Worst super-power in the world
Patrick once mentioned to me that there was a comic book character who's super-power was that she had every power that no one had ever thought of before - but as soon as someone thought of it, it went away. So she could commune with worms or other weird, obscure powers.
For some reason that stuck with me, and I was thinking about lame super-powers, and the worst one I can think of would be able to see all the things that almost didn't happen but be unable to change anything.
For example, my workout partner Tom was driving and a CTA bus plowed into a car two cars ahead of him, totaling the car. 30 seconds faster, and that would have been him. Imagine, being able to see all the things that almost did happen, time shift +/- 45 seconds, move something around +/- 10 feet and imagine the possibilities, the catastrophes. Seeing them all, all the possibilities, as events unfold, unable to change anything.
That would drive you insane.
What would be the worst super-power you can think of?
4 Comments:
My superpower would be always to know the difference between "who's" and "whose" but tragically, like Cassandra in the old Greek myths, never to be able to convince any of my blogger friends that I was right or that the difference was worth learning. And, no, I have not bought or otherwise read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.
My own favorite trivial superpower I wish I had was the capacity to open CD wrapping, especially the sticky part with the name on it, in one sweep, every time. Foreign governments would pay a pretty penny for someone with a talent like that, eh?
I believe your friend Patrick is thinking of one of the Brotherhood of Dada from Grant Morrison's revamping of the Doom Patrol. This superperson, neither hero nor villain but, as I say, part of the absurdist meaninglessness that the Doom Patrol had to fight, was a Japanese woman whom Mr. Nobody (the Dadas' leader) rescued from an insane asylum where she was terrified of all dirt; he convinced her to join the Brotherhood by giving her a hermetically sealed costume. "Clean now," she whispered to herself.
As it turns out, I have a very similar imagination to Roughgroove's friend Tom. In my case, it's all about traffic and it is entirely visual: I actually think it is related to the fact that my eyeglasses are no longer appropriate to my vision. I regularly foresee cars not slowing down in time to avoid obnoxious pedestrians. Friends of mine know that I am not kidding, and that I frequently wrench my head away from these imaginary accidents in the making.
Perhaps for that reason it is good that I return for a couple of days to the Great Ohio Desert, as David Foster Wallace imagined it to be in an early novel, whe3re there is so little traffic. Although I do not promise that I shall learn to drive this summer, I have decided that it is unpatriotic of me to continue the legal fiction that I am a citizen of Brooklyn, and I will change my voter registration to that of an Ohio citizen. When Ohio swings blue by one vote in November, I hope all of Planet Roughgroove will thank me--
8:25 PM
Actually, a somewhat more serious thought experiment:
Of the "classic" superpowers, which are the ones that you'd really love to have, and which ones would you not at all be interested in having?
For me: flight, and invisibility, and telepathy. Not particularly for me: super-strength, invulnerability, power beams. (Berseker rages and adamantium skeleton, right out; the teleportation thing would be pretty good, but I guess I don't consider it classical. I love the word "Bamf," though.)
As for magic, I am a real classicist when it comes to magic, and I consider virtually every use of it in pop culture to be bogus. Yes, even on season 6 in Buffy, eventually. Now Thessaly in Neil Gaiman's Sandman, that's more like it. You've got to play by the rules, and not make them up as you go along--
8:36 PM
It woudl have to be Teleportation or Flight. I know you said that Teleporation doesn't count as classic, but in my comic book patheon, it does. :-)
Sad to say, most of my super-power-fantasies are all about how I could actually use them in this world, not in a comic book world. Who would want super fighting powers, 'cause that would mean that you would be -- well -- fighting all of the time. Teleportation would allow me to stay under the radar, and even escape should the decide to have an interest in me.
Flight is just cool. Useful (No more traffic jams! No more parking! No more stairs!) and elegant. My favorite fliers: Cannonball (probably because he is lean and goofy, something that is kinda sexy to me) and Vortex precisely because he is lean and not goofy, which is also sexy.
8:54 PM
1. Dig Captain Cadaver (on the Vortex link)! Now that's a superpowered being I immediately identified with.
2. I agree that the best superpowers are the ones that do not confer great responsibility, to paraphrase Peter Parker's uncle, but that could get you out of a baseball stadium crowd or from the parking garage right into the movie theater. Has Roughroove seen Spidey 2 yet, and if so, what did Roughgroove think of it?
9:08 PM
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