training superheroes

[marycatelli]

In a world where you could train up to have superpowers -- hero or villain or neither -- where would you train?

Would matter a lot.  

Could be government academies and secret, criminal underground groups.  

Could be specialist orders or the like.

Could be special private schools, perhaps with charity scholarships  (Perhaps not!  Requiring education the poor people can't afford is a classic way to keep them down.)

Much depends on exactly how hard it is.  Not to mention what powers you can train into -- superstrength?  telekinesis? superspeed?  flight?  energy attacks?  green thumb?  healing powers? -- and how powerful they are. A government would be happiest with none, but then second best, with many to pit against each other (except how much damage does that do?).

Comments

[asakiyume]

This thought came to me as I was reading the last sentence: if there were superpowers, and if they were something you could train into, and enough people could train into them to have specialist orders or schools, etc., would they still seem like superpowers? Or would our sense of what's possible just extend to include those things? Even if it's just one percent of the population, or a tenth of a percent, whatever-it-was would become a thing that humans could do. There are people now who have perfect pitch and others who are math geniuses, and we pretty much just accept those things, the government too. It's true that flying and telekinesis are more dramatic, but I'm thinking that someone who's a math genius probably has more chance of giving the government destructive capabilities--or more power to work *against* the government--than a person who could fly or one who could move items without touching them. I don't mean this as snark; I'm sort of thinking out loud. A lot of the superpowers we think are most fun or impressive are impressive on an individual level (flying, breathing under water, etc.) but aren't super dangerous societally. Energy attacks I guess would be bad ;-) I guess it depends on the superpower.

[marycatelli]

Would also depend on how long they've been around -- if they were a recent surprise -- and how sharply they differ from normal human abilities. If there's a sharp discontinuity, unlike math ability that grades from innumerate to supergenius, they might be marked off.