quote:Originally posted by Set: That's definitely something I was thinking of with my 'House of El' idea, that between Clark and Kara alone, there could be *thousands* of part-Kryptonians flitting around by the 31st century, and if Conner or Power Girl (the other Kara) have some krypto-DNA, they could also spread some around.
There may be something to that. It could help to explain how some Terrains can get locked in nuclear reactors or ingest super-plastic fluid and get super-powers instead of getting dead.
From: Sumner, ME | Registered: Jul 2003
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Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
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quote:Originally posted by Portfolio Boy: I admit I have yet to read the entire thread, so I apologize if somebody else already has suggested this, but IMHO, Tyroc doesn't need air in space, he only needs air in his transuit.
That would allow him to scream, certainly. And so long as his powers remain the pseudo-magical ability to scream and 'stuff happens,' he's all good.
If he were Marvel's Banshee, his power would be no more useful in a transsuit in space than a stinky fart. It would travel to the edge of the suit, and then stop, because the air particles that are conducting the sonic vibration would be trapped in the suit with him. Indeed, the full force of one of the Banshee's sonic screams would either blow the suit apart from the inside, or reverberate around inside the suit, affecting only him.
Without particles to conduct the vibrations, sound and heat do not exist (which is why space, despite having a bunch of stars just hanging around burning like a million constantly exploding nuclear bombs, is both silent and cold, as the sound of all those burbling cauldrons of nuclear fury and the heat they produce can't propogate through vacuum). They aren't 'things' or 'energy,' so much as properties of matter. No matter to vibrate / oscillate / agitate, and Banshee's pretty much a guy in a spacesuit.
[The comparison is muddled by the number of characters who, like Tyroc, use screams to activate other powers. Banshee's flight requires him to scream, but is 'psionic' and doesn't use sonic vibrations to lift him, 'cause if it did, he'd be pounding the ground beneath him like a jackhammer as he flew, crushing everything between him and the ground, and causing ridonkulous amounts of property damage. So he'd be able to fly in space just fine, even if his scream never left his suit. Black Bolt's powers are even more unclear. Sometimes it's sonic, sometimes it's just triggered by his vocalizations. Generally, the only rule about Black Bolt is that his power works however the writer wants it to. It's sonic when Dazzler needs to absorb it. It's raw destructive power triggered by a vocalization when he needs to blow up a ship in space. ]
Registered: Aug 2006
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posted
I'm watching an episode of Morgan Freeman's Through the Wormhole where he's talking about how, on the quantum level, a change to one sub-atomic particle can trigger a similar change to an otherwise unrelated "twin" particle. Simply saying that Tyroc's powers operate on the quantum level might easily explain how vibrating the air particles in his transuit can vibrate sub-atomic particles in an asteroid, making it go POW!
From: Sumner, ME | Registered: Jul 2003
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Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
posted
quote:Originally posted by Portfolio Boy: I'm watching an episode of Morgan Freeman's Through the Wormhole where he's talking about how, on the quantum level, a change to one sub-atomic particle can trigger a similar change to an otherwise unrelated "twin" particle. Simply saying that Tyroc's powers operate on the quantum level might easily explain how vibrating the air particles in his transuit can vibrate sub-atomic particles in an asteroid, making it go POW!
Indeed. There was never any pretense that he had 'sonic powers' back in the day. He screamed and stuff teleported or caught on fire or went intangible. It was all more like reality manipulation, or magic spells.
Quantum stuff could work on two levels;
On the 'sci-fi Star Trek technobabble' side, his screams could tear holes in spacetime, and cause improbable things that have happened in other quantum realities to happen in this universe. Sort of a 'bleed' thing, where if there was any universe where this item had mysteriously exploded, he could 'bring it here' and affect the item in this universe. That would fit with a comic book universe that's already established the presence of a bunch of adjacent universes, alternate timelines, hypertime, etc. and allow him a Scarlet Witch-type power of doing pretty much whatever the heck he wanted to do, as long as he knew the right 'scream frequency' (spell, dimensional coordinates, whatEVER) for that particular effect.
On the harder science side, and skipping all of the other stuff and just going with 'sonic powers that work in space' angle he could quantum entangle himself with the target of his 'scream,' and then conduct the vibrations of his sonic assault directly to the target object. His own body would begin resonating at a frequency that would shake the item apart, and he'd conduct the force of the vibrations along a quantum corridor, not through real space, eliminating the need for any sort of conducive medium connecting him to the target.
A logical outgrowth of this second option would be for him to retain all of this energy within himself, instead of creating a 'corridor' to channel it away into another thing, possibly making himself appear superhumanly strong and / or invulnerable (to kinetic force, in particular, although probably also to extremes of temperature).
In a way, it would mimic that old Black Bolt trick of channeling all of his energy into his 'master blow' that could knock out the Thing or whatever. Through his internal vibrational manipulations, he'd be absorbing impact and redirecting it into his own fists, kind of like a version of Sebastian Shaw or 'Strong Guy' from the X-verse. (Man, all my examples are from Marvel!)
Registered: Aug 2006
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quote:Originally posted by Candle: DID mankind 'evolve' in the middle ages? One theory is that the climate had a mini-warming cycle for a few hundred years. That meant that people didn't have to struggle constantly to eat/survive so Maslow's principles kicked in. I haven't heard of any significant changes in the humans of that time from anyone before them. Is there something?
Humans were advancing socially and technologically during this period, esp. in Arab and Chinese cultures. In Europe people were evolving biologically, as they were gathering in large towns and cities they were building resistance to diseases, among other things.
Eryk Davis Ester
Created from the Cosmic Legends of the Universe!
posted
As far a xenophobia goes, I think most modern people would be shocked at how non-xenophobic most Europeans of the Middle Ages actually were. You have a huge legacy of multi-national, multi-cultural empires strectching back at least to the Romans which still had a strong influence on European culture thoughout most of the medieval period. It's primarily with the rise of the modern nation-state that the kind of group identity that's necessary for racism as we know it today really solidifies.
From: Liberty City | Registered: Jul 2003
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Can I just say that I kind of like "Prime-Time Trapper" as a phrase and a name? And if someone came up with it before me, I happily cede creative licenst to you. I might even use it as a LW alias if I didn't dislike the character so much!
Oh, and appropos of not much, I was thinking again about Titan the other day, especially Cham's line about Titanians sharing 99% of genes with earth humans. This gets back to the whole question of the 21C Mon-El/Legion seeding mission and the "Lanothians" versus Levitz insisting that Titan is an earth colony. I imagine since he's Paul Levitz, he can ignore whatever prior stories he wants, even if they are really, really recent. But there's a nice, time-tested solution to the problem -- At some point in the next millenium, earth humans settled on Titan with the Lanothians. Perhaps they wre fleeing earth in a war-like period. Perhaps they were telepaths experiencing discrimination or exploitation on earth. And they sought refuge with the Lanothians, who took them in and helped them develop their telepathy. At some point, the Lanothians moved on, for whatever reason -- evolution, recreation of their homeworld, inter-breeding with the humans, whatever -- leaving the earth human colonists as the residents of Titan. Long story short, problem solved.
BTW, I seem to recall that we never actually SAW the Lanothians, right? So, one could go one step farther and posit that the Lanothians were methane breathers (makes sense to live on Titan) and eventually resettled to Hykraius, from whence Tellus hails. All the more reason why Tellus was part of the 21C squad!
-------------------- ...but you don't have a moment where you're sitting there staring at a table full of twenty-five characters with little name signs that say, "Hi, my superpower is confusing you!"
From: Chicago, IL | Registered: Jul 2004
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