Skip to content
“Wait, you have these powerful humans and ERA needs me?” Lexx stopped walking as the thought struck him.
“They don’t work for ERA.” Keith stated. “They work for the cities they live in and don’t have any incentive to go hunting your dice.”
“There’s no money in it for them.” Chel added quickly, still hoping that was true.
“And that’s why ERA doesn’t like them,” shrugged Keith. “It’s always about the money with them.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am making an effort to stop using the words, actually, really, very... I really, really am.
It's funny that I wrote the above notes down years ago and they work. Registered CAPES act as an aid to police, kind of like supercops. I uppose I should mention again: Most, while being superhuman, beyond what normal humans can do, are not to any degree near what Lexx can do.
Oh, and they like money. A lot.
Seeing comments below, I should clarify: They're like sports stars. Many won't lift a finger without being paid/ only help as part of their job, some will do what they want, some are criminals, a few reject the system and float around. Their pay comes from their cities, donors, etc, anonymously. Their pay also covers any damages they might cause, so many won't risk their pay on something that might cause serious damages to property, leaving a few who do the real nasty work, despite pay. Justice and Castle are the top for that kind of work. Anytime Justice is mentioned, he'll be referred to as a jerk, because he has no use for anyone who isn't family or a limited circle of friends and lets it be known. He's not a tool, he's just a jerk.
Castle's actually a nice down to Earth type who has tea parties at children's hospitals with sick kids. ;) He gives away most of his pay and is far more liked than Justice.
Chill's an orphan, zero family, and a ward of the state. She's wrapped herself up in her persona and nobody knows who she really is. She doesn't even know.
Very few can just walk away from the system, and the others LOVE it when one tries, since they get a challenge in hunting down one of their own. By the way, I need to go adjust my numbers. There's only 300 of them in the US.
Anyone working for ERA is biased against them, because they meddle in ERA affairs.
- Tiff
12 thoughts on “Day 27 4 09”
MysteryGal790
I knew they were actually selfish tools.
MysteryGal790
OH YEAH, FIRST COMMENT!
sorry ……….. I get a bit excited at times…
😛
Raxondr
Call me a tool, but I think as long as they’re not demanding billion dollar salaries, getting paid a premium rate because you can provide services nobody else can is fairly reasonable. I don’t expect a neurosurgeon to work for minimum wage while he removes a life threatening tumor from my brain.
Not sure why I would expect these guys to work for free. Altruistic heroics, like Superman and Captain Marvel are wonderful. But Superman has a day job, and Captain Marvel is a kid. There’s nothing strictly wrong with demanding to be paid. You can call them mercenaries, but mercenary does not automatically mean evil. Cops, firefighters, and EMTs all get paid.
Calling someone a tool and saying they should provide their services for free is a bit idealistic. They have to make money somehow.
It would make a city look pretty bad if their superhero was on welfare. That could only really happen if the city didn’t care about its reputation, and the cape was either very selfless, or independently wealthy.
Spikes
Based on the three we’ve seen so far I think it’s could be a safe assumption to think that at least two of them could be the selfish “pay me what I want or I move to another city” types.
Stuart Gathman
The amount that can be demanded with that threat is pretty much the definition of what they are worth. Greed, while corrosive to the individual (money addiction is not unlike drug addiction), is easily managed by society. Covetousness, on the other hand, destroys both individual and society.
Raxondr
Hmmm. You both make excellent points, though I suspect I just have a less optimistic view on how these kinds of things would actually work. I have a bit of a dim view of people, and by extension, any government where people have a hand in it.
That said, I would not put it past the government to try to treat capes as government contractors, rather than actual employees, in order to get out of paying them all they owe, reducing them to saying, “You can pay me my asking price for the ability to carry a bus full of orphans to safety, or I will take my talents elsewhere.”
I honestly don’t find it unreasonable to shop around for the best salary they can find. Now, if they take a crisis situation and use it as an opportunity to negotiate their payments, I would consider that unreasonable and cause for termination of a contract.
That said, chances are pretty good that unless the city is in constant peril, they are more or less city mascots who do a little superhero work on the side. Forgive me if I seem to be playing devil’s advocate, but I honestly see no reason why a cape shouldn’t be able to shop around and see if anyone is willing to pay more for their presence.
What I get from Keith in the last panel is that ERA doesn’t like them because they would demand money. And cities like NYC will probably be able to pay them better than ERA.
That said, unlike ERA, I don’t really see NYC trying to strong arm a cape into cooperation, like they are with Lexx. I honestly have trouble seeing ERA as strictly good when they threaten to take Lexx into custody and confiscate all his stuff if he refuses to work with them.
They may not have said it directly, but there is the insinuation, since they tracked him to his beach house. They were literally saying they could storm the place if he refused to come and talk.
Honestly? I don’t see the ERA being any more trustworthy than the capes that came to see Lexx. However, since they’re willing to offer him intel on where to find his dice(which he already has), their current goal coincide for now, so there is no reason not to work with them.
That being said, once the dice are all captured, He had probably better watch his back, since Victor’s superiors probably won’t be as sympathetic to Lexx as he is.
Good thing Lexx still has an ace up his sleeve. All he has to do is expose Keith as having the implant, and imply he’s not the only one keeping secrets from them. Should slow them down while every single employee has to have full MRIs and medical examinations to search for potential security risks.
Or he could just blackmail Keith into helping him, because otherwise, that’s the end of his career. He would get kicked out, and he would never be allowed anywhere near any secure data for the rest of his life.
Unfortunately, I strongly doubt Lexx would consider any of this. He is not used to political maneuvering, and he may not fully understand what would and would not be advantageous. That, and he really doesn’t seem cutthroat enough to take advantage of that.
Back to the original point though. I have trouble seeing the capes as bad guys, or even jerks for wanting to be paid well when there is no clear good organization to contrast with.
Raxondr
Waaait… Do you mean to say that they are forced to be in this system? And that if anyone tries to quit, they will be arrested or killed?
Wow. Props, Tiff. That is dark. That’s X-men dark. If that’s how it really is, I honestly can’t blame them for being jerks. Their attitudes are entirely justified. Man, Lexx should sympathize with them over almost anyone else.
From that last panel, Keith’s statement had me thinking the ERA was just pissy because they’d actually have to pay whatever superhuman they hired, but it’s because they would personally be at risk, since they left the system. “I’m risking my life and a cushy job. You had better be able to triple my current pay. Plus benefits.
Or maybe it’s that they all police their own, and they declare open season on the traitors, which is also pretty dark. Personally, I’m hoping it’s the former, since that’s basically the mutant registration act from Marvel’s Civil War, but institutionalized. That would make capes second class citizens, in a sense. I wonder if cities trade them around, trying to get better ones, too.
And those that reject the system. Do registered capes hunt them down for fun, too?
This answers a couple questions, but I feel like so many more have been opened up. I am very intrigued by this. I’m a sucker for world building and fleshed out settings, which is part of what drew me to this comic to begin with.
The other reason is that I like Sirius and Riley. Heck, I like all the characters. Even the ones with personalities I usually hate actually have depth, so I don’t hate them after all.(looking at you, Claudia.)
Love what you’ve done, and keep up the good work!
Wild star
Woah woah woah woah woah! Duuude, I only just got that. Wow tiff, that…really an awesome…twist? Whatever it is, I like it!
Tiff
Things might change a little as I tweak it between now and whenver I finally get the story started, but it’s not QUITE that dark. 😀
They are all registered, if they aren’t smart enough to avoid using their abilities in a way where they are easy to detect/parents intervene and see that the system is really restrictive.
When they are active, it’s difficult to leave, because they likely make a LOT of enemies who can cause them a lot of trouble, even if they are disguised, because, truthfully, unless you’re wearing a metal suit, someone is going to figure out WHO you are and no amount of glasses is going to throw someone off the scent in this world.
There’s safety in the system for their families, so leaving that system is almost impossible because you open yourself up to massive liabilities.
The hunting down part isn’t to death, it’s more of bringing someone back who ‘owes’ the system funding. They’re tied up by money and contracts.
ERA brings up money, because they do feel at least a little entitled to help when people’s lives are endangered. 😀 And yes, they don’t have the funding to pay the high prices that the cities demand to lend out their CAPES. 😉 The CAPES do dictate those prices, btw, the city just gets a cut and if they don’t want to do anything, they quote really insanely high prices.
It’s kind of a difficult position all the way around and the CAPES want to be paid extra if they are involved in anything that ERA is doing in their cities. That’s the biggest sore spot with ERA. The CAPES are already being paid by their city to cover their city. ERA doesn’t see why they should have to pay extra for what CAPES are already being paid to do.
Most of ERA’s facilities are NOT located near large cities.
I haven’t even touched on the villainous side. 😀 Mostly because, my favorite villain is a heroic villain. 😉
Raxondr
So they are more or less forced to join the club, but they don’t have to join in the club activities. That’s not quite as bad as I envisioned, and it’s not quite as bad as Lexx’s situation. Still, forcibly conscripting them is kind of a violation of their civil liberties. Of course, I also consider many things the government does anyway to be violations of civil liberties, so I can let that slide due to realism.
This being said, it sounds very much like they become second class citizens immediately. I could give many scenarios, but the most prominent in my mind is that in the event of an accident, they would be more liable than a normal person, because, as most people would put it, “He’s a superhero. His profession is preventing these kinds of things, therefore he must have been acutely aware of what was happening and did nothing to stop it.”
I envision civil suits against them constantly. If they pull a man from a a car about to explode, and the man is paralyzed from the crash, they could sue the cape. They punched a guy with a gun and the gun goes off, hitting a civilian. Cape gets sued for reckless endangerment and accused of involuntary manslaughter by the family of the deceased.
There are some extremely good reasons for standing by idly unless you are specifically called on for assistance.
I also wonder what happens when they are injured or killed in the line of duty. round the clock protection is expensive, and I can’t see anyone really caring about the Ex-cape’s family after the cape is no longer useful to them, thus pretty much ensuring that the families have a high mortality rate.
And don’t say they get put into witness protection. In a world with superheroes and supervillains, no location or information is ever really *that* secure. An invasion or infiltration could come along, get hold of the information, and begin systematically wiping all of them out. There’s a brick(Justice), and an ice cape, no reason why there couldn’t be a walk through walls guy.
All in all, you keep fighting for the man with the leash, or your family dies. But when you die, your family gets turned out, and they die.
I might be seeing this a little bit too cynically, but it is hard not to see it as an almost direct parallel to Lexx’s situation. Fight for your masters and the amusement of the masses, or be killed/enslaved/worse.
Tiff
You’re 100% correct in everything you just said. There isn’t any witness protection type care, because it’d be impossible, thus chaining them into the system.
Of course, if you’re never IN the system, nor ‘popular’, you stand a better chance of being able to do as you wish and fade into the background. The story I have scripts for follows the ones OUTSIDE the system and opposed to it.
People like Chill can come and go as they please, because Chill does not look the same when she’s not iced over. One of the prominent things I wanted to explore was losing yourself to your persona or being able to seperate yourself from your persona. Chill IS her persona, as are most of the ones who are easy to identify, like Justice. Castle just doesn’t really care.
Like sports stars, you have some who are good with their money and some who give it all away without a thought to what the future might hold if they are killed or severely injured in action. Families ARE actually taken care of to a point, but they are responsible for their own security, often choosing to pool their resources.
One of the more serious things I always think they might consider at some point is who they are outside their abilities. They see the flash and glamour of being a CAPE, but most are only seen by what they can do, not who they are. They might love doing some thing other than their gifted abilities, like Castle. His parents are a doctor and a teacher. 😀 He would have liked to have changed lives as a doctor or a teacher, but he’s too popular to ever be a teacher and his abilities make him unsuited to being a doctor. They have severe drawbacks equal to every ability. The more I talk about Castle, the more I like him, even though he did not exist prior to this scripting. Justice and Chill did. He didn’t. Castle is powerful, but the cost is that he’s not precise, has tremors in his hands, and uncontrollable minor physical ticks when not moving.
Everything I’ve typed concerning him is character creation on the fly and set in stone… for him.
It’s what he has told me.
Raxondr
Darn it, Tiff! How dare you have such awesome material!?
I do have an idea for you, though. You know how the ADC isn’t above sending someone to kill Lexx or Chel on the sly? What makes anyone think the cities wouldn’t do that to Capes that try to quit? The Capes know it happens, but there’s no proof. The other capes are sicced on the deserters, and, quite frankly, better publicity for the CAPES program to have the deserters die while causing massive collateral damage.
Then they can point to it and say “This is why we want to make registering mandatory! To stop rogue capes like this guy from ever harming our children!”
Huh. Actually, that sounds like something that would come from one of my stories. Nobody really wants Captain Sociopath, or Professor Bio. A dude with portal gun powers, or a looney wizard who reads too many comic books and watches waaaaay too many old B movies.
Can’t wait to see where you go with Chill, though. While I can’t really see her being an over the top golden age type cape, I can see her going, “Dude, I have tons of adoring fans, a multimillion dollar contract, and a penthouse suite as Chill! Why would I ever want to be anyone else?”
If handled well, you could even portray Chill’s rejection of her civilian persona as completely reasonable. She is Chill. That’s the identity she chooses for herself, rather than the crappy name and life she was given when she was born. Dream come true for her.
Follow me on Twitter
My TweetsMeta
Subscribe to Blog via Email