If you had to choose one superpower that you could never turn off, what would it be?
For example:
Make billionaires turn inside out when they're on the same planet as me
It happens continuously and so fast its not perceptible
So, question: when the billionaire dies, does their wealth transfer according to local laws? So an entire lineage could instantly turn inside out, including bastard children on the fringes of inheritance, with only an estate tax to save them?
Logically since all billionaires die, their lineage would be gradually wiped out.
Where it gets tricky is how they would manage the money. If the money is not directly controlled by them, are they billionaires? So does the CFO of a multi billion dollar company also get turned inside out?
It would be a heck of a monkey paw without stipulations that would make the point worthless.
Counterpoint:
Who cares?
The traumatic shock of any one person personally possessing a billion dollars or more in wealth being Dr. Manhattan'd would eventually lead people to realize that they need to redistribute wealth.
The potential number of potentially innocent people killed by this process is infinitesimal compared to the deaths and uneccessary harm caused by the general hoarding of wealth.
The new, hard mandated moral norm of the planet would be that possessing over a billion dollars gets you functionally smote by god, obviously the universe has imposed a hard cap on wealth accumulation and thus it is actually bad.
You can quibble about inflation, and I can quibble about making some more precise measure based on a formulation revolving around proportion to the median wealth of 100 miles of where the 'billionaire' is currently standing.
We are talking about magical superpowers here, presumably there would be a magical way to force actual transparency of hidden assets and what not, account for non liquid investements, all that.
A sane world that exists after this paradigm would put in place basically the reverse of overdraft protection, it would automatically stop any desposit that would make your net wealth exceed the magic number, it would automatically disperse shares of stocks or CDs or bonds or whatever to some kind of public pool or random people such that no individual ever singly has over a billion bucks or whatever the magic number is.
If you did not create a world like that, then 'random' people would keep liquifying whenever their net wealth exceedes magic number.
Every incentive would thus exist for all but the literally suicidal to carefully manage their investments and basically create something like the above mentioned system.
... You could probably make a decent anime or show out of this idea.
Its like a Death Note on autopilot, and if it is actually emmenating from a single person, doubtless a number of oligarchs would attempt to hide their wealth, as well as probe the system to figure out its rules, figure out who the actual person with this 'superpower' is, and kill them.
This person may not even know it is them, and then they may figure it out on their own, or may be prevented from being assasinated by some other group that did figure out it is them, and wants to protect them because billionaires bad.
Tons of dramatic person to person character dynamics, as well as larger scale social conflict plot setups here.
If you don't specify a currency or a grade of inflation, this might kill far more people than expected.
1 billion Iranian Rial for instance is just about 23752 USD.
A couple of multi-millionaires would pay you to stop and then you'd implode.
Still a net win for everyone else though, I support this.
How pedantic do we get to be? Like, I’d be fine with flying because I could just hover a millimeter from the ground instead of standing, I would think
My stepson asks all kinds of questions like this and highly scientific pedantry is my go-to move.
“Technically if you were invisible, your retinas would stop working, so I’d go with flight.”
Sometimes pedantry is beautiful
That's like Arthur Dent's girlfriend Fenchurch.
Just don't travel through hyperspace.
Flyings fine as long as I have variable velocity.
"I forgot one thing about the guy who had gained the ability to fly - it was actually only for a foot or two, and only an inch or so high"
This is pretty simple though right?
Healing factor - always-on healing.
Healing factor - always-on healing.
Don't we already have that?
Sometimes the always on healing works so good cells start doing things like reactivating telomerase and ignoring the signals for programmed cell death and become cancer, sometimes turning effectively immortal.
Not for everything and not good enough though.
Especially for something as complex as mental illnesses/trauma your body has hardly any ability to heal by itself.
Though then we can get pedantic: How long should you feel down when someone you love died? Because I don't consider it a bad thing for something like this to take a while before healing. It'd suck to attend their funeral having completely healed already.
Monkey Paw: Cancer cells also heal
Deadpool?
That's basically psoriasis.
Have you not read the hundreds of stories about people unable to die?
Boom. cancer. Now you’re deadpool
Shapeshifting, I will take no questions
Shapeshifting for sure. Don't even need to be human, id totally try being an amorphous sentient blob for a bit. Joints cant hurt if you don't have joints!
I'm always at a comfortable temperature no matter what.
If humanity finds out about that property of you, you might end up as some kind of human battery. If you can't be cooled down under any circumstances, one could use your body to heat up infinite amounts of water/air with heat pumps and use you to heat entire cities. Super useful for the rest of humanity but not exactly the life I'd like to live. :D
That is a really good one. Because you can't stop it, but a comfortable temperature is always comfortable.
Being lucky all the time would be cool. The only time I can think it might be a hindrance would be at a casino because they'd think I'm cheating but I don't gamble so it doesn't matter I guess.
I would have the power to be naturally skilled at anything I do and having it always activated would be a bonus.
Jack of All Trades Activated
You are now naturally skilled at all tasks but will never be considered a master in any discipline
I would want the superpower of linguistics: the ability to fluently read, speak, and understand any language ever spoken or will be spoken.
I guess in combination with the 'can't stop it' twist that would mean that you can't stop talking in these old and random languages. So people will think you're crazy and you'll end up in some kind of mental illness hospital.
So you want to be Cypher?
I had never heard of Cypher before, but yes. Just like that.
Soundly you here the suffering of animals around you
hmmmm, "plot armor" sounds nice to be always on.
Shapeshifting. It's what I wanted anyway and I can always just be continuously toggling the length of my little toenail to be 1mm longer or shorter.
Hell yeah, I get to choose my boob size, and I can have my hair changing colors like in Terraria!
Healing of all kinds. Ageing, sickness, and wounds.
Can't die. It's gonna suck in 800 trillion years. Imagine if you can't sleep either because you don't need to recuperate.
I didn't say Immortal. Death by violence is certainly possible.
Recuperate? I don't sleep to recuperate, only to pass time.
You suddenly die of cancer that you've healed faster than your immune system can kill
Eh, I would class that under sickness.
Never becoming deaf and always having good hearing. I'm not sure I'd be able to enjoy life anymore if I became deaf, so just having good hearing would make the rest of my life worth living, without any major side effects I could think of.
Reading this reminded me that my ears are ringing. I can ignore it but if anything draws attention it can get pretty bad.
Ringing sucks. I'm used to random ringing occuring, so I'm good there.
I can live without hearing, thanks to subwoofers, but if I ever go blind I think I'm just going to kill myself.
So permanent good vision; I pick that.
Magneto's power set could be very useful and easy to manage. Magnets can certainly be made stronger and weaker. He/I would need to build up to any dangerous level of magnetic power, so meditation before sleep would be clutch. Bullet-proof, flight, what amounts to telekinesis, and the ability to manifest any metallic object is fairly incredible, yet unobtrusive.
Also, Forge's power set would be pretty nice to have. Can engineer, build, fix, and invent literally anything. Solve any technological problem at will. The photocopier would never be broken. Wait, does anyone still use a photocopier? The only thing that'd be annoying is becoming everyone's IT department.
Jamie Madrox is also a great contender. Instant dupes of myself at will (and, yes, magically, they come with clothes).
These are my answers.
And canonically if a dupe holds an item, and you hit them you get another of the same. So buy gold bars and keep on going to the pawn shop
Power to make people have empathy.
Everyone within my earshot has to tell the truth.
Works with TV, radio. Any real time communication.
I think this should also work on myself
I would use this power to make a communist organization of my choice completely immune to infiltration
Imagine an America without COINTELPRO
God of Toilet Paper.
You might laugh, but I would own the world.
If you were in my favor, you would get the softest, never-chafing, cleanest single-wipe-clean TP ever. No matter what you ate, no matter how spicy, no matter how ill, you could be assured of pain-free, cooling, soothing, wipes. It would be beautiful. Rainbows and peace, no matter how violent the shit
Piss me off? Anything you choose to clean your backside with is then designated TP. I will clog all the toilets, all the plumbing, all the sewers. I can make it all gympie-gympie leaves, sandpaper, wax paper, or just vanish mid-wipe. No matter how much you wiped your already raw ass, there would still be more. I would be a scourge on the Earth, and all would have to bow down before me. You would love me. You would hate me.
He who controls the comfort of the sphincter, controls the world.
That is easy: super intelligence
Great way to feel lonely and isolated! It's already an issue "gifted" folk struggle with, and the more "gifted" you are, the more isolated you tend to be
You are too smart and realize how fucked up the world is and become severely depressed.
You don’t need to be too smart to see this… unless you’re a liberal redditor then you surely think you are.
I’m using you the same as you are, not meaning you the commenter lol
Every lonely fuck thinking he is the smartest person on the planet is replying to this
I would choose to have the power to turn off superpowers and then I'd try turning off my superpower and see what happens.
What if breathing in only is your superpower
What if breathing out only is your superpower
Ko re ga requiem da
What if breathing is your superpower
No, I mean turning off the superpower of turning off superpowers that can't be turned off.
Powers of a deity.
You are now Cyamites, the god of beans. Use your powers wisely.
Could be worse. Highly nutritious foodstuff providing plenty of vitamins, protein, and fiber. I could do a lot to alleviate some world hunger immediately. Making people fart all over the world would be fun, too.
I could also put beans in the no-bean-chili gatekeepers chili. Evil bean god could be fun, too.
The USSR obviously
Sixth sense/ Intuition
Teleport. Its always on, so I'm just flickering on the spot constantly so fast that its only visible on some cameras.
At the same time this gives me the seeming ability to fly at will, be anywhere, and potentially float (destructively) through walls.
You'd effectively be capable of being in two places at once.
Oh wow, yeah, just flickering between two or more points of existence. It'd be hard to have a simultaneous conversation, but I'm just thinking now of the restaurant possibilities... having a nandos whilst eating a creme mont blanc
Omnipotence
I’d be able to slam dunk on anyone who guarded me. People would be like, “Won’t this guy stop dunking on people?” Can’t. I wished on a monkey paw.
NBA 2K26 would have to rewrite the game engine like when EA had to introduce “vision cones” to Madden so Michael Vick wasn’t better than Payton Manning.
Easy: Max out luck. Literally no downsides
You luckily have an abbreviation in your DNA that means your tellemeres don't shorten. You can't age. You reach 87000 years old. Humans have gone extinct. You are trapped alone on a dead earth. You try to shoot yourself but the gun misfires. You jump off w cliff, but a sudden updraft catches you and you land safely. In this multiverse, luck is now objective.
I think defining luck could be weird. Is it lucky to not die when I want to? Or lucky to do so in a more humane, less painful or instantaneous way?
meh. Id be optimistic that an alien ship would pick me up to experience even more amazing things.
Luck is not an infinite resource, meaning that when ever you get lucky, somebody else won't. So you'll actively will siphon luck from people around you. Good luck with the loneliness, no pun intended
Super strength. I'm just always strong. Cool.
You would have to recalibrate your interactions, or you'd be breaking things and people constantly.
And don't ever lash out on accident (even if it's because you got ticklish or you jerked in your sleep)
The ability to shapeshift doesn't really get affected by this caveat, so that remains about as appealing as it was before.
Taken to an extreme, one can get a controllable/turn-off-able biological immortality and at-will violation of conservation of matter/energy.
Invisibility
Hope you like a sleeping masks. cause eyelids could be a problem.
The ability to cure any disease at will. Also the ability would be transferable. So if i touch an object, and then have that object touched another individual touches it or consumes, it would heal a disease or ailment.
I would then claim to have discovered the cure for Alzheimer’s. I would just touch a large vat of some sort of liquid and then ship out A vile of liquid from that vat And then the person is cured of Alzheimer’s.
Within a year, I’d come up with a cure for another disease and then start shipping out the vials for that too.
Maybe a year after that I come out with cures for 3 diseases. I’d have to scale it up so that way people weren’t immediately suspicious of how I came up with cures for everything.
I would have to charge enough so I could keep expanding the company paying for employees and machinery needed to create the vials package it ship it, etc. I’d charge a dollar per vial sent out for my personal profit. With a minimum personal profit of $40,000 US per year.
And just so the world isn’t screwed when I’m dead, I would transfer the ability onto multiple object objects. So for example, I would put it on rocks. That way they could use the rock to then touch the vile of liquid to create more medicine.
Since I could never turn it off, I would just keep healing a small patch of skin on my big toe or something. Since skin is continuously aging and technically aging is a disease I would have no problem on the side effects. It would just continuously heal that patch until I want to heal something else.
One vile would cure one ailment or disease.
Yeah I have said I want a transmissible immunity to sexually transmitted disease, that would save a lot of suffering, and be a lot of fun to get the immunity going out into the world but all disease? Is that advisable? There may be some need for it to keep evolution going, or some effect we can't predict. I like the way you are rolling it out here.
at will sounds contrary to the post. I mean flight at will would mean not all the time. I feel it would have to be like your touch cured any and all diseases always.
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I'd chose telekinesis. Heck man i'm sick of having only 2 hands and i'm lazy. I'm ready to use it everytime.
a whole gallon of jizz every time i cum
You never stop coming
yes 👍
Kegel would hate you
Just stay fit
I am incredibly resilient.
The doctors will have to find a chemist to even do surgery
The power to see through clothing. Because it would remind me that no one is really important.
Umm... Sure that's why you want that
I mean, why else? Unless you're surrounded by swimsuit models, most of what you'd see isn't that pleasant. Plus everybody's body would be smushed from their clothing, so it'd look kind of wonky.
Recon countering regret
China
That lady that makes people explode by thought from they boys . I would only need it for a few hours then just keep it as backup just incase any more Nazi's get anymore ideas. That includes the Russian ones as well.
I'm not sure how this works if it's never turned off? Are you always evolving someone's head? Like 1 person in your line of sights head explodes per second or does everyone need you just get a headache?
I mean the power is on all the time she just has to wish for them to blow up but yeah I would have go live with some monks after I did the first batch to make sure my mind is centered but I'm willing to make that sacrifice
