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kohikari[Error: unknown template qotd]
OMG I HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT THIS SO MANY TIMES you have no idea XDDD
Um, but to be more coherent. I have over the course of my lifetime--that's from 2:36AM EST Friday February 16th 1990 to, like, now--thought about this so many times I actually have a list in order of preference. Because, because, what with being a small hyperactive over-analytical bookworm with a wild imagination and from small Catholic grade school to mostly repressed year in massive public school to small special ed middle school to art high school, theatre major, and chronic lifelong insomniac with nothing better to do in the midnight hours lying in bed staring at the ceiling than (a) thinking about my day/week/life (b) making shit up (c) fantasizing if I had magic powers (d) making up stories (e) angsty preteen existential introspection that led to angsty teen emo poetry (and fic, natch)...well.
I tended to use the "three wishes" model for what-if; when I was younger, I had some Goosebumps books, some straight-up first-person stories but also some second-person choose-your-own-adventure stories, and one of them was about this kid who finds a genie in a soda can, except she's this really sadistic passive-aggressive bitch, and so for years I had this thought in my head (still do) that if I ever found a genie in a bottle I would slam it shut and GTFO...because seriously, trying to think up orders specific enough with no leeway for godawful ironic/karmic Armageddon is waaay too much effort, and playing with fire and all that jazz. But because it was the middle of the night and I was bored, I kept thinking about what I would wish for if I ever had that chance. And thought, and thought, and thought, and over the years came to several very specific decisions.
The first and most obvious hurdle is, should I wish for world peace? (Or something along that line of inquiry.) Me being me, I came to the conclusion after a while that major global, national or even local change would just be fucking with shit I don't understand, and the world has a precise and proper balance, and some shit just needs to happen for the good of the future, and yin-yang/light-side-dark-side/use-the-fork-Luke/who wants to be blamed for the Apocalypse anyway.
The next hurdle is, should I wish for a million dollars? Problem with that is, the government would probably want to know where the money came from, and if you introduce too much new currency into the system you might induce an economic collapse or something, and they've done studies on lottery winners, it's scientifically proven that a sudden huge windfall can royally mess you up. Like a movie, minus the heartwarming morals at the end and plus a celebrityesque overdose of heroin after discovering that you've fathered an AIDS baby or something. Also, money? Not much fun if you're working with wishes--I mean, you have the power of a god at your fingertips and you wish for something earthly and unoriginal? Lame. (Though it would be nice to pay off the mortgage and afford college...maybe health insurance...mmm, health insurance...)
Then you come to (if you haven't thought of it already) the biggest (and funnest) hurdle of all: Should I Wish for Superpowers? Me being me, I immediately concluded that it would just not be worth it to wind up dissected in some government's sekrit experimental lab. Of course, me being me, I also thought of a way around that--write up clauses in the wish! (Of course, there is the teensy problem of hiring a lawyer to help with the language.) Something like, I want my sudden magical powers to be completely discreet and inconspicuous so that (a) I don't have to become a celebrity (b) I'm not exploited/turned into a guinea pig. Like how when magical girls put on a different outfit, not even their own mother can tell who they are.
(Yes, I do believe that the best way to deal with a djinn offering wishes is to have your attorney serve him/her/it papers. You have to be careful these days...)
But--to the question asked in the first place. What would my powers be? *goes and gets list*
(1) The ability to find things lost. Because I lose everything all the time and it's maddening. Also, could make a mint charging for business--LOST AND FOUND: You Name It, We Locate It! Does Not Apply To Witness Protection. Inquire Within--I mean, everything from runaway Fido to missing persons to oh-crap-I-misplaced-my-keys-again.
(2) Fluency, written and spoken, in all languages ever. Because it would be awesome and awesome and awesome and do you know how much money translators can make? I mean, damn. And--for science! All those dead and dying languages, can you imagine? Whole cultures and histories recovered.
(3) Control over temperature. However you want to say it--able to slow or excite the molecules, magical ice/fire, just something that would involve, at its extremes, the ability to set shit on fire with my mind. And freeze stuff, of course, because however much of a pyro I am, I am also very much a winter girl. Maybe with subtle control too, so I could like pull A/C in the most sweltering depths of summer.
(4) At this point the list sort of wavers, from "omg I would so love this" to more of a "hey that would be kinda cool" vibe:
from some sort of BeastMaster/Animorphs/Horse-Whisperer thing with--and this is the determining criterion--the ability to form a meter-or-so wide "bubble" of sorts inside of which no arthropod could come (because, like, MASSIVE bug phobia that I've only now managed to quiet down to a sort of muffled panic);
to the ability to breathe underwater, plus something for pressurization, so I could swim without a great big honking facemask (I can't open my eyes underwater, or regulate my breath so that I don't need a nose plug);
to the ability to fly/levitate/mess with telekinesis for thesmaae same (cool typo!) sort of result, 'cause for some reason I dream about it all the time and it's terrifying but it's awesome (my dreams tend to be like really bizarre video games, it's like an adventure every night);
to some sort of elemental/hippie/Wiccan earth-water-sky magic thing, which is yeah kind of generic, but we're talking what-if superpowers here, so why the hell not?
[/tl;dr]
EDIT: also, this wasn't on the list because I've only been considering it recently, but: a form of limited time travel, only for the past ((a) because I don't believe time is two-dimensional (b) because I've never been a fan of time travel in general, it goes in the "major shit I have no business messing with" category), and strictly in an invisdible observation capacity, with no chance for interference. Because I think it would be awesome, and edifying, and cool, and terribly useful for science/history/anthropology/etc. to be able to really see and hear and smell and feel and taste what ancient civilisations were like, and even beyond, to like dinosaurs and shit--because (a) awesome (b) awesome (c) AWESOME and did you know that the Eocene epoch (about 56-34 million years ago, fairly recent in relative terms, the continents were all pretty close to the positions they are now) was when cats and rodents and bats and marsupials and a bunch of other smallish mammals appeared and there was mad global warming so the whole planet was warm and wet (with high sea levels) and covered in temperate and tropical forest and rainforest, trees everywhere, and even Antarctica was full of life.Best. Vacation. Ever. [/geek]
SON OF EDIT (like mad long after--it's one of those OCD things): power over electricity/storms/weather was on the table at one point, just, y'know, to put that out there. There was something else I wanted to write about, something terribly profound and meta about superpowers/magic/etc. and wanting them and fantasy and etc., but in true Terranova fashion I forgot it soon after thinking of it in the first place (much like my dream this morning...)--oh wait I remember! Yes. That, instead of all these epic superpowers instead a group of smaller gifts, more unobtrusive, like the ability to open/unlock anything, or the finding talent, or a limited version of the lingual talent like automatically assimilating any language come across, and a story about such would be so much more...well, interesting than the traditional comic-book superstrength /superspeed /telekinesis /telepathy /fire /weather /lasers /etc. stuff. Like Tamora Pierce's Circle saga, without Tris's more dramatic magics, leaning more toward the smaller, more specific types like Sandry's thread magic and etc.
OMG I HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT THIS SO MANY TIMES you have no idea XDDD
Um, but to be more coherent. I have over the course of my lifetime--that's from 2:36AM EST Friday February 16th 1990 to, like, now--thought about this so many times I actually have a list in order of preference. Because, because, what with being a small hyperactive over-analytical bookworm with a wild imagination and from small Catholic grade school to mostly repressed year in massive public school to small special ed middle school to art high school, theatre major, and chronic lifelong insomniac with nothing better to do in the midnight hours lying in bed staring at the ceiling than (a) thinking about my day/week/life (b) making shit up (c) fantasizing if I had magic powers (d) making up stories (e) angsty preteen existential introspection that led to angsty teen emo poetry (and fic, natch)...well.
I tended to use the "three wishes" model for what-if; when I was younger, I had some Goosebumps books, some straight-up first-person stories but also some second-person choose-your-own-adventure stories, and one of them was about this kid who finds a genie in a soda can, except she's this really sadistic passive-aggressive bitch, and so for years I had this thought in my head (still do) that if I ever found a genie in a bottle I would slam it shut and GTFO...because seriously, trying to think up orders specific enough with no leeway for godawful ironic/karmic Armageddon is waaay too much effort, and playing with fire and all that jazz. But because it was the middle of the night and I was bored, I kept thinking about what I would wish for if I ever had that chance. And thought, and thought, and thought, and over the years came to several very specific decisions.
The first and most obvious hurdle is, should I wish for world peace? (Or something along that line of inquiry.) Me being me, I came to the conclusion after a while that major global, national or even local change would just be fucking with shit I don't understand, and the world has a precise and proper balance, and some shit just needs to happen for the good of the future, and yin-yang/light-side-dark-side/use-the-fork-Luke/who wants to be blamed for the Apocalypse anyway.
The next hurdle is, should I wish for a million dollars? Problem with that is, the government would probably want to know where the money came from, and if you introduce too much new currency into the system you might induce an economic collapse or something, and they've done studies on lottery winners, it's scientifically proven that a sudden huge windfall can royally mess you up. Like a movie, minus the heartwarming morals at the end and plus a celebrityesque overdose of heroin after discovering that you've fathered an AIDS baby or something. Also, money? Not much fun if you're working with wishes--I mean, you have the power of a god at your fingertips and you wish for something earthly and unoriginal? Lame. (Though it would be nice to pay off the mortgage and afford college...maybe health insurance...mmm, health insurance...)
Then you come to (if you haven't thought of it already) the biggest (and funnest) hurdle of all: Should I Wish for Superpowers? Me being me, I immediately concluded that it would just not be worth it to wind up dissected in some government's sekrit experimental lab. Of course, me being me, I also thought of a way around that--write up clauses in the wish! (Of course, there is the teensy problem of hiring a lawyer to help with the language.) Something like, I want my sudden magical powers to be completely discreet and inconspicuous so that (a) I don't have to become a celebrity (b) I'm not exploited/turned into a guinea pig. Like how when magical girls put on a different outfit, not even their own mother can tell who they are.
(Yes, I do believe that the best way to deal with a djinn offering wishes is to have your attorney serve him/her/it papers. You have to be careful these days...)
But--to the question asked in the first place. What would my powers be? *goes and gets list*
(1) The ability to find things lost. Because I lose everything all the time and it's maddening. Also, could make a mint charging for business--LOST AND FOUND: You Name It, We Locate It! Does Not Apply To Witness Protection. Inquire Within--I mean, everything from runaway Fido to missing persons to oh-crap-I-misplaced-my-keys-again.
(2) Fluency, written and spoken, in all languages ever. Because it would be awesome and awesome and awesome and do you know how much money translators can make? I mean, damn. And--for science! All those dead and dying languages, can you imagine? Whole cultures and histories recovered.
(3) Control over temperature. However you want to say it--able to slow or excite the molecules, magical ice/fire, just something that would involve, at its extremes, the ability to set shit on fire with my mind. And freeze stuff, of course, because however much of a pyro I am, I am also very much a winter girl. Maybe with subtle control too, so I could like pull A/C in the most sweltering depths of summer.
(4) At this point the list sort of wavers, from "omg I would so love this" to more of a "hey that would be kinda cool" vibe:
from some sort of BeastMaster/Animorphs/Horse-Whisperer thing with--and this is the determining criterion--the ability to form a meter-or-so wide "bubble" of sorts inside of which no arthropod could come (because, like, MASSIVE bug phobia that I've only now managed to quiet down to a sort of muffled panic);
to the ability to breathe underwater, plus something for pressurization, so I could swim without a great big honking facemask (I can't open my eyes underwater, or regulate my breath so that I don't need a nose plug);
to the ability to fly/levitate/mess with telekinesis for the
to some sort of elemental/hippie/Wiccan earth-water-sky magic thing, which is yeah kind of generic, but we're talking what-if superpowers here, so why the hell not?
[/tl;dr]
EDIT: also, this wasn't on the list because I've only been considering it recently, but: a form of limited time travel, only for the past ((a) because I don't believe time is two-dimensional (b) because I've never been a fan of time travel in general, it goes in the "major shit I have no business messing with" category), and strictly in an invisdible observation capacity, with no chance for interference. Because I think it would be awesome, and edifying, and cool, and terribly useful for science/history/anthropology/etc. to be able to really see and hear and smell and feel and taste what ancient civilisations were like, and even beyond, to like dinosaurs and shit--because (a) awesome (b) awesome (c) AWESOME and did you know that the Eocene epoch (about 56-34 million years ago, fairly recent in relative terms, the continents were all pretty close to the positions they are now) was when cats and rodents and bats and marsupials and a bunch of other smallish mammals appeared and there was mad global warming so the whole planet was warm and wet (with high sea levels) and covered in temperate and tropical forest and rainforest, trees everywhere, and even Antarctica was full of life.
SON OF EDIT (like mad long after--it's one of those OCD things): power over electricity/storms/weather was on the table at one point, just, y'know, to put that out there. There was something else I wanted to write about, something terribly profound and meta about superpowers/magic/etc. and wanting them and fantasy and etc., but in true Terranova fashion I forgot it soon after thinking of it in the first place (much like my dream this morning...)--oh wait I remember! Yes. That, instead of all these epic superpowers instead a group of smaller gifts, more unobtrusive, like the ability to open/unlock anything, or the finding talent, or a limited version of the lingual talent like automatically assimilating any language come across, and a story about such would be so much more...well, interesting than the traditional comic-book superstrength /superspeed /telekinesis /telepathy /fire /weather /lasers /etc. stuff. Like Tamora Pierce's Circle saga, without Tris's more dramatic magics, leaning more toward the smaller, more specific types like Sandry's thread magic and etc.