Is Victory Girl really a hero?

*UPDATE*

Alright. So I got a really thoughtful response from our very own RenderPretender about invincibility. I have quoted manga / anime sources as the main inspiration for VG, but I realise that invincibility means a completely different thing in the DC / Marvel universe. I mean, you have characters like Dr Manhattan (who can see all of time at once, as well as reconstitute himself from scratch), Superman (who benchpressed the equivalent of the weight of the Earth for 5 days before dropping a drop of sweat, You have... the Sentry (I'm not too clued in on Marvel) who's premise is he cannot be defeated and just comes back stronger? I don't know, but you get the idea.

Since I don't expect my readers to go read / watch those manga / anime to get a feel for how VG was intended, so I thought I'd write something for the readers who might be left in the dark a bit. Since I cannot directly compare VG to anyone from either the DC or the Marvel universes' I'll try to do it with an example instead. You'll need to scroll to the bottom of this post for that info.

** Original Post ***

TLDR: Yes (for DA)

Seriously? That's all you got to say? (For the DAVerse)

Fine fine! She is the strongest hero in her universe. Her power is telekinesis. She has no certain weaknesses. She heads the superhero organisation, called E-Division, which is a Government sanctioned branch of law enforcement. She is generally good-natured, but is not above trolling villains. And villains rarely want to fight her since she's been winning for six years now. That's how long she's been active.

But why would you make such a boring character? Don't you know writing invincible characters is boring?

Fine, fine. I was just coming off a whole load of One Punch Man and Boku no Hero Academia, while along side working on some random Supergirl in peril for the, oh, I don't know, 10,000th time. For those who don't follow anime / manga, both feature overpowered protagonists. The titular One Punch Man ends all his battles... in one punch. On Boku no Hero Academia, we have All Might, the Symbol of Freedom who wins in the end every time. Neither have any 'weaknesses' and there I had Supergirl, who could push the moon out of orbit on a warn sunny day in the silver age, crumpled on the floor because of some green, glowy rock.

Sigh

So I decided to work on developing an invincible superheroine. Of course, if my time on Quora has taught me anything about invincible superheroes, they are apples to oranges. So then began the quest to develop a world where I'd have an invincible superheroine and not have her jumping off the moon to return to Earth because someone punched her there, or throw punches that can create tornadoes. Also, it annoyed me that in both cases, the 'Invincible' hero was... no, not a guy, but was a strength-type character.

So, I spent some amount of time brainstorming over what power would be fairly versatile that could counter most other powers. And so the invincible superheroine got Telekinetic powers.

And then I was stuck with the next problem. Her opponents. Now, don't get me wrong, I love villains like the Joker or Lex, but honestly, even with Batman's 'scary as crap' persona, he has dodos who want to keep fighting him. Same with Supes. Which means, she needed to be... different.

Now, who is the kind of 'hero' who you cheer for, but the duck, you'd never want to face? I could honestly think of only one character... Alucard from Hellsing.



Now you know where her red jacket and white gloves come from, as well as her evil grin.

I have mentioned a couple of times that it's best for an opponent if she does not take them seriously. Like Alucard, she represents the power ceiling in her universe. And when she thinks her opponent is worthy challenge, she tends to take them seriously, at which point, they usually find out just how much a difference in power level there is, and she's usually left a bit disappointed.

Yes, Victory Girl might seem a bit weird in comparison to other superheroines, but that's because most of her inspiration comes from anime / manga characters rather than western comic superheroes.

So, there you have it. Both characters demystified to some extent I hope!

***

Design notes: Since most of the G8 Victory Girl's outfit comes from autofitting the G2 clothes, I found that I had enough bits and bobs to put together a new look for her. I have no idea how that jacket fits better now. The last time I tried it, I was sorely disappointed Since quite a few people seem to like her flaunting her belly, I thought I'd try it as well. Don't worry, I'm not getting rid of her heavy metal boots, but I do like depicting her from time to time in other footwear


***Original post ends. Update follows***

So, there's two key phrases, invincible in her universe and represents the power ceiling.

She cannot fight against any of the invincible characters in the DC / Marvel universes because her powers are no where near that scale. She's not flying through the sun (hello plasma!), or through a black hole (hello spaghettification!) She cannot teleport to Mars because she needs to get away from the summer on Earth.

So, how is she invincible? Her invincibility is because she's head and shoulders ( but she uses l'Oreal, because she's worth it) stronger than anyone else. She isn't the strongest, but represents the power ceiling, that is, there's going to be no power creep, but she'll encounter people who are as strong as her. I would have loved to explain this using comic book characters, but given the DC and Marvel power ceilings, it'd be impossible to scale them accurately, Instead I'll resort to an example to explain the process. Please don't mind me.

Imagine your favourite sports star! Did you imagine Magic Johnson? You didn't? Awe man.

Anyway, imagine your favourite professional basketball player stuck playing basketball with the neighbourhood kids. At some point, he starts imposing self restrictions to make the game more challenging for him (I can do this with one hand tied behind my back!) Sometimes, someone comes along and talks smack, so he thinks, 'oh yes! here's a contender!' Except, he's all smack and no whack (is that even a thing?) so our basketball player is left sorely disappointed with this fake contenders' performance. (That roughly sums up Alucard in Hellsing).

Now imagine our basketball player is the best at slam dunking. Now imagine another player comes along who specialises in three point shots. (I don't know sports! So just bear with me!) Either of them can trash entire teams of neighbourhood kids on the basketball court, but against each other, they'll need to get creative. Fortunately, such opponents are few and far between in universe and at the very least, there's no one as strong as her when it comes to TK. Is there someone who is as strong as her in brute force? Yes. Has she beaten him / her? Yes. She just gets creative.

At no point is she strong enough to wipe out an entire army in a direct confrontation, so the question of world domination does not arise. She cannot level a city with a thought. In the same vein, no Evolved can. But they are formidable opponents for regular people or even a smaller police force. There's only a handful of Evolveds who can directly threaten, at the most, small parts of any major metropolis.

I hope that makes more sense to those who don't watch anime. She's not all Goku in DBZ who'll obliterate planets with a kamehameha or pulling the moon out of orbit to drop it on her opponent