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[ Doctor Strange ] IN THIS ESSAY I WILL talk about why he can't be "depowered"
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OKAY so turning off replies 'til I finish
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POINT THE FIRST
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Stephen Does Not Have Powers
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This should be obvious, but since we're talking about comics here, it needs to be said
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Stephen Strange's brand of magic works by something called Favor Trading: he needs a zappy bolt, so he psychically calls Ikonn or Raggador or the Vishanti or whoever, and faster than the speed of thought, they grant him a lil of their power
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He owes them a favor, and gets his zappy bolt too. Since it can be a hassle to continually do this, sometimes they just go "yeah you can fire the zappy bolt whenever, just be there when we need you"
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Over time these favors accrue, and get called in. There's a comic arc where the Vishanti basically did just this and Stephen had to fight for like a couple thousand years or whatever (but they were nice and only aged him a few months when he came back)
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If you wanna read up on that it's the War of the Seven Spheres
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At the end of the war Strange was like "OKAY debt repaid, never call me again" and they mostly didn't. A side benefit of being ancient as fuck is being able to learn all the magic he needed to never have to ring the Vishanti up again
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Which is one of the primary reasons a sorcerer uses favor trading to begin with. Humans just don't live long enough to learn the kind of sorcery it takes to generate your own zappy bolts or binding rings or camouflage
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The 'long as fuck war' is one of the best canon examples for movieStrange being a raging badass between his own film (noob) and Infinity War
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Even the writer of the Doc film said they left it vague as to how many times the loop reset when Doc was fighting Dormammu
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Like, yeah, maybe he could have done that shit for eons but it's simpler just to wear Dormammu down and let him know he's a slave to time in order to get him to relent
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So: because Stephen calls giant entities for the big stuff, he only needs to develop the ability to ring them on the cosmic telephone
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In the comics, he has pretty good psychic talents. He's not Professor X, but he's not a neophyte. That's one of the only intrinsic abilities he could be said to have, but only insofar as humans have latent psychic prowess that goes untapped
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And of course it would vary person to person as most traits do
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STILL NOT A 'POWER' THO
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It's a talent, and one he has worked at
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POINT THE SECOND
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Magic Toys Do Not a Sorcerer Make
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Just because Strange is the current Sorcerer Supreme does not mean that if he doesn't have the title/job, that he's useless or shitty at magic
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He uses stuff like Agamotto's eye, or orb... Watoomb's wand, etc. to aid him. But these are surgical tools when normal things won't do
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Agamotto is really specialized in perception, which is why zir's objects work so well for seeing through illusions or into hidden realms
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The Sorcerer Supreme has access to all this cool shit, but they aren't the source of his "power" like so many shitty writers think
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Stephen would still be able to do things without those tools, it would just take longer or be way harder than a mortal could achieve in one lifetime
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This is why entities/gods like the Vishanti or Seraphim are so fucking hardcore. They're nigh eternal and have had those eons to get good. It's also why so many sorcerers ring them up for help
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The movie kinda slid sideways with this, in saying that items have magic in them, or... kinda focus energy that would be too wild otherwise
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...okay? But not really. Mordo couldn't go vaulting around on air without those boots only because Mordo's been around for fewer than say several thousand years
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using Valtorr's footwear is way easier than trying to achieve immortality or the next best thing
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Stephen can't just levitate around without the Cloak. That's why it's the Cloak of Levitation, duh
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He hovers in the air sometimes when he's meditating, but that's almost always writers wanting to make him look ~cool while doing Eastern shit. It's not practical by and large.
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The Cloak itself was actually earned the first time he bested Dormammu (he had a blue one before that, it didn't fly)
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The movies made it his familiar, like Aladdin's carpet. I am fine with this because Stephen needs all the help he can get, and having an artifact take pity on him is cute and also good character development
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(He needs friends too)
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But back to the artifacts themselves: they may or may not have intrinsic power depending on the canon, but they're definitely not necessary for Stephen to do 99% of the shit he does on a daily basis
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Which brings me to
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POINT THE THIRD
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Sorcerer Supreme Is a Job Title, Not an Indicator of Ability
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As horrifying as it is, anyone could be Sorcerer Supreme
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The only job requirement is "protect this reality." End of. One needs neither to be moral, or inherently not shitty in order to perform this function
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Doctor Doom was on the shortlist to be Sorcerer Supreme for a while, as was Loki, Scarlet Witch, Wiccan, Brother Voodoo, Daimon Hellstrom, and half a dozen others
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Half those people have... questionable ethics
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I mean, Doom is a benevolent dictator as much as a dictator could be benevolent, and Wanda had that whole insane 'no more mutants' thing and well... Daimon's like the devil's kid so
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Ahem
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Many of the candidates were more than qualified to protect reality. In fact, Brother Voodoo won the gig for a stint, and he called on the Loa for his power usage, not the Vishanti
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So instead of Oshtur, he'd summon up Papa Legba or whatever, and it worked out fairly well
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(I won't go into the issue of his ghost brother Daniel, and the whole wrench that throws into everything)
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Of note: when Jericho Drumm was Sorcerer Supreme, he had the Cloak of Levitation... sort of
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Instead of an ostentatious Dracula-looking thing, it was a tattered lil thing that looked like he dug it out of a trash bin
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During this run, Stephen was said to be "depowered" but dammit Bendis did not understand how magic works in the Marvel U, so he just cocked this all up
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He was primarily a Spider-Man writer so of course he didn't get into the details, he just needed a convenient plot device to neuter Strange since only newbs think he's "Overpowered"
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You can't be overpowered when you don't even have powers so FOH
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But yeah, Stephen was supposed to pick his successor because he used ~dark magic~ and was Unworthy of the title, so that was a thing
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A sort of dumb thing, but a thing.
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He didn't have the Eye of Agamotto, the Orb of Agamotto, the Cloak, the books, or any of the cool shit. He just walked around in a turtleneck and trenchcoat being a creepy old guy who was affably having coffee with Wiccan in cafes n stuff
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Being Sorcerer Supreme comes with cool toys, but it doesn't automatically imbue one with godlike abilities. Even the Ancient One, badass that he(or she) was, had to live a heckin' long time to be awesome and even then
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still barely a drop in the cosmic bucket compared to the magic gods
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the Ancient One didn't even pick a successor in most retellings. Stephen just kinda inherited it by default, which pissed off Mordo in basically every retelling
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There was an attempt to retcon Stephen into being The Chosen One, but that's a thing best ignored because it made no fucking sense and totally eroded his hero's journey
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The entire point of Stephen Strange ending where he did was he was the biggest asshole of all time and then got humbled like a jabroni
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In fact, he keeps getting humbled because he thinks he knows best (lol doctor) and constantly has to admit he underestimated a foe or overestimated himself
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Unlike a lot of heroes, his is an ongoing journey of self-improvement. That's 100% rooted in his origins in the 60s psychedelia movement and Eastern mysticism popular at the time
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most Eastern religions will tell you that enlightenment is a path you tread, and Nirvana only happens after you've been going around the block 983223472342 times.
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Strange, over and over, has to reaffirm this, and make sure that he's not getting too big an ego. He's mostly successful at it.
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So writers who only see him swinging in mid-battle with the biggest sorcery-dick are all "OMG EW, DEUS EX MACHINA, HE CAN DO WHATEVER HE WANTS FOR THE PLOT"
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And all the intellectuals be like: "lol u a lazy writer"
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I mean, fuck, even Iron Man has to build a thing in order to overcome some stuff. Tony Stark's power is his brain, and no one is going around saying that he's basic af without a suit of armor!
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Why the hell do people do it to Doctor Strange?
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Stephen Strange's power is knowledge
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STEPHEN STRANGE'S POWER IS KNOWLEDGE
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As one of my fave Doc writers says: Doctor Strange learned the cheat codes of the universe
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And in order to cripple that, you'd have to recode the fucking universe
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You don't just turn to shit because you lost your magic flying clothes. You know all the spells and tricks from all those years of Sorcerer'ing around, and that can't be taken away
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Comics!Strange is so old he literally isn't in debt to most gods anymore, but he's nice enough to call on them anyway
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See: that whole "not being an asshole" thing
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Movie!Strange has only a slightly altered method, in that they haven't straight up invoked any elder gods
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the Ancient One just showed him cosmic cheat codes for shields and stuff, and he was off to the races from there
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He had a whole montage of being in the library reading books of spells and absorbing those talents
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So I hate to say this but the only way you're gonna "depower" Strange is to give him fucking amnesia
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Which someone actually did to Tony Stark and I will never forgive them for it
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(Matt Fraction, it was Matt Fraction)
12 minutes ago
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(My hate boner for him will have to wait until another time)
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So this mostly concludes my essay
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Thank you, no questions at this time
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(jk u can ask questions)