Tonight concluded another volume of Heroes, which of course everyone knows as one of the greatest television shows ever to be conceived. So of course, what could be more appropriate than to put up a list of the top five superpowers I would absolutely love to have. Right now.
Of course, it’d be awesome if I could pull a Peter Petrelli (early Peter, not Volume 4 Peter) and just rake in the powers as I go, collecting them Pokemon-style. Gotta catch ‘em all!
In more or less the order of my wanting-ness:
One: Psionics. This includes but is certainly not limited to telekinesis (bending the spoon with your mind), telepathy (only if it’s on demand rather than always-on), and mind control. Think Sylar + Matt Parkman. Technically you could do just about everything else on the list with enough control over telekinesis. Flight, shielding, strength augmentation, whatever. If you can control down to the atomic level, you can walk through walls, go invisible, command electricity, whatever. It’s like the ultimate power. And of course if you’re Sylar you can always go for the can opener effect.
Speaking of, you’d never have to worry about dropping something in a tight spot, or fetching a drink from the fridge in the other room. Just think (oops, no pun intended) of the possibilities. Of course, some of the next few
Two: Teleportation. Obvious choice here. Clearly, if you had strong enough telekinesis this might not be needed but it’d be pretty damn handy. Although I could see myself getting amazingly lazy. There’s a scene in the movie Jumper where you see Anakin… sorry, Hayden Christensen’s character “jump” from one seat on the couch to one closer to the remote. That’d be me.
Three: Invisibility. Oh come on. What person hasn’t wanted to be invisible at least once in their life, for whatever (likely less-than-noble) reason? It’d be so much fun, even if you leave out the obvious high school locker room fantasy scenarios. Just need to work out that pesky physics problem of keeping the ability to see while invisible. Stupid laws of nature.
Four: Self-healing/Rapid Tissue Regeneration. Had to clarify this one, as it’s not Linderman-style healing (sorry, if you don’t watch Heroes you’re missing a lot of references here) but rather the ability to heal from any wounds inflicted on you. Just like Claire Bennet or Wolverine. Pretty straight-forward here… this one more or less protects you against any unfortunate happenings you may come upon while enjoying the other powers you might have.
Five: Elemental Manipulation. Think Captain Planet, without the cheesy 80s stuff clouding up all the coolness. Or the rings. Not necessarily weather, but elements. I’ll use the Marvel universe here: combine Pyro, Iceman, Dr. Doom, etc. I consider electricity to be an element too, hence the good Doctor. If you’d prefer I stick to Heroes characters, fine: Elle. How cool would it be to have such a show-off power like arcing electricity between your fingertips? I’ve always wanted to do that. But… like I said… with enough control, a strong enough telekinetic could probably do the same thing.
In fact, I think electrical control might actually be one of the more plausible/possible “superpowers” to have. The human body runs on electricity, so why not? Get enough control over the electricity coursing through your body, manage to channel it and extend it outside your body… voila. Maybe. In my dreams, at least. You can’t take that away.
Unless you’re the Haitian.
Photo credits:
jin.thai, icanhascheezburger, and Nano Taboada.
I’ve never quite understood people’s fascination with birthdays and the parties that inevitably accompany them. Yeah, today is the nth annual re-occurrence of the date that you were introduced to the world, so what?
