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PaperclipPerfector  30d ago (text post)   2770 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 17, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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So I've been watching X-Men '97 and started wondering what opinions here would be on how to deal with mutants if those kinds of powers started to show up in random people. Would you support registration? Something more serious? Nothing at all? Is it really ok to let someone with the destructive capabilities of a nuclear bomb just walk around, or board a plane, etc.?

…have you read Worm? I’d call it the definitive web fiction for superpowers.

For anyone who hasn’t—the setting has trauma-derived powers. Some small fraction of people are, upon having the worst day of their lives, handed a figurative gun. Depending on how poorly the next interaction goes, getting pressganged into the police is perhaps their best outcome.

Most Marvel-style laws would be unenforceable. A state monopoly on violence is right out. Plurality is possible, but slipping. Regions which can’t manage that devolve into warlordism and chaos.

Worm is the absolute best at working out what it would take to see lots of the standard superpower tropes. Why is there a central hero organization? How’d it end up looking like the Justice League instead of a military junta? How is there still a balance of power between criminals and the state? What’s Superman been doing all this time, and why is he in tights?

All these and more are addressed somewhere in this monstrosity of a story. It’s great.

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