Parahuman: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:21, October 20, 2017

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

Biology

Parahumans function like regular human though, unlike regular humans, they have a Corona Pollentia. The Corona Pollentia is the portion of a parahuman's brain that adapts to and allows the parahuman to control their supernatural abilities. The Corona Pollentia seems to awaken during a parahuman's "trigger event". 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 said in the interlude of arc 13 that it is "likely more to do with exposure to parahumans at formative ages than genetics."<ref>Interlude 13</ref>

History

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

Trivia

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 8000 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>

References

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 Parahumans function like regular human though, unlike regular humans, they have a Corona Pollentia. The [[Corona Pollentia]] is the portion of a parahuman's brain that adapts to and allows the parahuman to control their supernatural abilities. The Corona Pollentia seems to awaken during a parahuman's "trigger event". 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 said in the interlude of arc 13 that it is "likely more to do with exposure to parahumans at formative ages than genetics."<ref>[[Interlude 13]]</ref>
 <!--add a few things about Psychology they are pushed towards conflict. And they do escalate.
+Butterfingers said: ↑
+I don't follow this.
+The idea that a sane and rational government wouldn't try to co-opt parahumans seems very unlikely - they represent force, which the Government wants to maintain a monopoly on.
+It might not be the same as the PRT, but it would certainly exist, providing training, funding, psychiatric treatment (unlike the PRT, apparently), medical and dental cover, non-parahuman operational support, legitimacy, etc.
+What would be preventing such an organisation from forming and is the Government just sticking its fingers in its ears and going "la la la, I'm not looking"?
+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.
+What happens is you have agencies trying to get capes on board and entice them to their side - they offer money, benefits, training, gear, whatever else. But each parahuman you bring on board constitutes a risk to what you're building. In canon, the Doctor is pulling strings and seeding groups with cauldron capes, which provides a steady body of capes, and Contessa is devoting attention here and there to controlling crises and removing threats/dissent. Once you have that stable body, and you're handling all of the big problems (we see Cauldron discussing the fact that they have to stop doing just this around the time of Number Man's interlude), you have a stable organization that can survive the loss of two or three key members, and you only need to step in every couple of weeks/months to keep things more or less running smoothly. Then you've got bastions of strength for humanity and civilization.
+Without Cauldron, you run into problems where all it takes for your new organization to fall apart is one incident, one bit of drama, one nutball cape crossing a line. You lose trust, your faction fragments in half, and the individuals involved in this crisis are very powerful - your government or organization or whatever has to devote horrific amounts of resources to understanding, mediating and controlling the problem. And it keeps happening. The larger your group, the higher the rate of incidents. It's a struggle to get off the ground, and once you've actually made it, you're one disaster away from crumbling and having it all be for naught.
+By and large, big groups aren't so sustainable, without outside help and a strong example to show it's worth the effort.
 https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/15025011/
 <ref name="R1">Cauldron capes don't Conflict Libido to the same extent. They can get built-in conflict generators in the power, but not a libido per se. - [https://redd.it/3rb0y5 Comment by Wildbow on Would You Take a Drink? on Reddit]</ref>