In a comment on another thread, Amanda said that she’d rather be able to turn invisible or stop time than change sex. Which seems like as good a topic as any for a silly thread.
So what power would you have? Or, if you prefer, what power do you most often find yourself wishing for?
Me, I’d choose something similar to time-stopping; I’d want a rewind button for life. The “do over” power, I guess it’s called. That’s not the neatest power imaginable, but it’s the power I’ve most often found myself wishing for.
(No fair picking something saintly-but-boring like the power to end bigotry or world hunger or something like that!)
Is eternal health considered a power, or merely an attribute? I’d take it, but if it isn’t considered a power, I’ll take the laying-of-hands type healing at a touch powers. This may sound like a saintly-but-boring “end bigotry” type superpower, but the way I see it, 1) I could make good money as a doctor, 2) It would be good to be able to use it on myself, in case of emergencies (in which I was still conscious) and 3) some other powers are actually achievable through some form of technology. (i.e. you can take the power to shoot a fireball or shoot lightning from your fingertips to kill someone, but on the other hand you can also just buy a gun..You can take the power to run at 100 miles per hour, but on the other hand you can just buy a powerful motorcycle or car.) Healing people quickly would be nice, but we haven’t really come up with any technological substitutes for the magical power.
I would choose the ability to become instantly fluent in any language I wanted to. Being able to fly or lift the remote with only the power of my mind would be cool, but not as cool as saying “I want to be able to speak Polish” and suddenly being able to speak Polish.
The ability to have perfection information about and to freely adjust all the characteristics of any particle or set of particles in the universe.
(And then when it was time to turn in my physics homework, I could tell the professor “I’m sorry, but I found out the exact velocity of every particle of my homework paper, and now I don’t know where it is.”)
I would like the power to speak to the dead and have them answer me. And if I can’t have that one, I would like the power to make people tell the truth. I would like to know what would happen if the dead could tell tales, or if politicians could only tell the truth.
I’d want the power to be the inconspicuous fly on the wall any time I chose. Up high, out of swatting range.
Actually, it’s a really interesting exercise to ask people which of two superpowers would they prefer, flight or the ability to turn invisible. The person’s answer is supposed to reflect their personality. If they answer invisibility, they’re shy and instrospective, and would rather not be seen. Those who answer the ability to fly are the opposite, outgoing and have no problem performing in front of a crowd.
However, that question ignores the best of all superpowers–mind control.
I’d love to be a mind reader since, apparently, this is what some of my students think I should be when they dispute their papers — “that’s not what I meant here, you should grade me on what I meant!”
A photographic memory would be nice. Or the ability to not sleep.
I’d want the power to end bigotry . . . with my laser eyes!! Yeah, laser eyes would be cool. Also mind control. In fact, why not go for the whole shebang and choose my power to be omnipotence. Then people would be like – oh no, you can’t fight Raznor – he’s omnipotent! Good times.
Teleportation, without a doubt. My family and friends are scattered all over the country, and even short-range I spend about 10 hours a week in buses or cars.
Besides, it’d be nice to jaunte back to Hawaii in the wintertime whenever the snow piles up too much.
I heard that on This American Life, Andy. Turns out that women are more like to pick invisibility and men the ability to fly. The guy got all deep into the personality thing, but to me it seemed that women are always being looked at and that would be a break for them. The flying thing speaks to male socialization as well–the competitive socialization of men can exhaust men, and the flying thing is a fantasy that you are the top dog without having to work for it. Either way, it offers the person a break from gender expectations.
If I could stop time, I’d probably end up using it for social good, but I’d have fun with it. Like I would single-handedly ruin Bush’s ability to destroy Social Security by following him around and every time he’s making a speech, I would stop time, pull his pants down, run back into place and start time again. His credibility would be shot or he’d stop leaving the White House altogether. Same for anyone pushing his deceitful legislation. You lie in a speech to the American people, your pants fall down. I’d be the Honest Avenger.
I would pick shapeshifting, because it would be awesome. I’d particularly like the totally unlimited kind that ignores conservation of mass, but I could deal with conserving my mass if I had to.
Oh, definitely the ability to add hours to my days that no one else has. I’d like to be able to step out of regular time and do my own thing–whether it’s catching up on work, leisure, or sleep–and then step back in to everyone else’s time when I’m ready. I suppose this also represents somewhat anti-social tendencies, since all the time I was in my own time, I’d be alone.
unlimited telekinetic power &/or invulnerability.
yeah, that sounds good.
heh heh heh…
muwh-ha HA HA HA HA! ah HA HA HA HA HAAAA!!!!!
Fools! They’ll all rue the day they…. they… umm…
sorry…
i was just thinking about… stuff.
Controlling the weather. Think of the money you could make insuring that people would have good weather for their weddings. That, and you could end drought thereby reducing hunger, yadayadayada.
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Hi all im 79 a ww2 navy vet, live a full fun life after 4 divorces i still have a loving girl friend Ball room dance at least twice weekly- and work sculpting stone mostly every day . my wish is foe me alone and that is to continue to do what im doing now for another 11 years and then to die in my sleep with no pain and be able to leave my 5 children equal parts of my large ethnographic art collection to say nothing about the 10 acre –160 monumental and garden sized stone sculptures but more as im working on LARGE stone even as i WISH —cr
Telekinesis!
Gee, Dubya, you really are annoying me and making an ass out of yourself today. What’s that? Did a piano just fall on the president?
I’m gonna have to go with teleportation, too. All the time I would save, commuting to work and school, never having to cross campus in five minutes or less, hopping off to wherever, whenever!!
And if I decided to use my powers for awesome, instead of good (TM StrongBad), think of the “master thief” potentials of being able to teleport into, say, a bank vault at 2 am…
Amanda, I think I heard it on This American Life too.
When I heard the flying vs. invisibility thing on This American Life, I imagined the idyllic life I would lead if I were invisible. I wouldn’t have to wear clothing if I didn’t want to, I could sleep outdoors without fear of assault, live at the beach, scavenge food left on people’s plate at the ritziest restaurants..
But I think invisibility would come in second to the power to read minds.
Super-speed. I could finally keep my home clean.
Note that invisibility may not be practical in cold climates.
I would want to fly! I’d even do the corny superhero stance if I had to, to have my ability!
I want to be Samantha from Bewitched and be able to teleport, change appearance, maybe even turn the odd person into a toad every now and then.
I would, of course, settle for a more realistic “superpower”: the power to not suddenly have to pee every time I realize I’m stuck in a really long traffic jam.
Teleportation with a weight allowance of about 1000 tons. I’d make a killing as a “next minute” shipping company, be able to maintain LDRs, have a great home in the middle of nowhere, and live within “walking” of downtown Manhattan. No mind control or telepathy. That’s too much responsibility.
ahh, a discussion I have had many a time.
my answer always is probability manipulation. this is a lot more powerful than most people immediately think. sure, I could clean up in Vegas. but it’s really a super power that allows you do crazy, saintly things.
it’s hard, for example, to fight a war when it’s made a statistical impossiblity for your weapons NOT to break when you attempt to use them.
of course, it really would have to be something I was aware of, so I suppose to do the crazy, saintly stuff, I’d need a layer of omniscience first.
but then, I have probability manipulation. I could just guess and always happen to be right.
I can jump of a sky scraper, KNOWING that my power will do SOMETHING to make sure I don’t die.
hell, if I can apply it to a quantum level, I can start doing really insane things. because there’s always a chance, albeit infinitessimal, that laws of physics as we know them will cease to apply. so lead can turn into gold, or all the air in a room will just slide to one side, leaving a vacuum.
hell, I’ve even got a superhero name. “Even Money.”
“Holy Unlikelyhood, Batman! what do you suppose the odds of all the crooks guns jamming at once, then having a light fixture fall on them, rendering them all unconscious?” “it seems impossible, boy wonder”
and then I pop up from the background “actually, I’d say it’s about 1 to 1.”
damn, that’s an awesome catchphrase.
of course, I’d probably get killed off destroying some extrademensional menace during Crisis 2(TM)
I’d like to have the power to mesmerize people into telling me the truth about things they’d really rather not speak about. I mentioned this on my blog. I also mentioned that I actually have that power now. ;)
Flying, talking to animals, and claws. And immortality.
I wish I’d thought of probability manipulation first. Let’s see, how about the power to reverse the arrow of time (entropy) in specifc ways? This guarantees me as much fame and fortune as I want, while creating the possibility of eternal life.
Maybe it comes from watching Twilight Zone at an impressionable age, but when I think about it, I always see some personal super power as coming to a no-good end.
Like the power to go back in time and change decisions in my life. What if I had decided to accept at college X, and forego attendance at college Y, where I did in fact graduate? I suspect that could I have gone back in time and gone to college X instead, I probably would have got myself killed by a drunken frat boy in a hit and run my very first week. So much for a better outcome in my life….
Probability manipulation… that was the power of The Scarlet Witch. A very cool power. But definately a two-edged sword.
Probably the superhero with strangest power was Matter-Eater Lad. Yes he was a regular character.
I, personally, would pick super-intelligence.
After I took my then-eleven-year-old sister to see X2: X-Men United, I decided the power I really wanted was Kurt Wagner’s teleporting ability. It can’t be just the ability to teleport: I insist on having the *bamf* sound effects and the clouds of purple smoke.
My sister, of course, wanted Wolverine’s claws.
Time teleporation at will. Any other possibilities are pretty much obtainable after that.
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different from scarlet witch, but yes.
more akin to the probabilty magic from mage: the ascension.
although, for comic effect, another one came up before probability manipulation.
that’s the ability to do anything, provided I don’t know I can’t.
sort of like the looney toons “I can’t fall if I don’t see there’s a chasm beneath me” writ large.
it’s a super power that gets progressively worse as time goes on, as eventually, someone saying “you can’t lift a bus, it’s too heavy” would forever rob me of my power to throw vehicles like the Infraggable Bulk
I would like the power to make people only use logic when arguing; and also the power to force them to hear their opponent’s logic. Perhaps this power could be used for short time periods only – it might be too exhausting for everyone if it went on for ever.
Teleportation would be very tempting, especially since I have a long way to travel to do anything interesting at the moment, but on balance I would go for the ability to know what other people are thinking about me at any given time. Oh, the misunderstandings that could have avoided lately.
Anyone remember Manimal — a swiftly cancelled (and truly terrible) TV show from the mid ’80s about a guy who could through mystic Eastern breathing techniques turn himself into the animal of his choice? That’s what I want — you get flight, (effective) invisibility, and all sorts of other great stuff as well.
time travel, at will, to any place or time in history or the future. By far my first choice.
stopping time (so I could get things done by deadline :), would be second.
i wold want to get super gazzets and super stenght
Omnipotence
Dude, ted, I like so said that in comment 9.
Dude, Raznor, so I’m not allowed to want the same superpower?
But, duuuude, we can’t have two omnipotent superheroes. And if a superhero and villain were both omnipotent, their dramatic battle would destroy the universe!!
I like freezing power or I like to be able to fly.I want that someone do a spell on me to have those two powers.I wish.
i am currenlty writing a storie about 8 youngsters who develop super powers . and picking abilitys for 8 diferant people is way hard.
but for my self i guess id like to have the ability to rearrange molicules into anything that i wanted to , like take a bunch of differant materials and rearrange them into what ever i wanted or take people and turn them into semi inteligent piles of goo change lead into gold etc etc boy the fun i could have, failing that id like to have kinesis-kinesis the ability to use the full potential of the human mind pyro, tela,hydro,the entire gumalt of mental powers . bad guys beware lol
would have to be the ability to control water. because i love to swim and to be able to control it would be the best thing plus i want to become a marine biologist and if the wave were too high and could make the water calm