posted
Disclaimer: I don't recall this being done before, but as my short-term (and long, for that matter) have been shot to bits in recent months by liver-bashing and sleep deprivation, apologies in advance if I'm tramping on the graves of dead threads.
Anyhow! A nice cheery simple thread for Friday.
If you could have a superpower, what would it be? And why?
You might like to build on this brief by fleshing out your character: name, costume, tragic history. Or. OR! Do other forumites! Yeah, you could do that too.
Pretty Fancy...
After an intense period of concentration (ooh, a good thirty seconds) I discarded the potential of flight, invisibility, sticky spidermilk, gadgets a-go-go (not strictly a power in any case). I would like to be a metamorph. Yeah! Able to change into any sentient organism. Also, this would have the extra advantage of encompassing all other superpowers. Want to fly? Turn into a buzzard! Or a pigeon. And there's obvious heavy-handed satisfaction in being, literally, a fly on the wall (hopefully not heavy-handed fly swatters). As a superpower it would be pretty hard to beat, although I'm not sure how the size/excess matter aspect would pan out. Would it just be a transference of flesh? I'm not sure I'd fancy being a human-sized rodent.
I apparently haven't gained the power to use UBB accurately. :cross:
posted
In my RPG-playing yoof me and a mate used to sit around for hours making up characters for 'Marvel Superheroes.' You would randomly generate some powers and then have to fit a concept around them - taxing if you get a combination like 'ice control' and 'prehensile hair.'
Anyway, the point of that is I've spent (wasted) a lot of time thinking about this, and to me there is no superpower to compare with Mr Fantastic-style 'gadgeteering' - the ability to build mad-dog machines at the drop of a hat. Rocket packs, exo-skeletons, deathrays and time machines are easily within your grasp.
As for a name, a superhero/villain really needs a prefix, such as 'Doctor Diablo' or 'Captain Carnage', and his costume needs either an oversized helmet or menacing cape.
posted
I would be Movie Man! a hero with no "super powers" except the ability to resolve every problem I encounter in the narrative of my life with a Hollywood-style happy ending.
See a girl I like? Either we'll get together eventually, or someone smarter, sexier and more beautiful will come along soon.
Problem at work? Something will come up to resolve the situation and secure me a promotion.
Attacked in the street? Usually I'll kick their arses, no matter how many of them there are. Occasionally I may take a beating, but I'll take it well - Bruce Willis style - and I'll be happy in the knowledge that the bad guys will inevitably get their comeuppance.
When I do die, I know I'll die happy and fulfilled. At the end of the day, who can ask for more than that?
posted
Just how much of a ballache would it be, being a superhero in this country? Never mind Jonah Jameson, you'd have on your case; "where there's blame there's a claim"-style lawyers suing you and anti-capitalist protesters burning you in effigy because you hadn't got round to feeding the world's poor yet.
That said, I reckon it'd be great to have some of the superpowers that THE LORD GOD has in the Old Testament. Turning people into pillars of salt, causing ethnocidal floods, incinerating whole cities and firing frogs/locusts/lice/plagues upon the First Born/hail/flies our of my hands would be pretty boss, I reckon. I'd adopt the moniker Captain Yahweh and would tear round the place smiting the unrighteous, six days a week. On the seventh day I would rest.
My first mission: to smite those responsible for Heat magazine (which promotes the worship of graven images) with running sores and to slaughter their families, their servants and all their cattle. Show some of these fuckers who's The Daddy. Posts: 8657
| IP: Logged
posted
i have visions of riding my worms like paul atredies shouting "maaauuuuuuuuuudddddddddibbbbb" all while some wierd little girl is saying "for how should it be? for he is the kwitzatz haddarach"
Posts: 999
| IP: Logged
H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
topp reference there damo, you are :coll:.
-------------------- i'm expressing my inner anguish through the majesty of song Posts: 4243
| IP: Logged
posted
If you didn't think you were a skilled ninja, perhaps you would have the serenity not to laugh, or something. Perhaps you could ask Ally's husband.
In fact, if I were to be a superhero, I would like to be Ally's husband - hardest man alive. A sole warrior, treading the path of righteousness, and kicking all manner of skinny, pasty burglar scum. When people met me, they'd just know that I was the man.
Actually, no, scratch that, he's a shit superhero, as he has no super powers as such.
I think I'd rather be the kind of superhero that has an array of incredible vehicles stashed in all manner of unlikely places, each named after me. Need to fly somewhere? No problem, hop in the Ringo-copter. Going ski-ing? Get those Ringo-ski's on. They wouldn't be any different to normal ski's, except they'd have the word ringo-ski on the bottom of each one.
As for my super power, well it'd have to be something pretty devastating. None of this poncey flying crap, or your gaymo invisibility. Even laser eyes are a bit shit compared to my power. No I would crouch down, close my eyes, and the air around me would form into a solid wall of resonating bass. This could be directed into a Guille-esque SonicBoom, crushing cars, demolishing buildings and liquifying my opponents bones from within.
That'd be pretty fucking ace.
Also - I would use my power to touch ladies in their warm spot.
Posts: 12211
| IP: Logged
H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
Ringo: The Human Vibrator™
-------------------- i'm expressing my inner anguish through the majesty of song Posts: 4243
| IP: Logged
posted
Wow, that's almost a great name. What would be better, however, would be the name Vibrator. Not like you pronounce it, though, pronounced like Skeletor.
posted
lol@Rongo. Although I remember the time that you told me that you wanted to be a super hero who found things for people who had lost them. So I told you I'd lost my virginity...
posted
When I was a lickel childe, I used to think it would be terrific to be able to "stop time". None of your pansy "bullet time" Matrix shit - I mean stop it dead.
You could "freeze" time and wander about doing stuff whilst everyone else was still as a statue. OK, mainly it was touching up pretty girls, but you could do all sorts of other stuff, too.
I never really worried about the physics of it all. Until I read a story in 2000ad, in which someone was zapped into some machine and had himself accelerated so fast that it was effectively like "stopping time" relative to him.
That opened my eyes, 'cos they'd actually thought about the physics of it. Sort of.
All it meant was that he aged and died within seconds of those pesky scientists zapping him (from their perspective). He managed to get out of the special time thingy chamber as it was electrically locked and he could easily open the door inbetween electrical phases. He could also scoop great handfuls of concrete out of pillars as he was moving soooo fast, and do stuff like spend a week watching a fly's wings beat once.
A pretty shitty superpower.
Eventually I decided I wanted a UFO instead. Like in Flight of the Navigator.
Now, I think the best superpower would be a universal and infallible Derren Brown style ability to simply tell people to do what you want them to:
"Tony, piss off." "You there, dictator chappie. Stop mucking about and be nice for a change" "Go on, Mister Richbloke, give us ten grand? And all your little mates can do that, too." "Kylie, stop laughing and TOUCH IT." "Let's not have any nuclear weapons." "Mr. Oil Baron, please release the patents for clean free energy so we can all benefit from them without destroying the planet"
posted
Being invulnerable to harm is always good value, if only for that moment where you walk into a bar full of lowlifes and give them some shit. Out come the guns and down you go in a hail of bullets. Ka-Pow! Hi-fives and maniacal laughter all round as the attendant scumbags (usually long haired people with leather waistcoats and no shirt), resume their beers and point and laugh at your bullet riddled body.
But - oh! What's this! Movement! You unfurl yourself from the floor and stagger woozily to your feet. Maybe it's time to utter an understated "ow", or similar witticism. People stagger back in uncomprehending horror. Ass-kicking begins.
So yeah. Invulnerability could be mega-good fun, but it's a bit bland compared the kind of skillz Vibrator is offering. I also don't think it's very me. I think I'd be better suited to something stealthy (ie stabbing people in the back, snapping their necks). SOme kind of silent running/ invisibilty thing like that lizard thing from Monster's Inc. That would be more my level.
Alternatively, I always liked Jack Hawksmoors powers when he was in Stormwatch - abilities that he don't really transfer to The Authority. See, Jack's built for cities. They speak to him and he thrives on them. So the city can tell him when something goes awry. Turning up at a murder scene, windows show him reflections that happened hours ago. He can sense when a city's in pain. It's great stuff.
Of course, I'm not really a city boy - my roots being the countryside. So we'd have to come up with some sort of countryside equivalent whereby I would hear radishes scream as they were plucked from the soil by radish thieves, trees tumble at my command, and in one gripping sequence when a shot gun wielding farmer is chasing me through his field, the corn starts to warp and twist and binds the farmer to the ground. He struggles, but he's stuck fast, and in the distance he hears the engine of his combine harvester start to turn over.
Posts: 13758
| IP: Logged
Let me explain. In the garden of our house we have a paddling pool. It is our pride and joy, enormous and inflatable and taking up virtually all the stubby shrub growth we call 'lawn' (actually, this is a lie. It has never been, and, in our hands, never will be a 'lawn'. Grass, just about). Anyhow, pool. Going a bit green now as it's been rained in for the past week, drowned ants, bits of leaf, pond scum, whatever. We were going to clean it but emptying it and bleaching it's such a chore.
At about 6pm yesterday our doorbell rang. Little girl, neighbour's daughter, standing looking up anxiously.
'Yes?'
'There's an...an animal in your pool'
Cue panic.
I ran outside and sure enough, in the far corner, scrabbling around with its tiny paws, up on its hind legs, was a bedraggled squirrel. I went closer and it immediately started swimming towards me, fur slicked back, nose and chin above the water like a miniature otter, tail fat with water dragging behind it. When it got near enough, paddling frantically, I scooped it up, palm on belly, and it scampered off, dripping.
I don't know. Yanking this onto topic, I suppose to a squirrel a human would be like a superbeing. Ha! I am like a rodent superwoman! I wield unimagineable powers! Bow down before me, etc etc.
-------------------- the more brilliant her smile, the closer she always seemed to disaster Posts: 1057
| IP: Logged
on your case; "where there's blame there's a claim"-style lawyers suing you and anti-capitalist protesters burning you in effigy because you hadn't got round to feeding the world's poor yet.![[Mad]](mad.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic