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<repost from SFWF, with permission from JordanKai, because I figure the readerships of these two subforums don't totally overlap and I'd like a broader range of answers> As a personal project, I'm compiling a list of terrible superpowers that have appeared in fiction. To make things a little more difficult, I'm trying to limit this to powers that would be terrible to have. A clever enough writer can turn an apparently nothing skill into something really impressive - I'm thinking of "Metallurgist" (from Marvel's New Universe), who had absolute total control over one hubcap from a 1949 Chevrolet that he found by the side of the highway. (Imagine Captain America's shield. Now imagine it would come when you called, and carry you when it levitated, and guard you while you slept.) Even if the power doesn't much lend itself to munchkinry - here's what I have so far: King Midas (Greek myth) - turns everything he touches to gold, including food and loved ones (and eventually the whole planet - Ryan North's "The Midas Flesh") Black Bolt (Marvel Comics) - shockwave powers that are linked to his ability to speak, so he can never use his voice without destroying everything around him and has to stay mute Lepidopt (Tim Powers' novel 'Three Days to Never') - knows when he's had a given experience for the last time. "That's the last time I'll ever be in Australia / eat a tuna sandwich / hear anyone say 'John Wayne'", etc Miriam Black (Chuck Wendig's 'Miriam Black' novels) - upon making skin contact with you, knows how and when you die. She's tried to change the future. It never works. Kid Psycho (Legion of Superheroes) - forcefield projection that shortens his lifespan by a year each time he uses it. Nick Stavrianos (Greg Egan's novel 'Quarantine') - 'eigenstate', or 'quantum diffraction', which creates (n) versions of you and is utterly terrible for (n-1) of them Gus Kusevic (Algis Budrys' story "Nobody Bothers Gus"), is super strong, super smart, and super unmemorable. And super lonely. Mr. McMahon ("the Man who Always Knew", again by Budrys) knows who's going to come up with amazing inventions, and when, and where, and even what, and he invests in them and everyone gets rich and successful, hurray, and impostor syndrome is crushing him because he doesn't do anything. Nathan "Dr Nemo" Flack(Milestone Comics) - worse than Gus, because at least people will talk to Gus if he's there and approaches them. Nobody even notices Dr Nemo unless he's actively concentrating. "Do you know what it's like to spit on the President? To beat a man to death in broad daylight and get no reaction?" 'Don't Call Me Til Morning'("Miss Bulletproof Comes Out of Retirement" by Louis Evans) has no powers unless you wake her up when she was trying to loving sleep goddammit. Related point: Max Damage (Irredeemable / Incorruptible) gets more powerful the longer he stays awake, so whenever he needs to do something difficult he's hallucinating from sleep deprivation. Gardner 'Flashback' Monroe (Alpha Flight) can generate copies of himself that are actually him from the future. One of them got killed in a fight, and now he lives in terror that at any moment he'll be yanked into the past and impaled by an evil robot. Tom Niles ("The Man Who Never Forgot", Robert Silverberg) - the one thing he can't remember is that other people won't remember having interacted with him for eleven minutes at a baseball game 7 years 4 months 3 days ago and thus he can't function in society Victor 'Kleenex' Pasco, (New Universe) is allergic to superpowers. That's his only power: if you have powers and are standing next to him, he's constantly sneezing and itchy all over. Emery 'Butterball' Schaub (Avengers Initiative) is invulnerable and indestructible, and when he got his powers he was fat and weak and out of shape, and his power will keep him that way forever.
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Nov 5, 2023 21:38
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How about Henry Kuttner's Gallegher, who's a genius super-inventor but only when he's blackout drunk? The Gallegher stories are mostly about him trying to figure out what he built after his last bender, and why.
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Nov 5, 2023 21:55
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There was that Ultimate X-Men issue about a kid whose mutant powers kicked in, which caused everyone in his general vicinity to melt into nothing. He unknowingly killed his entire neighborhood and realized what was going on when he accidentally killed his entire high school. Wolverine was sent to put him out of his misery. The Justice League villain The Key had a thing where his psychic powers were so amped up that he couldn't stop hearing thoughts from around the world. He only had a moment's peace when he committed mass murderer. Similarly, I recall that in X-Factor, shortly after Decimation, there was a villain who was drawn to look exactly like John Cena and could not stop hearing the thoughts of all the remaining mutants and I guess wanted to wipe them all out. Baraka in the new Mortal Kombat timeline has piranha teeth and retractable arm blades, but they're a side-effect from Tarkat, a lethal disease that painfully mutates your body while making you bloodthirsty. Baraka seems to have a handle on it (making him the leader of his people), but feels that the disease is moving slowly as a way of taunting him. Iori Yagami from King of Fighters has the ability to control purple flames from his body, but is cursed to die young. Not that it really matters, since nobody ages in King of Fighters. He's also cursed to occasionally lose control and go into his Riot of the Blood form. He's faster and stronger in this form, but is also completely feral and has a history of unwillingly brutalizing and even killing his teammates.
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Nov 6, 2023 05:27
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Mr. Immortal from the Great Lakes Avengers is immortal. He is not invulnerable. He has no other skills. He will survive until the heat death of the universe, but it’s canon that the Incredible Hulk will kill him before he can evolve into the next Galactus.
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Nov 7, 2023 02:51
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Splint Chesthair posted:Mr. Immortal from the Great Lakes Avengers is immortal. He is not invulnerable. He has no other skills. He will survive until the heat death of the universe, but it’s canon that the Incredible Hulk will kill him before he can evolve into the next Galactus. How will Hulk manage that?
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Nov 7, 2023 03:59
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Friendly Fire shoots energy blasts from his hands, but always hits his own teammates, never who he's aiming for.
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Nov 7, 2023 09:39
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Glob (Robert Herman, X-Men) has translucent, wax-like skin. That's it. It makes him more resistant to damage because it's slightly more robust than normal human skin, but it does mean all of his vital organs are visible for anyone with nefarious intentions to see.
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Nov 7, 2023 14:17
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Bailey Hoskins, titular character of The Worst X-Man Ever, was pretty much designed for this list. He has the mutant power to explode. No power to reform, nothing to let him survive the blast. He can explode once, and he's dead. Mother of Champions from DC's Great Ten might have the worst of it. She gives birth to 25 superhumans every day, who grow at such an accelerated rate that they die of old age in a week.
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Nov 7, 2023 17:20
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Orphan-Maker from X-Men has a power so dangerous that it will supposedly lead to the destruction of the world if it ever expresses itself, something like grey goo.
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Nov 8, 2023 01:15
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Kudos for mentioning Tom Niles. Great story that i never see mentioned.
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Nov 9, 2023 14:21
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In Micah Ian Wright's Stormwatch: Team Achilles, Jukko Hämäläinen has the ability to psychically feel the pain of every living thing in a three-kilometer radius. This includes anyone who he's being forced to fight at the time.
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Nov 10, 2023 01:36
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l33tfuzzbox posted:Kudos for mentioning Tom Niles. Great story that i never see mentioned. you didn't think I'd forget him, did you?
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Nov 10, 2023 05:15
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Emplate from Generation X can absorb other mutant's energy and powers... but he also has to do it regularly or he gets sucked into a nightmare dimension until he feeds again. Forget-Me-Not of the X-Men has the 'power' to be forgotten. He has no control over it, and anyone not directly looking at him loses all memory of his existence. Isca the Unbeaten, an Arakkoan mutant, has the power that she always wins. In one-on-one fights, this is great. In larger battles, this can lead to her powers forcing her to betray her allies and defect to the enemy to ensure she's always on the winning side.
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Nov 10, 2023 06:02
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Angry Salami posted:Isca the Unbeaten, an Arakkoan mutant, has the power that she always wins. In one-on-one fights, this is great. In larger battles, this can lead to her powers forcing her to betray her allies and defect to the enemy to ensure she's always on the winning side. sure her power
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Nov 10, 2023 19:57
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Angry Salami posted:Isca the Unbeaten, an Arakkoan mutant, has the power that she always wins. In one-on-one fights, this is great. In larger battles, this can lead to her powers forcing her to betray her allies and defect to the enemy to ensure she's always on the winning side. Forget Hulk vs. Thor, I want to see Isca vs. Squirrel Girl.
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Nov 10, 2023 21:40
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Angry Salami posted:Isca the Unbeaten, an Arakkoan mutant, has the power that she always wins. In one-on-one fights, this is great. In larger battles, this can lead to her powers forcing her to betray her allies and defect to the enemy to ensure she's always on the winning side. Also she can’t turn down challenges, so if someone challenges her to something she will win no matter what it is. Like she was given a challenge from a former slave over who better understood loss. This instantly filled her mind with hundreds of years of trauma. She could likely be killed by someone challenging her to a contest with death as a win condition.
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Nov 12, 2023 02:19
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Splint Chesthair posted:Forget Hulk vs. Thor, I want to see Isca vs. Squirrel Girl. "Hey, I bet you won't lose this fight!" Squirrel Girl takes it.
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Nov 12, 2023 03:18
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Bailey Hoskins from The Worst X-Man Ever has the power to explode. Once. Afterwords he’ll have blown up Edit: someone already mentioned him, dang
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Nov 12, 2023 06:07
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A death touch in general, if you're not an evil bastard who likes killing. I think there was a 90's Starman issue based around some poor guy getting that power and basically being forced to be a supervillain because he couldn't be anything else. The take on the Hulk in Planetary. Guy gets hit by reality warping bomb. People theorize that in mid demise he tried to imagine himself into something that could survive such a thing. Turned into an inhuman thing that, whatever his endurance might have been, apparently didn't have the ability to escape a deep pit, as he was tossed in there. It took him decades to die of lack of food and water. Cornwind Evil fucked around with this message at 09:46 on Nov 14, 2023 |
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Nov 14, 2023 09:43
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Splint Chesthair posted:Forget Hulk vs. Thor, I want to see Isca vs. Squirrel Girl. Given that Squirrel Girl usually wins through the power of friendship, I assume Isca would just skip the middle man and immediately befriend Squirrel Girl.
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Nov 15, 2023 23:15
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In X-Statix there's a guy called El Guapo (Robbie Rodriguez) who has a super-powered flying skateboard...that's psychic, and acts on his subconscious urges, including self-hatred. And if he and the skateboard get separated for too long, El Guapo gets sick. He died horribly after a dozen issues and was never heard from again, as far as I understand.
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Feb 11, 2024 10:28
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There’s a guy in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part IV whose stand power is that if anyone looks at his back, he dies horribly and then the power transfers to the person that saw his back. There’s also a guy in Part VII who has a stand that just acts as his hype man. That he’s absurdly lucky is unrelated; the stand does not affect that in any wah
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Feb 11, 2024 10:38
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Honestly the way Quicksilver described his powers sounds loving awful. Always on super speed.
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Feb 18, 2024 09:33
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The character from the BBC show Misfits, whose power is being able to cause attraction in anyone which mostly seems to result in people trying to sexually assault her
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Feb 19, 2024 00:36
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