Post a seemingly useless superpower, or try to figure out how to make use of a superpower that someone else has posted.
Solar-powered night vision.
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Post a seemingly useless superpower, or try to figure out how to make use of a superpower that someone else has posted.
Solar-powered night vision.
Solar power actually doesn't disappear the moment the sun goes down, so this could still be effective. This is why solar powered torches exist. With that said, the obvious use is to see in the dark.
As for a seemingly useless device... submarine windscreen wiper.
Perfect for cleaning condensation that builds up on windows due to temperature differentials between the ocean and your vessel's controlled environment. You just place them inside the windows, not outside. :)
Also, Dazzler has a great power, she was just too stupid to ever use it effectively (at least in her original incarnation). The ability to convert sound into light? Pair with Banshee, and you have a perfectly sustainable, extremely high power laser. And that's a simple use. Heck, she's practically Captain America's shield (sounds are vibrations, after all, so nullifying vibratory energy is certainly something she can do), and that's just her defense. Explosives typically work via overpressure waves, which means that she could probably absorb/redirect those as well. The term "bomb-pumped laser" comes to mind.
For when you slam into fish underwater and need to wipe their guts off the screen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loony BoB
...Okay. I guess that goes in this thread.Quote:
Originally Posted by Skyblade
Anyway: the ability to fly at Mach 1, but only downwards.
You'd make a great tactical nuke.EDIT: and besides, downwards is relative, so you could probably function alright in space.
Without the power to survive an impact while traveling at mach one, let alone the power to fly, I would say there is exactly no purpose whatsoever given that you couldn't control it in any way whatsoever.
Jiro, you have to come up with another seemingly useless power! And I just realised that it's power, not device, so my one was rather pointless. Oops. I'll come up with another one, then: The ability to grow your hair exactly 25% faster than normal.
Actually, Jiro did state fly at Mach 1. Also, depending on which definition you use, flight can easily refer to controlled travel (versus gliding or other means of air conveyance).Quote:
Originally Posted by Loony BoB
However, the incredible restrictions do make it difficult to use. If that is the exact limit of your power, engaging it would either break the universe or kill you instantly. Or both. Since you can only fly at Mach 1, there could be no other speeds used for acceleration purposes.
Of course, if we assume that the power itself is controlled, depending on how it worked, it could save your life. You fall off a cliff and immediately turn the power on. When the power stops (either from you turning it off, or if it is automatically cancelled once you hit the ground, as "flight" is only possible through air) it could restore your pre-power speed, which means you'd hit the ground at a much more leisurely pace.
Actually, the thread said post one or find use for one someone else posted. Not both. And I'm way better at thinking up uses than I am useless powers.Quote:
Jiro, you have to come up with another seemingly useless power!
Define "normal". If you mean 25% faster than average, there are plenty of people with such growth rates already, which means it hardly even qualifies it as a power.Quote:
And I just realised that it's power, not device, so my one was rather pointless. Oops. I'll come up with another one, then: The ability to grow your hair exactly 25% faster than normal.
As for a use, well, if you're ever stuck on a desert island and need to make a rope of human hair to lash together a couple of sea turtles to escape... That power will make it easier, even if only a little.
The thread doesn't really work if you don't post up useless powers. Pretty sure it's meant to be make the useless power useful and then post another for the next poster to deal with.
The ability to see exactly 30 seconds into the past.
Is it anyone's past, or only the user's?
If it's the user's, is it from a first-person perspective or a third-person perspective?
If the latter, and then the former, that's EFFIN USELESS MAN, but if the latter and latter again? Could be cool. Definitely situational.
The ability to dictate faster than an auctioneer.
Assuming you change this to a rate that is actually superhuman (25% faster than average/median growth rates is within human parameters, and therefore not superhuman. Powers that regular humans can possess are by definition not superpowers, just powers), rapid hair growth could earn you some extra money, as you could sell it to people who make hair extensions out of real hair.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loony BoB
I would've gone the Jesus route with "turning water into hair."Quote:
Originally Posted by Loony BoB
Guy runs you over, and you managed to glimpse his license plate and memorize the first three digits, so you see through your own eyes thirty seconds ago so you can remember the OTHER three digits. Especially if you can grab a pad and paper and write it down while you're looking at the past.Quote:
Originally Posted by LocoColt04
Heck, that power's good for quite a hell of a lot of witness situations. Guy mugs you on the street? Scrutinize his face carefully at your leisure thirty seconds after he's no longer paying attention to you, so you can better describe it to the cops.
That is brilliant, actually.
The passive ability to 'hear' the thoughts of every living thing you are within a one mile radius of. That includes dustmites.
As long as it's accompanied by the ability to focus on a given thought (just like you can focus on a person talking in a crowded, noisy room), that's only slightly weaker than general mind reading. Particularly as dust mites' thoughts aren't very well formed (they do have a brain with a limited capacity for learning from experience, but not much more than that; and yes, dust mites are arachnids).
Quite well thought out, except that it's not "at your leisure". You can only look 30 seconds back.Quote:
Originally Posted by YerushalmiGuy runs you over, and you managed to glimpse his license plate and memorize the first three digits, so you see through your own eyes thirty seconds ago so you can remember the OTHER three digits. Especially if you can grab a pad and paper and write it down while you're looking at the past.Quote:
Originally Posted by LocoColt04
Heck, that power's good for quite a hell of a lot of witness situations. Guy mugs you on the street? Scrutinize his face carefully at your leisure thirty seconds after he's no longer paying attention to you, so you can better describe it to the cops.
If you got hit by a vehicle, you'd probably be too dazed/shocked to use it. Similarly if you were mugged. You'd need to be looking into the past at the latest 30 seconds after he left your field of view, and that would only give you a single instant of viewing before it started showing you the time when he was already gone.
Sure, it would work if you had an eidetic memory, but if that's the case, you don't need it anyway.
EDIT: Also, sorry, I didn't realize this was Wonder Square. I thought it was General Chat, which is why I was treating it more as a general discussion than a "game".
I am really, really not good at the "thinking new ones up" part, though, so I'm just going to point out that Yerushalmi solved one without putting up a new one, and head on out.
By "at your leisure" I meant not "whenever you like" but rather "once you are no longer in mortal danger".Quote:
Originally Posted by Skyblade
Perhaps, but there are a million other situations where it can be useful, like when I see a car running a red light and memorized the "How's my driving" phone number but not the license plate or vice versa (which happens to me rather maddeningly often).Quote:
Originally Posted by Skyblade
I didn't put one up because I don't believe there are any. Unless it's literally not a superpower (like Mirage's point regarding hair growth rates), I don't think there's a single one without some specialized use.Quote:
Originally Posted by Skyblade
You'd go insane within a day though, so I wouldn't call that a "power" so much as a curse. Unless you could actually focus on an individual thought, in which case it could come in at least somewhat useful, even if you can't figure out whose thought it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loony BoB
The ability to read your own thoughts, but only when you're thinking them. And with a half-second delay.
Now that's useless.
That's also not a superpower. I can do that myself by thinking a sentence, repeating each syllable twice.
Not necessarily. You hear a thought, you repeat it, hear it again, repeat it, etcetera. It lets you hold on to thoughts for quite a while, though admittedly it would take some concentration.Quote:
Originally Posted by TigmafuzzYou'd go insane within a day though, so I wouldn't call that a "power" so much as a curse. Unless you could actually focus on an individual thought, in which case it could come in at least somewhat useful, even if you can't figure out whose thought it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loony BoB
The ability to read your own thoughts, but only when you're thinking them. And with a half-second delay.
Now that's useless.
I'd use it to hang on to dreams, using the recursive loop to last through the period where you normally lose them.
I agree. That's why I didn't post any either. Ever power I could think of, even when I was trying to think of useless ones, I could find a way to apply.Quote:
I didn't put one up because I don't believe there are any. Unless it's literally not a superpower (like Mirage's point regarding hair growth rates), I don't think there's a single one without some specialized use.
That's not a superpower! That's a weakness. (I mean, it's also a mental disorder so I don't want to sound rude, but... as character flaws go, it falls into that department.)Quote:
Originally Posted by Tigmafuzz
But I suppose the point was to FIND a use for useless "powers" and such? Um... to reiterate EXACTLY what your thought process was to someone who said "what?!" when you did a really stupid quick action.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LocoColt04
Invulnerability to bullets, activated by getting killed with a bullet.
Even though I don't think it's a superpower, I've thought of a use. If we're living in a world with superpowers, we're clearly in a comic book - and this is exactly the sort of power that would give you immunity to mind control, using the comic book logic "if you can hear what you're thinking half a second after you think it, then you'll hear the difference between your own thoughts and the ones the supervillain is forcing you to think, and you'll break free".Quote:
Originally Posted by Tigmafuzz
Heck, doesn't that sound exactly like the sort of thing that would be explained at length to nobody but the reader in internal thought bubbles by a third-tier X-Men character?
The ability to speak really really fast? Heck of a lot of uses. You'll get hired for prescription drug commercials, for one.Quote:
Originally Posted by LocoColt04
Three possible responses:Quote:
Originally Posted by Tigmafuzz
1) That's not a superpower. If you or I get killed by a bullet, we'd be no longer adversely affected by bullets either.
2) You can get killed and resuscitated via CPR.
3) Do you know how many times people die and come back to life in comic books? :)
smurfing Jason Todd.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yerushalmi
smurf you guys I couldn't think of a super power don't try to change the rules on me
The ability to change the rules as to what defines something as a superpower.
Redefine "superpower" to be "the guy who cut me off in traffic", and suddenly he's the only one in the world who has to comply with the terms of the Superpower Registration Act.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tigmafuzz
Another use: sacrificing yourself to save others in a shootout. Most people who get hit with a bullet and just die are no good to anyone; your friends can use your invulnerable corpse as cover.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tigmafuzz