Who wants to talk about superpowers with drawbacks?

ME.  Everything is under a cut because I’m trying not to inflict too much mulling-over-of-plot on y’all.  But I need to hash some details out re: Polaris and Tumblr is now my wall at which to throw things.

OKAY SO.  I’m a big believer in the old saying that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, particularly with superpowers–that’s one of my favorite things about the X-Men, if someone’s superpower has no inherent drawbacks (like, oh, not turning off), they generally pay for that luxury in spades.  And of course they’re all paying for the experience of being mutants, all day every day.  But the point is that I’m doing something similar with Polaris: all the superpowers have some kind of downside, and it’s either inherent or a direct effect.  So HERE is a list of all five people with superpowers (they call themselves ‘blues’ as in ‘once in a blue moon’ because…astronomy terms are a big thing in-universe), with a few details and the drawbacks.

MAX, our heroine, is a technopath, which means that she can control any computer (anything more advanced than a cell phone from the early 00′s, basically) by touching it, no programming necessary.  I’m not going to talk about her much because, obviously, she’s the main character.  But her drawback is that, since her brain is programmed for technopathy, she’s severely dyslexic when she’s not using her powers–this means that while she can read okay on a computer screen, a book is pretty difficult for her.  She’s gotten good at hiding it (necessary when she was younger), and she really, really hates having to ask for help.  Fortunately her second-in-command Elijah is good as running interference so that she’s comfortable.

LESSA, our love interest, is an electrokinetic, which means that she can control and direct electricity through her body (her preferred method of combat is to throw lightning from her hands).  For scale, she can project about 20K amps, which is about half/a third of a natural lightning bolt and way, way more than industrial current, and over a million volts, which is…a lot.  Also not going to say much about her, because she’s the LI.  Her drawback is inherently part of her power: she has to be able to conduct electricity through her body in order to not die, but that does mean that she’s usually the best conductor around.  She can’t go outside in thunderstorms, because lightning strikes are far more current than she’s designed to withstand, and if she was weak enough or tired enough or unlucky enough, being struck might kill her.  She’s been struck twice, and the more recent one left Lichtenberg scars all up her throat and across her left shoulder and bicep.

HARRISON, seventeen-year-old black kid who’s been with Polaris since he was thirteen, is unbreakable.  More like the M. Night movie than Luke Cage–no super-strength, he’s just invulnerable to being cut or bruised or broken in any way.  However, he never suffered the microtears and small nicks that help build an immune system, so his is pretty well crippled, and things that look like a cold or a mild bout of the flu for anyone else can really be dangerous for him.  He is a genuinely sweet kid and doesn’t really LIKE fighting, but he’s also very serious about protecting his people and fighting for his beliefs.  He’s part of a Mars squad at Capricorn base in Texas, the shock troops, and he fights at the very front to take as many bullets that might hurt his squadmates as possible.  He has Max down as his next-of-kin and older sister, they stay in touch and she was the first person to tell him that he wasn’t the only one with powers.  He was the first blue Max met other than herself, so they’re close.  She wants him to move back to Ursa Major base in DC, so that she can keep a better eye on him–look, Max doesn’t have a lot of family, so she’s very protective of her pseudo-baby-siblings.

CLARA, eighteen-year-old daughter of Columbian immigrants who lost the use of her legs on her very first run-in with the police at eleven involved a brutal hit with a baton, can speak to animals.  No one totally gets how that works out, because she tends to be irritable and grumbles a lot and is just generally not the sort of person you’d associate with being good with animals, but they love her.  She is also mildly allergic to cats, which is not part of her drawback but rather part of the ongoing dramatic irony thing that blues tend to run into (Max hates being stuck behind a computer, Lessa and Harrison don’t care for combat, etc.).  I haven’t worked out a good drawback and will take any suggestions under advisement (I was considering sensory-overload problems with speaking to people for long periods of time, given that a lot of animal communication is non-verbal).  Among her other duties as tactician and translator, she takes care of the cats on Andromeda base in New York–all of the bases keep half-feral cats and sometimes a handful of dogs as pest management and fluff therapy, because everyone has PTSD, did I mention that?  And every time Clara gets a new kitten she sends a description to Max.  Max is also Clara’s next-of-kin.

JUDE, twelve-year-old nonbinary kid who just fetched up on Polaris’ doorstep like three months prior to the start of the book, can generate supersonic frequencies with their voice.  Like Lessa, their power is also the drawback: they can’t turn it off, so they function as an elective mute, and speak exclusively in sign language.  They lived on the street for a long while prior to joining Polaris, and they think Max pretty much hung the sun in the sky, because she got word from another Polaris base that they’d gotten this kid in and immediately arranged for them to be moved to another base with more kids from similar backgrounds and better-trained speakers of ASL (a lot of Polaris knows at least rudimentary sign, but not all of them are actually any good, you feel).  Um…I haven’t worked out a lot else about them, except that they’re cute as fuck, very fighty in defense of their beliefs (they want to lead a squad when they’re older, and they think they could be good in a battle with their power), and fucking hilarious, kid’s got joke and they can deadpan through literally anything.  Also they are a very dangerous poker player, and Max is their next-of-kin, so she gets a lot fo complaints about people having lost all their money to the tiny fighty street kid.  Max basically collects blues like action figures.

polarisoriginal workpolaris storymoran writes stuffCAN YOU TELL I'M HAVING ISSUES FOCUSING ENOUGH TO WRITEi have the document open i wrote like half a page todayin HOURS AND HOURS i wrote half a pagei am procrastinating like an assholebut i love these kids and their superpowersalso i feel very strongly that there is NO GOOD REASON not to have disabled people with superpowers???like???why the fuck not???someone got in a fight with me about it recently i guess that's why i'm annoyed about italso all of these kids have ptsd and probably depression/anxiety/some combination thereofbecause war will fuck you upand yes these are the only five blues in existence as far as polaris knowsthere are more outside of america and there are some who haven't realized that whatever they can do is superhumanor who have managed to keep that shit under the radaror who were discovered and disappeared by the government (that is DEFINITELY a thing)but more to the point they're at the VERY BEGINNING of the evolutionary wavethey haven't had enough blues who've survived to adulthood and had kids to encounter an exponential population increase yetmax is the oldest blue around and she's only twenty-twoeven outside the country there aren't a lot of blues older than she isshe might even have been the very first(well the very first who lived)