The other night, I was recording with my podcast buddies and tweeted the question of the week: "If you were a Super Villain what would your power be?" After receiving the responses I realized that you can tell a lot about a person by their answer. Some of them were silly: "Puppeteering, so I could make people dance." Some were chaotic: "The power to manipulate earth so you could sink buildings and stuff." Some were sexually mischievous: "Succubus," and "-to make any man have an instant erection with a glance." Some were classic: "Flying," "Breathe underwater," "Laser vision." Interestingly enough about one-quarter of them had to do with mind control and or mind reading.
I've got to ask myself, "Why?" I know some of you are thinking, 'Elynnes! What do you mean, WHY? Mind control gives a villain the ultimate power over anything that requires a brain to exist!' My response, "Yeah, but then people could cripple you with their thoughts."
Think about it. Sure, you can read people's mind, inject thoughts, make them want to do something so baldly that they go against their own better judgement. If you're able to do all of that then you've probably also got a super ego to go with your super power. And even super egos have their soft spots. All it takes is one person to simply think the right thing and it would strike hole in your super ego so vast you'd become mentally and emotionally crippled. And then you'd be flooded with with immobilizing shame. Your super power is also your super weakness. Sure, you will one day climb out of the abyss of darkness and despair, and that particular issue may or may not be resolved for you, but you'll have another weak spot…and all it takes is one thought.
So, no, although mental prowess is pretty sexy, I'll stick with my personal choice of atom manipulation.
What do you think? What super power would you choose?
