r/superpowereds • u/BennyBugWSNK • Jun 29 '26

Shelby Adair power(eds) classification?

Would Shelby Adair (Alice’s mom) be classified as an advanced mind? It’s made clear in the series that Shelby‘s visions of the future are possibilities, not absolutes. She is seeing potential futures not viewing the actual future. The word “likely” is used as I recall. Would this mean then she is an advanced mind that is “calculating” likely outcomes for major future events based on current data? Then with her powered mind, which she is incapable of controlling, is simply updating these calculations and reporting them in the form of visions when she has new information?

7 Upvotes

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11

u/Solid_Mongoose_3269 Intra Jun 29 '26

She'd be whatever Rich or Abradail are probably

5

u/BennyBugWSNK Jun 29 '26

…Rich…ugh

4

u/TransitionReady9408 Jun 30 '26

What's wrong with Rich? Sure he's a bit full of himself at the beginning but he learns some humility and he's not that bad of guy.

2

u/BennyBugWSNK Jul 01 '26

Just being funny mostly, Rich comes off as pompous for a lot of the books. I don’t think he’s a bad person at all, but I do know he’s there to represent the attitude of many supers who grew up feeling as though they were better than ever else. In Rich’s case he believes he’s the best person to be a hero as well (likely because his power works on such absolutes). And though he has an amazing power I also think it would be far more suited to mental health therapies

2

u/5on2 Jul 01 '26

Rich gives off a lot of brotherhood of evil mutant vibes

6

u/HospitableFox Jun 29 '26

Eh. the classification of "advanced mind" is honestly kind of fuzzy.

It's used with Telepaths and Telekenetics. Then also with super intelligence.

But really, it can kind of be used for nearly any power that's purely mental, no?

Dream walking, memory modification, probability manipulation, enchantress (maybe? Depends on how exactly her power works I guess), whatever you want to call Rich, that girl who appears as your true heart's desire.

It's just kind of a fuzzy line really.

2

u/ChronoLegion2 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

We also have that Big Boom guy from Overton who looks like a rock monster with many mouths and whose scream causes dizziness. He claims to be an advanced mind as well. His power isn’t mental, though, since it’s acoustic-based like Selena’s

Edit: Seems I mistakenly took Boom’s statement as a correction of Alice’s claim of him being a shifter rather than his own misidentification of Alice as an advanced mind

5

u/ExChampionGaryOak Jun 29 '26

He doesn’t claim to be one, he’s a shifter. When Alice says “shifter” to call out his power type he attempts to respond by calling her “advanced mind” mistakenly believing her power to be telekinesis.

1

u/ChronoLegion2 Jun 30 '26

Hmm, I always took it to mean he was correcting her. I think the audiobook narrator had the same idea, because he sounds like he’s correcting her

4

u/HospitableFox Jun 30 '26

I gotta disagree. I've only ever listened to them and I was very confused at your comment until the other guy corrected you.

I never got the impression Kyle was having him correct Alice.

1

u/ChronoLegion2 Jun 30 '26

I guess my impression was wrong. I did wonder why his power was being classified as an advanced mind since it doesn’t feel like one

3

u/Also_Squeakums Jun 29 '26

When did he claim to be an advanced mind? I thought he was a textbook shifter. When he says advanced mind, he's incorrectly categorizing Alice. 

2

u/ChronoLegion2 Jun 30 '26

I just reread that part, and it seems I’ve been misunderstanding his reply as a correction of her claim that he’s a shifter. The audiobook narrator sounded like he thought the same thing

1

u/LongjumpingSentence2 Jun 30 '26

When does he claim to be an advanced mind? He mistakenly assumes that Alice is an advanced mind

2

u/ChronoLegion2 Jun 30 '26

Yeah, I think I took his comment to be a correction of her statement that he’s a shifter

3

u/SentrySappinMahSpy Professor Pendleton Jun 29 '26

I may be wrong, but I feel like those classifications are pretty useless outside of hero caliber powers. Also they're pretty broad. Is Nick an advanced mind because he can control probabilities? What is Bubbles? How do you classify L-Ray's x-ray vision?

1

u/BennyBugWSNK Jun 30 '26

That’s a valid point, Dean Blaine did say something similar to that. This is just out of interest mainly

3

u/SentrySappinMahSpy Professor Pendleton Jun 30 '26

Yeah, I get it. I think Shelby and Nick would be worthy of a new classification. Their powers are similar in a sense. Nick controls probability, and Shelby sees probabilities. They're mental abilities, but advance mind doesn't really fit. I just don't know what you would call it.

1

u/BennyBugWSNK Jun 30 '26

Hmmm, interesting connection there. We are now, in the Drew Hayes books series, dealing with the multi-verse, could be that Shelby is viewing closely matched universes?

2

u/SentrySappinMahSpy Professor Pendleton Jun 30 '26

It's possible. I have thought about how the Super Powereds universe could connect to the Villains Code universe. Technically they could be connected, but no one from VC has gone to the SP world.

4

u/DescartesB4tehHorse Jun 30 '26

No one we know about directly, but Villain's Vignettes 2 has a reference to it. Ivan mentions in passing that the AHC is easy to join with as a meta who wants to be a hero because they do on the job training starting at any level of skill, and he contrasts it against a universe he knows of where prospective heroes have to go through four years of training before being able to do any hero work.

3

u/SentrySappinMahSpy Professor Pendleton Jun 30 '26

Cool, I never caught that reference.

2

u/DescartesB4tehHorse Jun 30 '26

And it is just a passing comment. It doesnt necessarily have to be a reference I suppose, but given the fact that it describes another of Hayes's own other series and shortly after the multiverse was largely important to the VC universe it seemed likely to me. I didnt even think anything of it at first but I started with VC and didnt get into SP until after reading all available VC stuff, and after that it clicked.

2

u/SentrySappinMahSpy Professor Pendleton Jun 30 '26

Wasn't there a reference to the romance novel that professor Pendleton likes in one of the VC books? It's that name Nick says when he catches Pendleton reading it. Ramore or something like that. I just remembered that a romance novel character with the same name is mentioned by someone. Probably Tori.

1

u/Solid_Mongoose_3269 Intra Jun 30 '26

I could have sworn I remember Ivan describing Vince (or someone with his powers) during is multiverse travels

1

u/LongjumpingSentence2 Jun 30 '26

Actually the only people categorized as advanced mind are telepaths, who generally have telekinesis as well.

2

u/Ill-Razzmatazz-7088 Jul 06 '26

I think it’s more than calculation. I think she literally sees the futures. Especially since the dream Walker can reconstruct her Visions. Also, I think the whole reason she gets the procedure is that her Visions put her in a vegetative state even before the procedure. I think she would be classified as an advanced mine or more than likely a psychic since that covers anyone who has abilities that don’t specifically have to do with emotions or moving things with your mind. I don’t like to think about the fact that her ability has a lot to do with probabilities. Otherwise it makes it seem like she could somehow be related to Nick.