The Beat That Always Stuck With Me In Regards To Uber And Leet Was When Taylor Mentions That They Beat

The beat that always stuck with me in regards to Uber and Leet was when Taylor mentions that they beat up sex workers on livestream while LARPing Grand Theft Auto. Uber and Leet get a lot of mentions before they actually show up, and the drumbeat is that they're pathetic, they're fodder, "as incompetent as supervillains can be while staying out of jail." Leet is the butt of a rom-com gag where Brian gives Taylor pointers on how to choke a man out more effectively. But they made money by beating up sex workers on livestream. That's a non-negligible number of potentially ruined lives! That's not softball fun-and-games! It's like textbook misogynistic violence against the marginalized! It's awful!

The narrative doesn't really dwell on this, because it's told almost exclusively from the perspective of people who have the firepower necessary to get away with treating Uber and Leet like jokes. But I think that it's a useful reminder that if you aren't one of the initiated, so to speak, then an encounter with the C-list, D-list, Z-list supervillain can be life-altering if not life-ending. The dumbest listicle-fodder DC or Marvel villain you've ever heard of has probably ruined at least one person's life over their handful of appearances, if not more. And it's an early indictment of the broad concept of the unwritten rules as advanced by Lisa, where she calls out Uber and Leet as the textbook example of villains kept in circulation because they're "amusing but harmless." This is within parameters? This doesn't merit heroes and villains putting aside their differences to clean house of problematic elements? Of course it doesn't. Both examples that Lisa gives of that dynamic in 3.6 involve a cape transgressing against another cape.

@lakesbian doing heavy work to dismantle the Cut Strings side of Wormblr.

so i blinked & accidentally wrote 2.4k words of alec analysis, content warning for extended discussion of child sexual abuse

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the problem with people saying any random character they like is 'feral' for being, like, mildly quirky or taking any spontaneous action or risk whatsoever is that it means ican't call rachel feral without sounding lame. even though she is feral. she is a feral dog.

Remember the Regent crickets post? I wound up speculating about the other combinations.

(Note: I'm assuming no relevant changes except the powers they end up with. Canon backgrounds, canon trigger events, inexplicably irrelevant power.)

General notes:

I can't imagine a timeline where Rachel gets powers and becomes a respectable member of society. Either she's ostracized for her inability to fit in, or she avoids society. Or both.

Alec's fate is defined as much by his environment as his power. Heartbreaker will try to make him a villainous minion if he can think of a way to do so.

By contrast, Lisa is suited for living in normal society. If her parents don't push Lisa away by trying to exploit her new powers, she might or might not become a cape. It's unlikely for her to become a supervillain without the right power (and others with her power aren't likely to become supervillains).

Like Lisa, Brian isn't predisposed to villainy; villainy is just the only clear way to achieve what he wants with the tools he ends up with. With a subtler or more aesthetically heroic power, he probably ends up on a different path. Unfortunately, most of the Undersiders also have unsubtle and aesthetically villainous powers, so most of these scenarios don't butterfly-effect much for him.

Aisha's parahuman career is warped by the fact that her brother started one before her. Aisha's path is different in an AU where Brian is a Thinker with an office job, than one where he wound up Birdcaged.

Taylor's the most flexible. She has something she wants to escape, and we know she'll try to find a way to use any parahuman ability she gets to escape it, one way or another.

I think wildbow should’ve stayed on track with Switch Hitter and kept introducing more lgbt characters named after increasingly controversial gay slang terms