The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Guys, a Mass Empowering Event is defined as "All superheros got their powers at the same time, from the same event." Drug treatment and the like by themselves don't count. Now, an accident that releases a massive cloud of experimental drugs/mutagens that catches a large number of people in it, and causes Super-Empowering to almost anyone who breathes it? That's definitely Mass Empowering Event.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Essentially the flipside of Won The Superpower Lottery, where the acquired possessed powers are ridiculously useful, to the point of Story-Breaker Power / Game-Breaker in extreme cases. Normal results are either useful but relatively "average" powers or powers that are weak enough to be considered "useless".
EDIT: Fixing inappropiate wording.
edited 19th Jun '11 7:57:46 PM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
One Winged Egret
It doesn't say "at the same time" anywhere on Mass Super-Empowering Event. It just says "give every character the same super hero/villain origin story". The key is that they all come from the same source, not that it happens at the same time. Drugs or repeated experimentation would certainly count. How else would they get Psycho Prototypes?
edited 19th Jun '11 6:18:19 PM by Clarste
It's not a flipside to Superpower Lottery. It's barely related to Superpower Lottery and that relationship is tenuous at best. One of them requires there to be multiple people with superpowers, one of them doesn't. One of them requires that there be other outcomes, one of them doesn't. One of them gives great power, one of them is a random chance of harm completely unrelated to if it gives something good alongside it.
In short, I don't see any way to merge them as the only thing they have in common is that they're about superpowers.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
That's the thing though. A character who as Won The Superpower Lottery doesn't have to aquire anything, like in the case of Superman or Martian manhunter who superpowers are natural to them.
"someone who won the Superpower Lottery has a completely overwhelming ability compared to everyone else in the story"
from the page
edited 19th Jun '11 6:26:26 PM by captainpat
Mass Empowering Event may need a split. There's a pretty huge difference between "The Awakening occurred, granting .1% of humanity magic" and "Somebody managed to mass-produce the Super Serum."
One Winged Egret
Actually, we already have Meta Origin, so maybe this could just use some tweaking in the description.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
@Clarste
: Well, someone should fix the article description to make that clear. That quote I gave came from the Playing With Wiki entry.
@shimaspawn:
@captainpat: Point taken. Fixing post now.
@Discar: Agreed. That should be done in a separate thread, though.
edited 20th Jun '11 6:51:25 AM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Superpower Lottery: A character is much more powerful than the rest of the characters in a work. These other characters need not have any powers whatsoever. This trope is entirely about comparing relative power levels.
Superpower Russian Roulette: If something causes superpowers, there's a chance it goes wrong. This trope is about random chance of a mistake.
These tropes are in no way related.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Well, then both tropes need to be redefined to include "compared to other people with powers." That's the only way that these make sense. Otherwise, just having a single person on a planet with Super-Strength would mean that person Won The Superpower Lottery.
edited 19th Jun '11 8:28:41 PM by SalFishFin
This may just be my interpretation, but the "relative to" part does seem at least implicit if not explicit in the writeup of both tropes, though clarifying that isn't a bad thing. Story-Breaker Power does cover the "incredibly weak power can break a story by killing the drama, regardless of power distribution in the setting" aspect at the moment.
In any event, there does seem to be a hole that needs feeling in terms of a trope about "Grants Random Superpowers."
Such a trope should cover:
- Mass Super-Empowering Event / Virus / Super Serum as a cause
- Grants a random power
- Power may be overpowered
- Power may be moderate
- Power may be weak
- Has a serious drawback, Superpower Russian Roulette being a Sub-Trope.
- One being it actually kills you
Missing anything?
In my reading, Super Power Lottery is about some heroes being significantly more powerful than others.
Superpower Russian Roulette is about an entirely different concept, where there is something—could be a drug, magic, event, etc. that could give you superpowers, if you're lucky, or could do something really bad, like turn you insane, make you hideous, or even kill you. You're lucky if it does nothing to you.
They definitely should not be merged.
Pretty sure Superpower Russian Roulette doesn't actually need to be random, that's just a Snowclone thing.
Rhymes with "Protracted."
Okay, reading through Mass Super-Empowering Event, it seems like its what I thought: Single event gives large number of people powers, rather than what was said higher up, which was identical origin. I believe Meta Origin works for that one.
So those two are okay. We just need to bring this back to Superpower Lottery and Superpower Russian Roulette.
Agreed.
edited 19th Jun '11 9:39:41 PM by Discar
According to what is on the page right now: Superpower Russian Roulette is Mass Empowering Event gives some people cool powers and fucks a bunch of other people over pretty much at random. So yes, there is some random required. It's random chance if you get cool powers, or die.
edited 19th Jun '11 9:42:11 PM by shimaspawn
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
@Earnest: I was going by shima's definition. Like I said, if exactly one person on earth had superpowers, going by that definition, he would have won the lottery. It's a logical hole in the description.It may be implicit right now, but it needs to be made explicit.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
@Shimaspawn: Your take on Superpower Russian Roulette seems too narrow. The way I understand it, the spirit of both it and Superpower Lottery is about the nature of getting superpowers in a given setting - the former ranges from good to useless to harmful, while the latter runs from useless, to good, to ridiculously good (possibly counting as Story-Breaker Power).
@Sal Fish Fin: Seconded.
@Earnest: Why "grants a random power"? And where would Superpower Lottery / Won The Superpower Lottery fall into that scheme?
And like I have said before, that's an unreasonably narrow interpretation. Had it still been in YKTTW stage, I would have had it expanded beyond Mass Super-Empowering Event.
edited 20th Jun '11 7:06:20 AM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
As written, Superpower Lottery has nothing to do with the getting superpowers. You would have to completely rewrite the trope for that. It's just a comparison of power levels. It's an old really well established trope that people have been using correctly for years based on the current definition. Changing it is a bad idea. It's breaking something that works so that you can inelegantly shove something else in there even though nothing but their names are vaguely similar.
Superpower Lottery does not run the gamut anywhere. It's "Character X has awesome powers compared to everyone else in the setting." It's all stuck at awesome. There's no downslope. Nothing to run. You seem to have created a definition out of whole cloth that has nothing to do with what's on the page now.
I don't mind expanding Superpower Russian Roulette, but the fact is, as the tropes stand you would have to completely redefine them both to merge them. That means ditching the current good examples for what exactly?
Why do you want to make 550+ wiks wrong just so that you can merge too things badly? And even if we did that, we'd need to move the trope at Superpower Lottery somewhere else because it's a valid working trope.
edited 20th Jun '11 8:38:55 AM by shimaspawn
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Just so we're clear, you are okay with adding the "compared to other characters with powers" clause to both tropes, right?
No, I am not ok with that. You're randomly redefining working tropes in a way that will make hundreds of wiks wrong.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Um... These tropes are about superpowers, right? Because if they aren't they shouldn't have "Superpower" right in their names. Why, then, should they suggest a comparison between those with superpowers, and those without? Because as I said earlier, if a single person in the known universe had a superpower, he should not logically count as having won the "Superpower Lottery."
Why not? Think of it as everyone else lost the lottery and got nothing.
Drop-Dead Cynical
There are multiple types of lotteries. Some, like scratch cards, have lower- and middle-level prizes of $50 or $1000, etc., with the real incentive being the million dollar jackpot. And some have a multi-million dollar jackpot, but only one person gets it, and everyone else gets nothing.
Yep. It's really not uncommon for the losers of a lottery to get nothing at all. Besides, it's arbitrarily redefining a working trope in a way that makes it not work any more. That is ALWAYS a bad thing.
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Superpower Russian Roulette, as I'm reading it, is supposed to be when there are outcomes that are not just weak but actually harmful to the recipient.
Rhymes with "Protracted."