Ever since I was a young lad I have fantasized about having powers.
I was always intrigued about controlling electricity.
You know, like Raiden from the Mortal Kombat games or like that guy in "Big Trouble In Little China"
I envision myself lying on my couch, my head on a comfortable pillow with the TV to my right sitting across the room, not paying attention to it and holding my hands up in front of me looking at them....electrical arcs shooting from one finger or hand to the next.
With a slight flick of my hand I would send those arcs from my fingers to my bare toes at the other end of the couch across the distance of my body and then back again.
Ultimately they would come back and strike my face, enveloping it.
Tendrils of electricity would swirl around my face making my eyes glow electric blue and I would smile.
Small electric bolts would run furiously across the saliva slicked suface of my teeth from left to right under my command as I grinned.
It would not hurt.
I can smell it.
That ozone smell.
It smells sweet and I like it
Then...
I later imagine myself at a strip club or a bar and some punk/bouncer gets it into his head to start s**t with me.
This guy is twice my size and shoves me HARD onto my ass outside in the parking lot after he kicks me out.
I hit the pavement and it hurts....a stinging sensation rises up my spine.
It smarts alright but not as bad as he is going to hurt in a minute or so once I regain my composure.
I get up.
He walks up to me, I stand up to him and I can smell his foul breath in my face, his nose inches from mine.
It only angers me further.
I say, "You shouldn't have done that." as I raise my both of my hands and let loose with POWERFUL electrical bolts from each of my ten fingers!
He, the man who could've been my friend but decided not to is launched backwards nearly 20 feet into the driver's side door of another customer's car....BLAM!...denting the hell out of it with his body, small electrical arcs swirl about him as he inevitably hits the cold pavement.
He has left a rather large, human sized imprint in a customer's Ford pickup.
As he lies twitching on his side, he looks up to see me walking toward him.
He sees me coming and tries to move but cannot.
He is literally paralyzed by my electricity that still continues to circle about his frame.
He twitches some more and looks up at me into my glowing electric blue eyes.
And my grin.
That almost unholy grin.
As you can see, I've had a fascination with controlling electricity since I was young.
If you had a choice, what power would you have?
Post Edited (01-20-04 18:35)
"If you had a choice, what power would you have?"
Omnipotence.
Mind control, definitely!
"Hello Mister Investment Bank Manager, give me a million pounds, right now. Mister Gates? Send me a couple of billion by end of business. Jennifer? Renee? Linda? Get yourselves round to my mansion soonest. Hey, Car Dealer Guy, I like that one-off Italian sports model, gimme."
I figured that a few of you would go for Omnipotence or a Professor X type of power.
I am focusing on a SPECIFIC NON-OMNIPOTENT power that you would like to have.
Omnipotence is TOO easy!
Time to exercise your brain!
Think of a singular power....maybe based on another superhero or element from your boyhood...one you always wished you had and go with it.
It would be even better if you could draw up a short scenario like I did about your power.
Any takers?
Post Edited (01-20-04 18:36)
Mmmm... that's a tough one. I am a big fan of the comics "Preacher" and "Hellblazer". In the first one the hero is Jesse, a former priest that has the power of "the word". Basicaly, everybody listening to his words will obbey his commands, no matter if he says "Leave me alone" or "f**k you". Constantine, the main character of "Hellblazer", has limited telepatic abilities, minor "word" powers and knows lots of practical magic, but usually this tricks end up in disasters or have great cons.
These two powers would be really handy.
"Omnipotence is TOO easy! I see omnipotence here as a sort of cop-out without really having to go into detail."
Careful, ASHTHECAT. You're THIS close to getting sent to the corn field! This is your last warning.
I'd like to be nigh invulnerable. Sort of a combination of immunity to diseases and toxins, extremely high resistance to injury, regenerative abilities and very slow aging.
Other powers might be more flashy, but if nothing can seriously hurt you, you're pretty tough to beat. The longevity is also a nice perk. Why not have a super power you could potentially have centuries to enjoy?
Lots of peace of mind with this power.
LoL, you always come up with the most zaniest post Ash.
as for my power i wish i could read women's minds, my life would be SO much easier.
Even if we could read women's minds, it wouldn't help us. I can read a calculus book, but couldn't explain it to anyone, including myself.
For my power, I'd like to be able to fly (and carry stuff with me, and not get cold in the upper atmosphere). It would just be so neat to go zooming around.
I just wish I had the power to control all women. ; )
Maybe my name would be Velvet Romeo or something stupid like that.
lol, i don't think women are as foreign as we think they are. the differences are more biological than psychological.
I've wondered about this myself. I've decided I already have a super power.
Faster to anger than a baboon with a stomach condition! More irritable than a wounded rhino!!! Able to be surly and sarchastic in a single sentence!!!
I am...
GRUMPY MAN!!!
Actually, I'd like to be super-intelligent. Not like an engineer or anything - I would like to have the ability to learn and retain information at an astonishing rate. I'd like to have a more-perfect-than-perfect memeory. I'd like to be able to fully evaluate and come up with a plan of action for a situation in less than a second.
Ever read Ender's Shadow? Like Bean, only without the nasty side-effects.
I used to always want to be invisible.
Then I got a job and realized, it wasn't an impossibility after all
When I was younger I daydreamed about turning into any animal I wished. And not just real animals, either- I could turn into a dragon, a bird that could fly at the speed of sound, etc.
Recently, however, I've been wishing I could manipulate time. I could go to Hastings, *pause*, load choice items into my car, go back to the place where I was standing in the store, and *unpause*. Whalala, nothing happened, I'll just mosey on out to my car...
But then I'd guess I'd grow really old faster than normal people, so I guess it wouldn't be all that...
(Yeah, I'd be a supervillian. So sue me.)
the differences are more biological than psychological.
must not be married...
"the differences are more biological than psychological.
must not be married..."
I was thinking the same thing. What exactly is the biological motivation behind wasting 80 hours a year writing Christmas cards and letters to people you either never see and contact, or people you are in touch with all the time anyway? I've been married 7 years and we have fought about my lack of participation in this ritual 7 times. Don't tell me it's in the estrogen.
Had this discussion with my girlfriend a while back, she thought Mind Reading would be handy, I figured it would be a pain, but would help me understand why she got a bit angry about how I didn't notice her new jeans [which look the same as her other jeans, exactly the same]
On the other hand having a power that enables you to mess around with people all the time would be funny as hell, like telekinesis [or whatever it's called, the move around stuff with your mind one]
Someone is annoying the hell outta you, you make them dance. Somebody is about to beat your head in with a bat, the bat beats them.
Not to mention all the pranks you could pull
I'd imagine it would be easy to make someone very paranoid and crazy with that power.
Eirik wrote:
> I was thinking the same thing. What exactly is the biological
> motivation behind wasting 80 hours a year writing Christmas
> cards and letters to people you either never see and contact,
> or people you are in touch with all the time anyway?
Yes, but you're also the anti-community guy :)
We all exhibit great powers in our every day life and don't even realise it. If you did aquire "superpowers" then they would become "ordinary powers" and then you would want something more.
It's not bad to seek those powers out as it is normal to want to see the next level of anything, but we should also understand what we already have.
We do have "superpowers" compared to some things. For example we may have more powers than a stone. Then again maybe stones have more power than we do. It depends on were you're at and where you are going (or where you think you're going).
"We do have "superpowers" compared to some things."
This is true. Compared to my two month old daughter, I have astonishingly great strength and superhuman intellect. I bet that if babies had some proportionate version of a gun, the bullets would bounce off my chest.
I wish I had the power to make people' head and bodies exploded when I hit them (Fist of the North Star people.) I know that's more like a made up martial arts but I WANT IT!
Or maybe the ability to copy myself like Agent Smith from the last two Matrix Movies. That would be sweet! I'd have my own base ball team (wait that joke's been done WAY too many times)
Or maybe the power to make my muscle's bigger and then I become stronger and faster. (Fist of the North Star again!). Though I either have to buy more shirts or I have to remove them before I go into battle.
Eirik wrote:
> I bet
> that if babies had some proportionate version of a gun, the
> bullets would bounce off my chest.
You mean a bebe gun?
lol, nope sure aint!
Another good example would be that I have a weakness for potato chips. Chips are like kryptonite to me and I'm superman.
I once went a whole year without a potato chip on a $100 dollar bet with my daughter.
As lame as it sounds, I can remember watching Firestarter when I was younger and thinking that Charlie's dad [PUSHER] had the cooler power.
Sure, blowing stuff up into a firey blaze is cool, but being able to manipulate minds is even cooler! Cab rides for $1.00 and the driver thinks it's $500.00 - good way to save the dough...
invisibility, super strength, flight, mind reading, womanizing, easy ending to marriage...
why should you have to settle for just one power?
If I had any power, it would be to make any power that I could think of or want a reality. I would be able to grant my own wishes to possess any power that I might desire. However, I would restrict my powers to the ones that have been mentioned previously with the exception of mind control. No f**king with free will.
all the powers they have on Dragonball Z, immortality (I could end it whenever I wanted), the power to feel only the emotions that are more beneficial to me at any given moment, and the power to bestow powers upon anyone I choose
oh yeah...and the power to restrain myself from being an ass and taking over the world or something...the power to make myself modest despite my abilities
i would have them all
Eirik! We at work decided not to buy each other Christmas cards, but instead to make a donation to a charity box, charity to be determined from a ballot. We raised £60 (@ $90) for a local hospice. You could put this suggestion to your wife - it saves trees, your time, and benefits some people who really need the money!
The power of Kung Fu would be great...and it is, to some degree acheivable...
"Eirik! We at work decided not to buy each other Christmas cards, but instead to make a donation to a charity box, charity to be determined from a ballot. We raised £60 (@ $90) for a local hospice. You could put this suggestion to your wife - it saves trees, your time, and benefits some people who really need the money!"
That's a great idea! I'll set up a donation to the Human Fund.
(people who watch Seinfeld will get it)
Hehehehe!
That's a good one Eirik!
I just saw that Seinfeld episode not too long ago.
I can't decide which power would be best, but I do have some favorites;
Invisibility - Easy to spy on people, get passwords, etc. If you could make other things invisible as well, you could walk into a bank and walk out with the money.
Stopping Time - Also great for getting inside info, cleaning out a bank, avoiding getting beaten up etc.
Mind Control - Make banks give you their money (sensing a pattern here? :), let you in anywhere etc.
Telekinesis - Not as directly useful as some powers, but it could come in quite handy. I actually sometimes wonder if people don't have a limited version of this power. I always had model spaceships hanging from my ceiling and sometimes at night I'd stare at different ones and will them to turn and they often did. Not like they'd spin around, but it seems strange that they'd be hanging motionless and then decie to start turning a short time after I started staring at them.
Duplication: I would love to have the power to poof .... another me to go off and have some fun while the responsible one continues the good girl act ad infinitum w/ the students (teacher, I) my family.... etc.
Then the power to return to this one's body at later times... kind of like an out of body thing
I guess everyone can be a superhero or villian. Check out this site where this guy will combine your looks with your interests and make you into your own unique superhero action figure
Be a Superhero (http://www.imatoy.com)
looks kinda neat tho i have no idea how much it costs
Post Edited (01-25-04 17:49)
I want to have the power to stop and move time at will. Also mind control and the power to change matter and conjure up anything I wish.