Parahuman

Parahumans are humans who have undergone a trigger event and developed superpowers. The slang/colloquial term for parahumans is "cape," which is typically (but not always) used to refer to parahumans who wear costumes, but may also refer to Rogues.

Biology

Parahumans and potential parahumans have a structure called the Corona Pollentia in their brain. The size, shape, and location of this structure varies with the individual parahuman, but tends to be located between the frontal and parietal lobe. The Corona Pollentia, along with a substructure inside the Pollentia called the Gemma, allows the parahuman to control their abilities.<ref>“See, there’s this part of the brain that people who study parahumans call the Corona Pollentia, not to be confused with the Corona Radiata. It’s a part of the brain that’s different in parahumans, and it’s the part that’s used to manage powers, when the powers can be managed. More specifically, there’s this part of the Corona they call the Gemma, that controls the active use of the power, the same way there are parts of the brain that allow us to coordinate and move our hands.”

She ran her fingers over my exposed scalp, massaging it, as if she were feeling the shape of my head. “The size, shape and location of the Corona and the Gemma changes from parahuman to parahuman, but it tends to sit between the frontal and the parietal lobe. Beneath the ‘crown’ of the head, if you will. They can’t really lobotomize the Corona in criminals. Some of that’s because the location and shape of the Corona depends on the powers and how they work, and trial and error doesn’t work with the scary bad guys who can melt flesh or breathe lasers.” - [1] from Snare 13.9</ref>

The Corona Pollentia starts out at about the size of a golf ball. During a trigger event, the Corona Pollentia activates in a spurt of growth, spreading further into the brain and forming a connection with the parahuman's shard.<ref name="T7.6">“You get more cloudiness in some kinds of scans where it expands out into the webbing around the brain, but we’re not getting that. It’s been way too long since I studied this,” I said. “The corona starts as a single marker, like a quarter-sized knot in wood, or a ball the size of a golf ball, pushed between the two lobes. Then when we trigger, it surges into life. It’s part of the reason we black out. It expands slightly, veins swell. But most of the time an unactivated corona is hard to tell apart from an activated one, and a surprising number of people have unactivated ones. Sometimes you look at them and the larger veins or structures suggest what the power is linked to.” - Excerpt from Torch 7.6</ref> It also seems that parahumans can pass on a similar power to their children without them having to suffer severe mental trauma. It is important to note that while children of parahumans are more likely to gain powers, it is pointed out that the trend is more likely to do with long-term exposure to parahumans than genetics.<ref>“The odds are still high, even with an adopted child. It’s likely more to do with exposure to parahumans at formative ages than genetics.” - Excerpt from Interlude 13</ref>

Trigger events can radically alter a parahuman's biology, as seen with certain Brutes and Changers, as well as having other effects such as reducing or even removing the need to sleep or obviating the need for a functional body or brain.<ref>“At my apartment, I have papers on stuff like where the physical bodies of breakers go when they’re in breaker mode, or offloaded consciousnesses in nonstandard brains. I’m not sure if any of it would help in terms of inspiring tech, but maybe it could help you make some educated guesses.”- Excerpt from Torch 7.10</ref> Another example is that parahumans with sonic powers tend to have altered voices.<ref>“What ‘this’?” ReSound asked. I’d expected her voice to sound altered, as many capes with sonic themes did, but she sounded normal. Confident. - Shadow 5.2</ref>

Pre-Gold Morning powers were also able to alter themselves due to permanent changes in anatomy or biology of hosts, be it mutilation or deeper alterations, as exemplified by Victoria Dallon, Valefor, Bonesaw's projects and The Unmasked.<ref>When I was in Boston, there was a group that mutilated themselves to try to force their powers to travel in these alternate paths. It worked. - Excerpt from Black 13.z‏‎</ref>

Psychology

Parahumans are naturally inclined toward conflict, as shards choose humans that are predisposed to using their powers. Additionally, shards subtly nudge their hosts toward conflict, playing off of their existing neuroses and mental conditions.<ref name="SB1">Wildbow:Parahumans are naturally inclined toward conflict, because that's why they have powers in the first place - the entities want to test the powers. A great many parahumans are great balls of neuroses and they've got passengers in their heads that may be nudging them a little one way or another, powers that aren't necessarily controlled or easy to manage, or unfortunate implications. - Wildbow on SpaceBattles</ref> Parahumans tend to be more emotionally volatile, their emotional peaks and valleys more exaggerated, their trigger issues causing bigger eruptions.<ref>2. Triggers tend to be (both metatextually and for the individual) something that the individual can't let go of. Even for, say, Fume Hood's trigger, which you mention, the event was in part chosen because it's something that gets to her specifically, which puts her in a loop of sorts, where she's encouraged by the powers and stressful event to constantly put herself in circumstances that mirror the trigger (hostile people, collateral damage, decay) which makes it harder to put the powers away or let go of the stressful event, which encourages her to put herself into those circumstances, and so on. If she could put the powers away (or refocus to a Rogue lifestyle), then we might go back to point 1 - she might not have been chosen (obviously exceptions for Eden shards apply). Fume Hood's trigger might seem tame to you but it was just the right thing to devastate her specifically and stick to her. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref> This emotional volatility exacerbated conflicts and made gathering large teams of parahumans difficult.<ref name="II2.5">“And while I don’t like the way the idea is often interpreted or the conclusions it’s taken to, there’s the notion of volatility, and the exponentially increasing chance of trouble as the groups of capes grow larger. With parahumans, things are often exaggerated, both in weak points or the hot button issues they have, or their inclination to push certain buttons. The more you put in one place, the higher the chance of the wrong button being pushed. That was another concern of mine.” - Excerpt from Flare 2.5</ref> Parahumans who were isolated and not regularly challenged had a mild tendency toward increased mental abnormality, becoming more paranoid and aggressive.<ref>"Capes have a way of getting weird if they’re too isolated.”
“Ah, you read Weiss Four,” Dr. Rowland comments
"Yeah.”
“Explain?” Harrigan asks, leaning forward.
“If a parahuman isn’t challenged, they tend to veer a little off course, mentally speaking,” Rowland says. “It’s not a strong pattern, but it’s a pattern. The paranoid get more paranoid, the aggressive get more aggressive.”
“That’s a fact with almost any criminal,” Ingram chimes in.
“True,” Rowland says. “That’s one of the big arguments against the idea.” - Department Sixty Four,thread III page 18</ref>

Parahumans, especially those who trigger at a young age, can have their personality altered by their shards. The more conflict parahumans get into, the firmer a "foothold" the shard has to rewrite their consciousness and subconsciousness. In extreme cases, the shard can increase impulsiveness, cause obsession, amplify neuroses, exaggerate personality traits to the extreme, or overwrite parts of the mind. In lesser cases, the influence is subtler, with the shard tapping into the emotions and base impulses of its host in order to encourage them to use their power in a combat situation. In some such cases, parahumans become restless or depressed while out of battle, the feeling only fading when out and fighting. In other cases, the parahuman is actively rewarded by the effective use of their powers, instilling a desire to use them more often.<ref name="SB44">Depends on the shard. Bonesaw elaborates on the idea by noting 'breadth and depth' in her interlude. If the shard gets you while you're young, it can shape your personality across the board, on a deeper level. The more conflict you're involved in, the more toeholds it gets to rewrite your consciousness and your subconscious. To alter your thinking, it needs to do it as a part of the trigger event, or as part of the brain's development.

In the extreme cases, the shard can leave you with an impulse (Must fight when a fight presents itself), help set up an obsession ("Wall myself in!"), steer a neurosis in one particular direction (specific hallucinations rather than random ones, of you hurting people, pushing someone down the stairs, etc), create a link between A and B (Being around fire makes subject lose empathy and inhibitions. With lower empathy and inhibitions, subject uses power to make more fire.), or steer a personality trait to an extreme (Must be on top, I answer to no one!), or they just overwrite stuff (Can't understand humans, only dogs).

In the lesser cases, it can be a nudge, hard to distinguish from one's own psychology. You might be on the fence about something, trying to make a call, and the passenger pushes you one way over the other, based on your own feelings of doubt or fear. It might tap into emotions, and dampen X emotion while promoting Y, just dampen them across the board, or take the joy out of day to day living while adding excitement to the cape life. A vague sort of depression that only goes away when one's out and fighting. Sometimes, as mentioned before, it's set up as a trap, a flood of emotion or a set of mental switches that get thrown when a prerequisite is met - such as a cape just steering clear of all confrontations, except the shard set it up so they can't, and they have a sort of limit break/command cutting in that mandates them to fight in one way or another. Or it plays off a limit or a berserk button that already exists - Damsel can't spend too long being anything less than top dog or she gets restless, and if she goes too long despite that, then she has to act, she's acting without thinking about it. This takes time and effort for the passenger, and a host that doesn't demand that time and effort (by circumstance or intent) is going to develop a better connection with the power. This in turn is a reward of sorts. If Damsel did kill the local capes and assume control over the area, fighting off all comers, she'd find her facility and control with her power just ramped up like crazy.

It varies from cape to cape and shard to shard, and it varies depending on the host, the host's background and the host's personality.

Beyond that, other influences include the passenger playing fast and loose with the power itself, as it controls the metadata, which may be more visible if the subject breaks from their norm in terms of consciousness (gets a concussion, tranquilized), working off base instincts and impulses like 'stay camouflaged' (be a little more creepy and unsettling), intimidate/dominate (passenger works behind the scenes to make you look a little more dangerous as you mutate/grow/surround yourself in the aura of your power), etc, etc. In more pronounced cases, the power is just plain controlled by the passenger, not the host, and the passenger makes the seemingly random or uncontrolled aspects generate more conflict... pushing a power to kill rather than leave someone alive, or a thinker power turns up a vision of something the subject didn't want to see.

On the macro level, too, don't discount the fact that some shards (particularly powerful ones that warranted attention) are just sent to specific people, with the idea that it's a combination that's going to promote more conflict just by the sheer dynamic of it (Powerful person with a destructive power, a desperate person with a power with negative implications). - Wildbow on SpaceBattles</ref>

Some psychological commonalities exist when dealing with parahumans with a specific type of power. Masters, for example, have a systematic tendency to have interpersonal problems,<ref name="10.10IIe1">“I remember you geeking out one time,” Crystal said.  “Remember?  You were telling me all about how Masters have interpersonal problems and Shakers have issues feeling secure-”

“Ahem,” Vista said.

“-and tinkers dwell…”

“You got shakers wrong,” I pointed out. - excerpt from Polarize 10.10</ref> although this is true to an extent of all parahumans.<ref>I wrote a paper a while back about how Masters tend to have loneliness as part of their trigger events, and how maybe that was why Masters tend to be villains.  Because you need support and social pressure to be more of a good guy.  My professor then, the guy who I work for now, Dr. Wysocki, he tore me to pieces.  Too many other parahumans have it as part of their history.  Isolation.  It wasn’t enough to suggest a correlation. - except from Interlude 18.y</ref> As a general rule, Breakers, Movers and Trumps tend to feel distant from the rest of humanity.<ref>I knew Trump powers tended to arise, though not always, when a person triggered in relation to power-based stressors. I knew they tended to feel disconnected from humanity, much like breakers did, just like how movers reported being chronically restless or having trouble setting down roots. - Excerpt from Polarize 10.13</ref> Trumps become focused on parahuman powers,^{[citation needed]} Breakers separate themselves from others,^{[citation needed]} and Movers avoid confrontation and have trouble feeling rooted and staying in one place.<ref>When one could fly, it was easy to feel disconnected.  Movers in general had issues when it came to feeling or being rooted in things.  Being someone who had to run, walk, drive, and navigate the city on a day to day basis meant being in the city. - excerpt from Torch 7.4</ref> Shakers tend to focus on context and their environment,<ref name="II10.13e1">Shaker power, yes. Area or environment focused. Changing the battlefield. Shaker powers fell roughly in line with contextual or environmental threats. They were mindful of those things, usually. Context. Environment. - Polarize 10.13</ref> in a need to feel secure.<ref name="10.10IIe1"/> Changers worry about not being able to change back.<ref>There were too many stories, and recent mention of the Breaker in the hospital that hadn’t been able to leave her form wasn’t the only one of its kind. Changers, Breakers, and tinkers who emulated those things always had the ‘what if I can’t go back’ problem in the backs of their minds. Tristan was an all-too-recent reminder of how easy it would be to walk that line, and pick the exact wrong moment to use a power. - Excerpt from Heavens 12.9</ref> Tinkers, based on those seen in the storyline tend to have their personalities influenced by their gender.<ref>Beacon 8.2</ref> They also have to deal with seeing the world through the lens of their ability to create, i.e. everything looks like potential resources given the right tinker.<ref>I think the drawback of tinker is less the fair dose of crazy and more the "When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" - you start viewing the world through a different lens, but that lens requires a huge investment in time and other resources. You can't really ~not~ use your power, and using the tinker power really gets in the way of regular life. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>

Despite the prevalent influence of shards, parahumans are independent beings and act of their own accord. Shards merely influence their cognition on an instinctual covert level, with overt control of a parahuman by their shard being very rare.<ref name="R19"> Shards only very rarely 'make' people do anything. They pick their hosts with care, those people who are going to be inclined to use powers more or throw themselves into a given type of situation, they may nudge, or encourage more subtly, reinforcing behaviors they want with more power, more focus and utility in the power, or in damping down any drawbacks. In some cases, they may ebb and flow in terms of effectiveness, and in cases like Canary's, may ebb more for a long time, getting her to let her guard down, before a 'kill all the Japanese' chance comes up. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>

Population

It is implied that there are a great many capes in the world, but that they still form only a small percentage of the population. Brockton Bay has roughly seventy parahumans that have been introduced and described in the course of the story, implying that capes comprise less than one percent of the population.

It is also mentioned that there is about 1 parahuman for every 8,000 in urban areas.<ref>Insurmountable. Too much work for one woman to handle. She delegated where she could, but too much of the responsibility was hers and hers alone. The humans outnumbered parahumans by eight-thousand to one, give or take, in urban areas. Outside of the more densely populated areas, it dropped to a more manageable one to twenty-six-thousand ratio. But here in Brockton Bay, many had evacuated. Few places in the world, if any, sported the imbalanced proportion that Brockton Bay now featured. What was it now? One parahuman to every two thousand people? One parahuman to every five hundred people? Each parahuman represented their respective interests. She represented everyone else’s. The people without powers. - Excerpt from Interlude 13</ref>

Culture

Many parahumans follow a certain code of conduct that exists in different forms around the world. It is a general set of "rules" that parahumans use to prevent situations from escalating out of control. A parahuman's civilian identity is considered sacrosanct, with the act of unmasking a cape usually considered a grievous offense.

"Cape names," the name assigned to a parahuman's costumed identity, are a big part of parahuman culture. Not stealing another parahuman's cape name is considered common courtesy. Villains have been known to hold outright duels over the matter, while heroes go to great lengths to secure permission to take a name. Cape names that are considered "stupid" or offensive will be contested, with the community striving to rename the cape in question.<ref name="R12">Parahumans Online is something of a wiki that establishes names. If you don't pick and declare a name for yourself, someone else will (a la Skitter). If you pick a name that's stupid (superdude785) or offensive, the community will name you or strive to rename you (a la Bitch/Hellhound), depending.

Keep in mind that language is always striving to simplify itself. Long-winded names don't tend to get a lot of traction and will become nicknames, which eventually become the new standard. Someone names themselves Cyber Stealth Death Ninjaman ends up getting referred to as Cyberdeath, and that becomes their name.

Getting huffy and going, "But guyyyys! I'm Cyber Stealth Death Ninjaman, not Cyberdeath!" is a fast way to lose rep and have people move even faster to the short-form.

When a villain dies, their name is up for grabs, but if it's just taken without a second thought, then has a way of maintaining bad reps and picking up old rivalries with few of the benefits. That guy who always wanted to stomp Tailspin's ass might get some cathartic release from beating down Tailspin II. Sometimes very stupid villains take a name that's already taken, causing headaches for everyone involved, and invite beatdowns & contests over the name.

Heroes are far more likely to simply ask for permission to use a name. Unicorn III passed her name on to Unicorn IV, for example. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>

History

Background

Parahumans started to emerge around 1982, if one counts Scion as such, with the first true "heroes" appearing in 1987.

With the propensity for parahumans to appear in marginalized groups, political power shifted.<ref name="SV7478">It's worth stating that one of the underling ideas driving the formation of groups and ideological factions in the Wormverse is the notion that some people get a voice where they otherwise wouldn't. Give an immense amount of power to a (relatively) random section of the population and you'll see certain shifts in the overlying sentiments.

All the more so when you think that a parahuman with aspirations might latch on to an idea, concept, or group to get reputation, resources, and contacts. - Comment by Wildbow on Sufficient Velocity</ref>

In 1993, the PRT was formed in the United States to integrate parahumans into existing society, among other reasons.

Story Start

Society had largely accepted parahumans as a necessary evil to combat things like the Endbringers.<ref>Extermination 8.2</ref>

Gold Morning

Cauldrons purpose was revealed when Scion, now revealed as Zion began attacking humanity on a multiversal scale.

Post-Gold Morning

A full understanding of parahuman biology became known to the general public. The idea of "passengers" granting powers became commonplace.^{[citation needed]}

Trivia

• The term parahuman is constructed out of the prefix "para-," meaning abnormal, and human.
• What a general civilian knows about parahumans is wildly individualistic.<ref> - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>

References

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