Supervillian powers

[Locke cole]

Originally Posted by synkr0nized

Being that petty may be a power, I guess.

Exhibit B: Doctor Doom.

[Amake]

Originally Posted by Locke cole

Like, if you can intensify it, you can immobilize a person with their own weight. If you can invert it, you can have someone get thrown into space. If you can point it wherever, you might be able to make a person explode, depending on how fine your control is.

I always like to point out you can also control the speed of time in or around an object. One villain once beat Superman with some serious fine-tuning of this ability, simply ageing thin slices of his body at a tremendous rate while not ageing the parts in between. Although the rapid onset of time in itself mattered little to the Man of Steel, he had no defense whatsoever against the ravages of intersecting fast and slow time twisting through his indestructible body. Imagine that last sentence being read by the 1940s Superman radio drama narrator Jackson Beck.

[Locke cole]

Wait, how does gravity relate to ti- oh right.

Because messing with gravity would most likely translate into manipulating folds in space-time.

[Amake]

Well, it's one reason gravity manipulation is about the most fantastic (as in removed from reality) power we can imagine. We know time passes faster closer to the Earth's surface than higher up; it's a known feature of gravity. Though I don't know if anyone knows why it works that way.

[Locke cole]

Hurm. If gravity-manipulation takes that sort of track, I wonder if the one using that power could make wormholes, provided he understood his power to that sort of fine detail. As opposed to him just thinking "I do this, and he goes crushy crush."

[Amake]

It's a question Smarty and I have been wrestling with recently: Could controlling gravity allow faster than light travel or just near-lightspeed travel? The answer seems to be we can't figure it out because gravity is just completely impossible to control, at least for a sub-type 1 civilization. Like, if you want to create a planet-scale gravitational field literally the only thing you can do is gather up a planet-scale mass to produce that gravity. You can't fake it any more than you can artificially create temperatures below absolute zero.

So yeah, if you could control gravity you're probably at a point where every known and unknown law of the natural world gathers at your feet to pray and you could probably make wormholes.

On a sidenote it gets pretty funny when you realize every sci-fi TV show ever made has such ubiquitous artificial gravity they can afford to use it just to keep a character's hair from being ruffled.

(Disclaimer: I make no claim of correctly interpreting or remembering what Smarty alias Professor Smarmiarty said in aforementioned discussion.)

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I'm pretty sure what I said was "this discussion is stupid. Also you are ugly" then I left.
Discussing the implications of "controlling gravity" is completely meaningless unless you have a detailed description of what this actually means and how it works. Otherwise you could theoretically justify pretty much anything as extreme gravity control. It's like people who have "energy control". Everything is energy when you get down to it. So like that is basically do whatever yuo want power. The limits are whatever the authour decide.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Man, I just want the ability to make a sandwich so good it causes people to eat it to commit suicide because everything after you eat it is such a letdown in comparison.

[Japan]

Generally speaking super villains are defined and exist in a sort of ego feedback loop with their heroic counterparts, so I guess in that sense having a personality or philosophical outlook that is almost completely antithetical to the nature of the hero would be the greatest ability since generally the villains that are seen as the polar opposite of whoever they fight tend to stick in the collective pop culture subconscious a lot longer, and since super villains aren't real then longevity is probably the only meaningful judgment criteria of success.

See Joker, Lex Luther, that one yellow dude from the green lantern comics.

Or maybe it has nothing to do with the conceptual relationship to the hero and more to do with how many nerds like them.

[Amake]

Originally Posted by Professor Smarmiarty

I'm pretty sure what I said was "this discussion is stupid. Also you are ugly" then I left.
Discussing the implications of "controlling gravity" is completely meaningless unless you have a detailed description of what this actually means and how it works. Otherwise you could theoretically justify pretty much anything as extreme gravity control. It's like people who have "energy control". Everything is energy when you get down to it. So like that is basically do whatever yuo want power. The limits are whatever the authour decide.

As I recall we said in its simplest form gravity control would entail pointing your finger at things and make the gravity increase or decrease in that location with the only question being if the effect would be permanent or subject to your conscious effort and I had sexual relations with your mother.