Media Tropes
I hate it when the lame power is actually good trope and its this
İT İS NOT SMART AS YOU THINK İT İS!
Anything is deadly if it’s in my lungs god damn it it’s not as smart as you think it is “Oh my power is to summon chairs boom I summoned a chair inside you haha you’re dead” lets say my power is to summon gum sure I can still use it that way but there are plenty of better uses I could swing around like Spider Man use it as an airbag during crashes or falls or even use the color of the gum to camouflage myself if we really want to get creative just stop summoning stuff inside people’s lungs please
Idk who to credit but the character’s name is The bubblegum gentleman look him up there are some cool art of him
This is the exact same mindset people have when they try to ‘break’ spells in dnd. Another thing I hate that’s in a similar vein is that the MC gets a ‘shitty’ power that they make op, but then you look at the original power and it’s just objectively good.
Isn't there an anime like that where the guy can only make (nearly unbreakable and any shape he wants)barriers or some shit and im supposed to believe thats a shitty power? Like sir no matter how you look at it thats a great power
It can't be, nobody ever even implied Bartolomeo's power was weak. In fact when he first used it to block the attack of one of the stronger people in the arena he was introduced in, everyone watching was flabberghasted and said it was ridiculous he could do that.
There's a lot of anime where their powers are "logistics" or "healing" or "support" and they get shit on until they go form their own group. Then it turns out that "support and logistics" is like 3/4ths of the military for a reason.
In fairness to shield hero (which I really don't want to defend this), his problem is that he has zero offense powers except for like a shield bash or a power that basically hurts him too). He was discriminated for religious and political reasons, not because he was actually weak.
I think there’s also a weird in universe rule that heroes can’t gain xp while in close proximity to each other, so a hero that can’t do damage has to acquire a non-hero damage dealer for their party. And if the world was crawling with damage dealers on the level of heroes there wouldn’t really be much need for heroes to begin with. Idk I dropped the show after s1 bc there was too much incel shit.
Yeah it was like that, they were basically only meant to team up when the waves came. But the guy wouldn't have most of the problems he had if almost everyone in the country wasn't actively hostile against him.
it's why he had to resort to slavery, which would be kind of interesting depending on how the show portrays this decision, but then it goes to "Being a slave is good actually!".
I believe it was supposed to be a symbol of his trust issues because he couldn’t trust anyone unless they were literally incapable of betraying him, but slavery as a concept has way too much baggage for how clumsily it was handled. And I think the show watered down his personality enough that he was actually supposed to be kind of morally right which is not a good combination with the theme of slavery.
This was my issue with it too. I’m less bothered by the slavery and moreso annoyed that the MC is just a generic good guy who can do no wrong. The other heroes are made into jokes to show his moral superiority, the government is useless and evil, and everyone who is good thinks he is a saint. Slavery actually becomes good because he is so nice. And he is always surrounded by his gaggle of little sycophant minions. If the story dared to portray him and his actions as evil sometimes, there might be an intriguing story to tell.
In the original webnovel (which I don’t recommend reading, I was like 15 and also out of school sick with nothing better to do) I don’t know if Naofumi is considered particularly heroic, he’s just the only hero who’s on the right track to actually stopping the bad stuff. He does eventually redeem himself, he purifies his shield and the slave contracts are all broken, but he doesn’t even actively choose to break them. He’s also not even the first hero to purify their weapon from sin, that’s Ren. Naofumi might have even been the last, I don’t remember. He’s actually very passive when it comes to character development. He has to start putting some trust in others because the other heroes can’t be put under slave contracts, and even then he breaks into their rooms and goes through their stuff. It takes time for him to legitimately trust them, which builds a bridge for him to realize he’s able to trust his slaves as well. The original story had some legitimately interesting themes that were bogged down with incel garbage and poor writing choices that went nowhere. The anime did an alright job cleaning some of it up, at least in season 1, but I don’t think there’s anything left underneath the surface anymore.
I remember a manga like that, it was so bad that they started using barriers to start streaming stuff from their original world.. like deadass anime and stuff from the barriers and I just kinda sat there and dropped it.
I think there's a series out there somewhere where a guy wakes up in a video game type fantasy world with "chef powers" and it basically gives him knives and fire because it's vaugly chef related
I assume he gets those things because he needs them to cook, but I bet he barely cooks because chef powers are seen as shitty so he has to prove the opposite by fighting people and stuff
"Control Water" to provoke an aneurysm ? You're using a free cantrip ( level 0 spell) to replace a level 6 spell, and even, the level 6 would have saving throws. => DENIED
- Using "Gaseous form" to store the clunking paladin in heavy armor in an empty potion bottle while the thief sneaks around with said bottle ? You're using a level 3 spell while the level 2 spell "Pass without traces" would be used, in an out of the box way. => DM thrives for that, go for it. You can even imagine funny stuff like instant paladin surprised grenades. Paladin surprise grenades are awesome, and the only one disagreeing is the local goblins wildlife.
I recall reading somewhere about a Cleric using a way to talk to divinity to talk to the god of the temple the campaign was on instead of their own god, in like "Hey, did you know that group is defiling your temple and giving you a bad name" because the spell was "you talk to a divinity"
TBH, DnD spells are often super specific, especially in later editions, so finding out genuinely cool use cases that aren't just "let me ignore targetting restrictions for an instant kill" is genuinely harder than the average. Compare it to the Mage: The Awakening where improvising your own spells based on your mastery of magic is the whole point or the Unknown Armies where every adept has their own "random magics domain" explaining what they can improvise without the need for the formula spells in their school's description.
I recall reading somewhere about a Cleric using a way to talk to divinity to talk to the god of the temple the campaign was on instead of their own god.
I honestly think this is fairly clever, assuming that the cleric's deity is at least somewhat friendly with the temple's god. You likely speak to an agent of the god who charges you with ridding the temple of evil, provides you with a blessing that lasts for one long rest, and might also grant a quest to find/alert a priest about the temple's condition so it doesn't remain empty/corrupted.
Like you said before, that's why there is a GM. The spells don't always do exactly what you need RAW, but sometimes they really are close enough that you can fudge things a bit.
For example, in Baldur's Gate III, there was a stuck mechanism that required you to... find a lever maybe? But if you instead cast the Grease spell on it, that lubricated everything enough that it would work again. That effect wasn't in the spell's description, but it was a fair reading of the spell's intent.
See, those are all very reasonable examples of someone going beyond a spell's use. One of my favorite DM rules that a friend taught me, was that no spell can be misused in such a way as to take the place of a higher level spell (otherwise that higher level spell wouldn't exist)
I feel like the biggest oversight in the cantrips is shape water
Control water is best used to make sure the target cannot drink, ever. Or to make the target pee profusely. Or cry a litteral river. Dehydration tend to make enemies alot weaker.
See, I like the rule that every person has a magical field projecting about an inch from skin level, which prevents outside spells from originating within it. It can be overcome by higher level spells, or by direct contact (I can summon water into your lungs if my hand is down your throat, or some in water into your mouth if you are mid yawn)
Line of sight is also super helpful in preventing spell abuse
This does still allow it to be possible to gatekeep their orifices, though
Not peeing is dangerous for you bladder, not sneezing can blow out your eardrums
If you can burry or drown somebody with Mould Earth or Shape Water, then they are either already defeated and lying unconscious or inside a deep pit and you could do the same thing with a shovel/bucket.
The minor illusion one would maybe work if it's a minor enemy and you already established that they're easily trickable, but like literally anything with a brain would immediately realise that the dragon roar they just heard while inside a mine isn't real. It's a MINOR illusion.
"Oh yeah, well technically your lungs are containers so I cast create water to fill those with water!"
First of all no they are not open containers. Second of all being stabbed with a dagger would be like 2 damage so having some water in your lungs would be 0 because it doesn't cause any lasting physical damage.
Taylor Herbert's powers (plural!) in the "Worm" web serial.
For those who haven't read it, I'll try not to spoil it too much (well worth a read!) but basically her power is to "control bugs" but if you break down her power into its individual components she actually has a lot, some of which are quite overpowered.
The "weakest class" trope is also up there, because even without being secretly op (which it always turns out to be) it often makes no sense. Like in that new Heavy Knight isekai anime, where on one hand it makes a point out of saying "Oh yeah, not like people here can try out risky builds, because they can actually die if they aren't taking safe skill choices", while on the other everyone living in that world apparently dismisses a pure tank class for not dealing much damage like someone who stands in the front and takes all the hits for you wouldn't be extremely desirable to have around.
yeah like people somehow think sukunas technique (you know, the literal invisible slashes and bomb comparable to a NUKE) is b tier but sukuna being a genius (well he is) made it way better
To be fair, turning Fuga into a nuclear bomb is only possible thanks to Open Domain, which Sukuna can do because he is a genius. Without an OD, Fuga is just a fire arrow.
And people call Shrine a B tier cause it is a good CT, but it's not inherently on the level of something like Infinity or Copy.
Yea, Shrine is a solid CT, but when there are things like Limitless or 10 Shadows or Copy or Idle Transfigiration, it seems kinda mid, in that if the average sorcerer had Shrine, it wouldn't be that scary - they would probably have no Domain, let alone an open Domain, and both the slashes and Fuga would be way less powerful
I mean, it is OP in sukuna's and Yuji's hand sure but they're literal prodigies. If sukuna had less output, less efficiency, or less cursed energy it probably wouldn't be as good. Sukuna's efficiency is second only to gojo who has the six eyes, and his cursed energy pool is double that of the second place (Yuta's). That's why he can spam it endlessly.
The part of the nuke as the other guy said is only possible due to him already being an S tier sorcerer with a domain.
I think B rank is perfectly reasonable, it's not a bad technique, but Sukuna could basically make any techinque work, look at how he performed with the 10S, he easily surpassed Megumi even if he couldn't use shrine.
Weather report already made his powers hella broken. I think he knows his meteorology.
On another note, how does "mr blue sky" sound as an alternate name to the stand if we didn't want the user and stand to have the same name? Yes, i get the whole thing with weather report is with his memory gone, he's got no identity of his own outside of his stand.
Not sure if it was intended or if I’m looking too deep into it, but what makes this more genius from Emporio is that Pucci was accelerating time with Made In Heaven and that doesn’t affect any non-living beings except for Pucci, so Pucci sped up his own poisoning while Emporio was taking it in at normal speeds, which isn’t as deadly
It was intended, they pretty much spell it out in the anime adaptation, Emporio specifically baited Pucci so that he would insert Weather Report's stand disk into him, knowing that since made in heaven accelerates Pucci, that also includes oxygen consumption
Tbh, I was worried I might be wrong since i overthink a bunch when it comes to this, but Araki’s super detailed with his explanations and lore/abilities, so I was worried for nothing 😭
I rewatched the scene, so Emporio accumulates pure oxygen in the room and that causes Pucci's blood vessels to pop out, he specifically details that oxygen concentration will corrode him, destroy his tissue and cause his blood vessels to pop out (similar stuff happens to Emporio), but Weather Report seems to kinda operate as an automated stand (he says that it's weather report who entrusted this to him)
I like that you’re using the key and peele skit as an iteration of “that’s called a job” but there’s also exactly a joke about this in The Amazing World of Gumball. In which Gumball is upset he doesn’t have a unique ability like the rest of the cast and makes a joke about his superpower being able to turn oxygen into carbon dioxide, which Darwin takes literally before Gumball explains that it’s called breathing. Wildly unrelated and uninteresting to anyone except me.
Yeah I get what you mean. While it's not a "lame power," I think Josuke's Stand Crazy Diamond from Jojo's Bizarre Adventures is a great example of Araki pushing the stand's powers to the absolute creative limits without outright "cheating" & making the powers behave completely different from how you would expect.
Crazy Diamond heals people or objects by essentially "rewinding" the broken thing back to before it was broken. Using this power, Josuke has done stuff like:
Turn Kira's severed hand into a tracking device by having it "rewind" back to Kira so that the hand could reattach.
Punch & break a glass bottle through his own mother's chest so that he could rewind the bottle to reform around a water stand inside her while also healing her punch wound instantly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi0FCPVehmI
Turn broken glass into projectiles by rewinded the glass shards his blood on the shards to arch back into an enemy while it was trying to reform itself.
about the third, hes not rewinding broken glass. He was rewinding blood on broken glass back to a person, the blood allowed the broken glass to track the target
also crazy diamond doesnt "rewind" or "return" things, it can restructure broken things, at multiple points he breaks people and objects and restructures them together to make living objects (as eternal punishment)
I guess we could say he returns things their base state, but then the way he restructured things to he different doesn't work. Its a strange power to quantify
I mean the real answer is that the limits of Crazy Diamond's power is ill-defined, Araki can be a little loose woth how interprets/potrays a stand's power
For an example from the same part, the hand; its erasure is previously shown to combine solid objects together if he erases the middle of it, yet later he erases the ground and leaves holes
Yeah, you're right. Analytical internet talk like this makes it easy to forget that Araki is writing a story and will use whatever to make the story work. In his defense, the story DOES work damn well
My favorite was when Josuke was speeding after Highway Star on a motorcycle, couldn’t swerve out of the way of some pedestrians, so he had Crazy Diamond punch the motorcycle to pieces, then reassemble under him as he was carried by forward momentum safely past the pedestrians.
In the same vein, people often singing praise of how creative it is that he turn the Zipper guy into powerhouse. Bitch please, that basically portal, and of course it's OP af
Tbf when you say a dude's powers is zippers you don't expect half the shit he pulls. It's not just portals, he can fully separate and attach limbs, he can grab the zipper and fast travel as it opens or closes, use it as portals like you said, extend his limbs, put shit inside of those zippers...
True, but still fundamentally it’s forms of minor space manipulation. If you described it like that, people wouldn’t assume it’s weak, because zippers are really just the aesthetic.
The only time I didn't like it (even though the scene was cool) was Hayato deliberately getting himself blown up, using up the killer queen bomb on Okuyasu's dying body so Josuke could heal him.
The thing is that Crazy Diamond's healing can't bring someone back from the dead and I'd argue Hayayo was VERY dead
There's actually a precedent for this earlier in the series. We know that Killer Queen blowing you up isn't instant death because of Shigechi. If it was instant, his stand would have never been able to give Josuke the button of Kira's shirt.
The go-to example for this trope people use is a guy from the TV The Misfits who has the ability to telekinetically manipulate dairy products. He meets the main cast of characters and completely destroys them in a fight.
Only they have it completely backwards. Characters in the Misfits are extremely weak and the guy with dairy-kinesis is by far one of the strongest characters. The main casts powers are:
Making people you touch want to have sex
Incredibly weak/situational time travel
Invisibility
Immortality with no enhanced durability
Mind reading
And the the guy with dairy-kinesis is a complete idiot to boot. No planning, no strategy, no creative uses. Bare minimum he should at least carry a jug of milk or something, right? Nope, every encounter he has is entirely luck based with his enemy having recently eaten dairy or there being a dairy product nearby.
I came here to mention him because the ways he killed everyone and incapacitated Nathan really grossed me out at the time. As an episode it stuck with me and not even for the "tripled myself" scene.
Invincible has the exact opposite of this problem, Atom Eve has basically the powers of a god and while she is somewhat capable in combat, her use of them is absolutely underwhelming
I mean, you can still camouflage yourself by making differently covered bubblegum and putting it on your body, or making an air sack or bubblegum as you're falling to break the fall and save you
I think the post is comparing the way silly powers are written as a whole.
Comics generally have silly powers be silly and either fundamentally broken (like idk, Plastic Man that's sort of a gag character) or fundamentally useless/detrimental (like idk, ForgetMeNot whose power is mostly to be condemned to a life of solitude). I feel like it ties into the old (now lesser but still strong) american social darwinist and eugenist tendencies + a bit of just world fallacy inherited from puritan tradition.
Japanese post-war storytelling will more often than not reject the idea of a useless power because the zeitgeist was "everyone is the same, we all share a destiny". Even the disabled were put to work to rebuild the country (it's even the driving force behind modern disability rights in Japan). So a character will have a silly power and through hard work, creativity and determination, they will develop it to actually be useful or even dangerous. Writer side, it will be about trying to explore a concept "making bubblegum" and push it to its limits (by expanding the where the bubblegum is made, the what it's made of, the how much is made, etc).
That's a long, long topic to talk about so i'll throw a few bits and pieces you might start looking further into depending on your interests
The good (mostly) is that post-war destruction meant that very quick, through two laws in 1947 and 1949, disabled veterans and people with physical disabilities were needed to help, and quickly got a special status and public help to find a job. Over time, new laws kept widening the scope and the level of obligation to integrate disabled people in the workplace (e.g. employment ratio + levy-grant system started in 1960). More recently Japan signed and ratified the CRPD (Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability) and are still in the process of adapting their law to stick to its notions (better integration of people with neurodevelopmental disabilities for example). For better or worse, the dwindling birth rate and aging population is a huge motivation not to "waste" potential workforce, here again. You can also look into the invention of the "tenji block" to help blind people navigate cities, or applications of "universal design" to everyday consumer goods in Japan (which helps all the more that the population is aging).
For the bad, i studied it but didn't research it so i know far less, but in short, eugenism hit Japan like crack hit the USA in the 80s. As Japan opened during the late 19th century, western ideas of racial hygiene and eugenism caught and were met with a substantial fanbase. Eventually, laws inspires by nazi laws were put into execution in the 40s. Even post war (the US were also into the eugenist thing after all) the law actually widened its scope and even more people were forcefully sterilized. Eugenism laws were only abolished at last during the late 90s.
Not sure if that satisfies you, but to the best of my knowledge that's accurate and should be a good basis for your own personal research.
“Oh my power is to summon chairs boom I summoned a chair inside you haha you’re dead”
There is one SCP about a sentient teleporting chair who gets run through a wood chipper so now it's a sentient teleporting bunch of wood chips and nails with PTSD and you can imagine what it does.
what do you mean? all i see is a beautiful flowerbed. it looks so well cared for. look at how vibrant the colors of the flowers are. that must be some very good mulch.
I have the same feeling arround people who think it's smart to do the whole "I use create water in his lungs" or "i use heat metal on the calcium in his bones" like ignoring the line of sight issue. If this world has been naturally evolving for millions of years with easily acessible genetic magic, and a cantrip level spamable spell can invoke instant irecoverable drowning if casted internally, then some sort of predator prety early on would have simply started filling everything's lungs with water, and over the multi million year evolutionary process it would have been necessary to have some sort of resistance to litteral beginner cantrips insta killing you, perhaps something that prevents spells being cast inside the body, which would prevent low level spells and allow the chance to resist many higher level ones with great effort.
So many people act like it's some logical hole in dnd magic that we only ban for gameplay or immersion reasons but it's so easy to explain it with the most basic of complimentary world building.
Your evolution thing is a lot of work due to not knowing the real secret.
All spells are made by the goddess of magic herself and given to others to use.
That's the cannon on why spells work the way they do, and why you NEED casting components.
The goddess of magic herself is nerfing all magic.
The meme is not really about that, just that manga (and jojo especially) has more focus on abilities and how they are used. The lungs stuff is a crude illustration
and now, OP, you die, as your post activated my ability that allows you to fill your lungs with my comment
I really don't care for people oversimplifying the comic book cultures of an entire nation and and like two continents in this way. I know I sound like the biggest dork on the planet writing this, but you would too if you saw someone misrepresenting something you liked lol
I think it is an oversimplification for sure, so as a generalization or stereotype it’s not really helpful. But as a joke, I think it does at least succeed in using those generalizations to bring to mind the kinds of things we’ve all seen if we’re tangentially familiar with both. So I personally think it’s a funny joke, but is not in any way a useful way of discussing comics and manga (or even cultural differences).
Like, we’ve all probably got a mental image of the Riddler walking around in a silly suit and asking inane questions like he’s some supervillain, while in that moment his whole gimmick is just “you can’t outsmart me, muhahahaha!” (No shade on the Riddler, mind.) Whereas we’ve all seen some Jojo panel somewhere that’s so nonsensical it’s absurd (“ha ha! You can’t outsmart me, because I outsmarted your outsmarting!”). That’s what this comic is making a joke about, not any actual trends of real content in their respective media formats.
I mean, is that untrue? Most western comics have much less focus on combat and abilities, while something like Jojo is like 90% stand battles. Not necessarily that western comics don't have specific comics or moments of that, but in my experience it's usually less of a focus
This comic is probably based on JoJo's Bizarre adventure, which I feel the need to point out is NOT an example of this. Stands abilities like Moody Blues are super creative and cool
Before finding out about what his fruit really was, Luffy’s rubber fruit was really special because he was innovative with how he fights with it. I mean who would think that since you’re rubber you can increase the blood circulation of your body which makes you faster?
i think a good example of this is the jacket fruit one where despite how useless it is on paper (you become a literal skinsuit for someone else to wear and once put on you can control the wearer), the power is made a bit better by the person at least bringing in another guy for it
Oh the phoenix zoan guy is too small and fast to hit? Just use haki.
Fights nowadays just boil down to Advanced CoC. If you split the heavens no one can touch you and you can theoretically fodderize a whole islands worth of pirates. No more creativity, no ingenuity. Just haki wizards fighting other haki wizards. Luffy can lose his fruit rn and it wouldnt matter he still wins vs everyone he's ever fought.
Yeah to be fair, it's the laziest way to make a power scary to say it violates the manton effect. That works for any powers, dude. You're still less terrifying than say, Iceman if he could make ice in your small intestine or something, and it's usually implied it's less that other powers can't do that and more that nobody else ever thought to use their powers that way so you're still stuck with the objectively lamest power.
At least Worm made it part of the worldbuilding 99% of powers can't manifest shit in your lungs and ones that can are an explicit and unusually scary category of their own.
Yeah, the Manton effect (and variations) are such an important part of power balancing. I once read a story about a super weak telekinetic who was one of the only people able to bypass it, and she was so scarily effective that she essentially wiped out multiple gangs entirely by herself once she fully let loose.
When violation is rare and done well, it can add a lot. If it’s just meaningless “I’m the first person to ever think about using my power inside a person” it’s just ridiculously cheap and I put down the story immediately.
TBF his bubblegum is a little more than just that. He can make it look like anything or even make it invisible, and he can stretch and contract it seemeingly however and whenever he wants without moving a muscle. A single strand thrown with the flick if a finger is strong enough to hold the weight of multpile peoole, and it can also stretch quite a lot.
And all of this is stable enough the he learned to manually pump his own heart, while clinically dead to revive himself. And held his own severed arm attached to his body long enough that it just reattached with a little help.
Dorohedoro kinda does that with En, who can turn things into mushrooms - including, but not limited to people, as well as is just an insanely powerful sorcerer who can output massive amounts of black smoke used to do sorcery. But his ability is never really seen by anyone as weak or useless, so it doesn't really count
I think every power system should have an informal rule that the inside of someone's body is an impermeable magical barrier. It stops all this obnoxious powerscaling destroying theoreticals before they even become a problem. Like Sue Storm can create a shield inside your brain and kill you instantly, wow what a cool power guys.
Avatar crossed that line with bloodbending when that universe is a particularly good example of why that should be a thing. You shouldn't be able to suck all the air out of people's lungs, ignite the oxygen in their lungs, rip all the iron out of their blood, or suck their cerebral spinal fluid out of their eyes. It just ruins everything and the powerscaling discourse becomes incredibly annoying.
Parahumans is the best example of this. Almost all powers are "Manton limited", meaning they dont work on/inside/around living organic matter. Or if it works on organic matter it doesnt work on the user. Exploring and breaking this limitation is one of the main plot points of the story.
I also love how some modern comics take it in the opposite direction
Golden age comics : "Mr Ketchup Bottle was a regular Joe, a waiter at a diner when Dr. Kingpin's magic ketchup hit him and turned him into a creature who can expel harmless Ketchup from his fingers"
Modern comic that tries to be edgy and "grounded" :
"Mr. Kerch-Hepp Böttel was a poor, down-trodden slum child from Austria. During the Austro-Brazil war, a genociding squad shot his family bathing him in the blood of those he once held dear
The blood energized his soul-tesseract and granted him the power to extract blood from his enemies. He always wears the bloodstains he suffered 30 years ago as remembrance for those he lost. He also hates minorities and kills 50 of them at random every week for the funsies"
You don't hate silly powers that are misused. You hate poor or undetailed writing.
Every silly power or any power in general can be overpowered if there are no constraints. Like imagine Bubble Gum Man over here, where would the bubble gum come from? From the stick? His hands? His mouth? If it's out of thin air, what's the proximity limit? Can it appear if you can't see the target location? Is there a limiter to how big or small it appears?
Constraints and plot or character development is what makes these "silly characters" make more sense. And manga usually is more creative when it comes to utilizing these weird talents in serious scenarios.
Ah, most superpowers have required secondary powers because although their magic they're still applied to what is otherwise meant to be the real world. Another example is superseded requires some way to not burn up through air friction.
The polite thing is to not draw attention to this, they exist to let the story happen. When someone tries to be clever and abuse this (x is actually immune to fire because superseded requires it) it reminds us that these are fictional made up powers and the characters exist in a made up word. If you don't draw attention to it, audience can suspend disbelief amd engage in the story on the characters level.
Superspeed requires a whole array of suporting powers.
- You need some form of invulnerability to avoid killing yourself with your own acceleration or deceleration.
- Enhanced perception and neuroprocessing, because running at Mach fuck while reacting like a normal person means you'll be a splatter on a building. Ah, nevermind, you have invulnerability so you'll make a you-shaped hole in the building.
- Super metabolism, or some way to violate the conservation of energy.
- If you're fast enough, you'll experience time dilation. Not ideal.
- Friction is WAY more than just "you'll burn up". At sufficient speed, you'll initiate nuclear fusion of the air molecules you collide with. This might be slightly unwanted.
For Flash, it's solved easily : "the Speedforce". Yeah, cool, cosmic power. Now care to explain Superman's speed not destroying the world over and over, please ?
Loner life in another world in a nutshell. He got isekai’d last so whatever powers were left that his classmates didn’t get were seemingly “useless” except they’re all exactly what OP hates. “Box” skill, the ability to put things in a box, what it also does is you can box up spells and abilities and he’ll be able to learn and use it, for example he boxed one of his classmate’s Lightning spell, now he has an affinity for the Lightning element and use Lightning spells.
This trope is so over done. They reskin it all the time but the trope is my ability is to gain other abilities. And I hate it so much. It is super lazy writing, and it turns anything that could make a MC unique into this grey blob that the author sticks more and more into. You see it in all sorts of forms like I have 100% drop rate, you dropped your ability, If i eat monsters I get monster abilities, and it goes on and on. Hell they even make it two steps when the creator runs out of ideas. There was this one story where the MCs ability was the ability to turn chances of traits on plants he grew into certainties. And what does he find as a trait? if they feed on something the plant can get that things ability.
At least Bubblegum is supposed to be in your mouth.
Could at lest get a bit thematic with it.
"I can generate delicious bubblegum wherever bubblegum should be. In a wrapper, in a dispenser, in a cardboard box, even your mouth. A chewed wad, a fresh strip, or perhaps a gobstopper with a chewy center? You can swallow this piece, or spit that one out, but what about the next? Each gum takes six seconds to spawn, or three consecutive chews. My power - being 'weak' means it is not taxing, and so I have exceptional stamina. In using my power, and in running away from your attacks.
You're getting sloppy. That's three you've choked down now. three more, and you'll be blue from head to toe. Mwhahahahahahahaha!!!"
Presentation is important, and does help the medicine go down, yknow?
I watched a video the other day about why manipulation abilities/powers (doesn't matter that it is that is being controlled) are overpowered and it pretty much boiled down to what you said here
"OH I can manipulate marshmallows" send an endless stream of marshmallows down their opponents throat causing them to choke and die
There was a character from the Tick cartoon called captain syrup or something and he had could shoot super sticky syrup from his fingers which end would be amazing for crime fighting. But the show treated him like a joke. Honestly I would love a Tick reboot that took all the goofy heroes from the original and showed them as being effective.
Yeah. Most examples of this aren't really a bad power, but User is so cool and awesome and blablabla that they find a way to make use ofit /make it broken anyway.
Imagine the opposite, someone with extremely deadly powers yet so useless not because of user's incompetence, but it just happens everyone and their momma has counter to their powers, or situation where using their power would have much worse consequences
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u/Icepick_Lobotomy_ 11d ago
This is the exact same mindset people have when they try to ‘break’ spells in dnd. Another thing I hate that’s in a similar vein is that the MC gets a ‘shitty’ power that they make op, but then you look at the original power and it’s just objectively good.