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I AM EMPOWERED, pt.14: The Twitter-based YEAR ONE prose dealie continues!
🕑 Added 2020-06-04 13:00:02 +0000 UTC<Note: You can check out I Am Empowered's previous installments with this tag.
And now, back to Emp's first-person narration in (old) Twitter-based 140-character format, taking place roughly around the beginning of Empowered vol.1. This installment is a bit lengthy, so be warned:>
DRAMATIC ENTRANCES, FAILING DRAMATICALLY
More Things They Don't Tell You About Caping: A helluva lot can go wrong when you're dropping down on unsuspecting bad guys from on high.
If you jump down from a serious height—100' or more, say—the kinetic energy's so high that you can't possibly stay on your feet when landing.
If you touch down even a few degrees shy of vertical, you ain't gonna stick the landing, sweetie. Hello, humiliating, non-heroic face-plant.
Jump off the average office building, my wannabe cape, and you'll be moving at roughly 115mph when you hit the pavement below.
Regardless of how superstrong you are, at 115mph you'll have (WAY) less than 1/100th of a second to balance yourself upon landing.
Unless you're a tachycognitive speedster, you simply won't have enough to me catch your balance. You are going DOWN, oh showboating cape.
And if you ARE a tachycognitive speedster, why did you bother jumping off a building? Just take the stairs down to street level, dumbass.
The sheer velocity's almost certain to pitch you facefirst onto the concrete, oh Dramatic Jumpy Cape Sadly Ignorant of Kinetic Energy.
Sticking the landing with your masked face: Good for YouTube, not so good for making an intimidating impression on unsuspecting bad guys.
By the way, "kissing the pavement" is often a very literal and very accurate description of what happens when you don't stick the landing.
One time—and I'm blushing at the boneheaded vanity, here—I'd applied lip gloss JUST before trying a Dramatic Drop-In Entrance.
Yes, lip gloss: God forbid that any dirtbag supervillains might perceive my lips to appear anything less than dewy, luscious and shimmering.
So I jump down, end up faceplanting on the pavement. Say hello to the grit, pebbles and cigarette butt now adhering to my Guava Hydrafull.
My Big, Superhero-y Intro Speech: Ruined by me staggering to my feet while spitting out gravel and wiping off my dirt-encrusted lip gloss.
Don't judge me on the lip gloss issue. I have a justifiable, non-superficial—if irrational—reason for wearing Guava Hydrafull into battle.
See, Hydrafull's been my (non-cereal) Lucky Charm ever since high school. I've had nothing but the goodiest of luck every time I've worn it.
I've aced tests, snagged internships, landed a superjob, successfully avoided arrest for public nudity—long story—all while beGuava'd, see?
Careful to preserve Guava Hydrafull's fortunate status, I've been careful to only apply it when I really, truly, absolutely need good luck.
Sniffle time: I may have exhausted the providential powers of my Lucky Lip Gloss, as my last few beGuava'd superhero outings were disasters.
The time before the Gritty Pavement Kiss I'm describing, my shimmery, Hydrafull-y lips wound up sealed—unluckily—by a bad guy's duct tape.
More about the suckiness of duct tape later. For now, I'd best wrap up this rant about the Untold Perils of the Dramatic Drop-In Entrance.
So, jumping down from a great height usually leads to a mortifying faceplant. Useful, if you want the bad guys to be paralyzed by laughter.
The WTF value of a badly botched entrance could, in theory at least, distract the enemy. (Hasn't really worked that way for me, though.)
Even disciplined, well-trained baddies would have a hard time NOT underestimating a superheroine who just EPIC FAILED her Dramatic Entrance.
For bonus dramatic effect, some capes love to land on the roof of a nearby car. Nice, loud BANG, safety glass spraying from broken windows.
CapeProtip: Unless you're landing on a villain-owned vehicle, you're just being a dick by pointlessly racking up civilian property damage.
CapeProtip: If you must insist on a Car-Top Landing, make g-d sure that you can tell a convertible from a hardtop before you make the leap.
CapeProtip: Note that, if you botch a Car-Top Landing badly enough, you could wind up lodged inside the crumpled passenger compartment.
Happened to me once. Jumped down from way, way, WAY too high, so the vehicle's surprisingly crumply roof caved in and trapped me but good.
Tore the hell out of my stupid suit in the process, so I lost all my superstrength and couldn't struggle free of the mangled debris for some time.
Time enough for the baddies to get a good laugh at me, and snap a few (dozen (or hundred)) photos of the Crappy, Entrance-Botching Superhero.
I was still lodged inside the wreckage when the first cellphone images went online, mainly to My Least-Favorite Site Ever: CapeFail.com.
Yay: I have my very own keyword on the CapeFail website, a keyword that brings up a breathtaking and dismaying array of embarrassing photos.
Bonus Embarrassment Points: After the botched landing, I did not have a whole lot of supersuit left below the waist, as the photos made clear.
More Bonus Embarrassment Points: Turned out that the black, villain-y-looking SUV I'd landed on DIDN'T belong to the bad guys, after all.
I'd just barely wrenched my chubby, blushing self free, losing even more of my suit in the process, when the wrecked SUV's owner showed up.
He was not, I'm afraid, the happiest of campers. A red-faced, bellowing douchebro, which triggered unpleasant college flashbacks for me.
Many cruel, upsetting and hurtful things were said about me, things that were especially hurtful because I largely agreed with them.
As I fled the scene 50% naked and 100% humiliated, SUV Bro's verbal abuse ringing in my ears, at least I managed to stop myself from crying.
Okay, that's a blatant lie. I was bawling my stupid eyes out, snot streaming from my nose, making quite the pathetic spectacle as I made my escape.
Extra awesome thing about having a teary, sobbing breakdown while supersuited: No pockets, so I can't carry any g-d tissues with me.
Can't run up to a bystanding girl on the street and beg for a hankie, since they're always staring daggers at my costume, or lack thereof.
Lots of sniffling, snuffling, and wet, messy wiping of my nose on my hands and forearms, which makes me feel extra wonderful about myself.
As I scampered shamefully away, SUV Bro got in a parting shot re: my mostly bared backside's amplitude, a comment I'll carry to the grave.
Then again, even sticking the landing flawlessly is no guarantee of success when you're indulging in a Big Entrance, oh Caped Drama Queen.
The Dramatic Drop-In Entrance: Spoiled when I land, then notice EVERY bad guy closely observing that I can't wear a bra under my supersuit.
Hard to strike much all that much fear into the hearts of criminals when they're gazing glazedly at the parts of you that are still moving.
Oh, if only a MALE hero had to wear this stupid membrane. He's sure look silly, too, landing with his wobbly bits wobbling uncontrollably.
One time, I stuck the landing onto a (more durable) truck, surprising a bunch of minions with a big ol' "Halt, evildoers!" kind of shout.
Problem: I sound annoyingly shrill and voicecracky when I yell at bad guys; Sistah Spooky or Susan O can yell intimidatingly, but I can't.
I learned the hard way that, when you Pose Very Dramatically in full view of armed baddies, you become what is called "a stationary target."
Posing Very Dramatically before an armed man, you're not being heroic, like Indiana Jones; you're a moron, like that doofus with the sword.
I got about four words into my "Halt, evildoers!" riff before the bad guys raised their guns and, in unison, hosed me with force-beam fire.
I ragdolled off the top of the truck, slammed into a cinder-block wall, then got force-beamed plenty more. (Sore for a week, afterward.)
Supersuit trashed, powers gone, dazed and barely conscious, I couldn't even struggle when a minion trotted over and started duct-taping me.
While he was taping me up, the bad guy whispered, "What the f**k did you think you'd accomplish, striking a pose like that in front of us?"
He said I looked cute, Drama-Posing—I'm ashamed to admit I felt a little flattered, as he was kinda cute himself—but what was the point?
Thug: "Did you think we'd just surrender to you? Has that EVER happened, in the history of superhero versus bad guy interaction?"
Next time, Helpful Goon advised, I should just drop the useless dramatics and, quote, "take advantage of a successful roll for surprise."
I wasn't 100% certain as to exactly what Helpful Goon's phrasing meant, but I grasped the meaning of his Words of Bad-Guy Wisdom. (I think.)
I would've thanked him for the advice, but by this time he'd duct-taped my mouth, so I "mmph"-ed with as much gratitude as I could muster.
Security guards didn't find me until hours afterward, so I had plenty of time to mull over future tactics while struggling futilely against my bonds.
(While I appreciated Kinda Cute Thug's tactical suggestions, I certainly did NOT appreciate his notable adeptness at duct-tape application.)
That's one (rather dubious) advantage of being a frequently distressed damsel: You sure do get plenty of time for thoughtful contemplation.
<Writer's note: The last few tweets (arguably) imply an early meeting with Thugboy, which doesn't work very well in terms in series continuity; but I decided to leave 'em in regardless, with this editorial caveat afterward.>
Next time on I AM EMPOWERED: A longer chapter that will need to be broken into several posts, getting into more as-yet-unrevealed info about Emp's enigmatic supersuit.
TOMORROW ON THIS HERE PATREON: Possibly another installment of Vintage Con Sketches, though I'm not 100% sure about that.
Comments
Strypgia
Public nudity? WTF were you up to, Emp? College and alcohol?
Borg Lord
It occurs to me that a male equivalent to Emp would be advertising that he does not and cannot wear a cup. That's not a good thing to advertise to your enemies.
Lex of Excel
Exactly.
The Silver Socialist
You mean like Batman's cape?
DimZebra
A fascinating insight into the logistics of super-hero entrances. It does seem like a very easy, compromising thing to mess up when most of your environment is less durable than you are, and ripe for setting yourself up for something embarrassing afterwards. I appreciate the sacrifices Emp makes for this kind of insight :D
The Silver Socialist
Can we see that time she narely avoided public nudity charges?
Lex of Excel
The Three Point Marvel Landing works a lot better if you have a cape with a built-in hangglider.
