Brian Rogers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
subplotkudzu) wrote2008-04-04 07:17 pm
subplotkudzu) wrote2008-04-04 07:17 pm
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But what do they mean.
In my ongoing supers musings I thought I might take a step back and look at what powers mean in a setting. Sure, we can figure out what they do – how much strong guy can lift, how fast Zipster can run, and so on – but what they mean varies by book, team and even story arc. The hypothetical game system I'm working on is based around each play group constructing how powers are scaled and what they cost from the ground up for their own setting, along with what the supers team is supposed to be doing, so it might be worth the time to figure out the underlying metaphor.
When supers manifest or gain their powers in their second decade, those powers are puberty, or more broadly, like being a teenager. The normal aspects of this time period are sudden physical changes, emotional highs and lows, questions of identity and ones place in the world, combining into some-thing that is both scary and exciting. Eventually characters learn how to control their powers just as they settle on their identity and place in the world, but are forever changed.
When supers are born as something other than human, then powers are race and supers are a minority. The issues of equality, proving that one is equal to members of the Majority in ways that the majority accepts, the majority fear of the other, integration and status all matter. Powers equate to skin color or country of origin, and even when the majority acknowledges that the super is clearly better is some areas they will denigrate them in others (i.e. “those black athletes sure are good running backs but they lack the minds to be quarterbacks, and can’t be trusted around women.”)
Parsing that further, if the supers can hide their powers then powers could be Sexual Orientation (1): still a minority status, but there’s just no way to tell on the surface. The Race simile can also be extended here, with divisions between those supers who can hide their powers and those who can’t, with plenty of room for conflict between them.
You might notice that all of the above examples can be easily applied to the X-Men: mutant powers usually appear in puberty, marking mutants as members of another race, some of whom have the option of hiding their mutations. All three metaphors have been applied to the team over time , which has given the creators a lot of storytelling room. They are also some of the best understood metaphors for powers, but they aren’t the only ones.
For example, take the X-Men’s mirror universe cousin, the Teen Titans. During the books glory days (Wolfman/Perez run) it shared many characteristics with the mutant team: the heroes were in their late teens and early 20’s with intertwined personal and love lives and lots of angst. However, their powers weren’t like puberty or race – they were like Parents. Every member was either a sidekick or were empowered by their parents (Cyborg’s father built his prosthesis; Raven was the daughter of the devil; Changeling’s father injected him with a power serum, he was later adopted by a super family in the Doom Patrol, Starfire was, mostly, a standard member of the Tamaraian race). Their powers were things that they had inherited, just like blue eyes or a talent for music, and they had to find a way to forge their own identity, sometimes in the shadow of some intimidating parents (you go tell Batman you got a B+, see how well you do). As children we see our parents as powerful, but what if your parents really did save the world? How do you live up to that sort of expectation, even if you have the same powers? Or if you don’t? Like powers=puberty, powers=parent connected with the book’s audience, but it created different stories. Rather than being made to think about the nature of prejudice and humanity, the reader worked through the expectation that exists in every parent/child relationship. (The creative team did a good job with cranking these up to 11: you think you have an abusive parent, Raven'd father is a major Demon ans her mother taught her to shut herself off from all emotion lest she destroy ther world; you think your dad wants you to be an engieer? Cyborg's father experimented on him to boost his intelligence and then turned him into a machine!)
Another example, already touched on: in the Doom Patrol powers are like handicaps. The original Doom Patrol came out at the same time as the X-Men, both led by wheelchair bound geniuses with heroes seen as somehow inhuman, but while X-Men dealt with racial prejudice, the Doom Patrol were normal people who suffered horribly accidents and whose powers visibly marked them: Robotman was a human mind inside a robot body, Negative Man was bound head to toe in bandages that absorbed his internal radiation, Elasti-Girl could no longer control her size (2). They were the super heroes of the ADA, and the villains in their book were seen as equally handicapped, living on the outskirts of society.
In some cases the metahpor has to change once it's been mined out - X-Men was vital much longer than Teen Titans becuase it managed that transition; in Titans sooner or later everyone made peace with their parents and the metaphor just didn't provide more stories.
Are there others people can recommend: Are the power powers in the fantastic Four book like nations in the cold war (the space race, the fighting dictators in charge of stalmist conuntries, conflicts in hidden kingdoms being analgous to proxy wars in sattelite states)? Doeswhswhs's Soverignty concept fit into this? Any thoughts?
When supers are born as something other than human, then powers are race and supers are a minority. The issues of equality, proving that one is equal to members of the Majority in ways that the majority accepts, the majority fear of the other, integration and status all matter. Powers equate to skin color or country of origin, and even when the majority acknowledges that the super is clearly better is some areas they will denigrate them in others (i.e. “those black athletes sure are good running backs but they lack the minds to be quarterbacks, and can’t be trusted around women.”)
Parsing that further, if the supers can hide their powers then powers could be Sexual Orientation (1): still a minority status, but there’s just no way to tell on the surface. The Race simile can also be extended here, with divisions between those supers who can hide their powers and those who can’t, with plenty of room for conflict between them.
You might notice that all of the above examples can be easily applied to the X-Men: mutant powers usually appear in puberty, marking mutants as members of another race, some of whom have the option of hiding their mutations. All three metaphors have been applied to the team over time , which has given the creators a lot of storytelling room. They are also some of the best understood metaphors for powers, but they aren’t the only ones.
For example, take the X-Men’s mirror universe cousin, the Teen Titans. During the books glory days (Wolfman/Perez run) it shared many characteristics with the mutant team: the heroes were in their late teens and early 20’s with intertwined personal and love lives and lots of angst. However, their powers weren’t like puberty or race – they were like Parents. Every member was either a sidekick or were empowered by their parents (Cyborg’s father built his prosthesis; Raven was the daughter of the devil; Changeling’s father injected him with a power serum, he was later adopted by a super family in the Doom Patrol, Starfire was, mostly, a standard member of the Tamaraian race). Their powers were things that they had inherited, just like blue eyes or a talent for music, and they had to find a way to forge their own identity, sometimes in the shadow of some intimidating parents (you go tell Batman you got a B+, see how well you do). As children we see our parents as powerful, but what if your parents really did save the world? How do you live up to that sort of expectation, even if you have the same powers? Or if you don’t? Like powers=puberty, powers=parent connected with the book’s audience, but it created different stories. Rather than being made to think about the nature of prejudice and humanity, the reader worked through the expectation that exists in every parent/child relationship. (The creative team did a good job with cranking these up to 11: you think you have an abusive parent, Raven'd father is a major Demon ans her mother taught her to shut herself off from all emotion lest she destroy ther world; you think your dad wants you to be an engieer? Cyborg's father experimented on him to boost his intelligence and then turned him into a machine!)
Another example, already touched on: in the Doom Patrol powers are like handicaps. The original Doom Patrol came out at the same time as the X-Men, both led by wheelchair bound geniuses with heroes seen as somehow inhuman, but while X-Men dealt with racial prejudice, the Doom Patrol were normal people who suffered horribly accidents and whose powers visibly marked them: Robotman was a human mind inside a robot body, Negative Man was bound head to toe in bandages that absorbed his internal radiation, Elasti-Girl could no longer control her size (2). They were the super heroes of the ADA, and the villains in their book were seen as equally handicapped, living on the outskirts of society.
In some cases the metahpor has to change once it's been mined out - X-Men was vital much longer than Teen Titans becuase it managed that transition; in Titans sooner or later everyone made peace with their parents and the metaphor just didn't provide more stories.
Are there others people can recommend: Are the power powers in the fantastic Four book like nations in the cold war (the space race, the fighting dictators in charge of stalmist conuntries, conflicts in hidden kingdoms being analgous to proxy wars in sattelite states)? Does
whswhs's Soverignty concept fit into this? Any thoughts?1. Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies were praised as the gayest super-heroes of all time because of his analysis of mutation as sexual orientation, with Iceman’s family asking him if he’s ever “tried not being a mutant” when he came out of the genetic closet.
2. I always felt that Elasti-girl’s complaints were minor compared to the other members – yes she had quite a fall from being a pin up girl to being a size shifting freak, but I don’t recall her powers being so out of control that she couldn’t live a normal life, some-thing explicitly denied to her teammates.
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I did something similar in the "Working for T.H.E.M." setting, where powers are a scientific curse - just like any old Atomic Horror. It didn't end up working out in play because the players were more upbeat, but as written in Pyramid the idea was very much that having powers would kill you once they finished driving you mad.