Tags:
  1. Simon Price

    Simon Price Active Member

    Joined:
    Jul 17, 2017
    Messages:
    146
    Likes Received:
    61

    Can anyone see any problems with this power?

    Discussion in 'Plot Development' started by Simon Price, Jan 11, 2018.

    So, I just thought of an idea for a special supernatural power my character could have that feels upon initial reflection like it would be useful but not story-breaking and has a lot of room to let the character who has it flex their creative and intellectual muscles, but I'm worried there might be something major I'm overlooking here, some incredibly common dramatic situation it would trivialize or some way it could be abused in ridiculous ways, so I want a couple of extra opinions on it.

    Basically, the main character has the power to link his mind to the sensory input of any of the last three (give or take and subject to tweaking) people he's touched. At any time and from any distance, as long as somebody is one of the people he's most recently made physical contact with, he can flip a switch in his mind and suddenly see, hear, touch, taste and smell absolutely everything that person is seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. He can also do the reverse, and allow other people to experience all of his sensory input as well. In both cases, this doesn't override the subject's natural sensory input, they have access to both at once and can choose which one they focus on (or try to focus on both), though they can't completely ignore either one as long as it's active.

    As for what situations my character finds himself in, well without going excessively into detail: This is a story about the world being thrown into turmoil and chaos in the wake of humans suddenly being given superhuman powers en masse by an unknown entity. A combination of this power and an undiscovered natural talent for strategy find him thrust into the role of strategist for his group of friends who are trying to survive.

    Can anyone think of any possible drama-ruining exploit I should be on guard for and possibly tweak the power to prevent?
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2018
  2. mashers

    mashers Contributor Contributor Community Volunteer

    Joined:
    Jun 6, 2016
    Messages:
    2,323
    Likes Received:
    3,089
    If the power lasts indefinitely after touching a person, then all he would need to do is touch the antagonist once and then be able to see and hear everything they do, which could then make his role as strategist too easy. So I would make it so that the effect wears off after a while so he would have to touch the person again to re-establish the link. I would also make it so that it only works with skin-to-skin contact so that people who know about his skill can protect themselves from it, similar to Magneto's helmet in X-Men which shields him from telepaths. These factors combined mean that he would find it harder to link to people who don't want to share with him. He may therefore need to send somebody in his place to 'scout' having linked with them previously. You could have him physically immobilised for some reason (maybe he's severely agoraphobic and can't leave the house) so he links with members of his team, they go and act as his 'proxy' for the outside world so he can investigate and develop his strategy for the team.
     
    Simon Price likes this.
  3. OB1

    OB1 Active Member

    Joined:
    Jan 10, 2018
    Messages:
    221
    Likes Received:
    150
    Location:
    Manchester, UK
    This brings to mind the antagonist in the Netflix series Jessica Jones. He was able to control the actions of people who he was in close proximity to. So you could constrain his powers so that it was affected by proximity.

    Or have one of the protagonist or someone else who is immune to his powers.
     
  4. Simon Price

    Simon Price Active Member

    Joined:
    Jul 17, 2017
    Messages:
    146
    Likes Received:
    61
    Oh no, he can’t control anyone, he can just kinda hack into their sensory input so he sees everything they see, hears everything they hear, etc. Unless I misunderstood the connection you were making.
     
  5. OB1

    OB1 Active Member

    Joined:
    Jan 10, 2018
    Messages:
    221
    Likes Received:
    150
    Location:
    Manchester, UK
    So a bit like a Woad in the GOT series?

    I was kind of assuming that the power you are referring to might work in a similar way to the controlling power said antagonist has. That it could be limited by proximity to make it a bit harder.

    In a fantasy/superhero genre, what I have learnt from watching loads of you tube videos is that although you kind of have free reign over the magic and powers in YOUR world, you need to be able to justify them to make it believable, so for example if your character has the ability to invoke the senses of other people then the reader needs to know what he can't do, what his kryptonite is etc.

    Law of physics: "every action has an opposite reaction"
     
  6. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

    Joined:
    Jan 8, 2017
    Messages:
    12,141
    Likes Received:
    19,768
    Location:
    Rhode Island
    I'm thinking the logistics might it difficult to achieve the desired dramatic effect. First of all, he has to touch anyone he wants to "hack" into and then not touch anyone else within the realm of three to keep the link active. And since he would have to be standing right next to the target to go live in the first place, they would initially be sharing the same sensory input by virtue of occupying a similar space. Now, that would work great if you're in line at the bank and want to read the ATM pin of the person in front of you or something (hey, I wonder what that dude's sandwich tastes like), but if the MC needs to the victim to travel some kind of distance he'd have to isolate himself from touching others, which is doable, I suppose. @mashers idea of a suit works great for that.

    Unrelated, but I think it would be cool if there was like a six degrees of separation thing going on, where once your MC touches and can read a victim, the victim passes the target ability along to everyone they touch instead of it reverting back to the MC. That would lead things in unexpected directions, but it might not be what you're looking for.

    Unrelated 2: I'll be very disappointed if your MC doesn't use this ability in a sexual fashion at some point. Several dozen gags just jumped into my head, none of which I will mention here.
     
    Mckk likes this.
  7. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    Mar 9, 2010
    Messages:
    15,262
    Likes Received:
    13,084
    This feels a little too complex and convenient for me. If I were king, it would be simpler and less convenient.

    - He can only hack into the last person he touched--not three people.
    - He can't flip the sensations entirely off; they're there at a low level, like headphone leakage, all the time. When he's tired or his will power is low, they're harder to block out. When the person is feeling really strong sensations, he can't block them out.
    - I dislike the reversal where he can give others his sensations.

    This raises the question of how he arranges to feel no one's sensations. Maybe he truly can't? Or maybe touching an animal does that for him? Or maybe getting really, synapse-scrambling, falling-down, drunk?

    I find myself imagining that he touches a henchman of the bad guy, and then he's stuck wearing gloves for hours, days, weeks. One day he realizes that the henchman is in danger of death, and he has to choose whether to maintain the connection in the hope that the henchman survives and continues to provide information through the connection, or frantically grab the first person he sees so that he doesn't feel the pain of his death.
     
    Iain Aschendale and Simpson17866 like this.
  8. Simpson17866

    Simpson17866 Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    Aug 23, 2013
    Messages:
    3,406
    Likes Received:
    2,931
    Ms. Chicken, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely brilliant things I have ever heard. At no point in your precise, perfectly coherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered an irrational thought. Everyone in this board is now smarter for having read it. I award you all of the points, and may God bless your soul :)
     
    Iain Aschendale and ChickenFreak like this.
  9. Simon Price

    Simon Price Active Member

    Joined:
    Jul 17, 2017
    Messages:
    146
    Likes Received:
    61
    Interesting ideas, to be sure, but most of them don’t really gel with what I’m going for.

    I don’t like the idea of having messy control difficulties, like not being able to block out sensations completely, because it goes against the general design philosophy I have for the powers. The powers are supposed to clearly be very intentionally and intelligently designed by whatever mystery entity is giving them out, and the only messy side-effects that are present are generally those based in entirely manmade concepts and values. For example, one of the powers, a healing factor that heals disabilities, regrows limbs and reverses aging, but also rejects plastic surgery and implants.

    And what's more, this is a unique personal power, unlike the other powers which every other person on earth had a chance to keep access to (the way powers work is a bit weird), and only 24 people on earth, including him, received these powers. And while they're not all utterly broken and amazing, having just his specifically have weird bugs and glitches or feel potentially accidental would seem a bit weird.

    And the other limitations you proposed would severely cripple its usefulness to a strategist by not letting him oversee multiple teams at once and making him incapable of using the power to communicate with his allies, forcing him to rely on conventional technological means. Personally I think removing the ability to let others feel his sensations would make his options and potential courses of action less interesting rather than more.

    But while I don't think touching an animal turning the power off would be a good idea (it would raise the question of what qualifies and if insects qualify it would render his power near useless, so as it stands I'm only making it work on humans), I agree that the danger of extremely unpleasant sensations overwhelming him, traumatizing him, or even just forcing him out of that person's head would be a very interesting mechanic and way to limit his power. I had actually been thinking about that earlier today, as a matter of fact, as a possible means by which I could throw a wrench in his efforts to spy on somebody or assist a friend.
     
    Simpson17866 likes this.
  10. MugMugger

    MugMugger New Member

    Joined:
    Jan 12, 2018
    Messages:
    6
    Likes Received:
    1
    Here are a couple tweak I would do :
    • Of the three, he would be able to chose the two other he keep. ( This in my opinion would give you more "move" if you want to build complex strategy.
    • For is weakness i would make that in all time one of his power is use to store the feeling of someone he love. ( This would be a way to cripple him that open up more narrative possibility without taking anything away from his power.)
    • When he project his sense to someone else do he still feel what the other feel, for exemple he want to disarm someone so he put his hand over fire so the payne travel to that guy making him trop his weapon but looping back again to him making it twice as bad.
    This is what I can think for now.
     
  11. Simon Price

    Simon Price Active Member

    Joined:
    Jul 17, 2017
    Messages:
    146
    Likes Received:
    61
    Oh yes, I assure you they occurred to me too. But actually...

    That’s actually something of a growing concern of mine. I’m worried that the sheer fact that sense of touch is also felt (and thus that every time this young man uses his power on a woman he can feel her bare skin against her clothes) adds an inescapable and inherent pervyness to the power that could risk adding in obnoxious anime-esque sexual awkwardness that I really want to avoid except maybe for some cute moments with a love interest. But the problem is that the sense of touch is also dramatically crucial because it gives him a crucial backup weakness to his spying and also the dramatic opportunity to be shaken and horrified by feeling what it’s like to die. So I’m concerned about how to downplay it while still being realistic.
     
  12. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

    Joined:
    Jan 8, 2017
    Messages:
    12,141
    Likes Received:
    19,768
    Location:
    Rhode Island
    You mention it once or twice and then move on. Kind of like a movie where a character gets an unexpected power and they show the obligatory montage of the character doing funny and whacky things for a few minutes and then dive back into the story. Can't think of a great example... maybe that movie where Jim Carrey becomes god (Bruce Almighty?) and they show him doing funny things with his new powers.
     
  13. surrealscenes

    surrealscenes Senior Member

    Joined:
    Aug 9, 2017
    Messages:
    416
    Likes Received:
    309
    Location:
    a room made of impossible angles
    I think it could lead to some very interesting stories in a series.
    I like the last 3 idea. It gives you a chance to show what the trade offs are for the power. Does mc isolate themselves so as not to come into contact with anyone (and what are the psychological consequences)?
    At some point is the mc grabbed, drugged, and (for instance) presented to the pope for a blessing (then kept drugged and constantly asked what is seen)?
    Does mc meet the president of USA and feel so great about meeting the president that they wander off to a hotel room and later wake with terror over what the president is planning (yet nobody will believe the mc, who has to stay on the run so cops can't touch them)?

    So many ways this could go.
     
  14. Mink

    Mink Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    Dec 21, 2017
    Messages:
    631
    Likes Received:
    838
    This is the only thing that fully gives me concern:

    Unless the unknown creature changed the biological nature of humans to be able to handle that much stimulation then there could be the issue of sensory overload. Given that the power is his specifically, if he were to let someone have access to his own sensory input while they still have access to theirs then they may became overloaded and stop functioning. The human brain has all sorts of tricks in place to prevent us from becoming overstimulated just from our own sensory organs.
     
  15. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

    Joined:
    Mar 9, 2010
    Messages:
    15,262
    Likes Received:
    13,084
    As I see it, you usually aren't consciously aware of your skin against your clothes, right? Conscious awareness of sensory input fades after a while. As another example, if you were instantly transported from the room you're in to the room I'm in, you would probably notice smells (The bananas? The tea brewing?) and feel either warmer or colder, and be consciously aware of the thumpity-thump of the dryer that's running.

    But I'm not consciously aware of those things, except when I make a point of paying attention, as I just did. And you can't always even make yourself consciously aware of sensory input; there are those women who reek of perfume because they're so used to the perfume that they can no longer smell it. (olfactory fatigue)

    My first thought here was that he would be flooded with sensation and then become accustomed to the extended sensations quickly, so you can avoid addressing those sensations all through his experience. But then it occurred to me to think that maybe he's getting those sensations "late", after the subject's brain has edited them, so maybe you can ignore them entirely?

    That could be interesting.

    "What's he hearing? Where is he?"
    "I don't know."
    "How can you not know?"
    "Because he's not listening! He's not looking! All he's aware of is the bleeping Candy Crush screen on his phone! Did I not tell you that a subject with ADD is not ideal?"

     
    Simon Price and Mckk like this.
  16. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

    Joined:
    Dec 30, 2010
    Messages:
    6,541
    Likes Received:
    4,776
    @ChickenFreak idea may lend the novel a good dose of humour.

    And you say the power can go both ways? Is that automatic, or does your MC have to consciously decide to allow the other person to feel his surroundings? Because if it's automatic, it could be an interesting weakness/problem.
     
  17. newjerseyrunner

    newjerseyrunner Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2022

    Joined:
    Apr 20, 2016
    Messages:
    1,462
    Likes Received:
    1,432
    That type of ability sounds easy to abuse.

    Someone I've touched in the past is about to order something online? Let's see what credit card info they're putting in.

    Got the hots for the neighbor's wife? Touch the husband and wait for them to have sexy time.

    Having a bad day? Go into the body of a heroin addict.
     
  18. Simon Price

    Simon Price Active Member

    Joined:
    Jul 17, 2017
    Messages:
    146
    Likes Received:
    61
    Good thing he's a good guy.

    As the main character will say when his friend points out the possibility to hacking in to somebody while they're having sex: "Ethics aside, I don't think there's a single completely straight way to do that."

    Huh. While he wouldn't actually do anything like that, the fact that he feels the sensations of something like that but not the biochemical or hormonal consequences is probably something I should keep in mind; that might have some other application relevant to him.
     
  19. Homer Potvin

    Homer Potvin A tombstone hand and a graveyard mind Staff Supporter Contributor

    Joined:
    Jan 8, 2017
    Messages:
    12,141
    Likes Received:
    19,768
    Location:
    Rhode Island
    That will be boring as hell. Every reader will be waiting for him to do something dirty, or at least unseemly, so you best deliver on that front.
     
  20. Simon Price

    Simon Price Active Member

    Joined:
    Jul 17, 2017
    Messages:
    146
    Likes Received:
    61
    But the dark uses of the power are creepy and reprehensible. They would instantly destroy audience sympathy.
     
  21. OB1

    OB1 Active Member

    Joined:
    Jan 10, 2018
    Messages:
    221
    Likes Received:
    150
    Location:
    Manchester, UK
    Sounds to me like you want this, power to be used for good. However if you want to make this seem realistic, even the good guy has some dark parts to them. What you could do is either one of the following

    1. He uses his power to perv on a sexual interest. But then later feels the guilt of what he has done.
    2. He is just about to use his power to perv on a sexual interest, describing his thoughts and the excitement that feeling could be, but then just as he is about to do it, he refrains as his conscience forbids it.
    There was an episode of The adventures of superman where Clark kent is just about to use his xray vision to spy on lois but then decides not too. Even the good guy has theses desires!
     
  22. Simon Price

    Simon Price Active Member

    Joined:
    Jul 17, 2017
    Messages:
    146
    Likes Received:
    61
    Wait... isn't that the old 50s show that spent half of the time in black and white? Are you talking about another one or are you saying they actually went there back then?

    Also, I think if I'm going to have the temptation come up, I'm not going to have him succumb. The thought has crossed my mind of possibly having him accidentally bumping into the town's resident rich hot girl just as she's obviously about to do something like hit the gym showers, and being incredibly frustrated at being baited by fate with the opportunity as he consciously makes an effort to get the access to her senses out of his system in case his resolve is eroded later.

    I've been thinking it might be interesting to bring up as a bit of a plot point that he never feels truly comfortable with his power because, due to the nature of it, he can never just use it for fun. It's always in some stressful situation like leading his friends in life or death situations, or doing reconnaissance where he has to concentrate on what he's seeing.

    I also think that if he doesn't succumb, his reaction to somebody who uses a much weaker but similarly voyeuristic power for voyeurism would be interesting, showing him pissed off at somebody who succumbed to much less severe temptation.
     
    OB1 likes this.
  23. OB1

    OB1 Active Member

    Joined:
    Jan 10, 2018
    Messages:
    221
    Likes Received:
    150
    Location:
    Manchester, UK
     

Share This Page

  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
    Dismiss Notice