The Blockbusters

The Blockbusters
A team of Hollywood based heroes put together by movie executives and producers as a ploy to attract tourism. Initially some of the heroes were content saving the world from staged disasters and fake Monsters of the Week,  believing that superheroing is a business through and through and everyone is in on it for the ratings and merch deals.
Most recently they have broken with their studio investors and focused on doing real good.

ORIGINAL TEAM
STUNTMAN
 leader of the Blockbusters, the ultimate stereotype of American Blockbuster Action Heroes. He swears he has no super powers but everyone calls bullshit because he does stuff like John McClane and Jason Bourne ever day.

His support team lobbies to prevent Metahuman Scientists from changing the legal definition of "super powers" to fit him because he makes a lot of money on his image as a "non-powered" superhero.

He was HUGE back in the 80's and single handedly toppled the government of Val Verde (10 points for catching the reference). In the 90's he got even MORE popular and served as a one-man strike team against all sorts of shit (think the 90's anti-hero boom).

But he's older now and he's slowing down, and he's looking for a successor to pass on the torch but his "agents" don't want him to retire just yet and sabotage his attempts to find a worthy successor. He serves as a father figure for Country Gal, helping her come to terms with her identity as a superhero and learn to set aside the expectations of the hollywood bigwigs. Eventually he chooses to pass the mantle of  of Stuntman was passed to Barnstormer, but she decided to honor both her father's and Stuntman's legacy and pass the name of Stuntman down to her friend from the "Bad Guys" team whose dedication to honest hard work earns her the right to carry on the name)

SUPERSTAR

A parody of the popularity of Iron Man type heroes in films, he wears a bulky black suit that looks like it came out of Nu Tron. However, the his power suit is functionally useless. It's just a prop, and the money the city spends on it is embezzled by his support team. Instead, his invincibility, flight, and energy projections are just his natural powers.

Despite his abilities, he lacks confidence and is naturally nervous and shy. A lot of people have his powerset and he knows it. He's worried about letting down the city. He's worried about letting down his family. He worries a lot, and his "agents" prey on this to make him their pawn.

Sure, he's lying to the people by claiming to be an armored hero, but if its what the people want what's the harm?

His "agents' constantly remind him that he can be replaced. Anyone can be Superstar under the suit and mask. The keep telling him he's nothing special, only Superstar is special. And he's starting to believe them.
Eventually Superstar confronts his anxieties and abandons the armor, taking the name Shooting Star. He did a little time for being involved in embezzling money for his suit, but now is dedicated to being a family man and good husband for Barnstormer.

BODY DOUBLE
A metaphor for the self-centered nature of Hollywood. It can create wonders, but its obsessed with vanity and self-promotion. Body Double possesses the ability to perfectly replicate any other humanoid individual. He also is able to multiply into several copies of himself, each with the same abilities.

Studios pay him mega bucks for staying the hell out of movies, because ever since he developed his shape shifting powers he's trained his ass off to be an actor and can now convincingly impersonate any actor male or female.

He's active in the independent movie scene and fancies himself something of an artist and friend to artist. He makes his own movies with himself as the writer, director, and all the actors becoming the world's first "super auteur". He recently held an awards show ran by himself, for himself, and only featuring films by himself.People are starting to question his sanity, but doesn't care if you don't like his movies. He does, and there's more of him than there are of you.

Eventually, following a confrontation with one of his Doubles which has gone rogue, Body Double has isolated himself in a town made up entirely of his duplicates. He maintains a single Double in order to bring outside perspective into the collective.

THE HEIRESS
Possesses a variety of psychic powers, which grow or wane in strength according to the amount other people think about her.

When she was just a little girl she could barely make spoons bend, but now that she's a global phenomena she can summon light and sound, mind control people, and throw buildings with her mind.

She's a vapid hedonist but she is so because she thinks her popularity depends on being a marketable image. She's terrified of becoming a has been and not being able to use her powers.

When someone becomes more popular than herself she takes it personally because it eats into her powers.

She initially clashed a lot with Barnstormer, but has since come to respect the other hero. With Barnstormer's help she's turned her life around and has reconnected wither her estranged family. No longer one of the stronger members since stepping out of the limelight, she can still fight and protect whats important to her.

COUNTRY GAL

Her name is Lara Belle Johnson. Her hero handle back in Kansas was Barnstormer, which she inherited from her superhero father. In Hollywood she was forcibly rebranded as the horribly generic (and partly offensive) Country Gal.

She's a totemic, meaning she can call upon the spirits of animals to grant her strength and abilities. Her most famous totems are "flight of the eagle," "speed of the horse," "strength of the bull," and "cunning of the wolf.” Her powers are a sort of skill she inherited from her family;  her great great ancestor learnedthe ability to totemically adopt animal traits from a Native American who once saved his life.
She sees her powers as an honor she upholds because the settlers did a huge injustice to the Natives, and that  upholding their spiritual beliefs (even just a little) is her way of honoring them. The fact that she emulates quintessentially "American" animals makes her proud of her country and it's heritage.

Of course when she gets to Hollywood, nobody actually wants to her she has Magical Native American Powers because she herself is not native, so they just tell her to call herself a mutant so that nobody asks questions and she never breaks character from the folksy T&A show that she'd expected to be all the time.

She was brought into the Blockbusters just to even the ratio of females to male and be sidekick to The Heriess, and her handlers tell her this. They remind her that she can be replaced, that she's only here to make the Heiress look good and she better not try to ever upstage her as top superheroine. They remind her that she's not as pretty, hot, powerful, or important as the heiress.

She's a nervous wreck with low self-esteem. She's embarrassed as hell of her accent and past as a country girl tomboy, but she keeps her head down and remains the Heiress' sidekick.

She kicks it off nicely with Superstar who understands first hand the kind of shit she's going through and they make a cute, wonderful couple.

Eventually, with the support of Superstar and Stuntman she embraces her identity as Barnstormer. She takes over leadership of the Blockbusters and makes sweeping changes.

THE SEVEN SILVER SCREENS

A para-physicist investigates a theory that works of fiction are gateways into other worlds (think Multiversity) and accidentally bonds with characters from classic Hollywood Cinema when he tries to open a gateway into their worlds.

Now he seeks to return his new friends to their own worlds by creating the "Ultimate" movie, an abstract 7 hour mindfuck whose script he swears exists in his mind somewhere but he can't find it let alone visualize what the "Ultimate" movie would be. But until he crates this movie he and his friends work as members of The Blockbusters.

By saying a memonic phrase the para-physicist can switch places with six beings made out of black and white "hard photons".

The Rogue (Errol Flynn Swashbuckler from a fantasy epic)

The Warlock (Dracula+Karloff Mummy+Vincent Price roles like Doctor Phibes. A powerful user of black magic not from this dimension. A bad guy in his own picture, he seeks redemption)

The Cowboy (Western Hero in the Shane/John Wayne vein. Believes his world has moved on (think the ending to Shane) and wants to stay in this one)

The Robot (Robby the Robot basically. A 1950's style robot with an atomic ray built in. Physics warp in his presence. For instance radiation makes things grow. He longs to return to his world and his master that he watched over and protected)

The Detective (Same Spade + Philip Marlowe. His world was the most like our own, and he wonders if he isn't just from the past, but can find no mention of himself in this world besides fiction. He thinks the whole experience is like his ultimate case, the case of the man that never was.)

The Cartoon (Fleischer Studios era cartoon character with the power of toon physics. Powerful, but his powers can have random effects. Desperately wants to get back home. He finds this world strange and chaotic)

The Seventh Silver Screen is the para-physicist himself.

The reason Seven Silver Screens stays in Hollywood and works on the Block Busters is because they own the rights to his characters, and sense he can't prove legally that the movie characters aren't just figments of his own imagination and because the studios own those imaginary images they can decide where he goes and what he does. eventually The Seven Silver Screens become interdimensonal ambassadors and Hollywood loses control over their images. Their role in the team is taken by Movie Magic.

HOLLYWOOD HERO

In public he's a jolly, happy guy. Almost a parody of Superman. He claims to believe in hope and the human spirit but its all a lie, its all an image. He's actually a burnt out loser. He was a big hero once but unlike The Stuntman he hasn't aged gracefully and is paranoid about new members. He's a grouchy, mean, drugged addicted old man who just does not give a fuck anymore.
He lives life like sleepwalking and is a walking example of what the other characters could become if they aren't careful, saying one thing and being another thing entirely.


Eventually he gets back in touch with his inner hero and going out with a bang, taking out one of the heads of the Hollywood Conspiracy with him.

CURRENT TEAM

STUNTWOMEN
 (real name: Jenny Cowell, from LA proper) would be your typical Crime Fighter: she uses a polearm and fights tricky with all her various tools to keep the others on their toes. Barnstorm stands at least a full head taller than her, but she manages. When she's not a Crime Fighter, she does commercials, some voiceacting, and even a couple appearances on Disney.

MOVIE MAGIC

This hero is actually a well coordinated group of engineers. They were originally a production company dedicated to using traditional special effects over CGI but went belly-up after their last picture tanked hard. They got a job creating and enhancing "fight scenes" for Hollywood super heroes and "villains" but when one of them found out that the powers that be were starting to cover up real super criminal actions to "protect" their talent they all decided to go full vigilante and strike back against both the criminals and the system. At first Barnstormer and Superstar think he's a joy riding vigilante but they all begin to trust each other and work to expose the system.

The suit is a robot enhanced by holograms. That's the hero. The production company works behind the scenes setting up traps and devices and what not. They fight like a heist movie. It's all in the planning.

OLD HOLLYWOOD

back in the day she was the Dame of Diamonds: a bright and sunny superheroine of the black-and-white era (and actually something of a sex icon back in the day). With her resolute poses and unflappable enthusiasm, evil would cower at her ability to craft constructs from geodes, including diamonds, such as armor, weapons, and other implements; she even could travel through the earth and turn herself into a diamond form that rendered her practically invincible. Long after her retirement, she came back rebranded as the "villainess" known as the Earthmother, using her geokinetic powers to "terrorize" Hollywood.
After Hollywood Hero dies, Old Hollywood comes to her senses and takes on identity and themed costume to honor his memory "from the good old day"

BARNSTORMER

Formerly Country Gal, this heroine has come into her own and assumed leadership of the blockbusters. she has singlehandedly reformed the hollywood hero system, and removed the corrupting influence of the studio. She splits responsibilities with the Statesmen, but still finds time to make the trip out to Kansas and visit those "who knew her when."

THE EXPOSURE
The Blockbusters clash with a variety of rogues, some of which are truly villainous and some of which are contracted by the studio in order to put up a good show.
The Paparazzi, a highly motivated photographer always looking for ways to smear the Blockbusters and make some quick cash on the side. He constantly tries to prove that the Stuntman is Superhuman, and the Superstar is not an armored hero. When Country Gal got her scantily clad clothes blown off during a fight, Paparazzi toke compromising pictures of her and intended to sell the negatives to the highest bidder. Stuntman used his old contacts in the CIA to track him down and pay a personal visit to his house.
The Slasher, a superpowered serial killer frustrated that Hollywood movies "never get it right". He's frustrated that his crimes are covered up and written off as "normal" serial killings by the establishment which cause him to kill in more outlandish and creative ways.

Rogue Body Double. The Conspiracy that walks like a man. He's obsessed with destroying any connection Body Double has to people outside his collective, which means he wants to destroy The Blockbusters. Alternative name: The Sequel.

The Eight Screen. A seventh person came through from the disastrous experiment, a mad scientist from a pulp Flash Gordon-ish serial. He's come to the conclusion that they were pulled not only through space, but through time, meaning that even if they do find a way back through the "Ultimate Movie" their worlds won't be like they left them. All they know and loved will have moved on. So he vents his frustrations by trying to destroy the town through super-science. He uses an Earth quake generator and disguises the first few activation as natural phenomena.
The Eighth Screen keeps performing unethical experiments in an attempt to find a way to go home before deciding its impossible. One involves killing people in charge of remaking the eight movies under the belief they're "dirtying and changing" their worlds. Another involves uploading the eight movies into the minds of everyone in the planet in the hopes of producing a "platonic" perspective of the movies that'll reflect the "real" movie worlds. Another tries to "fix" the movie refugees under the idea that they have been contaminated by this world and can't return until they're like how they were in the films exactly.

Earth mother, a former heroine rebranded as a villainess by the studio, she fully embraces her role and becomes a full on source of terror.
Pole arm, From LA proper, she  does commercials, some voiceacting, and even a couple appearances on Disney. She joined the villain team in order to make her big break, but soon becomes disillusioned with the Studio.
Kashatskihakatidise - A Full-blood Native American shaman who saw Barnstormer on TV and recognized where her powers are from. She joined the "badguy team" believing that its insulting for a blonde white girl to use the ancient powers of "her" people. Her confrontation with Barnstormer lead to her  dropping the "Country Gal" title and coming clean about the origin of her powers
Stories around the Blockbusters should four on the themes of Corruption and distortion in media versus reality. Hollywood is MASSIVELY obsessed with both, and each character struggles with in their own way; Heiress struggles with maintaining her image because without it she looses her relevance, Stuntman wrestles with his image as the Ultimate Action Hero he's told he must ALWAYS live up to even though he's over the hill and questions not only his current usefulness as a Badass Violence Commando but seeing how little the crazy black ops shit in the 80's accomplished wonders what good he EVER did, Country Girl struggles with an image she feels forced upon her because she's told that without the relevance it provides her she won't amount to anything and make a difference, and so on and so forth.
Nostalgia (Child Star with superpowers. Starred on a show that portrayed the lives of WW2 era superheros where he played a Bucky type character. He was discarded after the show and wasn't ready at all for the real world which ate him alive. Blames Hollywood for ruining his life, but in truth he never had the guts to live his own life. Even this act of defiance is something Hollywood Hero talked him into doing)

Showstopper (A braggart and fashion model passed up for Barnstormer and only offered a chance on the "bad guy" team. She wants to get back at The Blockbusters and Hollywood for not "giving her the chance she deserves")

Spencer "Space Monster" Samson (Illusion hero who worked in numerous sci-fi movies as the monster, making complex suits out of bending light. A hero figure for some of the "Good Guy Mysterio" crew. Like Dame of Diamonds and Hollywood Hero he was one of the old crowd. He took the lumps, he lied, he did everything his backers wanted and in the end in his golden years he was allowed to keep making money off his powers by working as an SFX man...until cgi proved cheaper than his powers. The invention of CGI did not violate his contract due a loop hole, and he refused their offer to play bad guy so he left Hollywood after years of service nearly penniless in his old age. He had to bum money off his old friends Dame of Diamonds and Hollywood Hero. Eventually Hollywood Hero recruits him)
Hard Rock (Hair Metal Fan who's just in because he thinks its really cool to get a chance to fight super heroes "almost like, for real". Kind of dumb. Hopes the notoriety can help launch a punk music career. Despite his name and appearance his powers have nothing to do with sound, earth, or rocks. Rather he has ice powers. "Hard Rocks". He thinks this is clever.)

Blackstone III (Grandson of Blacksploitation star Blackstone. He tried a long time ago to get a job on the Blockbusters and was told to basically play his grandfather. He left, but holds gratitude toward Body Double for being the cast of one of his movies. Now older and wiser he's an investigative journalist that like the good Mysterio Crew found out about the fake super baddie fights and hidden legit supper baddie crimes like The Slasher. He believes the best way to deal with this corruption is to humiliate the Blockbusters rather than work with them. The powers that be can't make money off a humiliated super team. What better way to beat them than by taking away their revenue?)

Miss Symphony (In the rapidly-becoming-posthumanity society new forms of media are being invented every day, but the old guard of Hollywood is trying to slow them down just as they slowed down the development of VHS and torrenting. Miss Symphony is a psychic show of sound, feeling, and emotion--and her shows can even be recorded on certain psy-sensitive devices. But Hollywood used its pull to stonewall her attempts to market herself. Now she wants revenge. In her mind The Blockbusters are just as guilty as the rest of Hollywood for keeping her down. She knows and has worked with The Seven Silver Screens attempting to create their "Ultimate Movie" and sees them as manipulated--she doesn't extend the same consideration to the rest of the Blockbusters.)