Lame superpowers in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- Child of the Storm rehabilitates one or two people who have previously lame or underdeveloped powers.
- Sean Cassidy a.k.a. Banshee is mostly famous for screaming at people to knock them down or at the ground to (somehow) fly. The story delves into some of his lesser-known powers and the lesser-known properties of sound — for instance, he's got a powerful Compelling Voice, he controls sound in a small area around him, so he can move in complete silence, he's got a form of superhearing that allows him to use his own footsteps as sonar and he can shatter anything if he hits its resonant frequency. This includes wands, bone and diamond. Fairly formidable, even before you take into account the fact that he's had nearly fifty years to get very, very good with his powers. He's also physically about thirty due to a Noodle Incident involving 'a living island, name of Krakoa' and a badass of note, who's prepared for his powers being nullified by training in hand to hand. Natasha notes that he's a particularly skilled practitioner of Aikido.
- Warren Worthington III a.k.a. Archangel uses the codename of his Superpowered Evil Side (Wisdom theorises that it's a response to his rejection by his family) and possesses deadly sharp metal wings, which are arguably even more dangerous than in canon — they're made of some kind of supernatural/alien metal that means that Warren's speed is not exactly constrained by normal physics (he's seen comfortably breaking Mach 1, maybe even Mach 2, when he really gets going), low level superhuman physical abilities and a Healing Factor that would make Wolverine blink. He's essentially a Living Weapon and is bitterly aware of it.
- Both Xander and The Flash have a secondary power born from "having become one with an aspect of reality" in Crush
: the power to sense where breasts are with larger ones being easier to detect. When Batman questions why Flash never mentioned said power, he points out that having breast radar is basically never useful, even in search and rescue operations since it doesn't help him find men (or young girls). Though apparently both Flash and Xander can detect Powergirl anywhere on the planet. - In Infinity Crisis, Peter Quill begins to ask Aquaman what kind of power talking to fish is, only for Aquaman to summon a tidal wave that includes a humpback whale squashing several of Thanos's forces.
- Downplayed in Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!. Mashirao Ojiro's Metahuman power just gives him a muscular tail for attack, defense, and mobility. While it's a useful enough power to get him into the most prestigious Hero school in Japan, he complains that it isn't particularly flashy or powerful when compared to other Metahuman powers like Ochako's Gravity Master abilities or Kaminari's Shock and Awe. It doesn't hold a candle to Izuku's "Quirk" either.
- Origin Story:
- Louise Fulford, Alex Harris's partner, is a mutant with the power to change her hair color at will. She can change it to any range of color she can imagine, and even can change it to a rainbow-like combination of colors. Alex at one point jokingly assigns her the superhero code name "Lady Clairol." Rather than be embarrassed by this, Louise actually calls herself Lady Clairol at one point as a matter of pride.
- A lot of the residents of the homeless camp at which Alex and Louise take shelter fall under this trope. Aaron's power is to see infrared light, Oz can shapeshift, but only to the four primary characters of The Wizard of Oz (Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion), without actually gaining any of their abilities. Jan was a teenager with oversized jaw muscles and superhumanly strong teeth. And Debby's skin is translucent. The Avengers these people aren't.
- Thinking In Little Green Boxes: As it turns out, Harry does have a mutant superpower: hair regeneration. He'll never go gray or bald. Learning this is the in-fic explanation as to why Professor X becomes Onslaught.
- Animagus potential is shown to be quite common (between 1/3 and 1/2 of all wizards and witches) in Time and Again but most don't bother to pursue it due to either the fact it takes a couple years to learn or the fact their form isn't terribly useful. Xander never bothered as his form is a spotted hyena and he has some serious trauma related to the animal, while Harry Potter's form is a moth.
- In Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse, whilst pursuing Shampoo, who has eaten a Zoan Devil Fruit that lets her turn into a rabbit, several marines comment on how lame a power that sounds. She thinks she's gotten a pretty good deal, however, as it nullifies both one of her biggest weaknesses and one of the things that most interferes in her pursuit of Ranma.
- Kroko gets this in A Posse Ad Esse. While his fellow inmates get things like emotion-controlled weather, limited gravity manipulation and the ability to pause time for 30 seconds, Kroko... can fly seven feet in the air. (Granted, he is 19cm tall, but still.) And he seems to have to constantly flap his arms to maintain this flight.
- Potter Puppet Pals in the live show at least. Dumbledore describes the awesome power of:Dumbledore: ... The spell we know as love.
Harry: Lame!
- Rambar in The Motley Two. As a troll, he's got Psychic Powers, but rather than something useful, they just make him into a Fourth-Wall Observer who can hear the mysterious voices that are the readers' suggestions and argue with them.
- Played With in Villain Of Your Own Story: In the new reality created by Alya's Wish, she finds the Butterfly Brooch instead. Though excited at the prospect of becoming a real-life superheroine, she's disappointed to learn that it specializes in Super-Empowering — she wanted a real power, a direct one rather than playing support! So she decides to become Hawk Moth in order to lure out heroes, intending to steal their Miraculi so she can get a 'better' Transformation Trinket and claim the glory she feels she rightly deserves.
- In Juxtapose, this is Izuku's opinion of his own Quirk, Minor Banishment. He's able to banish anything from existence... but no more than 10 grams at a time. He also has to be touching whatever he wants to banish and he has to have a solid image of the structure of whatever he's banishing in his head. These highly specific conditions made Izuku the laughingstock of his peers and even All Might initially doubts Izuku's prospects of becoming a hero. But he discovers more and more applications for it while attending Yuuei as a general education student, which manages to get him into the Sports Festival after more than a year of Training from Hell to prepare. By the end, he and Hitoshi Shinsou end up winning it despite the presence of powerhouses like Shouto Todoroki.
- In Level Up!, some of the possible Feats members of Izuku's party can get are utterly worthless, such as "whistling" or "double strength bonus when opening jars".
- In The Eyes Have It, Kurenai Yuuhi has a doujutsu that let's her slightly (1.5x) magnify objects she's looking at. According to her, it's mostly useful for reading fine print.
- Just Check Both:
- Naruto has inherited a kekkei genkai from his father that causes him to change genders at semi-random intervals. Haku is severely creeped out by the idea of someone who changes genders having a crush on him.
- Gaara from the same story has the power to set his hair on fire.
- This Bites!: A Devil Fruit that allows you to turn into a human child would be pretty much useless for anyone. Unless they happen to be an inanimate object, like a ship.
- Jaune's father in Professor Arc has a Semblance that tells him when it's going to rain.
- Sailor Mercury from Sailor Moon Abridged is not only utterly useless, in one episode she even causes the people to die by using her powers, hence blocking their views and prevent them from fleeing the scenery.
- In Here There Be Monsters, Mister Midnight and Midnight Maid are equipped with several blinding weapons. Ridiculous compared with the Marvel Family's incredible powers or Ibis' sorcery, but effective to disable a Flying Brick with no defense against them.Mister Midnight and Midnight Maid reached in their belt-pouches and came up with weapons. Chuck's was the blackout device, Joyce held the Torch. She activated hers a second before his and blasted the Poet's eyes with a ray of intense brightness. A second later, Chuck's gimmick projected a cone of blackness, engulfing their foe.
"Confound it!" griped the Poet, floundering about. "They didn't give me a power to deal with this!"
- Discussed in Mortal Man when Barnacle Boy asks SpongeBob to be his sidekick due to his people skills:"You make people happy. That's your superpower."
"Really? Gosh. That seems kind of cheesy," laughed SpongeBob.
"What do you mean?" scowled Barnacle Boy, standing up straight and placing his hands on his hips indignantly. "I thought you of all people appreciated the power of friendship."
"Oh, I do," assured SpongeBob, "It's just... that's not a real superpower. I can't make water balls or assemble the creatures of the deep."
- In Hellsister Trilogy, Supergirl uses super-hypnotism -one of her most undervalued powers- to mesmerize D'reema into speaking the Life Equation and so cancelling out Darkseid's Anti-Life Equation.
- In A Boy, a Girl and a Dog: The Leithian Script, Orome -the God of Hunt- considers the Art of her sister Nessa -the Goddess of Dance- "is a frivolous waste of time". Then Luthien dances Morgoth into unconsciousness, and Nessa proceeds to gloat a lot.
- In Atonement, the Travellers have incredibly destructive or fairly useful powers... except for Oliver, who got the power to look attractive to anyone who sees him.
- Learning To Be Human: In an omake later declared to be canon, a minor character has one of these. He Triggered due to the stress of being Kaiser's nephew and overshadowed by his uncle, gaining the Stranger power to... have no one be able to remember his first name. Doesn't matter how he tells them or even if he writes it down, nobody retains that information. He's stuck as 'Probably-Francis' after someone decided that he looked like a Francis.
- Mauling Snarks: Jessica Yamada is a parahuman with a power that attempts to gauge other people's thoughts based on minute changes in skin color. Apparently, it overspecialized with the last group of hosts.
- In Risk It All, some of Ren's less combat-ready skills are at least useful life skills like speaking multiple languages or driving. He struggles to come up with uses for some of the more esoteric skills like Barista, which just makes him an impeccable coffee brewer. The only thing he can come up with is starting a MeTube channel about brewing coffee for some Prestige.
- Marik from Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series can use his Millennium Rod to control minds. Unfortunately, it only works on people called Steve. Although having people's names legally changed makes them susceptible, as Joey and Tea find out. This also applies to people whose middle names are Steve, as Marik was able to control Bandit Keith because his middle name was Steve, and presumably people whose last names are Steve. He also pointed out that, if he felt like it, he could have "Stone Cold" Steve Austin kick your ass.
