LNH20/Meta: the silver and bronze ages

[Lalo Martins]

quoth Andrew Perron as of Fri, 02 Dec 2011 18:45:27 +0000:
> On Dec 2, 4:56 am, Lalo Martins <lalo.mart... at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> 1964: The Network is so popular, that by this time powered individuals
>> are generally known as net.heroes and net.villains, or net.men in
>> general. (In the 70s, feminism would replace net.men with net.human. In
>> the present, a growing movement wants to replace even that with
>> net.persons, Tori being one of their poster children.)
> 
> Honestly, I see "net.human" as more of an indicator of "human with
> powers", including villains and those not active in adventuring, rather
> than "superhero".  I could see some pundit calling them "New Humans",
> and the term getting conflated with net.men (which itself would later
> become net.hero).

Sorry, that was poor writing of my part. I did mean exactly that; net.men 
(later net.human, net.person) means anyone with powers, whether hero, 
villain, in-between, or not adventuring at all.

>>       Secretly, Y.O.N.D.E.R. is a joint initiative of the military,
>> intelligence, FBI, and a few key private interests; most of its members
>> are either pre-existing, usually experienced military/intelligence
>> net.agents, or manufactured specifically for the group.
> 
> I'd say that it's publically associated with but independent from the
> military, that the military thinks they're in control of it, that the
> CIA and the FBI both think *they're* in control of it, and that the
> private interests are in it deeper than anyone suspects, possibly
> including themselves.  The members would be split evenly between those
> who are military but don't know any of the other secrets, those who are
> in the employ of some other interest, and those who signed up thinking
> the public facade was the truth.
> 
> Ironically, one of the private interests is the organization of a
> retired net.hero, whose goal is to push society towards more ethical and
> less corrupt behavior.  The second-in-command of the team is the only
> member who knows this organization even exists.

That works better. Also, if it's a Bronze Age thing, it should probably 
be tailored to speak more to Bronze Age values, including social 
relevance and whatnot. No idea how :-P


>> 2002: The Killfile.
> 
> I think I would've put this a bit earlier, both to give the world more
> time to adapt to it as the status quo and to reflect the beginning of
> the Modern Age (whose beginning is disputed, but whose latest possible
> beginning date has gotta be October 2000, with UItimate Spider-Man #1).

That's funny. I also wanted it to be earlier/longer, but I thought 
somebody at some point had said it lasted 5 years. Maybe I'm wrong. Yeah, 
I'm fine with 1999.

>> 2002: Net.ropolis becomes Netropolis.

This is meant to be “shortly after the Killfile”, so if we move the 
Killfile back, we move this too. Then 1999 would be even more 
appropriate, because of the .com burst; I can imagine a city wouldn't 
want to be too closely associated with the .com phenomenon by then.

-- Lalo “in the net.hero bubble” Martins