The larger political landscape in the game [Background]

US politics looks much the same in Masks as it does IRL. A few bits of note, off the top of my head. North Carolina went blue by a wide margin, due to Halcyon City residents voting blue; the city has seven million eligible voters, 82% showed up at the polls, and of those, 73% voted democratic. This narrowed the electoral college results margin by 30, and increased the popular vote margin by an additional 2.8 million (22% voted red). The election results redoubled rhetoric in local city politics that continues to push for Halcyon City to declare itself a sovereign city state, divorced from any nation's politics. (It's declined all national funds since 1969, and was all but fiscally independent since the 1920s, thanks largely to the influence and management of Justice and anonymous seed donations.) Extreme right factions in the country have become increasingly anti-superhero in the last few years, perhaps stemming from the event two years ago in which Jason's father and family saved the life of a president unpopular within those groups.

Rest assured, I don't plan to make the game any kind of political ... thing. I just got to thinking about what a liberal city of 10 million would do in NC, and it all went down a rabbit hole after that, ending in Jason's background information. (And honestly, the news is already full of dialogue that sounds like it was written for the Red Skull, so it'd be a shame to waste THAT. :)

I can imagine many traditional conservatives being very interested in Halcyon City and receptive of supers, as well: the place is almost certainly a bastion of capitalism, it brings a lot of business and tourism to the state, and supers are the very epitome of rugged, self-reliant individuals who can get stuff done by the sweat of their own brow. In that light, vigilantes or other independent heroes - as long as they don't go overboard - would be seen as a sort of "super-militia", loyal to "the people" rather than "the government". In that model, the city's political situation is mostly positive and a broad spectrum of opinions can be heard, even if its population swings one way or another on the spectrum. And while there are probably some (fill you your preferred term for non-traditional ultra-rightist conservative nationalist etc. type)s, there are also probably (as a reflection of your notes above) a few left-wing zanies who see all these so-called "heroes" as goons for the status quo and the impending fascist state ... FWIW, there are probably some political extremists in the metahuman community (there always are), hero and villain. I don't expect that to be a theme, but it's worth considering even as we talk about all the positive folk attracted to Halcyon.