Basic Trope: A bureaucratic Government Institution is founded with the purpose of controlling a large population of super-powered individuals.
- Straight: The Mutant Registration Board keeps track of extraordinary abilities and can engage in a human eminent domain to force them to use their powers for certain applications.
- Exaggerated:
- The Department of Abilities not only drafts all mutants from discovery into the organization but any human who is in the top 10% of capabilities in anything!
- The MRB's drafted Mutants not just having the classical psionics or generic abilities,there are also omnipotent ones.
- Downplayed:
- The Mutant Safety Board only has jurisdiction over those who are a Person of Mass Destruction and have either Power Incontinence or an unjustified rampage in the past (merely being a Destructive Savior against a sufficiently powerful threat would not qualify).
- The Mutant Safety & Health Board's only purpose is to keep track of medical issues that mutants have to deal with (not that that prevents abuse of the registration).
- Justified: ???
- Inverted: The Helot Commission is founded to control the mundanes.
- Subverted: Mutants are considered ineligible for conscription or government service
- Double Subverted: At least "on paper" - in practice, the State Sec is completely made of mutants, who are rounded up by their peers and forced to join their ranks.
- Parodied: A bunch of people with utterly useless or silly mutations are treated as super badasses because that's what mutants are, right?
- Zig Zagged: The MRB only states that Mutants that committed serious crimes to be punished by joining the military for an period of time. While the rest can voluntarily join the military. However, conscription or national service calls still apply.
- Averted: The Mutants can freely join the military or not just like others,or being the conscription that everyone including Mutants may have a chance to exempt from.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "Man, I hate to ever make the military know my ability!"
- Invoked: The Federation found a new psionic species and decided the best way to slowly introduce them to the Federation society without severe xenophobic reaction is to take them into their own services before rolling them out to the public.
- Exploited: A scientist want to develop weapons and other stuff related to supernatural abilities. He decided to make use of the Mutant Draft Board to get the best Mutants/Supers for his experiments.
- Defied: The government refuses to create any agencies that keep tabs on superpowered people, not wishing to risk the bad PR of people assuming it's one more type of Sinister Surveillance or, maybe worse yet, legalized discrimination.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- The Supers are feeling that the government is restricting their freedoms and simply treat them as mere tools. So they decided to hide themselves from the public, increasing difficulty for the officials to find them. In case they were found, some may choose to kill in order to keep the secrecy, meaning the plan will give out more losses than gains.
- The Muggle Higher-Ups tortured, threatened and mistreated their drafted Supers for their own gains. Eventually the Supers got tired of it and snapped out by causing mayhem that even the military may be unable to stop it.
- Reconstructed:
- The Federation provides high-quality amenities and special accesses to the Mutants/Supers that even the Fed's own soldiers would envy on. This made them more comfortable with the draft.
- The Military invested heavily on military technology and able to create weapons that can overcome super-powered individuals,making them able to force the Supers into their fold.
- Played For Laughs:
- Kelvin is a superhuman theoretically capable of curb-stomping the entire government with a single punch but he cannot get rid of a single meek, yet absurdly persistent, draft officer trying to give him his draft letter.
- The draft board is Vast Bureaucracy unable to do any damage to the superhuman population because its personnel can't even blink without filling 900 forms in triplicate.
- The draft board and the superhumans it manages are the sorriest bunch of losers that have ever lived in a superhero setting, and whether or not they make do seriously depends on whatever's funnier at the moment.
- Played For Drama: Kelvin, a Telekinetic young man was forcefully drafted into the military without consent, but one day he managed to find out an underground organization that is plotting to free supers like him...
- Played For Horror: The MRB getting a complete registration of every man, woman and child with abnormal powers in the country is step one towards a mutant-annihilating holocaust (this is an application of the Trope that has some precedent).
Back to Mutant Draft Board
