America's Individuals: The Legacy Line

Games Sentinels of the Multiverse
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So, a few of you might remember that the first time Justifier got one of his letters read on the air, it was under the byline “America’s Crappiest Legacy”. When I wrote that, it was probably intended as nothing but a joke about being progressively worse instead of progressively better, but now that we have Artificial Intelligence churning out what most people are comfortable calling “slop”, I think I have a new perspective on what ACL could mean, and one that’s a tiny bit flattering in spite of the comparison to something about our modern society that’s maybe not great.

See, part of the ideal of America has always been the idea of the everyman, the little guy, the average reasonable citizen. Legacy’s exceptionalism fits other aspects of American-ness, but fails miserably at that one; heroes like Setback and Bunker do a lot more to suggest the typical American instead of some lofty unattainable ideal. They aren’t the best at anything, but they do what they can, and the fact they keep trying is more important than whether they succeed.

So my thinking is that in one particular universe (which probably doesn’t have a Setback, and might be home to a very different Bunker that’s not so much of an average person, maybe more of an Army experiment in crafting the perfect soldier and then cybernetically fusing him with the tank he drives, who knows), maybe Wellspring set out to create a Legacy that didn’t tower above the country that he was leading, but rather blended in to it. As a generative AI model samples an every larger dataset in order to get ever closer to the exact mathematical middle of it, creating the most predictable and unexceptional answer to its prompt, maybe the power of this Legacy Line version is designed to make each consecutive Legacy more closely resemble the average American. Less different than any of his predecessors from the Angry Taxpayer and the Innocent Bystander and everyone else who’s just a normal guy doing his best. Perhaps in that world, being the averagest is an actual advantage, because it means being easier to relate to; maybe this Legacy doesn’t inspire his allies to fight harder and overcome superlative threats, but simply serves as a typical example of the normal people they fight to protect.

2 Likes
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Listening to the Secretary Seized episode makes me feel like Crappy Legacy is the Aminia Twain of that universe, like his freedom five didn’t hire anyone to do that job so ACL himself is mired in the minutia of human legal and social responsibilities. So he hardly ever does actual superhero things, but had the long-suffering “team parent” energy that Aminia usually has.

It does mean that his dad and granddad would have been very well liked during the World Wars, because he literally was just another GI, not really powerful and certainly not living a charmed life. Paul 8 has probably the worst of it, because America is less interested in hero worship of extremely normal people in the Sixties and forward; superhero stories are less about lionizing the courage of a vulnerable man who risks his life to protect others, and more about saying he has to spend all his time doing paperwork and paying bills like everyone else.

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this is fun, and I really like that alternate Bunker idea :eyes:

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I considered instead digging up a link to “Das Bunker”, my favorite by far idea I’ve ever come up with for an alternate Bunker promo, but decided it didn’t feel like remotely the same universe would have produced these two characters.