Martian Nanotech Superhero 'Verse

[Adelene]

Proper Matilda TK is magic, and this world doesn't have that, so, yeah. Super Bluetooth is a really cool idea, though! And that *would* actually get her a pass on the age front, since for something that complicated you'd definitely want to do it as young as you possibly could.

[Kappa]

XDDDDDDDDDD

And she could come up with the idea and significant parts of the design herself, which I imagine would help indicate that she could handle it. XD

edit: And then I bet a Tony hears about Matilda and is like, "I wanna do that," and designs complicated Iron Man suits without the intervention of nanites. Would the project approach a ~17-year-old Tony Stark who was merrily building him- or herself Iron Man 3-level suits? XD

[Adelene]

They'd be more concerned about her maturity than her technical skills, on the age front, but I imagine she'd impress them with that, and then her requested powers (which they definitely ask about on the application, along with why the applicant wants those powers in particular) would be enough to get them to have her come in that year instead of waiting 'till she met the usual minimum age.

[Kappa]

With "indicate that she could handle it" I was thinking more the specific ability to get accustomed to this particular power and make good use of it - I feel like designing it herself is a good indicator that she'd have an easier time getting comfortable with it than most people, because she'd understand what she was doing, you know? And then, yes, she impresses them with her maturity. ^^ I love Matildas.

[Adelene]

Not necessarily, actually - the problem with that sort of thing is sensory overload, and besides the age factor it's really hard to predict what any given person will be able to handle there. It's not a huge deal if that goes wrong, compared to something like wings or super strength, but they'd still really rather not bring her in, go through everything, and then end up having to surgically remove her fancy new toy because it gives her debilitating migraines, yanno? And they've got enough experience with that to have a pretty good idea that even thirteen is kind of pushing it, and a fifteen year old wouldn't have good odds at all, so it very much comes down to the question of maturity.

[Kappa]

But, hmm... the upper age limit is the one that's sensory-related, right? I feel like there might also be a practical lower limit - not necessarily on age, although I'd expect it to correlate - where somebody might be able to come up with the idea of being followed around by a flock of helpful fairies, but have a hard time adjusting to them in reality because of the comparative difficulty of understanding their capacities and limitations and integrating them into everyday life, relative to something simpler like superstrength or radio communication. In that respect, Matilda's set.

Or to put it another way - I feel like Super Bluetooth With Helpful Robots is the kind of power that is maximally useful to someone who has a strong and nuanced understanding of the Helpful Robots in question.

[Adelene]

Ah, yeah I get it. In a practical sense, though: sort of maybe? Mostly they'd be looking at whether she'd cause or run into trouble, more than at whether she'd be able to get some amount of use out of them right away; so long as she gets in enough practice to keep the skill from completely atrophying, it doesn't matter if she doesn't use the robots for much of anything until she's older, they'll still count it as a win - the fact that Matilda in particular won't run into that problem is a bonus, but not decisive given their actual goals. (They actually tend to run a little bit sociopathic, in this regard - not malicious at all, and strongly ethical as far as their ethics go, but it gets kind of obvious sometimes that nobody there is doing the 'look out for my fellow human' thing.)

[Kappa]

Heh. If that's the attitude they're taking, Matilda might just decide to go hang out with Tony Stark instead of sticking around to help with the nanite research XD Matildas are very much the "look out for my fellow person" type, and I think they'd prefer an environment where that attitude was supported.