not so super question

[mrissa]

What's the worst/most useless superpower you can think of?

Adding comments to turn other people's useless ones useful is an encouraged behavior. When timprov and I were talking about this the other night, I said, "PaperclipMan! Can always find a paperclip when he needs one!" And T. suggested gruesome scenarios of finding them in the supervillains' brains/aortas/etc.

Comments

[laurel]

This one isn't entirely useless, but isn't especially impressive compared to most: Kevin says his super power is "super fast drying hair" and it seems to be true. If he doesn't comb his hair within minutes of taking a shower, it'll dry funny.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Mine will tangle, which is a different problem. I don't suppose he can make other people's hair dry quickly, too?

Maybe if he was a superhero he could...um...no, everything I'm coming up with here is waterproof hair, which is different (and nastier, frankly!).

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's related to separating water from protein molecules. That could be interesting, if you manage to define 'hair' as various non-hair things. Generating a local dry-heat field might give you weather control (it all comes back to weather control) but that's not quite it.

[brooksmoses]

That would be rather interesting if it worked underwater, too....

[greykev.livejournal.com]

ala spider sense: Sense of Impending Doom(tm) the knowledge that something bad is about to happen, but there's only enough time to get out a witty comment, not actually *do* anything about the Doom.

[thesaucernews.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, the "Troi-Sense"

Troi: "Captain... I sense the Romulans are decieving *computer explodes*"

Riker: "We gave her a chair on the bridge why?"

Picard: "We needed three chairs to give the room visual symmetry."

Troi: "By the way, Riker, you're getting a hangnail."

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Do not underrate the witty comments. We have gotten through an amazing amount of crap powered by chocolate and witty comments.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

I could do with the Power of Getting Cat Hair Out Of Things but I'm not sure it'd be too useful in a crisis.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, come: suppose you're being attacked by a person-eating tiger (a highly common crisis, repeated in miniature - he thinks he's a tiger - in this house on a daily basis), you could flourish your Power at it, all its fur would fall out, and it would be so startled/embarrassed/chilly/fascinated ("ooh, am I still stripey?") that you'd have plenty of time to run away...

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Partial precognition - a glimpse of the future without enough details to know just what's going to happen. A view of certain people sitting in a certain room, say, with no further info.

The power to levitate objects - but only less than 0.1 gram and only more than 1 meter (the distance requirement is to avoid nifty particle physics tricks. Though there might still be useful possibilities involving ink molecules.)

The power to attract but not repel cockroaches.
The power to turn things pink - useful for making 8-year-old-girls happy and that's about it. (Oh, wait, my washer already has that power. And making 8-year-old girls happy isn't negligible.)
The power to put people to sleep - but not deeply enough that they won't wake up if you try to do anything else. (A lot of managers have this one.)

[ksumnersmith.livejournal.com]

Many an Evil Crime might be prevented if the villian were suddenly covered in cockroaches at a crucial moment. Crunchy cockroach shells underfoot could also be an effective warning of people trying to sneak up behind you. And, if you could attract enough cockroaches at one time, why not ride them down the street, carried on their little backs like a stick in a current?

[mkille.livejournal.com]

The ability to make everything that "tastes like chicken," taste like something else that isn't chicken.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

There used to be a TV show on UPN called The Sentinel, which for some reason was a big hit among fanfic people. The conceit was that the guy had superhuman senses.

I only saw thirty seconds of one episode, but it made me laugh. Someone had swiped a car or something, then idled it, pulled the keys from the ignition, and threw them into a small wooded area. The Sentinel came along, and there was a close-up on his eyes (shades of Zoolander!) then a kooky zoom-in on the set of keys!

So it was a show about a guy who can always find his keys. Can paperclips be far behind?

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

never saw the show, but it had some prety good slash. (Actually, I suspect I liked the slashfic better *because* I never saw the show.)

[spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com]

I think extreme empathy would be a very useless and crippling superpower. How do you destroy the evil villian if you're caught up in understanding that he's only doing it all because his mother didn't let him have ice-cream when he was a kid?

[the-flea-king.livejournal.com]

The super power to travel forward through time! At precisely one point one seconds per second.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I can imagine some uses in interstellar travel, but only to make the generation ships not need so many generations.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

The Interesting Four (http://snl.jt.org/skit.php?i=90).

B

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

Captain Obvious! The superhuman ability to point out the obvious. Nobody ever wants to take him to the movies.

Captain Ironic: also points out the obvious, but sneers more.

American Idol (Wo)Man: No actual superpower or talent in any way at all, but is so convinced that they do, if only you give them one (more) chance. Superhuman self-confidence, if you will.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That is wholly unjust! I have taken you to the movies more times than I can count.

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

I think it would have to do with songs and/or lyrics, but I'm not sure how--either the ability to identify songs nearly instantly (only useful when you're hunting Theme Music man.), or to be able to quote song lyrics for any and all occasions. (Even less useful than the other quoting skills like monty python or shakespere.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I have this latter superpower. I wonder whether I traded it for invisibility or what.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

The Power to Cloud Men's Memory for Baseball Statistics.

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

Have you ever played the RPG "Stuperpowers"? It was based on this premise: you were a superhero, but with either useless, annoying, or gross powers.

The list of powers included such gems as "Turn Things Plaid", "Cause Snowstorms In Restsrooms", "Summon Mariachi Band", "Nacho Downpour", "Speak With Fire Hydrants and Mailboxes", "Turn Your Skin Into Aluminum Siding", "Create 3 Cubic Inches of Instant Mashed Potatoes", "Spontaneous Combustion", and "Cause 70's Hairdos".

[redbird]

I'll take "summon mariachi band," in case I'm nervous walking down the street by myself: the hypothetical muggers wouldn't want the witnesses, even if they didn't expect the mariachis to defend me.

It might also be useful for being lost in random places and getting rescued (though the band wouldn't be much good for directions, not having gotten there by normal means).

[alecaustin.livejournal.com]

The collective decision of my PDX friends and I (who - collectively - spend far too much time thinking about these things) was that the most useless superpower one was likely to encounter was uncontrolled cell growth. Also known as cancer.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh. Uh, super.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Arm Fall-Off Boy, whose power is exactly what you think it is, and the Dog Welder, who fights crime by welding dogs to criminals' faces, were intentionally rubbish, does that count ?

I've always thought "was lost in the jungle as a baby and raised by friendly amoebas, and now when peril threatens he can SPLIT IN TWO !" would be a good backstory for a useless superhero.

[redbird]

My super power is to attract people who need to ask directions.

This isn't actually useless, because I can often answer, and I like doing so, but it's not as useful as, say, being able to find people who could give me directions when I need them.

And, from /usr/games/fortune on SunOS: "His super power is to turn into a Scotch terrier."

after about 12 seconds' thought ...

[fmi-agent.livejournal.com]

Magically teleport entire solar systems from the Andromeda Galaxy to the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Re: after about 12 seconds' thought ...

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

timprov had one similar in utility to that: move objects precisely 8.4 light years. As a scalar, not a vector.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Because I am the Amazing Loophole Girl and can't help but obsess over mechanisms (is that super-strength because you have extraordinarily strong muscle fibers or because you lighten whatever you pick up?) I'd have to say the most useless superpower is anything sufficiently defined. Folklore definitions for magic might work-- here you have a cloth which, when spread, produces a meal. Not 'carbon', not 'adequately heated and cooled matter', but a meal, and it can never be anything but a meal. It's difficult to argue contracts with a placemat.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

The Morrison run on Doom Patrol featured a villain called The Quiz, who had every superpower you have not thought of yet, so people going into battle with her would frantically call out "Flight ! Super-strength ! Teleportation !" lest she develop them, and then she would trap them inside magically appearing unbreakable bell jars or something similarly outre.

"The carotid artery is a small object"

[jenfullmoon.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of Laurel Darkhaven in Rising Stars, i.e. the one whose special power is to telekinetically move tiny things. "That's useless, what can you do with that?" Become an assassin, that's what...

So, hey, some of these powers might be useful :)

Empathy Lad

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

http://www.comicspage.com/comicspage/main.jsp?custid=69&catid=1876&file=20070216csbre-a-p.jpg&dir=/brewster

B

Re: Empathy Lad

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Hee.