Small and Forgetful

[Khymeria]

I’ve been reading a lot of early Avengers and in many battles Wasp seems to become forgotten. Obviously her being so tiny puts her out of sight, but she is consistently out of mind after a few minutes of battle with Thor, Iron Man, and the others. Villains like Mandarin and Kang should likely not be this instantaneously forgetful even though they might have more pressing concerns. 
 

In your opinions is this a handwave narrative device between the player and the GM or is this  nearly a superpower cloaked in writing and special effect? Like a Mind Control, one specific command: forget, with other variables? 

[Lord Liaden]

This is a function of her being a woman in superhero comics in the early 1960s. Like the Invisible Girl (now Woman) in the Fantastic Four, her primary role was to look pretty and sometimes be a damsel in distress. For most (though not all) of the superheroines of that era, while their powers were occasionally useful, when serious superheroing goes down it was a job for Real Men!

 

Mind you, Wasp's powers and weapons were initially particularly weak, even compared to her partner Ant-Man. That really only started to change in the '70s.

 

BTW for the point you're making, I believe "forgettable" would be more appropriate than "forgetful."

[Khymeria]

5 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

BTW for the point you're making, I believe "forgettable" would be more appropriate than "forgetful."

Yes…forgettable. 
 

She does get a few chances to save the day but the women are written to be shopping, getting their hair done, or consumed with bad decision making because “you are female.” Excellent point. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I actually built a character for a psychic campaign (that sadly never got going) that was built around this.  He was a street thief type whose one power was people just ignored and forgot him.  I built it as a conditional invisibility, but you could probably get away with using Change Environment (make your Ego roll or you ignore me).  Its not an enormously powerful ability, most of the time.  It won't allow a surprise attack, it won't really do much other than keep yourself from being targeted most of the time.

[Khymeria]

Change Environment is a direction I hadn’t considered. Invisibility to a Mental Sense kind of thing did cross my mind but wasn’t really smooth. The not being targeted definitely needs a bit of balancing with defense especially in a team environment. Thanks! 

[Asperion]

One also has to consider basic human psychology going back to antiquity.  Humans have been trained to believe that large is dangerous and small is harmless.  Reality states differently.  Most of the really dangerous creatures are the tiny ones (spider, snakes,  etc) while the larger ones could shred most humans with little effort,  they also have many traits that make them less dangerous. In fact,  according to WHO,  the most dangerous creature on Earth (other than humans) is a spider from Australia. Makes one wonder about this entire large is dangerous idea. 

[LoneWolf]

In the early Avenger issues Wasp was not forgotten she was ignored.  She had no real attack powers, so most supervillains did not pay any attention to her.  When your attack is NND with the defense being resistant defense almost anything with superpowers will ignore you.