some SuitPerson: haha well you know - thank God it’s FRIDAY amiright!!!!!!
me, who works the next three days and has entirely lost the concept of weekends as a time for rest and relaxation:
My favorite thing is when people say “Thank goodness it’s the weekend!” or “At least it’s Saturday!” while I am ringing them up for their purchases on a Saturday.
A recent #HighHopesLowRolls combat encounter in which @bin_witch_illustration forgot that her paladin Hashaan was the only one of us who knew healing magic. 🎲✨ Professional adventures at work right here!
In the vast world of comics, I wonder if there have been heroes with a “Groundhog Day,” type power. By that I specifically mean a hero who, if they die, immediately finds themselves waking up at the beginning of that day again. If they don’t die, they just continue forward through time.
I’m just thinking of how crazy it would be to have that hero on your super hero team. Like, you go to headquarters in the morning, and it seems like everything’s normal. But then you go to fire off a one liner, and they say it at the same time as you. And suddenly you know. Something went wrong.
And then one day you come in, and your heart drops as you see that their every move looks rehearsed. They answer questions before asked. They are totally aware of everything that’s about to happen. Imagine how scary that would be, realizing you’re starting a day that you’re team mate has failed to survive maybe dozens of times.
Okay but like, now I’m imagining. People this person loves die? They kill themselves (who knows how many times) to make sure they get to save them. Which is horrible and traumatic, and now they see a certain relief in their teammates’ eyes because they can always give their teammates a second chance. It’s how they see it anyway. And everyone will know that if a teammate dies and a day passes, that maybe this superhero could have saved them by making sure they died, but they didn’t. Like holy fuck. This is a tragic concept in a way.
Honestly, I blame @docholligay that this is where my brain went. Thanks a lot! 😭
Imagine having that pressure on you. You have to decide whether today was good enough to let it become permanent. Or did too many people die today? Did anyone die today? Did anyone get injured? You’ve been through this fight a thousand times now, and today only two civilians and one teammate died, and one kid was permanently brain damaged, and that’s by far the best you’ve done. Do you move on, or do you try again? You’d give anything not to be the one making this decision. Literally, you’d rather die than have to make this choice again… but that’s not an option for you anymore. Being a god is awful.
(You want to take a break for just one day, go take a nice walk in the woods and then reboot at the end of the day instead of trying to control everything that happens for the 923rd day in a row, but doing that means literally abandoning your teammates while they die. You can’t do it.)
Yes. Yep. Exactly. And it’s not just that you have to relive it or make that choice. You have to construct your own death. Maybe you can throw yourself in front of a blow you know is killing. Then at least it doesn’t have to be you. But that walk in the woods? You’ve got to take it completely in your own hands. And does it even get easier? Can you keep from resenting your teammates for expecting this from you? If it does get easier, is that really a good thing?? Can you still feel? Just. Damn!
The partner weighs in and adds: at what point do the remaining teammates take it into their own hands and kill you themselves to force a restart?
Oh no. He also points out. If a villain really had it out for this person. Capture them. Hold them over night. Then they have the rest of the day to do whatever and as long as they kill them before the end of that day… oh god
Yeah, I figure in that kind of scenario the superhero very, very quickly figures out the easiest and most certain way to kill themself and makes sure it’s ALWAYS available. One of their worst fears is getting severely injured but not actually dying. They have standing instructions for their teammates to kill them if that happens. (I started writing a Fury Road AU on this concept and stopped partly because this got really dark really fast. Ugh.)
Ugh, yes, becoming the villain’s reset button would be even worse. They might have nightly sleepovers with the rest of the team to make sure they’re always free at the end of the day, with a standing policy that if they do get captured, the team will drop nukes until they’re sure the reset button has been hit. Collateral damage, who cares, right? (AAAAAAHHHH!!!!) At some point the difference between being the villain’s reset button and the good guys’ reset button becomes rather unclear.
