Super Registration Act Description

Super Registration Act

Is it just me, or is this written fairly narrowly compared to the examples? Honestly, it feels like it's entirely about the Western superhero comic industry, which had an infamous story arc about it, but most examples are just a background part of the setting. That's not to say that the analogies, like gun control, don't hold up, but the particular conflict it assumes rarely exists.

Perhaps this is a cultural thing. Obviously gun control is only an issue at all in America: most other 1st world countries take it for granted that guns should be controlled. Why would anyone challenge that? And the fact that it's controversial in America means there's a decent number of people on both sides, including those who believe that guns should obviously be controlled. So the only people who would use this trope as a controversy are those who support gun freedom or equivalent.

Of course, superpowers aren't guns. You can't surrender your superpowers to a benign government. It's a part of who you are, and therefore liberty issues are even more implicated. But even still, most examples don't show it as controversial. It's usually portrayed as the most logical and reasonable result of having a world with superpowers that aren't secret (ie: no The Masquerade), and has no moral value. Even ostensibly silly series (or perhaps especially them) will show it as a nod to realism.

Honestly, as I'm writing this I start to wonder if this is a People Sit On Chairs thing. I'm pretty sure it's not, since getting registered can be a plot point even when benign and uncontroversial, but that's basically what it is. Governments like to register things. It's how they govern. We have birth certificates and marriage certificates and driver's licenses and everything, so why the heck would superpowers be any different? Why is this controversial, or rather why did the writer of this article assume it was?

I took out the comparison to gun control. It didn't make it any clearer.

And "I've never read a work where it was used" is not a sufficient reason to call something Chairs.

edited 15th Apr '14 9:19:02 AM by Madrugada

I've read plenty of works that use this trope, they just don't have the implications that the description says it should have. Unless you're saying that examples where there's no conflict over the existence of the law should be removed? That would be quite a pruning.

edited 15th Apr '14 9:50:24 AM by Clarste

The description doesn't mandate a conflict, and I'm seeing examples of the registration act being manipulated by corrupt people in the Anime&Manga folder, so I'm not inclined to believe the description is overly narrow.

I do think most of the description belongs on the Analysis subpage.

For the record, I don't think there's an actual problem with the description or the trope (otherwise this should go in Trope Repair), I was just wondering about the meandering and analytical nature of the write-up.

Clear Concise Witty: the "meandering and analytical" belongs on Analysis, if it is needed at all (and I do think some of it is important, but most is interfering with describing the trope).

Except when you can. Such as in the third X-men movie. Then they become like guns again and the villains just sound nuts when they call being De Powered "genocide."

Even then, they're more like arms and hands then guns. Governments can confiscate them, but I think most people would agree that it's a bigger deal than gun control.

I'm sure Magneto would call the ability to rip the Golden Gate Bridge out of the ground "just like an arm or a hand." But then he's a mass-murderer and that ability is his weapon of choice.

But I doubt most people would want to live in a world where random people are allowed to freely and secretly wield weapons of mass destruction just because they happened to randomly come into possession of them.

In fiction where you have a more or less omniscient viewpoint, the audience can say "those are the good guys, they save the world, of course they should get to use their powers." Especially as the registration act proponents are often depicted as villains, idiots and/or racists rather than normal people honestly concerned about dangerous superpowers. In reality the heroes would be just a bunch of strangers and the more powerful they were the more they would have to prove themselves before people would be willing to trust them with that power, if they could trust them at all.