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I AM EMPOWERED, pt.6: The Twitter-based YEAR ONE prose dealie continues!
🕑 Added 2020-01-02 14:01:00 +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. In this chapter, Emp is addressing the challenges of superheroic rooftop-to-rooftop (or "R2R") jumping: >
I AM EMPOWERED
Chapter 3: ABOMINABLEMENT DIFFICILE (pt.2)
To evaluate roofjump routes, I personally prefer the très catchy French adjectival system for comparative mountain climbing difficulty.
En Français, tough climbs are graded difficile, très difficile, extrêmement difficile, and—dig this, mon cheri—abominablement difficile.
Sad to say, a distressing number of R2R paths across this supposed Mecca For Capes are très difficile at best, if not downright extrêmement.
And a few R2R routes—such as the crosstowner I just mentioned—are so abominablement difficile, I almost expect to see yeti on the rooftops.
Given that bad guys are already all too prone to buttkicking me, I don't need a R2R route buttkicking me before I can even get into battle.
Ah, but even a less-than-difficile R2R run can be rendered quite difficile indeed by the wrong set of environmental complications, mon ami.
First, I must bitch—and moan, too—about the breezy bane of the superjumping set: Wind, in all its cape-thwarting, blooper-provoking glory.
The average wind speeds at rooftopping level are roughly 10-12mph or so, quite often gusting a fair bit—or an UNfair bit, really—higher.
Hello, "urban canyon effect": Blocks of big ol' skyscrapers funnel airflow down city streets, jacking up wind speeds and air turbulence.
Combine the base wind speeds at 30-story-height with urban-canyon phenomena, and you have a none-too-tasty recipe for superswirly airflow.
The same hop-skip-jump route across a given few blocks can fluctuate from easy-peasy to difficult-ish to "WTF?!"-y, depending on the wind.
On a long-distance jump, a strong head wind can easily make you fall short. A gusting tail wind? Oops, you just missed the landing entirely.
A stiff wind from the side can throw you off just enough to turn a smooth, easy touchdown into a metal-mangling rendezvous with a HVAC unit.
Normal windspeeds are challenging enough, but the potential for superjumping fiasco srsly skyrockets when you're R2Ring in storm conditions.
Try a long-distance rooftop leap in a howling wind, and shortly you, too, will be howling, once a 50mph airblast sends you plummeting awry.
When freak weather hits this city—a frequent problem, given supervillainous microclimate manipulation—most R2Rers are effectively grounded.
In fact, every major cape-opolis boasts superhero-specific, localized wind advisories, tracked via apps like CapeAlert or HeroWeather.
A ranked series of advisories supposedly grounds the mere-human roofjumping hero, then the superdurable R2Rer, then the flight-capable cape.
For the smartphoneless super, a series of warning-flag displays are posted in high-visibility—and high-altitude—locations across this city.
Gotta love climbing up to a roof and seeing the double red flags of "GALE WARNING" in the distance, hinting you're about to get blown away.
(Unless you're an insecure young superheroine achingly desperate to prove her capeworthiness, in which case you blithely disregard 'em.)
In theory, superheroes shouldn't ignore weather advisories—except during life-threatening emergencies, a.k.a. EVERY G-D MINUTE OF OUR JOBS.
On the fun-free weather front—see what I did there, with "front"?—storm conditions often include driving rain, which is NOT a personal fave.
Tough call as to which factor makes rainy-day rooftopping more annoyingly sucky: The lack of visibility or the lack of non-slippery footing.
My maligniest of roof-level foes, the parapet wall, becomes even more fearsomely mishappy when rain-slickened in a downpour. (Cue my AIEEE.)
Craptastic as R2Ring in the rain might be, it's still preferable to the rare—but ouchily memorable—times I've dealt with wintry-weather R2R.
Thanks to cryovillain rampages and cape-spawned climate anomalies, I've weathered—oof!—the ordeal of superjumping across iced-up rooftops.
From painful experience, I can assure you that old-school videogames radically understate the difficulties inherent to an "ice level", okay?
Slipping off an ice-coated edge, plunging through the snow to a frosty-pavement faceplant, I recall thinking, "You lied to me, Nintendo®!"
2-D platforming games clearly gave me a wildly unrealistic view of ice-based jumping. I feel disillusioned and betrayed by you, Super Mario.
Then again, few of the superhero platforming games I played as an impressionable girlcape-wannabe properly convey the true misery of R2Ring.
No doubt commercial realities intruded, as who'd wanna play a realistic cape-sim in which you spend most of your time falling off roofs?
The last time I retrogamed with PURPLE PALADIN 2: RETURN OF THE ICE PACK, I wound up hooting and jeering at the game's laughable oversights.
"No roof in this city is even remotely so cape-friendly, okay? See how every building's JUST the right R2R distance away—nice REALISM, huh?"
Before long, my mood deteriorated from sneering amusement to increasing resentment. "Oh, I would KILL for a crosstown R2R route this easy…"
Luckily, real-world capery soon intruded, before I could smash a controller in a fit of pique over the game's polygon-based Pollyanna-ism.
(ProTip: If you're superstrong and easily frustrated, trust me on this one—do not EVER consider playing videogames while fully powered-up.)
Needless to say, I would KILL for the classic "double jump" so often seen in old-school videogames. Luigi's definitely one up on me, I'm afraid.
So, in summary: Despite what DUPLICITOUS AND DISINGENUOUS RETRO PLATFORMING GAMES—grr!—would have you believe, rooftop jumping is très hard.
Well aware that I'm a very lucky little capette, too, as I'm helpfully superdurable—though rather less so after I smash into the pavement.
I render the very maddest of respects to daredevil-y normal-human capes, who fearlessly ignore their painful fragility and risk roofjumping.
No illusions, here: I'd plague-avoid R2R if I always faced grievous bodily injury instead of disgrace and chagrin after botching a jump.
Note: Overcoming your entirely sensible mammalian fears of splattering on the sidewalk is just as thorny as mastering R2R's physical skills.
After month upon month of R2R superjumps—and subsequent, disastrous superfails and supercrashes—I'm much less scared of falling, nowadays.
I do, however, remain terrified that someday I'll screw up a R2R leap and actually land on some poor civilian in the street.
My all-too-chubby behind, plummeting from skyscraper height at terminal velocity, could easily injure or kill some hapless city dweller.
Regarding heights, I was inarguably braver as a wee wannabe cape than I am as a grown-up. (Cut to Age Four Me plummeting down staircases.)
Later on, as still-daring—and still skinny—Age Ten Me, I developed a rather more sensible respect for heights, if not outright fear of ‘em.
Even so, I constantly pressed my limits, knowing that the Real Superheroine I wanted to be couldn't afford to be an acrophobic scaredy cat.
I continued climbing pretty much everything climbable in sight—and some things that weren't climbable—just like I did as a little(r) girl.
Ah, but unlike my pre-kindergarten era of rashly fearless, Daddy-alarming stunts, Age Ten Me was all lump-in-throaty at high elevations.
Forcing myself to scale up ladders, clamber up trees, and edge up to roof edges, much-less-oblivious Age Ten Me was now battling real fear.
I wouldn't have known the terminology back then, but I was struggling to deliberately desensitize myself to my developing fear of heights.
And to Age Ten Me's credit, the simplistic therapy worked—until, as a teenager, my body started filling out, and then OVERfilling out.
Tree-climbing as a skinny, agile, lively, happy 70lb girlchild sporting an admirable strength-to-weight ratio is one thing.
Tree-climbing as a pudgy, clumsy, sluggish, glum 130lb woman-to-be sporting way too little brawn and way too much backside is quite another.
Burdened with a cumbersome, awkward adult body that often feels heavy and soft and weak—moreso at certain times of the month, I'm afraid—
—I've never once felt the same confidence and sureness when climbing that Age Ten Me knew, let alone the utter audacity of Age Four Me.
That's not wholly true, though. Lately, while being swept up in the lose-myself blur of frantic roofjumping and frenzied villain-pursuing—
—for brief moments I completely forget that I hate my body, and I'm Age Ten Me again, a little scared but still strong and light and nimble—
—or sometimes, even more fleeting, I feel like Age Four Me, entirely oblivious of fear and absolutely certain of my own indestructibility.
My suit glitters crazily and all my body-image issues melt away and my nagging insecurities evaporate and I feel like badassery incarnate.
Yeahp, sometimes my goofy ol' supersuit, embarrassing and unreliable and enigmatic as it might be, feeds me pure awesome sauce, straight up.
Ah, but what the hypermembrane giveth, the hypermembrane can also taketh away… which ith uthually what happenth, to my dithappointment.
Clearly wary that I'll get too hopped up on WIN, the suit always seems to bring me back to earth—yes, literally—with a strong dose of FAIL.
Shall I spin you a tale of exactly such giveth/taketh WIN/FAIL contrastiness, which happens to involve R2R mishappiness? Indeed, I shall.
<Next week: Emp's discussion of "R2R" rolls on, this time kicking off a lengthy, action-packed, "real-time" account of a rooftop-oriented misadventure.>
TOMORROW: Another sketch dump of recent art requests will take up the Friday slot, looks like.
Comments
KranberriJam
The fact of how wind works around tall buildings has never crossed my mind when considering superheroes. You always have great ideas!
Dean Reilly
Or the Wilhelm scream?
Lex of Excel
I thought that was the Goofy Howl?
Strypgia
Now I've got this image of Emp missing a jump and falling into an urban canyon, making a Wile E. Coyote 'AIEEE-EEE-EEEEEE...' as she plummets.
