#the current roster is better without them

[hel-starr]

the only 2007 jsa character i’ll allow in the new series is citizen steel, because i liked his dyanmic with pg. cyclone is so obnoxious i don’t know how anyone can get pass her lines, and if i say what i think about magog i’ll be suspended.

[teamchasezwrites]

Wrestling Rant:

LA Knight absolutely deserves to be in the main title scene. Using the excuse of “he can’t wrestle” is absolutely laughable. That’s like telling a published author they can’t write. “Oh yeah? Let me see your work. Oh you don’t write???” It’s not that LA Knight “can’t” wrestle, it’s that you don’t like him.

And that’s okay. You don’t have to like everyone wrestler. Saying he can’t wrestle is disingenuous.

Stop acting like fans should be okay with 2 US championship reigns. (Honestly someone needs to explain to me why he lost it for Shinuske, who then just never did anything. But anyway…) He was the most deserving person in the MITB match. He should have won. (Yeah yeah yeah;m Seth and “muh power”). Face it. The man does not need the briefcase to get a championship match with Jey. His entire quest is to get the belt. Punk is there to stop him. Punk isn’t even going after the belt. The only other person outside Seth wanting the belt is Gunther. The Raw main title scene is just as bad as Smackdowns, which brings me to the point:

Cody, Drew, Damian, Orton, Kevin, Knight, Solo, and Jacob all have the ability to wrestle for the main title. That is your main division roster. But only 1 is currently in the main division. Why? Because of Cena. Say what you want about him, but you can’t over look the fact that his “one last time” is bottle necking the entire roster. That’s why Knight is not in the main title scene. There is no room for anyone other than Cody.

Once Cena leaves and order is restored, the best thing they could do is take these long title reigns and stick them wear the sun doesn’t shine. Roman has ruined this for a lot of fans. Fans who now think anything less than 6 months/a year is laughable. (Personally the irony is funny because fans also champion 17 reigns. Like how did you think he got that man? It wasn’t because he was holding the belt for a year each time.)

Losing a title in 3 months doesn’t mean the reign was ass or a joke. If the feud is good… personally, Cody should have lost the belt to Kevin Owens and then won it back. How much would that have elevated that feud? “We need him to lose it to Cena!” He would have. Winning the belt back at the Rumble. “But it would have been less than a year.” It would have been okay.

With Kevin hurt and Orton on some schedule like Roman, the main title division needs help. Adding Drew, Damian, Knight will only help. Adding Solo and even Jacob will bolster it. Having them feud for the title. With each other without the title. Having them cycle from the main down to the US scene and back up again. The US title is not “beneath” Cody. It’s not “beneath” Roman. Many main event guys have help the US (or the equivalent IC title) lots of times. Sometimes the feuds for those belts were better than the main championship.

Knight got popular at the wrong time. Damian needed the briefcase to be used as a catalyst to be kicked out of TJD. Drew needed the briefcase to further his feud with Punk. Now Seth needs the briefcase for power.

With Jacob turning on Solo and more than likely entering into a feud with him, it will be interesting to see how LA Knight is utilized going forward, as well as Damian Priest.

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

did every hero really follow endeavor's plan during the jail break? I've never watched bnha, but I always figured there were more heros then Japan knew what do with. Was endeavor really just that worried about how the fight again AFO would go? and did AFO have the league with him? or other prison escapees? Given eraserhead was so entrenched?

As a preliminary matter--yes, it was way more than AfO. The League basically did what they did during the USJ arc and subcontracted their violent attacks. They needed a big force to first get AfO and everyone else out of Tartarus, and then they made it very clear (via loudspeaker and also fucking tweet) that they would all be very peacefully retreating while all those criminally insane and violent motherfuckers went that other direction. Ball's in your court as to how you want to tackle it.

AfO was the biggest threat, by fucking far, but it was far from isolated to him. It was the entire League of Villains + Their Very Special Friends. It was the kind of force that would be required to make the entirety of Tartarus fall for the first time in history. So the heroes had plenty to keep them busy.

And as to whether Endeavor was that scared about the next fight with AfO... Yeah.

I think bnha does a good job at establishing that All Might and AfO just exist at entirely different levels than every other person alive. Their fight leveled a decent chunk of Kamino. And I think that's kind of power and devastation is hard to conceptualize as like, people in a world where we don't have to worry about superhero fights. (as a side note--Sukuna's Big Fight in the Shibuya arc from JJK did better than any other fight in media to really capture the sheer cosmic horror of being caught as a bystander in one of those fights).

But endeavor saw it. He was there for AfO’s and All Might’s last fight. The gods were fighting. Everyone else was just an ant.

He is facing the villain that ultimately took down All Might. All Might won Kamino, sure. But he didn't get up again after. He was permanently and irreversibly taken out of play. And Endeavor has spent the last year feeling like he was struggling to be even half of what All Might was with two hours of productivity a day. He was so consistently voted to not be able to compare to All Might that he bought a wife and had four kids about it, all of whom hate him actively.

He does not think he is winning this fight. He is Japan's number one hero. The responsibility is going to fall to Midoriya Izuku to him. He is the best they have left, and the fight that would be coming was one that already nearly killed All Might, the one guy he has never ever been able to compare to. And when he really looked himself in the mirror and asked if he could stop AfO, the answer was no.

And it wouldn't just be AfO if he came back to power. It would be his followers--and he was liable to get more than just the current League of Villains roster. It would mean more Nomus. They could barely handle one Nomu--how could they possibly handle the Nomus, and the LoV, and AfO?

And the answer that he came to was that they couldn't. Not without All Might.

He thought he was sacrificing Yokohama for every single other city AfO was going to level if he had time to grow in strength again. He thought that if they threw absolutely everything they had at him while he was weak, then maybe they could contain him and the League before entire cities fell.

So. That's why he came to that decision. Why did every hero fall into line?

So what’s key to what happened here was it was this complete structural breakdown at exactly the wrong time.

Structural Flaw #1: Transportation

Was it every hero in Japan that responded to Endeavor’s order? No. But not every hero in Japan was available. Any heroes out of the immediate area were too far away to do shit.

But it's a massive crisis. Heroes would commute from all over if they could--but it's not about desire, it's about time and resources. With how imminently emergent the threat was, a lot of far-away heroes would need something like a jet to even conceivably get there in time.

Who is sending the jet?

Let's pin down what heroes could, conceivably, get there in time. Very few heroes are in walking distance. How do heroes typically get from Point A to Point B?

Hero society in bnha is an agency model. There is no communal pool of resources--you have what your agency has. You have a jet to transport you if your agency has the money for one, and I’m pretty sure only all might had that (he has since had it dismantled and the parts repurposed for the sake of the environment. He only had it to begin with so he could quickly respond to imminent threats. All Might thinks there's more than one way to save the world and saving the environment is part of it). Like. We even saw Endeavor flying fucking commercial.

But let's just assume, arguendo, that some agencies have jets. It would have to be the very top agencies to possibly afford it.

All of whom are shown in canon to mostly operate out of the same area. So they're going to have to send the jet somewhere else to get more heroes. Now any travel time is doubled. If they do send it out, how many people are they realistically getting? Are these heroes in multiple different cities? That's more travel time then. Maybe we just land the plane in Kyoto and whoever gets on in the twenty minute period while they're refueling is who is coming back. We'll hand them parachutes and kick them out the plane door over Yokohama. Okay. Good plan. Go team.

Who is sending the jet?

Like, who is physically making the call to send the jet? Who do they call? Do they just start ringing around their buddies and seeing if they have other plans? The city is on fucking fire and we need people fighting now, so the big name heroes don't have time to organize transport with other agencies. They’re not even thinking of that right now. Make it a sidekick's job.

They are all on fucking strike.

Fuck it. Fine. Make it an admin's job. There has to be some kind of office staff who can work a telephone who's available.

Who is thinking to send the jet?

Admins are not making strategic calls about where the company jets go. There would have to be some kind of protocol in place or someone with the authority to send the jet would have to think of it in the moment. And I guarantee you this would not be the case.

Because this is a society where they have canonically semi-privatized public safety and put people in direct competition with each other over it.

ASIDE: The Economic Structure of Heroics and Why It Sucks

I have an economic structure. You must listen to it. I promise it is relevant. This is why it takes me forever to do things it's because i get too deep into the weeds and have to explain the fucking economic structures underpinning the analysis for my nonsense to make sense.

How the fuck do heroes get paid?

I have no idea if canon ever tells us because to be so for real with you guys I have not watched this show in years. I haven’t cared about canon since the Shie Hassaikai arc. The fucking YouTuber arc broke me. I literally never watched it again. If they ever explain to us how heroes get paid I do not know and I do not care. I refuse to go back to canon. Everything I found out about canon after the Shie Hassaikai arc, I learned against my will. The ending to this story was so fucking stupid and I only have a scattered knowledge of the details but I’m still right. If canon ever tries to explain it then please do not tell me, I refuse to learn more things about this show.

But I still like poking around the potential economic structures based on the part of canon that doesn’t cause me psychic damage. So here’s the thought process for the economic underpinnings of hero society in the pez universe.

From canon, we know it can be an enormously lucrative profession, we know that it involves some degree of private interests (re: merch lines), and we know that there are some people who cannot have merch lines (Underground Heroes, e.g. Eraserhead), so there also must be some kind of public funding aspect to it as well. So. Who the fuck signs your paycheck?

Sources of Funding

a. Public Funding

There must be some kind of official governmental budget for heroics. Like. They are very much a public service. There would be no way to have a fully private heroics force without government funding. What else are you supposed to do, fucking Venmo heroes after they save you? Do they put your kitten back in the tree if you don’t have enough.

In my mind, there's public funds allocated to heroes as part of a city's budget. That funding is allotted based on the number of employees in a given entity balanced against the confirmed acts of heroics of that same given entity. There’s a base salary level and that can be increased based on how successful you are, but salary isn’t exclusively what this fund is for. The heroic entity (an individual hero or an Agency) is effectively receiving grant money from the government to run their agency. You put it into salaries, gear, office space, everything. The government is basically investing in heroes, and it’s investing more in heroes who are shown to have a greater positive impact on society.

It involves overly complex calculations regarding the scaled difficulty of a given bust/rescue/act and ranking of the villain (if there is one) and the overall public benefit for the service rendered. You get bonuses for having a lower average property damage, for contributing to community building projects, that kind of thing. It is Complex. There is a lot of paperwork that has to be submitted to strange and vaguely threatening government accountants. When Mirio and Izuku start their agency, they will burst into tears multiple times trying to figure it out once filing season rolls around, bundle all the paperwork in a Massive Tears And Shame Package, mail it off to the shadowy powers at be, and then get a perfunctory notice that they are getting a ludicrous amount of the city budget allotted to their dinky little agency for the upcoming fiscal year because they are Big Fucking Heroes and enormously good at what they do and it reflects in their stats. They will then lay on the ground of their haunted fucking office and stare at the ceiling for a very long period of time.

But this puts the heroes in competition with each other. Your public funding is chained to your stats under this model. There's only so many criminals out there--you've got to get the right numbers or it cuts into how much of a slush fund the agency is working with.

It's sort of an insane model for a public servant position, but I think it matches with what canon shows us. Imagine having firefighters pitted against each other. like, having a competitive model for public safety raises extreme concerns about how it incentivizes public servants to act.

But this isn't canon's model. It's my guess as to how canon works based on the hints i can remember and my own mental illness. So why do I think canon suggests a model like this?

It's because 1) canon does establish that heroes are in competition with one another and 2) this kind of model would likely be necessary due to the level of autonomy that heroes have.

The literal first fight we see involves heroes in competition with each other. Kamui Woods is doing a big Ultimate Move, and Mount Lady rushes in and steals the show. Like. that is crazy behavior if we are looking at this through the lens of a typical public servant. Imagine you're trying to get directions from a park ranger and a different park ranger kick flips in with a map and a desperate need for you to get your directions from them instead. You call poison control and they’re beating each other in the head over who gets to tell you you’re dying.

Still, on its own, the competition isn’t dispositive, because the private income streams (we'll get there) would incentivize competition even if public funding wasn't based on it. But the level of autonomy that hero offices exhibit also suggest some kind of competition model.

Heroics agencies are not run like a typical police force or fire station. With most entities that function as first responders, they respond to some kind of centralized force (like 911 call centers) and they have highly regulated resource distribution. Like, police forces are restricted to a specific jurisdiction. Within that jurisdiction they have multiple districts and officers typically stay in their district. They're not going to a different fucking city because they think the crime is cooler there.

But Endeavor does exactly that. He's like "hello, son who hates me. Let's go to Hosu because I want to fuck with the hero killer for street cred. won't you come along. It is non-optional" and todoroki says "i hate you father and will abandon you on our father son trip to set a serial killer on fire with my mind. it will be for mildly gay reasons."

These agencies aren't a centralized public service. They are all just off doing their own thing. They're not responding to specific areas as allotted to them by the city--they just fuck off and do whatever. Like, there's probably some coordination between agencies as to who is covering what patrol, but it likely would be more out of courtesy than formal requirement. People wouldn't step on each other's toes nearly as much if there was more of a structure to this.

Typical public agencies who receive funding in accordance with staffing and budgetary needs have more structure and formality than is exhibited in canon. Heroics Agencies act like they're all independent contractors. They probably function like grant money recipients, where they're all fighting for the same pool of funds. You have to write in and show why you deserve that money when that's the case. They're in competition with each other.

Like, is this definitively the structure in canon? No, of course not. I have no fucking idea what, if anything, canon has going on. But it definitely fits with canon.

b. Private Income Streams

We know from canon that it can't just be public funding. Izuku alone probably paid for the Mighty Agency private jet with how much fucking all might merch he bought. Canonically, heroes have merchandise lines, branding deals, commercials, everything. All Might had fucking movies made about him. Those are all extremely lucrative income streams--and likely where the richest heroes get the biggest brunt of their income.

In order to get this kind of income, you are necessarily in competition with your fellow hero.

Public attention, spending money, screen time, all of it--it's a limited resource. You have to be the person who gets to the fight first, who does the big move, who saves the day. If it's someone else? Then that's another kid buying their action figure instead of yours. Heroics is heavily commoditized in canon, and that inherently invites competition.

2. Distribution of Funds

So now that we have a theory as to where the money comes from, how does it get paid out? Based on canon, it comes down to a structure of (a) Independent/Underground Heroes and (b) Agencies.

a. Independent/Underground Heroes

I can't actually remember if the word "independent" is said in canon or if I came up with it, but I think canon implies its existence. It's basically the same thing as being an underground hero, but you're still a Spotlight hero. I also cannot remember if the underground/spotlight thing is canon or fanon or what I’m sorry I haven’t watched this show in years.

Independents are spotlight heroes without the backing of an agency. They just go out every day with the clothes on their back and a dream. They have no support staff, no back up, and no one to help them if things go sideways.

It is not a popular employment option.

Part of it is because it's that much harder to fund being an independent. Like. Say you're just out of high school and you decide to strike out on your own as independent. You're still spotlight, so you can have a merchandise line, and that'd be a nice income stream while you're just starting out.

How the fuck do you start your own t-shirt line?

How do you make contracts with the manufacturers? How do you make and copyright the design? how do you sell the stupid things? Do you try and get them in Walmart? Do you start an Etsy? Your own website? do you call your mom and cry when you have 500 ugly t-shirts with your face on them that no one wants to buy and they're taking up all the space in your studio apartment.

Agencies have preexisting structures in place to help launch these kinds of options, which is one of the reasons why they're so attractive for baby heroes just starting out. The only reason why Mirio has merchandise is because he decided that he didn't care and didn't need to make merch and Izuku came after him with feverish crack addict energy because he cared and he needed Lemillion merch like. yesterday. All Might ended up getting his agency to start a lemillion line. Mirio gets the profits with a reasonable fee to the Mighty Agency. To this day he suspects that Izuku is 70% of his sales but Izuku denies this fervently, like a liar (he actually has a small but very devoted fanbase who rabidly support him and buy all of his merch. he would cry if he knew this. Still. Izuku is his biggest fan and buys literally every single piece of new merch in triplicate.).

Underground heroes are in the same boat as independents but they don't even have the option of a merch line. They exclusively get public funding unless they're backed by an agency, which none of them are because agencies have a tendency to fuck them and their busts for the sake of the spotlight. All underground heroes are bitter and culturally opposed to agencies.

On that note:

b. Agencies.

This is where by far the most heroes would end up. But an agency is like thirty dudes with the same joint bank account. How does the money get there and get distributed out?

i. Public Funding in an Agency Context

Take the above model. How do you attribute public funds based on personal statistics if there's no single person? Does everyone get their own check? But that wouldn't make sense--this isn't just for salaries, it's for funding the actual heroics itself.

Everyone under the same agency would be counted together for the purposes of funding allotment. If Sidekick A managed 300 busts last year and Sidekick B man managed 350 busts, then congratulations, The Big Hero Hero Agency made 650 busts last year, here's a check made out to the agency, figure out what you want to do with it.

But what about incidents that involve multiple heroes from the same agency? Let's say that The Big Hero Hero Agency is involved in a big bust. It is Sidekick A's baby. They have spent months doing this. This has been blood, sweat, and tears. When the day comes, they are joined by Sidekick B, Sidekick C, and Big Hero himself. Sidekick B has been helping Sidekick A for the past three weeks on this case. Sidekick C got called in the day-of to help.

Big Hero showed up for the last twenty minutes of the fight when they were mostly done with everything.

So. You're filling out the post-arrest paperwork. For funding and for public statistics, you need to make sure to properly account for who gets credit for the bust. It has to be one person--if you had everyone individually credit themselves for the bust, then it looks like you've resolved four incidents instead of one under this financial model. it's artificially inflating your numbers for public funding. that's fraud. Who should get the credit: Sidekick A, Sidekick B, Sidekick C, or Big Hero?

Well, there's nothing stopping Big Hero from writing their own name. So let's go with Big Hero. He helped.

This was one of the big sources of the sidekick strikes: a lot of agencies had an absolute policy of attributing successes to the name hero if they touched the case at all, because there was no rule against it. It was better for the agency, after all--unrealistically high numbers on the biggest name meant the agency as a whole appeared more successful.

So there were a lot of heroes artificially inflating their stats with things that were more properly credited to their sidekicks. Which made it all the harder for sidekicks to leave because their stats were shit because their boss was taking credit for their work.

ii. Private Funding in an Agency Context

But that’s just public funding. How would agencies distribute private income streams?

Big Hero Agency is proud to announce its newest line of Big Hero Action Figures, featuring the Entire Big Hero Team, now retailing for $39.99. Get it now from a store near you.

So. An agency is selling an action figure line featuring Sidekicks A, B, and C, as well as Big Hero himself. We’ll round up to an even $40. How do we split up the cash?

You can’t give everyone each $10. You have to first pay the suppliers, the advertisers, the trucks that shipped the toys to the store, etc. Then you have to pay back into the agency to fund miscellaneous expenses—the stationary, the insurance, the coffee in the fucking break room. Everything. By the end, there’s only $4 of profit left over. Not great, but hey—they’re selling a lot of toys. So if they each get a $1, then it should add up quick.

Right. But. If you think about it, people are only really buying it for Big Hero. He’s the best hero of all of them—his name is on the agency, and just look at how much higher his stats are. So it’s only fair that he gets $3.70 a toy and the rest of them can get $.10 apiece. Don’t worry, it’ll add up quick.

Not all agencies would have been like this. But a lot of them would be. Money is a hell if an incentive to screw people.

END OF ASIDE.

With all that in mind—why would they feasibly have a structure to fly in help from other heroes far away? That’s their fucking competition. Sure, we have team ups, but they’re all either well in advance or in the heat of a moment. If they are in the heat of a moment, half the time the heroes resent it because they just stole their fight. They’re gonna what—pay the exorbitant jet fees to fly in someone who’s just going to steal their hard work in the eyes of the public?

Okay, but what about situations like this? Massive emergencies where you need more people?

Those haven’t ever happened before. They had All Might.

So. The heroes on the ground calling in help are out. What about the heroes who are close enough to make it there by ground transport? No one calls them, they just show up out of public need. How are they getting there?

Trains are out. All the trains into the area are shut the fuck down. We are not giving the freshly escaped villains a bullet train to the rest of the country. Same thing for buses. No fucking bus driver is making their regular route into a fucking battleground.

Private transportation it is. Anything more than a few hours out of the area is completely out of the question. Like, good ol’ Manuel from Hosu City and all his buddies? Not making it. The wild wild pussycats? Watched this on TV from their mountain home. Gran Torino? On FaceTime with All Might, who is watching the fight with Midoriya Inko’s hand gripped in his left and Bakugou Mitsuki’s hand gripped in his right. Gang Orca? Twelve hours away and on a fucking island so he needs a boat AND a car to get there. Or he just fucking swims.

But there has to be at least some hero that saw this happening and heroically climbed in their Mazda sedan to make the three hour car trip. Why didn’t they go to the fight in Yokohama instead of the one against AfO?

Frankly at that point those literal children were visibly doing way better than the actual heroes were faring and any heroes showing up went where they were most needed and uh. It wasn’t by the kids.

If we have the agency model as given to us by canon, then that means there is a decentralization of resources. If you want to utilize your public defense force in the case of emergencies, then you need a way to fucking get them to the emergency. Canon does not have that. This is a huge structural failing that only wasn’t a disaster sooner because most emergencies required one guy and he had his own private jet. So most heroes in the country never had to even consider if they would listen to Endeavor’s order because they were completely cut off and useless at the time.

So. Now the analysis has been narrowed from all of Japan’s heroes to just the ones in the immediate vicinity of the fight. That’s still a fuck ton of heroes. This is a heavily populated area with a bunch of heroes around. You can’t go outside without tripping over a hero.

Most of those guys were on fucking strike.

Structural Flaw #2: Over-Reliance on and Abuse of Sidekicks.

The vast majority of the workforce had to be sidekicks. Like, just from a business model perspective. Even the smallest agencies we saw had 2-3 sidekicks. Endeavor’s agency had at least double digits, and I think Idaten was at over a hundred or something. We were probably looking at, conservatively, a 1:10 ratio of heroes to sidekicks.

All those guys are on strike.

Okay. But not all of them, right? Idaten already settled and got their sidekicks back. That’s like a hundred guys.

Except the Strike was not isolated to the Tokyo/Mustufasa/Yokohama area. Idaten sent out a lot of their sidekicks to other regions to help alleviate some of the strains of the strike. (As a note, this was not the Idaten sidekicks crossing the picket line. Them picking up the slack for other sidekicks still striking would have helped minimize effects on the public. However, the agencies of the striking sidekicks would have reaped no benefit from this under the compensation structure outlined above. Idaten would have gotten the credit for everything their sidekicks did, so the other agencies would still be bleeding from this while risk to the public was slightly alleviated. Idaten’s entire function in this strike was to set an example for quick settlement and minimize public harm. There’s this entire sub-analysis on Idaten’s internal culture and how it intersects with broader heroics standards that I won’t get into now this is already way too long.)

Idaten is at 1/10 capacity. It has like, ten guys, all of whom have been working say, thirteen hour shifts (voluntarily—again, it was a decision made to try and minimize the public safety risks of the strike while still allowing their colleagues their best chance at improved conditions) daily for the past month.

All of those ten guys responded to Tartarus before Endeavor made the call.

To understand the exact nature of the breakdown, you really have to see the chaos of how exactly this unfolded.

The LoV and their merry band of criminals hit Tartarus. The heroes do not realize at this time that they intend to let everyone out, give them transportation, and point them straight towards the mainland. They think that they’re just there for AfO. That’s still a huge crisis that needs to be shut down immediately, so they call out all of their best. Endeavor responds. Hawks responds. Eraserhead responds. Mt. Lady, Kamui Woods, Miruko—everyone in the vicinity who could conceivably respond show up. For a second, it looks like it’s going to end here.

Once the LoV get AfO out of his cell, the entire tide of the battle turns against the heroes. Now everyone’s out. All of those horrible, terrible villains. Tartarus has fallen. They have to make hard decisions. The high ranking, very powerful heroes who are most likely to break the line on Endeavor’s decision? They’re already at the fight by the time he has to make it. It is chaos and something they cannot easily leave.

The LoV’s picked right now because they knew that the heroes were operating at less than a tenth of their regular capacity. They picked right now because they knew the system had structural faults, and if they hit them just right, it would all come down on the heroes’ heads.

But the sidekicks broke strike lines to respond, right? Why do they all go to endeavor’s side?

For one thing, it wasn’t all of them who showed up—maybe a third of them were not even in the area any more. It wasn’t malicious, or intentional, or anything like that—they were off visiting their families for the first time in a long time or taking vacation. All of them had spent the past few years being completely overworked and abused by their jobs. They just weren’t there.

So now we’re down to 2/3rds of them who can even try to show up.

A lot of it wasn’t actually made as a reasoned choice. For many of them, they ended up where they did because of all the chaos.

So you’re a sidekick. You’re on strike. The entire world has gone to shit. How do you normally find out about the world going to shit?

This is a competition model streamed through individual entities. There’s no central command structure. Your agency calls you.

Well, your agency either fucking fired you or they cut you off completely during strike negotiations. This time, you find out through the news when the story breaks. Now what?

You frantically try to get in touch with your (ex) agency. Who is picking up the phones?

No one. That was your fucking job before you went on strike.

I used to work at a government public-service type deal, and let me tell you, they abuse the fuck out of non-unionized workers. You are doing everyone’s job. No one ask why we don’t get more support staff because they have unions. Like. I had a law degree. I was hired to be a lawyer in that office. They had us all doing the jobs of four people, and by that I mean it would be the literal entire job description of another fucking position in that office and we were all expected to just do it too.

Unions incentivize treating workers right. The absence of them opens the door to the opposite.

Why the fuck would agencies hire more people to lighten the load on the sidekicks and let them focus on actual heroics? Just make the sidekicks do everything. What are they going do, complain? They’re a dime a dozen. Hire more of those fresh faced kids with no standards just out of school.

You know when you had a job where you’re like. This fucking place is going to fall apart without me. But they treat you as disposable and easily replaceable and you’re like “okay bet” and so you leave and you find out from the people left behind that it actually fucking fell apart without you and you’re just like :o

Yeah. So that happened.

There has been a massive break down in the function of heroics offices for the past month and change because the sidekicks were not there. They were the ones who actually did most of the day to day handling of the office. They were the ones coordinating transport and figuring out the actual mechanics of who would be deployed where in a crisis. All those things that would be super helpful now? Yeah, those guys aren’t there, and they’re locked out of the fucking offices and can’t get in to un-strike for the sake of societal crisis.

But they know where the fight is. It’s on the news. Why don’t they just show up?

Where’s their gear?

Who owns it?

Heroics support gear must be an enormously expensive thing. It would have to be provided by the agency itself. Literally the only reason why Mirio has gear is because 1) all might would NEVER let his pseudo step son run around without proper support so the man would have bankrolled it himself if needs must and 2) the UA support class has a stipend each year where they can make support gear for active heroes and those heroes get it for free in exchange for free advertising for the students trying to kick start their careers, so he is decked out in THE most experimental bullshit from Hatsume Mei Industries (I have this entire side plot where the support class this class year low key became a sort of religious cult haha not really it’s just a joke it’s not really a joke and power loader is afraid every single day when he comes to work he is afraid under the iron clad rule of Hatsume Mei’s weird girl energy and they all decided Mirio was the Tabula Rasa, a figure of prophecy, and I just cannot get into that right now it’s too long it’s too long already. But it’s so fun).

All those sidekicks on strike lost valuable time trying to get back into their agencies so they weren’t showing up to an S-class villain fight in their fucking jammies. Then, when some poor admins figured out what was going on and let some of them in, everyone was frantically gearing up and getting in whatever transport van they were pointed at. Some of them didn’t know they werent reporting to Yokohama until they were already at the other fight. There’s was so much chaos and confusion that very few people had a clear idea of what was happening.

With the sidekicks, some of them never made it, some of them just got in a van and went wherever it took them, and some of them chose to obey Endeavor’s orders. Some agreed with the decision. Some disagreed but deferred to his experience. With how the Sidekick Strike had left their infrastructure, very few sidekicks were able to respond fast enough to make any real difference.

Now for the last possible demographic: the heroes that weren’t on strike and weren’t initially deployed to the Tartarus Prison Break. Why didn’t any of them go to Yokohama?

Structural Flaw #3: All Might was that one kid doing the entire group project for like forty years and some of these people are having to be heroes for the very first time and realizing that they don’t actually want to risk their lives to save people they just sort of liked the idea of this job.

It may be a bit too specific to be a structural flaw but I’m counting it anyway.

So, just to give a bit of a recap: We consider every hero alive in Japan as a candidate for Endeavor’s order. The vast majority of them are too far away to do shit, and there’s no centralized transport network to get them there faster. Toss in those who are dealing with personal medical issues or are away on vacation or just can’t come for some reason or another, and you’ve lost most of the heroes in Japan as respondents. Probably ~80% of potential heroes are culled from this alone.

So we have, generously, 20% of Japan’s heroes left as potential people to respond. ~90% of those are sidekicks on strike. They’ve got hours before they make it to any fight, because of the aforementioned structural breakdowns.

Now we’re down to 2% of Japan’s total heroes.

Some of that 2% were first responders to the initial Tartarus prison break. All the big name heroes in the area. But there can’t be that many top heroes—so let’s say 0.2% of them were at the initial fight.

Now we only have the remaining 1.8% of heroes to analyze.

There have to be a percentage of those who agreed with Endeavor’s call as a tactical decision. If they show up to any fight, they’re going to be obeying his order.

So we only have the ones who disagreed with his call left to look at.

These are small-time heroes. All of the big names are already at the fight. So they are less likely to have flashy Quirks, be especially talented, or consider themselves to have an especially large effect in the grand scheme of things. They have likely spent their entire careers living in a world with All Might.

It has never actually been down to them.

Think of Uwabami. Momo did her work study with her.

Her hero outfit is a fucking evening gown. She spent the entire work study doing commercials and meeting with her fans. She explicitly invited the young heroes that she did because she thought they were cute enough to be in commercials with her.

Now, she’s had some good if minor moments helping rescue civilians. It’s not that she’s never saved anyone.

But all of the top heroes are already committed to the fight against AfO. The current Number One Hero just ordered all her colleagues to report there. And Yokohama has a lot of S-Class villains en route.

And what the fuck is she going to do to stop them? It’s just her. Half of those villains took All Might to stop the first time. She is not fucking all might.

Is this a hero likely to go to Yokohama completely on her own to fight *checks notes* literally the entire prison population minus one guy? The worst guy, albeit. But one guy.

These are all heroes who have never had to be the actual thing standing between society and destruction. There has always been someone more powerful or capable or heroic nearby. Until recently, there has always been all might.

This isn’t to malign them. A decent percentage of them are legitimately well meaning about being a hero. They do good. But when it came to the big, blowout fights, they have always, always, always been the heroes evacuating civilians in the background or performing rescue in the aftermath. It has never been them who had to stand up and do the fight itself.

Every single one of those villains represent a big, blowout fight. And this hero trying to decide if he’s going to obey Endeavor’s order? They are one guy. And they’re not sure if they could even beat one of those villains alone, let alone all.

The reason why no one disobeyed Endeavor’s order was because, frankly, at the end of the day, they did not want to die.

Endeavor’s order signaled to everyone that there was no guarantee anyone would show up to Yokohama. It actually put good odds to the opposite. If you decided “fuck that, I’m going to Yokohama” then you’d likely be doing it alone.

What Class 2-A did was considered a death sentence. People who didn’t know them and their bullshit were shocked that they all made it out alive. These were the worst villains their society had ever faced and it was all of them at once (minus that one guy).

The heroes who were in a position to disobey endeavor didn’t actually think it’d make a difference if they did. They’d just… lose.

Most if not all of these heroes made the decision to become heroes during all mights era of peace. Everything just had lower stakes. Crime was less frequent and less serious. The big fights always had someone there who could handle them, because All Might was there. They’d fight the odd mugger or purse snatcher and help put out fires and go home at the end of the night. They’re heroes. That doesn’t mean they’ve ever truly had to grapple with a life or death fight.

If they went to Yokohoma, they thought they’d die. So they might as well respond to a fight that has a chance. Even if they feel ashamed as they do it. Even if they think Endeavor made the wrong call and wanted to go to Yokohama instead. All Might wasn’t there anymore. And they were afraid.

But there is one thing that Class 2-A had going for them that gave them an advantage over these heroes. And that was the fact that they are all medically insane.

It’s that they were together.

It’s a decentralized heroics structure. If you have a large agency, you are necessarily a top hero because no one else would be able to get that many people to agree to work under them. So you’re already at Tartarus and this isn’t a decision you had to make.

Maybe you’re independent. Maybe you have a small agency with 2-3 people. There is no preexisting centralized line that you can use to try and gather more people to go to Yokohama with you. You’re stuck with your immediate colleagues and maybe a few other heroes you’re close enough with to have their number. You really don’t have time to try and ask around to see if anyone else wants to go to Yokohama instead—you need to pick a battle and get there yesterday.

What good is 2-3 people going to do in Yokohama? You’ll just get massacred and it won’t have made a difference. At least if you go to stop AfO, you’ll have a chance at doing something that mattered.

Maybe you disagree with Endeavor but you defer to his training and experience.

Maybe you don’t go at any fight at all. Maybe you’re afraid. Maybe you became a hero in a time where you had a symbol of peace, and you realize you can’t keep doing it in a time without one.

I think there’s a small subsection of heroes that quit in the aftermath of Yokohama. Because they wanted to disobey endeavor’s order, and they thought they’d just die and it wouldn’t matter, and then dawn came and a bunch of school kids had managed what they were too big of a coward to do. I think the fact that they fell into line when their hearts told them they shouldn’t made them seriously doubt whether they were good enough to be a hero.

But they were alone when Endeavor made the call. And it felt like certain death. And—yeah, it sort of felt that way to Class 2-A when they made the decision to respond. But they weren’t alone when they did it.

They were together. And they always felt braver when they were together. Together, they could make miracles happen.

[ultimate-marysue]

Actually DC fixing Gotham's jailbreak problem or even killing a couple of Batman rogues would be such a breath of fresh air.

The roster is pretty tight as it is, so trying to fit new bad guys without stepping on a pre-existing rogue's niche is kinda hard. The old rogues are fun, we love a classic, but they're also a bit stale. There are only so many times you can re-invent the wheel before you need a break, and since we're shuffling between the same bad guys again and again you don't have enough time to miss them for the most part.

I'm not saying you can't do interesting stuff with the classic rogues, I actually think some of them could make for pretty interesting modern storylines. I just think it comes a point where it's to the detriment of Batman himself. How many times can Joker escape Arkham or Blackgate before you start scratching your head about it. Yes, I actually really like the whole no killing thing. Cassandra Cain is my favorite character, I don't think Batman has to start killing rogues, but he should definitely do something about the constant break outs.

Yes, I know, it's great to bring an old rogue back...but that's only if you're bringing them back from something.

Let Bruce Wayne fix Blackgate penitentiary, let him actually invest in cleaning Arkham and turning it into what's meant to be instead of a torture facility. Now, when he catches a rogue it has stakes. Once most of the old rogues are out, introduce new players taking over the power vacuum. Maybe one of them is in cahoots with police and we need an arc of cleaning the police force (god forbid we make an actual critique of the structure but that's DC for you). Maybe one of them is an anti Bruce Wayne with enough money and resources to keep his criminal and personal lives separate. Give him villains that require detective work to put behind bars! Or just give him villains that fit the new era.

You don't have to keep having the same rogues break out of jail again and again, especially if you're not interested in exploring other philosophies outside of Batman's "Killin is wrong and we can't do anything about how extremely ineffective our jails are nor change society in any meaningful way". The thing is, to keep Batman from stagnating they have to keep jumping the shark which means that Gotham keeps getting worse and worse despite Batman and Bruce's efforts. In fact, it almost seems like he's making things worse.

This post is my answer to that: make things better, give some semi permanent solutions, add new rogues to fill the power vacuum and keep things fresh without needing to have seven active gangs, several meta humans, the mob, ten serial killers, several assassin cults and the Joker all simultaneously active. I know nostalgia sells, but it also makes things worse! Also, I'm only suggesting this because of the direction I perceive DC to be taking with current Batman (which is edgy but a bit more wholesome than the Dark Knight era). If they wanted to go back to noir, super edgy and dark, sure, turn Gotham into a hell hole. But idk, having so many lighthearted issues and comics with way more family stuff (fluff and drama alike) doesn't jibe with the absolutely hopeless state of Gotham.

Idk, maybe someone will tell me "mmmm actually this has been done before" but I just want them to stick to it. Fix Blackgate or I can't take Batman seriously.

[absolutebl]

with gmmtv collecting more and more bl boys, is there someone in the current roster you'd think would actually be better off /outside/ of gmmtv? whether because you think they're not being put to enough use, you'd like to see them in a project the studio wouldn't go near etc etc....

Oh I'm gonna make people so mad.

Well, I did say I wanted JoongDunk in a Mame production, just to mess with everyone and because I think they'd do great high heat. But I think they are being very well served by GMMTV so far, especially if their next BL (the police one) actually happens.

I can't see a pair leaving GMMTV together to go elsewhere, although I can see parts of pairs leaving.

I mean JimmySea keep getting duds, but I can't see Jimmy leaving and they certainly wouldn't stay together if they left.

I'm such a brat, I'd actually like to see TayNew, EarthMix, and OffGun leave, just because I want to know what would happen to GMMTV without them as backbones.

Specific individuals?

Ohm. It's time, let him roam free again.

Jimmy, just because I wanna see how much carnage he would reap as a free agent.

Aun, he's underused and I'd like to get him away from GMMTV.

Marc, Papang, and Mond = same deal.

Gun - what the hell, why not? Let him be more himself out there in the world, who knows what might happen.

[sophieinwonderland]

r/systemscringe is Hulking out over my Avengers post!

Does everyone know that?

What comics or movies was this addressed in?

Why does the hatesub act like this word was just made up? Sanism has been a thing since the 60s!

I know it's hard for you all, but please at least TRY to educate yourselves before making fools of yourselves in the future!

This subreddit just cannot stop itself from hurling ableist insults.

Oh, for the love of the triple goddesses!

What is it with certain groups reacting to NEUTRAL descriptors by claiming they're slurs?

This is the ridiculous bad faith "cis is a slur" argument all over again.

"Singlet" is a neutral term for a non-system. It's not a slur. It's not an insult.

You just have a massive raging victim complex.

And I promise you, the fact that you don't have DID is not the reason everyone thinks you're a piece of shit.

They've typically fought Mutants when those Mutants were doing something that could be dangerous to the world. Not just attacking them because they're mutants.

Mutants have even served on several Avengers rosters. And The Avengers have teamed up with mutants far more than they've come to blows with them.

Yes, Steve and Tony have generally stood aside while mutant discrimination was happening. That's an unfortunate side effect of separate groups of writers running different comics. Besides that, Captain America showing up to save the X-Men from their enemies in their stories would be pretty unsatisfying.

But even if Steve is just someone who hasn't done enough for mutants, he's still generally supportive of mutants.

Hulk wasn't abused in the MCU as far as has been revealed. Nor is his plurality considered DID.

This may be confusing it with the Ang Lee movie that did address the abuse.

MCU Hulk, so far as we know, is an endogenic systems made by trying to recreate the super soldier serum in an experiment gone wrong.

"He doesn't live in Marc's head. He just invades it"

Right... That's a Gateway System. A headmate from the outside entering the mind.

And the gods do seem, at least, somewhat "attached" to their avatars. It seems like they can communicate only with their avatars and prospective avatars. How this works isn't perfectly clear. But it at least doesn't seem as if he can just freely roam Earth and appear to different people whenever he wants while bonded to someone. I admit this may be disproven in the future.

Still, my assumption is that he can appear to Layla because he wasn't currently bonded to Marc. Once he's bonded to Marc again, he can't communicate with Layla anymore.

This did come to mind. But being pro-endo isn't just about believing endogenic systems exist. Even if we consider the Winter Soldier an endogenic system... which feels wrong on multiple level... he's a brainwashed tool to them.

They don't even consider him a real person. Just an asset to use.

Given their association with Nazism, I wouldn't expect them to see other systems any better.

Your so-called "defense" is reliant on having no idea what you're talking about, and regularly accusing DIS systems of faking for things that are basic parts of the disorder.

One of the first things you'll see on my page is a debunking of just a small fraction of the lies r/systemscringe has spread about DID in the name of "defending" it.

But we are not talking about DID here. We're talking about plurality. About the experience of being multiple in one body. And this is something that has been well-recorded by actual psychiatrists.

The entry on DID in the World Health Organization's ICD-11 states that you can have multiple "distinct personality states" without a disorder.

In Transgender Mental Health, a book published by The American Psychiatric Association, it was specifically acknowledged that you can be plural without trauma or a disorder.

If I wanted, I could go on and on and on, listing paper after paper affirming the existence of non-disordered and endogenic plurality.

But what's the point?

The thing I've learned from sysmeds is that they are chronically incapable of accepting any information that proves them wrong.

And this is the ultimate reason that the Avengers could never be anti-endo. And even most Avengers villains couldn't. Being presented with all of these expert opinions and still doubling down, when you can't even name a single doctor who claims all plurality comes from trauma, requires a certain level of willful ignorance that fictional characters like these are rarely written with.

None of the Avengers would ever be a sysmed.

Because being a sysmed requires you to lack curiosity. It requires you to lack critical thinking. It requires you to be someone who will go along with the crowd and be sucked in by groupthink. To NEVER question the narrative that you're given.

And this type of person... doesn't make for a good protagonist.

In the end, you're pretty clearly not The Avengers. You're just ignorant bigots who hide your bigotry under the guise of helping people. But that is just a front. Inside, you're looking for people to blame for your own suffering, and so you've picked a marginalized community you think you can get away with attacking because it's more socially acceptable. And you will refuse to accept facts that prove you wrong because accepting those facts would mean you're the bad guy.

No, you're definitely nothing like Avengers. But maybe Purifiers?

[sketchfanda]

Sketch-Verse Lore:Life on the XXX side & Tier Systems

With the particular quirk and kinky nature of their respective wives or girlfriends and how often they get around with other women, it stands to reason that Krillin, Kirishima and Moxxie would somehow halogen to wind up finding themselves working in the porn industry. But of course the studios to work for her are professional as much as they are erotic in nature and the owners and operators of these establishments have a fond appreciation for the natural talents of their rookie studs, even obliging their need for a little anonymity to protect their identities and prevent from being recognised out on public streets. To say nothing of how much their co-stars just love and look forward to working with them for filming and photoshoots.

From the dragonball verse’s ZigZag studios aka Double Z studios we have Don Juan Sanchez (Krillin), to date the current sole human male star in the anthro occupied roster. Naturally this has seen him build up a steady growing body of work in its newly arisen human male on furry female tag demographic as well as a sizeable fanbase among women. Most chalk this up to the slight resemblance he has to the line of Warrior Monk sex dolls and his modest, humble charisma and debate rages I he would look better without the beard and tattoo (which are temporary). His most notable streak thus far has been the series of shoots he has performed with retired veteran stars who’ve made thir comebacks in a new career renaissance just to have another round with him. Rumours say he’s gotten up to more sexual hijinks off camera than on but nothing has been confirmed or denied….

In the Heo Aca verse, we present ManaWorld Pictures’ Mr.R often referred to by his common character name Red (Kirishima), who Syx herself has come to consider her personal favourite rookie to date and she even has that statement in writing. This modest beefcake has made quite the body of work thanks to his Plus Ultra stamina and his personal drive and dedication on the ideal that a real man never leaves a woman sexually unfullfilled or unsatisfied. His Ikemen vibes have certainly also helped in not only being well built and quite well endowed but also the right blend of cute and handsome and his teddy bear like nature has made for quite good chemistry with some of his co-stars. One can only imagine his age and skill will only increase in age as his career runs on....

In the peculiar Hellverse, we have the Lust ring based Skullfuck Productions' talented rookie imp sensation known only as Mysterious M, an enigmatic demon of sophisticated theatrical taste and culture and an appreciation for the arts. This silver tongued sweetheart has made quite a name for himself with his ever growing body of work seeing him woo many a fine pretty sexy thing in Hell and even the living world and Heaven itself!! This has seen sales of his movies and views on the SFP website hit numbers mathmeticians have never even possibly heard of and that's not changing anytime soon. Many a woman has sent fan letters sharing intimate details they've had fantasizing about this masked imp visting them in their dreams to work his demonic magic on them....which has inspired the scriptwriters much to Mr.Sketch's delight...

Rumours say that Demon Queen Chloe with her vast amount of free time and ultimate omnipotence and a few individuals made up a tier systems of studs & bull on what particular girls really like and want in a man. those who've qualified are all equal in endowment but it’s particularly ranked by emotional maturity . There are 4 tiers in total as follows as well examples of the guys who fall within each.

Tier 1 is the Lovable Every man Himbo: these guys are the every regular men who poses huge cocks and a level of relative maturity but in some way foreign to the Lewd occurrences . These are some who fall in this tier. Jon Herron, Dipper Pines, Izuku Midoriya, and Jaune Arc.

Tier 2 is the Reluctant Bull Moose: These are the guys who are thrusted in the lewd direction by random chance and fate. These are the ones who does it cause it’s the only choice or tricked.

Tier 3 is the Crutch Crotch. These are the emotional support dogs of the endowed hunks and himbos who attracts the laddies with their eagerness to listen and be courteous towards the women who they fuck

Tier 4 is the Trifecta Ratio Casanova: these are the hunks who are all three tiers in a perfect ratio of personality and skill. These of course are Kirishima, Krillin and Moxxie.

[dr-futbol-blog]

Allies, Pt. 10

While Sheppard is being weirded out by having to work together with the wraith out on the Daedalus, McKay is continuing his work with the representative of another alien race, now on Atlantis. Although they had previously been conducting their experiments on the Daedalus, which seemed to be rather crucial for trying to break through the wraith jamming codes, they have now had to resort to running simulations far away from the theatre where the action is taking place. McKay's absence from the Daedalus is underscored by the fact that they have also left Hermiod out of the roster, have abandoned him to do busy work in the city that is, given that his whole purpose is to watch over the humans learning to engage in interstellar travel using Asgard technology, not even on the ambit of what he has been tasked or has volunteered to do. His job is to stop humans from burning themselves playing with matches, not to figure out an effective way of throwing firecrackers at the other children.

McKay: They didn't need you on the Daedalus? Hermiod: Colonel Caldwell believed my time was better spent disabling their jamming code. McKay: Huh! So, they can fly that ship without you. Hermiod: Yes. But apparently you cannot run these tests without me.

McKay walks in and cannot resist making a quip at Hermiod's expense because he is still feeling touchy about having been made to feel stupid by him earlier. McKay's line is classic projection. He feels like he had not been needed on the Daedalus and he deals with the discomfort of this feeling of neglect and abandonment, of not being chosen by Sheppard -- which are some of his core injuries -- by projecting them on Hermiod. Hermiod, as an Asgard, does not seem to be feeling any kind of way about it and his general feeling seems to be light annoyance pretty much across the board. He does seem to understand the snideness of McKay's remark, however, and replies in the same spirit, and it is entirely likely that this is precisely why Hermiod enjoys working with McKay much more than with most humans.

It is significant that McKay uses the word need here because it is their needs and their wants that they must have discussed with Sheppard over the course of the past couple of weeks. McKay wants to be on the Daedalus with Sheppard but he is not needed there for what they are currently doing, and hence Sheppard must have convinced him to stay back. Later on Weir asks him whether he is sure he wants to go up on a hive to supervise their systems and he tells her "Of course I don't want to do it! I just… I think it should be done." This time, he does not want to go but he needs to go and we note that Sheppard, albeit cautiously, is with him on this. Sheppard agrees to let him go on a hive (albeit with Ronon), which he would not have done three weeks prior. Letting McKay go up on a hive without him would have been out of the question.

Ergo they must have discussed the necessity of placing themselves in jeopardy, and to appreciate the difference between when something is wanted and when it is needed, when taking chances is needless and when it is necessary. McKay had agreed to stay back now, even though we can hear in his words and in his tone that he very much wanted to be there with Sheppard and felt upset about being left behind, but currently his time is also better spent working on cracking the jamming code. Later on, when he needs to go on a potentially dangerous mission, we see Sheppard for the first time support him in doing it, which shows the maturing of their relationship.

McKay: I'm sure I would have been fine. Hermiod: I am not as sure. McKay: Really? Well... OK, try it now. Well, well! Turns out the human knows what he's doing after all. Hermiod: Indeed. Your assistance on this project will be noted. McKay: My "assistance"?

Hermiod continues making McKay feel like the Asgard finds him intellectually inferior -- which, in all fairness, he does, and probably rightly so -- and we can see how defensive it makes McKay. This scene shows us clearly how what people perceive as McKay's arrogance is a psychological defense mechanism, how he has to prove himself to be the smartest person in a room because he is intimidated by people who challenge him intellectually. We have seen this with Carter, who had very obviously challenged him and whom he subsequently felt the need to call dumb, to try to make Carter seem less competent in his own mind because he felt threatened by her, she made him feel small inside like the neglected little boy that he is always hiding. Unlike Hermiod, Carter had also been a double threat person, someone who was brilliant and attractive to the men whose attention McKay craved, who he hoped he might entice with his own brilliance.

McKay does come across as arrogant absolutely, but his arrogance is a protective covering against the existential threat posed by people who challenge him intellectually because he is counting on his skills, on the things he is able to do for other people, to earn him their approval and perhaps one day their love. McKay has tried very hard to make himself indispensable because he thinks that that is the only reason why people tolerate having him around, he is using his intellect to buy himself absolution for the jagged edges of his difficult personality. And the sad thing is that while he has made some true friends during his time on Atlantis, that people appreciate him for his many different qualities, a lot of people still do see him like that. He is worth keeping around because of that "big old brain" of his which, although this had explicitly been said by Sheppard, has never been what Sheppard thought of McKay. In The Shrine (S05E04), McKay confesses to Sheppard that he is afraid that when he is no longer a genius that Sheppard will no longer care about him, will not care to know him, and although it is killing Sheppard to have to watch the man that he loves slowly being erased right in front of him, he never loves McKay any less.

McKay seems to manage to break the wraith jamming code, which would give them the ability to beam nukes aboard the hives when ever they needed to do it, and it is possible that it had been a very personal reason that had driven McKay to solve this problem, to work extra hard on getting this to work. The point of this scene is not to establish McKay as equal to Hermiod, let alone as smarter than him, only that he feels threatened by anyone who challenges him intellectually. Hermiod acknowledges McKay's contribution and it is possible that he is hazing the human on purpose just because McKay's need to be seen as competent and in control amuses him, as the Asgard are so far removed from human emotions that he would have no idea why McKay is behaving the way he is. But even though he clearly feels slighted, McKay is ecstatic that they had managed to accomplish this, as it means that Sheppard would never have to get on a jumper to fly a nuke up on a hive. However, it is possible that it was too easy for them to crack the code precisely because the wraith never intended them to be able to break the real code.

Kleinman: The delegation transport's returning to the friendly hive ahead of schedule. Sheppard: What was that? Kleinman: The transport has been destroyed. Caldwell: That's not good. Kleinman: Sir, Jumper Eight is reporting the enemy hive has opened fire. Friendly hive is sustaining serious damage. Sheppard: If they get boarded, it's all over for Atlantis. They'll give us up for sure. Caldwell: Jump to their position, shields at full, ready main rail guns, ready all missile batteries. Helm: Jumping into theatre now.

While McKay's experiment on the wraith jamming code seems to work, what ever kind of system he had devised for releasing the canister of virus all at the same time in the enemy hive seems to have failed -- although not because his system had not worked. The wraith are a suspicious lot and just the attempt to negotiate their surrender seems to have alerted the enemy hive to something fishy going on.

The "friendly" hive seems to be taking quite a beating and after Sheppard reminds Caldwell of the fact that their friendly neighbourhood wraith know the secret of the survival of Atlantis and if they get boarded, the rest of the wraith are going to learn about it as well. Caldwell agrees, he and Sheppard clearly see eye to eye here, and decides to go to the defense of the wraith -- which is something they would have thought inconceivable only a day ago. We see Caldwell get up from his Captain's chair to stand side by side with Sheppard, and again we see that he has a lot of respect for Sheppard as an officer -- when it comes to combat, he knows that he can count on his counsel. At the same time, we are reminded that although Sheppard may have agreed to go along with this plan to use the retrovirus to turn wraith into humans for the wraith to feed, he does not trust them for a minute. This has been a marriage of convenience all the way.

Caldwell: Get that jumper back into the bay! We're not gonna be able to keep this up for long. Sheppard: Think we'll give them enough time to jump...? Kleinman: Our hive is entering hyperspace. Jumper Eight has been recovered. Caldwell: Set course for Atlantis. Get us out of here!

The Daedalus jumps into the defense of the friendly neighbourhood hive and, as is often the case with space battles, we see sparks flying all over the bridge. Interesting with regards to Sheppard's preference for standing in this episode is that we see him go around Caldwell's chair to stand behind and between him and the weapons' officer, holding on to their chairs for support. This tells us that the bridge has become too unstable for him to stand without holding on to something but even so he chooses to keep on standing.

Of course he might just want to be near the captain and his weapons' officer to be "in the thick of it," but his presence is not really required there. The only thing he manages to do from his position is to slightly distract the weapons' officer who is such a professional as to be unflappable under fire. They manage to recover their cloaked jumper and tuck tail to run, not actually wanting to engage with the enemy hive now that they had given their hive the chance to escape. They had not come here to fight, they had come to observe and what they had observed was a snafu.

The most interesting thing about this is the way Sheppard chooses to stand when in this instance, sitting down would have been safer and probably everyone else on the bridge would have preferred him to sit down as well. The way he is holding on to the Captain's chair is somewhat disrespectful to boot, and him holding on to the weapons' officer's chair while he is engaged in defensive maneuvres might be downright hazardous -- and yet he stands. It seems like Sheppard has been standing the whole way there and back, showing his marked preference for standing in this episode. And while we do not know precisely how much time has passed, when they are returned to Atlantis night has fallen, so he has been standing for a while.

Wraith Queen: Our delegation was searched. They were killed immediately when your canisters were discovered. Our transport ship tried to escape but it was destroyed. You must devise a better delivery method. Weir: Or what? Wraith Queen: Or we will disclose your location to the other wraith. Weir: We kept our part of the bargain.

We then find Sheppard, McKay and Weir speaking with the wraith queen who seems to be back in their hive, and presumably the hive is somewhere close to Atlantis, possibly in orbit around it. They are having what is essentially a debriefing of their joint mission, going over what had gone wrong. The wraith seem comfortable laying the blame entirely on the Lanteans when they -- and the delivery system McKay had devised in a hurry -- probably had very little to do with why the other wraith had found them suspicious. However, the queen is blaming it on the faultiness of the delivery system and demanding that they come up with a better one. We see McKay sigh deeply just as soon as the queen mentions the canisters, seeming to anticipate that they are going to lay the blame on him.

What I want to highlight here is the way they are positioned. We find McKay between Weir and Sheppard where we have seen him before because that is his rightful place. This is to say that it is not a question of McKay being inserted between Weir and Sheppard, he is standing next to Sheppard because next to Sheppard is where he belongs. Even though it seems that in this case Sheppard is the one who had walked to stand by McKay, had parked himself slightly behind him, in general McKay seems to think nothing of inserting himself between Sheppard and anyone because his place is by Sheppard's side. Because they are standing here, next to the same screen as where Sheppard and Weir had been standing when the queen had first arrived to Atlantis watching her descend, we are able to compare the way they are standing, to contrast Sheppard standing next to McKay with him standing next to Weir. To wit:

While it looks like there is more distance between Sheppard and McKay, they are actually standing closer to each other. Weir is standing behind Sheppard who is facing the screen, whose position has nothing to do with her. With McKay, however, Sheppard is standing behind him, and he is spreading out his hand in a way that creates a protective barrier around McKay. It is extremely likely that their hands kept brushing against each other even though we do not get to see it. We see the same from the other angle:

It again looks like Sheppard and McKay are further apart than Sheppard and Weir where there is a gap between Sheppard and Weir and Sheppard and McKay are very nearly touching. Sheppard is also angled toward McKay, has turned his body slightly toward him. From the way they are standing, it must be that Weir had come to stand by the screen first and had then been joined by McKay, who has put a normal amount of space between himself and her, letting Weir into his personal space. And it is after this that they had been joined by Sheppard, perhaps just as soon as he had returned from the Daedalus, who had then chosen to stand next to McKay, not next to Weir, and who had come to stand by McKay's intimate space.

And McKay had not moved away from Sheppard the way a heterosexual man would, to equalize the space he was holding between Weir and Sheppard or even getting closer to the woman, to put additional space between himself and another man. This is not something that people do consciously, this is just how bodies usually naturally arrange in space, men guarding their own space. There is some very clever camera work going on here, playing with the focal length which you can tell if you look at the screen in front of them (which is much wider in the first shot, truncated in the second). Using camera work and editing to obscure what we literally see right in front of us is what the show has been doing since the very beginning. To iterate: Sheppard is standing closer to McKay than he was to Weir. Sheppard is standing next to McKay while previously, it was Weir standing next to Sheppard.

Weir: We gave you the retrovirus. Wraith Queen: And it is useless without an effective delivery system! Sheppard: So we have to do everything? McKay: OK, OK. I will figure something out. But no more holding back!

It is also telling that just as soon as the wraith queen gets aggressive, Sheppard takes a small step forward and puts himself in front of McKay, between McKay and the hostile alien. Sheppard gives the queen what is a flippant retort but just as soon as he catches himself, is reminded of the fact that they are supposed to have an alliance and work together with these wraith, he tries to walk it back by putting this boyish, innocent look on his face that he has probably used in charming nannies and teachers his entire life. There is incongruence between his tone and his expression because he tries to use the faux-innocent face he pulls, lifting his brows quizzically, to take some of the bite out of his aggressive gut response. And make no mistake: his initial, instinctive response was in defense of McKay. It was the delivery system that the wraith queen was attacking, which is what McKay had provided them with, causing Sheppard to immediately jump to his defense both verbally and physically. Note that he also uses the "we" form here, taking a part of the blame and all of the queen's current ire on himself.

Speaking of doing everything, as the queen does not respond to them but just keeps looking on, both Sheppard and Weir turn to look at McKay as though expecting him to come up with something, which McKay seems to quickly catch on to -- just as he had earlier that morning ("Which means you want everything!"). Note that this is very much an example of McKay reading Sheppard's thoughts, of McKay figuring out immediately what Sheppard is thinking without him having to say anything. Yes, Weir looks at him too but it is to Sheppard that McKay reacts here, he is responding to Sheppard's unspoken thought that was directed at McKay. We see Sheppard whip his head back toward McKay and think at him, and without delay McKay is replying not to the wraith queen but to Sheppard, who had thought something to the effect of RODNEY CAN YOU THINK OF SOMETHING? or RODNEY YOU GOT ANYTHING?

Yes, the two of them do know each other very well and it is somewhat obvious what is being communicated by Sheppard's look, but nonetheless this is showcasing that wordless communication between them. McKay's line "But no more holding back" is also important because this too seems to be something that applies not just to their alliance with the wraith but to what ever had taken place between him and Sheppard in the weeks that they had spent together recently, what ever compromise they had reached to get them to the place they are now. We see that McKay is not holding back but is expressing the frustration he feels in this moment, which is something that he might have tried to hide from Sheppard previously, before Inferno (S02E19). But he is not holding back now, he is letting Sheppard in on how he feels even when what he feels is negatively charged. Sheppard does want all of him, and this is very much a part of who McKay is.

There is a comedic beat to this, highlighting their dependence on McKay pulling dei ex machina out of his wazoo at the eleventh hour. But while Sheppard and Weir turning to look at McKay at the same time is comedic, the pressure that is constantly put on McKay's shoulders is not a joke. He complains but also feels the crushing weight of it more acutely than anyone outside of Sheppard seems to realize, and it is because Sheppard recognizes this that he tries to avoid putting it all on McKay to the best of his ability, he tries to help McKay shoulder as much of the responsibility as he is able. Even here he had made it clear that it was them that were asked to do everything, not just McKay even though in effect it was McKay that they were expecting to think of something (and even in practice, as we learn later, Sheppard had helped McKay "think of something," and we have seen that Sheppard is much better coming up with ideas for McKay to implement). Sheppard may look to McKay here because he trusts McKay, but he was never going to let McKay think that he needed to do it alone. From what we learn later, the two of them had stayed up all night workshopping this just the two of them alone together.

Continued in Pt. 11

[jeynearrynofthevale]

NHL Salary Cap 101

The nhl salary cap can be weird, convoluted, and hard to understand. So, if you’re curious about some of the basics such as how players are paid, why they’re send down sometimes, and how deadline acquisitions work, this should be a good starting point!

The 2024-25 salary cap is 88 million. That means that a team cannot spend more than 88 million total over the course of the 186 day nhl regular season. Because players are not paid during playoffs, teams are allowed to be over the cap. There is also a salary cap floor. Teams must spend at least 65 million on players.

Every nhl team is required to have a minimum of 20 players (18 skaters and 2 goalies) and a maximum of 23 on their roster. Most teams want at least 21 or 22 players so in the case of an injury, guys can step in. Every nhl player must have an annual salary of at least 775,000. And no individual player can be paid more than 20% of the salary cap, which currently means 17.6 million. Interestingly, the highest paid nhl players make much less than the other highest paid athletes but the floor for nhl players is actually higher with the lowest paid player being better compensated relative to other major sports.

So, the salary cap essentially forces you to balance your team. You cannot just have the 10 best players in the league on one team because you cannot pay them all and retain them.

One of the details that’s most important to understanding the minutiae of the salary cap is that nhl players are paid daily rather than annually. Because there are 186 days in the nhl regular season, a player with an average annual value (aav) of 10 million is actually making $53,763 for every day they are on the nhl roster. Players can also be sent down from the nhl to the ahl. A major reason teams do this is for cap relief. Basically, it saves them money and cap space.

Up to 1.15 million in salary can be buried in the ahl. This means that sending down your 10 million player (even if they’re playing really badly) is pretty much untenable. Because you still are counting 8.85 million on the cap for someone not on your roster. But a player making less than 2 million is an easy player to send down when you want cap space, especially if they don’t require waivers.

So, just as players’ salaries are calculated down to the day, so is the cap. Because the cap essentially gives you a set amount of money to spend over the whole nhl season. So, if you start the season with a roster that has a total cap hit of 87 million, you have 1 million in cap space that can accrue over the course of the season. Say, you maintain that exact roster with zero changes for the 1st 100 days of the season. Then you have that 1 million to spend entirely on the last 86 days. And because players are paid on a daily basis, you only have to pay that player for 86 days. So, you can do some basic algebra: (86/186)x = 1,000,000 where x is the player’s full aav. You solve for x and find that you can afford to add a player with an aav of $2,162,790 if you wait till 100 days into the season to trade for them or sign them.

Now, like I said before, you can also send players down to the ahl to save cap space throughout the nhl season. You can even do this just on days where no game is happening. This is generally referred to as a paper transaction. And this is done because every dollar can matter when making a trade. If you have a young player making 1 million dollars who is waivers exempt (meaning they can be sent down without giving other teams the chance to obtain them), every day they are not technically on the nhl roster, is a day you save $5,376. And you can tack on any cap space you save on a day to day basis to be used at the trade deadline.

Are there any other ways to add players at the deadline? Yes. The Vegas Golden Knights, Tampa Bay Lightning, and Chicago Blackhawks have all famously used ltir in the process of winning championships. Ltir is “long-term injury relief” and any player who will miss at least 10 games and 24 days of the season is eligible to be placed on it. Ltir essentially gives you a player’s cap hit back while they are injured. So, when Mark Stone goes on his annual ltir, he stops playing for the duration of the regular season, the Knights use his cap space at the deadline to add other multimillion dollar players, and then they are able to use both Stone and those players in the playoffs.

What are the downsides of ltir then? Why isn’t every single team using it? Well, for one, players need to actually be injured and not capable of playing to be placed on it (though this line can be blurry) and must come off of it once healthy. And perhaps more importantly, if any player on a team is on ltir, that team cannot accrue any cap space while they are on it. So, it can be more limiting in some ways.

[littlemisssquiggles]

So…about today’s new episode of Kamen Rider Gavv…

First, we had a Kamen Rider who is a Granute half-breed; born from the union between a human and a Granute who transforms using a driver built by a Granute scientist and powered by Gochizmo minions that he makes himself as a result of his Granute heritage.

Then we got a Kamen Rider who is a human, genetically infused with a Granute gland who transforms using a driver built by a human scientist and powered by Gochizmo minions borrowed from Gavv.

Now, in today’s episode, we have a new Kamen Rider who is a pure Granute who transforms using a driver built by a Granute scientist; powered by his own “artificially-made” Gochizmo minion.

Seriously, things are really cooking up now on Kamen Rider Gavv!!!

But in terms of our current rider roster, the only thing missing from our lineup is a Kamen Rider who is a pure human who can probably also transform with their own hand-made driver through the power of artificial Gochizmo minions.

If the Gochizmos can be “artificially-made” to serve other Granutes outside of Shouma as we saw in the case of Kamen Rider Vlam and Nyelv Stomach then what’s stopping the case of making a Gochizmo that’s safe for use with humans? One that can allow said human to become a rider without the need for an (unsafe) Granute implant?

I’m STILL hoping for Sachika to become a Rider somehow.

Unless Vlam ends up replacing her in the opening happily skipping besides Shouma and Hanto after he later turns good, I still want to believe those bouncing gummy bubble balloons beside Sachika in the Gavv opening OST will one day reveal her potential rider form similar to what happened with Hanto.

Call me delulu for willing to believe Sachika is rider material but I dunno, I don’t wanna give up on this theory just yet.

With the arrival of Gavv’s CaKING form, I feel like we gotta have some kind of Rider form that is meant to match that. To compliment it in a similar fashion to Valen's recent Bushel form while still being it's own thing.

The king may have his right hand knight-in-arms at the moment but what's a king without his queen, right?

And what's the perfect female counterpart to a caKING than an iceQUEEN?

Cause what goes better with cake than ice-cream?

We have yet to see some kind of Gavv Gochizmo form inspired by ice-cream.

So, how about a female Rider with ice element abilities inspired by everyone’s favourite cold dessert of ice-cream? She can be called Kamen Rider IceQUEEN.

Any excuse to make Sachika a Rider; dammit! But then again, this is just me hoping.

Now; let's discuss Vlam for a sec...

Despite him being a villain, so far I’m intrigued by Vlam.

His Rider henshin-transformation jingle has now dethroned Shouma’s as my favourite of our three titular Riders. He also intrigues me as a character. Strangely enough, he doesn’t seem interested in Dark Treats.

If anything, he seems more invested in playing the long game and rising through the ranks of Stomach Inc. to … benefit himself? Or so he’s giving off now when in the beginning when he was first introduced, I thought he was just another Dark Treat junkie turned part-timer like the other ones we’ve encountered in the series thus far.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d assume that Vlam’s goal was to take down Stomach Inc. Like he has his own personal vendetta against them. However, if that was the case then why doesn’t Vlam work with Shouma and Hanto instead of agreeing to be their hunters. To defeat them in the name of protecting the Granute part-timers and Stomach Inc.

If Vlam isn’t interested in Dark Treats then truly, what does he want? What’s his game? His real game?

I guess we shall see as time goes on.

~LMS (2025)

[leucrotta]

I should be asleep since I have things to do today (I have things! to do! what a concept) but I wanted to give a brief update on the stuff I vented about last time. spoiler alert this one is way less negative

so first of all, I want to say thank you to the people who reached out after I put that post up. I didn't directly respond to any of you, because at the time I didn't have the energy, but I read them all, and I re-read them, and I appreciated every one. at the time I posted that, I couldn't decide which was worse: that someone might read it, or that no one would. I think I know the answer now.

anyway, on to the updates.

I saw my doctor again, and was quite open about the fact that nothing was working and nothing was good. she admitted to me that she wondered if we weren't on the completely wrong track to begin with. that since none of the treatments designed for my condition were doing anything at all, that maybe I had a different condition than we thought. we talked about that possibility, and concluded that there were definitely signs, and that with few other options, we might as well try something new. further proof that we're just throwing spaghetti at a wall at this point, but better than nothing.

I started a new medication, one not meant to treat mdd, but another condition (I don't want to name it in case it turns out I don't have it), and I don't know if it's a placebo effect, or if it's actually another thing I'll get into in a sec, but I think I kind of maybe see a difference this time. I'm not sleeping quite as much. I've Done Things for the first time in months. not big things, not lots of things, but things. I still have a long way to go to un-destroy my living space, but I took steps. that's kind of big for me.

this is pretty embarrassing, but for the sake of being open: I started brushing my teeth again. that's also pretty big. I changed my sheets. that's huge.

maybe we're onto something here. since this has maybe worked, even a little, we're trialing another medication later this month, one that's more risky, but if it works, I don't even care. wish me luck, I guess.

I've also been seeing my irl friends more lately. part of that is one of them having vacation time finally, but I'm going to try and keep it going. having obligations to other people helps keep me moving.

and okay, the thing I alluded to earlier: a close family member, one of the few I'm still close with, recently came into, uh, let's say a decent amount of money. I don't know the exact amount, I'm not asking. the point is, this family member knew a lot of my situation, even if not all of it, and graciously reached out to help. I was able to get my car loan current, get groceries and gas, and I have enough to keep going for a few weeks still. said family member has also said they're willing to help out more in the future, now that they are able to do so without worry. my day-to-day needs are not as much of a question anymore, and I can't even put into words what that has done for my mental state. the constant fear and stress is going away gradually, as I realize this actually happened, and isn't going to disappear.

it hasn't solved all of my problems, of course. there are still large amounts of money I owe to various institutions, other, less important bills that I am behind on, and the fact that I would feel guilty taking someone else's money for the rest of my life, even if they offered. (not to mention the whole disability thing.) but for now, it's something. it's room to breathe. and I really, really needed it.

today, I allowed myself to do something frivolous. I saw a movie (something I used to do regularly but haven't in a long time) and had takeout from my favorite Indian restaurant. it felt outrageously expensive given what I've been spending on food lately, but I think that's okay for one day. (movie was great, btw, everyone go see Sinners)

today I have a full roster of fun things planned- free comic book day, flea market, hanging out. I don't even feel exhausted at the mere prospect. I'm looking forward to future plans, rather than just intentionally sleeping through the days like I'm trying to hit a cosmic fast-forward button. I think I might actually be hopeful about things.

part of me feels guilty just for the fact that my current high is due largely to luck. not everyone has a relative who suddenly gets an inheritance, and it feels unfair that I haven't found a solution I can give to others. I know that there are people around me who are struggling just as hard as I was, and it hurts that I can't show them how to get out, too. I guess the best I can do is extend what I can, when I'm able. and I will, once my own situation stabilizes further. I don't intend to forget that I owe a lot to other people's kindness, even now, and that I want to pay that forward.

so for now, I'm... okay. not great, not sure I'd even call it good yet, but it's not bad, and that's worth a lot.

to those who reached out, and those who just read this (and the other post), thank you for being there. I only hope the news continues to be positive.

[cementcornfield]

The flaws in the team - is this fixable in one offseason?

I’m worried they’re gonna see how close some games were and talk themselves out of making necessary changes 😕

god. i have no idea. the thing is that the bengals have always had this reputation, and it's a fair one for the most part. but as a new fan, i've only been experiencing these good years. (became aware of them during the super bowl, really got into them the next season. luckily became a fan right around when they went on a 10 game win streak so like, i wasn't aware this team DID lose?? and now look at me.)

i think, if you want to be Fair, the front office and organization HAVE been making changes. selling the stadium naming rights, making an in-season trade, paying joe the most guaranteed money they've ever paid, these are all steps in the right direction. but you can also fairly point out that a lot of this is way too little too late. they are far far behind the way most other front offices are run, and we're seeing the consequences of that.

i hope that progress keeps being made. i hope they see what they have in joe and ja'marr after this insane season, and see how they've let them down. i think joe (and certainly ja'marr lol) is the type to speak his mind when he sees something he's not happy about. i'm not sure how much power or sway he does have in the organization, but i imagine it's more than pretty much any player they've had til this point. and i can only hope they listen to him!! (without him having to threaten a trade, which i wouldn't blame him for. but i don't think it's come to that quite yet.)

in terms of what changes they could reasonably make this offseason, i think we need to (ONCE AGAIN) focus on drafting and signing defensive talent. it sucks because oh my god we've dedicated so many resources to that the last few years, but we just keep missing (and of course letting the actual proven talent go, assuming we can replace and it turns out we can't!) and then when you think about how high-potential players haven't developed, you do have to look at coaching. lou has been incredible for us scheme-wise the last few years. he is one of the few DCs who has proven he can consistently limit patrick mahomes, josh allen, and even lamar sometimes (less so this year lol). but! when you take away his top talent, he's not able to reproduce these results reliably. which i mean, that's a hard ask for anyone, but it's his job to work with the tools given, and two years in a row now he's proven that he can't set up the players he has currently on the roster for success. so the answer might be in replacing him? or at the very least, keep him for his scheming creativity but maybe replace position coaches? who actually work with and develop the guys every day?

i still think zac's job is safe. and i know i'm in the minority when i say i'm mostly okay with that. when you look at this team's problems, and what they've been able to do on offense this year despite key injuries, i still think that's impressive. and obviously you can attribute some of that to joe's ability to improvise, but i think when you look at the game plans recently, they've been pretty good overall. zac definitely still has trouble with deciding on when to be aggressive, and sometimes he gets too cute with shit, but i really don't think he's this team's biggest problem, and i think joe is still very much on his side. if that changes though, then yeah, i'd think zac's seat could get pretty hot.

oh i do think we need to get rid of frank though. our o-line is better at pass protection this year, especially when orlando is in and having one of his best years statistically. and i get that when we have joe at qb, we're always going to prioritize passing, that's fine. but i'm pretty sure we're dead last in run blocking. which is a shame because chase brown has shown he can be pretty special! but we need to give him SOMETHING to work with on these runs. and given that frank is the o-line AND run coordinator, it's pretty evident that he's the problem there. so maybe the team gets rid of him? hopefully?

i dunno, this has become a whole rant but these are just some of the things that i think could happen? and maybe if they do, we'll be in better shape next year to get things figured out. i'm excited to watch our young guys this season, see what we have in them. because they could definitely be the key to success next season!

[express-archives]

This is very random, but how do you think your Fatui OCs would fare under different Harbingers? (Feel free to do ones they’d like or dislike more than their current department 🤭)

ohhhh this is SUCH a good question!!! so i took this question and decided to do which harbinger(s) my ocs would fare better under and which one(s) they would fare worse under.

both faye and viola would fare a lot better under tartaglia. he would have a lot more respect for the two of them (to be clear, he'd have more respect for them than pantalone does; arlecchino really isn't the problem harbinger here) and their relationship. he'd also put a lot more emphasis upon keeping them close together in their work. since he has siblings himself, he kinda knows what faye must be feeling when she does not know where viola is or how she's doing—thus, childe would keep them very close and generally wouldn't go out of his way to separate them. he also wouldn't treat faye like a dog; he'd just treat her like a worthy and respectable opponent, as he already does. he's also notoriously not harsh with his subordinates, unlike his colleagues, so he'd be very good with viola. plus, he understands that she's a child and doesn't... expect her to do things that he expects from his other subordinates. he also would expect faye to drop things to protect viola (...whereas pantalone, um, doesn't like or encourage this trait of hers...).

um. tl;dr, in the best universe that still involves these two being members of the fatui, they'd work for childe 🙏

on the other hand, i actually think faye is a fairly versatile soldier and could work comfortably under most of the harbingers. however, she'd probably struggle under scaramouche or columbina. scaramouche, because faye doesn't exactly like being thrown around for the littlest shit, and he would be like... straight up abusive. i mean, pantalone is too, but he indulges her whims usually—she can touch him openly, lean over his shoulder, latch onto his arm like a doting and yappy child without getting punished for it, meanwhile the balladeer would probably respond fairly poorly to something like that. uh. yeah. columbina, because faye is just straight up scared of her LMFAOSJDKSGJF???????

viola could not thrive under dottore. i don't think i need to explain this one... you want this gentle and kind child to work for arguably one of the most morally corrupt harbingers on the harbinger roster? uh. no ❤️ she wouldn't do well at all. i was also going to say that she wouldn't thrive under scaramouche, but i actually disagree with that one and think he'd probably have a little bit of a soft spot for her. yeah, she's a teen, but this girl is literally still a baby. a child. a child in his unit. he'd be an asshole about it, but he'd probably take her under his wing after a while of seeing this pathetic wet cat child stumble around his unit. so. erm. the only harbinger she could not thrive under would be dottore 🗣❗️❗️❗️

i haven't finished natlan, but from what i understand, capitano is actually a very respectable and honorable man, yes? therefore, emilio would have absolutely thrived under the captain. i think he's actually a little irked that he DOESN'T work for capitano, because he'd be doing so much better if he was, and he wouldn't have had to forsake his honor and wisdom as a warrior from natlan, had he been employed under the first instead of the second (so close yet so far...). if emilio did work under the first harbinger, i don't think he would have even had this agonizing descent into monstrosity in the first place. he would still be honorable. he'd still be... himself. hm. poor thing. if things had only gone ever so slightly differently... oh well! 🥰❤️

emilio cannot possibly hate any harbinger more than he hates dottore. end of discussion. my guy is actively in the worst possible timeline for himself LMAOOOOO rip 💔💔💔💔

ohhh godddd. hestia. hestia. hm. well. she's in her best timeline, i can't even lie. la signora became her mother after a while, so hestia wouldn't thrive better with anyone other than la signora. that said, she could definitely work in other units! i think she'd do fine under capitano or even pulcinella. hell, she'd be okay under childe. ultimately, however, the best unit for hestia would be the one she is in right now.

hestia would hate working under dottore or pantalone, though. not because she couldn't do her job well—she'd be good enough at doing her job in either unit. she just couldn't do it because she is morally opposed to both of their methods (i like to think la signora would just go bother dottore solely to piss him off like the akademiya diva she was, and they saw one another as close equals; that said, i also think hestia would just straight up ask her mother why the hell she would want to voluntarily be anywhere near that man LMAOOO).

...esfir, like emilio, is already living their worst timeline 💔 there is no worse unit to put her in. they're already in the worst ok.

THAT SAIDDDDD you know who esfir would love working for? arlecchino. peruere, specifically, not crucabena (which. um. is obvious, considering i've said a very young esfir cursed crucabena out once or twice. Or maybe thrice idk). she would absolutely adore the knave!!!!! would probably look up at the fourth harbinger with the most "🥺" eyes ever. esfir would just... love arlecchino in a very vulnerable and real way. they would call arlecchino 'father' and mean it.

[edgessunflower]

Sensitive stomach

Pairing: Andrade el idolo x Fem reader x Charlotte Flair

Description: Your partners help you after your sensitive stomach acts up

Gif credits to @islandofrelevancy

You laugh uncontrollably at Jey and Seth backstage leaning on the floor before walking down the hall giggling. Suddenly the familiar wave of an upset stomach hits you before you could sit down or rush to the bathroom, Charlotte was coming in from outside with Andrade right behind her before they saw you leaned over the trash can vomiting until you blow your nose as they ran over "Woah baby breathe it's okay". After a few more times of blowing your nose, you were sitting in charlotte's lap sipping on cold water "Was it something you ate?" you shake your head as andrade brought you tums for your stomach knowing how sensitive it was after you got sick while leaning your head on his shoulder before he carried you to the car and took you back to the Airbnb that you all were staying in for the next four weeks while on the current roster trip to Hawaii. The first thing the two did was have you slowly eating chicken soup from the small restaurant down the street, you ate almost half of the soup and sipped on cold milk after taking a stomach med before you were laying in bed with andrade holding you watching tv while charlotte was on the phone with Rhea who you were gonna meet up for a small workout session but your stomach had other plans in mind as you get a text from rhea that said "Get better baby boo, I'll fight your stomach for you 😘👿". You giggle at the text before charlotte joined the two of you and put on a movie which you fell asleep halfway through tucked against andrade as the two finished the movie finding you awake two hours later in the living room eating pudding which made them laugh before sharing kisses with the pair eating the whole cup without a problem at all.

[true-blue-sonic]

It's crazy to think that Silver only has seven canon game roles.

Let's see, there is '06, Rivals 1, Rivals 2, Generations, Forces, TSR... Are we counting Colours DS as well? I think it should because my boi is in there XD /j

But yeah! I believe I've once read a theory (I don't remember where, sorry) that it was actually a good thing Silver very swiftly got delegated to minigame-roster-filler and "who owns a PSP anyway?"-character after '06 and the hatred it generated around him: it gave people a chance to warm up to him without putting him too much in the spotlight, helped tremendously by his completely revamped and genuinely fun and fair battle in Gens. I think that, if he'd gotten a mainline role again so shortly after '06 (or even his own game, of which there were apparently signs that was an actual plan in that time?), it would have made people far more resistant to growing to like him. Characters that are shoved in your face endlessly are hard to warm up to if there's something about them you dislike, especially if it comes at the expense of characters that are more beloved. But as history shows, Silver only began to have actual plotline relevancy again almost a decade after his last main big role (Forces, compared to Rivals 2). And in that decade, he didn't fill any roles that made him more important than other characters: in Colours DS he's just one of the dozen characters showing up in the park with nothing special about him, in Generations there's multiple other boss fights with previous rivals and enemies (and Silver's fight is generally considered to be leagues better than what he had in '06, which helps too), and in minigames and racing games he's just there to fill the roster. Thus, when in Forces he actually played a big role, people either enjoyed seeing it because they had time to get used to the character and grow fond of him, or it was enjoyed by more recent fans who knew nothing about '06 and just liked Silver for how he got presented in his handful of minor roles and Forces (like me! I got introduced through the franchise through Mario & Sonic London 2012 3DS). Perhaps there was some help too from a pendulum swing of the fandom at large beginning to appreciate '06 more, after the change in direction the franchise took in the 2010s? Though, I am not knowledgeable on that, I am too young to know what the fandom mentality was like in both eras. So what all that in mind, it's indeed quite wild that Silver has appeared so little in canon games, but I do believe it's a good thing he's shown up a lot in rosters with dozens of other characters as just a playable option who did not have any plot relevance. I wouldn't say Silver is super popular currently, but the sheer hatred the fandom allegedly held for him in the second half of the 2000s is certainly not here anymore. So, who knows what the future might hold for him? I believe SoJ quite likes him, after all. But this all is just a ramble from my side, haha!

[c1ssie]

bad bitch alert 💋

FULL NAME: suzanne "cissie" king-jones KNOWN AS: arrowette ( formerly ) GENDER / PRONOUNS: female, she / her most of the time? ORIENTATION: bisexual PLACE OF BIRTH: star city CURRENT RESIDENCE: los angeles ( verse dependent ) AFFILIATION: young justice ( formerly ), the arrowfam ( briefly, unwillingly, she was typecast )

PERSONALITY

MORAL ALIGNMENT: neutral good MYERS BRIGGS: esfj -- the consul ENNEAGRAM: type 3 -- the achiever  FOUR TEMPERAMENTS: sanguine/melancholic blend TOP TROPES: i just want to be normal, the ace, one last job, hair trigger temper, i am not my mother.

HISTORY cw for mentions of child abuse and a gentle mental breakdown

to understand cissie... i fear you have to understand her mother. so here are the sparknotes on miss bonnie king: she was the original miss arrowette, springing onto the hero scene after winning a bronze olympic medal. ( she was raised to be an archer and seen as a failure in her own mother's eyes after she medaled, ultimately leading to their estrangement! ) she's not great at heroism, but she does manage to hook up with green arrow for a hot minute. so. good for her. she met cissie's dad, roped him into the nonsense, and then eventually ended up leaving the hero scene and having cissie!!

from an incredibly young age, cissie's mom saw that she had promise. her eyesight was impeccable, her aim was unbeatable. in her daughter, she saw a path to reclaim her dreams. but, that path wasn't achievable until cissie's father died and left a decent chunk of change for his family. following bernell's funeral, she got to work.

anyway. enough about her. now it's cissie time!

cissie's childhood was extremely regimented. if there was a class or a private lesson or a book that could inch her closer to perfection, cissie was in it. she trained and trained and trained until her mother deemed her 'ready' and sent her on her first mission, during which she met bart allen aka impulse!

cps was alerted of the situation in the king-jones household shortly after cissie's first mission. she was removed from bonnie's custody and enrolled in an all girl's school. even without her mother present, she continued to train. after a slightly misguided interpretation conversation with her therapist**, cissie became determined to get one over on her mother by proving herself to be a better arrowette than she ever could've become under bonnie's wing.

**before we get further into the nitty gritty of everything else, it must be noted that cissie's therapist, marcy, swiftly filled the massive vacancy that her mother had left behind. during her early time at the saint elias school, she was the only person that cissie spoke openly with and was the only person to know of her identity as arrowette.

she set out on her own heroic crusade and was able to get a few successes under her belt, before realizing that the solo game was not for her.

enter: young just us!

cissie joins the ranks of young justice after calling them in to help her deal with harm. for the first time in her life, cissie has friends!! i won't go over all the shenanigans that they got up to, but please note that even though her time as an active member of the team was ultimately short, it was an incredibly important developmental time. that's fambily. even when she's not on the roster, cissie will always be a part of young justice! she was able to balance yj with her school life and secret identity for a while, but. then some bad things happened.

cw for a shooting / torture. her aforementioned therapist was brutally murdered while cissie was away on a mission. she snuck by the cops that were swarming the school and ended up seeing the tape that the killer made of her therapist begging for her life before ultimately taking her life. reasonably, cissie snapped.

cw for a not so gentle mental breakdown. following the murder, cissie made some. um. choices. she decided that she was going to hunt down the killer and make him pay for what he'd done. read: she was going to kill him back. she was almost successful, even going so far as to literally hunt the man for sport, but conner made a last minute save and carted cissie off to the safety of cassie's house. at this point, cissie was borderline catatonic in the wake of what she'd almost done. she was supposed to be a hero, but heroes don't act like she'd acted. heroes don't try to hunt people for sport. that's wild.

when she finally came out of it, she made the decision to retire from being arrowette. she couldn't bear the thought of what lines she might find herself crossing if she stayed in the game. everybody cheer for self-awareness!!! yay!!!

exit: arrowette

enter: olympic gold medalist cissie king-jones

though she gave up the hero lifestyle ( with some difficulty and a lot of pushback from her friends ) cissie did not give up archery! after all, she was good. great, even. after some pushing from her mother shocking cissie ended up attending the summer games and winning gold for the us and set her life on a new path!

after her olympic win, cissie had also won over the country at large. her dorm room was often filled with fan letters and she scored a guest spot on buffy the vamp wendy the werewolf stalker.

she was still routinely roped into yj shenanigans and she still routinely complained about being roped into yj shenanigans, but she was finally happy to be living a relatively normal life!

that's pretty much where the comics leave us with a big ol' blank to fill in, between appearances in more recent books but don't worry!! i'm gonna tell you what i think she's up to in her adult life!! ( as adult as dc will let these youths get anyway )

her future / missing years consist of a slow but steady rise to fame in hollywood and on the olympic level! she's acting, she's shooting arrows! most importantly, she is not touching superheroics with a 10 foot pole! the only exceptions that will get her involved are immediate danger for a member of yj ( not just anyone!!! sorry to the new lineups!!! she will go for anita, bart, cassie, greta, kon, or tim!! everyone else can choke. respectfully ) or she is blackmailed with a brain bomb. ugh. better not happen twice. as for her relationship with her mom? it's fine. they talk. she mom-ages, to an extent. there is very little trust between them, but cissie shan't be cutting her off. haha unless.

the end <3