Shapeshifting
23d 18h ago by lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/Stamets in Tumblr@lemmy.dbzer0.com from lemmy.dbzer0.com
"Yea, I picked the power to change reality at my will. I can literally do anything I want. Water is breathable now. Disease doesn't exist. I created a moon base by snapping my fingers and people can teleport to it. What did you pick?"
"Oh, uh... shapeshifting..."
So I don't risk fucking up thermodynamics next time I drop acid and making atoms stop being a thing.
I mean I’ve seen myself “functioning” when I’m a tiny bit high. No way I’m trusting myself with that much power. “Oops, instead of teleporting those guys on the surface, I halfway burried them”
Even shape shifting is dangerous but the worst thing I risk is getting blood everywhere when I flip you off turning my middle finger into a dick thicker than my hand
I would be fuckin impressed though, when that thing fthwamps on the table.
Can't hold game controllers without an erection not practical
I mean the dexterity would be literally fucked up, but imagine smashing your literal dick on a finishing move, while 1v1ing your homie
It would be my middle finger for flipping people off what would I even press with that
Triggers?
How simultaneously large and small are your hands
It ain't the size of the boat, it's the motion of the ocean 😉
I'm more concerned as to how upsetting this might be to modern understandings of physics
If your shapeshifting doesn't break thermodynamics, then you're not able to shapeshift into anything smaller or larger than yourself.
(Though, perhaps, you could stretch it a little by 'cheating' it -- become larger by shifting into a hollow shape filled with air, become smaller by shifting into a shape filled with very dense material. But there are limits to that -- too big, and you'll float away like a balloon; too small and the ground/floor beneath you won't be able to withstand the pressure, so you'll sink down into it -- and you'll never be able to change your overall weight/mass, which might compromise your disguise in some situations.)
Simple. When you shapeshift, your extra mass gets shunted into Z-space. When you need extra mass, mass is borrowed from other masses in Z-space.
Shapeshift into a black hole!
If you've read Watchmen you know what the downside of that power is. Godlike power leads to detachment from the human race. You lose the connection to everything you ever loved, to your humanity.
The worst that being a shapeshifter will do to you is getting you into some kinky sex.
Some versions of shape shifting have very real downsides. Remember Odo from Deep Space 9
Notice how his face looks like it was crudely sculpted out of clay? This is because in the story he's a shapeshifter. But this isn't shapeshifting like Animorphs, where you just have to imagine an image of an animal that you've absorbed the pattern of. That form of shapeshifting is like a menu. You mentally select a form to shift into, and the powers take care of all the pesky details.
But some forms of shapeshifting, like Odo's, don't work like that. You can't just mentally tell your powers "make me look like John." If you want to look like John, you instead would have to mentally picture every single minute detail of John's face and body. Imagine if you had to consciously recall and build up your entire form detail by detail every time you shifted.
This is why Odo looks so odd. His true form is a puddle. Him taking a form is like a painter painting a picture - every detail has to be consciously chosen. Maybe a true master painter could shape shift into a form with a realistic face, but most folks would end up looking like Odo.
It's been a while since I watched it, but wasn't Odo shitty at shapeshifting because he was raised away from his people (puddle)?
Sure. But if you're granted shape shifting powers today, will you have that level of expertise? No your skills would be far below Odo. Hell you'll probably have to spend a few decades as a puddle before you even figure out how to turn yourself into something as simple as a plain cube. I'm telling you, be careful with shape shifting. Depending on the malevolence of the genie or other entity granting you these powers, it's very easy for shape shifting to end up as a fate worse than death.
From what I recall, as the years go by, he gets better at it. In that one where they get stranded on that planet which sends them back in time he's essentially using his "real" face.
True Changelings can impersonate people flawlessly. IE Martok, Doctor Bashir and Chief O'Brien were done perfectly.
He does. And that's the problem. It took him decades just to learn the level of shape shifting given to him in the show. If you end up with Odo's version of shape shifting, it's going to take a similar another of time to master it. Hell, it took him years to figure out the most basic forms. It took him years just to figure out how to be anything other than a puddle.
What did I pick?
Russia.
I had a stray thought about what it must feel like to be a fish and now suddenly the entire planet is an ocean. I'll try to fix it in a second, at the moment I'm trying to think about how not to drown.
Really, superpowers need a lot of caveats or it's just horrible. Even in comics / cartoons people don't have the knowledge and responsibility to use their powers properly. But, at least those people are given super-endurance and massive plot armour along with their powers.
If someone could change reality at your will, could their puny human brain manage such an enormous power? If someone could shapeshift, could their modified body put up with the stresses of that new shape? Does having the shape of a bird give you a bird's ability to fly -- not just the knowledge but the hollow bones, etc? If someone had super strength, would it follow that they have super skin that won't rip and tear if they punch a wall? If someone could fly, would they run out of oxygen at 10km height? Would they be able to fly up there without freezing?
Funny, I picked the power that makes me unaffected to anything involving other powers.
That house you're sitting in? Boom, now it's a catapult. Gravity is your new enemy.
Was it done by your powers? Then I guess it's a normal house 🙃
You can teleport wherever you want in the universe, but I'll be the snail walking towards you. I just need to find where you teleported from.
I picked the ability to transcend physicality and now I'm in a warld of pure imagination, where my ass is even more of a dumpster fire than it already is, because all the air is fire in this warld. I do regret this decision.
When you become a pen where do you put the money? Checkmate shapeshifters.
Yeah, but then you'd really know what it sounds like when a hand grenade goes off in a bank vault.
You can stuff a roll of hundos up any of your holes and when you turn into a pen, the money stays inside you, so if you're willing to sodomize yourself, you can make like five thousand dollars a pop. I've done this forty-six thousand times and I am buying my third house with cash as we speak!
The best part? You don't need superpowers to shove cash up your butt. Realize your dreams today!
Wait, this is about superpowers? "Turning into a pen" is a sex move in my colloquial vocabulary.
Why bother with a heist? Just turn the tip of your finger into a great big diamond from time to time.
Or more classical: Impersonate a rich person and do some transfers out of their accounts.
Why the tip of your finger? Just use a fingernail, clip it off, donezo.
“What’s your wish?” “I want my fingernails and boogers to turn into diamonds”
“The fuck is wrong with you”
"Kazaam your wish is granted!"
Your boogers now turn into diamonds...while they're still inside your sinuses.
The "pick a superpower" game needs rules, because otherwise, the best option is omnipotence.
It's kind of a tacit rule that it's about comic book super powers so we don't go biblical with it, but I get it. Hell, marvel has reality benders. I use "pick a mutant power" so at least we're working in x-men lore.
And still, something like Prof X is almost always the correct answer. IIRC he has the power to just make the entire world drop dead if he wants to
I mean, technically his power is telepathy, just dialed up to 11. You could probably specify limits on magnitude.
Any power can be OP if you up the magnitude of it all... E.g. I shapeshift into the sun, ending all life on earth.
I think shapeshifting is different from matter transmutation. So you're just be a big Sun made of flesh. Which would probably still bake the planet, but not for fusion reasons.
If we are going X-men level mutant powers, I always thought an underappreciated one was Forge. You can basically fix any problem you have with technology. He could have built something that made Iron Man look like a tinker toy if he wanted to.
I think something as simple as: You can't break the law of conservation of mass, law of conservation of energy or exceed the speed of light would cut out most bullshit.
That's what CYOA's are for, they are the complete game that this question teases but never delivers.
My favourite is https://cyoa.ltouroumov.ch/viewer/
I've spent hours of my life, every single day, just browsing its insanely long list of powers and trying to make various combos and synergies.
Omnipotence also needs to have rules. What if it doesn't come with omniscience? What if your powers are so immense that they're utterly impossible to control? You move the muscles you'd normally use to stand up, and your power shoots through your legs, shattering the planet.
This sounds like a potentially funny anime
A very short one.
That's basically the plot of Daily Life of the Immortal King. I would say it's worth a watch.
Telekinesis but with perfect control. Turn lead into gold, bend light around yourself to become invisible, fly wherever you want to go, fake super strength by lifting stuff with it, make peoples heads explode.
Good luck plucking out the neutrons, protons and electrons off each lead atom, I've heard they don't enjoy staying still
Hence the "perfect control" part.
That's also not really "telekinesis".
Yeah that'd be my vote too. If there's no range constraints... Like you could just yoink a fuckton of carbon out of the atmosphere, plant trillions of seeds instantly, etc: climate change solved. Watching tv and some politician or CEO is saying evil shit again: rip em in half mid speech for the world to see. Invading another country? Your entire military inventory from bullets to nukes just turned into dildos. War solved. Religious text or paraphernalia? Dildos. Public religious speech? Large diameter dildo. Religion solved.
The amount of good you could do in just a few minutes...
And then all the unintended harms because nobody has ever done things like that and so nobody has ever thought what the consequences could be.
There's a really good scene in a JLA comic where superman and flash argue about this. Together they could just take away all the weapons, punish all the crimes, stop everyone from doing bad things ever. But the consequences of that are that it would take away the free will of people. Their heroes would become their masters.
Who was arguing which side? I'm guessing it was Superman who argued against taking away people's free will?
There are also the unintended consequences to the economy and to the natural world. For example, provide food for everyone, and you accidentally bankrupt farmers. Suddenly remove CO2 from the atmosphere and maybe you shock and kill plants, etc.
While true, absolutely worth the risk. If I have the power to completely end a hostile military, I'm not holding back for fear of what it'll mean for the dildo economy.
at that point, why not just choose somehing like reality bending or omnipotence
Why no altruism?
Dude you just got super powers chill
90% of people would become supervillains if they got powers.
Change my mind.
i feel like i'd be doing a fair amount of public service with which peoples heads I'd be making explode.
Yeah, they could have gene-edited people's cancer away. Or redistributed food to places that need it.
Yeah, they could have gene-edited people’s cancer away.
Eh... Actually making the genetic edits is the (relatively) easy part. Knowing which genes to edit is the hard part. And 'perfect control telekinesis' doesn't help you with that.
You get this power, but you have to do it one atom at a time. You can turn lead into gold. One atom of lead at a time.
“Don’t mind the pen holding the bag of money”
Why does that pen have two bags with two hundred thousand euros? Does anyone else find it odd?
If I shapeshift into an inanimate object, where does my consciousness go? Pens don't have a brain, or any senses at all. Could I even perceive the world around me? Would I live forever in pitch darkness, unable to think, unable to change back? All for a bank robbery?
Magic.
It's not actually shapeshifting you just perfectly transform everyone's perception including yourselves to appear as such. There, no more physics breaking.
Jumper style teleportation. I know it’s not objectively the best, that would probably be Atom Eve’s power from Invincible. But Jumper is the only media I’ve ever seen that’s left me a deep, unquenchable yearning to have a power. For days afterwards I was daydreaming about where I would teleport to.
You could get a cheap house in the middle of nowhere. You could get into movies for free. You could rob a bank. If you felt heroic you could be a top tier EMT. Maybe a low-risk astronaut. Bring the pieces of a giant rocket into orbit a little at a time until they can go anywhere with it. I could also spend more time with dispersed family.
Most importantly you could go to your favorite restaurants around the world whenever you wanted.
I always liked the powers from chronicle.
I'd want the powers of the Jessica Jones villain played by David Tennant where you can make anyone do anything. But instead of using it to rape and shit I'd make rich people turn their homes into homeless shelters and give their wealth away and I could just walk out of any bank or store with whatever I wanted.
turn their homes into homeless shelters
Ok, so now you've sheltered 500 people, say 10 to a room. I suppose that's nice for them, what about the other 770k in the US?
There are 750 billionaires in the US. I get your point about them not having enough real estate to host 1000 persons each, but usually, people considerably underestimate how many billionaires there are and how much they're worth.
They wouldn't have to give up their home to shelter 770k people. They could to it with less than 1% of their combined wealth.
That, and my definition of wealthy encompasses more than just billionaires. I'd include centimillionaires, at least.
Edit: the best info I can find says there are about 65k centimillionaire households.
Their wealth is very different from their homes.
Sure. But this is unproductive bad-faith literal reading.
That's where making them give their wealth away comes in. The homeless shelter thing is more of a "fuck you" than a practical solution.
prop hunt
Ok. Valid. However, once you turn into the pen, you’re a pen on a shelf next to a bag full of the stolen money, which I assume the bank employees, that were not traumatized by seeing you turn into a pen, will put back into their drawers. Pen probably confiscated, studied, disassembled.
Gotta rethink that one. Lots can go wrong.
Can't you just turn into a slime mold or bacteria to escape?
You're leaving the money behind. Defeating the whole purpose of robbing the bank!
Hmmmm good point.
What if you turn into a pelican and fly out with the money in your mouth?
They'll lock the doors and shoot you. Robbing a bank of tough work, whether shapeshifter or just dumb!
Oh I meant robbing it as a pelican! People would be too perplexed by that
Tellers are trained to not give any money to birds. They instruct the security guard to shoot them. Without opposable thumbs, you're gonna need compliant tellers.
Shapeshift as the manager, ask for passwords, keys, codes, stay late, clean the place out. Really the best option for this score.
But not as whacky as a pelican with hands that can talk, but yeah, your own sounds better
i believe the most powerful super power is mind control, because you can make people believe you have the other super powers, see you using those powers, and then do the thing you needed the super power to do, before forgetting they actually did it themselves
Mind control can't change your sex (or just make it feel better, with fast recovery), make you live longer, or help out when you're having a rough time on the toilet.
It just turns everyone into your slave. You're a villain by default.
More importantly, it's super boring. People with mind control powers can have whatever they want—materially—with basically zero effort just by forcing people to give them stuff. There's no struggle, and if there is any, it's just you sweating or getting a headache while staring off into the distance.
Mind control yourself, done.
Is there a hero with mind control?
It’s a very interesting take to have a good person struggle with removing another persons agency to try and do good.
Is there a hero with mind control?
Professor X, perhaps?
(Though, if you get into conspiracy theories, it might be questionable whether he's actually a hero. There are questions about whether or not he's ever used mind control on any of his 'students'.)
I could see using it to help people get over hang ups or bad habits. "You're not terrified of snakes anymore" or "You hate the taste of cigarettes now"
Lol, lazy ass.
“Yee, I wish for a superpower that makes people think I have a superpower”
“Why”
“Can’t be arsed with the whole flying thing, just rather sit on that couch right here”
I feel like shapeshifting would be an awful superpower if I got to choose. Why would I choose a superpower to cancel my insecurities? Your appearance is a huge part of who you are. How you look is a reflection of the life you lived and the work you put in to look a certain way. Magically being able to look perfect won’t make you secure, it’ll just make you come up with new things to be insecure about. Insecurity isn’t about looks, it’s about strength of character.
Also some forms of shapeshifting can be horrifying. In some kinds of shapeshifting, you have to be able to visualize every minute detail of the form you're shifting into. Imagine getting shapeshifting powers and shifting into another form. Then when you want to shift back, you realize you don't actually have a "default form." You can shift forms as often as you want, but you have to picture and visualize every minute detail. Your original form is now lost forever. Remember Odo from Deep Space 9? His form was roughly humanoid but clearly not natural. He had to consciously control every minute detail of his face.
Imagine trying to paint a photo-realistic painting of yourself. That's a fraction of the level of detail you'll need to capture every detail of the forms you're changing into, including your original one. Even your original form is now lost, replaced with whatever half-remembered remnant you can cobble together with your mind.
Pictures exist tho, use them as references
Also I'm repping my ancestors. It's a proud heritage
Just shapeshift into someone with other powers
So the very first thing you think about when picking a superpower is one that's primary benefit is deceiving people?
Not materialize unlimited amount of food and address world hunger?
Not healing any disease with a touch or better: remotely? Or materialize vaccines with a snap of fingers? Or capturing CO2 out of the air??
We had way too many Hollywood superheroes movies. Now people think a supe is either an invincible warrior or can do super nasty things. No one wants the least spectacular highest good brought to the world powers?
Think through the state of the world and the consequences of those things. Unless you're also invincible you will be killed for doing literally any of those things.
Lets just do world hunger. We produce around 2.5x the amount of food needed to feed everyone to the average american caloric intake. That's something we already do. We have the ability to ship any good anywhere in the world within 12 hours, or alternatively, keep a good fresh enough to be sold over MONTHS of transportation (think the fresh fruits picked in South America that is shipped to Thailand to be processed and shipped to china to be packaged then shipped to the US to be sold 3-6 months after they were picked.).
We have no world hunger. There is not a lack of food. There is not a lack of transportation.
Hunger is used as a weapon. Period. That is the totality of the reason that any single person or group of people do not have the ability eat 3 square meals a day.
If you, as (presumably) an American were to just bring food to Cuba, you will be investigated by congress and Trump's DOJ both on criminal charges. (see Hasan Piker currently being subpeanoaed for just filming Cubans and bringing food.)
If you magically could produce infinite food, you have just taken away the most used weapon in world history. This means you are the single most hated and despised person by not only those in power, by but everyone that benefits from those in power, and that's a lot of people, and they own (effectively) all the guns and nukes.
The reason people dream small with superpowers is because, realistically, as long as you don't drastically change the status quo, you're safe.
In a case where you can't pick "changing reality" as a power, "time control" is pretty much the next best thing. Pause time, rewind, fast forward
Selective time control, so you can pause, rewind, fast forward things independently. Now you've added immortality into the mix.
- Starting to feel the effects of aging? Just rewind yourself while leaving the rest of the universe in place.
- Got injured or diseased somehow? Just rewind yourself to before that happened and try again. Or, if it's inevitable, just keep rewinding over and over again to enjoy your good health before that happens.
- Always keep your perceptions a few minutes ahead of your body/brain. That way, you can never be hurt or killed by surprise -- you'll always see it coming a few minutes ahead of time, and you can either pause or rewind time in order to avoid it.
- You can keep any loved ones immortal as well, if you choose. Just rewind them to reverse it if they ever age or get injured or even die.
Beyond immortality, it also provides you with other incredibly powerful (and perhaps terrifying) abilities:
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You can, of course, become incredibly wealthy if you choose. Lottery numbers are your playground. Perfectly timed investment choices are trivial. You can accrue decades' worth of compound interest in seconds. (Do be careful, though. You could probably wreck the global economy if you take this too far.) Robbing banks is so beneath you. How much cash does a typical bank have on hand, anyway? A measly few hundred thousand? You could easily make millions, billions of clean, legit dollars in the blink of an eye. Forget robbing the bank, you could easily own the bank.
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From an outside perspective, you never seem to need to sleep. And you can definitely never be caught sleeping and vulnerable. You just need to pause time around you whenever you want to take a nap, then resume time when you wake up.
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It unlocks true 'time travel' -- by pausing yourself and moving the universe forward or backward around you, you can travel freely to the past or the future. And not just yourself, either. You could easily take objects or people with you if you wanted.
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By extending the 'keep your perceptions a few minutes ahead' strategy, you can gain limited clairvoyance -- always knowing what's going to happen in the future. At least, what's going to happen to and around you in the future.
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You can now 'teleport' to any location that you could otherwise get to. Just pause the universe around you while you go there, and resume the universe after arriving. Alternately, you could just slow the rest of the universe instead of pausing it entirely, and now you can cosplay as a super-speedster who can move arbitrarily fast.
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In the (unlikely) event that you actually need to fight someone instead of just using time shenanigans to avoid the fight, you could go back in time and either prevent what made them mad at you in the first place, or kill them while they were young and vulnerable ... or sterilize their grandfather, so they never existed in the first place.
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If you want to fight someone without messing up the continuity of the universe and potentially creating huge butterfly effects, you can just fast-forward or rewind them specifically. Rewind them until they're a fetus. Fast-forward them until they're a dusty skeleton. Really horrify your enemies by doing that half-and-half -- age regress their top half while accelerated-aging their bottom half. Or just pause them indefinitely and leave them as a helpless statue. You could even troll them by slowing them way down -- let them try to fight you while moving at glacial speed. Laugh at them while the bullet they shot at you takes decades to cross the room. (For extra trauma points, you could slow/pause most of their body, while allowing their brain/sensory organs/vital organs to continue at full speed, so they'd be fully aware of how slow they're moving and able to internally agonize about it for a long time.)
I was going to say this too. Time powers can be used to mimic all other powers, therefore making it the best.
Sure, you can control time. But, your body still exists as a biological being within the normal time stream. If you slow time down, your thoughts also slow down by that same amount.
Shapeshift into money (gold bars?), get yourself deposited under your name, then shapeshift back into a person and leave during some kind of scheduled reserve review or transfer.
Heist by way of reverse heist.
Shapeshifting into inanimate things is great until you find out it's DnD polymorph rules and it gives you 0 INT/CHA/WIS, I would be afraid of testing tbh
Form of...
A human brain and limbic system encased in a gold bar!
.... yeah so it turns out that if you try to apply ... any even sort of consistent 'rule set' to shapeshifting... it results in either extreme body horror, or physics defying nonsense, or both.
I dunno, apparently caterpillars can somehow retain some memories when changing into butterflies, despite essentially turning into soup, so, maybe there is some kind of way this can make some kind of sense...
I think the main problem would be being conscious enough to become human again. Would a gold bar even notice time pass? You would probably be stuck as a gold bar forever
Animorphs 'solved' this problem with time limits and basically mental conditioning.
Your brain transforms too, but somehow 'you' mostly remain intact.
But... if you're weak minded, the beast takes over, its instincts are too overwhelming, you lose yourself and become the beast.
How this would work with a ... gold bar?
Well the closest thing I can think of would be like a trilobyte, iirc their outer carapace was literally minerals, basically a rock.
But I might be wrong about that.
But if I'm not... gold rectangular trilobyte.
I use my shapeshifting ability to look exactly like myself, simultaneously concealing the ability. No one knows I'm actually me, but not really.
My dumb ass would transform into a bowling pin or something. Then the detective would say something like, “Hey WAIT A MINUTE. This is the same bowling pin from the Chicago job.”
Then the detective's buddy looks at you and says:
"Ooh. Tough split."
That’s a strike
The thief has gone missing but we recovered the money and this pen that laid on top of it. I'll book it into the evidence locker.
I'm sure a piece of dust would have no problem making its way out of the evidence room, eventually. Assuming you can turn into one.
I mean you could also just turn into a fly/ant or something similar and leave the evidence locker. Not like they are hermetically sealed
Can I slightly cheat and choose all the powers of one superhero (or maybe more of a trickster god)? I want Bugs Bunny powers, since he's the most powerful being in the universe.
Obviously. They're LOOKSmaxers.
I can't wait for _____maxxing to exit the lexicon.
That's just waitmaxxing.
I feel like choosing only one of these two options is needlessly limiting.
Lack of imagination is worst quality for a shapeshifter to have.
Okay, how are you gonna get the money out tho?
Both
I don't understand how these are different things
or shapeshift into someone who has some other superpower you want..
Why should having Superman's shape result in you having his powers?
it wasnt specified that turning into someone doesnt give you all properties of that person
It was called "shapeshifting" not "person-becoming".
I use my chimera abilities to get away with so many crimes where DNA would normally pin a person for life! And they're not even sex crimes anymore! I totally am not the Craigslist killer from 2011-2013 in the general Syracuse area, despite what other evidence is available to law enforcement. They just don't think someone could be this stupid to admit this sort of stuff online. Well, here I am.
Jokes on him, he didn't specify a shape shifting pen... Now he's trapped as a a pen forever.