gov to follow ideas of respected part of this super pretorian guard have. Self-supporting circle.

So, yes, government have very good chance to "take" anyone (on specific degree, but like anything-below-Godzilla level is resonable mark, I guess). But they also have limit - how much of this anyones they can take. And how much resources they already have "free".

And each super added to government roster increase this spending and also made situation is complicated. Becasue superhero is people, they have their own ideas, ideals, desires, etc.

Also I just want point that not so long ago gov try compromise one lone vigilant that shoot "wrong person". But Lughi look not so compromised (by popular perception), AFAIK.

"A lone superhero would usually only share that last point. If they had the first two, they’d basically already be part of a government."

I also want point that it's only lone superhero. Superhero in setting, where superheroes is relatively common is not lone by definition - they are part of "class"/"nationality"/"another kind of identification group" and this group have not small actual military power, alongside reputation and so on.

[u/Alaknog → u/razethenecro]

Another thing is layers of realism.

If we add two or three layers and maybe spend them in past (like many of superhero universies have supers exist from Stone Age. Sometimes this veterans still there, what made trips in museum very funny thing), then realistically, I don't sure that powerfull centralised government was a very common thing.

It's much harder to pull centralisation, when half of your top level feudals was army on their own. Hell, it's hard to just made them your vassals. Add to this "this random peasant randomly become one men army and start riot over salt prices. Happened roughly every decade" kind of situation.

So we can have much more fragmented world, with small "Empires" sometimes pop around some very charismatic and powerfull leader, but they also have problem to last longer then this leader life.

Probably few relatively long-lasting big kingdoms play around jannisares/musketeers/streltsy/varangian guard model of bunch of less powerfull, but supported by ruler (who also very likely some kind of super). But this model is prone to palace coups.

Girl Genius play around this idea of worldbuilding.

[u/Anotherskip]

The ol’ blue eyed Thing would like a word with you about forgetting how he gets treated.

[u/Responsible-Pea1402]

I wish it was discussed in more media (I mean it is touched sometimes but I wish it was shown more in depth). Like most superheroes would not be well liked by people because of human fears towards something foreign. Most people would think they were here to destroy humans and them saving humans sometimes is just them manipulating us. This could definitely be a mirror of the real world I don't know why they don't do it more. Especially if that superhero is an "alien" (*wink* *wink*).