Suspension of Disbelief

[Sarai and Samiel]

OR
How to Make a Super Character that Everyone Finds Enjoyable

1: Why am I writing this?

I suppose that before I even begin to act like I have any idea what I’m doing with this, I should explain what it means, and what it is all about. It all starts with one of the most important things that one can do when preparing to roleplay, write a story, act, or play an RPG. Creating a character. I, just like everyone else, started out with no real idea what I was doing when I created a character. The first time I really created a character, by which I mean, I was attempting to come up with a personality and set of abilities that would be consistent and not simply something nifty to think about for a few minutes, was approximately eight years ago. That character was the one that would come to be known variously as Selene, Selene Star, Selene Darkblade, and finally Selene Starblade.

Selene was, I now realize, a very poorly-made character. Her abilities were basically limited to what I could imagine happening, I hadn’t figured out consistent strengths and weaknesses and styles, her personality was half-formed and more malleable than a wad of silly putty, and I completely skipped paying any attention to whether anyone else would want to have her around. It is this last part, I think, that is one of the two most vital elements to creating a successful roleplaying character.

It is extremely important to remember that, as a roleplayer, or an RPGer, or an actor, or even a writer, that your character(s) do(es) NOT exist in a void. There are others around, with whom your character will have to interact, because that is what a character, and a person, is. An individual being in an environment composed of various other beings. Now, hang on a minute, you’re probably saying. This is supposed to be about super powers and characters, isn’t it?

Yes, yes it is. And this is one of the most important points of all- a character’s ‘abnormal’ abilities and tendencies are a vital part of shaping the character’s personality, and vice-versa. If you create a super-strong character, then that super-strength will affect the character’s personality. It may be welcomed, shunned, it may be something the character doesn’t even realize they have, or any of a number of reactions. These influence how the character acts towards things that are, for instance, potentially breakable. That, in turn, affects the power, and the character’s use of it. A character who is super-strong and not aware of the fact that their strength is unusual will not use their strength in flashy or showy ways, will not make boasts of their ability, and may even act surprised upon handing something to someone else and finding that this other character is incapable of carrying it. A character who has gained super-strength as a result of some scientific accident, and who had previously been picked on for puniness or weakness can have a number of different changes to their personality even as simply regards those previously looking down upon them. Furthermore, a character with super strength who welcomes the ability may exercise to further increase that strength, where one who does not may remain at that same level of strength for a long time, as they attempt to avoid using it at any possible time.

Inasmuch as this relates to other people wanting your character around, you have to remember that this applies to the players as well as the characters. A character who is so self-sufficient as to never need help from other characters is no fun for the other players, as that one character either takes on all challenges themselves and leaves the others with nothing to do, or they consistently make it clear, intentional or not, that the other characters are not needed. Similarly, a character whose player is constantly providing their character their own challenges in a story thread, and effectively ignoring those set forth by the thread’s creator is no fun for the other players- they aren’t really participating in the thread, and aren’t contributing anything of interest to the other characters or their players. It becomes a case of ‘Enh, he’s off on his own again, big whoop.’

That’s all that I’m going to go into now in terms of character personality, simply because this is supposed to be a series of small essays about character abilities, not on how to create your character’s personality (That comes later. ^_^ Kidding, kidding....).

This brings me back to the other vital element to creating a successful roleplaying character, which is what this series is really about- suspension of disbelief.

From the start, anyone reading anything written for a roleplay so far as it is designed here and in most other places must suspend their sense of disbelief. They must be willing to say ‘I can accept that Neo is able to bring Trinity back to life’, or ‘I can accept that Son Goku is generating immense amounts of power’, or even something as basic as ‘I can accept that there is magic in the world being portrayed’. The difficulty is that there’s only so much that someone reading, watching, et cetera, can accept before things start to become outright silly, stupid, and/or boring. There is a point beyond which further increase of power is no longer exciting- if the last villain was able to blow up the entire planet, and you try to make the next villain worse by a power increase, it’s not going to work too well. How much more destruction can a villain cause by being able to blow up two planets, when there’s only one planet there to blow up in the first place?

This is something that a large number of roleplayers fall short on when starting out, and I am just as guilty of it as anyone else. After a long time of knowing about it, and continuing to see people doing the same things, causing the same problems, and learning the same lessons the hard way, I finally got around to actually starting work on this. Hopefully, it will be taken in the light that it is meant- as a series of thought-out suggestions regarding various powers and abilities that are commonly or uncommonly granted to characters, and possible methods for treating these powers and abilities without making them seem ‘broken’, ‘godly’, or simply ridiculous.

Generally, the best way to maintain this is through the proper use of suspension of disbelief. There are two primary ways to help suspension of disbelief. The first, and more common one, is to somehow limit the power in question, either through reasonable or arational methods. I call them ‘arational’, because there is no sensible explanation for them. For example: a reasonable limitation on an invulnerable character is that they can still be moved about by severe impacts. This is reasonable because invulnerable only indicates harm to the character from being struck in some manner, and says nothing about effects on their position, surroundings, et cetera. An arational limitation on an invulnerable character is that they are invulnerable to everything except aluminum. This is arational, because there is no explicable reason why such an element as aluminum would be able to penetrate this invulnerability when similar elements, such as tin, or even simply other metals, cannot.

Typically speaking, a reasonable method will ‘buy back’, so to speak, a greater level of suspension of disbelief than an arational method. It is much easier to believe an invulnerable character who still gets knocked around and flung hither, thither, and yon, than it is to believe an invulnerable character who cannot be moved without their consent, but has a vulnerability to aluminum.

This further compounds itself in the form of knowledge and capability. A character who is super strong generally won’t have learned any techniques for overcoming someone with a minimum of power- they have no reason to. They’ve got, theoretically, so much power they don’t need that sort of a technique. A character who learned first to throw magical blasts will probably not learn to throw chi blasts- they can already attack at a distance with a fireball, why learn to do the same thing via a method that takes years to develop (again)? A character who already runs faster than any known vehicle will generally not learn to drive a car or truck- they simply wouldn’t develop the need to do so. There are and always will be exceptions, but characters who are exceptions are exceptions, and that needs to be taken into account when creating the character.

Hopefully, I will be able to contribute a treatment of at least one ‘power’ each week, as I intend to do for so long as I can keep it up. If you would like to suggest a ‘power’ for a look in one of these small essays, please Email me at Correctdirection@aol.com and I will see about working it in.

The current list of powers for treatment (and the essay in which they will be treated):

2. Invulnerability
3. Super Strength
4. Chi/Ki/Qi/Light/etc.
5. Super Speed
6. Super Senses
7. Immortality and Amortality
8. Prescience
9. Omni-anything (-science, -potence, -presence, etc.)
Suggestion by Slife:
10. Mind Control
Suggestion by Acradius:
11. Irremovable Possessions
Suggestion by Acradius:
12. Killer Doom Uber Super Mega Ultradeath Doom Doom Doom Killy Doom Final Attacks
13. Miscellaneous Non-weapon Ranged Attacks
Suggestion by Acradius:
14. 'Unstoppable' Attacks
[ January 10, 2006, 11:57 PM: Message edited by: Reiko, Yume, Selene, et al ]

[Sarai and Samiel]

2. Invulnerability (And/or high durability)

Invulnerability. It has to be among the most common ‘super’ abilities for a character to have- right up there with super strength and enhanced senses. Also, because of this, it is one of the ones with the most unusual additives that are commonly considered part of the ability itself. Top that off with the frequent misunderstandings of the word, use of odd or sometimes silly weaknesses to offset it, and it’s near-permanent association with super strength, and you come out with what ought to be one of the most simple and basic super abilities turning out to be a huge mess to deal with.

So- where to start? Well. Probably the best point to start out with is what invulnerability is. It could be argued that what it isn’t should be the focus but then, face it, you’d be sitting there all night. What is invulnerability? It is the state of being invulnerable. Invulnerable, as defined commonly in a dictionary, means ‘incapable of being wounded, hurt, or damaged’- or ‘proof or immune against attack’. Both of these pretty much agree with the common use and application of invulnerability on or to peoples’ characters in roleplay, so that’s fairly straightforwards. However, that still leaves the question of what it means.

As commonly accepted, an invulnerable character takes no physical harm from attacks. This is all well and good, and more or less easy to portray or represent accurately- if one keeps in mind what one is doing. A character who has only invulnerability is only protected from harm by attacks. Thus, spraying them with magma will not burn them, nor will it bludgeon them. However, invulnerability does not provide proof against the magma proceeding to cool and lock the character in place. It does not prevent the inertia of the magma, the effect of a firehose-stream of rock, from shoving them away from the impact. There is no reason your character cannot have some sort of defense against these effects, but that defense is not a part of invulnerability.

On the other hand, absolute invulnerability such as this is generally considered to be pushing the borders of ‘cheap’ and ‘godmode’, because it prevents direct physical attacks from being effective at all. This is partially an effect of many players not wanting to, or not knowing how to, use their imaginations to overcome this difficulty. It is also partially an effect of total invulnerability actually being somewhat ‘cheap’. Mostly, though, it is an effect of the immense number of ‘rider’ powers that are typically added on to invulnerability.

A partial list of these powers (in no particular order):
Ignoring leverage. (Because I’m invulnerable, I can hold up this thing that extends fifty meters to my right and one inch to my left and keep it balanced)
Ignoring pushes of any sort. (Because I’m invulnerable, I can stand still when a train crashes into me, even though I only weigh 100 pounds)
Immunity to pain. (Did you feel a breeze?)
Ability to anchor to a surface. (See ‘ignoring pushes’)
Ability to prevent the surface anchored to from in any way being altered/ripped apart. (I’m grabbing this, and even a team of wild horses can’t pull me off of this water barrel- or it off of the ground, for that matter....)
Mental protection. (I’m invulnerable to EVERYTHING!)
Super Strength. (I’m invulnerable, so I get to crash through walls!)

Most of these powers are actual riders, but the last one, super strength, is somewhat iffy when looked at properly. No, a character who is invulnerable does not automatically gain the ability to lift several tons. However, given that the human body (the assumption being that the base for the character is human or at least very similar to human) is capable of exerting more force itself than it can safely withstand, invulnerability or high durability does permit seeming super strength, by allowing the character to exert all of their strength without endangering themself. This strength, though, will still usually be within human norms, and generally won’t allow multiple-ton lifting, or punching through blocks of steel, or the like.

At any rate, removing these riders from invulnerability, one comes up with a fairly simple basis- at first. However, then one arrives at application of the invulnerability. This is an important step that many people with invulnerable characters do not seem to ever take into account. Namely- how is the character invulnerable?

Is their skin impenetrable? Their bones unbreakable? Is their whole body made of some ludicrously durable substance? Are they surrounded by a skintight forcefield? Is their skin incapable of being affected by anything but them? Do they absorb all the inertia from any blow they receive? Is the character incredibly dense (and if so, why aren’t they a black hole instead of a character?)

The removing of the ‘rider’ powers and application of this question combine to provide reasonable faults in invulnerability. The character is invulnerable, but hit him with a hand grenade, and he’ll still be tossed around, maybe stunned. The character’s skin is invulnerable, but if you hit her hard enough, she can take internal organ damage. The character is invulnerable, but cannot physically feel anything. The character is invulnerable, but it’s ‘only’ physical.

The other way in which invulnerability is made less ‘broken’, but sometimes in a way that requires even more suspension of disbelief, is through the addition of weaknesses. Characters who are invulnerable to everything but fire. To everything but metal. To everything except when in the presence of a certain element. To everything they are aware of. To everything sharp. And so on and so forth.

Personally, I advise against this alternate method of making invulnerability more palatable and acceptable, because unless it’s done very carefully (only invulnerable when touching rock, because he draws on the power of stone) and with worked-out reasons, it can become very silly or strange, which will make the character harder to accept in any particular forum. (HOW much kryptonite landed on Earth????)

Additionally, the effects of the ‘method’ invulnerability allow many more options for character development, providing hooks to hang many things on (invulnerable character who eats a lot, because he can’t feel anything through his forcefield), and may even guide you towards other powers that would be appropriate for your character to have (if the character absorbs inertia, can they then redirect it or store it?), or other weaknesses.

In the end, all that invulnerability really does is make a character physically unharmable to a certain degree, or by a certain manner, and any further abilities are ‘riders’. An invulnerable character can’t neccessarily stop a train by standing in front of it- even if they are strong enough, what’s to prevent them being shoved along the ground for miles and miles? That’s another power entirely. By keeping these limitations and potential qualifications in mind, you can use the invulnerability to make the character more believable, without giving up the unbelievable power to ignore damage.

Similarly, everything that applies to invulnerability applies to extreme durability, if to a somewhat lesser degree. It should be fairly easy to trade off invulnerability with simple resistance to damage and injury, so long as you keep in mind the limits of the durability as well as the other notable aspects that also apply to invulnerability.

To give some examples of invulnerability being applied, I will list a few characters from various places who have invulnerability or extreme damage resistance.

Juggernaut: A classic example of true invulnerability. Cain Marko is literally invulnerable, thanks to the Ruby of Cyttorak. As ‘rider’ powers, he also needs neither to breathe nor eat, and he got the addition of super strength. However, his invulnerability is very basic. It affords him no protection against mental powers, which is the reason for his helmet, it doesn’t provide him with the ability to ignore or alter leverage (nor does his super strength, one of the few cases where super strength AND invulnerability are both not given that particular rider), and it certainly wasn’t too much help when Spider-man managed to sink him to the bottom of a pit full of wet concrete.

Superman: Perhaps *the* classic example of invulnerability. It is hard to figure out the actual effect and extent of Superman’s defensive ability, because it combines with so many things. His ability to fly, thereby anchoring himself at any point he likes, allows him to ignore leverage and inertia to an incredible degree, which combines very well with his invulnerability. However, it is apparent that he is not completely invulnerable- after all, Doomsday was able to bruise and cut Kal-El. Taken individually, Superman’s extreme durability is a great power. Compounded, however, with his near-unlimited seeming list of other powers... well, Superman’s a nice fantasy, but as a character, there are some rather writer-unfriendly limits there.

Kouryou Yume: Okay, yes, this is one of my characters. She is also, however, an example of how I practice what I preach. Yume has extreme durability- she is very resistant to physical blows. She is also invulnerable to cold and cold-related things. However, she is still burned (to a degree) by fire. Radiation is still poisonous to her. She can still be shoved around by inertia (though it’s harder when she’s not in midair, due to her ability to stick to surfaces with her hands and feet). And because it is primarily her bones and skin that are durable, she has various weak points (eyes and mouth, for instance), and potentially could be badly hurt by internal organ damage from some source or other. This leaves limitations on her resilience that leave her considerably more believable than she would be without them, because all the limitations are ones that both make sense, and make her less than ‘uber’.

Unus the Untouchable: This is probably the best example of invulnerability really not working out. Unus had only one power- the ability to cover himself in an impenetrable forcefield. At a glance, this looks great, but with no other powers, it really wound up rather wimpy. He could still be knocked over by shoving on the forcefield, picked up by grabbing the forcefield, et cetera. In the end, he was discarded, though his companion, The Blob, stuck around.

The Blob: Originally having appeared with the one-trick pony Unus the Untouchable, the Blob actually managed to be a vague threat. Certainly not on the level of Juggernaut, the Blob has always possessed two abilities in addition to invulnerability- first off, if he does not want to move, he will not be moved. Very useful for stand-ins, but not so good for much of anything else, unless you like performing as a freeway support post. However, combining invulnerability (or extreme toughness, depending on what decade the Blob is being referred from), the ability to become immovable, and a decent level of super-strength, the Blob manages to be at least competent, which is a lot more than could be said of poor Unus.

Mr. Incredible: You’ve seen that movie, right? Mr. Incredible is the classic, one of the most basic super-heroes. Two powers- super strong, and incredibly durable. If you pay attention, though, you notice that he really only has the two abilities. To a certain extent, he seems to ignore leverage, but that capability is rather heavily limited (it takes a lot of effort for him). In this manner, he is made very much more believable as a character- he’s really tough and strong, but the applications are limited to a certain extend, which is why he functions better alongside other heroes. I call him extremely durable because he is still cut (by the machine encountered early on), he still can be electrically shocked, the wind can be knocked out of him, and he seems to become a bit bruised (though it’s not visible). He also can throw his back out. ^_^

So, with all of this in mind, some suggestions for invulnerability:

How about a character who is invulnerable, but because nothing can move their skin aside from themself, they have no sense of touch? They would then have to be incredibly careful around anything the least bit fragile, and furthermore would have probably some emotional problems having to do with being separated from the world to a degree... they might indulge very heavily in visual, audible, or taste and smell related pleasures, in an attempt to make up for not really being able to touch anything. Or, they might be very obsessed with physical pleasure due to their lack of it. They might become careless, believing that they cannot be hurt, or extremely careful, being sharply aware that others are vastly easier to hurt than them.

What about a character who is invulnerable only when touching metal, because they absorb some properties of it? They would likely take to toting bits and pieces of metal around all the time. They would do great in a space-age area, and have severe trouble in stone-age environs. Maybe they would have a piece of metal implanted somewhere?

Invulnerability is a very tempting power, but there are always ways around it- and there are a number of ways to come short of it, while still having an enjoyable degree of the capability. It is also very tempting to tack on any or, more often, all of the ‘rider’ powers that tend to come with invulnerability, and while it’s a nice thought, it’s not always a reasonable one, and can lead to people having difficulty believing in your character. At its basis, invulnerability is both the most believable and most unbelievable power, because it is so basic, and so easy to overdo.

[Sarai and Samiel]

3. Super Strength (and simply Superhuman strength)

Superhuman strength is probably the second most common ‘super’ ability. In a way, this is a shame, because it is among the most difficult superhuman abilities to properly represent in all ways. While it does not have as many ‘riders’ as invulnerability, it carries a decent-sized set of its own. Additionally, it is nearly always given restrictions or limitations that either make little sense, or may as well not be present. This only worsens the situation that results from trying to give a character such an ability.

In the case of super strength, what it is not is actually about as good a place to start as what it is. After all, strength is a much more relative thing than resilience, and with the broad range of degrees out there, it’s neccessary, to a point, to define the ‘level’ of the super strength. For the purposes of this dissertation, we’ll consider super strength to be broken down into several levels. To a certain degree, these can be described by capability, but they may also be generally figured by measuring dead-lift capability- how much weight the being in question can raise from floor-level to arm’s-length overhead in one shot without stopping.

1. Barely Superhuman: Could punch through a brick wall with a bit of effort. Can lift and throw as much as one ton english, though only very short distances- maybe a few feet. Dead lifts slightly more, maybe a ton and a half.

2. Modestly Superhuman: This level of strength is possessed by a startlingly large number of superheroes and anime heroes. It generally indicates being physically strong enough to shatter concrete into a gravelly substance with a straight punch. Can probably dead-lift as much as six or seven tons english.

3. Greatly Superhuman: This level of strength allows feats such as supporting highways, holding up a barrier against a large rockslide, or breaking harder rocks and softer crystals barehanded. May dead-lift up in the range of twenty or twenty-two tons.

4. Excessively Superhuman: For most intents and purposes, this level of superhuman strength is no different from any level above it, for reasons that will be discussed later on in this entry. Can probably crush most hard crystals and gemstones, provided appropriate protection from own strength. Could potentially dead-lift eighty or ninety tons.

5. Incalculably Superhuman: In most situations, no character would be able to take advantage of the full extent of this strength. Could potentially crush coal into diamonds, and then the diamonds into diamond dust, provided appropriate protection from own strength and the diamonds in question. Likely dead-lifts several hundred tons.

6. Unlimited: For all intents and purposes, there is no feat of pure strength beyond this character, though without protection from their own power, or some unusual circumstances, they still will not be able to enact feats beyond the ‘excessively superhuman’ level. Could potentially crush matter into neutronium, or crumble neutronium, provided appropriate protection from own strength, the materials involved, and the heat generated. Can dead-lift weights that cannot reasonably be expected to exist in a liftable form- appropriate barbell and dumbell weights would instantly collapse into black holes.

Why have I divided the quality up like this, you may ask? Because these are the typical levels that such ability appears at. Level 1 super strength is possessed, basically as a minimum, by almost all (>75%) characters that appear on the Battlefield, and by nearly any physical combatant in a heavy-duty fantasy/sci-fi/superhero setting. It is, however, still barely within the range of human normal, though usually only under extremely strenuous (read: adrenaline-use) circumstances. Level 2 super strength, however, is markedly less common than level 3 super strength. Most super strong characters seem to default to level 3, and most characters where superhuman physical power is not a major character attribute simply don’t bother with super strength at all, excepting physical combatants, who tend to default to level 1. In most cases, when a player wants a character to be superhumanly strong, but does not wish to be outright excessive, the character will have level 3 super strength. Characters with this level of strength tend to still be fairly skilled combatants, but there is a notable tendency to rely on raw power over finesse and skill. The remainder of cases use level 4 or higher super strength. Cases of level 5 or 6 super strength are extremely rare among characters created by those with more experience, partly from the sheer ridiculousness sometimes caused by that grade of physical power, partly because that level of raw power starts becoming useless, and partly because it is very difficult to actually represent such capability in a character.

Now... what is super strength NOT, but often represented as?

Super strength is not the ability to catch excessively large objects moving at high speed. To a certain extent, it will aid with that, but if the character in question has no protection against the impact, they are going to be jelly, no matter how strong they are- a fifty-ton ball of ice and rock moving thousands or even hundreds of thousands of miles per hour has a HELL of a lot of momentum.
Super strength is not the ability to ignore leverage. You may be strong enough to lift a whole city block’s weight, but two things will still stop you from ripping one from out the ground and clobbering someone with it- One; the weight, focused on your standing surface, will drive you right through said surface. Two; the city block itself won’t withstand the leverage, and whatever part you grabbed is going to come off in your hand. And three; no matter how strong you are, you aren’t going to be able to find a way to bend your body that won’t prevent you from falling over from that amount of weight centered that far away from your feet.
Super strength is not invulnerability, or even resilience. Some methods of gaining super strength will incidentally cause improvements to durability, and increased resilience is necessary to actually apply the super strength without breaking your own body, but they are two separate things, and disabling one won’t disable the other.
Like invulnerability, super strength is not going to allow you to ignore pushes. Inertia still has effect. No matter how strong you are, if you’re 200 pounds, and you get hit by a twenty-ton train going a hundred miles per hour, you are going to be moved.

WARNING: RANT. YOU MAY SKIP THIS IF YOU WISH, IT IS NOT VITAL, THOUGH IT IS USEFUL
As an aside, you may note a theme here. This is a response to something I have seen a truly excessive amount of- people ignoring the fact that they’ve just been hit with an immense force. Too often, someone who’s invulnerable or super strong will take or catch a blow that has far more than enough force to send them flying, and will simply stand there. That cannot be done without some method of anchoring. Invulnerability and super strength do not grant immunity to inertia. They to not grant the ability to remove inertia. They never have, and never will. For anyone who doesn’t understand the concept of inertia, watch people bowling. When the bowling ball hits the pins, and they move rather than holding still, that’s inertia. If you start out with motion, that motion is gonna go somewhere.

At some point, I’ll probably address inertia on its own, because it seems to be an idea that is both poorly explained in school (that is, the teachers seem to try to bore you to death with it), and by-and-large uncomprehended. Hopefully, I can manage to make it actually interesting enough to pay attention to. But don’t hold your breath.
NOTICE: END OF RANT. IF YOU STOPPED READING, THIS IS WHERE TO START AGAIN.

At any rate, now that I’ve hit that tangent for a while, why don’t I get back to what I was supposed to be doing? Yeah, I thought that would make you happier.

Having defined what super strength is *not*, I am now left with defining what super strength is. This, surprisingly, is relatively simple. Super strength is the ability to exert force exceeding the levels of which a human being is normally capable. At least, this is the standard definition. Naturally, it does not always hold correctly. A super strong frog is not going to be able to exert the same level of force as a super strong human. Obviously, some sort of improvement is needed to the definition, so here it is: Super strength is the ability to exert force and/or power in excess of the levels of which the being with super strength should be capable.

For someone four feet tall with a build like a gathering of sticks, dead lifting half a ton is super strength. For someone five and a half feet tall with arms broader than footballs and even thicker-muscled legs, lifting half a ton is not super strength, but lifting a full ton is edging into that.

Hopefully this is enough to give the idea of what super strength really is. It had better be. Now comes the actually difficult part. Determining what super strength allows the character to *do*. However, you have to start small with something like this, so I will start by defining what normal strength allows a character to do.

Normally, strength determines a number of things about a character, through a variety of routes. The most obvious, of course, is how much weight a character can support. A stronger character will be able to support more weight- within a certain limit. Also, a stronger character will be able to hit harder within a certain limit. A character’s strength does a great deal to determine how far and high they can jump. It also determines how powerful of a grip they have, and it helps to determine the results of a contest of opposed force- within certain limits.

This certain limit, this key thing that has to be kept in mind when applying super strength, is the character’s body. If you wish to understand this, you have to look at a rather unusual example, one demonstrated subtly in a number of movies. Particularly, the case of someone punching somebody else, and injuring or even outright breaking their hand, because the target of the blow was protected by a piece of metal. Sometimes it is a funny event, sometimes an awe-inspiring event, and sometimes a troubling event. But how does it happen?

When a person is developing, growing up, they learn how tough, how ‘hard’ certain substances are. Because of this, they learn to expect them to give upon impact. Because of this, someone who is punching steel, and aware that they are punching steel, and furthermore aware that they are not necessarily strong enough to punch their hand through the steel in question, will pull their punch, instinctively, so that they do not break their hand upon striking. If you really feel the need to test this, get a large number of identical pillows, a friend, and a piece of hard wood (which you are less likely to break your hand hitting than a chunk of metal). Have your friend put the flat piece of hard wood into one of the pillows when you are not looking, and then cycle through them, punching each in turn. One of two things will happen- either you will punch the soft pillows with much less force than you normally would, expecting each to have the wood and therefore instinctively pulling your punch, or you will strike the pillow with the wood in it much harder than you would normally strike the wood, and your hand will hurt some (though not as much as it would, on account of the pillow padding the impact).

The upshot of this is that people are generally considerably stronger than they actually perceive themselves to be and act as though they are. However, they are unable to exert this strength properly without injuring themselves, excepting against very soft substances. This is something that martial artists have to work their way past- this is why for breaking cinder blocks or boards, a martial arts student will often be told to think *through* the target- to put the target of their punch beyond where the surface they are striking actually is. This helps to fool the instincts to a certain amount, so that the strike would be pulled *after* the point where it actually impacts, and the force is therefore greater, because the muscles have not acted to counteract their own force. When someone in a stressful situation acts beyond their normal strength, typically what this means is that they are temporarily abandoning these self-protective instincts, and exerting their true physical power. This is why extreme durability and invincibility seem to lend a certain degree of super strength to a person (or would). The downside of this is that the character in question does not have the usual ‘extra reserves’ of physical power for stressful situations- they can already safely exert their full strength without injuring themself, so the instincts to prevent self-injury are not in place.

There are other things that affect strength- and strength affects other things. To a certain degree, strength and speed are interrelated. A higher strength allows a greater ability to push against air, to shove off from the ground, and a higher speed, meaning a greater inertia, causes an increase in the force exerted- so, to a point, super speed and super strength are correlated. A character with either will be able to exert a degree of the other, within reason. And a character who is limited to low speeds cannot fully exert their strength in an effective manner- they’ll be great for lifting and pushing, but actually striking will not be as effective. Likewise, a character with super speed but low physical strength will have significant limits on their top speed and be very easy to stop (provided you are fast enough to get in the way), though they may still have astounding acceleration.

These factors apply to super strength just as much as they do to regular strength, but there are further limitations and connotations to super strength.

For instance, the concept of a super strong character being able to strike the ground and cause a fissure. This, quite simply, will not happen. A character striking a surface with that level of power will force their fist or foot into the ground (provided the limb can survive that level of stress), and may create a significant shockwave and cracks, but unless the surface in question is extremely brittle and/or dense, all they will create is a hole big enough to fit the limb that struck. This is another matter of inertia and resilience- if the surface is not resilient enough to withstand the blow, that which is striking it will simply punch through, much like the way a bullet will pass through thin metal, walls, or similar substances- the force is simply too much, and while some of it gets spent on whatever got in the way, the rest stays with the projectile, which keeps going. Therefore, some other force or ability must be applied in order for such a fissure to be created.

A super-strong character ripping a mountain free of the ground, or an island, or any large mass of land, will similarly not happen. Even if the character is resilient enough to withstand the strain, the rock and dirt is simply not held together well enough to match the stress of that much power, or of its own weight, and all the lifter will actually come up with is two handfuls of dirt and/or rock.

One of the most important instances is when a super strong character strikes another character. To a certain point, it is reasonable for things to break and the defender to be flung away by the force of the blow. But after passing a significant level of power and/or speed, the amount of force will be too much, the area of the fist or foot too small, and the recipient of the blow not durable enough, and the limb will be thrust through the body of the defender, leaving a (likely very messy) hole.

Finally, and this is a point that many people seem to miss, just because a character is capable of exerting enough force to lift something, does not mean their body can withstand the strain. Your character may be able to exert enough force to juggle trains or wads of neutronium, but after a certain point, the materials of which the body are made of are receiving more stress than they themself can handle, and bone will splinter, muscle will be crushed, joints will snap off or be impacted into solid masses, and your character has just killed him or her self.

While there is no exacting guideline as to how to measure these things, applying a modicum of reasonability and sense will make them much more believable. Most of the more ‘believable’ reasons for strength involve the use of ‘extra’ forces, such as chi, magic, or other supernatural or extraordinary materials/energies/powers to exert this force- for instance, Superboy’s ‘tactile telekinesis’. Though, this is a somewhat wobbly example- it allows him to ignore inertia, due to the nature of telekinesis (oops).

There are, however, at least a couple of other believable reasons. One that is used with some actual frequency is having the character be extraordinarily tough, usually from having lived in high gravity environments, or simply being naturally more physically durable. This usually intertwines with a higher physical density, lending the character a certain level of high durability. While this is okay for the lower levels of super-strength, at the higher levels it becomes much less believable, as there is a point after which the character will simply collapse into a black hole on account of their density. The other one of which I am aware is the use of extreme physical training, though, as noted, this is not something capable of accounting for super strength beyond level one.

Naturally, a character who is simply physically larger will have a higher level of strength, both super and non. It would be unreasonable to expect an elephant to be less physically strong than a normal human being in a comparable state of health- there’s simply so much more muscle mass there that it is a silly proposition. Of course, again, the mass and volume of the being in question alters the aspect of leverage, making it another hard thing to define.

Unfortunately, the greater number of super strong beings in fiction have their strength either totally unexplained, or given some sort of glib reason, such as ‘He’s an alien’, or ‘She’s been training a lot’, or even just ‘well... you know... he just... um.... is.’ It is better not to go this way, and to ‘save the suspension of disbelief in your character’ for other, more unique character traits and abilities.

Some reasonable things to consider when creating a super strong character:

Why is the character super strong? Does whatever state they derive this power from have other affects on their state, such as high durability or constant self-injury? How aware is the character of the fact that they are excessively strong? Does it still hurt for them to hit something particularly hard, even if they break it instead of their hand? Can exercise improve this strength? Why? How? If the character is super strong because of magic, or ki use, or something of the sort, how much do they have to focus to maintain that super strength? How costly is it to them, in terms of energy? Does the super strength come accompanied by super endurance, or do they get tired just as fast as they would without it? Does the super strength show in their build? Why? How? Are they proud of it? Afraid of it? Are they only capable of producing it in times of extreme stress? If no, are they capable of being even stronger in times of stress? How did it affect the character throughout the time they had this strength?

Super strength, like invulnerability, can be a very tasty-looking power- but it is very hard to apply it correctly, and when one does, it turns out to be considerably less attractive without investing in certain other powers to avoid having it go to waste. Any time you are tempted to add/build in super strength to a character, you should look very, VERY carefully at the character concept in your head, and try to figure out if it really belongs with the character, or if you’re just adding it because a) everyone else has it or b) it just seems so damn useful.

[ January 17, 2006, 02:24 AM: Message edited by: Reiko, Yume, Selene, et al ]

[Sarai and Samiel]

4a. Chi/Ki/Qi/Light/etc.

This particular subject, interestingly enough, is one that I performed a dissertation on at one point. I present here first my dissertation in complete form within a quote, so that you may select to read it or not. Afterwards, I will perform my actual 'Suspension of Disbelief' topic regarding these energies, so if you want that instead, this is the point to start hitting pgdwn at.

Originally Posted by Selene Starblade five years ago

Section One: What is this stuff, anyways?

Very often, in an anime or other martial-arts related fiction, one martial artist or another will perform an act that is quite simply outside of the realm of normal physical possibility. This ranges from jumping more than five feet off of the ground to throwing balls of raw energy to moving faster than sound unaided. These are all expressions of a personal power generated by each and every person, called ‘chi’ or ‘ki’.

It is generally accepted that one has to be very much attuned to oneself in the physical or psychic sense to express this ability in any noticeable fashion. Please note that by ‘psychic’, I mean to indicate related to the mind, not to psionic powers.

Anyways, only the most trained of martial artists, the most skilled and/or powerful, are able to perform superhuman feats using their chi or ki on a conscious basis. Anyone can use their chi or ki unconsciously, however, it will generally be unfocused and relatively ineffective. Furthermore, without training in chi or ki use, the body will not generate significant amounts of the energy on its own. There are, of course, exceptions. In the “Dragon Ball” universes, for instance, the race known as the Saiyajin have the innate ability to not only generate, but effectively use, large amounts of chi. They also turn into generally uncontrollable giant monkeys at the sight of the moon, though, so this is, perhaps, excusable.

Regardless, the best way to explain chi and ki is as the physical or semi-physical manifestation of a person’s willpower. The stronger the will of an individual, the more energy is generated. Furthermore, as demonstrated by the Mouko Takabisha and Shishi Houkoudan, chi can be affected to an incredible level by emotion. Rather like diluting wine with water, emotion can be expended along with the chi, allowing the chi user to effectively use more chi. However, like diluting wine with water, the energy becomes less rich, less stable, as it were, and its overall effectiveness is cut to a certain degree.

Thence comes the distinction between ki and chi. It is generally accepted that, while chi is always ‘flavored’ by emotion, ki is pure willpower, undiluted. Thus, a certain amount of ki is roughly ten times as effective in performing a given task as the same amount of chi. At first, this seems to make no sense, as chi’s dilution can vary, depending on how strongly the chi user is feeling the emotion. However, there is a certain ‘saturation limit’ beyond which the power of chi does not decrease with the continuing influx of emotion. Fortunately for chi users, this limit is practically the only power at which chi functions. Furthermore, while expending chi can be very tiring, expending one’s ki can be very dangerous.

When using ‘emotion-powered’ chi, once the user has spent the emotion, burned it all out, they cannot draw on more chi without switching which emotion they are focusing on. Thus, while someone using all of their chi becomes temporarily emotionless and unable to use chi-based effects, they are still alive, and are not the least bit physically tired from the chi itself. They will have lost much of their will to do things, but that is all.

Ki, on the other hand, is considerably more dangerous to use extensively. First off, as a purer form of energy, it is harder to control. As one handling nitroglycerin has to be more careful than one handling a bag of gunpowder, so is it with ki and chi. Second off, while chi can be absorbed, due to its emotional nature, ki is considerably more difficult to absorb. This means that, while someone on their guard can keep from being damaged by their own chi attacks, someone using ki needs to be very careful not to hurt themselves. Finally, ki, being the wielder’s actual willpower, is extremely mentally draining. If someone were to use up their entire store of ki, they would have no will to live, and their body would immediately cease functioning properly. This, most likely, would result in death.

[Sarai and Samiel]

Originally Posted by Selene Starblade five years ago

Section Two: On using chi.

Between chi and ki, chi is the more accessible of the two energies, as it can be called up by emotion, particularly focused emotion. On occasion, it can be expressed by those with absolutely no physical or mental training, if the emotion is strong enough. The most direct demonstration of this is the ability of those in particularly desperate straits to call upon superhuman reserves of strength or speed for longer than adrenaline has an effect on the body.

There are many uses for chi, as it is a highly flexible energy. In the end, of course, it is not quite proper to call it an energy, as it can be used as a semi-solid, but energy is the best and most comprehensible way to refer to it.

The most common expression of chi is involuntary. Whenever someone is focusing on generating chi, they will generally put out a battle aura, a faint glow or emanation around themselves, indicating that their body is generating more chi energy than is present in the resting state. Akane Tendou, for example, often generates a blue rage aura when irritated. Unfortunately, she seems to have no effective way to use this chi, resulting in its generally being wasted to further increase her battle aura.

While the chi in a battle aura is generally actually just floating around the system of its generator, chi can also be used for the express purpose of putting out a battle aura. This allows the user to do such things as make their aura visible intentionally, expand their battle aura beyond themselves, or achieve other similar effects. However, as a battle aura is largely an involuntary expression of chi, it takes a lot of chi do do anything in particular beyond making the aura larger or more intense.

Battle auras are very defining of their possessor. It can generally be assumed that the larger and more intense the battle aura, the more chi the creator has. Normally, battle auras are invisible to anyone not already experienced in using and sensing chi, but an especially intense battle aura, either due to raw power, or to energy being spent on making it detectable, can even be seen by everyday people. Also, the shape or form of a battle aura can be affected by the nature or emotions of the possessor. Someone with an especially strong self-identity may have a battle aura that vaguely resembles themselves, for instance. Usually, however, a battle aura takes the shape of flames rising off of the generator. This is largely due to the way the user thinks of their chi, however, and while flame-auras are most common, battle auras can easily be found in different forms, from swirling like water to simple spheres or geometric shapes. Also, if the battle aura’s possessor has a particular emotion on which they base their chi more often than any other, that emotion will start to have an effect on the aura as well.

With that in mind, this seems to be a good place to note the specific effects of emotion on chi. While chi is ultimately a shapable energy, subject more than anything else to the directions of its generator, the emotion used in creating the chi still has effects on the form of the chi. Each emotion lends to its chi a particular color, and emotions that can be considered a variation on another emotion usually have special shades of that color.

There are four other qualities that emotion alters in chi. First is temperature. When let be, each emotion’s chi has a natural temperature range that it takes on. This is the most difficult effect of emotion upon chi to alter, so most chi users generally leave it alone, preferring instead to use a different emotion of chi to attain particular temperatures. It is usually considered not worth the effort to alter the temperature of a particular emotion of chi. Regardless, chi is either cold, warm, or hot to the touch, though technically there is relatively little distinction between warm and hot chi. The primary differences are that hot chi is capable of igniting flammable materials, and hot chi tends to be uncomfortable for most beings to be in contact with (aside from its generator).

The second most difficult quality of chi to alter is its brightness. While most chi generates a certain degree of light when at an intensity to be visible, the majority of chi light is very bright, making it visible in broad daylight, and also useful for lighting dark rooms. A few emotions of chi are ‘dark’, not ever generating much light at all, and generally only visible with well-lit surroundings against which to contrast them. Used correctly, these emotions of chi can even reduce the lighting in an area.

The third emotion-based quality of chi is weight. This quality has less effect than the previous two, because if the person controlling the chi wants the chi to go up or down in particular, it will, regardless of its weight. However, many chi blasts or thrown-chi effects do not involve the chi’s generator beyond the projection of the chi, so the blasts will have a particular tendency based on their weight. Heavy emotions of chi are denser than gas, though somewhat less dense than water, and will thus have a tendency to fall like a thrown ball. Light emotions of chi will tend to float upwards in the air, and are very useful for lifting things underwater.

The fourth significant quality of chi is texture. Again, this is largely controllable by the chi’s generator, and chi is never sticky, rough, etcetera, without the generator’s enforcement. The only two textures caused by particular emotions of chi are ‘hard’ and ‘soft’. Chi that is ‘soft’ tends to flow like fluid around things, suffusing the environment. ‘Hard’ chi resists intrusion, often acting like a solid surface. Chi that is neutral in this respect acts more like a thick gel, solid to a point, but rather elastic.

Thus, we arrive at a sort of ‘chi table’. Each line has three entries- the emotion generating the chi, the qualities of that chi, and the color that the chi will take.

Anger / Hot, Hard, Bright / Red
Lust / Hot, Bright / Fuschia
Love / Warm, Soft, Heavy / Pink
Joy / Soft, Light, Bright / Yellow
Depression / Cold, Heavy, Dark / Puce (yellow-green)
Confidence / Light, Bright / Gold
Jealousy / Cold, Hard, Bright / Green
Hunger / Hard, Dark / Brown
Rage / Hard, Hot, Bright / Electric Blue
Sorrow / Cold, Soft / Blue-green
Contentment / Warm, Soft, Dark / Gray
Tranquility / Warm, Soft, Light / White
Outrage / Hot, Hard, Light / Orange
Dispassion / Cold, Hard, Heavy / Sky Blue
Determination/ Cold, Soft, Bright /Orange

Certain emotions of chi have particular emphasis on particular aspects- dispassion chi is particularly cold, rage chi is especially bright, and love chi is very soft.

Thus, we have the limits of chi, clearly defined. Just as important, if not moreso, however, are the potentialities of chi. Beyond the reflexive battle aura, there is a near infinite range of things that can be accomplished with chi, despite its limitations. The most simple and easy intentional use of chi is to enhance the body.

The most basic form of enhancement is, of course, to improve the body’s resistance to damage. This seems, at first, to be completely in error, as the basic use of chi allows a person to strike harder. This, however, involves a fallacy of perception. If anyone ever did strike with all the strength they could bring to bear, without chi enhancement, they would likely injure their own hand, foot, etcetera. The human body is capable of exerting more force over a short period of time than its own structure can withstand. Using chi to enhance the body’s resistance to damage, however, can push the limits of what the body can withstand up to meet what it can exert.

The next form of enhancement, of course, is to increase the amount of force exerted by the body upon its environment. This is achieved by increasing the speed at which muscles contract, thus increasing the speed of limb movement. This needs to be balanced with the first form, or the chi user risks injuring themselves much as explained in the previous paragraph. This allows the user to strike harder, inflicting more damage, but also permits higher and longer jumps, greater lifting power, and faster motions, up to the point where they match the speed at which the chi user can mentally process their environment.

Following naturally from the second form is the third- increasing the speed at which the mind functions. With an increased processing speed, the mind can control the body at higher speeds. This is considerably more difficult than the previous three forms of chi use, much as each is more than the previous ones. However, where the previous three- battle aura, damage resistance, and improved force- are each a step apart, this form of self-enhancement is several steps up, despite being an instinctive next step.

The final basic form of self-enhancement does not fit in the same ‘ladder’ as the others. This is enhancement of the senses. There are numerous ways to achieve such effects, some working only on certain senses, others working on all of the senses.

There are other methods for enhancing the body’s capabilities with chi, but these are more specific, and some are highly esoteric. The remainder of the uses of chi are outside of the body. These are where the emotional properties of chi take center stage, and are also the much more noticable methods.

Chi projection is only capable with large stores of chi, thus mandating that one be at least practiced in the use of chi in other manners, if not expert. This is why it is so rare for those not practiced in some sort of combat to be able to use chi: the most basic uses are generally only found in martial arts. Without considerable practice in the basic uses, not enough chi will be generated to function in any of the advanced uses.

Chi projection can take on many forms. The most basic form of this is the chi blast, of which there are two grades. The lower grade of chi blast requires less energy, but the higher grade is more effective and more flexible.

Lower-grade chi blasts use the chi to bind together a mass of air, which usually takes on a ball or slightly more aerodynamic shape, and throw it at the target. This is capable of bludgeoning the target, but does not work so well against fluids, or against anything significantly tougher than wood. There is also a minor explosive aspect to this form of chi attack, as the chi releases from the air on impact, blasting away from the impact point.

High-grade chi blasts take considerably more effort, largely for the simple reason that they consist of pure chi, rather than a mass of chi-bound air. These blasts usually take on spheroid shapes out of reflexive habit from those used to using lower-grade chi blasts, but can also be seen in any of a number of other shapes. The kind of damage inflicted varies likewise. Standard is bludgeoning and explosive, much as a low-grade chi blast, only on a larger scale. However, an especially focused chi blast can puncture or slice things, depending on its shape. An excellent example of a highly effective high-grade chi blast is the Kienzan, also known as the ‘Destructo Disk’, as used by Kuririn. Its flatness allows it to shear through nearly anything, as well as making it highly aerodynamic, thus requiring less energy to push it through the air. The spinning motion keeps the chi, so long as it is bound together, in a disc shape, and further aids the cutting effect.

Due to the ability of chi to act like energy, solid, or fluid depending on the will of its generator, there is a wide variety of attacks that can be performed with it. It is not, however, limited to offensive use. A solid plane or disc of chi can be used as a sort of shield, and it can be infused into a mass and used to levitate it. However, controlling chi once it is no longer attatched to one’s aura requires a considerable extra expenditure of the energy, and thus, many chi-users will settle for flinging multiple projectiles, rather than persisting with a single one until it hits.

One method around this problem is the semi-beam form taken on by the Kamehameha. By maintaining a constant wave of chi from the projectile to the controller, it takes considerably less chi to influence the motion of the projectile. On the other hand, this leaves the controller vulnerable, as they must remain in place, throwing forth more and more chi to power the beam as it becomes longer and longer. As yet, no complete solution exists to avoid the problem.

Regardless, the ability of chi to take on any shape desired by its controller permits an incredible degree of flexibility, although the controller will need to be at least a little bit imaginative to come up with a workable shape. For this reason, flexibility of mind is at least as important as practice using chi.

There is one major vulnerability that chi has that is not shared by any other form of ‘special energy’. The fact that chi is powered by emotion means that someone other than the generator who is attuned to that emotion, either by feeling it particularly strongly, or by focusing on it, can basically ignore any of the chi projected at them or, with sufficient practice, absorb it to increase their own stores of chi.

[Sarai and Samiel]

Originally Posted by Selene Starblade five years ago

Section Three: On using Ki

Aside from previously-discussed matters of effectiveness and danger in usage, there are actually relatively few differences between emotion-based chi and pure ki. The primary one, of course, is that ki, not being diluted by emotion, does not take on particular aspects. Rather, its natural state is fairly neutral, white, and flowing.

Being undiluted by emotion, of course, makes ki much more difficult to produce in significant quantities. By the time a chi-user can produce chi blasts for use as anything other than a desparation or final attack, they may be lucky enough to have almost enough ki to produce a very faint glow of battle aura not extending beyond their own body. On the other hand, similar to the difference between doing curls with a ten-pound weight and doing curls with a forty-pound weight, practicing with ki improves a user’s ability to produce both ki and chi considerably faster and with far higher upper limits.

Furthermore, while ki is more difficult and expensive to one’s willpower to generate, it is just as easy to keep a ‘control link’ open to it as it is to keep one to a mass of chi, and since a ki user has larger amounts of energy at their disposal, they effectively have an easier time maintaining control over it. That said, it is still more difficult to gain control over ki in the first place and to actually direct it, so it more or less balances out in the end.

Finally, ki, when left uncontrolled, seeks to disperse to the same level as chi. However, since there is more energy in it, the results are rather more violent and widespread than those achieved when chi goes uncontrolled.

In the end, ki and chi boil down to a physical or semiphysical manifestation of a person’s will for something to happen. Thus, the more powerful a person’s will, the more forceful their personality, the more ki or chi they will generate at the base of it. With training, of course, anyone generating chi can improve their ability to do so, and anyone is capable of storing chi and ki, as well. There are limits, of course, to how much chi or ki a body can withstand containing or producing. Too much, and a body will likely rip itself apart. This is why physical conditioning is as important to the use of ki and chi as emotional power and willpower.

Ki, which also serves as the basis for chi, is generated by everything that has a mind. Its degree is determined by willpower, which goes a long way towards explaining the lack of chi attacks in, for instance, platypi. (Or, is that ‘platypuses’? MS Word seems to think so.) However, there is more to it than that. Chi is constantly generated by all living things. Unfortunately, there are limits to how much chi a body can store. Thus, every animal is constantly ‘leaking’ both ki and chi. The amounts are miniscule, but they can certainly add up. Furthermore, even plants have a tiny quantity of ki, though their generation levels are so low as to be almost nonexistant. Regardless, this leaked ki suffuses into an environment slowly, but surely. Thus, a home, a tavern, even a whole city, can, over time, develop its own ki flow, thus lending it something of a personality. Furthermore, whole planets have ki flows, though they are slow and not especially intense. (It can be supposed that the ‘Lifestream’ extant in the Final Fantasy series of games is an expression of this ki flow, or perhaps it is simply a flow of lifeforce. It may even be both.)

Also, for this reason, if a ki sense is developed, a person or, indeed, any animal, can learn to detect the distinct ki and/or chi signatures of individuals at range, as well as the amount of chi being generated. There have even been machines capable of detecting this leaked chi. Humans are known to have a very rudimentary chi sense, often passed off as ‘the willies’ or ‘gut instinct’. There are likely other races with this sense built in, though many races completely lack this extra sense. With practice, this sense can be developed, or even brought out in those who do not naturally have it. If it is used long and regularly enough, this sense can become unbelievably accurate, permitting activity even in conditions where all other senses are useless (fighting wearing baggy corduroy in a deep limestone cave where a skunk recently died, during an earthquake with firecrackers going off while blindfolded and numb from cold).

One major reason that different individuals have distinct ki signatures is that ki is constantly flowing throughout the body, much like blood. While certain key points in the ki flow are always the same, at least relative to the remainder of the person’s body, the flows themselves are slightly different in every individual, much like a fingerprint. This constant flow of ki helps to keep the body functioning as well.

The other reason behind the distinction is the differences in peoples’ dispositions. People who regularly become angry will have that ‘flavoring’ their chi signature, and people who act dispassionately towards everything will have that altering their chi signature. This also affects locations, which is a part of why so many people feel ill at ease around places like mental wards- the sheer chaos of the chi residue left by the inpatients triggers the chi sense in a bad way.

Thus, while chi is in practically everything, its primary generators are animals- things with minds. Willpower and physical condition are both essential to the ability to use ki and chi regularly. Effectiveness is partially provided by these, but also by imagination, which grants inspiration to use ki and chi in new or different ways. So, despite the limitations, use of this energy remains as much, if not more, an art than a science.

Section Five: Exceptions

There are, of course, exceptions to every set of rules, and the rules on ki are no different. The known exception is to the limit of chi that a body can continuously produce or contain, which limit is different for every race, with slight individual variations. The exception occurs primarily in the universes where one Son Gokuu is present. This exception is the chi-transforming races.

Normally, when a body produces or tries to contain more ki or chi than it can safely do, the energy goes out of control, ripping the body apart and killing the erstwhile user. However, it is possible, through experience with ki control, to alter the ki flows of one’s body to accept more ki than is normally possible. It is also possible to alter the ki flows of one’s body to limit the production and storage of ki. Both of these result in… interesting things.

The first extension of ki control is notable in the Saiyan race. The Saiyajin are naturally higher producers of ki than average, and are also naturally attuned to their own ki flows, which permits them greater control of their own ki. When a Saiyajin advances to the point of generating more ki than their body can safely handle, which amount, by the way, is already ludicrously high, their ki flows will be instinctively altered by their subconscious. This alteration in the flows of ki causes the body to react by changing, so as to more properly fit the flow of ki. The upshot of this is the ability of Saiyans to transform up, into the state known as Super Saiyan. Further modification of chi flows allows the states of Super Saiyan two and three. In some realities, it has been pushed further, to include such levels as Super Saiyan four and five, Ultra Saiyan one through three, Holy Saiyan, and Hyper Saiyan- though these extra degrees tend to vary in nomenclature and nature from one reality to another.

The second extension of ki control is exhibited primarily in the Kuurajin, most noticably in use by the one known as Fureiza. Some races have upper limits of ki generation and storage so far in excess of even that of the Saiyajin that no limit is known. These races have their own ki-based problem, however- so long as their ki flows remain in the proper configuration, they have a lower limit of ki generation that is a set distance below their current maximum. Thus, members of the Kuurajin must constantly be concentrating on their chi to avoid accidentally damaging or outright obliterating their surroundings, which tends to be a very inconvenient thing. Nearly as inconvenient, however, is the inability to focus on anything but one’s own ki very well. So, Kuurajin of high power must alter their ki flows to reduce the amount of energy generated and stored. This, again, causes the body to alter itself to fit the flow of ki, resulting in a lower-power state. Once this lower-power state reaches that problem point, however, another alteration in ki flows becomes necessary. And so it continues, resulting in things such as Fureiza’s four different forms. This has an important advantage not inherant to the other type of transformation, in that training affects both power levels the same, and since it is easier to challenge one’s body and chi when one has less of them, training in this lower-powered state is actually easier, and repeated iterations can result in an incredible improvement of the original form. It is, indeed, fortunate that the Kuurajin are not very inventive, or they would have noticed this and taken advantage of it to out-power anything even conceived of so far.

Thus, the first method results in a person ‘transforming up’ as they reach for greater heights of power, and the other method actually involves ‘de-transforming’ as the person pulls themselves up from the depths. While only a few races have actually transformed, it is not actually impossible that any race is capable of a transformation of one kind or the other. Too few races have plumbed the depths of physical and ki power that fully to say for sure whether the ability to transform is indeed racial or not. If it is not, then it is fully certain that the pre-existing ability of Saiyajin to transform into giant apes certainly makes it easier on their bodies to develop transformative ability than it would be for a race that, at base, has only a single physical form.


All of this said, there is still an incredible range of possibilities for anyone with the ability to manipulate chi and/or ki, leaving it still as much an art form as a science, and thus, very much similar to martial arts- potentially infinite in variety, despite the presence of practical limits.

This gives a more or less full summation of the way that I personally handled chi with my characters in any of my writing- and ki too. There have been some changes with time, as I've learned various and sundry things, and worked and reworked some ideas, but the general information remains mostly relevant.

Long enough for you?

Yeah, I thought so.

So, now I move on to the real meat. That's right, we're getting back to the purpose. Forgot it yet? It's suspension of disbelief.

[Sarai and Samiel]

That's right, this was supposed to be about making these energies and the use of them believable. So, let's start.

What the hell is this stuff?

My, I hardly know where to start. There are so many different forms of inherent personal energy displayed in various fiction media....

Chi/Ki/Qi is, of course, the most common. Renowned in martial arts manga and anime, appearing in various roleplaying games (sometimes predating translation of anime and manga to western culture’s comprehension), and used widely as a reference in real-world martial arts.

More recently, the manga/anime Naruto has displayed something similar but different- which they call chakra. Given that chakra are originally referred to in reference to lifeforce or qi, clearly there’s relation there.

Then there’s the other things- one of the most notable being Wyborn’s ‘Light’.

Despite a number of fundamental differences in origin and manner of manipulation/function of these different (or not so different) energies, there are a number of things consistent across all of them. For one, these energies are all around. Qi and Chakra are present literally everywhere, it is just a matter of developing them to the point of ‘expression’- being able to display and/or use them to achieve effects. Light, from what I understand of what Wyborn has communicated to me, is limited to living things (I may be wrong on this)- which still leaves it spread over most of everywhere.

Regardless, these energies are energies inherent to a character, that are expressed directly- that is to say, a character using one of these energies to accomplish something is literally doing just that (or at least, is most of the time). This is an important distinction between these energies and those such as magic- where magical energy is used to cause, say, a bolt of lightning or a ball of flame to strike a target, the energies I am discussing here will be striking the target directly.

Though, of course, the term ‘energy’ is being used very loosely here. After all, you can’t have a ball of energy. It’s simply not physically possible. It might be more appropriate to call these things semi-energies, in that they can and frequently do have physical form, even if that form is usually highly malleable and capable of occupying the same space as matter.

Additionally, a character using these energies, if they drain themselves completely of them, is typically left dying or dead (assuming they were truly alive in the first place). In each case, these energies are composed of something vital to life, be it spiritually or psychologically (ref: dissertation above).

So, given all of that, I’m done, right?

Not hardly, unfortunately.

There are a number of problems with the uses of these energies that I have seen, both here and in various writings- usually fanfictions. Not too surprisingly, professional and semi-professional writers tend not to overdo things with these ‘powers’, and manage to keep things within the suspension of disbelief. Tend. Not always true.

First off, there is the problem of amounts. Since these energies are, for the most part, continually replenishing, not only in characters who wield them but in those who do not, they are theoretically infinite power sources- over time.

Theoretically infinite over time. YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO REST AT SOME POINT. All too often, a character with the ability to use these powers will simply keep using them, and using them, and using them, with absolutely no downtime no matter how much and how often they expend the resource.

This is, quite simply, stupid. Especially as sometimes these characters, in an attempt to make them more believable, will suddenly run out of ‘juice’ in the middle of some extremely heavy-duty use, and then be ‘dry’ of the power for a significant time. This s *not* how these abilities were originally defined as working, which is a major hit to suspension of disbelief right there. It is also *not* consistent, which is the ‘two’ of a very killer ‘one-two’ punch that will quite happily let you use it to destroy the believability of your writing.

If a character is constantly generating a power by nature, they are constantly generating it, no matter how many times they ‘run dry’. On the other hand, you will pretty much never see a character able to use such a power only as quickly as they produce it, which only makes sense- all of these powers are capable of being stored by a being proficient in their use, and why bother doing that if you can’t use the buildup for something?

An excellent analogue to this is found in most real-time strategy games. There are resources you gather, to construct your base and your units. As time passes and your gathering increases, you will become able to spend larger and larger amounts of the resources to increase the effectiveness of your units, or to create units that are basically stronger or more capable or more interesting. But if the resources are limited, you have to stockpile- to save up- for later purchases of expensive things. A player who cannot spend more than they gather has no reason to stockpile.

A character who cannot use more of these powers than they generate has no reason to have any ‘reserves’.

A player who gathers so much that it is impossible to outpace the gathering with their production is either playing an imbalanced game with no real thinking involved, or cheating.

A character who generates so much that they couldn’t possibly need to have ‘reserves’ is either fundamentally ‘broken’, or ‘godmoding’.

It’s a hard thing to cope with. What game-player doesn’t want to be generating SP/MP/Gold/whatever faster than they could possibly spend it? But if that happens, it destroys game balance. This is a fundamental difference between designing a game, and playing it. In writing a freeform RP like is done here, or a novel or story as is done in other areas, you have to maintain balance to maintain both believability, and a sense of challenge for the character.

So, there is the biggest thing to do to make these powers believable. Give your character a limit to the maximum they can ‘stockpile’ and a limit to how much they can ‘generate’, and *maintain that*. Inconsistency is a very big enemy of suspension of disbelief- and an enemy of fun in most games, as well. A game where rules are constantly changing only truly works if all or most of the rules are constantly changing (Calvinball, anyone?).

There is one other major thing.....

An exploding mass of chi will not generate smoke. This is a chronic problem to be found with people who are used to the Dragonball series by Akira Toriyama. Chi does not catch fire. It explodes, it bursts away from the centerpoint- I guess what is needed here is a bit of defining.

When something explodes, what you have is a certain volume of material (say, that of a marshmallow) expanding to a much greater volume (say, that of a medium-sized television) so quickly that it forces everything around it away very intensely- likely sending some of it flying.

A balloon popping is a form of an explosion. The container (the balloon) resists the expansion of its contents until that outward force exceeds its capacity. Then the container bursts, and the contents expand in all directions until they reach a neutral state.

Smoke has nothing to do with this.

The reason smoke appears with a lot of explosions is that a lot of explosions involve burning things- and burning things converts them from a solid (which is a lot of matter packed together) to a gas (which is a lot of matter spread way way far out)- expanding them. Gunpowder, T.N.T, phosphorous- these things are all frequently made to burn quickly enough that it causes an explosion.

Burning can cause explosions. Explosions rarely (but sometimes) cause burning.

Chi semi-energy explodes not because it is burning, but because it has been released from being very heavily compacted. The explosion may kick up dust if there is a lot of dust, or turn something solid into dust and kick that dust up into the air, but it will *not* create smoke when it happens midair with nothing around to be turned into a dust cloud.

There are a few other things, but they are largely particular to one or another form of energy.

In the end, semi-energies such as chi, chakra, and Light are all very much more flexible in terms of how you use them without breaking suspension of disbelief. However, you have to always keep in mind the rules you or whoever else has already laid out for them, and you have to maintain consistency above all.