A lot of them assuming you don’t get the required secondary powers.
Super speed, if your perceptions aren’t heightened it rapidly becomes impractical, if they are things are going to get painfully boring real quick. Even thinking at double speed means you are going to be waiting for the world to catch up a lot. Never mind what even relatively low G-forces can do to someone.
Super-hearing. Imagine if you really could hear conversations a block away, it can be hard enough discerning one conversation in a crowded room, imagine it being like that everywhere. All the rats and insects you will be hearing, the sound of people’s clothes rubbing together. Even if normally loud things aren’t deafening just focusing on one thing will be taxing.
If you don’t get secondary powers then super strength is going to suck. The human body is already capable of injuring itself with its own strength. How many fastball pitchers get arm or shoulder injuries just from throwing something really fast, or power-lifters who have something break or burst. Modern sporting records are starting to push up against the structural limits of the human body.
Super-hearing. Imagine if you really could hear conversations a block away, it can be hard enough discerning one conversation in a crowded room, imagine it being like that everywhere. All the rats and insects you will be hearing, the sound of people’s clothes rubbing together. Even if normally loud things aren’t deafening just focusing on one thing will be taxing.
Super hearing would essentially be tinnitus with some variety in the inescapable noise.
Also it would be similar to the experience a lot of autistic people have with their sense of hearing. Feeling overwhelmed by the background noise of every nearby animal, bit of noisy clothing, conversation, and heavy machinery is par for the course for me.
Duuude what if tinnitus is the superpower trying to happen? 🤯
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I think the superhearing power is going to be different than you think. You can already hear your clothes rubbing against skin, the air conditioning blowing, etc. Your brain is pretty good at filtering those out. Now, the conversations will be more difficult, but think about your experiences at a party. Most of the time you can hear another group’s conversation if you listened and focused on them, but you can tune them out (most of the time, ignoring the cocktail party effect stuff for now). Unless you have focus issues already, it wouldn’t be a big deal. The issue would be the initial period where your brain has to learn what exactly to filter out. Right now, a rustle to my right would be a bad sign, and hearing a rat crawling through the wall would freak me out. After a few weeks though, I bet I’d have adjusted.
Yeah, I don’t mean my own clothes, (though I do quite often hear them). I mean everyone’s. I’ve also spent quite a bit of time living in a building where you could hear the rats moving about rather clearly (through a combination of a rat problem and some poor construction decisions.) Yes it goes from a ‘what was that?’ alert to a ‘oh it’s the rats’ but you still notice. It’s very different to continuous background noises like AC or traffic.
Loving one’s life as if always at a loud party is exactly the thing I’m seeing as the problem. Yes you can actively focus on something specific, but always having to do that is going to be unpleasant. Never mind all the stuff you are going to overhear that you don’t want to overhear.
Yeah, as someone with misophonia, I can’t imagine my hearing getting better than it is. Already I can’t tune stuff out, and it’s not just people talking. It’s ALL the lawn work in my neighborhood! It’s the bunny rustling leaves in my backyard from my bedroom. It’s the fan in the fridge that everyone else just blocks out. The gurgle of the fish tank. Lights make a high pitched noise, as do other electronics. That’s all before people. The amount of noises people make that others tune out is so much! Rubbing your fingers together. The spit in your mouth right before you speak. If I’m cuddling with you, the liquid squish your eyes make when you blink. The creaking and popping of your joints! Even just breathing is a loud constant. Most everyone else is filtering all this out, but it’s not something you can learn to time out. You either can or you can’t, and if you can’t you end up literally moving because your neighbor coughs too much and it wakes you up in the middle of the night.
Super speed would come with similar issues as super strength. You would get less than a block, and you’d just be a skeleton.
Not to mention, the concept of saving someone from being hit by a car, likely results in 1 or (more likely) both of you being turned into paste from the impact.
Superpowers really only work in comics and movies, in real life there’s just too many variables.
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Honestly the best super power IMO is the ability to open gateways in time and space
Seeing as the earth is constantly moving at 1600 km/h I feel like it would be incredibly difficult to actually open a portal on earth in the past or future
Seeing as position is relative, why not?
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Super strength is something I could see being problematic.
The movies always show the super strong hero picking up buses or trains with one hand, but in reality you have to lift such vehicles in specific places, or they will be damaged. Youtube is full of videos depicting cars falling from mechanic’s lifts due to improper lift point placement, or just old fasioned rust. Imagine Mr. Incredible going to pick up a bus in a state where the roads are salted, and just breaking off a handful of the frame.
This is the kind of gritty reality I’d like to see in a movie. Stuff is constantly breaking when the hero tries to pick it up, he has to go through a montage of classes on structure and how to choose the best place to grab onto things.
Also leverage. Unless the super strength comes with stability, lifing a boulder from the edge would just make the hero’s feet slip out from under them. He has to lift one side straight up until he can fit underneath to balance the thing. Then he has to hope that the ground below can withstand all the weight of the boulder pressing on the soles of his feet.
Also super strong guy has to grow morbidly obese in order to gain a slight mechanical advantage over whatever he’s trying to move
Haha, yeah!
I’d just depict it as super strong guy ripping panels off of vehicles or tearing wheels and shit off.
Additionally, see the essay Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex by Larry Niven
Overthinking? Yes, intentionally. Gross and funny? Also yes!
I have a collection of short stories that includes that essay. Long time fan of Niven!
Also, even if you were that strong, the calories you’d have to eat to pick up that shit and put out that much force would be insane. The Hulk would have to eat wheelbarrows of food after throwing cars around
I have wondered before how many cheeseburgers Cyclops would have to eat to power his laser eyes.
Could be “scientifically” countered by nuclear fusion/fission of the atoms in the food eaten.
I never thought about that but you’re correct. You can mess up your car really bad if you put the carjack anywhere else than the strong parts of the frame.
Yup. Same with ‘slowing things down’ too quickly - sure you might save the bus but the strawberry jam inside isn’t going to appreciate it.
Like when Ironman falls out of the sky and slams into the ground. He’s always just fine.
Haha I’ve thought of that. Maybe they can add that to a Deadpool movie or something with a super strong character ripping up a car finding the lift points.
Any sort of super strength without added toughness and motor control. You’d break your own body let alone everything around you pretty fast. Same for juggernaut movement. Or high jump type flight.
Also, forget picking up buildings or planes. Most things would break or crumble under their own weight as soon as you tried to pick them up.
Insert: >Superman is actually a psychokinetic
I think this is the way they explained it away. But then other extremely strong supes can lift gigantic things as well. I’m actually OK with them not trying to explain it.
Pdf warning: https://www.qwantz.com/fanart/superman.pdf
Superman actually controls the inertia of matter he comes in contact with.
Forever War delved into the problems with super strength. The power armor took a humongous amount of training to be used finely enough in everyday tasks and not break something or someone. A simple handshake between someone in power armor and someone without could result in crushed bones or a ripped off arm. A great show of skill in using the power armor was the main character sitting down in office and writing a letter with pen and paper while wearing the armor!
Another great example of how dangerous superstrength is when dealing with non-superstrength people was in anime Beastars where one big carnivore accidentally ripped off the arm of his smaller non-carnivore friend. In-lore was said to be a very common thing to the extent that limb reattachment is a common medical procedure.
My Hero Academia deals with this
I think that’s why I love that series. Each quirk has a consequence to it. One-for-all can store and unleash energy, but unless you use that stored power to reinforce the opposite forces, your bones will disintegrate
I had always wanted my superpower to be flight obviously because flight is the shit. I went to my local theme park after the Batman ride opened. I can hear what you thinking Batman doesn’t fly. This particular coaster, they put you in laying down on your back, lock you in and then the bat wing flips you over. Every negative G turn, unless you’re gripping onto things with your hands, you just rag doll. Even if you could magically work out flight it would just be a constant painful workout trying to keep your limbs from looking stupid while you’re doing it.
Or high jump type flight. Flashbacks to Morrowind. Poor Tarhiel.
Being able to turn into metal/sand/water/bats/lettuce or whatever without additional magic would destroy the structure and state of your brain immediately.
I think you guys are overthinking things too much. In a world in which some magical phenomenon can turn you into a lettuce, all of a sudden you draw the line at brain functions?
Obviously the brain is just encoded into the lettuce DNA
Maybe it works like caterpillar goop in the cocoon. It’s goop, and not exactly a caterpillar anymore, but experiments have shown that there’s at least some persistence of being, even after the former caterpillar-goop has become a butterfly. E.g. If you train a caterpillar to react to a specific stimuli with a negative response, the resultant butterfly will respond to the same stimuli in the same way that the caterpillar did.
Disregard modernity. Embrace lettuce.
Teleportation. Unless truly instantaneous, you need to account for the fact that the earth moves 18 miles per second relative to the sun.
And isn’t the solar system moving at like 500000 miles an hour around the milkyway too?
Teleportation and timetravel both have this issue where you have to take a fuckload of moving parts we don’t even completely understand yet, into account.
Time travel would have to imply teleportation as well. If teleportation is actually instant or ftl, it would also be at least some level of time travel as you would be able to move outside your causal envelope.
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The universe doesn’t care what you think is easier.
It moves, you moving from one point in the universe to another needs to take into account where all the moving parts are going.
Only instant teleportation, where nothing has had time to move, would work. But that would be akin to traveling back in time.
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Inertial systems are all equal in a certain relevant here sense, if there is no need for account for your movement relative to Sun, Galaxy, CMB, or anything else. Yes, in this sense, Sun also rotates around Earth.
On top of that you need to account for the fact that the earth’s surface is moving at different speeds depending on latitude and elevation. Even if you can do the calculations to hit your mark, there is most likely to be some energy mismatch that needs to be accounted for.
Very nicely addressed in the Jumper novels by Steven Gould.
This doesn’t make sense. The earth moves at very different speeds depending on what you compare it to. The only thing that makes sense is for the teleportation to be relative to the teleporter. Maybe it would still require taking into account rotation, instead of linear momentum. idk, still seems complicated.
But if it takes time, there’s a moment where you’re not there, and thus, the reference is lost.
Instant teleporting no problems though. I would even be okay with nightcrawler/Minecraft nether-like teleport where you travel through another locked in dimension.
What if you could “lock on” a target like in star trek?
Ability to stop time.
As soon as you stop time, everything will go pitch black. The photons which refract off everything will be absorbed by your eyes instantaneously.
Assuming you could still see, it would be freezing everywhere as the heat would dissipate the moment you touched it.
Assuming you could still see, and wouldn’t freeze to death, if you were to unfreeze time, the human-shaped vacuum tube you created while walking from point A to B would collapse violently, killing you, and anyone else standing close to it.
This also assumes that with time stopped, you can push microscopic particles around. If not, then any movement at all will make every molecule around you act as radiation, and and dust will feel like tiny razor blades, ripping through your body.
Also, the ability to stop time doesn’t guarantee the ability to start it again.
Also, the ability to stop time doesn’t guarantee the ability to start it again.
That’s some Monkey’s Paw shit right here
Lack of light is something that does come up with the History Monks in Discworld. Although they only slow down time, so they can see things, just very dimly lit.
mind reading. it would make you super sad super fast, because you’d always know when you’re being lied to.
I remember one of the tidbits I picked up from a psychology textbook was that people who were worse at knowing if their partner was lying were in happier relationships. Turns out that white lies are important.
Invisibility. It would also make you blind.
I think this is really the only thing there is, without assuming there isn’t “complete control” over it. You either sacrifice total invisibility to be a floating pair of eyes (or at least 1), or you’re blind but totally invisible. Making it truly impractical even if you have full control over the ability.
Great take on this in a D&D setting where a players character was able to roll incredibly high to notice an invisible person. The DM came up with this solution on the spot and made fantasy and logic weave together for a believable solution and an awesome situation:
I knew exactly what that was going to be before I clicked. Brennan is an incredible DM.
What if light is just refracted around you. You would be able to see, but it would look all rainbow like.
If everything but your pupils were invisible, and your pupils were 90% invisible, it’d probably be fine. Most humans can comfortably see with 10% of the light.
There is a character in My Hero Academia that can phase through objects, but when he activates his power he can’t see or hear anything as a result.
It depends on what kind of “invisibility” you mean, if you’d be able to assume the temperature and texture of any material you’d be invisible but could still see. If you mean invisibility by breaking light you can’t really say, since we don’t yet know how we could use this to make a human body invisible, thereforce we don’t know the counter meassures yet
if you’d be able to assume the temperature and texture of any material you’d be invisible but could still see.
That’s not invisibility just camouflage.
Like, you can have the same texture as the wall you are standing in front of, but you’d still show up as a human-shaped piece of wall protruding out. Or if a bug was to crawl on the wall behind you, you’d block it’s view.
That depends on the angle you’re looking at it from but yes.
But I don’t think we wouldn’t find any counter meassures if we happen to invent a perfect technology to turn invisible
Assuming that the invisibility is based on a physical property. You could also be psychically invisible where you manipulate others minds so they don’t see you.
But that would me more like “imperceivability”.
There was a TV show about a guy with super senses -hearing, smell, touch, vision. I grew up with brothers, learned to breathe defensively to not smell things, and remember thinking there is no way I would survive having a supernaturally sensitive sense of smell. There are just more bad smells than good in an average day.
I think also that hearing people’s thoughts would drive anyone crazy.
What I would like to have is super jumping and landing, sort of like flying but just bouncing.
I mean, my dog thinks garbage and shit are the greatest smells possible and he’s the most trustworthy person I know, so I have to assume it all circles back on itself somehow.
The Sentinel. I watched that back in the 90s.
That is it! I remember thinking what an awful boyfriend he would be. Like, it would just be so uncomfortable to think he was always thinking you stink because everything was dialed up to 2000%. Never wanting him to go down on you because any taste/smell would be so magnified. Perfumes would hurt him too. And he’d probably want you so quiet as well.
I never thought of that but yikes.
If I remember the show correctly, after the first few episodes he could mostly control when the enhanced senses were in use.
I mean, dogs somehow manage
Super speed. Even if you ignore the air friction and possible “everything moves too damn slow for me” problems, it doesn’t come with super endurance.
Fun fact! There’s a theory that the reason humans can’t run faster than ~25 mph is because at that speed the injuries from an impact become much more life threatening. So everyone who was capable of running that fast would generally die by running into something or tripping
Neat theory, but I dont think I buy in. When we have tools and packs to keep us safe from predators, and any old human can run down a gazelle by just jogging after them for an hour til they collapse from heat exhaustion, where is the evolutionary pressure to be a super-sprinter?
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Predators were a much bigger threat than you realize. Us being the dominant species has more to do with us being in groups. All it would take is one hunting trip gone wrong and your sprinting for your life.
Imagine
How
Slowly
It
Seems
Like
Everyone
Is
Talking
To
The
Flash.
Can you imagine what it’s like when they ask him to search the entire city for a bomb? To him he’s spending months or even years just walking around looking in every room, every trash can, under every car, etc.
They actually address this with the super speed character in I’m a Virgo. Flora’s superpower is that she’s always bored x_x
Same in Invincible. The speedster basically has ADD because everyone else is so slow in comparison
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Immortality. If you go to the bottom of the ocean or space without protection your muscles won’t get any more oxygen and you’ll get rigor mortis and basically be stuck forever.
Eventually Kars stopped thinking
Cuz that would be an irl situation. Lol
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This happened in the movie the guardians
Laser eyes/heat vision where you can’t see where to shoot.
Unless you get magic oakleys, a là Scott Summers.
Shape-shifting would almost certainly be agonizingly painful.
Not sure why it has to be. Being a superpower, it already defies logic. Why is it necessarily painful? I don’t see why the brain can’t temporarily shut off pain receptors if it’s already doing something fantastical.
I’m reminded of the Animorphs books, where they describe the process as grotesque and the odd sensations they feel.
The Animorphs series explores this quite well. It’s not actually painful for them, but should be and is plenty disturbing.
Only the first time. Then just leave out the nervous system going forward?
Super speed. Either you would need to also think and react at super speeds, which mean the world would be agonizingly slow, or you would have normal speed reaction in which case you would crash and die.
There is also the option of super reaction time on demand, but in any case non of this matters as super speed would make the air as “thick” as a concrete wall so you would also need to me super strong and super durable.
Also friction
This might not be a problem, since you could regulate how fast you run, in which case you could run as fast as a car which wouldn’t necessarily require other super stats
