i was today years old when i learned i was save scumming as superman. (i mean i actually started remembering details abt this a few years ago but i just put it together as more than a video game metaphor like last week but YKWIM LMAO)
so because like i would try to save everyone and prevent things that made folks sad, right? like catching kids ice cream before it hit the ground and making sure people’s keys and change didn’t land in the storm drains. lots and lots of traffic accidents i cushioned. and i was hearing Everything and i dunno how to describe the beautiful perfectly chaotic rhythm that the world danced to. it would seem random until everything synchronized and it suddenly wasn’t.
so im maxing a high score to a rhythm game daily, moving clark when he stretched or yawned or i would make him ruffle his hair a lot so that when we landed back in place it would disguise the fact that it would change to windswept back in literally the blink of an eye. as i learned how to go faster and hear farther my scope increased and before i knew it i was making everypony’s life easier on a global scale. a game of exponential growth where the high score to beat was yesterday’s high score. it didn’t matter if i got credit and i was moving so fast it was more often than not folks wouldn’t even see me at all. unless i had to move something slowly to keep everyone safe and like avoid giving folks whiplash. i was sniping clogged drains with precise laser blasts and stuff like that constantly. (did you know that certain frequencies of lasers can go through solid matter and deliver the energy they’re carrying to a specific point and only that point? science sure is something!) altho folks were often less than thrilled when i would look uhhh through them and then tell them to seek out a specific kind of medical care haha.
and what did i do if i missed something? well, since i could see the after image of where folks had been within the last 12-36ish hours by squinting real hard, i could sort of see through time? at least, i could see farther into one direction of time than the flash could, so what i was doing wasn’t a flashpoint. it totally wasn’t. i would just cheat the centrifugal force of the planet to let me fly real fast in circles (not quite orbit) until i was back to before whatever my mistake had been, and then i made it right. i only used it when i accidentally couldn’t save a person’s life, too, nothing unnecessary! but the flash and eventually also some other guys got real steamed about it plenty often. i did it anyways because i would Always rather get an earful from a coworker or get put through some ninth dimensional monster of the week’s psychedelic time god puzzle than let someone die on my watch.
but when i had to try more than once to get it right? and i would go back to the same moment to start over again? boy oh boy thats classic video game stuff… feels bonkers to figure it out