Finding a use for a seemingly useless superpower

[Skyblade]

If the latter, and then the former, that's EFFIN USELESS MAN

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.

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.

Quite well thought out, except that it's not "at your leisure". You can only look 30 seconds back.

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.

[Yerushalmi]

Quite well thought out, except that it's not "at your leisure". You can only look 30 seconds back.

By "at your leisure" I meant not "whenever you like" but rather "once you are no longer in mortal danger".

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.

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).

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.

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.

[Tigmafuzz]

The passive ability to 'hear' the thoughts of every living thing you are within a one mile radius of. That includes dustmites.

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.

The ability to read your own thoughts, but only when you're thinking them. And with a half-second delay.

Now that's useless.

[Yerushalmi]

That's also not a superpower. I can do that myself by thinking a sentence, repeating each syllable twice.

[Skyblade]

The passive ability to 'hear' the thoughts of every living thing you are within a one mile radius of. That includes dustmites.

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.

The ability to read your own thoughts, but only when you're thinking them. And with a half-second delay.

Now that's useless.

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.

I'd use it to hang on to dreams, using the recursive loop to last through the period where you normally lose them.

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.

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.

[LocoColt04]

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 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.)

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.

The ability to dictate faster than an auctioneer.

[Tigmafuzz]

Invulnerability to bullets, activated by getting killed with a bullet.

[Yerushalmi]

The ability to read your own thoughts, but only when you're thinking them. And with a half-second delay.

Now that's useless.

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".

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 dictate faster than an auctioneer.

The ability to speak really really fast? Heck of a lot of uses. You'll get hired for prescription drug commercials, for one.

Invulnerability to bullets, activated by getting killed with a bullet.

Three possible responses:
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?

[Tigmafuzz]

3) Do you know how many times people die and come back to life in comic books?

smurfing Jason Todd.

[Jiro]

smurf you guys I couldn't think of a super power don't try to change the rules on me

[Tigmafuzz]

The ability to change the rules as to what defines something as a superpower.

[Yerushalmi]

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.

Invulnerability to bullets, activated by getting killed with a bullet.

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.