Its Just A Background Detail At The Moment, But It’s Interesting How The Superpowers Have Undergone

The Power Cut previews: The Superpowers

Essay and art previews for some of the essays from The Power Cut, an upcoming The Power Fantasy fanzine!

Credits:

Masumi: essay @jkjones21, art @tazmuth

Heavy: essay @idonttakethislightly, art @jkjones21

Etienne: essay @meserach, art @artbyblastweave

Magus: essay @rei-ismyname, art @jkjones21

Valentina: essay @khepris-worst-soldier, art @idonttakethislightly

Eliza: essay and art @idonttakethislightly

Finally got my copy of The Power Fantasy #6

someone: this beauty standard was constructed with specific political purpose, and effectively dismantling the power structure that justifies itself through it requires us to give up using aspects of the body as a metaphor for morality or social worth

the notes:

it’s just a personal preference, it’s not that deep, go outside, touch grass, get married, work a hard job, have kids, stop thinking

so you’re saying I have to fuck people with [trait]? you’re going to show up at my apartment and force me to fuck strangers? your analysis of beauty standards is literally rape. OP wants to fuck me specifically, a random hostile stranger in their notes. they’re turned on because their body disgusts me! (no I have never seen them but I vividly imagine their body as disgusting because why else would they make a post like this)

did you know that another society/culture/time period had a different set of beauty standards? I bet OP didn’t even realize this

actually beauty standards are evolutionary instinct and you’re anti-science. you want us to ignore biology?

I actually WANT to fuck people with [currently devalued trait]

we should remind people that [currently devalued trait] was valued in a different society with another brutal hierarchy based on bodily ideals as proof that [currently devalued trait] is good actually. this definitely does not replicate the exact politics OP is challenging

once I met someone with a stigmatized bodily trait and they were a bad person. I’m sharing this anecdote absent any context so others can draw their own conclusions. if you go to my blog every single post is me sharing totally real stories of people with this trait doing mean things. I’m not saying certain bodily traits create inferior morals, I’m just compulsively curating an entire blog to imply it over and over and over

I used to think [stigmatized trait] was disgusting but I’m trying to unlearn it right now. I assume anyone with that trait would feel me saying this publicly is an act of kindness I’m bestowing upon them rather than a casual cruelty just like all the other comments about how disgusting the trait is

Clockblocker not on a train: A perfect hero; capable of locking down opponents without causing injury; requires tinkertech and a demonstration by Skitter to figure out how to use his power to do harm

Clockblocker on a train: A weapon of massive destruction, incapable of anything less than destroying the entire train, for the second he freezes anything it shoots towards the back of the train at at least 50km/h and up to 300km/h

Taylor the Survivor

This is a key moment for Taylor's character arc, helping her dad salvage what they can in the aftermath of the endbringer attack. The high school insecurities are just a memory and stepped fully into her role as a masked parahuman. She's growing into her potential, even as the line between Taylor and Skitter begin to merge in dangerous ways. Physically at ease and confident; I wanted to include the knife she wore but it didn't work with this pose.

That being said, I don't know why it struck such a visual chord with me. Emma seeing her old victim from the car was just a vivid scene to me, I knew I had to draw her.

Something I haven’t really seen talked about is how the Undersiders mirror Taylor’s bullies.

Obviously, each member of the trio torments Taylor differently: Madison creates little annoyances and pranks, Sophia is animalistically violent (predator-prey) (obviously this is part of the bad racial politics of worm) and Emma engages in psychological warfare based upon specific knowledge of her victim.

Meanwhile, in the Undersiders, you have Regent, who causes little slip-ups in his opponents, Bitch, who is animalistically violent (dog) and Tattletale, who engages is psychological warfare based upon specific knowledge of her victims. And in Grue, you have a Mr Gladly; an authority figure who is meant to reign his charges in but whom fails utterly after making only token efforts.

And Taylor is completely fine with this! I don't think she even really notices, let alone cares, because, with the exception of Bitch (whom she establishes dominance over), this isn't turned against her. Taylor holds a knife to Amy's throat while Tattletale threatens to ruin her life, and she doesn't even have a second thought.

Jack Slash works as well as he does basically entirely on the basis of how visibly the author Does Not Like Him. There's a version of Jack Slash written by some other guy who actually unironically thinks his character archetype is hot shit, and that version sucks and the version of the story that he's in also probably sucks. This version also sucks but you can feel everyone else in the story rolling their eyes in unison at the fact that they've gotta put up with his bullshit, everyone going, "alright, can we please stop with the Dark Knight pastiche and go back to playing realpolitik with well-realized individuals who aren't homicidal cartoon characters that we're forced to take seriously purely by virtue of their inexplicable six-digit grimdark looneytunes bodycount"

Something I’ve only occasionally seen mentioned is how Cauldron capes still have a degree of irony between their power and their trauma

Take Coil. While moments away from being rescued from Nilbog’s monsters, he is faced with a split-second choice: to kill his superior officer or to not. He didn’t know which was the right call, whether it was possible for them both to survive or whether letting his superior live would have doomed them both. And so, he made his choice, and was left to deal with the consequences of it. And then he drinks a vial and is given the ability to delay the making of any such decisions, until the consequences were known.

Or Battery. She wants powers to take down Madcap, and gets powers that operate similarly to his but perform better. Except, of course, only for a handful of moments, leaving her ultimately worse off than him. She loses to him 7 times, and only wins on the 8th because Legend is there

I disagree strongly with the people people who say taylor getting stuck on earth Alph is a fate worse than death. Obviously it’s awful that she can’t see her friends again but the ending represents her entering a place of stability and healing, where she can finally begin to live a healthy life.

I think those people see Taylor’s awkward and I’ll fitting entrance to the civilian life and feel that she’s lost her place in the world, but I think that’s part of the healing process. She’s no longer trapped in the place that forced her to do the things she did to survive. She doesn’t fit in because she has been molded in a harsh environment, and now she finally has room to change.