I AM EMPOWERED, pt.11: The Twitter-based YEAR ONE prose dealie continues!

<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 next chapter's a bit longer than most I've serialized here, as it was just a bit too short to be split into two installments.

For the record, this chapter features the largest number of ideas and lingo that I'd have liked to use in Empowered proper, but just never got around to drawing. >

 I AM EMPOWERED 

 Chapter 3: ROUGH HANDLING AND RESCUE-NEEDINESS 

I should note that my cape-clad colleagues use a specialized, often quite offensive vocabulary of slang terms for the civilians they rescue.

For the record, I myself try to avoid the use of such insensitive and unkind—if not outright degrading—language. (Well, I TRY not to, okay?)

Now that I've properly established my Bona Fides of Exquisite Sensitivity, here are a few civvie-related terms from the Unofficial Superhero Glossary. 

FAINTING SHEEP: Poor folks who have frozen up entirely in the face of life-threatening terror, gone wide-eyed and semi-catatonic with fear.

I'm well aware that the term is erroneous, as the animals famously prone to the genetic disorder myotonia congenita are goats, not sheep. 

My superpeers not only dehumanize civilians by equating them with animals, but compound the insult by equating them with the WRONG animals.

CHINA SHOPS: A callous but not entirely inaccurate term for the frailest and most osteoporosis-prone segment of the elderly population.

Quite often, when I'm carrying an especially fragile-seeming senior citizen to safety, I'm more frightened (of injuring them) than they are.

Once, I was so nervous hefting a tiny, brittle doppelgänger for my late great-grandmother that SHE had to comfort ME while I was saving her. 

FOOL HEADS: Panicked civilians who are, as you might guess, yelling their fool heads off. They do bellow actual words and sentences, though.

BANSHEES: Unlike the slightly more coherent FOOL HEADS, these terror-stricken folks do nothing but scream wordlessly at deafening volume. 

I've been amazed by how long and how loud—and how annoyingly—a human being can scream, often without ever seeming to need to take a breath.

Interestingly, scream-output decibel levels seems unrelated to overall size and body mass, as children can out-shriek big, strapping men.

BLUBBERS: Not an unkind reference to weight but, rather, an unkind reference to frightened civilians who sob and wail and bawl uncontrollably. 

As a Crybaby-American all too often prone to bouts of weepiness myself, I tend to be highly sympathetic towards my fellow Blubbers. 

Howeva: I'm often dismayed by the prodigious amount of nasal discharge that a Blubber in full yowl can produce—and smear into my hair, ick.

WETPANTS: A reference to how extreme fear can, unsurprisingly, have adverse effects on bladder control. The next stage? See: BROWNPANTS.

CLINGERS: Terrified civilians who grab onto you so fiercely during a rescue that they're not easily removed once safety is reached.

Last week, it took longer to pry an especially tenacious 8-year-old Clinger off of me than it did to save the poor thing in the first place. 

I'd peel one arm off my neck, and the other would latch on elsewhere. I'd gently tug both her arms free, and her legs would snake around me.

Honestly, felt like I was wrestling an octopus in an "I'M A PRINCESS" T-shirt. (And I've wrestled octopi before, so I know whereof I speak.)

I'm keenly suspicious of adult male Clingers, though, who sometimes seem a tad too enthused about grabbing onto me while I'm rescuing them.

Then again, I'm a small-ish female carrying a much larger male, so it's possible that he might clutch my, ah, most prominent asset for stability.

Yeahp, I am indeed saying that men have a disconcerting tendency to grab my all-too-grabbable behind when I'm hauling them out of harm's way. 

SUPERSTORM CHASERS: Just like "storm chasers" recklessly pursue rampaging tornadoes, these doofi recklessly pursue rampaging superhumans. 

They tend to be "trouble tourists" who travel to this city solely to see superheroes in action, though some locals are just as cape-crazy. 

Most of this city's tourism industry is based on its (over)population of colorful superfolk. Heck, even I moved out here for the superscene.

The problem: Superstorm chasers are a major annoyance when you're fighting, thanks to their clueless action-ogling from the front lines. 

Sensible civilians run for cover when the going gets cape-y, while dumbass, derpy superstorm chasers run right into the thick of the action.

Repeatedly, I've had to rescue superstorm chasers who've almost gotten killed while gawking at—and videoing, of course—cape-on-cape clashes.

The worst part? These doofi think of getting rescued by a superhero as just a really cool part of the Complete SuperStormChasing Experience.

SUPERSIZED: A stigmatizing, weight-biased, cruelly derogatory term for the morbidly obese, and arguably the most offensive label in cape slang. 

As a person constantly struggling with body-image issues, I would never, ever get all judge-y and shame-y regarding other people's bodies.*

(*Okay, maybe I do OCCASIONALLY get all judge-y and shame-y regarding other people's bodies, but that's mainly a Kardashian-related issue.) 

Still, as much as it pains me to sound insensitive-ish, I must admit that people of size frequently pose considerable rescuing challenges.

The truth is, I'm just too small to successfully pull off a fireman's carry on anyone whose body mass happens to be much over 350 lbs. 

The last time I tried to over-the-shoulder-carry a person of size, both me and the poor guy I was trying to rescue ended up humiliated. 

Even a "bridal carry" is problematic, as just getting one's arms under a morbidly obese person's center of gravity can prove challenging. 

In fact, at times I've wound up blinded by, well, a faceful of the person of size I'm carrying, and had to ask them to navigate me to safety.

Note: Firefighters no longer use the so-called "fireman's carry", as it exposes the person being carried to greater levels of smoke and heat. 

Instead, dragging a supine victim along the ground by a grip on their shoulders or clothing is the preferred technique, nowadays.

Note: Floor-dragging a poor civilian is rarely much of an option for superheroes, not when we're leaping or flying or dodging villainfire.

Plus, much of the time, a cape needs one hand free to deal with ongoing bad-guy issues (VORPP!), so we still use over-the-shoulder carries.  

Clarification: The textbook "fireman's carry"—obsolete a term as it might now be—drapes the carry-ee over BOTH the carrier's shoulders.

Don't confuse this with the humiliating, uncomfortable, carried-person-jarring "single-shoulder carry," which I try my best to avoid using. 

Not only is the single-shoulder carry awkward and painful, but it evokes distressing—as in, damsel-in-distressing—sociopolitical overtones.

It renders the carried person into a passive and often sexualized object, with her face down and her backside up and on obvious display. 

As an all-too-often-captured superheroine with butt-specific body-image issues, I HHHHHATE it when a bad guy single-shoulder-carries me off.

Cue video clip of me bound, gagged, and slung over Anchorman's shoulder, as the cameradouche leers, "Check out the ass on THAT superchica."

So, I've sworn to never use the single-shoulder-carry on female civvies. (I've made no such vow regarding men, though. Deal with it, guys.) 

I should hasten to add that responsible superteams make sure to school fledgling capes in proper rescue—and civilian-hauling—techniques. 

During my first week of Newb Orientation as a Superhomey, my toughest training course by far was the dreaded "Handling Civilians With Care".

This class forced us rookie capes to work through hundreds of different scenarios while carrying civilian-simulating "Cape-Test Dummies".

These were a dizzying variety of soft, floppy, mannequin-y dealies crammed with maddeningly sensitive accelerometers and shock detectors.

If you tripped the sensors' gee-load limits while running or jumping or heroing with your Precious (Civilian) Cargo, BRAPP went the alarms.

The dummies were even wrapped in "surface-cohesion sensor membranes", which would sound alarms when gripped hard enough to tear human flesh. 

That hellish week, the following robot-voice message was the soundtrack to my nightmares: "<BRAPP> ALARM INDICATES ROUGH HANDLING <BRAPP>"

All ages of rescue-requiring humanity were represented, from simulated babies and children all the way to the elderly and the VERY elderly.

All the human spectrum's scales were present, from pixie girls to regular folks to brawny oafs to people of size to people of ENORMOUS size.

Frustration, by the way, is spelled "using your bare hands to pry a 400lb unconscious victim out of a car wreck without rupturing their skin." 

Protip: When trying to extricate a morbidly obese dummy from a simulated car wreck, JUST CONCENTRATE ON TAKING THE WRECKED CAR APART, IDIOT.

Note: I am wildly envious of teleporters and flight-capable superheroes, who have it SO much easier when rescuing the rescue-needy.

The human body's exasperating fragility: Driven home to me while trying to evac brittle, breakable civilians from a burning (sim) building.

I was so overjoyed at landing successfully with 90-Yr-Old Lady Dummy—on Try #18—that I threw her in the air, setting off her shock sensors. 

After finally—FINALLY—grinding through all the individual exercises of civvie-saving, I staggered onward to the course's notorious final exams.

I soon learned why these last rounds of training simulations are nicknamed "Getting The Cold Bucket of Harsh Reality Thrown In Your Face."

These turned out to be nightmarish scenarios where, if you had the wrong power set, you simply could not save everyone who needed saving.

The odds were stacked so high against me that, despite frantic efforts, I could only rescue a handful of civilians, leaving the rest to die. 

The older SuperHomeys refer to these effectively impossible situations as "Kobayashi Maru scenarios", whatever the heck THAT means.

With my particular set of interests, I know a little bit about Japanese culture (more on that later), but "Kobayashi Maru" is beyond me.

I'd Google the term, but I'm still get way, WAY too pissed just remembering those infuriatingly horsebleep scenarios to think rationally.

Rationality wasn't my strong suit at the time, either. I completely lost it, shrieking at the trainers about the unfairness of it all.

Capitan Rivet pointed out, "This is an exercise in triage, Emp. Like it or not, as capes, we face appalling choices like this all the time."

Even Spooky briefly dropped her icy contempt long enough to weigh in. "Yes, I know, this is a bit harsh," she said, almost sympathetically.

"But someday, you'll find yourself in a situation where you just won't be able to save someone. It happens to all of us, sooner or later."

Pretty far gone now, voice cracking badly, I yelled back, "We’re superheroes, for f**k's sake! We're SUPPOSED to save everybody, aren't we?"

I sniffled a little, kept on babbling. "Otherwise, what's the point of being a superhero? What's the fucking point, huh?" Yay, profanity! 

"We… we gotta save everybody, or we're just…" Then I trailed off, under the (figuratively) eyebrow-raised gazes of the seen-it-all 'Homeys. 

I also trailed off under the dawning realization that my sputtering about "saving everybody" was yet another recurrence of my Daddy issues.

Or, to be more specific, my dead Daddy issues. Once again, my irrational compulsion to be a superhero connects back to childhood trauma. 

A Real Superheroine wouldn't have let her Daddy die in front of her. 

A Real Superheroine would've been able to save him. 

So. I shut up, sniffled a little more, and eventually passed the triage-ariffic final exams of "Handling Civilians With Care." Yay, me.

When I left the Homeycrib training grid, though, I was quietly seething. I swore one thing to myself, over and over, with squinty intensity:

I was gonna save everybody, regardless of what the other 'Homeys said. 

And if they thought that was a joke, I fumed silently, they could go f**k themselves.

Next time on I AM EMPOWERED: In fact, I think I'm gonna take a break from serializing I Am Empowered for a week or two, so I can try subbing in some different kinds of Patreon posts during February. A higher number of Patrons than usual deleted their pledges leading into this month, so it might be the case that the repetitive structure of my posts of late has been a problem for folks; perhaps a greater variety of content and topics would aid in Patron retention. 

Tomorrow: Along those lines, not sure what I'll be posting here on Friday, TBH! Been months since I did a work-stage dealie on an Empowered cover; maybe I could do one of those. Or I could get back to serializing roughs and script from Empowered and the Giant-Size Issues. Hell, maybe I'll post a poll querying what you folks would like to see.