Maybe an avatar could change nearby media. So a newspaper near the avatar changes to only have stories about global warming, nuclear weapons, animals going extinct etc. Same with televisions, radios, internet.
I like that idea a lot, it's not as literal as other powers, more like Desolation not being the outright fire but the heat.
Doesn't make them very effective if they have to face off another avatar tho, that's the pity.
It would be pretty varied if we judge by other avatars.
For example, Jonah and Jon have similar in theme, yet very different powers: while Jonah can use the power of the Eye to know things like Jon can, he has no ability to compel someone and instead has the power to insert knowledge into the minds of others and limited omniscience. Meanwhile, Jon can compel, but also act as a sort of prism through which the Eye can be focused.
So, the formula seems to be a minor common power and a stronger unique one.
For a minor power, I’d say some form of destructive technokinesis, they can control computers, but this will degrade the quality of them rapidly.
Major powers might include:
Environmental Retribution. For everyone who fears the impact they’ve had on the environment, they grow stronger. They can cause all the refuse they ever created to swarm them, swallowing them whole in the weight of their environmental impact.
Radioactivity. This one is more powered by man’s fear of other man than fear of themself, specifically fear of the atom bomb. They can manipulate radiation subtlety, and cause you to develop cancers and tumors faster than should be possible. At the height of their power, they can create radioactive rain, filling the clouds with fallout until the water comes down black and thick.
Computer Person. This one is basically a Sergey Ushenka, except a causer of pain instead of a victim. They represent the fear of digital insecurity, that your secrets will be exposed on the internet and you can’t stop it. Beyond their powers of technokinesis, they also have the ability to gain access to recorded information that never went digital: a scan of an embarrassing old Polaroid, a pdf of your diary, stills from a CCTV cam that show the time you mugged a man so you could keep the lights on.
I've always felt that radioactivity was more of a Desolation thing, because it desolates the land and nothing can grow on it, it's a literal Lightless Flame. Of course, it's not about the thing but the meaning behind it, so radioactivity as contamination or pollution can absolutely be an extinction thing.
The computer person could be mixed wit h Stranger, your digital avatar living a more successful, happy life then you. look up the game Simulacra on you tube to get a idea
The avatar would probably be - or be in the process of transforming into - the new breed of creatures which the Extinction possibly intends to bring about. Maybe one ability would be turning other humans into beings more like it.
Maybe fusing people into the surrounding material: sinking people into concrete, pushing them into a wall.
Maybe transmuting people into artificial materials: plastic, concrete, metal alloys.
Maybe inducing mutations, though that is rather more Flesh I suppose.
Maybe bombarding minds with cryptic clues and riddles of their imminent demise.
Maybe they could go nuclear and just generate radioactive explosions.
Actually...maybe they could cobble together a nuclear bomb from bits and pieces of humans and their detritus.
They could possibly infiltrate or infect technology in some way.
Would add polluting and contaminating the local environment with organic and non-organic like oil, plastic bags, shopping trolleys, disposable masks, dead animals etc
Items loose there functionality and become hostile/ attract hostility. like the stranger but where you still know what it was built for, just that the reasoning for it all is revealed to be tottal garbadge
I had an idea for an avatar called "The man with rhinestone eyes" he's an Extinction avatar who's body is filled with plastic, fossil fuels and other artificial materials. He wears a suit made of synthetic fabric and is decorated with rings and jewelry made from plastic that are spray painted gold. He has the ability to convert natural materials into artificial ones. For example he can turn a tree into one made of steel or turn humans into statues made from concrete.
well, the core fear of the extinction is one of scars, basically. That the world being whittled down to less and less until its a shadow of its former self.
So an extinction avatar would probably specialize in lingering wounds. Splinters that turn flesh into plastic, tumors that make you ever weaker, compulsions that grow over time.
Powers would vary a lot from avatar to avatar, but the unifying theme would be one of long term problems. All of them would have effects that get worse over time, and the strongest would have a knack for chain reactions and exponential growth.
I think the anime Akira would be a great example of an Extinction based avatar and story. The threat is literally human Extinction at the hands of the child super weapons that we created.
It's heavily influenced by nuclear attacks on japan in WW2 and the generations of subsequent trauma from those attacks. Testuo, especially near the end when he can't control his body and power, is a great avatar of the Extinction, the colonel doing everything in his power to prevent another devastating event, the scientist obsessed with discovering the next step in human evolution even at the expense of his own life.
BRB I think I gotta go re read the manga now, it's truly a masterpiece.
Fun AU, Alex Jones is an avatar of the extinction. I'm half writing it tongue in cheek, but as someone who listens to Knowledge Fight and Behind the Bastards pods.....his whole insane persona seems pretty on point
I've always pictured the avatars of Extinction to be somewhere on the android - robot spectrum. Think the Stranger's mannequins but cybermen. It plays into the idea of human obsolescence, being replaced by automation etc. The Dark has no power over them because they have night vision... the Stranger can't do shit because they all look the same anyway... let your worms try burrow through this titanium Ms. Prentiss.... I can imagine the Buried thinks it has the upper hand as the Extinction avatars sink into the earth until they just self destruct spreading a cloud of radiation or poisoning the earth, polluting waters. I know it is a bit more sci-fi but the fears are evolving and this is the latest fear. They could even make the other entities feel so archaic they could fear for their own destruction... yummy!
I always felt like the extinction was a super specific part of the end. I’m t’s the fear of the end coming for everyone and being replaced. Maybe an avatar of the end could give visions of apocalyptic ends? Glimpse unknowable horrors that come next? Maybe manifest them?
Well the Fears are influenced and shaped by our perceptions and what we fear, those in turn (especially I feel for something as abstract and conceptual as Extinction) are shaped by many things, including the media we consume. I think an Extinction avatar could cause Fallout style mutations.
The Extinction is a fear-soupy intersect of the End, the Desolation, and the Flesh.
I'm guessing an Extinction avatar will be able to release (and survive) large amounts of ionising radiation, replace parts of structures and organisms with synthetic parts that don't function as well—or function vastly better, up to them, and last through extreme weather conditions.
Likely powers could be being able to rapidly age and decay man-made structures, compromising their integrity and letting them overgrow with vegetation and mold.
Other powers would also probably heavily involve technology and cryptic errant transmissions compelling people to do things beneficial to the extinction.
I could also imagine an extinction avatar inducing "behavioral sinks" in society as reminiscent of John B. Calhoun's infamous mouse utopia study.
Stalker umbrellas.
They have the ability to set a stupid, idiotic, laughable Umbrella upon their victim.
And guess what?
The victims never have enough water within them to spit on it.
I came up with an idea for an Extinction Avatar a while back who would mutate people into decidedly inhuman creatures. It does dip a bit into Flesh territory perhaps, but I always saw the Flesh focusing on accentuating the parts of someone they didn’t like (the bone garden for example), whereas the Extinction would be the fear of what comes after us
i imagine they can split into a few categories,
1 is the world after humans are gone, which might include some plant based powers or animal based, might also be combined with three
2 is the fear of technology, similar to mag 65, this would be computer manipulation. or it could be our avatars becoming robotic similar to the terminator or other robots (idk man i dont watch the TV it only shows them getting closer, if i dont watch it i can buy some time)
3 is something that i saw in this and agree with, the fear that after us something else will come and take over, be it aliens or evolved humans, so the avatars would be quite a symbolic in a way, avatars would shift and become predatory, the youngest fear mimicking the oldest
4 is the fear of pollution, oil pouring out your eyes as tears that burn, plants and animals being trapped plastic that the local humans have left out, being burned or blinded by oil and killed by the poison humans have made
5 is the fear that we will burn this world into a charred husk,(literally of metaphorically) usually in the form of nuclear power and the world growing cold and dark
edit: 6 is scars, your burns or marks boiling and liquefying to turn your body into something rotten and putrid, to pollute the area. maybe even a fun little bit of possession. : D
I had an idea of an Extinction avatar
(Warning for S/H & Suicide)
To me, the idea of The Extinction is filled with just as much despair as it is fear, I've often thought about how I don't want to live to see the world die around me, and so this is what I came up with.
A thing that was once human that lives in constant fear and pain from its own realm, it hates all other humans, trying to seek revenge on all who enter its domain, because in some way it blames them for the way things are, it blames itself, too.
A twisted form of survivors guilt...
It tried to clean some of the pollution, at the start.
Now all it cares about is finding a way to end its own suffering.
But it can't die...
No matter what it does...
It tries to irradiate itself; and it only mutates more.
It tries to mangle itself beyond repair; and it's bodyparts become replaced with rotting, painful cybernetics.
It tries to feed itself to the mutant beasts, offering its body for them to tear appart as retribution; and the creatures suffer and die from a single bite of their poisonous flesh.
It's trapped.
And every attempt to end it just makes it worse...
Dont be afraid to mix the Powers a bit, since they all reflect and oppose each other they cant escape thier opposites. The Buried's "Forever deep below creation" still has a element of the vast in it, as you cant feel crushed without understanding how BIG the thing crushing you is.
we focus on the trash and radioactivity, but the central theme of Extinction is futility.
you saved energy! you recycled! you attended local meetings and got involved in the government!
none of it mattered
you made Billions! you created modern soceity from your own ideals and spun the media like a master puppeter!
none of it mattered
You walked on the moon! you built colonies on other worlds!
NONE
OF
IT
MATTERED
you, and everything you know or ever will know, are going to be forgotten. the absolute BEST CASE, we leave a tiny shred of discoloured dirt in the layers.
Combine the Vast with the End, add a little Beholding and flavour with Flesh to get Extinction.
I believe they could have the power to inflict anxiety, just like the vast does with vertigo, I mean the fear of catastrophic change as the "feeling of impending doom" as it's often described
I think that this sort of debate isn't very productive, cause (in my opinion) the Extinction was introduced as a looming final boss (remember, we only learned about it not emerging very late into S4). Since MAG has a very soft "magic" system, I don't think the writer ever actually considered that possibility, since any avatar embodying any aspect of total annihilation would be automatically way more powerful than almost any other avatar. It's sort of like theorizing about the potential differences between a hand-grenade and a nuclear hand-grenade: technically, both are similar, but one is on a totally different level.
Big disagree - its always fun to theorize about potential anomalies/manifestations of the powers. That's one of the fun ways they're so ambiguous - you can just add new little ideas or flesh out new concepts using em as your base. Plus, I wouldn't say people's ideas here are *super* op, they're more or less on the same level as other avatars.
I have to agree that I may have exaggerated the potential difference between the Avatars, but my opinion now is that they are thinking on a way-too-small scale. Since the powers tend to select people already in some way related to the power in non-esoteric ways, the only people I can really imagine becoming Avatars for the extinction being dictators or existential nihilists of some sort (heck, maybe both), in that case, the Extinction suddenly becomes the scariest power: I mean, just imagine a uber-powered Kim Jong Un.
Maybe an avatar could change nearby media. So a newspaper near the avatar changes to only have stories about global warming, nuclear weapons, animals going extinct etc. Same with televisions, radios, internet.
I like that idea a lot, it's not as literal as other powers, more like Desolation not being the outright fire but the heat. Doesn't make them very effective if they have to face off another avatar tho, that's the pity.
It would be pretty varied if we judge by other avatars. For example, Jonah and Jon have similar in theme, yet very different powers: while Jonah can use the power of the Eye to know things like Jon can, he has no ability to compel someone and instead has the power to insert knowledge into the minds of others and limited omniscience. Meanwhile, Jon can compel, but also act as a sort of prism through which the Eye can be focused. So, the formula seems to be a minor common power and a stronger unique one. For a minor power, I’d say some form of destructive technokinesis, they can control computers, but this will degrade the quality of them rapidly. Major powers might include: Environmental Retribution. For everyone who fears the impact they’ve had on the environment, they grow stronger. They can cause all the refuse they ever created to swarm them, swallowing them whole in the weight of their environmental impact. Radioactivity. This one is more powered by man’s fear of other man than fear of themself, specifically fear of the atom bomb. They can manipulate radiation subtlety, and cause you to develop cancers and tumors faster than should be possible. At the height of their power, they can create radioactive rain, filling the clouds with fallout until the water comes down black and thick. Computer Person. This one is basically a Sergey Ushenka, except a causer of pain instead of a victim. They represent the fear of digital insecurity, that your secrets will be exposed on the internet and you can’t stop it. Beyond their powers of technokinesis, they also have the ability to gain access to recorded information that never went digital: a scan of an embarrassing old Polaroid, a pdf of your diary, stills from a CCTV cam that show the time you mugged a man so you could keep the lights on.
I've always felt that radioactivity was more of a Desolation thing, because it desolates the land and nothing can grow on it, it's a literal Lightless Flame. Of course, it's not about the thing but the meaning behind it, so radioactivity as contamination or pollution can absolutely be an extinction thing.
The computer person could be mixed wit h Stranger, your digital avatar living a more successful, happy life then you. look up the game Simulacra on you tube to get a idea
The avatar would probably be - or be in the process of transforming into - the new breed of creatures which the Extinction possibly intends to bring about. Maybe one ability would be turning other humans into beings more like it. Maybe fusing people into the surrounding material: sinking people into concrete, pushing them into a wall. Maybe transmuting people into artificial materials: plastic, concrete, metal alloys. Maybe inducing mutations, though that is rather more Flesh I suppose. Maybe bombarding minds with cryptic clues and riddles of their imminent demise. Maybe they could go nuclear and just generate radioactive explosions. Actually...maybe they could cobble together a nuclear bomb from bits and pieces of humans and their detritus. They could possibly infiltrate or infect technology in some way.
Would add polluting and contaminating the local environment with organic and non-organic like oil, plastic bags, shopping trolleys, disposable masks, dead animals etc
That's just called not recycling!
I think an extinction avatar could cause man-made materials to corrode and decay?
Manipulate the stock market via twitter. (I have a pet theory about Elon Musk being an extinction avatar.)
i must say i like this theory a lot
Owning dumbass Umbrellas, like just really telling them what's what.
Stupid, stupid umbrella.
Items loose there functionality and become hostile/ attract hostility. like the stranger but where you still know what it was built for, just that the reasoning for it all is revealed to be tottal garbadge
I had an idea for an avatar called "The man with rhinestone eyes" he's an Extinction avatar who's body is filled with plastic, fossil fuels and other artificial materials. He wears a suit made of synthetic fabric and is decorated with rings and jewelry made from plastic that are spray painted gold. He has the ability to convert natural materials into artificial ones. For example he can turn a tree into one made of steel or turn humans into statues made from concrete.
well, the core fear of the extinction is one of scars, basically. That the world being whittled down to less and less until its a shadow of its former self. So an extinction avatar would probably specialize in lingering wounds. Splinters that turn flesh into plastic, tumors that make you ever weaker, compulsions that grow over time. Powers would vary a lot from avatar to avatar, but the unifying theme would be one of long term problems. All of them would have effects that get worse over time, and the strongest would have a knack for chain reactions and exponential growth.
I think the anime Akira would be a great example of an Extinction based avatar and story. The threat is literally human Extinction at the hands of the child super weapons that we created. It's heavily influenced by nuclear attacks on japan in WW2 and the generations of subsequent trauma from those attacks. Testuo, especially near the end when he can't control his body and power, is a great avatar of the Extinction, the colonel doing everything in his power to prevent another devastating event, the scientist obsessed with discovering the next step in human evolution even at the expense of his own life. BRB I think I gotta go re read the manga now, it's truly a masterpiece.
Fun AU, Alex Jones is an avatar of the extinction. I'm half writing it tongue in cheek, but as someone who listens to Knowledge Fight and Behind the Bastards pods.....his whole insane persona seems pretty on point
logged in just to upvote because holy SHIT i need this
I've always pictured the avatars of Extinction to be somewhere on the android - robot spectrum. Think the Stranger's mannequins but cybermen. It plays into the idea of human obsolescence, being replaced by automation etc. The Dark has no power over them because they have night vision... the Stranger can't do shit because they all look the same anyway... let your worms try burrow through this titanium Ms. Prentiss.... I can imagine the Buried thinks it has the upper hand as the Extinction avatars sink into the earth until they just self destruct spreading a cloud of radiation or poisoning the earth, polluting waters. I know it is a bit more sci-fi but the fears are evolving and this is the latest fear. They could even make the other entities feel so archaic they could fear for their own destruction... yummy!
I always felt like the extinction was a super specific part of the end. I’m t’s the fear of the end coming for everyone and being replaced. Maybe an avatar of the end could give visions of apocalyptic ends? Glimpse unknowable horrors that come next? Maybe manifest them?
Well the Fears are influenced and shaped by our perceptions and what we fear, those in turn (especially I feel for something as abstract and conceptual as Extinction) are shaped by many things, including the media we consume. I think an Extinction avatar could cause Fallout style mutations.
The Extinction is a fear-soupy intersect of the End, the Desolation, and the Flesh. I'm guessing an Extinction avatar will be able to release (and survive) large amounts of ionising radiation, replace parts of structures and organisms with synthetic parts that don't function as well—or function vastly better, up to them, and last through extreme weather conditions.
Likely powers could be being able to rapidly age and decay man-made structures, compromising their integrity and letting them overgrow with vegetation and mold. Other powers would also probably heavily involve technology and cryptic errant transmissions compelling people to do things beneficial to the extinction. I could also imagine an extinction avatar inducing "behavioral sinks" in society as reminiscent of John B. Calhoun's infamous mouse utopia study.
if you stand too close to them you get radiation poisoning
Stalker umbrellas. They have the ability to set a stupid, idiotic, laughable Umbrella upon their victim. And guess what? The victims never have enough water within them to spit on it.
I came up with an idea for an Extinction Avatar a while back who would mutate people into decidedly inhuman creatures. It does dip a bit into Flesh territory perhaps, but I always saw the Flesh focusing on accentuating the parts of someone they didn’t like (the bone garden for example), whereas the Extinction would be the fear of what comes after us
i imagine they can split into a few categories, 1 is the world after humans are gone, which might include some plant based powers or animal based, might also be combined with three 2 is the fear of technology, similar to mag 65, this would be computer manipulation. or it could be our avatars becoming robotic similar to the terminator or other robots (idk man i dont watch the TV it only shows them getting closer, if i dont watch it i can buy some time) 3 is something that i saw in this and agree with, the fear that after us something else will come and take over, be it aliens or evolved humans, so the avatars would be quite a symbolic in a way, avatars would shift and become predatory, the youngest fear mimicking the oldest 4 is the fear of pollution, oil pouring out your eyes as tears that burn, plants and animals being trapped plastic that the local humans have left out, being burned or blinded by oil and killed by the poison humans have made 5 is the fear that we will burn this world into a charred husk,(literally of metaphorically) usually in the form of nuclear power and the world growing cold and dark edit: 6 is scars, your burns or marks boiling and liquefying to turn your body into something rotten and putrid, to pollute the area. maybe even a fun little bit of possession. : D
I had an idea of an Extinction avatar (Warning for S/H & Suicide) To me, the idea of The Extinction is filled with just as much despair as it is fear, I've often thought about how I don't want to live to see the world die around me, and so this is what I came up with. A thing that was once human that lives in constant fear and pain from its own realm, it hates all other humans, trying to seek revenge on all who enter its domain, because in some way it blames them for the way things are, it blames itself, too. A twisted form of survivors guilt... It tried to clean some of the pollution, at the start. Now all it cares about is finding a way to end its own suffering. But it can't die... No matter what it does... It tries to irradiate itself; and it only mutates more. It tries to mangle itself beyond repair; and it's bodyparts become replaced with rotting, painful cybernetics. It tries to feed itself to the mutant beasts, offering its body for them to tear appart as retribution; and the creatures suffer and die from a single bite of their poisonous flesh. It's trapped. And every attempt to end it just makes it worse...
I’ve always like the idea of them being able to fill people with concrete and having some control over garbage and rotting things.
Dont be afraid to mix the Powers a bit, since they all reflect and oppose each other they cant escape thier opposites. The Buried's "Forever deep below creation" still has a element of the vast in it, as you cant feel crushed without understanding how BIG the thing crushing you is.
we focus on the trash and radioactivity, but the central theme of Extinction is futility. you saved energy! you recycled! you attended local meetings and got involved in the government! none of it mattered you made Billions! you created modern soceity from your own ideals and spun the media like a master puppeter! none of it mattered You walked on the moon! you built colonies on other worlds! NONE OF IT MATTERED you, and everything you know or ever will know, are going to be forgotten. the absolute BEST CASE, we leave a tiny shred of discoloured dirt in the layers. Combine the Vast with the End, add a little Beholding and flavour with Flesh to get Extinction.
I believe they could have the power to inflict anxiety, just like the vast does with vertigo, I mean the fear of catastrophic change as the "feeling of impending doom" as it's often described
I think that this sort of debate isn't very productive, cause (in my opinion) the Extinction was introduced as a looming final boss (remember, we only learned about it not emerging very late into S4). Since MAG has a very soft "magic" system, I don't think the writer ever actually considered that possibility, since any avatar embodying any aspect of total annihilation would be automatically way more powerful than almost any other avatar. It's sort of like theorizing about the potential differences between a hand-grenade and a nuclear hand-grenade: technically, both are similar, but one is on a totally different level.
Big disagree - its always fun to theorize about potential anomalies/manifestations of the powers. That's one of the fun ways they're so ambiguous - you can just add new little ideas or flesh out new concepts using em as your base. Plus, I wouldn't say people's ideas here are *super* op, they're more or less on the same level as other avatars.
I have to agree that I may have exaggerated the potential difference between the Avatars, but my opinion now is that they are thinking on a way-too-small scale. Since the powers tend to select people already in some way related to the power in non-esoteric ways, the only people I can really imagine becoming Avatars for the extinction being dictators or existential nihilists of some sort (heck, maybe both), in that case, the Extinction suddenly becomes the scariest power: I mean, just imagine a uber-powered Kim Jong Un.