Characters with incomprehensible powers

[davetvs]

I always head-canon Wanda's mutant power as the ability to generate, channel, and manipulate chaos energy; honed and expanded with magical training (since chaos energy also powers certain types of magic or spells). Sage, telepathic computer brain. Isca, slave to her own powers.

[Harasar]

Btw. What is it with evil brothers of X-men having absurdly more stronger powers than their heroic siblings *cough* Vulcan *cough*?

There is also Jamie Braddock, a reality warper, while his brother is a flying brick, and his sister is telepath/telekinetic

I haven't read anything with her in it, but I read an interview with her creator saying something about her swapping places with Iron Man and eating a sandwich...and was just confused.

Isca's powers don't really make sense to me, particularly when they come into play and when they don't. Why can she abstain from a vote on the Great Ring but had to accept Roberto's challenge in Magneto's fight with Tarn? Are they preocgnition, probability manipulation, or a combination of both?

Agree with both, they powers don't make much sense. And of Arakko's council, I don't really understand powers of most of them. Ora Seratta can obliterate anything with her eye, but not Ouranos for some reason? Xilo, the worm-like one, I don't get what his power is at all, and Sobunar with ocean-in-blood - sounds fancy, but what does it even mean, what he can and can't do with it? Redroot and Idyll's powers are also quite vague. Only Lactuca and Lodus Logos powers are easy to explain and understand.

[davetvs]

The Arakii having hard-to-explain powers works for them, imo. They're essentially a lost people from a lost society, they should be relatively incomprehensible to the rest of Sol.

[useridgoeshere]

Idyll's powers were the worst. Made sense to knock them off. Idyll is an Omega who can see the one true future but can't change it or tell you about it. Heck, we could all claim that power. "I know the one true future! As long as you have absolutely no follow-up questions."

Isca's powers don't really make sense to me, particularly when they come into play and when they don't. Why can she abstain from a vote on the Great Ring but had to accept Roberto's challenge in Magneto's fight with Tarn? Are they preocgnition, probability manipulation, or a combination of both?

If they're precognition, they have to be short-term, because, for example, she sided with Uranos because he would win, but he lost. So, she was wrong and was on the losing side. But she claims that she has never lost?

[Harasar]

The Arakii having hard-to-explain powers works for them, imo. They're essentially a lost people from a lost society, they should be relatively incomprehensible to the rest of Sol.

But they are still mutants. IMHO if mutants are supposed to be an evolution of humans, then they should have explainable and useful powers that could help with survival. I always saw mutants as a sort of experiment by mother nature, with each of them getting different powers in order to check which one would be more helpful for survival of their entire species. Like what if this one got telepathy, would it be more helpful than that one, with ability to generate ice? Or that one's with wings?

And mutants also should retain humanoid appearance, or at the very least organic body. While I like characters like Rockslide, Mercury and Bling! their powers don't make sense, because they are dead ends of evolutions. Same for someone like Proteus, who is now an energy being possessing other people. What's the point of his power? Loosing their organic body, they can't pass their potentially useful for survival powers to next generation.

And pointless "powers", like that one whose power was in what his skin was blue from 198 series. Or the guy with longer neck than normal, etc. While not all powers should be useful for battle, they are at least should be useful and even if they harm the owner, they should also provide something good. Like Chamber, yeah, his power destroyed half his body, but he got telepathy and can survive solely on generation hid body generates. On the other hand Face lost all of his senses and can't even survive without help of others - so his power is all negative, without any positive.

IMHO leave weird and/or useless powers to Inhumans.

[Agent Grayson]

The Arakii having hard-to-explain powers works for them, imo. They're essentially a lost people from a lost society, they should be relatively incomprehensible to the rest of Sol.

Maybe how they explain their powers, due to differences in language and expression, but not the powers themselves.

[Arachne]

But they are still mutants. IMHO if mutants are supposed to be an evolution of humans, then they should have explainable and useful powers that could help with survival. I always saw mutants as a sort of experiment by mother nature, with each of them getting different powers in order to check which one would be more helpful for survival of their entire species. Like what if this one got telepathy, would it be more helpful than that one, with ability to generate ice? Or that one's with wings?

And mutants also should retain humanoid appearance, or at the very least organic body. While I like characters like Rockslide, Mercury and Bling! their powers don't make sense, because they are dead ends of evolutions. Same for someone like Proteus, who is now an energy being possessing other people. What's the point of his power? Loosing their organic body, they can't pass their potentially useful for survival powers to next generation.

And pointless "powers", like that one whose power was in what his skin was blue from 198 series. Or the guy with longer neck than normal, etc. While not all powers should be useful for battle, they are at least should be useful and even if they harm the owner, they should also provide something good. Like Chamber, yeah, his power destroyed half his body, but he got telepathy and can survive solely on generation hid body generates. On the other hand Face lost all of his senses and can't even survive without help of others - so his power is all negative, without any positive.

IMHO leave weird and/or useless powers to Inhumans.

Well, Face spent his life in Limbo. That may have warped his natural mutation some.

[BobbysWorld]

But they are still mutants. IMHO if mutants are supposed to be an evolution of humans, then they should have explainable and useful powers that could help with survival. I always saw mutants as a sort of experiment by mother nature, with each of them getting different powers in order to check which one would be more helpful for survival of their entire species. Like what if this one got telepathy, would it be more helpful than that one, with ability to generate ice? Or that one's with wings?

But that's not how evolution or mutation works. Species don't evolve useful mutations by design....they just happen, randomly, and the ones that are particularly useful in terms of a species survival over time end up being the ones that stick.

Mutants make more sense than Inhumans to have random, bizarre or even useless powers specifically BECAUSE its the nature of mutation to be random...whereas it makes less sense for Inhumans to ever have random or useless powers because the nature of their race and powers is the potential for SPECIFIC powersets was encoded into the Inhuman genome by their Kree makers long ago, and a key part of Inhuman society is Terrigenesis somehow unlocks powers that are explicitly useful or needed by their society. Like its a major recurring beat throughout Inhuman stories that some Inhumans come out of Terrigenesis with healing powers because their society needs more healers. When telepaths die, Terrigenesis produces new telepaths. Etc, etc.

Whereas mutants are just a pure crapshoot, random mutation begetting all kinds of new powers and physiologies....at least until some of these mutants pass their specific expression of the X-gene down to their own offspring, at which point that powerset becomes an inherited, hereditary mutation from a specific family lineage or bloodline.....but this still doesn't preclude the possibility of some second/third/fourth/etc generation mutants not inheriting the hereditary powerset, but instead randomly getting a new mutation unique to them, same as how the X-gene can produce a new power or mutation in a mutant born of two human parents.

Its two totally different takes on the evolution of a superhuman species, with the difference being one might have been initially catalyzed by Celestials way back in Earth's history...but past the point of its initial introduction or manifestation within the genepool, the course of mutant evolution is analogous to random mutation, even as many of those random mutations become stable mutations passed down to future generations alongside the continued random expression of new X-genes in each generation. Whereas the other superhuman race in this comparison, Inhumans, is the result of evolution via intentional Grand Design, an artificially instituted evolutionary process whose progression unto future generations WAS mapped out, at least initially.

Which is a big part of why I wish they didn't pit mutants and Inhumans against each other as though there can only be one that gets focused on, because Inhuman society would be FASCINATING to juxtapose with the growing Krakoan society and existing Arakkii one....because its a completely opposite approach to a superpowered society....by design. Intentionally.

Inhuman society is built around the idea that powers are born of society's need for certain powers, and with a big emphasis placed on Inhumans fulfilling certain duties or filling the role they were meant to play from the moment of their Terrigenesis. Whereas mutant society is built around capitalizing on the most useful mutant powers and trying to replicate or reproduce them, and/or ensure the longevity of those powers being accessible to mutant society, so that mutant society can forcibly evolve their SOCIETY down certain paths, via which powers they most embrace and make use of.

Which could position the Inhuman and mutant societies as being at completely opposite points of the same spectrum....with mutant society trying to take control of their own evolution and steer its course down the specific trajectories they want or feel will be most beneficial to their race.....whereas the Inhumans, whose society has been shaped by that kind of artificially cultivated evolution for millennia....found their society radically reshaped, stimulated (and even in some respects rejuvenated) by the Terrigen bomb unleashing Terrigenesis in numbers that far exceeded any planned or designed for 'societal need'....thus unlocking and introducing/reintroducing into Inhuman society the capacity for powers that WEREN'T need-based but just....simply randomly present regardless of whether or not they were useful for the needs of Inhuman society at that particular time. In essence.....mutants started down the road Inhumans had been on for millennia right around the same time that Inhumans got a shot in the arm that was basically the equivalent of their entire society experiencing a random mutation with the capacity to drastically change the course (and nature) of their entire race's longterm evolution.

Course, Marvel decided 'lets make them fight!' was a better approach and now who even knows what the overall status quo of Inhumans is at this point, but I digress.

[BobbysWorld]

Maybe how they explain their powers, due to differences in language and expression, but not the powers themselves.

Well if you factor in how mutation is in part a response to (or at least instigated by) environmental influences and stimuli, the fact that the Arakkii are an offshoot of mutants who spent four thousand years developing mutations that were a response to having an otherworldly hell-dimension for an environment....could feasibly result in powers that seem esoteric, mystical or otherworldly by the standards of Earth-based societies and those who grew up shaped by 'normal' Earth environmental factors instead.

[davetvs]

Bingo. My thoughts exactly.

[BobbysWorld]

Ugh, all of this is feeding into my thoughts on what if the Neo were the direct descendants of the Okkarans who didn't go into the rift with Arakko....because that plus their longterm isolation would in effect make the Neo 'time capsules' of powersets/mutations that were initially present in the Okkaran Age, without them ever being impacted or influenced by Amenthi factors as both branches of the Okkaran family tree passed down their mutations and continued to evolve new ones for four thousand years. And there's so much you could do with that narrative dichotomy, from a cultural/societal viewpoint and omg okay I'm gonna stop talking about the Neo now, lmao, that's my cue to go log off.

[davetvs]

Imagine if that was how they finally explained Omega mutants. Maybe they have XO-Genes, with elements of the Original Okkaran mutations more powerful than average because they are descendants of those mutants.

[Frobisher]

None of their powers make any sense really. When things happen like Kurt spontaneously appearing human because his X-Gene was turned off, you know the reason for everything their powers do is "because the writer said so".

[ETMike1988]

If they're precognition, they have to be short-term, because, for example, she sided with Uranos because he would win, but he lost. So, she was wrong and was on the losing side. But she claims that she has never lost?

But the mutants can use Uranos for an hour, so at least he can left his prison. It is maybe better than rottening inside that prison eternally... So it was a very minor victory for him!

[BobbysWorld]

Imagine if that was how they finally explained Omega mutants. Maybe they have XO-Genes, with elements of the Original Okkaran mutations more powerful than average because they are descendants of those mutants.

Tbh, I'd prefer going in the opposite direction. My big wish post Sins of Sinister is that all the focus on Sinister's grand designs and where they can lead - depending on how much people are aware of what happens in SoS - prompts a big societal/cultural shift as Krakoans re-evaluate their trajectory and consider other possible ones.

I just really would love to see at least one or two books (and writers) embrace the idea that the real strength of mutants as a species and a culture - is that its the nature of the mutant race to be anti-dynastic. Sinister's obsession with certain bloodlines like the Summers, various ancient mutants with a ton of influence over their descendant lines like Apocalypse....they've kinda reframed how characters look at the basic fundamental nature of mutants.....but if you get the characters to ignore all that for a second....the biggest evolutionary advantage mutants have is the sheer RANDOMNESS inherent to their species.

No matter how hard various mad scientists like Sinister work....nature works harder.

My point being that there's a flipside to most things in life, a natural give and take. And for all the gains you make by 'controlling evolution' or steering it down certain predesigned courses....the sacrifice you make for that control is you become limited by the confines of your own imagination.

Even if you perfect the art of tailor-making mutant powers and genomes and longterm bloodlines, to always give you the desired result.....

Those results will NEVER amount to more than what you've 'pre-programmed' them to be. You can't imagine or plan for things that you haven't imagined or planned for.

And the real treasure trove of the X-gene is that you never know WHAT new powers will be introduced with each new generation of mutants. And if you can't plan or prepare for new powers, new evolutionary developments...if you view the randomness of mutation as a weakness rather than a strength, the more you TRY and weed out that randomness....the LESS able you'll be to counter or capitalize on any particularly potent new mutations that slip through the cracks and randomly pop up every now and then regardless.

In essence....trying to control the very nature of mutant evolution....dilutes what makes mutant evolution so damn potent in the first place. Its not the evolution of superhumans from a handful of individual strains, mixing and propagating and evolving into new strains and variances over time....its all of that PLUS the constant, consistent, continuous introduction of new, random strains as part of each generation alongside those stable, inheritable mutations.

Sinister's ego is inherently short-sighted, and misses the point of what mutants could TRULY be. The more he convinces himself he's mastered evolution by deliberating creating mutants like Cable, his chimeras, and thinking his perfectly engineered and designed designer-made mutants are more powerful or capable than anything else out there....the more he opens himself up to being blind-sided by Mother Nature being like lol, bet, and being defeated by a new generation of mutants who include mutations he never could have seen coming....because they're beyond what he might have ever imagined or tried to engineer himself.

We don't know how many Arakki omegas there are, how much of their population they make up...but I'm inclined to think they're actually pretty rare, because many of the Great Ring omegas predated the Amenthi war entirely, and I do think if they had tons of omegas at their disposal, they probably would have won.

Whereas Krakoa has almost a dozen omegas....out of the relatively small percentage of Earth-born mutants that have been resurrected so far. Only a few hundred thousand in total....out of the thirty six million in the resurrection queue. Who knows how many kids on Genosha, how many latent mutants who died without their X-gene ever activating and are now in the Waiting Room....were potential omegas as well?

And the difference is, I think.....passing down stable, inherited mutations from particularly powerful mutant parents like Arakkii warriors who were born before Okkara split, or descendants of Apocalypse, or Scott and Jean, or Selene or any other powerful mutant bloodline....like yeah, that will pretty reliably result in a population of powerful mutants with powersets that stretch back generations.

But with a finite genepool (the kind that results from keeping your society spread out among smaller, insular clans and not interacting with any other civilizations, like the Neo)....or even a less finite but still limited genepool (the kind that results from spending millennia isolated in Amenth, but still seeing new vectors or introduced into your genepool via the Amenthi demons - which logically DON'T possess the potential to add new X-genes to the genepool)....

Like yeah, you guarantee the longevity or inheritance of various potent powersets, and you can pretty safely guarantee or gauge the 'strength' of future generations based on that....

But you lose out on the sheer wealth of POTENTIAL that is tons of new random mutations, that comes from the mutant genepool frequently being added to by the introduction of new genetic vectors when reproducing with humans.

That's the rising tide that lifts all boats realization that could REALLY create a paradigm shift....the realization that just like previously antagonistic mutants coming together for common cause massively benefited and enabled the rapid development and expansion of mutant society, where ALL mutants benefited, because former Acolytes, 'useless mutations' like Ugly John's, and powerful X-Men are all at least equally benefiting from the resources of a post-scarcity society, access to gate travel, etc. (I'd say resurrection, but there is a class system developing based on which mutants get first priority in the queue, due to their usefulness, and that does need to be acknowledged and addressed, just to do SOMETHING with that awareness)....

But point is, just like all mutants benefitted from coming together and sharing the results (even if to varying degrees)....in theory, if mutants and humans can find ways to coexist more peacefully and pool resources as well as the benefits reaped from them (no demanding that mutants just share their tech like resurrection, without anything to show for it like oh, say, even just saying 'no, we're not going to make it legal to murder mutants and then try to bully them into sharing immortality with us in the same breath')....

It really is to the mutual benefit of both mutants and humans, in the long-run, that they continue to coexist and intermingle. Death to the Great Replacement bullshit once and for all, please, because not only is it grossly problematic in all kinds of ways....its short-sighted. Even if mutantdom really did 'fully' supplant humanity and there are only mutant bloodlines from here on out, stable inherited mutations plus SOME continued random variances every generation.....that'll never measure up to what the Sol System COULD be if mutantkind's genepool is continually added to by the addition of X-genes that pop up in bloodlines that previously only contained humans, before that generation.

I think there's room for a future era of books where Krakoa, Arakko and possibly more mutant nations DO exist as safe spaces for mutantkind, and to develop and uplift cultural identities and societies of their own, that embrace mutation and all it has to offer rather than stifle and threaten it....while still saying 'we're leaving the door open for us to build new connections and relationships with humanity, who we do want to co-exist with in the long-run as equals....but from now on, we're only doing it from the standing point of humanity seeing mutants as equals in terms of having our own identities, our own societies, our own cultures....not just freaks and your own unwanted cast-offs who occasionally create something you want.'

But point being, IMO, the reason the modern Krakoan generation of mutants has so many more omegas compared to the more isolated and insular Arakkii and Neo civilizations.....

Is that even as the most powerful members of their original generations passed down their mutations to later ones, and even as their own mad scientists like Tarn engineered powers and bloodlines born of their own imaginations, like Sinister did on Earth....

They worked hard, but nature worked harder. And it still resulted in more variety of mutations, more potency of mutations, than preserving the bloodlines and experimenting within wholly mutant populations was capable of producing all on its own.

Random mutation.

For a people built around the very concept of evolution....in the long-run, its of way more use and benefit to a constantly evolving people....than any possible attempt at creating 'an ultimate evolution of mutants, the ideal endpoint of mutants.'

Because in nature....evolution HAS no endpoint. It doesn't exist TO reach a certain aimed-for destination. It just exists to continually keep mutating and evolving and growing, generation after generation, without end....

And for a people who want to claim they've achieved immortality, existence without end....trying to EVER imagine or envision....let alone ENGINEER....a specific endpoint....

Is ultimately ALWAYS going to be self-defeating, and cheat them out of their potential to ever become anything BEYOND that artificial, self-chosen endpoint.