I wrote this about five years ago. I just re-read it for the first time in about as long. It's foul, but funny.
This genuinely grossed me out. Bravo, sir, bravo.
I wrote this about five years ago. I just re-read it for the first time in about as long. It's foul, but funny.
I think I'd want to stop time. Think about all the things I could get done in a single day if I could stop time? Deadline coming up? No problem, library closing in ten minutes, HA! It would be perfect. Imagine if you could get a new story out every week!
If not that, a perfect memory. Learn something once just by reading/hearing it, boom, never have to practice it to make sure it goes in. Save a lot of time.
I think it would be ultra fun to have a shape-shifting superpower (like Mystique's.) If you played your cards well, you could avoid schemes requiring you to use your power to make money. Then you could just try living all sorts of different lives. Keep what you like; replace the rest until you have exactly what you want.
I think it would be ultra fun to have a shape-shifting superpower (like Mystique's.)
As a biologist, it would be interesting experience what it is to be another species, and as someone who enjoys writing, being able to adopt the skin of different people would be useful in internalizing different perspectives and experiences.
I have always known since a very young age that if I were a supervillain, you could kill me with French's yellow mustard. A few squirts and I'd be down.
Agreed. I've always kinda wondered about the physics/biology of shapeshifting, though. Like, what happens if you eat three tonnes of vegetation as an elephant, then need to change back into a person in a hurry? What happens to all that fermenting greenery in your guts? These sorts of questions keep me up at night.I agree about shapeshifting. It would be really cool to be able to change into other humans or animals. It would be a bit like having all the superpowers in one. Want to fly? Become a bird. Want to be strong? Turn into a bear (or elephant). Want to run fast? Become a gazelle? Want to spy on other people? Become something unobtrusive, like a rat, or simply take the shape of another person to blend in.
As a biologist, it would be interesting experience what it is to be another species, and as someone who enjoys writing, being able to adopt the skin of different people would be useful in internalizing different perspectives and experiences.
Agreed. I've always kinda wondered about the physics/biology of shapeshifting, though. Like, what happens if you eat three tonnes of vegetation as an elephant, then need to change back into a person in a hurry? What happens to all that fermenting greenery in your guts? These sorts of questions keep me up at night.
Seems like you could create free energy by standing on a balance scale with a medium-sized rock on the other side and changing back and forth between an elephant and a flea. Perpetual motion is a problem with many superpowers. Therefore logically superpowers should require some form of energy to use.
Agreed. I've always kinda wondered about the physics/biology of shapeshifting, though. Like, what happens if you eat three tonnes of vegetation as an elephant, then need to change back into a person in a hurry? What happens to all that fermenting greenery in your guts? These sorts of questions keep me up at night.
Laer's solution of only being able to shift into something of roughly the same mass seems like a reasonable constraint if we're keeping things within our universe. Hey: turns out there's a list of mammals by average weight. I've met adults weighing anything from ~35 kg to ~150 kg, so that rules out anything much bigger than a black bear (~154 kg) or smaller than a hyena (40 kg), although there are some outliers who are upwards of 200 kg who could do a sea lion impression in a pinch. I suppose you could postulate that a shapeshifter could become anything smaller than their human self (just try not to think too hard about the mechanics of how that mass would be shed ... it wouldn't be pretty), but turning back's gunna be a problem, unless there's a way to 'borrow' mass from the surrounding environment, as you point out.Well, if gut contents don't convert with your body, you'd have to take a heck of a dump. Immediately and uncontrollably. Fasting for at least 36 hours before shifting back to human from large ungulate form is strongly advised. One could craft a humorous story around this premise, though it would be rather in a gross vein.
Someone who just shifted to herbivore form after a good steak dinner would likely get very sick with a deer or horse type digestive tract that is suddenly filled with meat too.
This could be an interesting limitation on the power--the need for fasting prior to shifting between forms of greatly different size and digestive biology.
I always wondered what happened to someone's clothing (in cases where the person isn't naked when they come back from being an animal, or tangled in ill-fitting clothing when they shift from human form), and of course, to their biomass when they shifted to a smaller form (and where does the biomass come from when you go to something larger). Maybe there's a sort of insta metabolism that takes place, and a sort of magically-powered version of photosynthesis (fixing CO2 and water into organic macromolecules) when you need to get bigger.
Though Fritz Leiber had a Fafherd and Gray Mouser story where people shifted down to rat size, and there would be this puddle of fleshy goo waiting for them at the site where they used the spell (or was it a potion). You needed to shift back in the same place to re-incorporate you gooey goodness. Otherwise, you'd "borrow" biomass from the nearest convenient target (who might be delighted if they needed to lose a lot of weight, but otherwise it would be a problem).
Another possible superpower would be the ability to mind control other humans or animals and temporarily "borrow" their bodies. A sort of possession. The ethical issues are serious, but at least one wouldn't get a bellyache that way.