Praetoria Sympathizers Anonymous

[CoeruleumBlue]

Help, this game is turning me into a communist or something.

 

I mean, why would I want to live on Primal Earth when Praetorian Earth actually is kind of a lot better? Sure, there's a ridiculous personality cult around Marcus Cole and to a lesser extent the Praetors and Dr. Raymond Keyes... but it's hard to say Primal Earth doesn't have the same kind of thing, but even more ridiculous. As one of the NPCs put it, no one is saying Cole created the world and on the seventh day said it was good, but unlike them, why do I think I should care? Should we all praise Statesman and Positron and Synapse for keeping the world the same, but hate on Tyrant and Anti-Matter and Neuron for actually making it better even if they definitely let it get to their heads a little? It's not like they're making you go to the First Church of Cole or whatever, the Cole and other posters don't seem so different from the hero statues and posters in Paragon, but they did way more to earn it so the big egos just seem like a more understandable vice to me.

 

I mean, in Praetoria the world runs on an anti-matter reactor! Hamidon and the Rikti aren't problems! Psychic people are common and accepted in society! Instead of a bunch of random gangsters running around the Seers put all the criminals in jail except the very most organized criminals who are less of a threat to society than a bunch of random gangsters anyway since they pretty much just want their money and that's it like the mafia in every mafia movie or show ever! The technology in general is way better and the architecture is huge and impressive (and a lot of it also reminds me of architecture I see in real life and enjoy, so that might be biasing me.)

 

Screw the idea of starting characters in Praetoria and immigrating to Primal Earth, I kind of would rather just immigrate to Praetoria, not just start characters there because the story is fun, but like, other than the lack of certain utilities and day jobs in a lot of the maps, who wouldn't rather live in Neutropolis or First Ward than Kings Row or Croatoa? Who wouldn't rather hang out in Nova Praetoria or Imperial City than Atlas Park or Peregrine Island? Peregrine Island looks like a slum from the 1990s other than Portal Corp, and a couple of the big statues, which are just propaganda for keeping things like a slum from the 1990s apparently. Is this the real reason the game was cancelled the first time around, because it kept turning everyone into communists? 

 

So, umm, convince me that whatever is going on with the Ghouls is somehow way worse than whatever is going on with Longbow and I would never ever want to live on Praetoria because I am becoming kind of concerned for myself. It's one thing to think fighting the Syndicate or beating up the Resistance protestors, Seers, or both just because you can is way more fun than getting the Shining Stars to be patronized by Manticore, and another to be like, umm, what's so bad about this place anyway? It's way more advanced, more accepting of mutants, escaped science experiments, mages, aliens, and anyone else who's different, and all the Cole and Praetors and Dr. Raymond Keyes personality cult hardly seems different than what's on Primal Earth, but way more understandable if anything since they actually accomplished way more... Please convince me that the problems with Praetoria are somehow worse than there being some questionable socialist realist art on most of the walls instead of questionable impressionist art... yeah, the problems hardly seem worse in that respect either... Thanks! 

[lemming]

Woo, this will be an interesting thread to try to keep in the lines...

 

Praetoria is more fascist and definitely a dictatorship, while Primal is more libertarian, at least in my view. 

 

Though, as the story is shown, Hamidon is a much bigger problem in Praetoria.

 

I think you need to read the full history of Praetoria, it's a pretty awful place.  It just looks pretty.

[CoeruleumBlue]

1 hour ago, lemming said:

Woo, this will be an interesting thread to try to keep in the lines...

 

Praetoria is more fascist and definitely a dictatorship, while Primal is more libertarian, at least in my view. 

 

Though, as the story is shown, Hamidon is a much bigger problem in Praetoria.

 

I think you need to read the full history of Praetoria, it's a pretty awful place.  It just looks pretty.

 

When I read it it sounds bad, sure, but when you play missions there you always want to end up going Loyalist, because the Resistance just wants to blow everything up and do literal terrorism, and I'm not sure they even have a government to replace all the Cole stuff with, just anarchism and terrorism. You could always just say the Loyalists are bad and Resistance is worse and that's why we're glad we live on Primal, but like, the Freedom Phalanx and Longbow seem pretty terrible. Praetoria is pretty authoritarian and it has issues, but I'm having trouble thinking that Praetoria's issues are worse than Primal Earth's issues, especially the ones the so-called heroes caused firsthand. Like Praetoria isn't perfect but just because it's authoritarian and a bunch of people have a weird personality cult, but it doesn't seem to quite be an actual cult, around Cole actually doesn't make it seem that dystopian. Like, are people just scared because it's different, it's authoritarian, and it looks pretty and those three things are enough to make everyone think it's automatically going to be North Korea? If anything it seems more like Singapore but without all the human trafficking and I'm having trouble figuring out what's so bad about that. A lot of the wall art is questionable but it's at least more interesting than the questionable wall art on most buildings on Primal Earth, and if people name things after Cole who cares, even if Cole named things after himself that's not great but not the biggest problem anyone has ever had.

 

I'm not sure being "more libertarian" is a good tradeoff at all for all the problems on Primal Earth, especially since Primal Earth seems like it can be just as personality cult-y, just with more people instead of only Cole all the time, and none of them seem to even slightly deserve any of it because Primal Earth mostly just looks like a big slum with outdated technology and people with actual powers instead of just really good with a bow or having a suit or whatever being rejected from society and so many more problems than Praetorian Earth does. Like on Primal Earth there are a gazillion random gangs running around, on Praetorian it's basically just political fighting, the Syndicate doing organized crime, Ghouls eating people, Clockwork malfunctioning, Hamidon in First Ward and shadow stuff in Night Ward. The threats in Praetoria might be bigger but you're also less likely to ever encounter them and if you do you're just a Powers Division person who can handle it anyway, regular people on the street don't have to know or care what's going on and they'll probably have a better quality of life. If you're a regular person you probably have a better quality of life, if you're Powers Division you'll probably have a better quality of life because there's a lot of backstabbing and stuff but you can handle it, if you get abducted for an experiment like Noble Savage at worst you just get turned into a way cooler monster than what you would've on Primal Earth and if you have a problem with being a monster, well, that kind of is the Resistance's fault because who wouldn't rather be a cool monster with your mind intact than a regular human anyway? That's just your internalized Othering of people getting at yourself.

 

So yeah, I don't actually see what the big problem with Praetoria is except basically people are just afraid of things that are different and Cole has an ego and most people go along with each others' egos. There are definitely real problems in Praetoria and there's no use pretending there aren't, I just don't see how the ones in Primal Earth aren't worse. The fact Praetoria is supposed to be an evil dictatorship and... I'm not sure how it is to be honest is still moderately concerning to me. Like I'm just playing the stories and it seems like living in Praetorian Earth would be way better than Primal Earth, the stuff you have to do is more worthwhile and everything works better, I'm not sure it being a dictatorship makes it evil as much as that just drags back memories of classes in like middle school I was in where everyone made a fictional country and one group said they wanted a dictatorship and they didn't think that had to be evil and the teacher was like "wtf." Now I feel like it's my turn to become one of those edgelords. If people who accomplished more get more of an ego and backstab each other somewhat who cares, if the alternative is that the world is worse for everyone because the competent people aren't allowed to do anything. 

[CoeruleumBlue]

Regarding Ghouls, all the known people who were experimented on and turned into Ghouls were themselves Resistance members, and the Resistance members plant bombs in office buildings, and also are the ones who think Ghouls are mindless zombies rather than just regular people who look sick or ugly or like they have been totally roided out, and the ones they see just happen to be hungry all the time because their metabolisms are super high... but they never ever eat each other despite that. They would probably just eat rats or something if the Resistance didn't treat them like trash, so yeah, the Resistance is at least as responsible for Ghouls as Neuron is. It's definitely icky that the government is experimenting on people without their consent, but like, it seems like they're literally just experimenting on the people who planted bombs in an office building or aided and abetted the people who planted bombs in an office building, and once they finish the experiment they would probably hypothetically be able to cure them all anyway. I'm having a hard time seeing this as better than Ms. Liberty making a paramilitary group armed with flamethrowers and semi-automatic weapons to do things like kidnap the mutant son of a famous scientist and deliver him back to his father who will attempt to remove his mutation, or send the paramilitary group armed with flamethrowers and semi-automatic weapons to do many other things that hassle civilians in the name of the law on the Vigilante-aligned morality missions, or basically being rather a lot like what many people criticize with comic book superheroes and just not changing anything like Superman or "being a rich 1%er beating up the mentally ill" like Batman, the latter of which also brings up the fact the so-called heroes don't do anything mundane to make the city better either in addition to also adding questionable things.

 

For example, in Star Trek the crew of the Enterprise is just taken aback when they see a Dyson sphere, yet the Rikti are basically the aliens or genetically-engineered humans who would build a Dyson sphere to begin with, which is actually an idea taken from Olaf Stapledon, the Rikti are basically a combination of the genetically-engineered human-aliens from First and Last Men/Last Men in London/The Star Maker series combined with Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke which was inspired by Olaf Stapledon anyway. You're telling me the technology level in CoX is basically centuries, millennia, and maybe millions or billions of years in the future of what exists in Star Trek once you add in the fact there are ancient Lovecraftian elder gods whose technology is literally the Magic origin, yet the best Paragon City can do is a bunch of underwhelming and usually run-down and crime-ridden 1990s architecture that's less impressive in scale, aesthetics, and technology than what I see when I take walks? I get that there would be poor parts, but like, I don't get the "Superman can't fix society because then people would be shamed by an alien fixing things for them" kind of argument. I think Superman fixing society is way more interesting even if it leads to some more morally grey questions here and there.

 

Literally the only thing that seems like a real problem rather than just being kind of authoritarian that anyone can point to in Praetoria is the Ghouls, and even if we assume the Ghouls are definitely a huge problem and not something more questionable and the ends can never justify the means, and also that they're definitely not just experimenting on known terrorists or accessories to terrorism who would otherwise get a death penalty or something worse, I don't think that one thing outweighs all the horrible stuff that goes on in Vigilante alignment missions, or just allowing most of the city to be totally dilapidated and gangs to run amok when it could be genuinely really futuristic and interesting. So yeah, if that's the worse thing it's a net positive and you just sort of end up with another science fiction story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," but it's more complicated than that because the Omelas kid is clearly pure and innocent, while it seems like the Ghouls are just people who are being subject to those experiments as a punishment for literally terrorism against civilians even if they're civilians who like Cole too much, it might be curable at some point in the future anyway even if that's a very ends-justify-the-means argument, and they're being as nice to the Ghouls as they possibly can rather than acting explicitly sadistic.

 

So even with the Ghouls I just don't know how to argue Paragon City is better. The world where superheroes solve people's problems just seems better than the one where they claim to be hands-off but they really just keep the status quo around in terms of technology, societal change, and literally everything else. If people would improve society themselves you could say that supers doing it are bad guys, but it's hard to say that when they don't improve it themselves, and also when literally anyone with any talent at all even if it's learned like Natural and a lot of Magic, Technology, and Science heroes can be anyway, or that people with gifts aren't secretly a bunch of Mutants, then you're basically just saying people with talent changing society is bad because occasionally there are bad results and definitely a lot of questioanble results, and that freaks people out even if there seems to be a net positive overall. 

 

...So yeah, I'm actually having trouble figuring out what's so bad about Praetoria, because even though clearly there are some problems in Praetoria and it isn't perfect, it's hard to see any of those as being worse than the problems in Paragon City that the supers either cause directly or could fix but choose not to, the Ghouls included in that, the only perceived problems with it seem to amount to "authority bad," "change bad," and "supers should pretend not to exist for the sake of the general population (even though literally anyone with enough talent or money is a super by default so that's literally anyone who could do anything.)" I guess Paragon City takes the whole "Superheroes are defenders of the status quo" thing very for granted even though in my experience that's not actually the case with all superheroes media and the only examples people ever point to with that are basically just Avengers and Justice League and their individual members. But I don't think it's ever been true of say X-Men especially, or Spider Man, or Fantastic Four with Richard Reeds doing all his experiments all the time, or non-Marvel and non-DC superheroes like the Incredibles, or for one individual Justice League superhero, I don't think it's true of Wonder Woman who actually does try to change society unlike Superman, Batman, the Flash, and most of the rest of them. There are more stories out there where superheroes try to change society or just don't try not to change society than not, just a couple of the top superhero stories that are considered the all-American ones and whatever are status quo ones, even though those aren't even necessarily the most popular ones in addition to only being a minority of stories. 

 

I think a lot of the sort of metanarrative problems with this game in general come from the fact that it seems like it's all from Champions TTRPG lore, but the names are swapped, and then they try to actually make Defender/Statesman the unironic good guy. The bad part though is that instead of the evil Qliphothic magic world that's made by the subversion of Qabalah, you just have some vaguely socialist authoritarian world where superheroes are in charge and make some morally questionable decisions sometimes beyond just being kind of authoritarian (there's a reason I don't count stuff like Seers as huge problems, that's just part of it being authoritarian, while the Ghouls are not.) Like instead of Earth and a seriously dark magic parallel Earth that's run by demon summoning and human sacrifice and actually seriously horrendous stuff, it's literally just Earth and a more authoritarian Earth where you have some problems from people having unchecked authority and that's about it, they don't seem to be trying to be explicitly sadistic or anything even if there are sketchy decisions being made. Is that what we're supposed to be fighting against, the idea that even if everyone benefits from the supers running the government that's bad because the police will read people's minds and there will be unauthorized experiments and questionable socialist realist art and too many things named after Cole? Yeah, I went in seeing all the tropes and being like "it's the sinisterly pretty evil world, aaaah!" and came out just being like, the people in my middle school class who wanted a dictatorship as long as no one was being sent to concentration camps or discriminated against were probably right and now I feel weird. 

[lemming]

1 hour ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

When I read it it sounds bad, sure, but when you play missions there you always want to end up going Loyalist,

The only sides that seem to want to just do good are the Wardens, but you don't see the true horror of Praetoria until the final arcs.

Responsibility is probably the second least evil since they're in it to protect people without knowing how terrible the regime is.

Power, they're in it for themselves, but you get a clear idea just how insane most of the praetors are.

Crusaders, yea, they're flat out terrorists.

 

On Praetoria being a good place:  No.   Freedom there is heavily regulated and if you step out of line, you can get crippled or worse by the PPD.  Drugs in the water supply to keep you unaware, people being kidnapped for medical experiments by the people in charge, and so much more.

 

End game of course is fleeing praetoria which is except for the outpost, everyone flees to Primal.   Maybe there was a plan to retake Praetoria from the Hamidon, but shutdown happened.   We do have new arcs from HC with some of the players of Praetoria vibing off the few arcs that were written on live dealing with the after effects.

[lemming]

4 minutes ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

Regarding Ghouls, all the known people who were experimented on and turned into Ghouls were themselves Resistance members,

James Noble, not a resistance member.   Plenty of other ick is in Praetoria.

[CoeruleumBlue]

3 hours ago, lemming said:

The only sides that seem to want to just do good are the Wardens, but you don't see the true horror of Praetoria until the final arcs.

Responsibility is probably the second least evil since they're in it to protect people without knowing how terrible the regime is.

Power, they're in it for themselves, but you get a clear idea just how insane most of the praetors are.

Crusaders, yea, they're flat out terrorists.

 

On Praetoria being a good place:  No.   Freedom there is heavily regulated and if you step out of line, you can get crippled or worse by the PPD.  Drugs in the water supply to keep you unaware, people being kidnapped for medical experiments by the people in charge, and so much more.

 

End game of course is fleeing praetoria which is except for the outpost, everyone flees to Primal.   Maybe there was a plan to retake Praetoria from the Hamidon, but shutdown happened.   We do have new arcs from HC with some of the players of Praetoria vibing off the few arcs that were written on live dealing with the after effects.

 

I've seen more than one final arc though and I'm not sure we're not just getting a biased viewpoint. Is there anything wrong with just being in things for power? And why not just protect people? I'm not sure being "free from Cole" is important at all. Just because everyone grows up watching Star Wars doesn't mean it makes sense to rebel against an authoritarian regime no matter what. The alternative seems to be a world where there are a bunch of people with superpowers running around, yet everything technologically, scientifically, socially, and culturally stays in an exaggerated state of stasis because no one wants to change anything. A few scary things here and there is vastly superior to that. Plus, have you even see Vigilante morality missions? If anything Primal Earth's so-called heroes are way more immoral than the Praetoria Praetors. The Praetoria Praetors are doing experiments on people without their consent to try to turn them into gods and make them live forever, the Primal Earth heroes are doing experiments on people without their consent to try to turn off their powers because powers bother them. One of these things seems vaguely justified in a utilitarian way because there's no rule saying the best option objectively can't be one that makes everyone squeamish, the other just seems like someone is scared of change. 

 

3 hours ago, lemming said:

James Noble, not a resistance member.   Plenty of other ick is in Praetoria.

 

That's Noble Savage who I mentioned from one of the end arcs, he's literally a Resistance member and you meet him through his Resistance member friends. Even if he wasn't a Resistance member when they experimented on him, all his friends were terrorists, so yeah, of course they would single him out to remove him preemptively. The Seers know what people will do after all. They have a department of pre-crime and... the department of pre-crime happened to be correct. He wasn't a criminal when they took him to experiment on him, but he became one, and you probably, pathetically, don't even need psychic powers to do that because all his friends and associates were in the Resistance anyway. Isn't it nice that the Praetorians know who's going to become a terrorist in the future so they can isolate them in the tunnels away from the other terrorists preemptively? Thank Emperor Cole and Mother Mayhem. Primal Earth is nowhere near catching up there, their terrorists are just allowed to run around because of some inane unfounded belief in "free will."

Edited 11 hours ago by CoeruleumBlue

[Lunar Ronin]

Where do I begin...  Some of this will be very spoilery.

 

• Noble Savage wasn't initially a Resistance member.  He was a cop.  A cop that elected to undergo an experiment to make a super-cop, but it went wrong.  Neuron threw him away in the underground, like garbage.  You later find him as Noble Savage, and only after you get involved do you set him up with the Resistance.  Also, if you're an undercover Loyalist, you get the option to make Noble Savage an undercover Resistance member, secretly working for the Loyalists.
• Not all Ghouls were Resistance members.  Some were, no doubt, but not all and I doubt not even most.  Some were just abducted homeless.  In the Hatchet story arc, you optionally discover that the Alpha ghoul you tame was originally also a cop, not Resistance.
• As referenced above, Neuron is a monster.  He performs scientific experiments on people (many against their will), and then throws them away in the underground like the Ghouls and Noble Savage if they don't go as planned without any care in the world.
• Praetor Tilman/Mother Mammaries/Mother Mayhem is also a monster.  You discover later that Seers are psychic women, abducted against their will as teenagers, and stripped of their personalities.  Part of their souls are literally thrown away like garbage.  Mother Mayhem also slowly kills them by slowly feeding off of their psychic energies, which is why you don't see any middle-aged or older Seers running around.  On top of that, Mother is also highly mentally unstable.
• Praetor Duncan is a narcissistic, sociopathic whackjob who keeps a loyal army hooked on Fixadine.
• Some Resistance are also whackjobs that are more than willing to blow up innocents, yes.  Those are the Crusaders, but there is also a faction called Wardens that want to overthrow Emperor Cole with as little innocent bloodshed as possible.

I won't even get into the events of the Magisterium Trial and the Issue 24 Praetorian story arcs like Number Six's.

 

Praetor White is ultimately selfish and out for power, but he's sane and can be worked with.  Anti-Matter is also sane and can be worked with, he actually seems like the most decent of them all.  Praetor Sinclair and Emperor Cole are both control freaks and are somewhere between the others.

[Frozen Burn]

PRAETORIA FOREVER!

 

Whether it's Praetoria or Primal - both places have their advantages and disadvantages.  But....

 

In Praetoria, you can live in peaceful bliss and harmony - thank you, Enriche!  Ignorance *IS* bliss!  Who cares if the government is lying to you; who cares that Cole made a deal with Hami instead of defeating him; who cares if the Praetors have their own secret societies running things and constantly scheming; who cares if all psychics are ripped from their families to become a seer; who cares if the Syndicate secretly runs most of the corporations and subverts the regime; etc, etc, etc - we don't know about any of it because of Enriche - we're blissfully happy!!  

 

Here in Primal - the government is just as corrupt as Praetoria, but we know about it.  We struggle and struggle to fight and get nowhere whether it's against a regime, fighting crime, or enacting our own chaos seeking power and glory.  We're constantly under attack by gangs, cults, corporations, and militants.  There is no peace; no rest; no escape - no matter what alignment you are.

 

For those of us in Praetoria who are aware and off the sauce - that's okay too!  We can carve out our future however we want:  being loyal, seeking power, protecting the people and doing good works, or being crazy terrorists against the regime.

 

So, again, whether in Praetoria or Primal - both sides have their advantages or disadvantages.  Just choose what you prefer.  PRAETORIA FOREVER!  🤣