So, I was thinking about The Power Fantasy last night and realized two things. A couple fridge horror moments as it were. Spoilers up to issue 12.
First, I'd intially assumed Heavy has some sort of super healing powers. But he doesn't, does he? In that one scene with Tonya, he says he's holding himself together and hoping it'll heal. So, he's using his gravity powers to physically put his body back together and hold it in place, but that doesn't speed up the healing process it only allows it to happen, in a way that it generally wouldn't happen for someone who just got their lower torso blown to bits. So there's scarring and pain and all that fun stuff, and he's not even sure it'll work. He's not sure he won't have to hold himself together with his powers alone forever.
Second thing. Etienne. What a shitty life. Like wow. Most people mostly get the things we need to grow up given to us -- sometimes there's some neglect, sometimes there's some abuse, but to survive infancy and early childhood we need things to be given to us freely. Etienne, from a few minutes of his birth, had to take what he needed, using his mind control powers, in order to not die.
Which means a couple things, firstly, no wonder he's not a Kantian, if he had moral lines he wouldn't cross and they included reasonable things like "not using your mind control powers to make someone else do a thing that they wouldn't have done otherwise", he wouldn't have survived at all. And it'd be a less interesting story. The surprising thing is that he didn't go full on supervillain. He's got a great supervillain origin story.
The other thing is, he's never been loved. Nurses physically cared for him, but he was unresponsive, there's a good chance none of them ever spoke kindly to him or showed him any sort of emotional affection. (Even setting aside the racism thing, and well, the racism thing was clearly there.) He's gotten little or no physical affection. No bedtime stories. No lullabies. No time when he fell and bumped his knee and got a kiss to make it better.
Who knows whether it makes it better or worse that he's known all along that those things exist and other people get them, just not him.
And yet, he gives the little kindnesses he never received to others. He does his God act to soothe Eliza -- yeah it's creepy and fucked up, but he understands the concept of trying to make someone feel better and how to make someone feel better. He's kind and gentle with Masumi. He lies to the public with the intention of keeping them calm. He takes this life of his that's been utterly devoid of any recieving of affection and kindness, and gives affection and kindness back, and is at least reluctant to respond to attempts to kill him with using lethal violence back.
Although I'm not sure what the deal is with him going after Kid Ignition, who after all didn't do anything to him and neither did Heavy and surely he knows that.
I think. I'm not sure how the psychic cage concept works. Magus thought he had the stadium set up to block Etienne's psychic abilities, but if it did that then how was "Etienne" still doing anything? It is confusing. Perhaps Etienne is lying about not being able to break through the Pyramid? Seems like a thing he'd do.
Back to Etienne's shitty childhood. I think there's a bit of ambiguity around his first act of mind control. Was Etienne already like that and "it'd be more ethical" was Etienne's words? Or did Etienne do some sort of nonverbal push on the doctor's mind and he came up with those words to justify trying to keep Etienne alive, and that's where Etienne's obsession with ethics began?
Either way, I can imagine Etienne not being entirely convinced saving the world is worth doing.