"Heroes"

[stoutfellow]

Tomorrow night is the season finale of Heroes. I have scrupulously avoided spoilers; nonetheless, I have a prediction to make, under the cut.

I expect Peter Petrelli to die, or (less dramatically) to somehow lose his powers, or his power-absorption ability. He's simply too powerful, the way Silver Age Superman was.

Now, Peter isn't Superman, by a wide margin. But he's about three-quarters of the way to being a discount version of Supes. Let's compare powers, starting with the big four.

Flight. Peter has absorbed Nathan's ability to fly. Judging from the incident in Nevada, Nathan can fly pretty fast, too.

Invulnerability. Peter's not invulnerable, but the regeneration ability he picked up from Claire is a fair substitute. All he needs is a henchman to do things like pull shards of glass out of his brain stem...

Super-speed. Peter isn't super-fast (except, perhaps, in flight). But he's got Hiro's abilities: he can stop time, teleport, and even travel in time. That's close enough for me.

Super-strength. Not yet - but just let him meet Niki...

What about the minor powers? Superman has heat vision; Peter has the nuclear abilities he got from Ted Sprague. Superman has super-hearing; I don't recall whether Peter's run-in with Sylar came before or after Sylar stole that talent, but you know they'll meet again. Peter doesn't have anything like Superman's other vision powers. On the other hand, Peter has telepathy, telekinesis, prophetic drawing, and invisibility. He's also got or will get, via Sylar, other powers: liquifying metal, whatever that freeze-power Sylar used on Molly's parents was, and who knows what else? Peter has powers he probably doesn't even know about yet - and every time he meets another special, he'll get even stronger. Candice? Micah? D.L., assuming he's still alive? (It's a shame he never met Linderman.)

It's too much. Stopping Sylar will take someone at that power level, but, unless the writers plan to up the ante every season, Peter is just too powerful. (And if they do? Eh, that trick never works - cf. Willow Rosenberg, or Anita Blake, or Jean Grey, or...) (Why is it that the examples that come to my mind are all female? Well, there's Doctor Manhattan, I guess.)

Comments

[kattsune.livejournal.com]

And if they do? Eh, that trick never works - cf. Willow Rosenberg, or Anita Blake, or Jean Grey, or...) (Why is it that the examples that come to my mind are all female? Well, there's Doctor Manhattan, I guess.

That's a really good question.

How would you describe their powers/power ability without referring to the laundry list of superpowers directly?

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite sure what you're asking, in context. Is your question directly related to your statement, immediately preceding it? (Taking your question at face value: magic, beats me, and supercharged telepathy/telekinesis, respectively, but with no clear quantitative or qualitative limits or costs on any of them.)

[kattsune.livejournal.com]

I couldn't think of any other All Powerful characters that weren't women either, but then, I'd just read your examples, and sometimes that's enough to place stuff in your head and knock out other examples that would otherwise have come to mind. So, I would agree with you that it seems to happen with female but not male characters, but that seems kind of lazy.

So, the category is "World-Unbalancing SuperPowered Character."

What are the qualities that make a character WUSP?

(Then, when we have a definition of sorts, it may be easier to find counter examples, or to find examples and determine other commonalities that may explain why Chicks with Ultimate Powerz is such a popular theme.)

Obviously, the powers themselves aren't particularly important. Just being superstrong isn't the same as being super-invulnerable when someone clunks you in the back of the head with a tire iron. Being invulnerable to physical harm won't help you if you run out of air. Not needing to breathe won't help you in space unless you're also super-ready for crazy temperature extremes, explosive decompression, and escaping the gravity of other objects. And even if you have every superpower under the (yellow) sun, it isn't WUSP if someone else out there has your kryptonite.

Wordy, but clarified?

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Okay, gotcha.

It occurs to me that it might be easier - as far as identifying examples - to use a post-facto test. If the writers of a character have found it necessary to reduce a character's powers, to remove him/her from the field of play, or to impose psychological/ethical constraints on his/her power, then the character was too powerful.

Some examples, then.

The current version of Superman is, I understand, quite a bit less powerful than the Silver Age version; he can't travel through time, he's not as fast or as invulnerable as he was, etc. (Previously, the writers relied on ethical constraints, plus his vulnerability to kryptonite and to magic; evidently, these were eventually deemed insufficient.)

Thor, at one time, had time-travel and dimension-travel powers, via the enchantments of his hammer; those enchantments have been removed, and he no longer has those powers.

The Watcher has vast if unclear powers, but is bound by ethical constraints.

Doctor Manhattan wound up exiling himself.

Jean Grey - or rather Phoenix, curse their revisionism - unconsciously imposed "circuit-breakers" on her powers; after those were removed, she eventually chose to kill herself. (I'm talking about the comics version, not the movie.)

Willow spent most of Season Seven terrified of using her powers. Her great spell in "Chosen" marks an end to that; I haven't seen the post-crisis comics, so I don't know how - or even if - Whedon dealt with the problem after that.

Hmm, hmm, hmm... McKillip's Riddlemaster trilogy more or less tells of the apotheosis of Morgon of Hed. The story ends soon after he comes into his full power, so it's hard to tell what constraints McKillip had in mind, but I would guess that it's again a matter of ethical restrictions - Raederle's love, and his still-strong ties to Hed itself.

[kattsune.livejournal.com]

I don't think it should be limited to characters who have been reduced. In some cases, I think the power edit may have been performed because the science wouldn't support it anymore in the minds of the average reader. Like flying against the Earth's rotation until it stops, begins backspin, and starts to retrace its steps does not equal time travel. Phenomenal cosmic powers and planet-wide destruction, but not time travel.

I'm not terribly familiar with all the comic characters you've mentioned, but I did think of another character that gave me the impression he could walk into a story and say "I win." I eventually quit reading the Wheel of Time series because by book 9, I'd come to the decision that it didn't matter what he did or to whom, everyone loved Rand al'Thor, and just in case they didn't, he had so much power he just crushed his enemies like ants at a tap-dance competition.

In the examples you gave, how "powerful" would you say that character was with respect to his or her world, and what prompted the change if he or she chose to self-limit?

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

I think I'm going to reply to this with a regular post.