Everybodies Kung Fu Fighting!

Why I'm not totally comfortable with it (although I understand the point you're making) is that it seems to unavoidably make all origins effectively an offshoot of the magical one. The only way to posit a supernatural foundation to all of the five origins that is *not* magical is to write a much more restricted definition for "magical" than originally intended, just to leave room for a supernatural-but-not-magical Super-Origin.

I'm not comfortable with saying, in effect, that superheroic science is normal Science changed by Magic to follow different rules, and superheroic mutation is Mutation changed by Magic to follow different rules, and superheroic technology is Technology changed by Magic to follow different rules, etc.

My guess is that this "origin of origins" was mostly intended to be a justification for powerset proliferation, and at the moment is intended to obey the MST3k Mantra. However, my personal opinion is that by trying to come up with an actual explanation for this, instead of hand-waving it away, the writers forfeited the right to use that defense, ala midichlorines (The Force obeys the MST3k Mantra; midichlorines can be dissected and freely ridiculed).

In my opinion, if you're not going to make a bullet-proof explanation, you're much better off appealing to the Rule of Cool.

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

This is patently untrue, seen as how people with super powers existed long, LONG before Recluse or the Statesman. Easy examples - the Nictus and Kheldians. The Circle of Thorns, the Mu, the Banished Pantheon and the Coralax. The old gods, and at the very least Hequat, whom we get to meet in-game. Lord Nemesis, said to be over 180 years old and born and realised long before the Statesman was even born. Giovana Scaldi existed long before, as well, and she serves as the source of power for Vanessa DeVore. The Red Caps, Cabal, Fir Bolg and Tautha De Dannon are all many centuries old and have been leading a war in the spirit realm. The ghosts in the Port Oaks fort are also several centuries old, comprised primarily of pirates. Bat'Zul, the Cap Au Diable demon is probably several millennia old, which would make Deathsurge and the smaller Cap Au Diable demons ancient, as well. Speaking of which - the Leviathan is significantly older than the civilization of the Oranbegans, which is itself 14 thousand years old. We could probably also count the Shivans, as they come from an asteroid in outer space, and are presumably more than a couple of hundred years old.

The Origins of Power arc is a crock, to put it plainly. It's an excuse for Cimerora and powerset proliferation, and its missions are nothing but a well of deliberate misinformation, with the different Origins contacts contradicting each other, contradicting themselves, contradicting continuity and being contradicted by subsequent events. Since it's been theorised multiple times that no-one really know what the hell is going on or how things are interconnected, all of the contacts in those arcs are making nothing more than somewhat educated guesses.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

It's a reasonable interpretation, certainly, and I can't really find a fault in it. But I AM saying it's possible to argue the opposite and still make a fairly convincing argument. I'd base it around the origin of his power, arguing that his actual POWER is science/mutation and his technology is only an application of it, to which I can draw a parallel with Cyclops and his goggles. Yes, he can blast stuff indiscriminately with his naked eye, but his precision and control come from the goggles. But he's still a mutant.

Again, I'm not trying to contradict Matt's interpretation of Positron's origin. I completely agree with it. I'm merely trying to point out that origins are flexible and subject to spin as much as they are subject to fact.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Reading the forums.

I always thought his hair simply got stuck to the inside of his helmet.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

This is because, IMHO, Origins are not 'canon', per se.

They are an in-game categorization performed by a fallible in-game agency, not Word of Gawd (the individual player has final word on what the origin of a character's power "really" is).

If you have the ability to generate superhot plasma and hold it in your hand without being burned, and you tell your hero license interviewer that it's a spell you learned from reading a book you found in grandma's attic, they stamp 'Magic' on your application and send you to Magi. If you say that the ability just manifested by itself when you turned 13, they stamp 'mutant' instead.

I imagine the individual agencies like ELITE and what not have further testing they do to make sure you are 'one of theirs'.

For a while there, wily Marcus Cole had us beleiving his powers were Natural, having come from 'harnessing his Inner Will' after studying with Tibetan monks. But he dropped that story eventually.

But many superheroes have a few innate powers backed up by tech, magic and good old Natural experience, training and talent.

It all comes down to whether them to hand you throwing kinves or vials of mutagen after the interview.

Which actaully doesn't counter my point at all, it is possible that there is another possiblity other than natural. Jor-El knowledge of what the yellow sun will do is proof of nothing.

Doom/Batman in 2012

The Resistance has boobs too, and better hair!

The stuff you describe is pretty much all magic based. I'm not arguing that beings with power didn't exist before the Well of Furies incident, I'm arguing how common place they were. How often did Joe Normal accidentally eat a quarter pound of radioactive isotopes and instead of perishing in a gruesome way, suddenly find he has the ability to shoot energy beams from his toes.

That magic and ancient gods existed in the COX universe has never been in question. And of course they would have been around well before the Well of Furies thing. Because the well itself is magical...so DUH!

What the origin stories are suggesting is that the proliferation of 'extraordinary individuals' that we have now are not a random occurrence.

Actually some of our established superhero universes are more of a crock. I remember a story in The New Warriors comic a long time ago where Night Thrasher was running an experiment with Speedball. Afterwards, Speedball attempted to reactivate his powers by jumping off the top of their building headquarters and was saved multiple times by hero after hero...including the Hulk. At the end, he asked Night Thrasher how many heroes there were in New York. And the number was pretty damned high. High enough that you begin to realize how silly it is that heroes are that prolific even in a single city.

My point is that at least the origins stuff explains how Paragon City could even begin to exist in its present form. Full of heroes at every turn.

Anything is possible. However, if you're willing to speculate anything without foundation, then you can say absolutely nothing except "anything is possible." Such a position is always uninteresting to discuss: its always first presumed, then immediately discarded in any discussion involving more than one person.

"What origin is Superman" is supposed to be parsed to "Given the definition of Origin in City of Heroes, and given all the knowledge we have about the character of Superman, what CoH origin is most consistent with the character of Superman?" And I've never seen a credible case made for that answer to be anything but Natural.

Magic is one of the five "origins" written on the Cimeroran tablets, aside the sixth one tagged "incarnate." If it existed in spades (the Oranbegans were a nation where ever man, woman and child were able sorcerers, so it did), then by definition large gatherings of super-powered people existed prior to opening the box.

What's more, I believe it was someone in the Midnighters' club who said that such a gathering of super powered folk as we see today hasn't happened since Cimerora, which is a large part of why we go there.

Lastly, trying to explain why people gain powers via some sort of magical force pushing them to do so is plain and simple atrociously bad writing. It takes all of people's complicated, pre-planned ideas, kicks them in the nuts and tells them "No, you're all wrong. See, THIS is why you have powers." Which, if it were actually enforce and thank God it's not, would be a catastrophic move to pull on people with five years of character prehistory. I do NOT want to have a Council retocn done to my characters against my will.

And again, it's absurd to tie this into some random event whenever, considering how many heroes and villains are not from this Earth. Plenty, PLENTY of them are from other planets, other dimensions, other plains of existence, other timelines awaking from a thousand-year slumber. As I said to a friend of mine recently, if there were Men in Black in Paragon City, they'd all die from overworking within a day.

The Origin of Powers is yet another example of "The Hamidon is a what what of what?"

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You have a narrow view of magic. Not everyone who uses magic is necessarily superpowered. If these people used magic solely by study and rituals and mixing of potions but themselves were not magical beings, then I think they stand outside of what the Well of Furies incident is referring to.

They didn't gain their powers by some accident, they are simply applying knowledge that they have learned.

Is there some game canon where it is stated that they were innately magical beings? Or was theirs' simply a magical society where everyone was taught the use of magic?

And this right here is the problem I'm having with your argument. Your issue is that you want to be able to tell the people who hold the rights to the lore of the game what they can and cannot mean because it doesn't fit in with your ideas of how their universe should be.

Oddly enough, I don't see them policing people's bios for exact canon compliance. You are still free to write your characters' origins as you see fit. If they aren't coming down on the girl whose toon claims to be Lord Recluse's second cousin, once removed and who had Statesman's love-child, then I have no idea why you'd even care this much.

About all I've seen them do in this regard is choose which MA arcs are considered canon and which aren't. They don't delete the ones that don't fit in with their lore.

Even so...how does it truly affect your characters? If you're an alien, then you're not from earth and don't even need to be concerned about origins. If you are from earth and got your powers from a freak accident or whatever, then all they are saying is that you were able to gain powers from that accident because the bands that tie reality together where that sort of thing is concerned are much looser. It doesn't really have that much of a bearing on character concepts at all.

So maybe it doesn't mesh with Samuel Tow's idea of a perfect superhero universe. My reply is: So what??

You have a narrow view of what the scope of the Origin of Powers arc applies over. Either that, or it applies to absolutely nothing, because people have been getting powers the same way since the opening of the box as they have before it, and it seems disingenuous to claim it is because of the opening of the box NOW when it wasn't before. Remember Daedalus? He's a tech hero in Roman Europe.

Oddly enough, I said the same thing, and I'd appreciate if you quote my points in their entirety if you plan to contradict me, lest we end up saying the same thing. No, they do not enforce it, and it's pretty much the only redeeming quality of the storyline. Yes, the only good part of this storyline is that I can pretend it doesn't exist and make my characters the way I want them anyway.

So your attempts at dismissive insolence via an intentional misreading of my post do not befit you. I just know the word "insolence" is going to get me into trouble, but it means what I want to say. Talking down to me like I'm some thick-headed yahoo does not serve to make a good argument, and if you're going to handle yourself that way from here on out, just let me know and I'll admit defeat right now.

*edit*
Just to be clear - no I do not intend, nor feel I have the authority, to mandate how the developers run and develop their game. But if you'd actually read what you quoted, you'd have noted I called it "bad writing." Last I checked, I was well within my rights, and dare I say, within my competence as a consumer, to call a piece of lore as I see it - bad, bad writing and a very poor idea. It's hardly the only one, but it's potentially the worst in terms of the implications it could hold for player concepts if anyone actually took it seriously. They are in control of the game and can feel free to do with it as they please, but as long as I'm in control of my wallet and my keyboard, I'm also free to state my opinions of their decisions, as is the purpose of this forum.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

This right here. In fact, I often choose my "origin" based on the primary enemies, not on whether it is the "actual" origin of my character. A few of my Natural characters would be considered Tech by most players, but I didn't particularly want every Tech character to have Clockworks as their prime enemy group.

I never choose Science Hero side, even for Science-based characters, because I despise the Vahzilok and avoid them as much as possible.

That's what's great about CoH; we have a framework in which to paint our own pictures. We can use the parts we want and rewrite the rest for ourselves with our own imaginations.

This is exactly why the Origin of Powers arc caught me completely by surprise. Origins are not meaningful, and we've been picking them partly at random, partly for convenience, partly incorrectly, but every time without restriction. Whether or not the quality of writing is good or not (and outside the story of Magic, I'd vote "not"), the real question is "why?" Why mess with origins? Why try to write them into the game when they haven't had a clear meaning... Very much ever? Why try to define what they mean in such oddly absolute ways when they don't mean very much anything at all?

This is really odd to me. It's like sticking the words "toon" or "mob" in character dialogue (in fact, the Inventions tutorial had one of the teachers talk about "mobs" for a while), in that it's just out of place in the actual game. Security/Threat levels vs. Combat Levels are sort of an acceptable fudge, but our archetypes or origins have never been terribly meaningful. Granted, we have the various "meaningful acronym" organisations, but even those are only very loosely defined as to the heroes they take care of. Basically, anyone who can work with Azuria goes to MAGI, anyone who knows his way around a computer goes to DATA and so forth.

Certain things are just best left undefined. Like, say, Inventions. They're just generic enhancements that work for all origins and only define what they DO, not what they ARE. How is this Invention: Damage making your rifle bullets hit harder? Err... Stronger alloy! Sure, why not. That sort of thing.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Just the other day I was slotting a newish toon and was putting in some "named" DOs, like Benedict Tech Adv. Targeting Eye or something and it seemed a bit silly to me when I thought about it. "Just how many eyes do I freakin' have?!"

Okay, here's one for you.

Counterintuitively, "origin" has no effect on how you actually get your powers. The one game effect "origin" does have is on how your powers change, aside from just practicing on your own.

Natural? You take Training from experts in the field and apply their knowledge to tweak your powers.

Magic? You make a contact with a Dimensional Entity - something outside yourself - and add its power to yours.

Mutant? Your best bet is to undergo a Secondary Mutation. Somehow. No, really, somehow. They can be grouped into classes with the same effect, but how you actually trigger yours is anybody's guess.

Technology? Cybernetics. Upgrade the tech you're made from or the tech you use.

Science? Perform Experiments (or have them performed on you), exposing yourself to all manner of weird radiations and substances which given your existing powers have predictable effects.

What affects Superman's capabilities the most? Weird radiations and other controlled substances. Occasionally he makes use of a Kryptonian Invention, or one from Star Labs, or something derived from him undergoes a Genetic Alteration.

But, clearly, he's otherwise a man of Science.

Statesman (the dev) once said that Superman was Natural, as he powers were inate and just refined over the years on a alien world.

Statesman (the dev) once said a lot of things.

This particular statement may have made sense in the context of how origins were designed to function in the original draft of the game, affecting your character's actual power and access to power sets. This was scrapped, by the way, because of the tremendous power differentials between "good builds" of the various origins.

But it doesn't mean anything, given the mechanical effect of "Origin" in the actual game. Which, as stated earlier, is "how your powers get better", or what Enhancements work for you.

Ok...I'm willing to admit I may be fuzzy on this, but what examples do we have before the Well of a large number of people who have gotten their powers by freak accidents of science or by being mutants? Who are the large numbers of super powered heroes who have been around before the Well?

Nemesis is what he is due to careful and deliberate experimentation to prolong his life and create mechanical clones etc.

Lady Grey and Dark Watcher seem to be of the 'old powers' type of entities. Their origins are never fully explained and it seems to be hinted at that they aren't human at all.

Actually yes you did say the same thing...and I somehow missed or misread it. So I was wrong to imply that you didn't have that view.

Oddly enough, when someone like Nethergoat uses this exact same 'tone' in his arguments, no one seems to call him insolent. It must be a forum quirk. Regardless, it is difficult to convey true emotion through a forum post.

My intent was to say: 'So their origin explanations don't sit well with you, what implications do you think this will truly have on the game?' I personally don't think it makes that much of a difference and I don't foresee them ever really doing anything about it.

Their 'terrible writing mistake' in terms of the Well of Furies explanation was seemingly used as a backbone for powerset proliferation. That means it was used to open up more powers for more characters so that more character concepts could be accommodated. No one lost...everyone gained something.

I'm curious to know what you think they could do with it if they actually DID take it seriously?

Superman does not in general perform scientific experiments upon himself to enhance his existing powers or gain new ones. You can't drop the "scientific experiments" part from "exposure to weird radiations and substances" or its not science anymore. It might not have been a deliberate scientific experiment on you personally, and it might not have been a scientific experiment conducted by you personally, but the presumption is always that the effect was a product of scientific research. The Sun is not the product of scientific research.

Furthermore you're attempting to make the case that what affects Superman's capabilities the most is exposure to the sun, not his intrinsic Kryptonian biology. In effect, you're saying that a human being standing in the sun is intrinsically closer to having superpowers than a Kryptonian on Krypton, because the Kryptonian must still get to a yellow sun, which is more than what the human being has to do, which is only become Kryptonian.

I don't think that is likely to match most people's definition of "affects the most." Its his Kryptonian physiology that is most responsible for his capabilities: yellow sunlight only unlocks that ability without actually changing his physiology in any way (that has ever been stated as far as I know).

Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.

To further prove that math and logic can defeat anything, ever.

Originally Posted by Nethergoat it's NEVER too late to pad your /ignore list!