Eh :waggles hand:. If we're really being a hair edgy about this, the Protectorate, as super cops, are effectively another gang, just one with government backing. So the logic then goes, if one of the gang members isn't playing nice with the others to a terminal degree, they might as well extract what value they can out of them as they "tragically died in the line of duty" (which I'm pretty sure happens all the time in terms of national statistics for mid-tier capes and lower), and they can try and parlay that into better funding or some external help or whatever.
To be clear, I'm not saying this would be any sort of national push, as RCB et al would definitely frown upon it, but some more corrupt local forces might try to get away with this sort of thing.
I wouldn't doubt it, though the tendency is low, because the Protectorate
aren't cops. They're a super-new institution and they're
meant to be cops, but the institution hasn't really developed that critical mass of douchebags the cops have. 'The others' are just as wide-eyed and full of dreams. They play great with the others, they just aren't focusing wholly what the institution's leadership wants them to - they're squeezing in actually valuable work on the side.
I'm not so sure it happens all the time.
Remember the Unwritten Rules? Often criticized as only protecting the powerful? The Protectorate is very much a group capable of getting punitive if anybody violates them in their direction.
Also, canon BB capes don't really show any of that kind of attrition, do they? Though this Bay seems more populated with low-level capes, so perhaps it also has some more bloody churn.
Canon BB capes don't show much attrition over the breadth of Worm because like 85% of Worm happens in the space of two to three months, and then Brockton Bay is a place to visit, not where the story happens. The amount of time the reader spends in BB before the triple-apocalypse hits is like a month. We don't see attrition because Wildbow barely even finished
introducing the setting before breaking it. It's a snapshot, not a video. Fanfic tends to take that snapshot and expand it out across all space and time but the churn is actually pretty significant.
Even in the process of that introduction, a major gang fell and a second one was in the process of falling. Two big-name capes went to the Birdcage, and Empire 88 was getting effectively thrown out into the wilderness with their legal identities outed and a court order to freeze their legal assets probably just waiting until the PRT finished writing and submitted it. And if you actually look at the timeline, well...
At
least three of the Empire 88 capes first came to town within like, the last year? That's just the ones that are very clearly indicated as such, not the ones who are 'we don't actually have any information so assuming they came recently is just as valid as assuming they came aeons ago' - the only ones we
know have been in BB longer than like three years are Kaiser, Fenja/Menja (and they're pretty young so they could easily have triggered relatively recently), and Purity. Probably also Krieg, maybe Night & Fog. We
know Hookwolf is a New Yorker and sorta migrated to BB and he's been there for a few years, but probably not more than five. We don't know when Stormwolf and Cricket came, but it was presumably at Hookwolf's invitation and thus at some point after him. Crusader and Alabaster came during Purity's retirement, they're explicitly part of 'the new recruits'. Rune is 14, she didn't come that long ago. Victor's timeline is unclear but was unlikely to be more than three years ago, because he's married to Othala and Othala is 17, so even if she triggered earlier (I assume at 12), she wouldn't have been considered for sending off on crusade until she's at
least 14.
Bakuda is an exemplar of that churn, she showed up literally less than a month before Taylor started.
The Undersiders started to
exist less than a year pre-canon, and at
least Lisa and Alec were new to town at that point.
If the Merchants even existed, they didn't have Squealer, she literally joined them in like Arc 3-4
during canon (Squealer was listed as an independent when she was first mentioned in Victoria's interlude).
Go back two years and you lose like half the Wards - we have a specific timeline that Clockblocker triggered at 15 so he could plausibly be there as a newbie, and we have
no timeline on Triumph, Gallant, and Aegis so you can assume whatever. Vista joined specifically in 2009 mid-April, so almost exactly two years prior to 'a few arcs deep into canon'. Kid Win joined literally nine months later. And we know exactly when Sophia joined, around October 2010ish. There may have been other Wards in that space since that leaves us with a small number, but if so they either transferred out of town or quit entirely, because there are almost
no Protectorate members in the right age range.
For the Protectorate, Dauntless has been in town and empowered thirteen years, but only joined the Protectorate like five years ago, the way he's written. Assault and Battery came to BB 5-6 years ago (we have a specific timeframe on when Battery led the BB Wards), and we know basically nothing about the arrival times of Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Velocity, and Challenger (or anything else about Challenger). We can assume Armsmaster has been here for at least five years, long enough to be comfortable in his position, but that's about all we have solid indicators on.
Almost none of the New Wave kids were triggered two years ago. Laserdream was the first, but Glory Girl was the second, and we know she triggered after mid-April (because Vista was already in the Wards when she first triggered). Panacea triggered one year pre-canon, and Shielder was even newer.
We don't know exactly when Coil came to town, but it was probably a year ago, because his expansion is explicitly one of the factors that wiped out a preexisting BB gang, the Chorus.
Faultline may not have even had a crew two years ago. Labyrinth is super-new, Spitfire joined up like a couple months pre-canon tops, and we don't have exact timelines on Gregor or Newter but there's no evidence that says they were definitely longtime.
Like, go back two years and half the canon cast wasn't even there. That's pretty good churn!
And we never hear about old ones unless they specifically are relevant to the story of someone around right now. Which means if BB's cape population isn't undergoing a massive increase for no actual reason, there is roughly half the cast worth of capes that
were in BB two years ago, and died or fucked off in those two years. Groups like the Chorus, a gang we've heard of but was gone before Taylor's adventures. (We won't see 'em here either, though they will at least be
mentioned since their fall was pretty recent)
Canon BB has Panacea in-city as a potential resource. How much she was actually used is up in the air but anything short of died at the scene could mean that they would make it.
Only for the past year. The fact that Panacea and Othala are in the city absolutely slows the churn, but Panacea just hasn't been here that long - her arrival is
part of the churn.
Is it, in fact, not? Like, we know the BB Protectorate does mix it up with the likes of Hookwolf. They don't actually yield the map to the Nazi Blender Dog. Maybe to Lung, but people who are less pocket endbringer have to work for it.
Well, the Protectorate don't yield the map to the E88, but the Unwritten Rules are, in fact, not nearly as meaningful a thing as Tattletale tried to sell.
Remember, Tattletale is a petty criminal, and she's fine with that. She doesn't have much of a conscience. But she was trying to convince Taylor, who
does have a conscience, that being a villain is okay, it's totally low stakes, this is basically just a game! She was absolutely presenting a fairy tale to seduce Taylor into darkness (not that that's hard, just need to bat eyes in her general direction).
The Protectorate mixes it up with the Nazi Blender Dog and he goes at them with
utterly lethal force. There is no safe way to swing a sharp blade empowered by superstrength, and Hookwolf can make himself blunt but he never actually
does. Man swung a live blade at a ten-year-old girl. And she didn't die but y'know, the difference between her stitching herself up so no one thinks she's a weenie and her getting disemboweled in public is less than an inch. Hookwolf does not have that precision. The latter was a perfectly valid outcome to him.
And we know Lung kills people, he makes very persistent efforts to that effect.
Armsmaster's halberd? I mean, it does have blunt-headed configurations, but the strength augmentation is sufficient that he can smash around Bitch's dogs. He hits full-force even blunt, he's breaking bones. And its
primary configuration is a very lethal blade. Two of its other configurations are a
blowtorch and an arc welder. Even for the squeaky-clean Protectorate, lethal force is very close at hand and always ready when needed.
Brockton Bay is
lethal as hell. The Protectorate and Wards
try not to kill, but the entire Protectorate retains the ability to at whim, and it's only certain villains that actually make any effort not to be dangerously lethal - small fry like the Undersiders and Uber/Leet that
can't just go 'come at me bro' to the entire Protectorate and want to avoid getting particular dedicated attention from them.
All the big gangs - ABB, E88, Coil - are basically always playing lethal force. Even if they
have nonlethal settings, they visibly make zero effort to use them. Kaiser was straight-up torturing ABB mooks to death when we saw him fight. (This, like many other aspects of working with Nazis, was not a dealbreaker for Skitter & Tattletale. I mean, Skitter told him to stop and he did, but also she didn't kill him on the spot, and should be very ashamed of herself)
Hah!
Maybe a power-enhanced metabolism, and she just kept ordering larger and larger meals with that burger being that restaurant's answer?
I have no basis for this but I refuse to accept a world where she wasn't doing it just through sheer natural grit.
re Dauntless:
Ah, thanks.
Though I don't recall hearing the phrase "red truth" before. I assume it refers to something along the lines of information the text explicitly provides?
It's an Umineko thing and I haven't ever actually watched or read Umineko. But one of the things is sorting fact from fiction, and lines written in red text are objectively, inarguably factual. You'd have to ask someone else to explain Umineko, but that, at least, is what I meant by it.
And many of them may not have even realized the institutional apathy was as bad as it is before they joined up -- at which point, well, they're already there, they've met likeminded people also there, so they might as well use the Protectorate's resources to do what they can.
Pretty much, yes. There are people that leave or don't go, but the Protectorate's combination of 'a paycheck', 'support', and 'legal powers, including arrest authority' are
pretty damn good for doing heroism. It is legitimately the most effective way to do the most good you can. People that stay out usually have pretty specific reasons for it, like the
specific good they want to do being the kind that the Protectorate gets around to
eventually rather than prioritizing.
Ehhhh. I mean, IRL, yeah, but do we know enough about the state of both countries in Earth Bet to say how much it's that, the reverse, or a mutual thing?
Though now I am wondering if that's in fact a large part of why Canada joined...
The most important thing to understand about the state of every place in Earth Bet (at least, as competently-written, so, uh, we're only really looking at the US and Canada here) is that it derives directly from the state in IRL. IRL, we can see the social tensions, injustices, the disagreements and hatreds in a country. They're the same in Earth Bet.
All Earth Bet does is remove the government's monopoly of force. Not only does every viewpoint get a vote, they get a tank too.
Earth Bet America is our America, except the fascists and white supremacists have superpowers to
actually challenge governmental authority (locally only, but locally is enough). And so do the communists and the queers. And the immigrants that don't like getting hatecrimed. And the depressed people who just lost their job and home and capitalism decided they weren't useful enough anymore to keep alive (hi Nilbog!). (And people who are inclined to
support the government absolutely do get powers too. But they already had power. And now there is a whole lot more power floating around in the country that they
don't have)
