I've always thought this was a rather silly question but in a recent discussion that included thoughts of Prim it came to me that I've long wished I possessed a 'superpower': The gift or art of Diplomacy. Tact. Judiciousness. Prudence. Preferably with a soft humorous component that couldn't help but make people smile. My wish wouldn't necessarily include that I be The Wise Sage, although a decent amount of intelligence would be helpful. It's more of a wish to have a gentle farsightedness and patient understanding that could help work through issues. As much as I admire this quality and strive toward it, it evades me.

How about you?

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My heart is forever in the Shire.

For a very long time I think I would have said 'invisibility'.

But now I would rather have a super power where the story I have in my head, the one I am imagining, picturing so perfectly - the ability to perfectly translate that to paper. To actually write the stories in my head right, instead of having all these ideas that seem so perfect until I sit down and then they flee from my fingers.

Yep. Perfect story transcription.

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The dumbest thing I've ever bought
was a 2020 planner.

elengil, I believe I understand what you are referring to. My daughter has a lovely story 'in' her that she has been working on for years. She knows how it begins and ends and even some of the middle, but being able to take it from an outline to a fully built-out story is quite a superhuman task!

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My heart is forever in the Shire.

I was going to edit but then you posted so...

Incidentally, my life-long dream was to be "The Wise Sage" (tm) when I got older, but now having gotten older, I think I'm going to have to accept that is just never going to be me.

As for stories, I've been 'cutting my teeth' on a variety of short stories, just to keep the writing flowing. But I still have some gaps in those where yeah, I'm all "I know this part, and I know this part, but... what happens in the middle there!??"

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The dumbest thing I've ever bought
was a 2020 planner.

Elengil, I love your idea.

I think I'd like the ability for people to recognize statements that are inconsistent with objective reality. It wouldn't affect ideas on subjects such as whether Balrogs have wings (fiction) or whether one person is more beautiful than the other (opinion) but when someone says, for example, that climate change is a threat to human survival, the truth of that statement would be self evident.

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“I am not so blind that I can't see darkness.”
Dangerous Beans
Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Oooh, so that would almost be like the opposite of Cassandra! That would be... world-changing, wouldn't it.

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The dumbest thing I've ever bought
was a 2020 planner.

Rose - your wish reminds me a bit of my idea for Captain Canada.

http://thehalloffire.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=351766#p351766

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I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists

I confess I've fantasized about being able to smite people with total, unfiltered empathy. Literally 'gift' individuals the capacity to experience what another is feeling. I think it would eliminate almost all hurtful behaviour.

Imagine: you assault someone and ZAP! you feel their fear and pain and helplessness and betrayal as it happens, exactly as if it were your own.

Would stop politicians from blithely relegating people to poverty; or bombing them; and all kinds of harm being done unto others because of self-interest or greed or ignorance - or racism or misogyny or homophobia.

It probably could not eliminate the suffering caused by sadistic psychopaths, though.

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Mornings wouldn't suck so badly if they came later in the day.

Isn't the lack of ability to feel empathy the main cause of psycopathy? Your superpower might actually cure all sadistic psycopaths, if so.

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SO many good thoughts!

Impenitent--that would be a very powerful superpower indeed.

yov, I don' think I could ever be as nice as a Canadian! My wish isn't so much to be nice (although that would be, well, nice) but to be tactful. To be able to say what needs to be said without having what I'm trying to convey be misconstrued.. or to know when to shut up! Or know when to make a light-hearted comment and move on.

Combine Frelga's superpower with impenitent's and I think we'd have things covered! Except for elengil's book writing, there would still be that.

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My heart is forever in the Shire.

I love this thread! Not only are these great ideas, these powers are not something that we can emulate with technology.

I've gained the power of flight today, in exchange for a significant but not exorbitant amount of money. And then we picked up the car at the parking lot, which granted us super-speed of up to 80mph (in today's traffic).

Speaking of technology, with today's AI, it may be possible for a social network app to recognize when a poster is being a jerk and rewrite their post in a courteous manner.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

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“I am not so blind that I can't see darkness.”
Dangerous Beans
Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

So what great deeds would you do with your superhuman tactfulness?



For years I've had fantasies running through my head of a certain kind of mind control. My power would be that when I wish it, I could compel someone to have an irresistible urge to obey what I tell them to do. (This is pretty much the superpower found in the graphic novel series Preacher.) My real desire isn't really about getting people to do what I want - it's to be able to get in front of anybody and say "Tell me the truth", and they would have to do so. The ability to, say, get access to certain world leaders, point a camera at them, and then say "Tell me the truth" would be supremely satisfying.

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I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists

Oh, that's a very good question! I hadn't had any grand plans for affecting the greater world as the other superpowers mentioned. Although tact.. diplomacy.. can be useful if a very ordinary sort of thing. I guess like a typical hobbit, I was thinking rather small.



That would be interesting.. would it work on the chronically deluded? Could you MAKE them see the truth as it really is and not what they've conjured up in their own deranged head?

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My heart is forever in the Shire.

Yov, you want a lying cat is what you want.

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“I am not so blind that I can't see darkness.”
Dangerous Beans
Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Rose - good question and it's something I've thought about! My thought is that they would obey a command to the best of their ability so those who genuinely can't tell their lies from truth would be tough, but I think in those cases you could still get some worthwhile answers with some proper interviewing skills.


Frelga - as nice as the kitty sounds, I don't want to just identity lies, I want to compel truth!

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I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists

But think how much fun it would be to hear a politician's attempts at prevarication, while the cat keeps pointing out lies.

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“I am not so blind that I can't see darkness.”
Dangerous Beans
Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Liar Liar

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The dumbest thing I've ever bought
was a 2020 planner.

LOL. I've never seen 'Liar, Liar' and I'm not a big Jim Carey fan, but that was pretty funny.

I can see that perhaps I should have included the wish for 'The Wise Sage' in my Superpower because then I would have definitely wished for a much more effective superpower!! You guys are pretty awesome at coming up with stuff!

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My heart is forever in the Shire.

Being a Wise Sage would be very useful, I agree.

A Lying Cat might force me to admit that the power I *really* want is for people to see when I am right.

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“I am not so blind that I can't see darkness.”
Dangerous Beans
Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Maybe we could whip up some Veritaserum.

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My heart is forever in the Shire.