Should I include a Native American antagonist?

I've changed my mind about my villains' racial identity. I want to make them aliens from another dimension now. Aliens are fun to design and don't carry any ethno-political baggage with them.

Well, unless you go for Space Jews or certain kinds of Scary Dogmatic Aliens, anyway.

edited 23rd Oct '12 10:11:57 AM by Iaculus

It wouldn't be too far fetched to have a Native American be the head of an emerging multinational technologies firm would it?

edited 7th Nov '12 5:49:42 PM by Worlder

It sounds like you're trying to build a Native American Magneto. Which could work well.

If you want him to be a Tony Stark/Bruce Wayne Guy, no not happening. They inheriated their wealth. They sustained it on their own smarts yes, but it's easy to build your own superhero when you've had the best education and supplies money can buy from birth.

You can start him on the reservation fine so long as you research your stuff. Make him a selfstarter who puts himself through school. Hell, college is a good place for building development over where he may start getting more jaded: scholarship awards and complications, dating and romantic intrests, friendships, social groups, competition with projects, internships, impressive professors for good or bad, etc.

As long as you help the audience see how he could have interpreted the situations in a realistic way, then the stress your character builds up is not just palpable, but understandable.

Magneto was a poor kid, then he goes through the Holocaust. Charles Xaivier has always been comfortable and wealthy. While Xaivier is "good" and Magneto is "bad", both sides are still human and both sides make sense. There were some that came out of the Holocaust as bitter as Magneto. Others didn't. I would recommend some character to act as his Charles even just in part to show he didn't go bad because he grew up on the reservation or experienced harassment alone, but because of a choice reaction.

Make his feelings understandable, but his methods, well, reasonable but not too over the top. Without the context of the Holocaust, some of Magneto's genocidal tendancies against humans is just mustache twirling silliness. But because of his horror and pain, we get it. We don't have to like it, but we get it.

Another one is the villian from Watchman, the smartest guy naming himself after the pharoahs, totally forgot his name. He's understandable batshit, but we can understand why he feels destroying millions to save billions is important. Likewise we understand Rorshack too. He's scary as fuck and we do not want a real life replica. But he's an understandable character as well.

Just do a lot of homework. Maybe he's inspired by a folk tale that he totally confuses. Maybe he misinterpretes or reinterpretes an element from his tribe as his feeling of justification or his feeling of self worth.

There is room for real potential here. :)

Yes I think I should explore different periods of his life as part of his character development.

Also, once again his main gripe with this new world began when his childhood home being attacked and destroyed.

edited 9th Nov '12 10:22:37 AM by Worlder

I don't know if it really fits but you could do something like Scarface / American Gangster / Lord Of War. Poor immigrant/nonwhite getting rich on drugs/weapons(/illegal gambling?) and even competing(fighting?) the big crime syndicates.

edited 9th Nov '12 11:39:23 AM by m8e

If there's one crime that he would be guilty of, it would be weapons trafficking.

Trafficking of advance experimental weapons no less.

edited 9th Nov '12 5:36:55 PM by Worlder

Do you think it would be a good idea to have him be kidnapped by superpowered neo-Nazis?

Such an event would only further add to the seed of paranoid and distrust implanted in him since the supers started appearing (it happens in around the same month of the feral mutant attacks).

Full-on neo-Nazis might be a bit too controversial. You could dial 'em down to Right Wing Militia Fanatics, though.

edited 30th Nov '12 12:07:49 AM by Specialist290

Actually, I think neo-Nazi villains might be less controversial.