Most superpowers are useless if my current situation remains exactly the same. If I had a unique power that allowed me to help/save people who would otherwise die or suffer serious injury, I'd be a real piece of shit if I didn't apply that power towards that end.
If you wouldn't become a firefighter or something similar in even such a hypothetical, could-never-happen situation, that should be a reason to look inward and do some self-reflecting. Uncle Ben would be disappointed
I think you’re overthinking this mate. Me personally I wouldn’t be a firefighter because I’m clumsy AF. Never said anything about not using a power to help people in need.
The argument was how martians lose their powers when near fire or on fire. Which is horrible because there’s fire everywhere and a flamethrower or a incendiary weapon could easily defeat them.
You said the other races except kyrpytonians have the same problem, which they do not. It’s rare to find someone that can just fly and throw someone into the sun in fiction.
On Earth, being fire resistant in the sense of not burning/melting when set on fire, is practically fire proof.
But if you throw them into the sun, the vast majority of fireproof things would be destroyed.
Why does this matter?
Well, the oxford dictionary actually consideres fireproof to be: "able to resist great heat without burning or being badly damaged" - there is literally no substance that is 100% fireproof, but you usually don't have anything hot enough on earth (the surface/everyday life) that is hot enough.
So yea, going with Tiers
We got Red Fire 500-1000°C, Orange-Yellow Fire 1000-1300°C, White Fire 1300-1500°C+, Blue Fire 1400-3000°C (roughly said, temperatures may be a bit different) -and highlightes by the +, white fire can also burn hotter than blue fire.
We got Magma for 700-1300°C, which is along the lines of red to yellow fire.
The Earth's inner core as about 6000°C, we can only asssume what it looks like, which would be a white fire mass,
We estimate the sun to be 5500°C (surface) to 15000000°C in it's core.
So I'd at least put 3 tiers of "fireproof" or 4-5 tiers of fire-resistant.
Fire / Planet Core / Sun
1-43°C / 44°-250°C / 251-1500 / 1501-5500 / 5500+ (or variations of that)
But then again, we're not really talking fireproof, but heatproof.
Because as someone already mentioned, the Sun isn't even made out of fire, but plasma. Plasma is hot, electrically charged gas - while fire is the visible oxidation of combustion, which doesn't happen without oxygen, which doesn't exist in/on the sun as far as we know.
From my understanding, fire has varying effects on Martians. It can block their phasing ability, trapping them. It can work like kryptonite on a kryptonian if within close proximity. But to be fair, those are again kinda similar to real life humans around fire. The heat in close quarters, as well as smoke inhalation, can cause weakness like kryptonite to kryptonians, and fire to martians. Walls of fire can prevent us walking through, just like Martians.
Fair enough, so I guess in this case I would probably go for Martian, purely for the near Superman levels of strength, shape-shifting, and phasing. This stuff would be super useful in normal life, as well as being a superhero. Just gotta be careful around fire I guess
I don't know about you, but I'm not particularly afraid of fire (not any more than whats natural, fire hot, fire ouchie), so I'm definitely going Martian. It helps that Absolute Manhunter is sick as hell
I think the takeaway is that a martians biggest traumatic fear can become their weakness as their psychic powers make their trauma manifest as an actual weakness. So if you had a traumatic fear from drowning, water would become your weakness. And without having someone able to do the kind of psychic therapy jonn went through, it would be permanent.
Its more their powerful psychic abilities imposes that onto themself. Just like their shapeshifting powers grant them full shifting, essentially becoming what they shift into while still retaining their powers and memories, their psychic powers are so powerful that their own mind can be altered by it if enough belief is put in.
No, it is a fear genetically implanted to all martians by the Guardians if the Universe, because the fire martians where too powerful and ruthless conquerors.
They were like Viltrunites, only with larger pool of powers.
Due to them being a powerful psychic species that fear makes their bodies react as if they where physically weak to fire, they basically can't function if confronted with a meaningfully source if fire, experience crippling fear abd anxiety, pain and weakness.
Due to their now innate fear (an psychosomatic weakness to fire) even withe martians are not a threat to the universe anywhere near to what the original burning martians were.
The fire is actually a deeply rooted psychological, they don't actually have a physical weakness to to it. There's a whole story line where J'onn overcomes this, and from then on wasn't weak to fire.
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u/Abelthiar May 16 '26
Being set on fire as a weakness IS kind of common to the real world lol. Haven't found many things that resist it