#IS AWESOME I WILL HEAR NO DISSENT IN THE RANKS

[wolfhuntsmoon]

Sarah Rogers and how Steve inherited ‘stubborn little shit’ from the womb

Okay, so I was noodling on Sarah after reading her Marvel wiki and some extraordinarily good posts about how EG Steve should have gone back to see his mum instead of Peggy etc and the timings of Steve’s early story struck me as... interesting.

Steve is born on 4th July 1918, before the end of WWI, meaning he would have been conceived in September or October of 1917 - that is, if he was born on time or only a few weeks premature. Which, given the tech and prognosis for preemies in the early 20th century, must have been the case because things were grim enough even if you weren’t born prematurely, for both baby and mother. If you were giving birth, you had a 6% chance of dying in Ireland in this period - roughly comparable with the rest of Europe but shockingly high by our standards. The odds were better if you were rich, but not by that much. Childbirth remained the leading cause of death for women worldwide until the late 1940s, remember. And kids fared no better. One in five children born in Dublin in this period died before their 5th birthday. Again, the figures would be better or worse depending on how well off you were, but even the richest still suffered appalling infant mortality rates.

Anyway, depressing history of women’s health aside, this means that Joseph Rogers, American solider, and her, must have been doing the do about then, and probably seeing each other on the regular before that, because believe you me, casual sex in the early 20th century was a big no no. Not to say it didn’t happen, but usually only via prostitution ESPECIALLY in Ireland, because the Catholic Church ruled supreme there even more than the British did and contact between the sexes was very restricted and frowned upon. Sex ed was nonexistent, and women knew that even a whiff of scandal about them was enough to ruin them, their entire family, and the rest of their life. It’s a hackneyed joke because it’s true: Ireland is small and everyone knows everyone. You would get found out and then suffer the consequences - sent to a mother and baby home if you were lucky, and those places were worse than prisons sometimes. That cultural context would carry over even if Sarah wasn’t actually in Ireland at the time.

So, likely they were married by then, because again: social ruin. The Marvel wiki says they were married, but not when. (I know nothing about the comics, I’m sorry) Soldiers and their sweethearts often married very quickly, and there are actually quite a few accounts of nurses falling in love and marrying the soldiers they tended. (More on this later) However, if she was widowed and could have the child respectably, why not return to Ireland? With, presumably, a support network that makes emigrating to America a worse, not better, prospect? This is the crux of my theory: Sarah Rogers was seen as an unmarried mother, and treated as such, because she married Joseph abroad, probably without permission, and when he died, had no social proof of the marriage. And in those days, unmarried mothers either: aborted in secret, had the baby concealed by the church where they were then taken and given up for adoption, or were cast out with nothing and ostracised if they decided to keep the baby. Sarah ending up in America strikes me as her taking the third option, and indeed the only option she could, to keep her baby.

But first: Joseph and Sarah need to meet in order to get down and dirty. How? He’s an American soldier who would never have set foot in Ireland in WWI - the British government kept their troops there, obviously, but the Americans were all put straight onto the continent or mainland Britain once they crossed the Atlantic from 1917 onwards (remember the US only joined in WWI in April 1917). In fact, the US wasn’t able to send significant numbers of troops to Europe until the following spring of 1918, because their army was so small and outmoded for trench warfare they basically had to send a lot of stuff over until they had enough trained bodies, which took about a year to organise. Based on this, if Joseph and Sarah were making baby Steve in September 1917, Joseph must have been in the regular US army before it entered the war, and likely in for quite a long time and experienced, to be sent over so soon. That experience would have been invaluable, meaning he never would have been assigned to stay in Ireland even if the US did send troops there. He would have been deployed straight onto the battlefield.

In which case, if Joseph never sets foot in Ireland, then how does he meet Sarah? Well, we’re told she’s a qualified nurse, and that was a solidly middle class job back then. You needed to have a good education, beyond primary level (which was all that was free for kids back then - you had to pay for secondary or tertiary level) and speak English well. In addition to that, your training to be a nurse took three years, and you weren’t paid or funded at all for those. So I don’t buy the theories that she emigrated to America only speaking Irish and totally penniless. Sarah most likely came from quite a well off family to become a nurse, although it’s not impossible she rose from much humbler circumstances as there were a number of scholarships and the like for the deserving poor set up by rich upper class ladies bored out of their minds drinking endless teas in salons who liked to do things like Help the Poor but only if they’re Pure and Mannerly. Qualified nurses were paid about £40/year in WWI by the British government, when your average domestic maid would have been earning about £20/year - quite a big difference.

Either way, Sarah, as a nurse, was exactly the kind of woman the British government was desperate to recruit by 1915-1916 when the true scale of modern attritional warfare became clear, and no longer pussyfooted around keeping women and their delicate sensibilities away from the battlefield. The Battle of the Somme between July-Nov 1916, for example, claimed the lives of over 20,000 British soldiers ON THE FIRST DAY. The British alone sustained over a million casualties (dead, missing or wounded) across the whole battle. They couldn’t afford to stay prudish. There were just too many casualties to deal with. They even opened up medical degrees to women without restrictions because they were so desperate! Which was a big part of the reason why Britiain introduced conscription for the first time in 1916, including in Ireland (which led to the Easter Rising and Irish War of Independence, hoo boy was that a mistake). Droves and droves of young women were recruited to fill all sorts of jobs while the men were away, but a large number also went overseas to the battlefields of Belgium and France. Sarah must have been one of them. If she was qualified beforehand, she would most likely have been sent to work in a field hospital abroad, because the voluntary members were mostly kept working as assistants on the British mainland. Lots of women joined these Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs) at the start of the war to nurse wounded soldiers, but the military hated the idea of using them until they couldn’t cope in 1915. Even then, volunteers were only used for the more menial tasks. Professionals like Sarah were what was needed the most.

Now, I’ve said that she likely came from a middle class family, so money probably wasn’t a worry until after she got to America, later on. Why go, given the pay wasn’t significantly more than you’d earn as a nurse at home? Well, the rigid social hierarchy of the time broke down in some pretty major ways out there, and it was likely the only chance an unmarried woman would ever get to travel that wouldn’t immediately ruin her reputation. And if you accept more the idea she became a nurse via scholarship and was poor, the increase in pay working abroad would have been sorely appreciated. And we can also consider patriotism might play a role - not all Irish were rabidly anti-British before 1916. Indeed, many ordinary and middle class Irish only became ardently nationalist in the wake of the brutal repression following the 1916 Easter Rising. And more than that, many Irish, even if they disliked the British, disliked the idea of the Germans and Austrians-Hungarians winning the war even more. Personally, I think Sarah was an adventurer who seized her chance to escape the restrictive social confines of Ireland and didn’t once look back, even if her family disapproved.

I couldn’t find a birthdate for Sarah, or a maiden name to tell me where she might have hailed from (thanks, Marvel. Not.) But let’s say she was part of that first initial wave of volunteers who signed up in 1914 - because it was HUGE. It’s really difficult for us, so jaded now, to get into the mindset of people then, but they did sign up in huge numbers. Partly due to patriotism, partly because they thought the war would be over by Christmas, partly fear of being shamed for not ‘doing their bit’ - there were lots of reasons. But it’s very telling that the British government didn’t feel the need to introduce conscription for men until two years after the war broke out, and they never introduced a civilian equivalent. So Sarah would have been very familiar with the horrors of the battlefield and the war by the time fresh faced Joseph Rogers arrives on the scene in 1917.

How did they meet? Sarah would have most likely been working in a field hospital, overseeing a team of volunteers. Field hospitals were behind the front lines, but only by a few miles, and nurses were killed by enemy shelling and gas attacks. They were the first real point of medical care most soldiers would encounter after having bandages slapped on them at a dressing station in the trenches, before being carted off to the field hospital (if they survived the journey) by stretcher bearers, horses, or increasingly as the war continued, motorised ambulances. So Sarah and her ilk were lasses made of steel, honest to god. They were in the thick of the worst of it, men screaming and dying, and often afraid for their lives while they tried to care for them. A lot of those nurses developed PTSD (then called shell-shock) as a result. Jospeh is most likely to have met her if he was a wounded patient of hers brought in from the battlefield. But only lightly wounded - if he had been badly wounded he would have been shipped straight back to mainland Britain to convalesce as soon as he was stabilised, thwarting any budding romance.

We’re also told that Jospeh dies in a mustard gas attack. So this hospital trip must have been for something different - a broken bone perhaps, or a minor shrapnel wound that would see him off duty for a while but still stationed in the area and therefore able to court Sarah. Young people (Sarah must have been less than 28 because that was the cut off age for nurses to be recruited in 1915-1916) being young people, I imagine they fell in love, fell in to bed, and biology did its magic. The timescale on this is open to interpretation, because the ABSOLUTE earliest they could have met is May 1917 (travel time by ship from America to Europe took weeks during the war), and Steve must have been conceived by October, latest. Which is a pretty whirlwind romance, but not unusual for the time. The Germans first used mustard gas from July of 1917, but Joseph must survive up until September/October.

So, that cause of death as mustard gas? This is strange given how mustard gas was well known at the time to be the ‘best’ gas to have inflicted on you. It produced horrific blisters and burns, particularly on the inside of your throat and airways, but rarely killed. Chlorine and phosgene were MUCH deadlier. So Marvel saying this is more poor research, but let’s go with it - gas affecting you would make it that much more likely you’d be caught by machine gun or shellfire or any of the other myriad ways to die on a WWI battlefield. Here’s where things start to align quite nicely (well, badly for Sarah, but good for fic writers) as mustard gas was deployed by the Germans on a large scale between October 9th-12th to defend the Passchadaele Ridge from a joint British and French assault on the German defences. This was part of the second biggest battle of WWI, the Battle of Passchendaele, notorious for the seas of mud men had to slog through up to their waists, and one of the battles which, like the Somme, gave WWI generals such bad reputations. In three months the British lost 350,000 men and advanced just a few kilometres. They abandoned the battle on November 10th.

So, Joseph Rogers? Must have died between October 9-12th, well before Sarah realised she was pregnant even if Steve was conceived at the start of September. Likely he was caught in a mustard attack, started choking because he couldn’t get his gas mask on/hadn’t got it fitted properly, and then was killed by gun or shellfire after his initial injury. Mustard gas took time to affect the skin and membranes of the body, so if he fell while the gas was still around, it would have looked much worse by the time his body was identified and retrieved from the battlefield. The date, however, means Joseph died never knowing he was going to be a father (sad!), and Sarah, newly widowed, likely didn’t see any reason not to continue working as a distraction until she encountered the first signs of preganancy. The stiff upper lip thing was a real coping mechanism back then. She would have been kicked out as soon as anyone could tell, or she told them and got kicked out, because that was legal and expected then. Pregnant women were fired for being pregnant in any job, and the idea of a pregnant woman working in a theatre of war, as you can imagine, would have outraged everyone.

So, Sarah gets kicked out, has no job. She’s widowed and pregnant. But, the marriage would probably have taken place without her family’s permission (letters were pretty slow and heavily censored on the front lines, the timeframe likely wouldn’t allow for anything except a note telling them she married) and although she would have had a marriage certificate, turning up at home without a husband but with a baby from a military camp? Would have been a deep, deep scandal at the time. Particularly if Sarah came from a middle class family who would have been extremely conscious of their social position and the danger she and her baby posed to it. Catholic mores plus unsanctioned marriage plus Irish social structures equals daughter returning in disgrace to besmirch the family name in a way that is literally unthinkable at the time. Family therefore issues an ultimatum - come back and get rid of the baby and the marriage cert so you can be respectable, or don’t come back at all. I really cannot stress this enough - families would, and did, prefer to say the woman had died and never have any contact with them again, rather than accept an unmarried mother back into their house.

Sarah, being Sarah though, grits her teeth, spits in God’s eye, and packs her bags for the first steamship to New York. She was a lot better equipped than most to make the journey, with some savings from her salary and a profession she could rely on once she arrived. But it was still a recklessly brave thing to do because at this point in time the ENTIRE Atlantic was infested with German U-Boats who were doing their level best to sink any Allied or Allied associated ship they could get in their periscope sights. And they were terrifyingly effective in 1917, although by the end of the year when Sarah would have beeen sailing, countermeasures like the convoy system had greatly reduced this. But still scary as fuck, because by that point the German U-Boats were even sinking hospital ships - until then left alone by both sides.

She probably arrived in the US in January or February of 1918 - it would have taken time to arrange her travel and the journey itself took 3-4 weeks. Little Steven G Rogers came into the world on July 4th, 1918, without a clue as to the sacrifices his mother made to keep him and bring him to America, or the heartache she endured in the previous years. And that, my fellow nerds, is why Sarah Rogers is AWESOME and a sorely underused character and development point for Steve in the MCU. Because to do what she did, and to make it through took more than guts, it took sheer bloody-minded spite and stubbornness, and hey - who does that remind us of? Steve doesn’t grow up and get angry and fighty - no, he’s got that shit in his GENES from Sarah from the beginning.

EDIT: Part 2 is up! Consisting of Sarah’s journey and entry to America, plus how Very Not Good it was to be Irish whilst trying to do so.

[gofancyninjaworld]

OPM Chapter 93 Thoughts

<20 in bold at the end.

It goes without saying that if you've not read this chapter yet, you probably shouldn't read this!

Typeset: https://imgur.com/a/cuCBt76

Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AopCejGDKMg

The ART!

If there’s only one thing I’d declare my love for, it’d have to be the art.  It brought the characters and the sense of place to life in a way I’ve not yet seen in One-Punch Man.

This chapter round, Murata did not pour his energy into elaborate backgrounds or spectacular scenes. His assistants did wonderfully at the backgrounds, particularly in showing the dereliction of City Z. So you'd think this chapter would be quick and easy to knock out? NO. WAY. Murata poured his art into detailing and delineating characters, bringing their very souls to life as we've rarely seen before. So many characters, both familiar and new. Along with the incredible character interaction, this chapter has been a real treat for the eyes as well as the mind.  

More thoughts still under the cut!

Chapter Theme: You Can't Escape the Pressure

Everyone is under pressure. It's on everyone, both that imposed by the external circumstances and that imposed on themselves by the characters. So much of the ugliness we see in the S-Class meeting comes from that pressure. I'll deal with Fubuki, Bang, King and Genos separately.

The collective pressure to prove themselves is on the support heroes. While they may be the support, their role is just as crucial and their objectives are many -- containing any escaping monsters, clearing an escape route and making sure that Waganma is escorted to safety. OneShotter definitely feels the toughness of the assignment while Needle Star focusses on the other side of the pressure: the potential reward of promotion.

Even at the top, the pressure is intense. If anything it's worse. Being based in A-City, the executives have to look at the results of their failure every single day, at the still-raw lunar landscape that used to be most of A-City. Metal Knight didn't even bother trying to fill in the larger craters, but just built road bridges over them. Sekingal may be ambitious but he has earned Sicchi's respect for not merely being the guy in the suit who sits back in relative safety while sending heroes to their doom. He's going to be there with them -- he's tied not just his reputation and career trajectory to the success of the mission, but his very life.

I don't think many people would begrudge Sekingal his ambition nor any of the support heroes for being politically shrewd in their desire for promotion. They're doing the work and taking the risks, why shouldn't they make sure to get their reward? It's people who use politicking as a substitute for doing the good work whom we object to.

Wanted: Leadership and Unity

ONE has long had a special dislike for experts without actual expertise. One of his early cameo characters was a Mr. Nanmoshirane (Mr. I don’t know) who was a pundit making useless pronouncements on the mosquitoes that had appeared over City Z. So, why is a ten year old in charge of S-Class? Because he's the best at the job and has lots ofleadership experience? HA, not a bit of it! It's because he's clever (technologically), is available, and is the only one who will speak up. 

Unfortunately, Child Emperor hasn't got the personal authority to shut down dissent and is having to rely on mollifying the egos of the other heroes to keep them all on side and focussed on the threat in front of them.   To watch the clash of titanic egos as they try to work out how best to approach the Monster Association raid is to feel for Child Emperor.  But he manages.

And then Sweet Mask appears.  As a deeply disliked and barely respected hero, his presence is unwelcome in the first instance and his insistence in not just joining the strike team but leading it started to create an ugly situation. 

Watching the S-Class meeting nearly implode into bloodshed, all I can think is with allies like this, who needs enemies? It's evident that no matter how talented the individuals are, without a sense of shared purpose around which they can rally and actual strong leadership, they're going to be easily working at cross-purposes to one another.

Fubuki: The Power of Spite

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? I guess Shakespeare knows what he's talking about -- here comes Miss Blizzard and she's looking to raise hell, both with the Monster Association and with her sister.

So much of her anger is not for the monster, Do-S, who brainwashed her group. After all, Do-S is a monster -- that's what monsters do. It's for Tatsumaki, who seriously hurt the members of her group and who has now had her dismissed without so much as a say. That's what she cannot forgive. She's taking them both on, both on a personal level and on the behalf of the group of heroes and compatriots she loves and nurtures.

While it's hilarious that she thinks of Saitama's group as her 'new' Fubuki group and is outraged at how completely she's ignored, her astuteness cannot be faulted.

Go Blizzard!

Bang: A Shabby Way to Treat a Good Man

I salute Bang's sense of responsibility in coming all the way out to A-City in order to find out what is going on, since the loss of his communicator has meant that he has no way to keep abreast of the situation. Watching Sicchi lie to Bang's face was just painful.

It's shocking how quickly narratives grow up around events. Sicchi may have defended Bang staunchly to the other executives, but he's asking if Bang let Garou go. Even Bomb is questioning Bang over it. And Bomb was there! You see how deeply this hurts Bang.

And yet, even now, Bang hasn't given up on Garou. He's jumped at the chance to 'accompany' King as he puts it in order to fulfil his duty to apprehend Garou. Maybe even to save him if he still can.

King: The Paper Tiger Becomes a Cardboard Tiger

King running away only to get himself deeper into trouble is nothing new, although it's wonderfully done here. His accidentally defusing the S-Class meeting's tension was absolutely stellar timing. And how freaky is it that even through several walls, Zombieman can hear the King engine?

However, what's new is that King can be mighty brave... so long as it's from behind Saitama. Watching King dying inside even as he puts on a brave face and says brave-sounding things has been quite the edifying development. He so wasn't counting on being bundled off to the Monster Association like a secret weapon though. Being deferred to and consulted by the other heroes was terrifying enough. The out-of-body experience he was having at the end is one for the ages. :D

You Wait Forever For A Cyborg And Then Three Come At Once

Conventional wisdom is that a cyborg is hard to kill. Defeat one, sure. Kill one, that takes some dedication. Accordingly, we see the return of Jet Nice Guy, phew! His backstory is that he won the lottery, then used his winnings on buying body modification surgery -- I'm glad they were good enough to keep him alive and that he's still got enough money (and enough desire) to return to hero work, looking better than ever. Learning that Drive Knight is also a cyborg has been awesome. Finally the question of what Drive Knight is has been settled, although the clues have been there for a while, mostly in Murata's art spreads, one of which shows him eating noodles through his mouth grille and another that shows him lounging in the swimming pool with a snorkel. His cyborg nature is why the rest of the S-Class are hoping that he may yet be alive, even if he's incapacitated.

I hope that we get to see what Jet Nice Guy and Drive Knight do. I hope the conventional wisdom isn't tested too hard!

As to the cyborg we know best, Genos, he has has gone dragon-crazy. [That said, his enabler-in-chief, Dr. Kuseno, has no right to say that it is Genos who is reckless: there's a bit of the devil in the old man too, what with putting such a badly-balanced build together for him.] I think I see the rational side of why Genos is gunning for dragon-level monsters so hard. As far as he's concerned, they're just a stepping stone in his path to strength -- huge, treacherous, bitey stepping stones, but stepping stones nonetheless. But they're rare monsters. If one pops up, it'll be assigned to Tatsumaki or a group of well-tested S-Class heroes. As a new guy who is still building his track record, Genos has no chance of being assigned one, not even to support another hero.

The conservative way to become a dragon-slayer is to painstakingly grind away, improving his proficiency with demon-level monsters until the HA is so confident in his ability to deal with them that they'd consider briefing him on joining other S-Class heroes to deal with a dragon-level threat. That'll take weeks. Genos is a little less... patient.

The Monster Association is the only place where he's guaranteed a crack at them. There are five main possible outcomes.

A: He gets killed or crippled (the scenario that literally keeps Dr. Kuseno awake). It is a risk that exists regardless of what he does -- monsters target even the most peaceable civilians. As a hero, Genos has a great big target on his back anyway.

B: He gets beaten down without taking out any dragons. Here's the thing: at the very least he's no worse off than beforeand he gets invaluable battle data to build up on. The data will help to sort between changes and strategies that were never going to work and those that might yet work with some improvement.

C: He gets beaten down but kills or critically injures at least one dragon. He gains that invaluable battle data plus a basis on which to consolidate gains. Gets a promotion to around S-10 (more likely rank 10 - 12)

D: He doesn't get beaten down and kills or critically injures at least one dragon. He can work on using data and experience to further refine the fighting platform. Gets promotion to well within top ten and to ask Saitama for his next assignment.

E: He doesn't get beaten down but doesn't take down any dragons, either. This scenario will have Dr. Kuseno sigh in relief, but it's the only really bad outcome from his perspective. He's lost data and the chance to tackle such monsters. He'll have to grind like mad and hope for another lucky break.

I rate the likelihoods of the various scenarios as A - 0%; (ONE isn't about to kill Genos over this fight), B - 60%; (no change from webcomic), C - 39%; (it's a big step up and still respects what happens in the webcomic), D - 1%; (in that case the first half of chapter 108 is redundant) and E - 0%; (don't worry boy, here be lots of dragons).

Rounding up

This may have been a set up chapter, but it was anything but uneventful. 32 people are responding to what is for most, the greatest challenge they've yet faced. Okay, one of them is Saitama and he's just wandering around oblivious to the import of anything.

I can't wait for the fights, when we see all the tensions and motivations explode into action.

<20: The keg is full of dynamite, and the fuse is lit. Bring on the explosion!