Thoughts on the New Arcadia Metahuman convention
blog post by Thinker
The metas are already descending on the city. Soon there will be thousands of them talking, sharing, discussing, partying, arguing and learning from each other (hopefully not fighting too much) and I am gleefully awaiting to see the chaos. However, we are almost at the 2 year anniversary of Ragnarok and it's hard to believe how much the world has changed. Some observations:
1. Governments, corporations and other large institutes have failed to meaningfully integrate metahumans: Most pundits thought that we would see legions of super soldiers and cops deployed by the governments of the world shortly after Ragnarok but we haven't. It seems that all of these organizations have structural impediments in getting metas and normal people inside the org to work together. I could go into great detail about this but the fact remains that no bureaucracy is able to handle metas well enough to keep pace with the underground arms race of power development. Even criminal cartels failed in this respect (outside of the syndicate, which fell to the New Ideal)
2. As a corollary: metahumans are mostly unsuited to lead large organizations of normal humans. It's not that they lack the skills or savvy to do so but once you become a metahuman, your attitude changes. You don't care about the same issues that would motivate you to lead an organization. That's why we don't see hyperminds dominating the Fortune 500. They see it as a waste of their time.
3. Religion has failed to soothe the masses: Religious leaders that declared Ragnarok as the End Times now look foolish. Others can't settle on a doctrine for metas and powers that their flocks agree on.
4. The more powerful you become, the more you care: Metahumans seem to have an exaggerated sense of idealism and morality. Even the ones we would call villains almost always have some strict code of conduct. I think it's partially a defense mechanism to keep you sane from the stress of coming to terms with your new powers.
5. Non-combat powers are much more useful than previously thought: With thousands of 'amateur' metas with so called 'useless' or utility powers out there, we are seeing a wide variety of applications - new tech, medical uses, environmental cleanup, the arts and more
6. The governments of the world will overreact and they will fail: The harder they push, the more damage they cause to themselves.
7. The New Ideal rocks! Seriously they are the only vigilante group with their heads on straight - no racism like those assholes in New York, no incompetence like the Russian hooligans, no corporate selling out like the London idiots and they only have one fascist (Chirop the protestor beater) That's awesome!
