30 years ago brought the first superhumans, regular people given great power seemingly at random.
15 years ago brought the paranormals, stranger and often weaker in their abilities, but far more numerous.
Today, the world holds its breath . . .
Or at least, it should.
Most people, though, are just trying to get on with their lives; some successfully, some less so. Which is hard, when shadowy conspiracies and worldwide N.G.O.s are turning your city into a proxy battleground over world-shattering secrets. It’s bad enough when you’ve just woken up with superpowers and terrorists are holding your school hostage. It’s even worse if you’re an illegal vigilante stuck in the middle of the whole Charlie Foxtrot after a supervillain raid drops vital information in your lap.
For Flint Perez and Hannah Eiling-Kingsford, life is about to get a lot harder to get on with.
Outliers
is a superhero-ish web serial, updating Tuesdays and Fridays.
This series provides examples of:
- Cluster F-Bomb: Fog lets one rip in 6-V as she cuts and runs.
- Deuteragonist: Hannah. The chapters are evenly split between her and Flint, but his storyline tends to affect events more, while she generally follows after them.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Flint is frequently mistaken for a woman, to the point where in chapters narrated by Hannah, he's referred to as such.
- First-Person Smartass: Flint, in spades. Hannah to a lesser extent, mostly from her imaginary dialogue with herself.
- In Medias Res: People and missions are already in motion when the story begins.
- Mass Super-Empowering Event / Randomly Gifted: A bit from column A, a bit from column B. While there were two Events, fifteen years apart, where a lot of supers got their powers, they continued to appear between and afterwards, seemingly at random.
- N.G.O. Superpower: the Watchtower Conglomerate, more literally than some. They are the only legal way to become a superhero, and as such manage most of the powerful superhumans on the right side of the law.
- Not Quite Flight: A few variants. Freefall teleports directly up and freefalls, Comet makes herself into a projectile over and over with charge times in between, and Void makes herself light enough to be pulled along by the wind her vacuums create.
- One Person, One Power: Averted: while all first-gen, and some second-gen, supers have only the one power, there are many second-gens who have multiple.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. The Outliers have two Natalies, Ribbon (Natalie Wong) and Void (Natalie Wilson).
- Psycho Ex: Edith for Flint. Later chapters reveal their relationship to be more complicated than that.
- Shout-Out:
- The high school in (New) Chicago is called Dresden High.
- "...and I did not like it, Sam-I-am."
- Slave to PR: The Tower heroes. As a private enterprise, all their income comes from movies, advertisements, promotions and products, so everyone working for them has to maintain a good public image at all times.
- Superhero Packing Heat: Ricochet, who acts as the Outliers' overwatch with a heavy-calibre sniper rifle. Justified in that her power seems to have something to do with... well, ricochets, and by the existence of stun rounds in the setting.
- Talking to Themself: Hannah often has conversations in her head, between a personality that seems closer to hers, and one that is significantly snarkier and cruder. Unlike most examples, though, she acknowledges that the voices aren't real, and that she's just using them as a coping mechanism.
- The Ghost: Void, nominal leader of the Outliers. Appears in the very first flashback chapter, but isn't seen or heard from in the present day until the very end of Chapter 11; over nine months in real time.
- Two First Names: Edith Ellis.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Flint and Lis, Flint and George... Flint and everyone, pretty much.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: Lisette/Ricochet.Flint: Ricochet always claimed her accent was Canadian, but it sure wasn't any Canadian accent I'd ever heard.
