Deadman seems to spend a lot of his time just floating around as a ghost, so he only has to dive into people when he needs to accomplish something specific (like talking to mortals or stopping his victim from doing something evil). The noble Mnemnosyne wasn’t asking for an extracorporeal existence, so he’s always got to be possessing somebody, unless he reverts back to his original body. After his body dies he has to possess and take over people - as best I can tell he can’t even die as long as he is near to or even knows of the existence of some other human.
I’ll stick with my choices of supernatural perfect judgement and/or high-powered TK, thanks.
Ooh, I hadn’t thought of the 'I can’t die unless I don’t know of the existence of any other human. That…was a flawed oversight on my part. Now I can imagine, after long enough with that power, wanting to exterminate all mankind just so I can finally die because I made the mistake of not giving myself an escape clause when I chose the terms.
As for having to always be possessing someone, I had started to write out a whole spiel about the mechanics of it with people in comas and otherwise not mentally functioning but physically able, but I clipped it because it got really complicated. The short summary of it was that I figured that unless I was doing something specific with a particular person’s body, I could simply occupy the body of someone who’s braindead but physically functional. That would also give me a sense of ‘continuity’ since I’d have a body to return to regularly and live an actual life as, without having to permanently suppress someone else.
The devil and genocidal tendencies are in the details.
I hadn’t though of the ‘catatonic person’ angle; presuming you manage to actually know about such people throughout your existence (via espionage in medial wards?) you would have an endless supply of less-morally-problematic bodies to hijack. Of course it would probably freak their doctors and family right the heck out when you got up and started walking around, but meh.
While I understand how certain powers might seem somehow inherently invasive or controlling, I think that has more to do with familiarity. There are plenty of things we don’t have control over or enter into what we consider our personal space, or ways in which people have disparate powers, that either people don’t even think about because they are so used to it, or they over analyze to the point of finding offense in everything.
Personally, I’d want to pick omnscience because that would seem to cover everything else but if I had to pick something more singular it would probably be flying, because I imagine that as being the closest thing to pure joy.
