And another thing!

[trinityvixen]

You know what? The more I think about it, the more I've come to realise:

I don't like Peter Petrelli. I mean, almost at all.

Really, I don't like Peter. I don't like that everyone loves Peter. I don't like Peter's powers. I don't like the actor especially.

Situationally, Peter's in an interesting place. I'm sympathetic to his desire to be special, but the bitch is crazy to throw himself off a roof to make the point. The whole macho-posturing bullshit between him and Nathan over who is loved more in the family? Balls to that. I get enough of that from the half-dozen episodes of Supernatural I have watched, thanks. And that might be less emo than the Petrelli stuff. Nathan is far more interesting, personally, emotionally, politically; so for that reason, Peter gets to be the Mary Sue so that he has to be loved, too.

Make no mistake: Peter Petrelli is a Mary Sue. He gets the girl despite being slightly creepy and asking her out over the body of her dying father (when she's got a boyfriend!). And of course she WUVS HIM when he wants/needs her to despite his doing nothing to merit it overmuch. He's useless, whiny, and completely self-righteous. Bor-ing.

Then there's the power thing. Peter's powers are a problem. It's like having the Phoenix on the show. What the hell do you do against the motherfucking Phoenix, yo? That crazy-ass bitch shows up, uses the entire powers of creation and destruction against you, and down you go. That's why X-Men: the Last Stand faltered so badly (among other reasons): they had no idea what to do with an all-powerful destructive force without the constraints on her power as were set down in the comics. Likewise, what constraints does Peter have on his powers? Sure, he got a little ill after absorbing a few too many, but he went on in the latter half of the season to absorb at least three more and only the one gave him any trouble. And the illness mid-season could just as easily have been explained by his body not being used to being a) dead and b) not dead but borrowing the ability to do so without any regularity.

If Peter has no limitations, there's just nothing you can do to him. This is a problem, narratively. Even when you have a similarly limitless talent like Sylar aligned against Peter, Peter's powers trump. Paper covers rock, neiner neiner neiner. Also, Heroes at least went to the effort of showing that Sylar is FUCKING NUTS because of all the power absorption. Sylar is a crazy man for having too many powers, and there's a real sense that not only is he unstable mentally, there's a chance he'll kill himself trying to take on all these abilities by messing with brains and the like. Peter? Has a little episode of exploding just the once and now is fine. "Crippling" him with memory loss is only a temporary solution. The Phoenix got her memory back, and there was trouble (in most continuities).

Heard an interesting theory that makes Peter a little more tolerable, though. Supposing that the concentration on regeneration of limbs has a purpose beyond Claire exploring her body et al.? Suppose the demonstration of her ability is meant to show what Peter post-explosion might have done. Perhaps he split into two as a result of the explosion. It would explain why Nathan, the only one nearby to Peter when he burned up, thinks he's dead. He might have seen Peter split down the middle and assumed the worst (or been unable to get close enough to check for certain). Then both halves regenerate their missing pieces. One is in a box that got opened in Ireland, and the other is a killer with a hoodie who can move unseen, possibly fly, and evade psychic detection. And who has a pretty damned good reason for not liking the fact that the older generation wanted him to blow up. That might actually make me like Peter. But only Evil!Peter. Amnesia!Peter still does not interest me.

Comments

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

"Crippling" him with memory loss is only a temporary solution.

Crippling him? That's not crippling, that's helping him. Peter's main limitation is that he's too caught up in his own shit. Without those memories his powers are a lot easier to use. Whoever mind wiped Peter did it to train him in how to use his powers more effectively. "There is no try, only do"

As for the all powerful bit, really that doesn't apply to Peter. All someone needs to do to take out Peter is to get some rifle training and get a custom made rifle and ammo made for the job. Make sure you catch hom off guard and that the bullet stays in his head and then all you would need to do then is bury the body somewhere no one would find it. Power scale wise Sylar is far more unbalanced then Peter since his brain isn't limited like Peter's. Craziness is relative, and really Sylar isn't all that crazy so much has driven.

I too agree that Mr. Hoodie smells of Peter (whether it be clone or something else). At the very least Hoodie is another poly.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Crippling him? That's not crippling, that's helping him.

It seems to be. But, technically, without knowing what abilities he's absorbed, he can't access all of them. Luckily, Claire's seems to be innate, and he's learned that when he's pissed off he's pretty strong and when he's scared he can jolt people with electricity (stolen from Ted, I assume). He's still missing Sylar's TK, Nathan's flight (so far, okay, I admit that), and he doesn't know that he's still got human bomb potential. These are all dangerous things to have and not know about. Plus, while he knows how to use the abilities, not being connected to who he was? BAD THING. Dude, two words: Dark Phoenix.

Of course, if the hoodie guy is Peter's split-off self, and let's say he got all the abilities Peter doesn't have, there's a chance that that is Dark Peter. Who still is not in touch with who he used to be (and who only seems to know he hates certain people and wants them dead). Which is even more dangerous.

And I don't see any proof that Peter was trained. If, as Claude said, it's entirely tied into Peter's emotions and he currently has none regarding the specific original owners of his abilities, they're running on neutral to appearing-as-necessary. That doesn't mean he was trained. Just that whatever happened to him post-explosion ripped away the emotional constraint on his powers.

WHICH MAKES HIM EVEN MORE ALL-POWERFUL. I'm gonna fucking hurl. As for your gunning-him-down suggestion? Still pretty hard given that he's got Matt's telepathy, too. Basically, bullets as "the great equalizer" do not change the fact that Peter is way unbalanced in the power department and completely towers over any of the other supers. It's only his--hurrah!--heroic goodness that means the day will be saved. He's a fucking Mary Sue.

As regards Sylar, there are significant limitations on him that Peter does not have. There's the whole has-to-murder-to-get-anywhere limitation. Which means anyone he can't get the drop on is pretty much safe (Matt would be, provided he could get away before Sylar got too close). It also means that if he's interrupted in the process (whatever process it is) of cloning the ability into himself, he could a) just lose that ability forever; b) mess something up in his own brain that leaves him with a significant handicap (that's what I meant about how dangerous it is that he messes with his own head); or c) dead because of said mess up.

As for Sylar's driven-ness meaning he's not crazy, maybe, but that's not proof. I'd say Sylar isn't necessarily psychotic. He's shown sociopathic tendencies (his jealousy of the powered folks after meeting Sures and his possessive tendencies in acquiring new abilities) that pretty much cover his behavior. OCD and anti-social personality disorder cover a lot of Sylar's behaviors, even the murders. However, there's also the severe, almost schizoid behavior he exhibits when he is pulled back down into being Gabriel Gray. I don't think that's a sociopath putting on an act. That's literally Sylar setting aside his entire personality to wear the cloak of meekness his mother was used to. When he makes that giant snowglobe for her? There's another schizoid break and you can see Sylar peeking through.

And don't forget his Zane Taylor impersonation. There's another personality he managed to wear and hold in place believably until Sylar poked through again. So, yeah, there are DEFINITE signs of fractured personality as a result of his power-collecting that make for the argument that he is in fact nuts on top of being a cold, logical, murdering bastard. The fact that Sylar could be reasoned with in the right personality--he called Mohinder in his Zane-ish snap after painting with Isaac's talent--means that he has a weakness.

I might also add that villainy, vanity, jealousy, and possessiveness are ALL negative virtues. Though they might not slow down his abilities, they can be used against him to stop him. Saint Peter, on the other hand, is everything good, and nice, and lovable, and gosh-darn-it-we-like-him. VOMIT. There's no reason to hurt Peter and feel that that is emotionally okay. So, bollocks to Peter, I say.

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

Actually you might want to rewatch the bar scene again. Peter didn't use super strength (unless it was bad filming of the scene) so much as TKed the guy into the next wall (the guy started moving backwards before peter's hand got even close). As for the electrical ability, it's not Ted's. I'm going off the assumption that it was from one of the guys who put Peter in the shipping container. He did use DL's phasing power so that was interesting. I still want to see Peter use "technopathy" since he did meet our favorite young character. For that matter he's also met Molly so he could have the ability to find things now too.

As for Sylar's "limitations", really that's one brain away from being removed. Once Sylar meets a sonar/ultrasound type or some type of "bio-attuned" mutant so that he can look inside you without cutting you, he will be in overdrive. Sylar also has the talent of using abilities at their fullest (something Peter is a long way off from doing).

Really the bullet thing isn't so much a great equalizer as much as an available tool. High powered rifles as good from as much as a mile away (well outside of Matt range). Lodging some physical material into peter's head seems the fastest way of deactivating him. In theory one could just vaporize his body such that there is nothing to grow back, but that's harder to pull off.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Once Sylar meets a sonar/ultrasound type or some type of "bio-attuned" mutant so that he can look inside you without cutting you, he will be in overdrive

Note: that power has, sort of, been shown. Something similar to it must have been possessed by Linderman for him to be able to heal people, and ditto the healer in Guatemala who looked at Maya. But the chances of him running into either? Not so good. One is dead and one is so freaked she's staying in Guatemala. Very unlikely ever to happen and I sincerely doubt that the creators thought of the fact that those two's powers could be used by Sylar in the manner you suggest. I just don't give them the credit for thinking of such a thing, a, and b, it would take away a lot of the horror of Sylar as a boogeyman, and then what would you do? Plus, there's no guarantee that Sylar would give up on the brain-taking, as it might still be the preferable way to be sure he acquired the powers he wanted.

Sylar also has the talent of using abilities at their fullest (something Peter is a long way off from doing).

Dude, you were JUST arguing that Peter'd been trained to use his powers since last we saw him. And, if as I suspect he's been using the electricity you can generate alongside nuclear reactions (i.e. Ted's powers) without blowing shit up, then he's gotten even better than Ted (Ted managed to use an EMP but not to use electricity as a weapon otherwise).

Really the bullet thing isn't so much a great equalizer as much as an available tool.

No one wants to see that. Bullets are stupid in a show about superpowers. They just are. Guns are a reference used to gauge the abilities of the supers, if anything. They're there to show Claire can recover from being shot and that Sylar can stop bullets. The power of guns is to show the power of the people they're used against.

Besides which: a rifle like you're talking about would take down Jesus in the second coming. It doesn't help us figure out practical limits (in the middle of a fight not everyone can get a mile away with a high-powered and probably very illegal rifle). Congrats, Peter might not survive a bullet from said rifle, but you need to give an example of a practical defense against him that people who aren't in touch with Columbian gun runners might have access to.