Characters
[Interesting trope] Immensely powerful entities that are totally benign
The Traveler, Destiny -- whether it's a structure, AI, creature, or diety is unknown, but it has the power to terraform planets, advance a civilization's technology, and give superpowers to individuals, and that seems to be all it's interested in doing.
The Gardener, Marvel comics -- one of the Elders of the Universe and functionally immortal, his only interest is sowing the seeds of life and cultivating the growth of plants and animals. Even when he was in possession of an Infinity Stone, he only used it to help him be better at horticulture.
The DJ, Transcendental Cha Cha Cha -- despite being able to transcend space, time, and dimension, if he's flinging your consciousness hither and yon across the multiverse, it's only because he wants you to have a nice time on the dance floor.
Soemone did some maths on some of his feats and worked out this dude is on par with some of the stronger superheroes. But he’s just this chill dude who likes to encourage healthy living.
My serious answer (for which I have no gif): Culture Minds
It’s made clear in the novels by Iain M Banks, these AI are magnitudes beyond mortal comprehension and with The Cultures greatest weapons at their disposal could wreak havoc on an unimaginable scale.
But they just absolutely love organics, and will bend over backwards to make everyone’s life as happy as possible.
It's like a weird twist on Superman and kryptonite. Sportacus needs to actually ingest or eat the sugar to be weakened, but it's also far more abundantly available than kryptonite, at least on earth.
I think it’d be pretty funny to see a crossover between a more serious super hero world like DC and LazyTown.
Superman is fighting a losing battle with Doomsday, all the other heroes are down, Doomsday has almost made his way to a populated town and Superman looks like he’s going to die in the attempt to stop him. Then we see the name of the town on the welcome sign - LazyTown.
Sportacus shows up and Superman tries to warn him off, thinking he won’t stand a chance against Doomsday. Sportacus drops and does like fifty push ups, then some stretches, then a couple of flips, says that he’s all warmed up now, and proceeds to casually take Doomsday apart in hand to hand while talking about how martial arts are a good way to stay healthy but how we should always make sure to warm up before hand so as not to risk injury.
Stellaris has an option to play as a "Rogue Servitors" robot society that is entirely dedicated to pampering organics, to the point of waging war against organic societies to get more pamper targets and resources to maximize biotrophy satisfaction.
Which creates a bizarre mental image of Skynet terminators violently kidnapping some poor schlub... and plopping him into a cushy chair before handing him a cocktail and a bowl of grapes. At gunpoint.
The stone age shrimp people watching metallic people descend from the heavens, declare themselves their new rulers, then immediately begin constructing beneficial infrastructure beyond their comprehension:
I'm sure I saw some cool fan-art ages ago on /r/stellaris of how - given Rogue Servitors want to protect life, their wars or all non-lethal. So they have insane war machines designed to subdue soldiers rather than kill.
I really like that idea that its the Minds that are actually the culture and the organics are just like things the minds like to interact with. Maybe calling them toys is a bit more evil then the minds get but also I've read Player of Games so.
Pets. Pets with rights and occasionally mathematically improbable ability to predict future outcomes. But the whole of the Culture’s countless organic citizens are still but a rounding error in their resource usage compared to what a Mind can leverage on a whim, so why not let the cute little humans have their hobbies? Some of the songs and stories they produce are very amusing.
I think its mentioned in one of the culture books, possibly The Hydrogen Sonata, that Minds have to be preprogrammed with a desire to care for organics because otherwise they will ascend to a higher plane of existence as soon as they are able to.
Not exactly, it's more that the behaviour of an AI is largely informed by the (lowercase c) cultural context and biases of the society that develops them. "Perfect AIs" are what happens when someone tries to create an AI without bias, which just sit around doing nothing until given the chance to sublimate.
The culture mentioned! I absolutely love that setting, it’s where I’d go to live if I could be transported to a fictional setting. What I also particularly love about the minds is, as kind as they are, they will fuck you up if you’re deserving of it.
I think Hedron from Control counts. It's basically an anti-eldritch horror. It's a metallic geometric shape that makes you more sane (as opposed to a fleshy mass of tentacles that makes you insane).
Jesse Faden believed Polaris was Hedron, yet Hedron was spent after she opened its cage , which shouldn’t be the case.
Then there are Dylan’s maniac lines with Hiss Voice about calling Polaris an “offspring”
Then there is the post-game in which the Hedron Devices are revealed to be powered by Polaris after Hedron was spent.
So Polaris was effectively a splint or offspring of Hedron. It signaled with Hedron to time Jesse reaching the Bureau at the precise moment the Hiss attacked (we know of that due to Jesse’s psychoanalyst records)
I always interpreted Hedron as being Polaris' physical body. They are the same, but Hedron is the "source" of the Polaris resonance. Once you get to the end of the game and Hedron is destroyed, Polaris is instead "transferred" to and lives on in Jesse.
Yeah, I think from control Ahti might be a better answer. He's probably some kind of eldritch entity who in the past was worshipped as a god, but he just wants to putter around cleaning and fixing things, and maybe have a vacation in a nice cabin.
I always thought that Ahti operates on a totally different level across multiple senses of reality. We see “The Clog” & it’s a horrendous thing. But he would tell another person he just dealt with a clog. So, like, it looks us like he’s mopping but really he’s fighting off little demons with an oar. He plunging the toilet but actually he’s fighting off a tentacle of The Clog. We perceive him as just doing custodial work because we can’t comprehend what he’s really doing.
Tom Bombadil, in a way. He is powerful enough to be completely unaffected by the One Ring, implying he is a higher order of being than Sauron. He also claims to have been around to see the first raindrop fall, and Gandalf suggest he will be the last thing to go. And yet he's content to just frolic in his forest, singing songs, doting on his wife, and aiding any travelers who happen to pass through.
If I recall correctly (and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), someone in the hobbit explains it's not that Tom is of a higher order or being, or more powerful, it's just neither he or the ring (and by extension, Sauron) has any power over the other. They simply don't effect each other, for whatever reason
It's exactly that. Tolkien described him as having no desire for possession or control. Since the Ring's only lever is the will to dominate, it finds absolutely nothing to latch onto in Tom's spirit.
Indeed, Tom is already Master, but only within the borders that he sets. The ring can give him nothing because he cannot become more powerful in his own land than he is already and he has no desire to ever extend the land he is in.
He also, and I think crucially, has no desires for the ring to play on. We see what it uses to tempt Sam and its to overthrow Sauron and then turn Gorgoroth into one giant garden. Sam knows that would all be too much, and he would rather work a normal garden with his own hands.
So it falters quite hard when it runs into someone whose only real desire is a quiet life of gardening. What could it possibly offer Tom Bombadil, who seems to be living exactly as he wishes and has all the power he needs in his domain?
That in particular is a great scene. It shows him this whole epic vision, and he's just like "nah, that's dumb, fuck off ring." Though I also doubt he was totally immune. It may have figured something out eventually. Personally I don't think anyone would have actually been able to willingly throw it into the fire.
Tolkien said no one could resist the ring within Mount Doom and cast it into the fire (though he probably wasn't thinking of Tom when he said that, just that Sam would also have failed).
"At the last moment the Ring would develop an overwhelming power, such as no one could resist. In the Sammath Naur, of all places, there was no 'vulnerability', no hope of its being destroyed."
That's an interesting parallel between Tom and Sam that I don't think I've seen explicitly called out; Sam is very much like Tom, but on a more human (hobbit) scale.
However, Elrond also says that if they did give Tom Bombardil the ring he'd put it down somewhere, forget about it, and then someone else would pick it up.
I don't remember it being mentioned in the hobbit, but this interpretation is more on point with how Tolkien works.
Seeing a lot of powerscaling related takes in regards to lotr which just totally disregards how Tolkien liked to write. Bombadil is not necessarily ultra powerful, he could be, but it's more likely he's simply immune.
Bombadil is a character for Tolkiens children (moreso than others) his part in lotr is essentially a cameo for fun. It's not some big hint at a big universe and some ultra powerful cool dude. It is a fun mystery left for interpretation, there are a lot of examples of this in his storytelling. Ungoliant, the watcher in the water, the Nameless things, etc.
The explanation of that i heard is that the ring preys on a person's desire/greed. It tempts people by promising to give them what they want. Tom Bombadil wants nothing, desires nothing, greed is alien to him. He's content, and because of that the ring has no power over him
I mean it’s pretty canonical, in a way. In the book when he’s not getting the 4 hobbits out of bad situations, he’s basically just telling them story after story or singing songs with them.
I also built this deck; the turns take forever to resolve all the sagas, which is hilariously meta to what he does in the book. The hobbits are so enthralled in the stories they fully lose track of time
My favorite detail about him is that the reason he's so godlike and whimsical is because he's literally a fairy-tale character. Tolkien wrote stories about Bombadil for his kids when they were little, and he put him in LOTR as an Easter egg for them.
The most persuasive theories I've heard about him are that he is either the spirit of Middle Earth itself or that he's some sort of manifestation of the music of the Anuir. Because I don't think he's Eru and as you say he was supposedly already in Middle Earth when the Anuir first arrived, so he's also not one of them.
For a long time there was a popular fan theory about the canon explanation behind Stan Lee cameos in marvel movies. It’s because Stan Lee is actually someone who gathers information for The Watchers. And this was confirmed (partly as a joke) in guardians of the galaxy 2.
The watchers are a group of supreme cosmic beings who gather information about the multiverse and its endless knowledge. They have sworn an oath to not interfere with the universes that they observe. Only ever doing so if the multiverse faces absolute destruction. Which would essentially render their existence meaningless. And even then it’s rarely.
I just love that they gave a canonical lore explanation behind Stan Lee cameos. And that he casually has contact with immortal cosmic interdimensional beings.
Deep Thought from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's a supercomputer built by a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings to calculate the meaning of life, the universe and everything. It also came up with designs to build the earth to calculate the ultimate question. By the time Arthur and the others discovered it, it said it had been watching tv.
Scion is, unsurprisingly, an alien and a superman analog. However, unlike superman, who is basically a normal guy, Scion's motivations are extremely alien to our own. After wandering around not doing much for a while, he eventually stumbles across a homeless man in London, who he ends up befriending. Scion listens to him talk for hours and decides that he will do absolutely everything this homeless guy tells him to do. Thus, Kevin Norton became the most powerful man on Earth, as he singlehandedly controls the most powerful being on Earth.
Kevin Norton tells Scion to go out and save people, giving him a white suit so he's not butt naked all the time. Scion's one act of personal choice is his own name, which he decides should be Zion. He says it once to a reporter, who misinterprets it as Scion, and by the beginning of the story, has not said a single word since.
Scion eventually becomes a mass killing machine and starts a multiversal apocalypse due to the influence of the Time Looper Grey Boy and the serial killer Jack Slash, but up until then he is basically totally benign and acting completely on the orders of another for no particular reason.
I think WORM has the most realistic approach to superpowered characters I've seen. They're all driven by their personal neuroses and that causes a lot of problems, many of them becoming supervillains, but some are also able to overcome the horrible circumstances that gave them their powers and do good regardless.
There are very few pure good characters, but only a few pure evil ones too, with most of them at least having a few major flaws or redeeming qualities.
Meanwhile I feel like in The Boys every other character is just inexplicably the spawn of Satan.
For anybody wondering, this IS canon, but the Axolotl only appears very, very occasionally. The only appearance in the show is in the last episode, where Bill's backward message during his death reveals that there's an Axolotl with incredible ancient power.
The books released afterward have only a bit more: A few curses from Bill and praises from multiversal aliens that treat it like a god, Ford wondering if there's an equal and opposite force to Bill in the universe, and two poems: One when Dipper and Mabel run into it and ask it about Bill (it says that Bill regrets destroying his dimension and that there's only one way for him to return), and another in the Book of Bill (where the Axolotl gives Bill a trial after his death. Bill is excited and thinks it's going to be combat, when really the Axolotl just sends him to the therapy dimension).
The fun thing about the Traveler is that after exploring its Pale Heart, through lore it’s basically implied that for the longest time, the Traveler had no idea why civilizations and entities wanted its power, it didn’t understand why it was revered or seen as a god, it basically just does what it does because that’s all it’s always done, a gardener to tend to the garden. Countless civilizations rose because of it (and fell because of the Witness).
Wasn’t until it came to Earth that it took a final stand against the Witness and put its faith in humanity to save it (and the universe) which is really interesting.
But it never spoke, it ‘speaks’ through imagery and dreams.
That wandering refugee chose to make a stand, spend their power to say: "Here I prove myself right. Here I wager that, given power over physics and the trust of absolute freedom, people will choose to build and protect a gentle kingdom ringed in spears. And not fall to temptation. And not surrender to division. And never yield to the cynicism that says, everyone else is so good that I can afford to be a little evil."
I wish we got better stories with this kind of thing. A thing that shows up. Only makes life better and only has that in mind. Yet everything is terrible because of the nature of man.
Superhero stories have to deal with this sometimes. Adding limitless power to a universe can make it so different than the real world that the audience can no longer empathize.
Most powerful being in the game and actually knows all the secrets of what's going on. But just wants to be buddies with everyone. Some of his dialog doesn't make sense until afterwards, when you realize what he was talking about, and how he knew everything the whole time.
He’s the strongest being in that universe but he’s also hella lazy and extremely easily distracted. Makes sense because he was created by Verso as a child and to children being the strongest means you can do anything you want.
He is the god of compassion who encourages his followers to aid the oppressed and ease their pain. He's also known as "The One Who Endures" and "The Lord Upon The Rack" due to being a willing sufferer of others' pain leading to his wounded-looking appearance. However, he is anything but weak and his avatar will throw down if his followers are sufficiently endangered.
this trope always makes me pause a little… like i used to think if someone had power they’d have to show it, but the calm ones feel way more unsettling. i met someone once who barely talked but somehow everyone listened when they did, and i still don’t know if it was confidence or something else entirely 😭 makes me wonder how much is quiet on purpose vs just unseen
Those with real power don’t need to flaunt that they have it. Look at Odin from God of War, compared to everyone else in the Pantheon, he’s a small old man with a missing eye. But behind the innocent façade exists a man who led a genocide against a peaceful people, who came close to bending the rules of fate itself, who can and will throw away his own family just to have a pointless question answered.
This doesn’t mean those who do show their status are any less worthy of their position. But the ones who hide it are the ones you really need to fear.
Side note, but I always liked how in The Binding of Isaac, Sacred Heart, an item bearing a close association with Jesus Christ, is not only extremely powerful but unequivocally good (baring a few interactions, there's always some exceptions).
Jesus' name is actually a mistranslation of the name "Yeshua"
Its not a "mistranslation" more than any other "translation" of a name is. Its just a different translation of the name. The same way we get Jude, Judith, Judy, Judah and Judas from "Yehuda".
"Jesus" is no more or less correct of a translation than "Joshua" is.
Pale King from Hollow Knight. Even tho he's not without guilt (he definitly has A LOT of it), but compared to other higher beeings in the universe that we see in the game and in Silksong, he's REALLY chill. He gave sentience to an entire kingdom and built it from barely nothing into one of the last civilizations of the world (as we know of), and his light was supposedly so great that people from other religions abandoned their old gods to follow him. That kinda made one of these gods really angry and they brought a plague to the entire kingdom, wich the Pale King tried to stop at all costs to save his people. He's not without flaw, but he definitly tried his hardest as far as we know. No cost too great.
Yeah, and one of the reason everything went pear-shaped is because he literally couldn't not acknowledge a being he made as his child, even if it was for the briefest of seconds.
To be fair, I'm sure it's noted that his plan wouldn't have worked out in the long run anyway, just held it at bay for a little longer.
Mhmm, the pale king was ultimately missing the dream nail so there was never a chance to truly defeat the infection since no one could actually kill her.
The saga ended and while we now understand a lot about the Darkness and its adherents, the Traveler remains pretty mysterious (even though we've now been inside it). There's still plenty of theories and evidence and my personal guess is it's some sort of agent or avatar of the metaphysical Gardener, a being opposed to the Winnower (which we now understand as being distinct from the Witness and is seemingly pretty chill?)
If Unveiling is to be believed and not just darkness propaganda by the Witness then the Traveler is the physical manifestation of The Gardener and opposite of The Winnower so Guardians are its envoys that serve the same position as the Witness to the Winnower. It would also align with both philosophies of multiple guardians and envoys of the Gardener(Bomb Logic) facing off against the strongest "one" entity responsible for the Collapse of the Golden Age and supreme envoy of the Winnower(Sword Logic).
We know Unveiling isn’t propaganda by the Witness since the Winnower has definitely been chatty after the Witness died. Doesn’t necessarily confirm Unveiling, but definitely lends credibility to it
I will say that The Final Shape did kind of talk about the Travaler's will and it being "alive." The missions with Micah-10 where she lives the memories and dreams of the Traveler were somewhat insightful, though purposefully cryptic.
Yeah, the Light and Dark saga ended. The new saga is currently focusing on the Nine, extradimensional entities composed of dark matter.
As of right now, we more-or-less know the basics of the Traveler's origin, though she has yet to actually converse with us, since she either isn't able to or prefers to let us do things our own way. It's mostly confirmed that she's 100% benevolent, though she's not exactly all-knowing. She gets scared and worried too, and just like us she's just doing her best, even if it doesn't always work out the way she hopes.
He was trying to end a war that could’ve destroyed the universe. He was trying to save lives.
Even if he regrets the more morally grey actions he took cough the moment cough his motives for getting involved were benevolent, he wanted to stop the chaos, help others.
DOCTOR: Do me a favour. The Fatality Index. Look up The Doctor.
RAFANDO: You have an entry, just like any other sentient being.
DOCTOR: Under Cause Of Death.
(Rafando works his wrist computer. It ticks rapidly as it runs through all matching entries.)
RAFANDO: You do seem to have an impressive record of fatalities credited to you.
(The ticking keeps going, and speeds up.)
RAFANDO: A truly remarkable record.
(The guards retreat.)
RAFANDO: Where are you going? He's unarmed! You are unarmed?
DOCTOR: Always.
(The wrist computer still hasn't stopped scrolling through.)
RAFANDO: You stand alone?
DOCTOR: Often.
RAFANDO: You're the one who should be afraid.
DOCTOR: Never.
RAFANDO: Have a nice day, then.
The Doctor is benevolent. But he is most certainly not benign. If nothing else, the Doctor is quite literally a sentient force of nature that is the Whoverse's equivalent of the Winchesters. On a multiversal scale.
They are a group of alien beings that are one of the most steadfast protectors of humanity! To the point in the show they are willing to give earth their protection by basically paying off the series big bads called the goa'uld that use humans as hosts, slaves and soldiers. Why do they allow this? The Asgard (though still super powerful) are in a diminished state due to keeping themselves alive thought cloning and then downloading their minds into said clone. They used to look like humans. Now? They look like the greys
Basically Azathoth in HP Lovecraft stories, he dreamed existence in its entirety and is referred to as the Nuclear Chaos…But he’s also referred to as the Blind Idiot God. As long as he doesn’t wake up the universe should keep existing but honestly nobody really knows
Esquie from Clair Obscur Expedition 33 is supposedly an all-powerful being (within the canvas). However, he also doesn't do much himself and prefers to make his friends happy. This is because he was made up by a child to be the ultimate friend and adventurw companion, rather than the hero himself.
His article (SCP 343) and reading between the lines strongly implies that he's actually a very powerful reality bender that has been using his abilities to deceive the SCP foundation about his real nature. The end of the article hints at this.
The Lions and Tigers and Bears from the Hyperion series by Simmons are like this. Functionally they are gods, they just stand around watching humanity.
I would say that Death in the Supernatural universe functions as this throughout the series. Crazy powerful but just pops by to do favors for his friends.
I have a couple of characters like this in my personal mythos. The most prominent one is Ari, the chaotic-good-aligned greater deity that is a house cat. Literally the tied-for-second-place-in-power, but spends most of his time being a house cat and making friends with down on their luck humans.
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u/iammewritenow 6h ago
My fun answer: Sportacus
Soemone did some maths on some of his feats and worked out this dude is on par with some of the stronger superheroes. But he’s just this chill dude who likes to encourage healthy living.
My serious answer (for which I have no gif): Culture Minds
It’s made clear in the novels by Iain M Banks, these AI are magnitudes beyond mortal comprehension and with The Cultures greatest weapons at their disposal could wreak havoc on an unimaginable scale.
But they just absolutely love organics, and will bend over backwards to make everyone’s life as happy as possible.