Immunodeficiency (Worm AU)

Hahahahah oh god.

I started writing something dumb for fun, then I wanted to try and write something with a PHO generator and wow what is wrong with me.

I wanted to push off the parts of Worm I didn't like, and then shit spiraled wildly out of of control into a crazy AU.

Anything massively wrong with my use of terms and statistics I blame on not having seriously studied either since highschool. Please inform me in the event that I drastically fucked up use of any of this terminology.

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Immunodeficiency

noun
1.
a deficiency in or breakdown of a person's immune system

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♦Topic: So, what's the difference between a metahuman and a parahuman?
In: Boards ► General ► Parahuman

Knuckler12 (Original Poster)

So, what's the difference between a metahuman and a parahuman?


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► JammerSlammer

Dude, there's already an entire megathread dedicated to this shit, head on over to the tutorial board and read it before you go starting a thread.


► Killergram

Google's your friend, mate.


► Jetsetslide

Aren't they teaching this in school? I think I remember having to write a paper on it.


► Bitterbomber

There's no difference, they're both basically the same thing. Fucking weirdos. It's just splitting hairs.


► Galabrad

> Aren't they teaching this in school? I think I remember having to write a paper on it.
Jet, not everyone takes those AP classes.
> There's no difference, they're both basically the same thing. It's just splitting hairs.
And this is just plain misinformation. They're wildly different, and you know it.


► Samwisee17

One's a magic space brain tumor and one's a magic space gene.


► Kekarrot

... While hilariously dumbed down, this is about the right of it.


► MajorSnaker

OK, let me lay the smackdown of knowledge upon you.

In the 80's a golden weirdo appeared. Shortly thereafter, the first people with powers started cropping up. These were the first parahumans, but due to an ongoing war of terminology between research groups (Look up War Of Names sometime, it's kind of hilarious and also educational) there was debate on what they were going to be called. Now, the golden weirdo disappeared around the mid-80's, but no one's quite sure when. This is when the first metahumans start popping up, but people at first just thought they were more parahumans.

But then the researchers actually started noticing major differences between older and newer groups. Parahumans all had a magic space tumor, formally called a Corona Pollentia. But these new guys showing up didn't. Instead, as we eventually discovered, they had a weird string of junk DNA, which occasionally wildly mutated into crazy patterns. Now see, here we have another difference between the meta and the para.

Para's are bullshit, and can do incredibly crazy things. But no two paras are quite alike. Varying power levels, manton limits, power ratings, all this shit is crazy. And that's without taking in the weird-ass Thinker/Tinker groups in the equation. But they're all about as different as can be. And barring the occasional exception, what you see is what you get. A blaster can hit 9000 degrees, but that blaster can never get over 9000 degrees.

Meta's are patterns. Those crazy genes make about as much sense as those brain tumors, but each meta pattern is more or less the same. Like those fox phenotypes. They're all capable of using illusion stuff, can throw around a little fire, and if you see more tails they're generally tougher. The giant phenotype gets much broader than that, and depending on ancestry can manifest lots of other different traits. But they generally obey the pattern. The other stand out quality is that meta's can grow more powerful over time. Their abilities act like muscles, and if they're trained they can get stronger.

Anyway, back to the history lesson. For a while the two groups were lumped, because powers make zero fucking sense. Then the brainiacs in charge actually started noticing wild differences between the two, even as their own little para/meta naming war went on. So, they split the names. Brain tumors became known as parahumans, and the gene freaks became the metahumans.

The reason why people tend to have issues telling them apart is because unless you're a massive geek, then your biggest exposure to people with powers is the PRT and the Protectorate. Who, hilariously enough, are named for parahumans, despite also having lots of metahumans in their ranks. This isn't helped either by a certain well-known film featuring a parahuman with magnetism powers advocating that they were the next stage in human evolution because of their superior genes.

Because Hollywood directors can't be arsed to do basic research if it'd get in the way of a good story.

And because Fox New couldn't get it right if their lives depended on it, and they'll use the words interchangeably, continuing to misinform the general public.


► SirWakkaber

Well, that was pretty informative. Nice job as usual, Snake.


► Bibothor

What Snake forgot to mention is that despite the dumb naming war being a constant thing due to lots of people trying to publish at once, parahumans was the official word for both for awhile, and that's what gone into some legislation. It wasn't until Sakurai published The Mysterious Gene that the two being entirely different categories of super-powers really gained traction.


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► Zanewell

The difference is that anyone can be a para, and nobody cares as long as they put on a mask. But if you get flagged as a meta-potentiate it suddenly has to go on all your fucking papers. You have to go and register with the PRT, even if the genes are inactive. And that means that on every job application you have to write down that you might at one point develop powers, regardless of the fact that you might never do so at all.


► Galabrad

Whoa, dude. Take it over to the meta-legals thread. This isn't the place for it.


► MajorSnaker

Well, I'd say that this is another difference. So it is worth discussing. Basic statistics for parahuman potential are like, one in ten thousand. Of those, it's kind of a shot in the dark exactly how many do become fully fledged parahumans. The studies vary, but basically in a more stable area, the odds of parahuman development tend to be lower. Compare and contrast Brockton Bay with Minneapolis. There's comparable population, but the Bay's parahuman count is through the roof. And having a thicker concentration of parahumans means that, hilariously enough, more parahumans show up.

The jury's still out on just how many people have meta-potentiate genes, because we still don't know all the phenotypes yet. We're still discovering new ones every year, although it is tapering off a bit. But the big reason that there's a larger push for detection and registration of metahumans, is that more meta-potentiates are becoming active metahumans. This isn't a case of 'for every active parahuman there are two active metahumans', this a case of the numbers go up every year.

When meta's first started emerging, it was hard to get numbers because they got mixed together a lot. But research indicates that they were actually a LOT rarer than parahumans. Like, for every ten para's you'd get a meta. The numbers are more complicated than this, but let me put up some figures for you. In 1986, there were 187 confirmed metahuman emergences across the United States. In 1996, that number was 1,369. In 2006, it was 25, 483. Those aren't total population counts. Those are new emergences per year. Metas are becoming more common all the time.

Part of it is easier diagnosis. We know what we're looking for and can screen for it faster, easier, and cheaper. But part of it is also that more and more potentiates are becoming fully expressed metahumans at younger ages. The youngest metahuman in 1986 was 27 years old. That record dropped lower and lower every few years, until for a while it hovered around nine years old. Then the child of two expressed metahumans was born expressed and we had to toss the book out entirely.

Second generation parahumans don't even come close, what little of those we know about anyway.


► Girigan

Actually, that's probably why there's a bigger focus on metahuman studies in the academic fields than parahuman ones. A random lobe in your brain doing crazy shit is harder to gather datapoints on then your DNA having a few weird genomes. There's still a shit-ton of X-factors, but you can at least get some data on what's going on. Statistically, more parahumans becomes capes too. This means that it's a right pain in the ass to deal with all the NDA's needed to just start looking at the biology of a cape, let alone get a family history. Metahumans aren't as involved in the cape scene (though a fair share of them still are) so it's easier to get the data. More data, more patterns, more things to study. So, it gets more funding.

That's not to say para's don't get put under the microscope, but tinker-tech is mostly what gets dragged in there.


► Kelora

So if we know why the muties get powers, why can't we give them to everyone?


► Bibothor

First off, never call a meta a mutant. While correct from a certain point of view, it's a lot like calling a man an ape that happens to walk upright. Which is to say it's basically wrong and liable to get you punched if the wrong person hears you saying it.

Second off, we don't know how or why metahumans get their powers. We can identify and classify the traits of a phenotype, and pick out what genes they have that are really weird compared to a baseline human, but we don't know how all those weird genes add up to 'hydrokinesis'.


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End of Page. 1, 2

 

OK, so.

Allow me to explain further just what this steaming pile of shit before you is about.

The space-whales arrive and do their thing. Eden dies.

Scion start the cycle, does his golden man thing for a few years, parahumans emerge... and then Scion dies as tiny local multi-dimensional beings put him out of commission like an invasive fungus putting a man into a coma. Scion's resulting comatose body becomes a breeding ground for the space-bacteria, who become fruitful, multiply, and end up back on lovely planet earth, where they bond to humans with certain genetic patterns and create metahumans.

In the end though, this is all an excuse to create a resurgance of fantasy races with fantasy powers.

Annette in this AU is a metahuman with an expressed fox phenotype gene sequence, while Taylor doesn't have hers active yet. The plot there is that PLOT happens, and then Taylor's fox phenotype expresses itself, along with a slight case of multiple personalities.

Accompanying this lovely story are themes examining troublesome issues like discrimination based on genetic profiling, the classic 'mutant' issues, and lots of cuddling.

 

Foxy Hebert family ? I am all for it.

 

Multiple personalities? I'm afraid that's not something I'm all that jazzed about. See the problem isn't the schizophrenia or multiple people in their head or whatever, the problem is that the amount of stories that do this well is very low. They either tend to make for very confusing reading (not being able to establish who says what) or it takes up too much time for no reason.

they are always going to be there, but not always relevant to the plot. At this point you have introduced what I guess is the x-men, and fantasy creatures on top of the already chaotic Worm universe, it's already plenty chaotic. What will this personality thing bring? And how much space will it take in the chapters? Too much and it will drown the rest of what happens, too little and it will feel stupid to add that extra layer.

You have my attention with the story, but I have my doubts, which I hope you will disprove

 

Ahhhh, so this is what you were working on. Looks good. definitely looking forward to fluffy tails. (If we actually get to them. Shad.) Also, your ability to pull rationalizations out of (inter-dimensional) thin air continues to astound me. Teach me your ways o master! Well done.

 

Actually, metahumans would have those too. The ratings in Worm have very little to do with power levels, what they are is threat ratings -- how hard is this individual to take down using a PRT squad and confoam dispensers. It's worth noting that a rating of 9+ getting belligerent usually ends in nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

 

I'm aware of this, but basically it's a sort of scaling issue.

A parahuman blaster out of the box can be a 4 or a 5, and will have an instinctive knowledge of how to use those powers. They also vary wildly and can do crazy shit out of the box.

A metahuman might not even have a blaster rating out of the box because their abilities are all trained. But a fox phenotype will never throw out a freeze ray at least, and their specialties aren't blowing things up.

The point being made is that parahuman abilities tend to be more random and dangerous fresh outside the box then a metahuman powerset is.

 

Depends on how you go about it. Tricking molecules into standing still in a linear path might be possible for a kitsune, even if calling on the power of Winter is not.

 

Hm... interesting so far, though I'm not very hyped about multiple personalities. I don't think I've ever seen that done well.

 

...Neat. This is really neat and well thought out. I do wonder though...does the metahuman gene wipe out the chance for a meta to gain a corona pollentia? Or do they work in tandem?

Also, seeing as how the Heberts are in BB I would imagine that there was quite a bit of discrimination courtesy of the E88 cuz 'muh human superiority' and crap. Though with Annette being a Fox phenotype I would imagine that she would've ended up training herself to protect her family. Not to mention her running with Lustrum's group back in the day - which may or may not have happened in this, who knows - would've prolly given her a bit of experience in using her powers.

...Hm. How does New Wave react to this whole situation? I mean, there are metas that are more than likely unmasked because of the forced registration - though they could still have secret IDs with great difficulty - so would they have more of a presence in the Meta community? Or would they be just straight up Metahumans with Amy as the odd one out??

...bleh. Anyway, definitely watching this. Seems like a fun time, especially with the potential of Fluffy Tails.

 

Iiiit's not.

Like I said on SV, this was basically written as an excuse to work in fantasy races. And while para and metahumans might appear similar at first glance, they're actually quite different.

Keeping things relatively simple here, while metahuman potentiates might have buds getting attached to them, the degree of stress required for a trigger basicaly means that long before that happens they'll undergo a metahuman emergence. Which will then eat the bud.

Still working out the exact history for stuff here.

Originally, one of the catalyzing events for the story here was a false flag operation by the E88 to 'provide evidence' that metahumans could descend into being feral beasts. This was to be accomplished by capturing an expressed metahuman, and then letting Victor sit on them until he sucked everything that could vaguely described as a skill out of the target, leaving only the baser phenotype driven instincts. Release them in a populated area, and watch the fireworks.

As a prominent and intelligent fox-phenotype, Annette was chosen to be an 'example'.

This goes... poorly.

Victor got the drop on Annette and put her in cage for awhile to start, and got a lot of stuff out of her... But then they let her wake up. As it turns out, Victor can't actually take away skills in metahuman ability use. And even if you can't actually remember how to spell anymore, throwing up a giant illusionary sign to call for help works pretty well to grab attention while you bust skulls and set lots and lots of things on fire.

Victor catches a free ride to the Birdcage, and the E88 enjoys a massive resurgence of attention on the national level from all kinds of people who are suddenly very interested in taking apart an organization made up literally of Nazis.

Anyway, the more I thought about this plotline, the more I kind of disagreed with it and felt it was just too heavy handed.

Metahumans are, on average, less likely to want to become capes. Part of this is them lacking CONFLICT balls, and part of it is that maintaining a secret identity when you're the only one in twenty miles with massively pointed ears in your facebook photos is very hard. The largescale registration doesn't help either.

... New Wave are still parahumans though.

 

Foxes? This has to end in Skittles.