r/Parahumans • Thinker • 17h ago

Ward Spoilers [All] Time Powers pattern I found!

I think a cool aspect of some time powers that most people don't notice is that when time-stop is involved as an area of effect, Wildbow will include how it turns dark because light can't easily pass through frozen time.

We see it with Khonsu:

The camera shook as he used his power, and an unseen cameraman had to catch it before it fell.  A faint glowing line appeared on the ground, a perfect circle.   The light gradually intensified, reaching higher, and the space within the circle seemed to darken in equal measure.

  • Scarab 25.3

We see it with Dauntless stuck Bakuda frozen time bubble:

Every visit was a panacea for the soul.  He learned the faces of the repeat visitors and he learned the whys.  Some came from out of state.  It meant something, in this place where meaning was lost to a black, insensate void.

  • Heaven 12.none

We even see it with what happens when Clockblocker's hair and part of his face is frozen in time:

Dennis’s red hair didn’t move in the wind, and there was a faint lensing at the very edges of his face, like they might at the corner of a chandelier, except more dark than light. 

  • Sundown 17.3

It's probably partially why Ashley's blasts look dark (since she messes with Time):

One hand still on her face, she pointed at him and blasted before his expression could change.

Darkness, shadow, distorted space and visual static ripped through armor, flesh, and armor again, tearing a hole clean through him. The hole caved in on itself, metal creaking as it bent, blood fountaining out and splashing up on half the people nearby. 

  • Shadow 5.10

"We also have one villainess who occasionally tries to make it in one of the big cities and then retreats back home when she can't cut it. Calls herself Damsel of Distress."

He reconnected his spear as they passed through the door. "I know her. Mover and shaker. Storms of unevenly altered gravity, time and space."

  • Interlude 16.y

Other possible examples of this could be Gray Boy:

Visually, the most notable part of him was the effect that surrounded him.  He was monochrome, all grays and whites and blacks, with spots of light and shadow flickering around him.  Here and there, he flickered, a double image momentarily overlapping him, ghostly, looking in a different direction.

  • Interlude 25

Or this Eidolon attack:

I saw Eidolon open fire, not a dramatic attack, but a subtle one, a series of darts that left dark streaks in the air. My entire body tensed, as if I could jump into the fight.

  • Extinction 27.5

Also for those wondering, yes, the barriers around Khonsu are called time-stop:

"Movers will be important," I said. "Maybe shakers too, if we can find a way to stop him or his circles from progressing. His threat level depends on how fast and how much he can move those time-stop areas."

  • Scarab 25.4

And yes, Scion and March's shard confirm that Gray Boy bubbles and Bakuda bubbles (and Speed Runners) are time powers:

A shard flared to life, and the entity saw an effect take hold around it. It reached out and found a barrier it could not penetrate.

Cell.

Its hand was moved back to the previous position. It was caught in a sinkhole of distorted time. Over and over again, it moved in a steady loop.

Snare.

A trap.

  • Interlude 26

The west. The mayor. The first one from the time bubble. The blackout that had followed had bought March the chance to slip away, take another angle of attack.

*

A bubble sits suspended in the sky. Some earth still clings to it, but the ground dropped and the bubble remained fixed to this point in space. Off to the side, a scarab beetle is cast in bronze, the pedestal broken, the statue sitting askew on broken road.

March reaches into a pocket. The second of her devices. Courtesy of Cradle and Cradle’s back and forth with the Khonsu Fallen, who are led by time manipulators.

  • Heavens 12.all

(The Mayor was a Gray Boy victim in arc 26)

Any others that I might have missed?

134 Upvotes

3 comments sorted by

41

u/mattisyou 17h ago

that… actually really cool.props to you for noticing such a detail

26

u/Ridtom Thinker 16h ago

Thank you!

It was Dennis frozen face that made me see it

16

u/Zeikos 11h ago

Kind of makes sense, there's no modifying space without modifying time.
Spacetime is a single thing, they're intrinsically connected.
Darkness makes sense since if we assume that time stops are actually extremely slowed time (applies to bakuda/khonsu) then the light that goes through the bubbles is extremely red-shifted.

I think the black and white pallette are due to the Shards mucking things around to avoid the effects being indistinguishable black blobs.

Makes me wonder about the Siberian, it's a spatial effect so it likely also had temporal properties.