I love this, though, because my favorite thing about Superman is he isn’t Batman. I love Batman too, but Superman isn’t a dude who decided to live his life in pursuit of a vendetta against society when he was eight and then just did nothing for the next two decades but get super jacked, become the world’s greatest detective, and memorize every strategy used by every winner in every field of competition in history. Superman is a very good-hearted person who knows how to bale hay, use AP Stylebook, and break meteors into manageable bite-sized pieces by hitting them real hard. And I’m not saying Superman isn’t smart. He’s a bright guy, he’s just not like, one of the celebrated geniuses of the DC Universe. The best thing about Superman is he is basically a normal dude who happens to be orders of magnitude stronger than anyone else. Normal dudes have brain farts. Normal dudes are presented with a life-or-death situation they have less than four seconds to resolve and make a decision that is not optimal. Normal dudes aren’t typically asked to rescue a child from a 10,000 ton machine bearing down on him at 85mph, but if they were, they would probably sometimes panic a little and do dumb shit like ruin a train when they could have just whisked the child to safety.

I think sometimes Superman makes the wrong decision, not necessarily to the result of extreme catastrophe, but something like this, where everyone is standing around clapping and cheering and the kid’s parents are weeping in gratitude and they want to pose for a picture for the 6 o’ clock news with Superman and the conductor, and in the crowd someone is like “Why didn’t he fly the kid out of the way?” and rather than rolling with the fact that the emperor is naked his friend just says “Shut up, Drew, it’s Superman.”

And then, because I also love Batman for very different reasons, I imagine that later on the same day Bruce Wayne gets a phone call and Clark Kent is like “Hey, Wayne, I uh, need a favor.”

“Do you now.”

“Yeah, I, uh, kind of owe the Union Pacific Railroad $60,000.”

“Oh, and why’s that?”

“Come on, don’t do this to me. It was all over the news.”

“I’m prepared to write you a no-strings-attached check for the full amount on the condition that you explain your entire thought process from beginning to end.”

Anyway, that’s why I like Superman.

this is god tier commentary

There is literally only one hard-and-fast rule in D&D character creation, which is one of basic courtesy to the DM and others–you have to create a character who, for literally any reason at all, would join an adventuring party.

(Like I said, this is basic courtesy; nothing is worse than the player who, when the DM introduces a plot hook, responds with “but why would MY character care? why would I get involved in this monster attack? MY character would just let the town guard handle it!” 

The answer to “but why would my character want to get involved?” is “Because you’re not the only player at the table, and you’re not the main character in a novel.” Pulling the session to a grinding halt around your character’s…lack of interest in the entire game….is rude and unfair. This is a team-based game, and an understood rule of conduct is that you are going to be playing a character who will–reluctantly perhaps, warily certainly, out of fear or self-interest by all means, but will nevertheless–join forces with the rest of the group and have some form of engagement with the plot)

And get this.

The vast majority of players snottily talking down to the actually interesting and engaging character concepts for not being “realistic” enough? They violate that one rule all the fucking time. A lone-wolf jaded rogue sitting by themself in the corner might be “realistic,” but if they keep no-selling plot hooks and refusing to engage with the plot because “it would be out of character”, then they’re not a good character for D&D and their players should have made a better one.

Literally the only law of character creation is to make a character who will in some way, shape, or form engage with the fucking story.

Make characters who are INTERESTING and ENGAGING and FUN TO PLAY and yes, don’t let assholes ruin your fun, but also: You are probably objectively better at this than they are and you deserve to keep that in mind.

NEVER take character criticism from people who only have one rule they’re expected to follow and still can’t figure it out.