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Main Characters
Alison Green / Mega-Girl
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Deconstructed - she was attracted to Patrick from the moment they met, but in the present day that attraction is predicated on him having reformed, which is very much not a sure thing. Eventually she decides that while she still has feelings for him, his mental health issues mean he needs her as a friend more than a romantic partner. Patrick himself even comments on it at one point:Patrick: What do you think all the little girls who looked up to you would say if they knew Mega Girl threw her cape away because a powerful, wicked man told her to? Not very progressive of you, Ms. Green...
- Born During a Storm: She was born while a mysterious storm raged across the entire Earth in 1991. As superpowers have only been found among born in that year or after, it's heavily suspected that the storm is actually what caused all the superheroes.
- Blood Knight: Albeit a reluctant one. To quote Alison herself:Alison: I love fighting. I love the blood, I love the heat, I love breaking shit. It's the only thing I've ever been good at, and the fact that it never makes anything better just fucking kills me.
- Catchphrase: As Mega-Girl, she had "you look like you could use a pick-me-up!" She tended to say it after picking up something heavy, like a giant robot. She's rather embarrassed by it in the present.
- Child Soldiers: She and most of the world's bio-dynamics received their powers at 14. She spent her formative years as part of a government-sanctioned superhero team in which she was exposed to horrific violence, was taught to solve all problems with violence without regard for collateral damage, killed (sometimes inadvertently killing innocent bystanders) and saw many of her friends or close allies die in combat. Most of her character development in comic is her trying to find ways to solve the world's problems without violence and coming to terms with the person she used to be.
- Closet Geek: In her younger days, she hid an interest in The Lord of the Rings to get in with the popular crowd. It's also telling that her Mega-Girl persona has a Silver Age attitude to crime-fighting.
- Comes Great Responsibility: Believes in this.
- Domino Mask: Wore this as Mega-Girl.
- Expy: Serves as this and a deconstruction of the Golden Age Superman.
- Extreme Doormat: Make her feel the slightest bit guilty and you can talk her into just about anything. Violet's friends throw her out of her own dorm room this way.
- Fatal Flaw: Her crippling sense of social-justice. Her very desire to solve all of the world's problems prevents her from getting anything done.
- Hypocrite:
- She criticizes a wealthy family for taking advantage of illegal immigrants, yet in the next scene she tries to recruit workers from a disenfranchised group for her cause.
- Says she doesn't like bullies, but when Max refuses to go along with her plan later in the same chapter she physically threatens him repeatedly until he complies. In this case, she is quite conscious of her own hypocrisy, and it troubles her deeply.Max: You have no right! Who made you the arbiter of good and evil? Why do you decide what people should get to do?
Alison: Because I'm stronger than you.
- In a Single Bound: She has Hulk-style leaps instead of flight. She eventually figures out how to actually fly, but it seems that she sacrifices her durability to do so; she accidentally dislocated her shoulder by flying too fast.
- Invincible Hero: Deconstructed; her unstoppable physical power is of very limited utility in dealing with any non-combat problem or threat, and her invincibility makes it difficult for her to understand normal people, especially other women.
- Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex: Alison has fears that anyone she might get intimate with would be hurt in the process, though her therapist does her best to dispel that notion, since otherwise Alison would be breaking a lot of other things by accident.
- Mundane Utility: At least before she discovers the ability to fly, Alison is absolutely not shy about using her strength to leap In a Single Bound from place to place, even just to her classes or her parents' house. She also helps Paladin around the lab lifting and moving heavy equipment.
- Muscles Are Meaningless: despite having super-strength she's noticeably very lean. Subverted in that her super strength is not biological, but a telekinetic ability manifesting as physical strength.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: There are very few things that can hurt her. Cleaver manages to cut her with an Absurdly Sharp Blade - as in micrometers thin at the edge.
- No Guy Wants an Amazon: Cites this as why her dating prospects have been dry, at least early on. It gets better for her later.
- Narcissist: Downplayed. She initially thinks that her inability to find a simple solution for all of the world's problems is due to a personal failing on her part.
- Oblivious to Love: Clevin is obviously smitten with her, but she considers them Just Friends. It's hard not to feel sorry for him when she goes on a date right in front of him while still promising to go see a movie with him some time. He does eventually spell it out for her, and she's honest about not being sure about dating him.
- Perma-Shave: Does not have body hair, underarm hair, or thick brows despite the fact that her invulnerability extends to her hair.
- Powerful and Helpless: Super-Strength isn't much help for dealing with systemic injustice.
- Smug Super: Was this during her days as Mega-Girl. She's mellowed out a bit since then.
- Totalitarian Utilitarian: When Max selfishly refuses to use his powers to enhance a Biodynamic and save thousands of lives at her request, she gives up trying to reason with him and proceeds to slam his head against the table and put him in an arm lock, then tells him that he can either do as she asks or get dropped off in the middle of the Atlantic. When he refuses again, she makes it a point that she was only asking out of courtesy and takes him anyway. Once they arrive to their first location she then applies her Super-Strength to his arm until he cooperates and uses his powers.
- Subverted when she later feels terrible about it and admits she should have tried harder to convince him without the use of violence.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Downplayed. She's slowly realizing that not everyone is willing to work towards the same goals.
- World's Strongest Woman: Alison claims to be stronger than any living human. By all accounts, she's not using hyperbole. There are very, very few things that can take Alison in a straight fight.
- Alison: You guys have a good plan if I ever go crazy, right?
Dr. Rosenbloom: My understanding is that a fleet of Earthships designed to take us off the planet should be ready by late 2016.
Patrick Andrews / Menace
- Abusive Parents: The flashbacks Allison witnesses in his mind show his mother murdering his dog right in front of him solely for tearing her stockings, and it also heavily implies that she is the one who made him subject to the whims of cruel scientists upon discovering that he was psychic. His father isn't shown being abusive himself but he clearly struggled with viewing him as a freak (something Patrick easily picked up on).
- A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Knows the the true character of everyone around him. Admits that he went insane because of it, and it was his primary motivator behind his plan to take over the world. As a child, he is reduced to tears when he looks into the mind of one of his therapists and it is heavily implied that the man was secretly sexually abusing children in third-world countries. Later on, he is horrified to discover how lifeless his sociopath of a mother's mind is.
- Arch-Nemesis: He was this to Mega Girl back in the day, pretty much by default since he was the leader of the supervillains attempting to take over the United States and she was the most powerful government sponsored super hero. The first time they actually met face to face led to them both quitting costumed shenanigans and becoming friends.
- Break Them by Talking: He delivers a hell of a speech to Clevin after hearing the tired idiom "Everything happens for a reason."
- Catchphrase: Back in the day he used "Thinking of You." He doesn't seem to use it anymore but he hasn't expressed the same embarrassment about it that Alison has for her old catchphrase.
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Discovered that this is way more efficient than being a supervillain.
- Face–Heel Revolving Door: From Alison's perspective. Even after 'turning good', she eventually discovers he is still a villain, albeit using legal means to to do so.
- Freudian Excuse: Received his powers at 4-years-old and was consequently exposed to worst of humanity at young age. And, after almost being murdered by his mother for making his parents' lives "difficult" as a child, he deliberately made himself cold to love to survive the emotional trauma.
- Kick the Dog: Is preventing Lisa/Paladin from patenting her inventions because he believes her idealism is dangerous.
- Manchild: Downplayed. Probably a side effect of receiving telepathic powers at such a young age, Patrick never got a chance to have a healthy childhood. When Alison travels into his mind, the personification of the "leader" of his mind is himself as a child. And it's heavily implied that he framed his villainous exploits as a game in order to distance himself from all of the terrible things he had done as Menace. After Alison leaves his mind, he tearfully breaks down in front of her after having full adult emotions for the first time.
- This is one of the reasons Alison rejects him (other than dating someone else at the time) after he finally admits his feelings for her. She is still in love with him, but she admits that he needs to take some time to find some friends and work on himself before he ever considers something serious like a romantic relationship.
- Measuring the Marigolds: Feels the need to very precisely break down the humor of Looney Tunes.
- More than Mind Control: Subverted, all of his mind control is more than mind control. He never had mind control powers to begin with, he just uses his telepathy to effectively manipulate people. He actually considers it something of an insult that people think he needed mind control to influence people when he already had the ability to read their innermost thoughts and motivations.
- Mundane Utility: Patrick can learn entire years worth of research and knowledge within hours, in any field of study, by using his telepathy to simply leech off the minds of people who are already experts in the field.
- Order Versus Chaos: When Alison goes on a Journey to the Center of the Mind, she finds it to be built as a city with a massive wall. Feral's, by contrast, is a lush wilderness. It turns out that this was because Patrick had to wall off sections of his own self - anything that could make him vulnerable - in order to survive growing up, and led to his becoming Menace.
- Power Incontinence: Patrick cannot turn his telepathy off, meaning that he is constantly reading the minds of everyone around him. It gets worse the more strongly he feels about the person. As Menace, his lingering feelings for his estranged parents were so strong that he could read their thoughts and fears from anywhere in the world. It got to the point he eventually visited them in person, to beg them to think well of him so he wouldn't have to feel their hatred.
- Reformed, but Not Tamed:
- And even the reformed bit is a little suspect.
- Stealing inventions from people to use to create military drones and such... ayup. He's still a supervillain. Just a LEGAL one.
- Retired Monster: He claims to be a good guy now, but his time as the most powerful supervillain in the world is something he views more as "that embarrassing phase I went through as a teenager" than "the awful crimes I must atone for." Subverted later on when he has a breakdown at Alison's appartment.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: When discussing Looney Tunes.
- Tragic Keepsake: After he and Alison have a fight, he's shown gluing his present to her back together.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Wanted to take over the world as a teenager to create his own version of a utopia.
- Young Conqueror: Made a serious bid to take over the United States starting at age 14, it's not clear how it would have ultimately gone down if he hadn't lost interest.
The Guardians
Hector Jimenez / Pintsize
Former leader of the Guardians. Has the power to shrink to a sub-atomic level.
- Ascended Fanboy: A life-long comic book fan who went on to form his own superhero team. He's even got personal AI based on Alfred Pennyworth and Pepper Potts. As time goes on, Hector turns out to be a subversion, as changing circumstances have made his dream job very difficult and impractical. He's not handling it that gracefully.
- Black-and-White Morality: Invoked. He very much would like to live in a simple world of heroes and villains, and his progressive realization that this is impossible has led to some painful ruminations.
- The Cape: Hector's ideal vision of a superhero. He even explicitly cites Superman as "the manual" for how to be one.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Introduced early, not that important...but gets more important later on.
- Heroic BSoD: The official end of the Guardians led to one for him, though he seems to be getting better.
- Incredible Shrinking Man: He can shrink down small enough to interact with matter on the atomic scale. After retiring, he plans to work at a laboratory doing just that.
- Mundane Utility: Eventually joins a team of researchers as a scientist, using his powers to see and manipulate things on molecular scales that would otherwise require incredibly expensive and specialized equipment to be possible.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: He and Allison can have abrasive conversations on the "right" thing to do with their powers, but at the end of the day they're here for each other, which they consider their best friend.
Mary Kim / Moonshadow
Former member of the Guardians. Has the ability to bend light to make herself invisible or cast illusions.
- Fallen Hero: She's gone from a superhero to a Knight Templar Serial Killer.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Tries to kill Allison, then stabs and nearly kills Klevin to force Allison to stop fighting her in order to save his life when the two of them accidentally encounter her right after she murdered someone.
- Karma Houdini: Escapes with the intention of continuing her campaign of killing accused rapists. She also suffers no repercussions for the innocent people she killed, either.
- Knight Templar: A feminist version, and in contrast to Allison's tentatively pacifistic approach. Moonshadow has come to the conclusion that the best use of her powers is vigilante action against rapists for the sake of making even a tiny difference.
- Master of Illusion: and like the other superpowered characters her skills are getting stronger.
- Never My Fault: She accepts no responsibility for Furnace's death, despite having drugged and kidnapping him before strapping a bomb to his chest that was set to go off if he used his powers.
- Nominal Hero: Ends up having a long talk with Alison about it. She says she's fine with killing people, the 'right' people, if it'll get a message across. She also states that she doesn't care if she murders innocent people as collateral damage.
- Overshadowed by Awesome: Is implied to feel this way about Alison.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Has decided that her mission in life is to track down and murder rapists who escape conviction of their crimes.
Brad Hoek / Sonar
Former member of the guardians. In addition to his batlike appearance, he has super sonar and enhanced hearing.
- Antiquated Linguistics: He usually speaks formally and occasionally throws in terms like "lecherous guttersnipes".
- Nice Guy: What little we see of him shows he's by far the most mellow of the Guardians.
- Super-Hearing: He can hear Alison's elevated heart rate from several floors away.
- Super-Scream: In a flashback to the Guardians' crimefighting days, we see him knocking out a mobster with a burst of sound.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Is the organizer of a support group for dynamorphic biodynamics facing discrimination because of physical mutations.
Other Biodynamics
Tara Lynn Cooper / Feral
A friend of Alison's from her superhero days, Feral was a member of a rough-and-tumble Mississippi-based crimefighting team called the Wild Ones. She has a Healing Factor and sharp claws.
- Animal Eyes: She has bright green eyes with catlike pupils.
- Ascended Extra: Has moved from an arc-character who is put into a fate worse then death, to one of the main cast.
- And I Must Scream: She willingly decided to become a lifelong organ donor, taking advantage of her powers to selflessly help as many people as possible. A secondary effect of her powers is that anesthetics don't work on her.
- Body Horror: Besides the...obvious issues with her arc, there is also the simple fact that she seems not to care if she gets hurt. At all.
- Crucified Hero Shot: A very explicit one in Alison's vision.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Alison has Max to boost Feral's powers to the point where her regeneration works so quickly that she's not only on track to end transplant/transfusion shortages worldwide in under a year, but remaining in her planned near-constant state of surgery was considered not just unnecessary, but also inefficient. The hospital calculated that anything more than forty hours in surgery per month would start causing them logistical problems with the storage and transportation of everything Feral donates, and even that's because they need time before they can catch up with worldwide transplant/transfusion shortages.
- Expy: In flashbacks, Feral is a gender-flipped, Cajun take on Wolverine. In the present, she's essentially a deconstruction of the character.
- Healing Factor: Has the ability to regenerate organs very quickly. She uses this to become a lifelong organ donor. Alison has Max upgrade her power to the point that she heals so fast that she can provide all necessary replacement organs for the entire world with just 40 hours of surgery a month.
- Heroic Sacrifice: An unconventional one, but she willingly subjects herself to a Fate Worse than Death as by undergoing constant surgery so she can donate an infinite flow of replacement organs with her regenerative powers. Alison describes it as the noblest and most horrific thing she's ever heard of.
- Turn the Other Cheek: Feral implores Alison to spare the protesters in front of her clinic after one of them tries to burn her alive and kill the operating personnel around her.
- Walking the Earth: Spent a few years doing this following Alison's breakdown on national television. She discovered how differently biodynamics were treated all over the world, and how much suffering humanity faces on a daily basis.
Lisa Bradley / Paladin
A technological genius who used to fight crime in a mech suit of her own design, now the newest professor at the New School. She wants to make a sentient AI.
- Artificial Limbs: Has a prosthetic left leg. It's actually a bit shorter than it should be, causing her to walk with a limp, but she keeps forgetting to get it fixed.
- Brainy Brunette: She's a super genius with brown hair.
- Child Prodigy: Deconstructed. She signed a contract leading her inventions to be owned by corporations, not her. It's Patricks' contract.
- Gadgeteer Genius: An Iron Man style superhero, who carries on the idea of random inventions and such.
- Genius Bruiser: Deemphasized now, but originally she was an Iron Man style superhero.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: Enforced. Her contract is specifically designed to make sure none of her inventions can actually help anyone, except the rich and the powerful.
Chris Mackey / Furnace
- Asshole Victim: Double subverted. Despite being a massive misogynist jerk, Moonshadow saves his life and admits he was not a rapist like she suspected he was. However, he lashes out at her when finding out she took him captive, and ends up bringing the dam they're in down on himself. The fact that he's placed in opposition to someone who is fully willing to murder men who are even accused of sex crimes only further complicates things. Furthermore, Moonshadow thought his angry outburst about her on TV meant that he was a rapist, only for it to turn out he was exactly what he appeared to be: a hotheaded jackass who was pissed about women who publicly accused men of being sex offenders when there was a known biodynamic killer on the loose targeting accused sex offenders regardless of whether or not they had been tried, convicted, or even arrested.
- Beware the Superman: He's been accused of murdering immigrants, and we see him ruin a police sting by slaughtering a criminal operation, nearly killing their hostages in the process. Later on, he goes on TV and threatens to murder any woman who speaks out about being raped because there's an invisible killer on the loose targeting anyone they think is a sex offender, and he thinks those women are all liars trying to get innocent men killed.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: In an attempt to kill Moonshadow, he accidentally drowns himself by breaking a dam.
- Jerkass: As you can probably guess, he's not a nice man.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Seen here. He makes a valid point that it's publicly known there's a biodynamic killer on the loose acting as Judge, Jury, and Executioner against anyone who is even accused of being a sex offender, so plastering the names of the accused all over the media is basically putting a hit out on them. He then crosses a line by explicitly threatening to murder women who speak out about their own sexual assaults because of this, regardless of whether or not they're telling the truth.
- Misogyny: Furnace regularly defends common anti-feminist positions, which naturally puts him at odds with Allison and unfortunately for him, with Moonshadow.
- Personality Powers: Playing with Fire combined with an overtly aggressive personality.
- Power Incontinence: He mentions this has started happening to him more and more often to his doctor. His destruction of a dam (along with his subsequent death) is possibly a result of this when he tries to kill Moonshadow.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: He's shown to be somewhat traumatized by the death of his biodynamic friends.
Daniel Wolczek / Cleaver
Daniel is twenty feet of muscle, rage, and wickedly sharp bone spurs. Once a sower of destruction under the leadership of Menace, he’s now working his way through all of the Harry Potter audiobooks while in prison.
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Pintsize claims that his claws are less than three microns thick. Thus far they're the only thing that's been able to permanently wound Alison.
- Abusive Parents: His stepfather was an alcoholic who abused both him and his mother.
- Blessed with Suck: Daniel's biodynamic mutation gives him incredible strength and durability, but gives him a fearsome appearance that made his own mother see him as a monster. The really nasty aspect is that his cancer cells are biodynamic in their own right and have the same durability and sharpness as his blades, damaging his body from within. It's stated to be incredibly painful, and is almost certain to kill him within a few years.
- Heel Realisation: He rejects Alison's assertion that people are fundamentally good, on the notion that, if that were true, then so were the people he killed in his tenure as a supervillain.
- Hidden Depths: Whilst in prison, he takes a keen interest in the Harry Potter audiobooks (Sirius is his personal favourite character, though he feels that Hermione should have been the protagonist) and learns how to play chess with Alison.
- Odd Friendship: Alison strikes up a rapport with him once she starts visiting him in prison, at least in part out of guilt that, if she had grown up in the environment that he had, she could easily have turned out the same way as him.
- Self-Made Orphan: Ended up murdering both his stepfather and his mother after his powers manifested and she pulled a gun on him.
Others
Professor Arjun Gurwara
Axiology teacher at the New School. He's got beef with Alison. Appears in a lot of places he shouldn't be.
- Ambiguously Brown: Gurwara is very careful about divulging anything that might hint about his background, even when relating an actual incident from his youth.
- Badass Normal: Completely unafraid of pissing off one of the strongest supers in the world. If nothing else, the man is brave.
- Both Sides Have a Point: He demonstrates both sides of the argument for and against Alison forcing Max to upgrade Feral's power by literally arguing with himself, taking off and putting on his jacket to demonstrate which side he's advocating at the moment.
- Cool Teacher: Though Allison does not agree with the rest of the class on this.
- Hidden Depths: Not only did he pull a Bavarian Fire Drill on Alison's entire class including her, he or someone associated with him made it so the REAL professor somehow lost memory of the entire month and a half Guwara ran the class in order to pull it off!
- Foil: Another one for Allison: He's an old, scarred cynic whereas she's a young invulnerable idealist.
- Troll: His introduction is essentially one long series of pushing Allison's buttons, under the pretense of teaching philosophy.
Max Prescott
A man Alison rescues from a burning building and then goes on a date with.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Initially comes across as very charming and affable, but in reality he's a spoiled, pushy brat who refuses to use his powers in spite of the immense good they could do for the world simply because they help others, not him.
- I Just Want to Be Special: He wanted to have powers because he believed it would the only way he'd be free to do whatever he wanted.
- It's All About Me: He sees his abilities as a curse because it forces him to help other people and it isn't one of the "cool" powers.
- Rescue Romance: He and Alison go on a date after she saves him from a burning building. It doesn't end well.
- Sheltered Aristocrat: Handsome, rich and painfully naive, with his libertarianism extending to the point of "If these illegal workers don't want to be work abusively-long hours for my family, they're perfectly free to quit and seek employment elsewhere!" He doesn't like to think about the effect his wealth has on others.
- Spoiled Brat: He's a from a wealthy family and initially acts as if he hasn't aged pass 14. What's more, he turns out to be Biodynamic too, but not with a "cooler" power that he wanted instead.
- Super-Empowering: He has the ability to give a power boost to other biodynamics. He refuses to use it simply because he doesn't think it's a cool power. Alison nearly breaks his arm forcing him to boost Feral, which makes her Healing Factor permanently strong enough that she can provide ALL necessary replacement organs for the entire world with 40 hours of surgery a month.
- With Great Power Comes Great Perks: Believes in this.
Clevin O'Toole
A guy Alison dates after Max. Enthusiastic film buff and musician with a sense of fashion you either love or hate. A cheerful guy despite having had his share of run-ins with biodynamic danger.
- Insecure Love Interest: Is hurt when Alison forgets about him during one of her speeches and when Patrick reads his mind, he runs off when the former mentions showing off pictures of Alison to people he barely considers friends to prove that she's interested in someone as unremarkable as him.
- Nice Guy: Unlike Alison's other love interests, he's genuinely a nice guy, as highlighted when he's understanding about Alison's conflicting feelings.Clevin: I mean, [it doesn't make sense] to me. But they're feelings. They're real whether they make sense or not.
