After some cute replies to Great The Inactive Upper Shame Page, I felt like I was being asked for a narrative so here goes:

The balance of power is pretty obvious at this point to everyone, or should be for those actually paying attention, with the wherewithal, and not bored and fucking off. The main cities that matter: Philadelphia and New York, and they’re allied.

LA is allied with them, but is a long-term-inactive placeholder, a gun or two to call in when needed. LV is not terribly IA or anything, but in the long term who knows what their purpose is, placeholder or cattle for the slaughter. Chicago is mixed, Beast is a placeholder, remote gun, for sure. DT is new, but was active before the takedown, and is likely a kill city at some point, in some fashion. The last variant of DT was always destined to die, between the growth of the city, the drama, and the fact they were obviously not valued higher than Philadelphia by New York, their mother city who they had turned to when they felt threatened.

While we have a decent amount of activity in NY, Philly is mixed. They get active when something is happening, otherwise, they don’t come around. It is not a nurturing city like New York is.

So, what of it? I guess the point is, what or who holds everything together? Is it fear? If say uncle FutureStealer died tomorrow, that would not change anything. Papa worm dying, probably not much would change, unless Alucard really got hungry, but he probably wouldn’t be able to get mama Quiet to move. He is a lapdog this time around. Ruff. Ruff. Squeak. If Alucard died, not much would happen… But if mama Quiet died, would that change things? Would uncle FS finally decide that keeping Philly around isn’t worth it? Would daddy worm hold it together? Either way, it’s between something dying in those two cities to see a real change…

We are in a day and age of whataboutism commentary on the news after all so here goes with a few more silly goose questions based on chatter so I'll take one from Tuck:

Is Alucard hiding certain elements that NY is paranoid about?

When will they clear a city for Goku? He’s definitely running a good crew that would probably do well with a city, compared to the other lack of effort out there. Will he be a point of contest?

Why hasn't Stiffler taken a city? He has also similarly earned it. It would be a great honor for him. 

Wouldn't it be cool if quiet authed Premeir?

Will NY/PH fail to kill one of their farm cities before a rogue comes out of them?

Will they piss off people by minor purges who then might rogue themselves? (There have only been like a couple, maybe like three, deaths that I would qualify as a purge). Most, nearly all, of their insolated murders have been justified in some fashion.

As an aside, Lesson #1: If you die, for any reason, your child probably shouldn’t spout threats of vengeance. That is called giving a person cause. You’ll die. Don't be your own weapon against yourself. Your child should just act later on if they were serious about it, and in many cases, who knows where things are in like 80 days. Be like water. 

Other silly goose questions to consider:

Is the current regime Curtis or Grin grade leaders? That I can answer, firmly, no. This is not a particularly cruel regime; they have been fortunate that no one has really stepped up to them, and there have been plenty of opportunities.

Are they bad people? No, they are doing a decent strategy, though some of the placeholder tactics are a bit lame in terms of keeping the community engaged here, and there is nothing to respect about keeping inactive leaders and hands up in certain but not all places. In most past times, this would not have been acceptable by any regime. They would cycle in active people, but this regime keeps many of those who are active pretty close.  

Either way, if there is some small catalyst, perhaps we will see more bloodshed and a shift, but for now, let us keep watch. 

For all press inquiries, you know where to reach me. I have pretty eyelashes. 

"As i've said before, i deeply love NY and most of it's uppers and citizens but unfortunately, they are being PH's lackeys and it's a shameful thing to see. We were once a proud city with proud people. What the hell happened?" Drala frowns.

"Anyway, that's some good material. Relevant points and also for the venceance part, as i'm terribly impulsive sometimes, it's good advice.

I really wanted to see what MrKuku would write in his newspaper about this. When DT fell, he wrote about it five minutes later. A lot of uppers and good people die, some of them from NY, slaughtered by PH and he don't say a word. Being homed in NY, i don't think he would be unbiased anyway, so yeah. Beautifully done and beautiful eyelashes."