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qobiin · 5 years

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weekly fic rec hoard

here's what i've been enjoying reading (and re-reading) this past week for different fandoms across the board! this week features: atla, bnha, good omens, harry potter, marvel, naruto and stranger things ♡ means: all-time fave, (m) means: 18+ themes

avatar: the last airbender

♡ first rule of earth kingdom fight club... series by ohmygodwhy zuko, his stubborn inability to die, and finding himself thru getting his ass kicked

The Most Ragged Edges by twinfinite In hindsight, Zuko really should have seen this conversation coming. He can almost hear Li and Lo chanting wickedly about the magic of Ember Island, about waves smoothing away rough edges…

♡ ribs by ohmygodwhy The first thing Zuko tells him during their first lesson after the whole Sun Warrior ruins ordeal, is “Fire comes from the breath.” a lesson in learning, and re-learning.

♡ see your son rising at last by aloneintherain When Zuko dashes into the sitting room, it is with the same wide-eyed panic that he ran from Azula’s smoking hands when he was a child. Iroh bites down on a smile. Zuko looks the same, even now, a decade later with a scar blossomed over one side of his face, green and brown robes replacing the solitary reds of his childhood. His hair is puffed up around his face. He looks like a very frightened, very windswept turtle-dove. Zuko dives behind Iroh just as Aang breezes to a stop in the doorway. Five times Zuko hid behind Iroh, plus one time Zuko stood proudly in front of him.

♡ the beginning of a new and brighter birth by aloneintherain “I’m so proud of you, my nephew.” Uncle cups Zuko’s face in his lined hand. The gesture is so tender, his palm so warm, that Zuko has to take a fortifying breath against the sudden swell of emotion in his chest. “I want to be a good leader, Uncle,” Zuko says. “I want to look after my people.” “You will,” Uncle says. “You are, nephew.” In a new era of peace, Zuko works to be a very different Fire Lord than his forefathers.

boku no hero academia

the stars are floating and we are flying by lunalou Aizawa starts walking towards the exit, obviously expecting Shouto to follow him, but Shouto's feet are frozen in place. His eyes flicker from the distorted reflection of himself in the ice to where All Might is giving him a long look, eyes kinder than anything Todoroki has ever been deserving of, and he feels sick. “Todoroki-kun,” Midoriya says gently, squeezing his arm in what Shouto presumes is meant to be a reassuring gesture. “It’s going to be okay.” He doesn’t think Midoriya is in any place to tell him what okay is, all things considered, but he chooses to keep quiet on the matter.

♡ I’ll share this with you, so leave it behind by yabakuboi For the sake of the story, All Might is never in need of a successor, and, when Izuku saves Katsuki from the sludge monster, encourages young Midoriya down a different path. Thus, Katsuki and Izuku part ways after junior high, as Katsuki enters U.A. and the Midoriyas move overseas. It’s later that Katsuki realizes that there’s something missing, that he drove that something away. Years after, Katsuki finds him in the last place he looks, in the cereal aisle at the local grocery store of their childhood neighborhood.

Loose lips Sail ships by Yousayhun Bakugou is at war with his own fucking mouth and everyone else just seems to be having the time of their lives.

♡ flare guns go off in my head saying not to call you this late by youreanovelidea Midoriya beams at him and Tokoyami is suddenly hit with the urge to look away. “So bright,” he mutters under his breath, low enough that Midoriya can’t hear him. (or, Midoriya is a problem child who just really loves his friends)

(m) The Devil Blues by iknewaman The 78th precinct's police captain, Toshinori Yagi, has volunteerd his squad to help implement the mayor's wish of increasing the successful cooperation between the city police and active Pro-Heroes. Each detective is to be assigned a Pro-Hero who will shadow them for two weeks, and the operation has been dubbed the 'Station Cooperation Operation'. Although it is not well-received by those involved, Izuku Midoriya, current detective at the 78th precinct and loyal follower of captain Toshinori's ideals, believes that the operation will be a success. If his captain says it will succeed, there isn't a doubt in Izuku's mind that it will. That is until he meets his assigned Pro-Hero.

♡ someone is wrong on the internet by rhenna It’s been a long day. By all rights, Izuku should be falling into bed, half dead. But instead of sleeping, he’s hunched over his laptop at 2 in the morning writing a dissertation about why exactly Ground Zero’s pecs are the best pecs to ever pec, and how dare anyone insinuate that he should lose some of that muscle because don’t you even understand what kind of physique a quirk like that requires? Amateurs. (Izuku has two jobs in this world: pro-hero and anonymous president of the Ground Zero fan club. What could possibly go wrong?)

good omens

♡ Divine Intervention (aka God ships it) by TheLadyZepher There’s a battle strategy devised by humans many millennia ago that's designed to overcome an adversary who is particularly well entrenched. Some walls are too tall and thick for a frontal assault, and must instead be bested through sheer dogged stubbornness. Crowley and Aziraphale didn’t know it, but they were about to be put under siege. Fed up with an angel and a demon who are still avoiding any talk of Feelings, God starts to interfere. When it comes to the ineffable plan, sometimes things need a bit of a push.

♡ Slow by write_away It started like this: A boy with the ability to warp reality met an angel and a demon and he made assumptions. You might say it started like this: An angel and a demon found a marriage contract hung on the wall of the angel's bookshop. They didn't question it. It also could have started like this: Once upon a time, the angel told the demon he went too fast. The demon took it to heart. Aziraphale and Crowley find themselves somehow married. Crowley fears going too fast. Aziraphale forges ahead. Neither know how to ask questions of each other.

♡ Eziraphael’s Gifts: A History of Queer Faith and Longing, by Natasha Marie Johnson (Beacon Press, 2019). by actualbat "If Eziraphael has come to be known--in today's language--as the 'guardian angel of sad queers,' then it makes sense for him to have shown up more regularly in the past once that became a recognizable historical category." Natasha is really glad that she's given this talk enough times to be able to do it on autopilot, because those two funny-looking men in the back just made the most absurdly astonished faces. (Or: Not all historians ignore gay subtext, and not all immortal celestial beings have their shit together. Also, voodoo.)

harry potter

♡ Apple Slices and Cocoa by FeathersMcStrange Harry Potter is an abused kid with not an adult in the world on his side when Molly Weasley meets him. She decides right then and there that if nobody else is going to try and take care of this boy, then dammit, she's going to.

hello goodbye (’twas nice to know you) by tamerofdarkstars Draco Malfoy thinks he might know whose thoughts are scrawling themselves on his skin, but that's crazy. Impossible, even. It has to be a mistake. - Self-indulgent soulmate AU where the thoughts of your soulmate inscribe themselves on your skin in a shifting magic tattoo

♡ (m) Men Who Love Dragons Too Much by fencer_x, IDoodleForNoodles ‘Kill Albus Dumbledore’ is less a challenging task and more a suicide mission, so when Draco Malfoy is presented with the option to either dispatch his Headmaster or suffer an excruciating and most ignominious death of his own, along with his parents, he reaches deep into his black little Slytherin heart and manages to scrape together enough courage to go with option C instead: Spend Sixth Year secretly studying Animagecraft in the hopes he’ll turn into something sufficiently imposing even the Dark Lord himself won’t be able to keep Draco under his thumb. But just his luck, his Animagus form turns out to be a dragon, and a rather randy juvenile at that, intent on finding its mate: one Harry James Potter.

marvel

♡ Hard to Love by Gruoch If someone had told May that Iron Man himself would one day occasionally show up uninvited to her quiet little apartment and intrude into her quiet little life, she would have laughed them out of the room. But then her life seems chock-full of unpleasant surprises these days. Or, Tony Stark wants a bigger piece of the pie. May Parker learns to accept help. Peter just wants to keep the peace.

♡ Mr. Parker Declined to Comment by apisdn The events leading up to the embarrassing moments during the Doomed Field trip, and how Peter Parker accidentally ended up in charge of things. All the while the political machine moves on, the Avengers do not kiss and make up, and the future draws ever closer.

Another No-Good Field Trip by Muimor Peter Parker is not having a good day. AKA, Where Peter's decathlon team take a field trip to the Avengers Compound, Vision's a menace, and Peter really doesn't want to go.

naruto

(m) Resonance by flailinginlove After being hit by a missing-nin's jutsu, Kakashi's chakra is never the same again.

♡ (m) What Otter Nonsense by DarkAuroran “Is that an otter?” Iruka asks as large, sable eyes blink at him and a little whiskered nose twitches curiously. “That’s an otter. Why do you have an otter?” “I can’t tell you,” Kakashi says with a great amount of dignity for a man cradling a baby otter in armoured gloves. “Classified Jounin mission business.”

♡ Learning Curve by ishiryoku This is the life she chose: the path of the shinobi. It's either roll with the punches or be left behind by her team—and Sakura's not about to let them go off on their own.

♡ Roots and Wings by ideaoforder When Naruto is kidnapped from his orphanage at age three, Kakashi is so done with this shit. He gets Naruto back, tells the Hokage where to go (politely, because he isn't suicidal), and raises the boy himself. Or, you know, tries and is proud when there aren't too many explosions. Then everybody starts to copy him and it's a whole thing.

stranger things

In Which Starcourt Is a Pun by asexual-fandom-queen (writeordietrying) “Welcome to Scoops Ahoy. Do you know what you want?” Nancy and Jonathan visit the Starcourt Mall and corner Steve at his place of work with their feelings, but in an awkward, this-is-still-the-1980s-so-we-can't-be-too-direct kind of way.

♡ my father comes and he goes by mjolnirbreaker So, for Max, he doesn’t punch Billy Fucking Hargrove. He just sits there in sweltering heat and listens to the C’s being announced, and when parents cheer for their kids he tries not to think about how his parents are currently in Colorado.

♡ it’s a risk, it’s a gamble by nondz (pinkjook) “I think we should pretend to date,” Robin says. "What?" Steve answers.

one of those new wave boys by glorious_spoon It probably should feel more awkward than it does. (Or: Steve and Robin go on a road-trip, drink, listen to music, and look after each other. And yeah, maybe there's some cuddling involved too.)

wanna rec me something? head over to my ask or submission boxes! message me even, i don't really mind (:

and to all my fellow authors who may feel a little down about not getting onto rec lists, this is for you:

#fic rec hoard #bookshelf #fic recs #atla #bnha #good omens #hp #marvel #naruto #stranger things #the gaang #bakudeku #ineffable husbands #drarry #irondad #kakairu #stoncy #mostly gen stuff honestly

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revolutionary-pirate · 7 years

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The Shit John Paul Jones Had to Deal With

A share of all this was outside of his control but also know that he brought some of it on himself, probably could have avoided much of it if he wasn’t such an insecure, paranoid, isolationist, and was better at making friends instead of enemies, if he wasn’t so gullible, if he didn’t have such a fragile ego, wasn’t so quick to please the upper class, so desperate to have any sort of command, had better judgement of people’s characters, was capable of forgiving and forgetting, and didn’t complain so much buuuuut, yeah. Here we go (below the break because this is an incredibly long post followed by a reflective conclusion):

Insubordination by a member of the John’s crew who refused to listen to a gardener's son.

Getting sued by the above member after punishing him for said insubordination

Being jailed for something he didn’t do because the above died and rumor had it that it was because he never recovered from his punishment. Jones was cleared of his crime.

His ship, the John, was sold while he was getting evidence of his innocence

Mutiny of the Betsy’s crew over money he didn’t pay them upfront

Had to defend himself against attempted murder by a mutineer

Accidentally killing said mutineer in self-defense and being potentially charged with murder by the Local Court because the Admiralty Court wasn't sitting that time of year

Convinced to flee by “Friends” so that he could face an Admiralty Court when it returned with the plan to fund his stay in America until safely returning to face trial and be cleared

the money never came

they had no intention of letting him come back

He was now on his own in a new country and with a new name

When given a fleet of three ships for a mission in the Navy, they came severely understaffed.

Jones left the Providence behind and took the Alfred and the Hampden in order to have fully staffed ships.

The Hampden almost immediately rammed into a rock and ruined the ship because its captain didn’t know jack shit about navigation.

They had to go back and move the Hampden crew onto the Providence.

The Providence vanished in the night, abandoning the mission because winter

They tried to arrest Jones for Piracy when he returned to Boston after he forced deserters from the Navy back into service from a privateer ship, the captain of the ship he’d taken them tried to sue him.

Jones found out he was ranked 18th out of 24 on the Navy Officer seniority list. Jones despised that number because it was a reminder of his low social standing.

Jones was Demoted after two successful voyages.

John Hancock happily greeted Jones in Philadelphia and agreed to move up Jones’ commission from August 8th to May 10th to grant him more seniority.

Hancock proceeded to change it to October 10th and wrote the cursed number 18 in the margins. When Jones, enraged by this slight, protested and asked for his old commission back, Hancock claimed he lost it.

Now without a ship, months go by until Jones was told to embark on the Amphitrite which would take him to France where he would be given a Frigate to command, which was under construction in France.

The French captain of the Amphitrite refused to take him because the conditions set by Congress stated he and Jones share command and prize money.

Jones was given command of the Ranger to sail to France

When he got to her he found that she had been stripped and of all her ropes and sails because they had been given to the frigate Raleigh for extra stores because the Captain of the Raleigh had more seniority.

Jones’ appraising eye noticed that the Ranger been incorrectly fitted.

He got into a fight with the ship’s builder because he believed the man was favoring his privateer interests and made the Ranger a passing investment and that that was why the ship had been incorrectly fitted.

The first lieutenant and second officer, Thomas Simpson and Elijah Hall, of the Ranger regarded Jones as a Privileged Passenger instead of their captain.

When Jones arrived in France, he was informed that the Frigate would not be his. The Indien was being sold to the French instead of the Americans

Jones was caught in the middle of a feud between Arthur Lee and Silas Deane.

Lee refused to sign the commissioner’s orders for Jones because he suspected that the prize agent was in on Deane’s embezzling schemes.

Jones befriended Edward Bancroft, who was only pretending to be Jones’s friend because Bancroft was a spy and passing intel on Jones’s plans to the British. Jones never found out and considered Bancroft his best most intimate friend and only confidant.

Bancroft was probably the reason why Jones didn’t get the Indien because there was intel that the Dutch were going to sell the frigate to the Americans which led to the British pushing the Dutch not to do it.

Deane claimed that Jones’ plan for cutting off the British Fleet with the French one was his plan and was promptly rewarded for stealing said idea.

The French set out to carry out a plan inspired by Deane’s (Jones’ *cough*) but hesitated in setting out for so long that the British Fleet was gone by the time they arrived.

Jones’ plan to sneak among some merchant ships and cut them off from the Royal Navy was forced to be abandoned when his plan somehow leaked out by a spy. I wonder who that was.

Jones preened under French praise of him and his ship but they were only patronizing him as always. Jones didn’t notice.

Jones planned to burn ships in a British Port, kidnap an Earl, and then ransom him in exchange for American Seamen who were suffering in British prisons.

His men had no intention of following him.

Within a few days of leaving France, there was a Mutiny.

they planned to throw him overboard, make Simpson captain, and sail back to New England.

Jones was warned of this plan and was ready when they tried to jump him and held a pistol to the man’s head and quelled the rebellion.

Jones rarely slept after that out of concern that he might be killed in his sleep by a crew he couldn’t trust.

Jones had a plan - crew refused

Jones compromised and they begrudgingly agreed

Plan required timed precision

the man in charge of the key point of said plan was drunk and missed the window, ruining everything

Jones had another plan and needed volunteers

Simpson and Hall were too tiiiiiiiiiiirrreeedd......

It took him all day to convince thirty people to help him and time was running short to carry out the plan

Unwilling to give Simpson and Hall time to convince the volunteers to back out, he decided it had to be carried out that night despite the fact that his plans were already half failed from the beginning because of poor timing but he figured it would still work out

The two boats didn’t reach port until dawn because the men were rowing lazily.

He successfully accomplished his goal of spiking the cannons and called to his men to join him in torching all the ships in the harbor, but they were drunk as fuuuuck, having broken into the tavern and drank all the ale and whiskey instead of doing what they were told

they had planned on abandoning Jones and rowing back to the ship so at least they were still there.

Jones asked why they hadn’t burned any ships yet and they cited strange noises and the lantern went out :|

One of the men ran off at some point and started warning the townspeople of Jones’ plan and the whole town came to life to see what the commotion was about.

Upon returning to the ship, Simpson and Hall were disappointed that Jones hadn’t been left on shore as was planned.

Phase two of the plan: Kidnap the Earl of Selkirk

While successfully fooling the servants of the manner into fleeing by convincing them that he and his men were of the Royal Navy and looking to press people into Naval Service, they learned that the Earl wasn’t home so it was pointless.

The two officers with him refused to just go back empty handed and wanted to pillage the grounds and take all they could find that was valuable.

Jones could have let them do it and have his reputation tarnished forever when they ransacked the estate or he could refuse and be killed and the estate plundered anyway.

Jones allowed them to go and politely ask for the lady’s silver plate and take only what was given to them, behave like decent men, and then return immediately.

The crew starts whispering plans of another mutiny. Jones hasn’t slept in two days.

Jones put Simpson in charge of the newly captured and wounded HMS Drake as prize captain in an attempt to make amends.

Simpson cut the tow rope and disappeared into the mist.

Jones spent a day trying to catch him and when he did, placed him under arrest because they were only two days out from France and he knew the Crew wouldn’t try to kill him or set Simpson free when they were so close to shore.

Jones heard nothing from Franklin, Arthur Lee, or John Adams (the new commissioner replacing the corrupt Silas Deane) upon his return about his success in striking terror into the hearts of the British.

His request for money to clothe and feed his men was refused

It was weeks before anyone acknowledged his success or the fact that he’d captured an equally matched Royal Navy Ship like no one else had done in the entire navy yet, or for... anything he’d done, really.

Jones was once again offered command of the Frigate Indien that had been denied him previously.

He excitedly headed back to Brest, brimming with ideas, plans, and schemes but it was then reported to him that the Indien wouldn’t be seaworthy for another three months and that Jones wasn’t going to have it anyway because the Dutch still wouldn’t sell it to them

Jones’ mentor greeted him warmly in Brest and then informed him that he’d given command of the frigate he’d promised Jones to someone else.

The French officers who had been friendly with [read: patronizing] him suddenly started turning him a cold shoulder

Simpson, who he’d allowed to be freed from prison and had given command of the Ranger to, had been strutting about with his own account of the battle against the Drake and insinuated that Jones had been fired and that Simpson was the only reason why they’d captured the Drake at all.

This may have been one of the reasons French officers were now snubbing Jones.

Jones’ prizes were sold and he was given nothing for them and thus nothing with which to pay his men.

The Drake was plundered and everything on it sold and some of his own personal items had been thrown onto the beach and left broken on the shore.

The 200 British prisoners he’d taken to be used for the exchange of American prisoners weren’t being utilized because they were too lazy to press for a negotiation. This really upset Jones.

Jones, depressed and feeling like he was alone in the world as everyone turned their backs on him, asked Franklin for some of his Philosophy, which he needed in his desolate attitude... Franklin ignored him, too busy to humor Jones’ brooding nature and complaints about not having a ship to command anymore.

His mentor/friend, Chaumont, seemed to be ignoring him, too.

He wrote that he was “Agitated and torn to pieces” and was completely unable to sleep. He was hurt because he considered Franklin to be like a father figure to him and he was hurt by Chaumont’s silence as well, but mostly by Franklin’s silence.

Jones needed a fast ship because he intended “to go in harm’s way” but the ship he got was the opposite of fast. It was an old, slow, clumsy, merchant ship but it was the best he could do.

The French almost didn’t buy it for him, but they determined that the ship was too old to be of use for the French Navy and that they might as well give it to him to shut him up.

Someone accused Jones of trying to rape his wife, but Franklin investigated and revealed that it was the night of the Carnival, the assailant was wearing a mask, and that it was actually a chambermaid who had stolen one of Jones’ uniforms and pretending to be him.

Jones only had two backers in Congress speaking up for him all this time but now one of them was sick and frequently absent from Congress and the other had been diverted from handling maritime affairs and hadn’t written Jones in months.

Jones was given a super top secret mission of great consequence and was ordered to appear in Versailles where he would meet the Marquis de Lafayette who had a plan just like Jones’ plans.

Just as Lafayette and Jones were agreeing to be civil to each other after a near slip over the matter of command and they were settling on a plan of action to carry out together, the King of France decided that he just wanted to flat out stage a full-scale invasion of England and reassigned Lafayette, leaving Jones on his own again.

Jones was given a fleet of four other ships, one of them, the Alliance, was already having issues with Mutiny on its way to France and its captain, Landais, was a pain in the ass. The mutiny had only been quelled by Lafayette’s threats.

The night after the fleet of five ships set out, Jones’ Ship, the Bonhomme Richard, ended up on a collision course with the Alliance.

Landais somehow convinced himself that the Bonhomme Richard was in mutiny and, instead of giving orders that would have prevented a collision, had gone below deck to get pistols.

The two ships crashed and the Alliance was damaged.

Jones fired his first lieutenant who had been in charge of the Bonhomme Richard that night and began to doubt Landais.

The British crew members pressed into service out of the French jails on the Bonhomme Richard planned a mutiny.

Jones wasn’t about to take the same shit he’d taken on the Ranger again so the leader of the mutiny was sentenced to 250 lashes, killing him.

Jones went ashore for business and the landing party that had rowed Jones to shore was missing when he returned from his business. They had gone to get drunk at the nearest tavern.

Jones got a fishing crew to row him back to his ship and then ordered all of them men who’d ditched their post on shore be flogged with twelve lashes of the cat-o’-nine-tails each.

Jones’s fleet consisted of the Bonhomme Richard, Alliance, Pallas, Vengeance, and the Cerf as well as two privateers, the Monsieur and Grandville on their hunt for prizes.

The Monsieur’s captain was caught looting supplies from a prize and the ship promptly vanished into the night. The Grandville vanished a few days later.

When the Bonhomme Richard was becalmed and drifting towards the rocks, Jones sent out a group of men on a barge with a towline in order to pull the ship out of danger.

The men, Englishmen pressed into service and homesick Irishmen led by a man Jones had flogged for ditching him on the shore before, seized their chance and cut the line, rowing for shore.

A longboat was sent after them in pursuit and never returned.

Jones sent the Cerf towards the shore to get a better look at the coast to see if they could find them, the Cerf vanished as well.

Jones and Landais of the Alliance got into a huge fight. Jones was trying to make peace, Landais was refusing, pissed that Jones prevented him from chasing a prize.

Landais proceeded to ignore every order or signal given by Jones for the rest of the journey and would disappear and reappear on a whim. Every time Jones summoned Landais to the Bonhomme Richard, Landais refused and insisted that the next time they meet it would be on shore and in a duel to the death.

Jones planned to hold the port of Leith ransom

The amount of time that it took him to convince the captains of the Pallas and Vengeance to join him cost valuable time.

While he was trying to get the two captain to agree to carry out the plan, their ships had wandered off in search of prizes and he had to wait for the ships to reassemble. This cost valuable time.

Jones proposed attacking the Coal Ships, his two fellow captains refused because it would be dangerous and they didn’t like risking their lives. Without their help, it was an impossible scheme.

The Pallas and the Vengeance wandered off, the Alliance has been gone for over a week.

Miraculously, the whole fleet was assembled now and Jones signaled the fleet to form a line of battle and ordered the Bonhomme Richard to sail straight for the Serapis to engage in the battle that would immortalize the name of John Paul Jones.

All three of the other ships disobeyed orders and ditched him again.

The Pallas ended up being useful and taking down the smaller Countess of Scarborough but the Vengeance was off hiding and the Alliance was nowhere to be seen. The Bonhomme Richard and Serapis were locked in a vicious bloody battle.

9:15 PM The Alliance comes out of nowhere and attacks both the Serapis and the Bonhomme Richard, racking both ships with its canons and then loosing a broadside on the Bonhomme Richard before vanishing into the night.

The ship sinking and unable to discern if Jones was still alive and unable to find the first lieutenant, the Gunner’s mate decides he’s captain now and called for quarters. Someone goes to haul down the flag.

Jones is pissed. He orders the man who called for surrender be shot and charged after them himself. The guy runs and Jones shoots, but his pistol hadn’t been reloaded yet, so he just chucks the whole thing at the guy and strikes him in the back of the head, knocking him out cold.

10 PM, the Alliance shows up a second time and blasts both ships again.

Jones and Landais ran into each other in a tavern and Landais reminded Jones that they had a score to settle by the sword. Jones, who had never had a fencing lesson in his life, smartly maneuvered his way out of the challenge.

Jones’ people were pissed at him (rightfully so in my opinion) and his British prisoners were even more pissed at him.

Jones’s attempts at pushing for a prisoner exchange were going nowhere because no one cared enough to push for one.

The prisoners schemed to kill Jones but Jones thwarted the scheme

The man refitting the Serapis was doing a poor job of it

Twenty of his men deserted in a stolen boat (5 drowned before they could be recaptured)

A steady trickle of desertion continued thereafter

Jones continued petitioning the French Ambassador to pay, clothe, and feed his men (which is why they were ditching him. They were getting none of the above) And the bread that they were getting was literally rotten.

Jones was informed that the French had taken the Serapis, Pallas, and Vengence along with all the prizes he’d captured and placed them under their own flag. Jones was ordered to take his crew and transfer to the Alliance.

The Dutch, who had welcomed Jones as a Hero and lavished him in praises, were pressured to stay neutral between France and England, so they turned on Jones and demanded he leave their port with increasingly insolent letters that Jones ignored until he was ready to leave and deemed it safe because the British were literally lying in wait for him outside neutral waters.

The Alliance, under Landais, had fallen into disrepair and was just filthy. The ship was infested with rats, the sails and rigging were in ragged shape and would fall apart in the event of strong winds and Jones was livid. He hated a dirty ship and a ship in disrepair was dangerous.

Jones wanted to return to France with a string of prizes to show off, but His crew refused because they still hadn’t been paid yet for their work and weren’t properly clothed for the winter.

One day, the crew refused to work until they were paid some part of what was due to them. Jones had his officers force the men on deck with swords and then promised them that when he got to L’Orient he would get them their prize money. He reminded them that he hadn’t paid yet either and then allowed them a double round of grog. The people happily went about their duties the next day.

Jones’s first lieutenant, who had come from Landais’ crew, was a drunkard. All of the Alliance’s officers and the Bonhomme Richard’s officers now operating on the same crew feuded constantly over when the Alliance had loosed their canons on the Bonhomme Richard during the Battle of Flamborough Head.

Upon arrival in France, Jones set about procuring the money he promised his crew but hit a lot of snags. (It would take literally 70 years before the money was ultimately paid to the crew’s descendants.) Why?

Congress didn’t give a shit about the Navy

Chaumont, a provider/paymaster for the American cause in France was going bankrupt

Jones, paranoid as he was, was convinced that Chaumont and the French government were conspiring against him

Upon arrival in France, they also found that the Serapis was being dismantled and was probably going to be sold for pittance, meaning they weren’t going to get any prize money for its capture.

He pressed the French to pay his men and tried to propose a new plan to raid England, but he wasn’t getting anywhere. He started to drag his feet because he didn’t want to go back without the money and chose to dwaddle as he swam amongst all the praise he was being lavished with in Parisian society over his fame and success and then wandered his way back to L’Orient.

He had another run-in with Landais when he arrived in L’Orient 6 weeks after he’d left it. Landais spotted Jones and started chasing him through the streets waving his sword about and exclaiming that he was going to kill him but Jones never learned to fence and was not keen on dying.

Landais was scheming with the crew of the Alliance while Jones was prancing about in Paris and simultaneously dragging his feet.

Seventeen of the officers and mates of the Alliance petitioned to replace Jones with Landais while he was gone.

The Alliance didn’t have room to carry all of the uniforms and weapons that he was ordered to bring back for the Continental Army because special passenger Arthur Lee was not a light traveler and all his shit took up most of the storage space on the ship.

While Jones was trying to procure a second ship to transport the rest of the supplies, Landais commandeered the Alliance, claiming it was on orders from Congress thanks to Arthur Lee’s convincing him that it was his right. Landais booted all of Jones’ loyal officers and chained up the rest of the seamen who were still loyal to Jones.

France, with orders not to let Landais leave the port, set up a massive blockade consisting of a boom drawn across the channel, all of the port’s guns trained on the Alliance, launchers filled with soldiers armed and prepared to board the ship and take it over, and three or more warships deployed to fire upon the Alliance or ram into her to stop her while Jones was gone getting proof the Alliance was His.

Jones upon seeing this at his return, chose to let the Alliance and Landais go in order to prevent France and America from fighting each other it even though he knew Landais was a coward and Jones probably could have just taken back the ship easily enough thanks to that show of force. One could guess he probably was like “Good Riddance. Take the fucking ship and leave. I hope that I never have to see your face again.”

One of Jones’ officers found Jones’ watch, which Jones had accidentally left behind after sleeping with a prostitute, when the officer presumedly slept with the same woman. He and another officer decided to have some fun with Jones and pawned it off, leading to Jones having to buy a case of good wine in order to get it back.

Jones’ still continuing efforts to get money for his crew in return for their prizes were now a tangled diplomatic issue that wasn’t going to be smoothing over anytime soon (like I said, 70 fucking years).

King Louis’ ministers were flaky about their promises to continue supporting Jones’ future expeditions and Jones didn’t want to leave without a promise, but it probably wasn’t going to happen so he had to.

The stores he was carrying for the Continental Army were ruined in a massive storm that nearly capsized the Ariel and left the ship without any masts or sails and they had to create makeshift ones just to limp back to port. He had to wait for the ship to be fixed and looked for a new ship that might be able to let them leave sooner in the meantime.

Franklin and the French officials were completely ignoring him and entirely unsympathetic of his problems by this point and were not helping him get a ship.

The Englishmen pressed into service by the French from the French Jails tried to mutiny on the Ariel’s voyage to America.

Jones’ friends (and everyone else really) were pissed and disappointed at how long it took for the supplies to reach America because they were a year late and not at all what had been promised. Jones was put on trial in a Court of Inquiry to find out what went wrong.

Number 1 on the Navy Seniority List, James Nicholson, heard rumors that Jones was lobbying for the rank of Admiral of the Continental Navy, which was a position yet to be awarded by Congress.

Nicholson ran a smear campaign against Jones and spoke directly to all of Congress to dissuade them from promoting Jones.

Congress decided that they weren’t about to get in the middle of a fight between captains and denied Jones the rank.

Instead of the rank of Admiral, Congress decided to award Jones with the command of the America, the first full blown battleship constructed for the American Navy and also pretty much the only ship left in the American Navy fleet, the rest having been captured, burned, or sunk largely in part to their captains’ incompetence. The Navy only had two ships left.

Jones went out to see the construction of the America and was satisfied and impressed with what he saw so far, but there were no supplies or builders to finish it. The man building it was also, to Jones’ chagrin, the same guy who had shabbily built the Ranger and neither of them had forgotten their differences.

The building was slow going.

Yorktown passed them by while still waiting for workers to complete the America. Jones was upset he wasn’t able to help Lafayette cut off the British Fleet with the French Fleet, which was, in part, using his plan that had been stolen from him by Deane years prior.

Jones received rumors that the British were planning on burning the America where she sat in the shipyard before she could be finished and posted a guard to keep watch, taking the watch himself every three nights.

The Magnifique, a French ship, struck a hidden rock ledge and wrecked upon entry to the Boston Harbor and Congress, bankrupt and unable to pay for the America’s completion (Jones had been paying for it out of pocket and trying to fund raise for it himself this whole time), decided that they were going to get out of finishing it by giving it to the French as thanks for their help to replace the one they just wrecked.

Jones was offered the Indien again. Y’know, the ship that had been offered to him and taken away from him twice already? Yeah, that one. It was sitting in the Philidelphia harbor and Congress was going to give it to Jones with orders to attack Bermuda.

The ship, which had been chartered to a South Carolinian, Alexander Gillon, had been used to accomplish nothing for the Rebel cause since it was built. Gillon suddenly stole away on the ship before they could give it away and he was soon captured by a much weaker British force and the ship was lost to them entirely.

Jones decided he might learn a thing or two about Fleet warfare and navigation or seamanship from the French and got permission to sign on as a volunteer and a pilot to help navigate the fleet through the Caribbean since he was familiar with the waters from his old merchant days.

They had nothing to teach him because they were a complete disaster and embarrassment and by the time they got things sorted out, the war was over.

Jones, still not done, tried to convince Congress of the importance of the Navy and planning how one might be properly made and employed, and how officers might be trained, ships be built, and on and on and on

Congress wanted nothing to do with a Navy and sold all of their ships and ignored Jones.

Jones pushed for Congress to fight the Barbary Pirates, which he predicted would soon be plaguing the American coast. Congress didn’t pay attention to him or his pleas to do it to rescue the prisoners held by the Barbary Pirates. (The Pirates would eventually prove to be a massive problem for America like Jones predicted.)

Congress eventually gave Jones a gold medal but no ship or fleet, just permission to get a commission from the French, which he’d already tried and failed to do.

Landais again saw Jones on the streets of New York while Jones was chatting with someone there and Landais started yelling obscenities at Jones from across the street and demanding a duel, which Jones managed to narrowly avoid again.

Jones, now on loan to Catherine the Great in her war against the Turks in 1787 as a rear admiral, was openly despised by the Captain of the ship he was to take over and found the man conspiring against him with the other captains that would be under his command the moment he arrived on the ship, Vladimir, for the first time.

The other rear-admirals were completely incapable of strategy or tactics in naval warfare and jokes of soldiers, but they refused to listen to Jones.

Jones tried to be civil and patient with them and held a council of war, which completely broke down because they didn’t want to plan things out like Jones was forcing them to do.

They at least formed together at least some sort of the beginnings of a plan to carry out before the meeting was broken up by Alexiano, the captain of the Vladimir.

Because Jones didn’t speak a lick of Russian, he had trouble conveying his orders and couldn’t 100% trust that they’d be conveyed correctly but didn’t have any alternatives.

Jones staged a successful plan that resulted in Russian victory against the Turks in their first battle. Jones followed Franklin’s advice and paid credit where credit was due.

His fellow Rear Admiral, Nassau-Siegen, who had put on a pathetic display at the battle and hid his ship behind Jones and the Vladimir, claimed the entire plan was his and that Jones had been the one who was timid and hanging back from the battle and that he deserved all the glory, not Jones.

Admiral Potemkin, who was already on Nassau-Siegen’s side, took little convincing to believe that and attributed the entire victory to his crony and reported as such back to Catherine. Potemkin and Nassau-Siegen made sure everyone in Europe knew their version of the story and started smearing Jones’ reputation.

Everyone started watching Jones and were just waiting for him to fuck up and it really started getting to him, feeling like there were eyes on him at all times.

Jones tried to set the record straight about the battle and his part in it, but no one was listening to him.

A second battle took place and Jones’s plan worked again. Jones ordered the Vladimir towards the Turkish ships that had run aground on the sandbanks, hoping to take the Turkish Flagship as a prize.

The Vladimir suddenly dropped anchor “within pistol shot” on order from Alexiano, the captain of the Vladimir that had been conspiring against him from the beginning. Alexiano claims it was to prevent them from running aground. Jones called bullshit. Jones turned to find Nassau-Siegen swooping in to take them for himself now that the enemy was aground and they attacked and captured the ship.

Someone retrieved the flag and went to present it to Jones, but Nassau-Siegen walked up and snatched it out of the guy’s hands as he was in the process of handing it to Jones so that he could be the one to present the flag, not Jones.

Nassau-Siegen accused Jones of being timid and complained that he was always having to protect Jones’ ships and boasted about having been the one to take the two ships the previous day and Jones dryly remarked that it’s not difficult to take a ship that’s run around. This made the other man furious.

Nassau-Siegen broke off to do what he wanted and ignored Jones’s advice. Jones suggested that he take the Turkish ships to make them into useful prizes, Nassau-Siegen did the opposite. He burned them.

Jones watched in horror as people captured by pirates, sold into slavery, and then forced to man the Turkish fleet were burned alive, screaming for mercy. More than 2,000 men were burned death in Nassau-Siegen’s attack, which Nassau described as “Beautiful.”

The second battle against the Turks was another victory and Nassau-Siegen took all the credit for it as usual and continued to smear Jones’ character. Admiral Potemkin was thrilled and lavished all kinds of rewards upon Nassau-Siegen and his officers and simply gave Jones a minor medal and have his officers nothing.

Jones was cut out of the squadron while Nassau-Siegen got the orders to attack the Turks. This wouldn’t stop Jones.

Jones, having taken two ships with a small squadron in a small boat at this point, intended to tow the Turkish Flagship back to the Vladimir as a prize.

A junior officer cut the anchor before Jones was ready and the galley began to drift. They tried to find rope to anchor the galley to a frigate, but nothing was long enough. He sent another officer in a small boat to the Vladamir to get rope and an anchor and cast off to claim another prize.

A few minutes later he finds that the Turkish Flagship he’d taken was now on fire. It had been set aflame by Alexiano, who had sent out a small boat to burn the ship so that Jones couldn’t take credit for capturing it. Jones was forced to watch and listen to their screams as more Turkish slaves were burned alive.

Admiral Potemkin came out to the front lines and joined them, assigning Jones ridiculous tasks that were constantly ruined by losing the element of surprise thanks to weather or a blunder from his men, and was running Jones completely ragged with them.

Jones had retreated from the latest mission because he knew that, without the element of surprise, he’d be sailing his men into a slaughter. The Turks had scores of ships. Potemkin accused Jones of negligence and of lacking in courage and insinuated that he was shy in battle. Jones was pissed. He finally snapped. He was fed up.

Jones was given command of the Northern Fleet. But it was winter. In the Baltic. No ship was going anywhere. Everything was frozen. And that right there was the point. It got Jones out of the way.

All of Jones’ letters abroad were being intercepted by the Russian Secret Police and prevented from getting out, which was why no one had been communicating with him at all the entire time he was in Russia.

Everyone who spoke English in St. Petersburg was British and absolutely despised him (Jones was literally Britain’s most wanted man). And because Jones didn’t speak any Russian, He was completely isolated in Russia and incredibly depressed again.

Jones was accused of raping a 10-year old German girl. In Russia, if you got convicted of Rape you were beheaded.

Jones hired a lawyer to defend him but the lawyer quit the case saying that the Russian government had ordered him not to meddle. Jones lost hope.

Jones almost killed himself. The French Ambassador, Comte de Segur, went to Jones’ apartment and found Jones sitting there with his pistols on the table in front of him. Jones had looked up at his only ally in Russia, broken, and said: “I would have faced death a thousand times, but today I desire it.” Segur talked him down, pleaded for him not to lose hope, and started pulling his diplomatic strings to bring the real story to light.

The girl’s story unraveled and it was revealed she was lying and her mother then admitted that a decorated official had paid her to come up with the sordid tale and to accuse Jones of doing such an abhorrent thing to her daughter.

Jones was ostracized by society anyway and Catherine tossed Jones aside, sending him out on paid leave for two years with no intention of actually inviting him to come back. The paid leave was just to keep him from turning around and joining the Swedish Navy against her. He left Russia in 1789, shunned and disgraced.

Jones was nearly killed by a Mob in Britain when he’d arrived there to confront Bancroft, who was no longer his friend and was indebted to Jones after he’d coerced Jones into a failed business venture years prior. The mob was determined to kill the famous “Pirate Paul Jones”

When he went to Paris, the French Revolution was beginning. Lafayette brushed him off, he was turned away at the door of a ball, and all the places he used to frequent were now closed.

The new American Minister in Paris, Gouverneur Morris, hated Jones and found him incredibly annoying and ignored him in the hopes that he would go away.

Jones wasn’t even spared after he had died in 1792, Gouverneur Morris had tried to just dump Jones’s body in some cheap grave somewhere and be done with him so that he didn’t have to waste public funds on his funeral.

Landais is like a stereotypical reoccurring cartoon villain and it gives me endless amusement. On a serious note, however, I’ll conclude with this: Jones had a shitty lot in life and he complained about it endlessly, which annoyed pretty much everyone. He made enemies very easily and was unable to forgive and forget. He was paranoid of his crew and was a perpetual insomniac, going for days at a time without sleep out of fear someone would kill him in the night or in anticipation of what was to come, and he would pace the quarterdeck constantly. Because he isolated himself, it was hard for his crew to even attempt to get attached or become loyal to him. Most were only loyal after seeing him in battle, navigating a storm, or in any other life-threatening situation in general, where he could be giddy, excited, sharp-witted, light-humored, and brilliant. His crews loved a Jones in battle. But a Jones any other time was hard to stomach because of his brooding, discontent, and paranoia.

Jones had an endless string of lovers, never getting too attached to any one of them for too long. He stopped trying to even make friends at one point and when a lady pointed out his preference for “love to friendship” Jones had responded, “Sad experience generally shows that where we expect to find a friend, we have only been treacherously deluded by false appearances.” He’d been fooled far too many times by people pretending to be his friend that he was done making them - which only perpetuated his downward spiral of depression and paranoia.

It wasn’t all bad, though. There were a lot of ups and downs, usually paired and in equal magnitudes. Most significantly, however, there was a gap of time in that list of shit that Jones considered to be the happiest time of his life spent with the best crew he’d ever have. He had a first mate, John Rathbun, who balanced Jones’ temperament perfectly. He could smooth out all of Jones’ rough edges, act as the perfect buffer between him and his crew, and was able to keep Jones calm and sensible. Together, they were able to run a tight ship with a loyal and happy crew, but, it didn’t last. He lost his valued first mate when he placed him in charge of a prize ship which got captured by the British on their way back to port and Rathbun was taken prisoner. Jones never heard from or saw Rathbun again. Other rival captains knew that Jones’ previous success had only come about because of Rathbun and that he owed Rathbun everything but he pressed on. Jones was a hard Captain to like and Jones knew that. Jones only had one other first mate who ever came close to being able to balance Jones the way that Rathbun had...

Jones was incredibly self-aware of his faults and knew that he had to be better and tried to be better but he could not, for the life of him, overcome them. He would change for a time, take people’s advice, try his best to reign himself in and be less self-absorbed, swallow his pride, give credit where credit was due, pay more attention to his crew and their needs, make less enemies, spend more time with the crew and get to know them, forge bonds with his officers and his men, stop dilly-dallying around in high society while his men shivered penniless in the cold, etc etc etc. He made efforts in all of those areas and succeeded for a time, but never permanently. He would always reach the breaking point of his patience and snap somewhere along the line. Something always happened and he’d revert back to his defensive state, easily wounded, brooding, paranoid, and sensitive. But he tried.

He was his own worst enemy. The most tragic thing out of all of this is that it seems like no one ever cared about him enough to stick around and he was shunned by everyone everywhere eventually. Great Britain wanted to see him hang, the Barbary Pirates had a bounty on his head, Russia had humiliated and ostracized him, America had dismissed/ignored/and abandoned him and destroyed what was left of their Navy, France had patronized him, used him, and then turned a cold shoulder towards him. When they buried Jones in an obscure cemetery in Paris, it was in a plain casket with a lead lining amongst a small group of people who had saved his corpse from simply being tossed somewhere unknown. The casket was lined with lead so that it would last longer and because they hoped that one day there would be a generation of Americans who would appreciate Jones, the things he did, and the vision that he had and would one day come to claim him and bring him home... but that didn’t happen until 1905.

[main source: John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy by Evan Thomas]

#John Paul Jones #Continental Navy #Long Post #The Shit List #holy shit it's 5:30 am no wonder i'm tired #jesus christ this is long #i can't believe there was 7.5k words worth of Shit Jones had to deal with #i didn't even talk about the times weather got in his way #John Paul Jones is a tragic figure #i cried making this list #if there is any part of this you'd like me to elaborate on send me an ask #And i'll explain #considering the fact that this is literally just the negative side of everything #and vaguely explained at times #it's just a skeleton of events really

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howtohero · 5 years

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Being a Mentor

Man, you got old. After fighting crime for so many years. After thwarting dozens of alien invasions and three or four deep sea ones, you’ve got a lot of experience behind you. A lot of weird stories to tell. You’ve somehow managed to survive countless cosmic reboots and interdimensional crises and you’ve experienced everything at least twice due to time travel mishaps. Sure you may not have been active throughout all that time. You spent a stint in limbo, we’ve all been there. You were stuck as a stapler for twelve years, less of us have been there but it’s not unheard of. And now you’re old. You’re an old futty-dutty. You never managed to get around to finding the fountain of youth or killing off death like you’d always planned to do eventually. You just aged. You’ve aged so much that maybe you can’t fight as many crimes anymore. Sure you can fight the easy ones. Your mail fraud or your non-elaborate heists. Anybody can fight those. But an elaborate heist? That’s simply not in your wheel house anymore. Don’t even get me started on dance heists. It’s been a loooong time since you were fit enough to foil a dance heist, But worry not, you’re not entirely useless yet. You’ve got decades, centuries, millennia possibly of useful experience. You’ve got tons of wisdom to impart. Advice to offer. It’s time for you to become a mentor.

The first thing you’re going to need to do is to get real crotchety. You can’t be a good superhero mentor if you’re not grumpy about everything and nostalgic for the old ways. Now I know what you’re thinking because I’ve been reading your mind since day one: “But Zach, do we want to play into and perpetuate these negative mentor stereotypes?” And to that I say, “Listen, being all crotchety is like 90% of the fun in being a mentor.” So start practicing. Now, when I practice being crotchety I find that it’s best to go too big and then to whittle yourself down to a manageable level of crotchetiness. Start wagging your clenched fist at children who step on any patch of grass, regardless of whether or not it’s on your own lawn. Frown at the sky no matter the weather. Even if it’s a really nice day out and you’re actually happy to be strolling through town enjoying the clear blue skies. Anytime anybody greets you respond with a grunt and a spit at their feet. This won’t make you any friends, but in your quest to be the very best superhero mentor there ever was, you’re going to need to make a few sacrifices.

When you’ve got your old grumpy mentor personality down you can begin filling in the rest of the blanks. As a mentor you need three things: 1. A teaching style. 2. Students. 3. Wise sayings. Though you can pretty easily fake two or three of those things in a pinch.

Teaching Style As with all things super, when you teach young heroes you need to do it with style. There are lots of different methods you can use. There’s the sink or swim method, where you toss your disciples into a pool filled with acid sharks or screaming leeches and they need to decide which has a higher chance of survival: swimming to the side and climbing out or sinking to the bottom and blasting out that way. You can teach through example, and lead your students into battle so they can watch what you do and learn from you that way. Though remember that your goal is always to craft your students into better heroes than even you ever were, and if you’re physically there with them in battle it’s going to make you look bad and I don’t know if your ego is ready for that. There’s the eye in the sky method, where your students go into battle sporting communicators in their ears that you use to advise them in real time. There’s the classroom method, where you don’t even let them go outside until you’re confident they’ve learned everything there is to being a superhero. This method means you’ll have to draw up a lesson plan and devise a curriculum that outlines everything they need to know about being a superhero. Hmmm, if only there was someone out there who had already written a comprehensive guide to all things superheroic. HMMMMM I WONDER IF SUCH A THING EXISTS HMMMM.

My personal favorite method of mentoring is the “what if?” method. In this method you develop incredibly specialized lessons and teach your students how to successfully navigate incredibly specific situations. Teach your students what to do in the event that while they’re fighting a bad guy the roof of the building they’re in collapses and dozens of live alligators fall into the room. Make sure these kids are prepared for the eventuality that it starts raining giant pancakes. Prep them for how to respond to a giant polar bear eating the sky. This kind of teaching isn’t always useful to the young would-be heroes but when it is oh boy, that’s gonna make you look awesome.

Of course if you’re not very interested in putting any forethought into this endeavor (and really, who wants to put forethought into things) then you can just wing it. Or start taking credit for things you didn’t plan. For example, if your pupils run up against DRUGGOOO!!!! (that’s how he spells his name, exclamation marks and all) the super titan who powers himself up by injecting highly suspect drugs directly into skull and he ends up being defeated by pumping too much of his highly suspect drug directly into his skull then you can make a sly remark that makes your students think that you engineered the whole thing in order to teach them the very special episode lesson of not using drugs. Or if one of your apprentices somehow manages to land two dates to the teenage superhero prom which I’m fairly confident is a thing and then has to spend the night running back and forth in between two rooms trying to juggle these two dates only for everything to fall apart when the unexpected happens, the two people enter the same room, then you can pass the whole thing off as an elaborate lesson you put together on following through on your commitments.

Students You can’t be a mentor if you don’t have anybody to mentor. (You do remember writing that you could fake any of these things in a pinch don’t you?) So you need to put up some flyers: “Experienced superhero looking to give back to the community by encouraging the local youths to put on a mask and finally do something about that cult that’s been sacrificing people to the large duck in the pond. You know the one. The really large duck from the pond. I don’t know how to explain it any more clearly. Picture a duck and then like, enlarge the image in your mind. Look, if you don’t know what I’m talking about just go down to the pond. The largest duck is the duck I am referring to here. If you or your youths are interested call this number.” In no time at all young people from all over will be calling you up trying to either get into your class or sell you things you don’t need. If you don’t get so many calls then you can’t really be picky about who you mentor. Unless you only want to mentor one person. That’s perfectly valid. If you’re a coward. What are you afraid of children? You’ll be fine. Just make sure you’re grumpy enough like we discussed. This means that you might end up with some real losers but I’m sure you’ve got what it takes to whip them into shape. (And if not the sink or swim method should take care of them pretty quickly and then it’s not your problem anymore!)

If you get a lot of calls though then you can stand to be a bit more picky. I’d recommend accepting people who don’t have powers first. I know this might sound surprising. I know you’re thinking that surely powered people would be easier to craft into professional superheroes but once again you’re wrong and this is why you don’t have a blog. People with powers already think that they know everything there is to know about being a superhero. Simply by virtue of being able to pick up a bus or turn into a giant tarantula. They’re not interested in listening to anything that you have to say and they’re going to be a real pain to teach. Plus, since they’re obviously not pros, they might trash your hideout with their new powers accidentally. So start with non-powered children. Then, once you get the hang of that, you can move on to more difficult clients.

In order to avoid overextending yourself by mentoring so many young heroes at once, organize these youngsters into a cohesive team that you’ll act as a sort of den mother or camp counselor to. You’ll have less one on one time with each individual student, but you will be able to bring in more money by charging more students. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what this is really all about.

If you’re not interested in talking to any young people you can always just fake having students. (Ha see!) Just make sure you loudly complain about how difficult and annoying all your invisible students are at the next elderly superhero mahjong game which has got to be a thing. Make up lots of stories about your students knocking over the giant loose change you keep in your hideout or how they keep getting kidnapped by your enemies. Point at other superheroes on the news and say “I taught them everything they know.” If the hero ever learns about this and denies it you can just say “Bah! These young whippersnapping turbo-revving punks are just so ungrateful these days” and bask in the nods and “here heres!” you’ll no doubt receive from your elderly colleagues.

Wise Sayings Just crack some fortune cookies every morning and you’re good to go. That’s it. (Talk about platitudes with attitude!)

Once you’ve got all this stuff down cold you’ll be ready to move onto the next phase of your superhero lifecycle. So angrily yell at trees, familiarize yourself with all the stellar advice we’ve compiled here, print out some flyers, order takeout, and you’re good to go. Happy mentoring!

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