I’m gonna choose the side effect and you choose the power:
“I ___, but only when I’m hard.”am the world’s greatest kindergarten teacher
Can revive the dead
“I’m gonna explain everything later, just don’t interfere.”
save kittens from trees
That sounds nice. The newspapers will call me a hard hero.
Can reproduce
Makes sense
You can give moving public speeches
become immensely popular as a male role model
You can captivate the attention of any child. You’re a comedian or magician that would absolutely kill it at any children’s birthday party. You would be a fantastic teacher as you can hold the wrapped attention of even the most tiktok-corrupted teen.
Except, there’s just one small problem…
I’m Mr beast?
They could make a killing off making videos on YouTube or something like Khan Academy. Just never show him from below the waist…
Pee.
Your super power is that you can transform into an afab woman, once.
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Shapeshifting
It hurts extremely because your whole body is physically altered.
Worth it.
There’s a whole fetish community that’s SOOOOO into this idea
RIP Scoot D:
You shift by magically turning yourself inside out ass first
Disgusting and likely painful, would have to be done somewhere private
You’re worried about manners??
I mean, the point of shapeshifting is to be sneaky
Something tells me you have less than honourable intentions for your newfound power
I mean, what would you do with it? If I had it, I could greatly influence the politics of any country, simply by being any leader I wish to be and screwing their public image
I would be a thespian of course! But now that you mention it, I can see the potential to use myself as a biological weapon to help bring about amore equitable world …
Your brain shape shifts as well into an exact copy of the animal you mimic. You have the intelligence of the creature you turn into. Which means a one way trip as any coherent logical human thoughts is driven out by animal instincts.
If I shapeshift into another human, I’d just have their memories. Id have to shapeshift somewhere calm, and leave myself notes
This might make a good movie plot
Give me the power, I’ll do it for free
This would have infer that your shape shifting skill had the ability to mimic not just their DNA but their nueral patterns as well. Without that you are again just left with instinct and a blank slate brain with no memory or knowledge.
Oh my god, Memento meets Animorphs.
Holy shit this is actually a good idea, I would actually read this book or watch this movie…
It could also work in a video game, but it would be very difficult to pull this off as the player character… could make for some extremely interesting NPCs in various settings.
Your clothes are not transformed with you
Still works. I just gotta shapeshift into someone about my height
You shapeshift, including your mind. When you change into a person, you take on all of their memories as well. You become a complete copy, and the old you simply ceases to exist. If you turn yourself into Donal Trump, there’s just a random copy of the president sitting in your apartment, utterly confused about where he is or how he got there. And the ability to shapeshift was a power of your old body. The new one can’t shapeshift.
Your weight also change, but the difference is converted to energy using mass–energy equivalence formula.
Grow slowly -> walking air cooler
Shink rapidly -> Boom
Wouldn’t it be more like: Grow slowly -> burn proportional amount of calories Since you would need to get that energy from somewhere
So you’d be interpolating between a keg-shaped dwarf and slenderman; sounds nice, too
Honestly, I could probably get behind that lol. After long enough I bet you could get really good at getting your mass exactly how you wanted it depending on what you want to do.
So I just need to keep my weight constant
But comes with body dysmorphic disorder. You’ll never be satisfied with how you look.
Not until you finally get it right, and at that point you look like a total freak to everyone else. But at least you’re satisfied.
Granted, but you can never turn back
access to all animal shapes, but can only use them once, stuck in final form forever.
Oh no… I’m a cat. Done and done.
You can only shapeshift into smaller versions of yourself.
That’s not really a side effect, more of a condition.
Every time you shapeshift, you lose the ability to shape shift one more atom than the last time you shapeshifted?
Like a Ramen card in Balatro
You can only shift into a species that you’ve seen before. Can only shape shift into living things (not sentient and mobile inanimate objects)
And you can never return to any species you were previously. It has to be a new one every time until you exhaust the possible species. Leaving you stuck as the last possible species you pick to shape shift into.
Wait, but can I shapeshift within a given species?
you shapeshift, but your state and society will periodically and randomly remind you, that they know, what shape you had earlier … wait, that does already exist. still superpower tho!
You can’t actually become anything unique, the body approximately closest to your imagination becomes yours. They also, become you in turn. You immediately become a world wide sensation if used frequently.
That’s not shapeshifting, that’s body swapping
fuck
Still a cool power
Your telomeres become damaged every time you use the ability
You forget what you like if you are changed for too long and don’t have a detailed enough reference
A matter of keeping some hair in a jar as well as a photograph of mine
Ide start an only fans account
You can also become invisible
Ability to make cheese at will.
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You are also able to end all wars
Teleportation
Every time you do it, you land on a poop
Just gotta carry disinfectant wipes and stuff I guess. I’d take this deal
Nah, just put on those covers that workers use before they come into your house. Little slips that go over your shoes.
And not like a little dog scat either. We’re talking the entire football team ate some bad vichysoise and it hit them during practice and that pile is where you land. Every godsdamn time. You’re starting to wonder if it’s the same pile.
You can only teleport your body. Meaning you will always arrive naked.
I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle
You should watch The Boys, if you haven’t already.
I have but totally forgot about that part!
Are prostheses and implants considered part of your body for purposes of teleport?
If say only you physical body teleports, leaving behind a pile of clothes, the contents of your digestive tract, and contact lenses. You arrive naked, hungry, and blind.
Granted, but your momentum is teleported with you. The earth is hurtling through space at over 100,000 km and you are on its -spinning- surface subjected to multiple momentum influences constantly.
Keep it to short distances and you might be ok, but with distance comes chaos.
This was fantastically embedded in the Jumper books.
Don’t you Just have to Teleport rapidly Forward in short disxtances then to mitigate that risk? Would probably also bei safer since you could See where to Teleport to.
Lmao not how it works. Things are only moving in relation to other things, if you’re affixed to the earth then almost any other point on earth relative to you is not moving.
If you teleport in refence to some other celestial body that sounds kind of dumb and also possibly a skill issue.
The surface of the earth at the equator is moving at ~1600 km/hr in order to rotate fully in a day. If you teleport to the opposite side of the planet, you’ll still be moving at that speed but the surface there is moving in the opposite direction. You will now be having a very bad day.
(Along the equator) in relation to the core along the polar axis. See how I did that? I filled in your implied point of reference. Isn’t that a pretty stupid reference compared to, idk, where your are standing now?
How much is a 3 square feet patch of grass moving in relation to the one nearest you? Two points on a grid. It doesn’t matter if the grid is being translated around an axis, the two points are basically fixed and dont move in relation to each other.
I see how you don’t understand reference frames. From any reference point, the 2 sides of the globe are moving differently. If you consider 1 side stationary, the other side of the earth is moving 3200 km/hr relative to you. If you’re at the core both sides are moving in opposite directions. I think you could teleport from one pole to the other and be ok. Reference frames by definition cannot be rotating.
Incorrect. Any two walkable points on the earths surface relative to each other are for all practical intents and purposes static. The examples you gave earlier were relative to the earth’s axis.
The earth is rotating bro. It is not static. that’s literally why there are jets streams and prevailing wind patterns. If you could actually use a rotating body as a static reference frame, the stars in the sky would be spinning around your reference frame every 24 hours. Any star doesn’t have to be very far away before it needs to move faster than the speed of light to complete it’s rotation (which is not possible). Go spin a basketball. I promise you the 2 sides are moving in opposite directions from any reference frame that is not spinning (bc reference frames by definition are not spinning)
Your accuracy is +/- 3 light years.
If your already on your deathbed, it would be a painful way to die, but you’d at least get an amazing view for a few seconds.
You have to have been there first within 24hrs to teleport there
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Couldnt you just teleport there for a second on weekend so the timer resets and you dont have to drive at all?
Could also do that with international vacation spots too.
Teleport home to feed the cat and then back to Italy.
You can’t control the destination.
The event alone causes an explosion, killing anything 50 meters to you, damaging anything 100 meters from you, temporarily disabled any electrical thing two kilometres from you, but you won’t be affected by any of this.
Anywhere you haven’t been is an imaginary place
“The Stars My Destination” by Alfred Bester. Considered one of the all time best science fiction novels. Everyone can teleport just by thinking about it.
You can materialize matter out of thin air.
Super strength
You fart continuously while using it.
Probably the most realistic of the side effects
There’s an episode of Justice League where Superman goes at it with Darkseid. Supes says that he always has to be careful and that the whole world is like cardboard to him, so this is the first time he can really let go.
So, you can’t pick up a coffee cup or touch anyone without worrying about destroying something.
Also, you aren’t invulnerable so if you punch a wall you’ll still break your hands.
Also, you aren’t invulnerable so if you punch a wall you’ll still break your hands.
This is an interesting side effect.
- Every time they sneeze they break multiple bones.
- If you push too hard during pooping you’ll blow out your ass and/or cause internal organ damage.
- Chewing could easily crush your teeth and break your jaw
- If a guy, don’t even think about masturbation. If you do manage it with the use of a device independent of your super strength, the ejaculation would still shoot out of you like a rail gun, destroying anything in its path and blowing out your penis.
The list can go on and on. That power is a fucking nightmare.
https://temp.larryniven.net/?q=man-of-steel-woman-of-kleenex-by-larry-niven
tl, dr a scientist looks at Superman’s love life. It’s not a pretty picture.
Reading this makes me want to trigger Nivenyrral’s disk…
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A sort of corrollary to this is CIPA
https://www.verywellhealth.com/cipa-disease-when-a-person-can-t-feel-pain-4122549
You just do not feel pain, cannot sense temperature and never sweat.
You also, as a child more often, frequently seriously injure yourself and do not even realize it.
Also the inability to sweat makes you much, much more susceptible to heat stroke.
The minimum force you can output is now around 500 Newtons
It’s extremely difficult to control - even grazing an object the wrong way with your finger can end up breaking it into pieces. Giving someone a hug can easily end with you covered in blood from the person you just split in two.
Going to the toilet propells the shit straight through the toilet.
Your muscles don’t gain super durability however.
Mind reading
It turns out nobody really thinks often enough for you to get any information
Twist: everyone is P-zombies but you! The Solipsists were right!
When you read someone’s mind you involuntarily blurt out everything you read.
I think that’s a syndrome
Crowded subway station = fun times!
You’re extra sensitive to reading the minds of non-human animals and can’t turn it off. All the time. Forever.
spoiler
You can’t turn it off or filter out any thoughts and are lost in a cacophony of thoughts bombarding you every second from evey living thing. Even isolation isnt a relief as the animals and insects asail you with their primitive instinctual thoughts.
Came looking for copper but found gold. Great write-up.
Antarctica here I come!
You arrive to desolate and wonderfully silent Antarctica.
For a time you are alone and happy in your isolation. Soon enough, thoughts start to slowly infiltrate your sleep and later your waking world. You can’t understand them. They are weird and very distressing. Over time you are having difficulty thinking clearly. You want to run but you cannot. You want to scream but you cannot for the thoughts are so upsetting. Your days and nights are spent in abject terror as you feel your mind slipping. Your essential nature being pulled away from you. Even more frightening is that you are starting to understand and interpret images, thoughts, and ideas, but they are so… Alien.
From the aliens.
The aliens that long ago crashed here on earth. To keep themselves alive they merged themselves with their spacecraft in an unholy combination of life and technology. They have been trapped by time, buried under the ice, waiting. Slowly the machine intelligence has been corrupted, the living minds fractured and the remaining combined intelligence is insane, mavolent, and hungry for new thoughts and ideas. Your mind is but the first. Your arrival has awoken them from a deep slumber. The ice that has kept them from humanity is melting.
You, (are you a individual any longer?) hunger with them for thoughts that are not your own.
I did forget about The Mountains of Madness!
Unholy union is as unholy union does. The machine elves have woken up, and they want to fuck.
All thoughts are formatted in .docx
All thoughts are deposited on a random storage medium and format. So you might receive a 3.5" cassette formatted with ZFS or a flashdrive that must be read by laser refraction (like a DVD)
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Whenever you do it, the fact you’re reading someone’s mind is announced loudly in their mind and in the minds of anyone nearby.
In exchange, all of your thoughts are broadcasted onto an account on every social media, no matter how small, with your name attached to it.
It works, but there is nothing to read. Enjoy your solipsism!
Everyone secretly despises you.
Always. You can never not be reading the minds of everyone around you.
Have my nose grow every time I lie
The ability to get my DnD group to have a sensible, routine schedule, with no cancelations.
Neural typical ignoramus is what I choose. I’d like to be able to ignore what’s happening in my country and be happy like a bunch of these dumbassss
Flying
Extreme fear of heights
Stealth low flight mode activated!
‘… I… I just prefer to ‘hover’, ok?’
Hovering would still be nice
“Hey, whats that up in the air?”
“It’s a bird.”
“No, it’s a plane!”
“Wait… Is that…?”
“AAAAAAAUUUGGGHAAAAAAHH”
“It’s Banshee Man!”
Achieved like bats fly. Your arms and fingers have been transformed into wings.
You are now the sexiest thing alive to birds, so they will constantly hit on you.
you lose all leg strength
Only at the speed of walking.
You can’t walk
Depending on how controlled the flight is, you could just flight 5mm off the ground and just look like you’re walking normally.
That sounds perfectly fine though
Flying has its own built-in side effects.
Every time you take off, there’s a pretty good chance that people nearby will notice. The government will want to study someone who has the ability to fly, so they’ll start surveiling the area. Within a short time they’ll figure out who you are, and you’ll be captured and eventually dissected.
And, that’s assuming your flight superpower comes with the ability to breathe at high altitudes, the ability to resist the cold you’d be exposed to by flying, the ability to see while flying without having your eyes dry out, etc.
You’re now a city pigeon.
You get struck by lightning
You can’t do it unless you’re wearing revealing bondage gear and a ball gag. Your kinks become the story instead of your superpower.
The ability to change the probability of events happening
You can only make things worse
Dang 😅 Who gets to decide whether I’m making something worse though?
Me.
You need to amass one kilogram of your own feces in a ceremonial bag for the power to take effect.
Name checks out, thank you Spiderman :3
Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
The other half is poop.
Can’t argue with that
Applies only to non terrestrial events
Chance of an advanced race of friendly aliens settling on Mars: 0.0000000000000N% => 100%
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The probability of gaining or losing a genetic trait in your body also changes based on the probability change you make
You can only make small changes, and it doesn’t always work. So, you don’t actually know if you have the power or if something slightly improbable happened.
You go forward in time to a point where the changes no longer matter.
With the snap of my fingers I can instantly cause the death of authoritarian dictators.
Bullet poops
the bullets fire whether your sphincter is open or not
Every time you sneeze you ruin a perfectly good pair of pants/underwear.
You can also solve world hunger
Nutsack strays
You’re full of gunpowder
Controlling time to undo mistakes i have done in the past
Speed up or slow down time at will
