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[In costume, ID reads 'Kid Flash.']

Show of hands, show of hands! Who around here knows who Superman is?

...I don't mean like- knows who he is, who he is, I mean knows of the superhero dude. Six foot eight, weighs a freaking ton ♫ I'm kidding, he's not six eight. He's taller.

What about Batman? Wonder Woman? Everybody knows the big three, they're like the holy trinity of punchin' dudes who deserve it. Plus I mean, Wonder Woman, am I right? I'm right. Ultimate justice in a one piece.

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Try that again, this time assuming the person on the other end has no idea what the Boy Scouts of America are.

[ she's heard of girl scouts, but only because they sell cookies. she's certainly never seen boy scouts selling cookies before. ]

Uhhhh he's an upstanding citizen. Like, always does the right thing for the right reasons, and then doesn't even have the decency to get preachy over it. Like that.

He doesn't get preachy? Well, that'll be the day. If all of that is true, I probably wouldn't mind meeting him.

Come to think of it, I might have heard about Batman, too. He's the high priest of the Rodent Order in Gotham, isn't he?

No. [uh oh wally sounds insulted]

He's the crown prince of the Royal Republic of Winged Ratland thank you, and you'd do well to remember that.

[ psh. ] You can't fool me, I've known enough people here who started in Gotham City. The Royal Republic of Winged Ratland probably isn't even a place. Royal republics are a total contradiction!

Everyone knows Gotham is infested with vigilantes from the Order of Rodent Priests!

Edited 2015-01-15 00:33 (UTC)

You know what's weird, though? The combo. Why birds? I mean, there's a guy going "I am Batman I am the night" and then the kids after that go with Robin? I'm still trying to figure out where it came from. Like the flying motif, maybe? But none of them fly. There's no correlation.

[ she sits there silently a moment as she seriously considers this. why are they birds? that doesn't make any thematic sense at all. ]

Maybe he gets hungry.

[ do bats eat birds? if she were a bat, she would definitely eat a bird. ]

It would take a seriously monster bat to eat birds. Like, that does not occur in nature.

...you know a lot about Gotham. Was there a lot of Bat people in the City?

It wouldn't have to be in a single bite. I mean, stags are generally larger than humans, but one still hunts and eats the other.

But there are many here now from Gotham who were here in the City. Edward Nygma, Oswald Cobblepot, Kate Kane, Harvey Dent. There were others in the past, some I was closer to at the time.

[ renee and carrie, mostly. but both are gone, and carrie's gone again now, too. ]

[noticing that three of those four names are villains

are you pals with gotham villains because like there's bad guys and then there's GOTHAM bad guys]

What so like- you're pals with Dent and Nygma? And Cobblepot?

No. I could hardly be called a "pal" of any of those, they're just the ones who are here. [ she very seriously contemplated breaking dent's legs once, in fact. ] The only Gothamites I've ever been "pals" with are all gone now.

All right, just checking. When you rattle off basically the entire B-list of Gotham villains like they came over for coffee yesterday it's a legitimate thing to worry about.

It's a bit surprising, though. I hadn't expected Kate on that list.

But I suppose I don't really know her that well, either.

Edited 2015-01-24 03:22 (UTC)

Kate? Uh- no, sorry, don't know a Kate. Was just talking about Dent, Nygma and Cobblepot, mostly.

I can say that Nygma discusses his villainous past openly, just as much as he does his reformation. He's an odd one, though. Something about him never quite clicked favorably with me. [ mostly that for years he harbored a dude who betrayed and killed her once and never had the good sense to stay dead. it's complicated ancient history. ]

I can't say much of anything about Cobblepot, I've never actually spoken to the man. And I can't say much of anything nice about Dent.

[ again, would totally break that dude's legs and not even feel guilty about it. but the motivation to is lessened with renee gone. ]

I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that either of the three has an infamous reputation in their home universe.

I don't wanna talk smack about anybody trying to reform, but. Yeah. Infamous is a good word for all three of them. [Harvey Dent is a bit more tragic; personality disorders and horrible disfiguration has a way of warping a guy, but he still killed loads of people. Just like with Annie, that'll take some getting used to.] But if they don't wanna cause trouble for anybody, nobody should cause trouble for them. I think that's a good rule of thumb for any functioning society.

For as long as that remains true, certainly. Probably less of a concern for some over others.

[ tragedy can go a ways toward sympathy, but when he's still so dangerous it isn't easy to spare it for him. but he's been keeping himself in check without renee here, it's best to just avoid him if he's really trying to stay in line. ]

Well, if it doesn't remain true, there's like ten superpowered people from their home worlds who would be happy to bring the pain, and I'm sure they know it. That's probably enough.

Edited 2015-01-29 05:54 (UTC)

And that's been such an effective deterrent in the past, hasn't it? Both here and on their home worlds.

All right all right, what would you do? Just throw anybody with a dirty history in superpowered prison?

That depends on what they're doing, and how much need there is for something to be done. But what I'm saying is that the existence of heroes in overwhelming numbers doesn't really do much of anything to create an environment where these people feel a real threat to their operations, especially with how content the majority of those heroes are with half-measures.

Is this a rehash of that "superheroes make super villains" argument? Am I reading this right?

That sounds like a stupid argument. Superpowers make supervillains.

But superheroes certainly aren't preventing or negating them, in my experience. That's all I'm saying.

Well yeah, not here! Not like we're given a whole lot of elbow room to do anything. We're illegal if we're not registered, and if you're registered then you gotta go on military missions whether or not you agree with 'em! Not a real encouraging setup.

I wouldn't blame it on registration. It's an easy scapegoat, but it remains nothing more than that. If villainy is still occurring, then registration isn't going to protect the villain once the truth outs.

Either way, this same sort of thing was still happening in the City, and we had no sort of registration there. It's an excuse for a problem with either no solution, or a very easy solution.

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