The last two superpower-vs.-superpower threads seemed to work well, and I am bored, so we're busting out the bracketology. I have 34 superpowers lined up to go. It would have been 32, but I couldn't make those last two cuts. I was able to make some cuts, but not enough to make a nice, clean 32. So everything that's halfway decent should be here, and if your favorite power is missing, I'd like to take this opportunity to say that you are wrong.
So here's how things will work:
*For as long as we're able to do so (which means up until the final), we'll have two matchups going at once. There will be four poll options (assuming I can get a mod to hook me up with one), containing each of the four possible winner combinations (for matchups of A vs. B and C vs. D, you'd see A/C, A/D, B/C, B/D). This is done to save time.
*Each set of matchups will be considered for about three days. Each matchup, as you'd expect, is calculated individually- if A/C has 10 votes, A/D has 12 votes, B/C has 7 votes and B/D has 2 votes, A beats B 22-9 and C beats D 17-14.
*Each power is considered as a broad category. For 'energy blasts', you're considering everything from Cyclops to Starfire to Jubilee. For 'shapeshifting', think everything from Mr. Fantastic to Mystique to Clayface. And so on.
*When voting, consider whatever the hell you feel like as long as you're considering only the powers given. Consider the science behind each power or write it off as 'it's a comic book, who cares', the havoc you could wreak, downsides, whatever.
*Please don't combine powers when voting. It's just A vs. B and C vs. D, not A and B vs. C and D.
That established, THE BRACKET:
Play-In Round (Salem Center, NY):
Invulnerability 54, duplication 24
Time manipulation 65, invisibility 13
ROUND 1 REGIONALS
Portland, OR regional:
Invulnerability vs. telepathy
Pheromone manipulation vs. flight
Teleportation vs. force fields
Weather manipulation vs. gravity manipulation
New Orleans, LA regional:
Fire/heat manipulation vs. telekinesis
Superhuman senses vs. wallcrawling
Immortality vs. shadow manipulation
Shapeshifting vs. intangibility
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY regional:
Time manipulation vs. electric manipulation
Superhuman vision vs. cold/ice manipulation
Superhuman speed vs. energy blasts
Waterbreathing vs. precognition
Deerfield, IL regional:
Healing vs. air/wind manipulation
Superhuman strength vs. probability manipulation
Superhuman intelligence vs. earth manipulation
Reality warping vs. mind control
(Final 4 is set for Anchorage, AK, in case you were going to ask. Bonus points for naming the hosts of all the regionals, but not too many because only one has any semblance of difficulty to it.)
That said, let's start this and see where things go. We'll start with the Play-In Round, held in Salem Center.
Invulnerability vs. duplication, and
invisibility vs. time manipulation. You've got three days to vote, approximately, so until Monday night.
Posts
Time manipulation. It's like superspeed and precognition rolled into one. For the bonus: fast-forward your significant other when they're nagging at you.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I am not so wonderful that there must be more of myself. Invisibility blows and time manipulation, provided you don't age when it's stopped, is practically immortality.
(And yeah, Monday's the 28th.)
Do... do I have to say Will is the best mod too?
See my game reviews at: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=strangegamer
I'm just saying.
I mean - invulnerability whatever. Duplication could just spawn like fifty copies and throw invulnerability in a trash can and throw it in the ocean.
Time Manipulation can just stop time and be very thorough in looking for invisibility. Or else just go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby and then Invisiblity's grandparents would never had emigrated to America.
See my game reviews at: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=strangegamer
A) The bracket was constructed randomly. (Though there's a nice Spiderman matchup in the New Orleans regional I see.)
Invulnerability and time manipulation. Who needs to be hidden when conducting your chaotic whims when you can alter time again and again until you get it right. As for the other one, you COULD have clones run around town doing stuff, but I'd rather just have the one me do the most brazen shit and know nobody could beat me up for it. (And with all those duplicates, I might not be able to keep track of them all.)
As for possession, that was one of the last couple I had to cut. Mind control is pretty close, though.
And jmilliken, it is in fact a superpower vs. superpower thread. The characters mentioned are examples.
EDIT: I keep thinking of new questions. Do duplicates also have injuries, illnesses, and aging from the original? Can a duplicate be duplicated? Is duplication instant or does it take time? Is it unlimited, or require some energy expenditure?
EDIT: or just go back in time, don't freeze it, do the same thing. If you went far enough back, you'd have millions of years to do whatever.
Therefore, I go with Invulnerability and Time Manipulation. Since my offspring will have the same characteristics, I'll have an army of Invulnerable Time Manipulating brats.
Let's make a clarification:
The four combinations are there only to speed the tournament along. You're not supposed to combine the powers. Do that for fun if you want, but don't base your actual vote off of a combination.
Time manipulation for sure though.
fools
By the way, you probably want to spoiler this. Had you posted this 24 hours earlier, you would have fucked up that movie for me.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Genetically homogeneous human of a single gender.
Not that useful for colonization
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
Is this what it's like when hawkgirls cry?
I mean, invisibility is cool, because you could touch boobies, or steal shit, but really you could do that with time manipulation as well.
And invulnerability? Not dying is the best power ever. I mean, really, what's the downside? You see all your friends and family pass away while you remain vigorous and time-manipulatey? Fuck them! What did they ever do for you anyway? Uh-huh. That's what I thought. Also, if you've got time-manipulation, you can always just go visit them in the past if you get nostalgic. Then you can remember why you became divorced/estranged from that person in the first place, and return to the future and your buxom love-android.
Duplication is awesome.
But Array's version from Gold Digger is the best: You make "duplicates," but they're not clones, but rather new people, with whichever abilities you want to give them (within a certain power limitation) and their own personalities, which can be reabsorbed when no longer needed. Sure, you get multiple personalities, but they all love you anyways, so you're a walking party.
Duplication is useless if you have time manipulation. You can just go forward and back again and get as many of you as you need at any given time.
Invisibility is useless for anything but parlour tricks, pranks and voyeurism.
Invincibility is more useful than these two, therefore I pick it with Time Manipulation.
Because it would be cool to hunt Osama Bin Laden.
*Invulnerability- people can smack the shit out of you and you don't go down. You can die from stuff like cancer or diabetes or something, but nobody's going to lop your head off or anything.
*Immortality- you don't die. You might get into a Mr. Freeze-in-Batman-Beyond situation where you're a disembodied head forever, but you don't die.
Invulnerability vs. Duplication is a tougher call. It depends a lot on the functionality of the duplicates. Is it a perfect clone right down to behavior? Can I make them as backups in case I'm killed or injured? Can I absorb their experiences if I send them to do stuff? If we assume I have complete control then I'll take that, I can use it to avoid death and it has so many other applications to boot.
You can't have two powers at the same time. It's two separate polls.