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What Measure Is A Non Super
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"Anyone who resists is just a human, and therefore doesn't deserve to live."
—Threshold, Dv8 #1
"Of what import are brief, nameless lives . . . to Galactus?"
When deciding What Measure Is A Non Human, many characters fail to assign any value to these creatures' lives, so it too often goes with Muggles in a setting that has Super Heroes.
In a world with Differently Powered Individuals, what use are Muggles? We're weak, need protecting, are evolutionary dead ends and, unless the hero uses Spirit Bombs, are of no real use. Even the Badass Normal on a team of supers can start getting depressed from this, and they're actually useful! And that's assuming most supers are nice. If the world is slightly more cynical then a slew of Persons Of Mass Destruction will cripple people with fear, hate, and helplessness, all while being condescending and smug when not classicist Darwinists. Beware The Superman, indeed!
This usually serves as a motivation for individuals and groups who decide to "do something about it" rather than take it lying down.
Option 1: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!
Much like a super-power groupie, these people will try to get super powers by mimicking their betters, often at great risk by trying to replicate how heroes get their powers. If enough people get this idea, or the government gets behind it, then it becomes a case of Utopia Justifies The Means. This can include organ theft, free Super Serum, cyber augmentations half off, and in general making Emergency Transformations routine medical procedures. Interestingly, though this group means well, anyone aspiring to power (even if they want to share it) is inevitably misguided if not outright evil, because a muggle should Never Be A Hero. The route of Badass Normal seems to have much better odds, on the other hand.
Option 2: If you can't join 'em, kill 'em!
These people usually come to this conclusion by adding some paranoia ( justified or not) to Genetic Engineering Is The New Nuke and naturally born supers are out-pacing mundanes. They interpret the "obsolescence" of baseline humans as an edict to kill all mutants/ psychics/ witches in an " Us or Them" fashion, fearing that supers will either forcibly take over or replace all humans. These types are usually spurred on by the villains attempts to do just that, and end up branding all supers as threats. Previously nice supers, in turn, will interpret this xenophobia as cause to exterminate or enslave all humans... This is usually the fear behind any Super Registration Act. Typically accomplished by calling the Cape Busters.
Whether the story chooses to address the underlying insecurity or not varies. When it does, it usually justifies baseline human's existence with a nice aesop like: our limitations drive us to excel, only humans can truly create, a world of all supers would devolve into planetary civil war (like we normals have done such a good job keeping peace without supers)... or, that we're so fundamentally bad that only a handful should have these powers, if at all. Since super-powered heroes are usually the focus of these stories, it's not rare to see a perfectly sensible initiative by the government to have its own supers, either to stop supervillains or to stop a hero if he should go rogue, turned into paranoid and militant strawmen bent on killing all heroes on the off chance of a super powered Darwinist takeover.
Post Cyberpunk stories that include The Singularity often have conflicts between humans and post-humans. Earlier stories had Mutants on higher Evolutionary Levels that likewise were generally incapable of coexisting with their predecessors.
An interesting variation has the super's be vampires, werewolves, aliens, or some other "bad" race... or outright evil race. In which case those wanting power (or unwillingly transformed) are prone to Transhuman Treachery.
Sometimes this trope is unsure what to do with a Badass Normal.
Opposite of Comes Great Responsibility.
Compare What Measure Is A Mook. A Sub Trope of Fantastic Racism.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- The new manga eV from james Farr seems to be experimenting with this somewhat. The main character was exposed to a serum that turns her into something approaching theity in terms of power...but only after the previous 77 candidates for receiving the serum had been murdered by fearful religious zealots.
- Darker Than Black shows the few humans aware of Contractors having a if you can't beat 'em, employ them attitude, with the majority of the Contractors being aggressively headhunted and employed as
human weapons 'special operatives' by various national security agencies like MI 6, the CIA, or by the mysterious criminal 'syndicate' that employs Hei. It eventually turns out that all these agencies are part of a single conspiracy to wipe contractors clean off the face of the Earth. This led to the formation of a La Resistance-style group determined to wall off the Gates so that the Contractor-genocide wouldn't be possible, even though they would have wiped out all of Japan in the process. Hei does not approve of either option.
- To Aru Majutsu No Index is a more limited example. Academy City is essentially filled with superpowered kids (espers) for purposes on educating and training them on the use of their powers in one centralized location. However, their powers are ranked on a scale of 0 to 5, with level 0s basically being normal humans since their powers are so weak. Level 0s are sometimes considered social outcasts and tend to be bullied by more powerful espers. This leads many level 0s to try and find a way to boost their powers, even if such methods are morally questionable.
- S-Cry-Ed, basically the Japanese take on X-Men.
Comic Books
Literature
- The Dreamers from Eric Nylund's Pawn's Dream treat non-Dreamer human life as pretty much worthless. The hero is lured into their schemes by one of them shooting his co-worker just to get his attention.
- Much of the conflict in the Wild Cards books revolves around the complex relationship between Aces (the fortunate few with powers but no major deformities), Jokers (those mutated but with little or no powers) and Nats ("Naturals", i.e. Muggles).
- The Puritan post-apocalyptic society in John Wyndham's The Chrysalids exterminates all mutations on sight... and 99% of them are totally harmless with stuff like 6 toes or blue skin. At the end of the book, their fanatical attitude is used to justify their extermination by a group of genuinely superpowered mutants, and this is treated as a good thing by the book.
- We must have read different books, because when I read it, that was not treated like a good thing at all, with other mutants showing up and killing all the fanatics. With their helicopter. Yeah.
- I think he means the people in the helicopter are the genuinely superpowered mutants.
- The third story in the Infinity's Prism collection of Star Trek novels has an Alternate Universe wherein Khan Noonien Singh won the Eugenics Wars. He then proceeded to create The Empire, which subjugated the rest of the Trek 'verse. The story concerns "Princeps" Julian Bashir of the Defiance (who is also genetically enhanced in the "normal" universe) finding the Botany Bay. In the TOS episode Space Seed, the Bay carried Khan and his followers, but in this universe, it carried regular humans on the run from the Wars. Does What Measure Is A Non Super ensue? Oh, yeah.
- In the Co Dominium universe, the genetically engineered Saurons consider unenhanced humans "cattle".
- In Nick Kyme's Warhammer 40000 novel Salamander, the Marines Malevolent express shock that the Salamanders are threatening to fire on fellow Space Marines to protect a few Mechanicus survivors. The Salamanders don't flinch.
- The House Of Night books have Option 2. Churches decide that vampyres are sinners and start killing teachers at Zoey's school. Neferet, the head of the school, decides to wage war against them.
- Odd John justifies this trope, arguing that superhumans would see ordinary humans the same way we would see most animals. The title character even says that he sees the narrator as a 'pet'. Apparently, none of the superintelligent mutants in the book are animal-rights activists.
- Most of the conflict in Nancy Kress's "Beggars" trilogy revolves around this trope.
- Skinned by Robin Wasserman contains A LOT of this, especially the second book Crashed. Lia Kahn gets in a car accident and is uploaded into a new body. Rejected by society, she moves in with rebel Jude and his gang. Jude believes that people, or "orgs", are weak and need their bodies to survive, whereas he, a mech, can do anything. Mechs have ceramic bones and titanium skulls, their bodies heal instantly, and they never tire or need food. All they are required to do is shut down occasionally and back up their memories in case their bodies are destroyed.
Live Action TV
- Heroes has The Company, a group with the ostensibly good goal of keeping tabs on all super powered individuals and helping them cope with their powers to protect the general public and maintain a Masquerade... which, thanks to evil/incompetent bosses, has devolved to the point of doing Bag and Tag's of all heroes they can find with a complimentary mind wipe, and killing those deemed "too dangerous to exist"... unless they're Sylar.
- And all the villains they have in storage that got released in season 3 as yet another Idiot Plot, despite Company's willingness to kill much more decent people in the pursuit of stability.
- In volume 4 the Company is replaced with a government organization meant to capture all people with abilities - except Nathan, who started it. His claim is that he's doing it because people with abilities are too dangerous to be left running around, which would be more convincing if he didn't target his own well meaning allies and a guy who can breathe underwater. Rather than concentrating his attentions on say, Sylar. Again.
- Volume 5 flips it around from the other side, with Magneto-esque Big Bad Samuel who doesn't seem to give a damn about the lives of Muggles and periodically secretly arranges their deaths to further his agenda. On the other hand, his agenda seems to be to try to create a sanctuary for superpowered humans to live free of persecution. On the other other hand, doing so seems to involve getting in bed with, you guessed it, Sylar again.
- The 4400 has Jordan Collier's faction. By the end of the series, he has no problem with mass promicin injections (the chemical that was used to give the 4400 super powers). This might be fine, if it weren't for that 50% casualty rate. Disturbingly enough, he may be right.
- Painkiller Jane was part of an organization who worked to find and "chip" all Neuros— even the ones who never did anything. Jane is the only superhuman member of the group, and even that's only allowed because she's not technically a Neuro.
- In The X-Files, no one even believes mutants and monsters exist (other than those 2 nobodies working out of the basement whom no one takes seriously), and 90% of them are psychotic spree killers who get killed by the end of the episode anyway. This is a damn shame, as they'd be one HELL of an advantage for the Earth Home Team when that Alien Invasion finally hits.
- On Babylon Five, some telepaths (especially those raised by Psi Corps) disdain "mundanes". The worst, like Bester, consider them entirely disposable.
- Note, however, that it goes both ways. A lot of mundanes dislike telepaths. Including a group who builds a virus to kill all telepaths. And the Telepath war is a major part of continuity!
- An episode of Thats So Raven had psychic teens who called it "the Normie Problem". In the end, of course, they learn that the greatest power of all is The Power Of Friendship.
- In Andromeda the Nietzscheans consider humans worthless - and the Knights of Genetic Purity consider the Nietzscheans (and all others with genetic mods) an abomination.
- In Star Trek, we had Eugenic Wars between genetically engineered and other humans, leading to genetic augmentation becoming a forbidden technique.
- In Star Trek Deep Space Nine, the Founder Changelings derogatorily call all non-shape-shifters "solids" and struggle to either control or destroy them. This in turn was caused by Changelings being hunted by other species in the past because of their abilities (in "Shadowplay" we see such attitude). Even those Changelings who do not belong to Dominion (like Laas) actually hold very little of "solids".
Video Games
- Taken to every logical conclusion within City Of Heroes and City Of Villains. While the setting holds enough Heroic Willpower for even the most ridiculous Charles Atlas Superpowers to work, there are still a lot of Muggles. Reactions vary from essentially worshiping Heroes like the Paragon City Civilians do, putting on the kevlar and facing down the super-powered villains like the Paragon City Police, living in terror like Rogue Island civilians, putting on the kevlar and facing down the super-powered heroes for later brainwashing like Malta, or joining the various villain groups for Psycho Serum or protection.
Web Original
- In the Whateley Universe, there's practically a war going on over this trope. "Humanity First!" is a world-wide grass roots anti-mutant organization (with backing from the richest family on earth), and the more radical members have tracked down and murdered new mutants. "Evolution Rocks" is an underground group of mutants who are basically anti-baseline. America's Department of Paranormal Affairs is having it out with the non-governmental agency the Mutant Commission Office, which may be kidnapping young mutants for experimentation.
Western Animation
- This is touched on in The Incredibles, where super-fanboy and wannabe-hero Buddy Pine has an inferiority complex about his lack of powers, an attitude he projects onto the Supers he meets. (The cruel irony is that Buddy essentially does have a superpower — he's a Gadgeteer Genius — but he never recognizes it as such.)
Buddy: Well, I finally figured out who I am: I am your ward. IncrediBoy!
Mr. Incredible: And now, you have officially carried it too far, Buddy.
Buddy: This is because I don't have powers, isn't it?
- And Buddy never notices that he nearly gets blown to pieces in his first appearance as Incrediboy. No wonder Mr. Incredible doesn't want a kid sidekick.
- The second season of Justice League Unlimited dealt with the US government's efforts to build a force capable of stopping the JLU in the event they went rogue. Naturally, they ended up going the route of the Well Intentioned Extremist and a bit of Jumping Off The Slippery Slope when their efforts included such things as creating Tyke Bomb Super Soldier clones with a shelf life shorter than a decade, trusting Lex Luthor and other super criminals, as well as turning JLU member Captain Atom against Superman. The pilot of JLU specifically said that the non-super Green Arrow was a member specifically to call them on abuses of power.
- Don't forget that evil psychopathic Supergirl clone, or that 'super soldier' serum that turned the general into a mutant monster, or...
- The Justice Lords were an example where humans did have something to fear from metahumans. This knowledge is what drove The Question into such a tizzy.
- Princess from The Powerpuff Girls wanted to be a Powerpuff Girl, but she didn't have any powers, so she got technology that imitated their powers. When the girls still wouldn't let her join the team (primarily because she got in their way), she became a villain, continuing to use powers similar to the Powerpuffs' granted by the tech.
Tabletop Games
- In Aberrant, Novas refer to non-Nova humans as "baselines", which technically is just a scientific term for their inability to become a Nova, but is treated as derogatory. Baselines usually fall within two camps: adoring fans or xenophobic champions of genetic purity. Since there's actually no way of telling whether a particular human is able to erupt (become a Nova) or not, a small minority try to provoke their eruption in various ways. Since lethal hazards can give you powers to survive those hazards, you can imagine how they go about this.
- Played annoyingly straight in Wraeththu, where the titular magical hermaphrodites having nothing but contempt and genocidal urges towards the surviving humans, despite that the Wraeththu are supposed to be the heroes of the setting AND each one was originally human themselves.
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