'A Brief Rant on Superpowers'

Ladies and gentlemen: My lamest rant I'm ever going to post!

Alright, I posted a poll the other day about superpowers, and now I'm going to ruin all of them because I like nitpicking things. So let's go through each power and check it out

Flight
Being able to fly would be pretty cool. But what's there to do? If you're breezing through the sky, probably not a lot. It'd be like taking a walk but with nothing to look at. Plus, you're probably going to run into all sorts of things: Bugs, birds, bird poop, etc. And just like walking, you're going to have to get tired eventually, and what happens when you do? You'll tire out and start falling down. You'll need a while to take a breather and once you've finally caught your breath again, you're probably already going to hit the ground.

Teleportation
There are two types of teleportation powers: The common one and the logical one. The common one is just being able to think of a place and be there in an instant. But there's so many other things you have to factor in. Say you want to go to your friend's house, so you decided to teleport there. But where exactly will you go? The driveway, a random room, the roof? And even if you do specify, where exactly in that room will you land: Near the fireplace, on the couch, laying on the floor? There's too many variables that make it an illogical power. The only way to make it seem reasonable is if you specifically use the coordinates of where you want to go, but even then, you'll have to factor in the y-axis too. That's why the Portal series has a better representation of teleportation powers. You place down one portal, you place down another, the two are linked. But what I've always wondered is what happens if you put a portal on a small box and another one on the floor and drop that box in the floor portal? Where's the box? Nonexistent anymore? Portals should be immobile. No matter what you put it on, the portal will stay where it is. Basically, they should be like mini wormholes. Like Voyd from Incredibles 2.

**Invisibility
**Come on, it's basic anatomy and physics. You can see because light reflects off of your eyes. If your eyes are transparent, the light passes through your eyes rather than gets reflected. Therefore, when you're invisible, it would be as hard for you to see anything as it would for anything to see you. But if you're already blind, then being invisible wouldn't be that much of a burden. But why would you want to be invisible if you can't see. One of the only perks of invisibility I can think of is being able to spy on people, but it doesn't really work if you can't see. Yes, you could rely on hearing, but any good eavesdropper could do the same thing being visible. And let's face it: You only want to be invisible so you can see people undress and other creepy stuff like that. Yeah, don't lie to me. But what if your eyes are the only visible parts? First off... ew. That would look really weird. Second, it sort of counteracts the whole "nobody can see me or find out where I am" thing.

Ability to read minds
The way this power is shown in comics and cartoons and movies and such is completely unrealistic (Granted, superpowers as a whole are unrealistic, but that's not the point I'm making!). If you're reading a person's mind, you're hearing/seeing what they're currently thinking about. But let me ask you this: Can you even get a firm grasp of what you're thinking about. Thoughts are usually all over the place. And if you want this power to find out a secret code or something, there's no way you're going to find it. No one is sitting at home on their couch and clearly thinking "And the combination to the safe is 76-23-12" unless they're really trying to remember it. And in the Fairly Odd Parents episode where Timmy and AJ are playing Battleship, AJ thinks "Oh I hope he doesn't say A5." When would anybody think that in a game of Battleship? If your opponent is one hit away from sinking your ship, chances are they already know which space to say, which means you wouldn't think that. And even if they weren't, why would you constantly be worrying about that one specific space? Basically, the power is more reading what you want to hear rather than reading what a person is currently thinking, which is some plot-convenient bullcrap. If you read someone's mind, isn't there ever going to be a time when all you can find is that one funny joke the person just recently heard or something?

**Super strength
**With this power, you will probably A) still collapse under the weight of what heavy thing you're lifting, and B) manage to crush smaller and lighter things with ease. And when you're walking, you'll probably also make giant footprints in the ground and break wooden floors. Leaning against a wall would probably end in disaster. To me, it feels more like a curse than a blessing. Accidentally tug on a page of a book, it rips out. Type things on a computer, break the keyboard. Unless you plan on both being able to hold heavy things and being a walking wrecking ball, I would not recommend this power.

**Super speed
**First of all, you'll be like Sonic, and that should be more than enough to nitpick this power. Sarcasm aside, imagine all of the physics you'll have to go through! You'll first have to start to build up momentum, and once you're--how should I put it?--rolling around at the speed of sound, it would be pretty hard and take pretty long to stop yourself without suddenly stopping and most likely tripping over. Plus, just because you're fast doesn't mean your mind or eyes would be. As you speed past things, they all turn into blurs and you won't be able to see or concentrate on your surroundings very well. And really, what would this power accomplish? Winning a race in a straight line? It'd be pretty hard to make sharp turns if you're going, say, 200 miles an hour. You'll also probably need some super agility, but nowhere in the name of the power does it specify that.

Time travel
We're all technically travelling through time as we speak. 1 second per second. But what if we could travel days, months, or even years per second or something like that? Well let's take a look at travelling to the past. Paradoxes happen. Suppose you were to go back in time to prevent Lincoln from getting shot. That would mean that he wouldn't have been killed, which creates a new present timeline where Lincoln wasn't killed, which means you would have no need to go back in time, which means you wouldn't be there to save him, which means he would be killed, which means you would have to travel back to save him and so on and so forth. There's no way to go back in time without messing up the time-space continuum. Unless every time someone travels through time, a new universe is created. You have the universe where Lincoln was killed, which you are from until you save him, then you create a universe where Lincoln wasn't killed, which you would now live in. Both universes would still exist, but after making a detour to the past, there's now a new universe that you live in. And who knows what kind of thing the Butterfly Effect will bring to that universe? The only way time travelling to the past should safely work out would be to see and hear what's going on, but without you being able to interfere with anything going on.

But what about travelling to the future? Oh, I laugh at that idea. Travelling to the future basically tears down the notion of free will. Since there are so many things that could happen within the amount of time you skip, there's no telling what future you manage to go to. You could travel to a future where Kanye is president, you could travel to a future where The Rock is president, you could travel to a future caused by driving to the right on the parkway, you could travel to a future caused by you driving straight. So many factors could happen within that time, so how do you know which future to travel to? And where are you during the time you skip over? Would people be worried that you've been gone for 7 years? The only way to do this would be like Futurama or something like that. Staying in the same place and waiting until it's time. The best way of travelling to the future would just be being able to speed up time super fast, and you staying where you are. And if you do that for 7 years, I'm sure you'll get a lot of weird faces looking at you thinking "What's up with that guy? He hasn't moved since 2021." The future's not written, and therefore, not able to be gone to without waiting.

Telekinesis
Moving stuff with your mind sounds awesome, and would definitely be my choice for a superpower! But, being the nitpicky person I am, I of course have to try to find flaws in it. How big, heavy, and sturdy does a thing have to be in order to move it with your mind? Is it proportional to how easily you can physically move it? Is it something that can be trained? Would people with stronger minds be to telekinesis as bodybuilders are to the physical body? I also think that something like that would probably result in a lot of headaches. I like the idea, but there has to be some limits as to what you can move. If you have a feather and a refrigerator, moving the feather with your mind would most likely be a lot easier than the fridge. And if it's based on your mind, then you can move whatever you're thinking about, right? What if your mind is wandering and you just happen think about a random person on the other side of the planet? Can you only move things in your line of sight? And what about tearing patches of ground and crushing metal that we see so often? The metal makes sense, but the ground? How would that work? And if you can take out chunks of ground, how do you know how not to take chunks out of other things? I've got more questions about this power than nitpicky statements because there's not a lot of things I can find illogical, but rather, things I want to know how they work.

So I applied way too much logic into fictional powers. But I like to nitpick, whether it's for realistic things or not. Nitpicking is fun, which is why I like doing these. Anyway, see you next time with probably an equally lame rant!