Blood Red Arachnid

I think you meant sufficiently studied magic. Though this isn't true if magic is fundamentally arbitrary.



Anyway, I always saw robots as being tech origin. Robots are made up of gears, pistons, motors, wheel and axles, levers, pressure differentials via liquid or steam, and other stuff. If you were to take a wheel and axle, it itself wouldn't be considered superpowered or a product of superscience. If you take enough wheels and axles and pulleys and levers and put them together in the right way, you get a robot. In the sense that you are constructing things from tools that are readily available, it is a matter of technology.

The case for science origin can be made very easily. There are several "parts" of the robot that we tend to take for granted, such as the material they are made out of, their power source, or their AI source. If a new and unusual way of handling those aspects is an important part of a robot's story, then you can say that it is science origin.

I did write up something about mutant stories on page 3 that aren't heavily based on segregation. Although I feel that plot point could be explored a bit more: Something that I always found fundamentally different between mutants and the other power types is that mutants are your kids, your friends, and your family. The other origins are seen as tools, as knowledge, as something extra that is added to the ordinary man. Tony Stark is a man who has a super suit, Green Lanterns are regular men who are given power rings, the fantastic four were regular people who got zapped into having powers, ect. In all of these cases, the superhero is a regular person who gets something added on to them. Another minor aspect is that these usually involve adults who have branched off from the next and are expected to be all mature and stuff. Superpowers here are more or less considered exotic weaponry.

But not mutants... no, those are the people who are born with their powers, and this is a bit of another primal fear that humanity has: something being seriously wrong with their child. By the mere context of expecting a human and not getting one, it makes mutants despised abnormality. The roles of the family fall apart, the social norms of adolescence are cast aside due to a horrendous power displacement, this is what makes people truly afraid. Now, you can make a case that this segregation can happen with all forms of powers, but you have to wonder exactly how often it is that little Billy is going to ingest a top-secret superserum and become Big Billy Boy Wonder before he gets out of middle school. When contrasted to how often it is that some child has a gene that, through the limitlessly intricate and not fully understood complexities of biology, has given him heat vision, it becomes a mutant issue instead of an all origin issue. No parent would want to send their kid to school with Johnny Storm.

Then there is the hunted issue. While the arcane need some kind of ritual/artifact/umpteen strange things, science needs rigorous and possibly dangerous research, technology needs assembly along with trial and error, and natural is just as its name implies, the mutant is a source of power that just happens. The genome has produced an aspect of power essentially for free with no strings attached. This isn't just "unfair" to the other origins. This is a shortcut to any opportunist who has the will to attempt it. The arcane and the natural want to use the mutant as a tool for their own gains. The science and the technology want to dissect the mutant to learn what makes them tick. The mutant is left segregated because they violate the established social contracts of power allocation, and likewise hunted because that very same power makes them valuable to whatever goal that anyone can have.



For natural storylines, one only needs to look at Roland Daggett, or David Xanatos. In a world of superheroes, unless things go the way of Praetoria it is a fairly safe assumption that the President of the U.S., the Prime Minister of Japan, the representatives to the United Nations, all of them will be regular people. To this effect, much of the villainy that you see happen in real life can be applied to the videogames as a natural storyline. The corrupt politician's weapon isn't flying or super speed, but a silver tongue. It is the jerk who's company is too big to let it fail, who gets pardoned for all of their crimes because they're friends with the Governor of that state, who's influence as an authority lets him dictate the news, who's endless list of contacts and personal relationships let him get a hold of whatever criminal resource they need. They are exceptional indeed, since there is nothing that a "never murder someone" hero can do against a villain who's powers are their cunning mind, charismatic personality, and substantial wealth/importance to the community.

ONCE YOU SAY IT, YOU CANNOT UN-SAY IT!

Too late.

ONCE YOU HAVE SAID IT, YOU CANNOT UN-SAY IT!