FRIDAY OPEN THREAD: Which Gay Superpowers Do You Want?

I, like many people this week, have full-on Marvel fever after seeing Endgame, and I want to talk about superpowers.

Now, everyone’s favorite go-to ice breaker is “what superpower would you have” and everyone picks flying except for the one creep who wants x-ray vision or the rogue introvert who wants invisibility. But I want to take this concept and do what I wish more TV shows would do with their characters: make it gay.

Once when I was signing up for a dating app it had an option that was like, “Make yourself invisible to straight people.” And I was like wait is this an option in real life? Because some days I just…can’t. You know? So I think that would be a cool gay superpower to be able to toggle on and off. Another queer superpower I wish I had is the ability to grow out an undercut in an instant. I’m currently a few months into this process and have a borderline mullet on half my head. It’s not cute.

What other powers do you think would especially benefit members of our community? Things straight and/or cis people wouldn’t need or understand (or deserve)? I’m also okay with you co-opting traditional superpowers and making them your own – like being able to fly but also glow like a rainbow while you do a la Karolina Dean. The supernatural world is your oyster!


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Valerie Anne

Just a TV-loving, Twitter-addicted nerd who loves reading, watching, and writing about stories. One part Kara Danvers, two parts Waverly Earp, a dash of Cosima and an extra helping of my own brand of weirdo.

Valerie has written 543 articles for us.

87 Comments

  1. I did not know it until I read @cloneasaurus4 ‘s article this morning, but I want to be a lesbian (ok bi) snake queen with a sledgehammer.

    Also I want to be able to make rainbows whenever I feel like it. Like big ones in the sky or like little ones you get from prisms. Hmm I should start carrying a prism with me. Thank you, Valerie Anne, I feel like identifying a superpower need and a concrete step I can take immediately to give myself this superpower are a good thing in my life.

  2. SHAPESHIFTING! (I’ve thought about this a lot)

    It’d be so much cheaper than HRT and SRS and facial feminization surgery, etc., etc.

    • Yes yes yes! Have you read Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl? It’s my ultimate fantasy.

    • YASSS — do you think you would shapeshift often or just have a ~casual look~ and maybe a ~formal look~ but like your whole shape? would you always be different human shapes or could you be like a leopard or a wolf?

      • Well tbh I would be perfectly happy with a one and done situation. I get to pick a shape I’m happy with and never change it again. But if I got to keep the powers, sure, I’d have fun with it! I’d love to be able to change my hair color/length/style. Maybe breast size and shape but that’s not super important to me. Definitely would like to switch genitals depending on my mood.

        The only thing I wouldn’t do would be to use it to manipulate or trick anyone, but I would be sorely tempted to give a press conference as Donald Trump saying, “I’m a very bad president. The worst! I’m a big baby. Also, the pee tape is real. I resign!”

        Oh, and I’m primarily interested in human shapes, but I always thought manta rays were cool when I was a kid so, sure, I’d try it! But what if I changed my shape to an animal shape and my brain had to change with it and then I forgot how to turn back!

        • That is a very logical and legitimate concern. You’d definitely have to read the powers rulebooks before becoming a manta ray.

    • Yes! Can I second this twenty more times? I’m still recovering from FFS, and the truth of the matter is that all surgeries aren’t very good at fixing “went through the wrong puberty” and “born with the wrong genitals”. Shapeshifting also conveniently covers fertility with the partner of my choice. There are superpowers that would be more arguably useful (teleportation, I hate driving and live in the US), but nothing else would improve my life as much as shapeshifting.

  3. I second the hair growing superpower. I’m currently trying to grow out a pixie situation and am now slowly approaching mullet territory. Luckily I already have the bangs-cutting superpower.

  4. In my superpower dreams, flying has always been tied with the ability to speak & understand every human language. I could make this gay by teaming up with my gf, who is #TeamFlying, and she could fly us anywhere and I could communicate with anyone!

    Also the hair-growing thing would be great. Some days I wake up feeling more MoC and I want my hair super short. Some days I wake up feeling more femme and I want my hair super long! Never do I wake up and want my hair weird and half-grown out and non-purposefully asymmetrical and yet (sigh) that’s where I’ve been for at least 6 months while growing out my last short cut.

    • I love both of these. Along with the growing I’d love to be able to change my hair color instantly. No roots, no waiting.

  5. I would like super-gaydar. The ability to detect (with 100% accuracy) and queer people in a predominantly cishet space.

    • OMG YES please. And like queer people can choose to be undetectable if they want but those who wanted to be detected would be and we’d be BEST FRIENDS

  6. I think shape shifting would cover a lot–flying? Peregrine falcon! Stomping the patriarchy? Elephant! Feeling femme instead of my usual MoC gender presentation? Queen Bey or Brie Larson doppelganger!

    But I also think it would be nice to have Perfuma’s ability to create natural beauty wherever and whenever I wanted.

    • That’s beautiful! Nature-related powers would be very cool. Though only if they come with automatically not being allergic to anything.

  7. I’ve got some travelling anxiety so I’d like to be able to teleport. But with the ability to take other people with me when. I’m not super interested in traveling somewhere instantaneously and then having to go to the airport and pick up my girlfriend.

    • Being able to teleport is a long-standing wish of mine. I don’t understand why scientists invested so much energy in the large hadron collider when they could have been working on creating ways to teleport.

    • Every time I sit in traffic or have to plan a trip so I don’t have to sit in traffic I wish I could teleport. Think how much more time you could spend sleeping!

    • Would love to be able to teleport! Especially if you could bring people along.

      1) LDRs (including friendships) become less awful.
      2) Safer for women at night.
      3) Attend all the Prides!

  8. One power that would be great to have is the power for trans people(especially trans women of color)to make others empathize with their struggles. If that could happen we could have a better quality of life. I’d also have the power physically and verbally defend myself better, with Batman/Catwoman like fighting skills.

    How is everyone’s week going? I feel a bit of mess today as I lost my debit card while leaving the bank. Maybe have left it at the atm machine. Thankfully, I have my banking app so when I realized my error 5 minutes later was able to cancel the card and order a new one with my banking app. Still kind of got to me I made that mistake. On the plus side had a donut today. Also, Cuties has its regular first Sunday of the monthly queers, coffee, and donut event, which is well needed.

    I spent my Sunday morning in Malibu on my favorite road and on a short hiking trail. Then in the afternoon went to a boba tea place with my best friend while we played connect 4, which I lost big time. Still was a great time. Then we went to the ramen place next door for food. We are still thinking about starting a food and travel-ish blog from the perspective of two queer Jews.

    It was really misty/foggy on the trail and the road I was on Sunday.

    Thank you for viewing and reading my post. Have a positive weekend!

  9. I want Karolina Dean’s rainbow power because it’s beautiful and awesome!

    Precise gaydar (gay people would have a rainbow above their heads, bisexual people the bi colours, straight people would get nothing).

    The ability to shoot rainbows out of my hands which I would use against all the homophobes.

  10. I definitely need to be able to teleport or just fly super-fast as my person is 4500 miles away. Shapeshifting would be a lot of fun too though.

    • Ooooh good use of teleporting/flying, I feel like a lot of queer people I know are in long-distance relationships.

  11. Okay, so I want my cells to be able to heal really unnaturally quickly. Not in like, a cancer way, just in like a no more chronic illness, or colds or flu like way. Because I have the slightest viral thing rn, which has weirdly gone to my wrists? And it’s sore and I’m grumpy about it. Here is my grump, thank you for listening.

    • I would love that skill because I bruise and scratch SO EASILY so people are always Concerned but it’s like, “I’m fine, just pale and clumsy!”

    • Perhaps right here right now you are demonstrating your already-existing superpower: the Grump Dump. I hope it worked and you feel better now.

      (Because the Grump Hump is not a superpower that most partners appreciate, it is not fun to feel like a Grump Lump, and Grump Rump is even worse. Leads to farting in tents, excuse me, witches’ huts.)

  12. I’ve always loved flying, so I’d truly love that! Just think; soaring through the sky, no need for an air-polluting engine or anything! :)

    Also, the ability to make plants grow and talk to pets! I’d sure love to know what my chickens are thinking / saying, LOL! Cluck cluck! :)

    • I would love to be able to properly express to puppies I meet on the sidewalk how absolutely perfect they are.

    • I am currently in a D&D campaign in which my ranger can talk to animals. I have a particular companion, a so-called “devil chicken” who named herself Pretty Bird and stays with us because she believes that all the PCs worship her. (We do not.) Imagine your chickens larger and more reptilian and predatory, but just as shallow and entirely susceptible to flattery. Also, entirely scornful of boy-devil-chickens, who are tiny runty little things not worth the time it takes to peck at them.

  13. I like to say I already have a gay superpower, I can pick up any comic book and it will almost definitely have a lady loving lady in it. I’m new-ish to reading comics, even newer to super hero comics, but when I finally picked up a Captain Marvel book it had some gay lady aliens in it. When I picked up this book called Enormous (by Tim Daniels) there was nothing explicitly said, but I sensed something between two female characters, and when I embarrassingly tweeted my feelings to Tim, he confirmed my ship! Lumberjanes, Rat Queens, Mind the Gap, all of them I picked up having no idea that not only do they feature queer girls, they’re main characters! So I think instead of picking a new superpower I’d like to just keep mine :)

    • I feel like I have that power with the shows my parents watch that I don’t. Whenever I’m over their house and watching a show with them, it happens to be a Very Gay Episode.

      • I want both of these powers.

        My friend has it with fiction—I swear she can touch a book at random and it Turns Gay.

    • That sounds perfect. I want to get over my anxiety about being able to do polyamory right and not hurt anyone’s feelings, so we could actually start being poly rather than talking about it all the damn time

  14. YES to the hair growing superpower. There always comes a point where you’re trying to grow out your pixie cut, mohawk, fauxhawk, undercut or what have you and it just looks like someone came at you with a pair of vindictive scissors…and the scissors won. Ugh…

    This power would also be good for growing out bangs. I hate growing out bangs. I swear I think the universe conspires against people who grow out bangs and makes the process as slow and annoying and torturous as possible.

    • I swear my hair used to grow from shaved-short to too-long overnight, and yet now that I actually want it to grow, it’s stuck in involuntary mullet purgatory!!

  15. When I was younger I desperately wanted invisibility. Today, all I want is to be able to shapeshift from male to female (or, barring that, to be able to change my hairstyle/length at will, so I can have a short men’s cut one day, and shoulder-sweeping locks the next).

    I sprained my leg falling off my bike this morning on the way to school and it hurts to walk and I can’t make an appointment with my chiropractor until next week. BUT last night was the release party for a literary journal that published one of my short stories, and tonight is the gallery opening for an art show one of my drawings is a part of, AND I got a summer job working on some digital humanities archival projects, which is a big career advancement for me, so like, a lot of good things are going on? But it’s been a busy week and I can’t really stop to enjoy the good things just yet.

    • I hope your leg feels better and your life chills out enough to enjoy the good things soon – it all sounds super rad!

    • I summon the power to end hunger, both actual hunger & the gay craving type of hunger. Satisfaction via bento box lunch. My gay call card will be leaving a cat behind but a kitty sticker will suffice! Gay cat lady saves the day once again. =3

  16. I feel like this is perhaps a bit of a bummer response to a fun question, and also not a superpower that’s exclusively needed/wanted by LGBTQ+ people, but I’d like to be able to take away and/or heal the pain and trauma carried by so many members of our community on so many different levels, only without taking away all the progress and insights and deep interpersonal connections and other gorgeous things that emerged as a result. Basically I want to take away the wreckage but leave the flowers that grew up around it.

    • I’m going to use She-Ra as my inspiration and say that my (current) desired gay superpowers are Glimmer’s powers of teleportation and sparkles and Adora’s power of hefting a sword overhead in order to become tall and buff (the sword is a key element of this gay superpower).

      • I swear I even looked for the “cancel reply” link before posting this and didn’t see it so I thought I wasn’t adding a goofy cartoon-themed answer to a serious one.

        My other gay superpower I want is having spacial awareness but like, with my mobile phone.

    • “I want to take away the wreckage but leave the flowers that grew up around it.” – That’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read.

  17. Shapeshifting would be really cool, but the superpower I’ve always wanted was telepathy. It would be wonderful to be able to communicate and understand people without the limitations of language (but in a consensual way that didn’t violate anyone’s boundaries) and also to finally understand why are straight people.

    • “also to finally understand why are straight people” oh that’s a MOOD.

  18. Maybe transference: being able to shift bodily characteristics to people who actually want them, injuries/pain/suffering inflicted to those causing it, bank account balances to people who have been exploited, myself into a world where I would never be tempted to use said power because everything is already *right*….

  19. i would like the superpower to fall asleep immediately wherever and whenever i want, and it’s a gay superpower because i’m gay so it would be gay sleeping

    • I have a friend who can do that and I’m always so jealous. I can’t even fall asleep in my own bed, let alone on a barstool holding a plunger. (Long story.)

  20. Aside from the obligatory I’m-trans-so-shapeshifting, I’d want the ability to compel bigots to actually be truthful about their bigotry- instead of this mealy-mouthing about “religious freedom” or “concerns about the border” or “sex-based rights”, they’d have to reveal their true motives: I think gay people are weird and probably going to hell. I’m irrationally afraid of brown people. Trans women disgust me and I’d prefer it if I never had to interact with them, ever.

    Cuz, I mean, if you’re going to tell me I’m subhuman, the least you can do is respect me enough to be straight-forward about it, y’know?

    • My guess is that they’re all scared.
      Goes without saying I suppose but I’d like to know what they think we’ll do to them.

    • Tessa needs to write a series of Wonder Woman issues where the whole thing is using the lasso on bigots!

      …also can we dump some sodium thiopental in the Potomac upstream from DC? Because I think hearing a lobbyist tripping on truth serum getting interrogated by AOC or other Fierce Congresswomen(tm) would be A+ television!

  21. I’d be able to invade people’s minds to live their memories and make them live others’ memories that I’ve collected, sort of like in Harry Potter, but I’d use it to force bigots to experience empathy.

    This week has been… rough. Family is visiting, and someone who has a tendency to say classist, racist and sexist things decided to throw homophobia into the mix. After lamenting on and off throughout the evening about how people get divorced these days (brought on by his son splitting up with the mother of his children) he started a sentence with “I think it has something to do with that thing you’re so enthused by, LGBT…” and ended it how the morality of western civilisation would still be in tact if people just stopped accepting LGBT+ people because these rights have really gone too far.

    • This need to always find someone or some group to blame for their own feelings of inadequacy. Truely gives me the irrits.
      Maybe more of us need the superpower of insight and self responsibility.

    • “That thing we’re so enthused by, LGBT” – new AS T-shirt. Imagine the look on your relative’s face if you showed up wearing one… ;)

  22. Queer femme vision – ability to successfully detect queer femmes, reversing their typical invisibility due to their frequent similarity to straight women.

    • I feel quite fortunate that I seem to have this one.

      Or perhaps it’s more I “assume” everyone who looks feminine is actually queer until I learn otherwise. (Not really, but really.)

  23. Shapeshifting is probably the best superpower, as long as the rules are in your favor (you keep your human knowledge and sense but also gain the instincts of whatever you shift into). Want to fly? Become a bird. Get into a locked building? Tiny bug. Excellent sight? Excellent hearing? Breathing underwater? Shapeshifting’s got you covered.

    That said, I’d pick telekinesis. I’m pretty sure I’d end up a vigilante anti-hero at best though, if I had the ability to, say, stop someone’s heart without being detected.

    • R u ready for this: Ok so I’m thinking the power to end hunger… like both the actual oh so hungry kind and the I have this unknown gay hunger/desire kind. Boom liberated with a special bento box lunch package. My gay call card will be leaving behind a kitty sticker. The gay cat lady saves the day again…meow & mike drop! lol

  24. I also want telepathy…but a queer form. So irrespective of how we present we can signal to each other that we are queer (if we want to) and our relevant pronouns (bc sharing can be awkward in front of the straights and sometimes it’s better to have allies model preferred usage), and to pass judgment on the straights and share all our inside jokes etc etc.

    • This sounds nice, but I kind of feel like the ability to share pronouns, pass judgment, and share inside jokes in front of the straights is its own super power. I wouldn’t want to give up the power to make straights feel uncomfortable and left out empathy.

  25. I want the superpower of having like a forcefield bubble round me so that I:
    – can be in a place with crowds and noise but block them out enough that they don’t make the experience unpleasant
    – can repel straight people
    – can repel men
    – can repel people who get in my personal space
    – can always have the perfect temperature for what I’m wearing and doing
    – never have to hear the words of homophobes, transphobes, racists etc

    Obviously people I want to can come through the bubble but everyone else would have to stay outside. Ideally this would also be a flying bubble but I’m not going to get greedy about that.

    • Ooh I like that bubble idea. Especially in crowds.

      “We can’t all come and go by bubble.”

  26. Teleportation and Shapeshifter skills for me. Is it greedy wanting more than one? It’s just that there are so many places I’d like to see and visit but but I’m too physically stuffed to manage it the usual way. If I could Shapeshift though, I might be able to do it myself. Still in the meantime I’ll work on my Empathy skills.

    • You can have as many powers as you want!! This is our game, we make the rules. :)

  27. For my big gay super power™, I’d love the ability to wear heels without ever having them become painful. Cause I have thigh high boots with heels that make me the lesbian witch of the Midwest. Idk about you, but me in heels is the gayest thing since (spoilers) Brie Larson’s hair in endgame.

    • omg i both want this super power for you (those boots sound amazing) and also for me (i gave up on heels in 2010 and haven’t looked back because OW, but fuck i miss how they look and feel before the pain kicks in!) <3

      • Heels for all! I definitely feel you tho, I wore heels to pride ONCE. Regretted it for the next two weeks. Ouchie! <3

    • I “kinda” had this superpower, it is called a decade of ballet and maintaining muscle tone.
      Put quotes around kinda because heels may have actually hurt, but merely registered as minor discomfort to me and that might have been something like pain to a normal person.

      • Yeah I think my high pain tolerance is my superpower. Though one of the reasons I have such a high tolerance (besides dance, which is where it originated for sure) is that I’m so clumsy so heels are a bad idea for a whole different reason.

  28. At will shapeshifting, all I have to do is concentrate my mind on the shape I want and ta-da I have that form and back regardless if the form is something animate or not.

    However this could get very dangerous as I would not content with just being able to shift from my Venus de Milo silhouette into other silhouettes.
    Not saying I’d go full werewolf but fangs and deadly sharp claws or talons? YES and then chances are I’d get very tempted to use them vigilante style. It’s not like there’s a weapon database LEOs could match raptor talons is there…and so there is my dilemma with shapeshifting as a super power.
    Plus I could give myself extra dense fists or feet and use those as weapons too.

    Anyway it would be great to have a customisable ability to shift across the whole spectrum of sex and gender and not be stuck looking like a classical nude with chicken legs.

    • …bk-AWK? bk-AWK! bk-AWK!!!! flapflapflapflap!

      I…I don’t know which of @jtsoundtech ‘s chickens I’m voicing here, but apparently it’s one who’s very excited by classical nudes with chicken legs? I dunno, I just comment here, the chickens rule the roost. Back to work so I can feather my nest. Happy weekend all.

    • I want fangs! For no good reason. I don’t even eat meat. But I feel like maybe people would take me more seriously.

  29. I am the worst dancer. I’m terminally clumsy and I bump into other people and things constantly even when doing just normal tasks.

    I wish my superpower was being able to dance with the combined powers of Brooklyn Heights, Kennedy Davenport, Alyssa Edwards, Shea Coulee, Chi chi Devayne, and Evie Odly. I would love to dance with drag queen levels of confidence.

  30. im taking avengers and making it queer so i want hulk smash powers without looking like hulk (i want to surprise my attackers) and i want an axe that always comes back to me and scares transphobes/homophobes so bad that they are incapacitated not like fully of everything, just their ability to be assholes

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