< Time Stands Still

Time Stands Still/Analysis

Required Secondary Powers

Those that stop time should be blinded. If time were stopped, everything else stops too, including light. And air, which would hold them in place because the air they displace when they move can't get out of the way. In fact, those that stop time should be frozen along with everything else by the mere nature of the ability.

One explanation for this is a Time Bubble, where the character stays in bubble of sped up time, thus avoiding many of the problems that speedsters would face (and the bubble must move with you or you're stuck in one spot). Of course, while this solves some of the problems, it merely displaces others. For example, you'd still be blind unless you had a light source in the bubble with you. If you did have a light source, you could see fine inside the bubble, but any photons which hit the edge of the bubble would get "stuck," so you couldn't see anything outside. And when you stopped using your power, all of those "stuck" photons would start moving again at once, resulting in a blinding flash.[1]

Another scenario is that rather than truly stopping time, the character simply moves really fast so everything else appears to be slower or stopped, like in the movie Clockstoppers, or one Choose Your Own Adventure story where you acquire a device to speed yourself up. Since this still leaves the problem of not being in sync with one's surroundings, for the purposes of this trope it can either be treated the same way as time "stopping", or as super-speed with all its attendant problems. Of course, there are problems with this too: the friction would probably be so great that you, and everything you touch, would either get a large hole in it or catch fire.

Over-application of this power should logically lead the user to be significantly older than they should be. This may or may not be addressed, although it really should if several in-story years go by with the character continuing to use it.

  1. ↑ Larry Niven made good use of this idea in his novella ARM, where an ordinary flashlight is used as a deadly weapon
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