#I’m trying to do GM for hire stuff but it’s still early in the process and I feel unsure of myself

[gwendolinechristie]

I need to make like $600 more a month in a way that doesn’t make me want to die.

[doktorpeace]

🖊 please introduce us to Erato, I know they're in a masks campaign but I have no idea what else

Oh, gosh, I feel like I talk about them too much as is but I can’t say I’m not glad to have the excuse. This is gonna be really long cause tbh I’m just gonna dump like, a bunch of their lore lmao.

Erato is my Masks: A New Generation character in a campaign being played alongside @twerkyvulture (As Amanda ‘Megafauna’ Ghorbani, The Transformed) @draayder (as Josephine ‘Rattlesnake’ Short, The Reformed) @spitblaze (as Les ‘Void’ Hawking, The Doomed) @heedra (as Enid ‘Frag Beetle’ Day, The Scion) and @skarchomp (as Parker ‘Cobalt’ Andrews, The Legacy) with @dykeceratops as our GM. The current arc features @mechanicalriddle as Zoe, The Nova as a guest member. Here’s a group shot done by @tredlocity. Clockwise from the top left: Cobalt in blue, Erato in the track suit, Les in the cloak, Zoe with the mismatched eyes, Enid’s the big robot, Amanda’s got the scales and claws, and Josephine’s got the mask and tonfa.

To get back to Erato specifically though they’re an Anti Metahuman/Metahuman Suppression Weapon created by the in universe tech group Wright Industries, founded by Ingrid Day, Enid’s mom. They’re generally stronger, faster, and more durable than humans and can copy the superpowers of others for 5-10 minutes by touching them thanks to what is basically a meta-stem cell transplant interacting with other parts of their systems. (Also, I 100% swear to god that I did not consider ‘Robot Hero Who Copies The Powers Of Others’ is literally fucking Mega Man despite loving Mega Man a ton until after I had hashed out the concept with my GM’s assistance. Only once Abby said ‘oh like mega man’ I was like ‘wait, shit’.) I’ll tell you some about them as a person before unloading their history onto you, lol. Being an android built for combat and kept in an underground research lab, kept on a rigid schedule, constantly taking tests, physical, mental, written, oral, ethical, etc. etc. etc. and under constant supervision Erato lacked for real interactive experience before the campaign started only really ever getting to takl with authority figures and their sisters. They were very passive and observational, owing in part to their power set requiring a lot of adaptation to make the most of. They’re naive and very bad at exercising discretion in decision making, sometimes they overstep boundaries when talking with people without meaning to, and they’re really emotional! They have trouble dealing with strong emotions cause they haven’t managed to discover coping mechanisms that work well for them, they tend to get angry kind of easily and need time to blow off steam. But they’re also very genuine, honest, and well meaning. They are almost never mean, rude, or snippy, they do their best to do well by others, and have a strong sense of justice paired with a deep distrust and dislike of the current legal system in universe. This is in part due to the conditions of their creation (and in part because the intent behind it was kind of right!) and in part due to Enid’s life being threatened by a representative of the state while they and their teammates were in jail after being arrested following a huge brawl with an anti-methuman terrorist group. They’re also very willing to put forth the effort to improve as a person and to mend relationship wounds, almost always apologizing first to Enid when they fight and genuinely trying to work in advice and feedback they get from others, which they often get from Les and Parker. They’re also relatively educated, from the tests of their creators, from home and public schooling, from personal research, but that doesn’t undo their naivety. They also just straight up lack some very basic and/or common sense knowledge. Like, they don’t know what a bear is. Why would you teach a battle android working in a densely populated, extremely built up city about wild animals? All in all they’re kind of inexperienced and immature and make mistakes a lot but they’re (usually) very willing to admit their mistakes and to try and improve and get better. They genuinely and truly want what’s best for others and are learning to value them self as much as their teammates. They’ve also taken it upon them self to start doing humanitarian work in their free time over the summer. In a fight Erato is adaptive and quick witted but tends to put themself in more danger than is necessary. They also sometimes use more extreme force than the others believe is called for, but after the first time they did they and Parker had a real heart to heart about it, Les helped Erato learn and practice some coping, centering, behaviors they could do even under pressure and Erato did their best to adapt. That said they Fucking Hate The Keeper So God Damned Much Because Of How Much Suffering He’s Caused Their Friends And How Much Danger He Presents And Would Kill Him With No Remorse. So they don’t intend to apologize for ripping his arms off whatsoever. They and their sisters, collectively known as The Muse Units, were made to work as a group and as a proof of concept that atomized units could replace traditional police for use against metahuman criminals and to slowly phase out The Registry, the legal department which handles general metahuman based laws. If successful the units could be mass produced and improved upon, rapidly replacing current, error prone, law enforcement. At the time of their development, between late 1999 for blueprint drafting and until mid 2002 when the project was shut down, they were the cutting edge for AI development aided in no small part by Ingrid’s technokinetic powers allowing her to make advancements few others could. (As a note Erato’s body was finished being built in early 2001 but their unique personhood didn’t really come to fruition until February 18th, 2002, so that’s what I consider their ‘birthday’.) Ultimately, however, while a few of the Muses excelled some did not perform to expectations, the project fell behind schedule, investors lost interest, and a minor scandal involving a casualty happened, resulting in the project being shut down. The Muses were placed in indefinite storage, the data gained from their short existence used on other projects such and some of the tech advancements used to inform future decisions by the company. And it would have stayed that way, if not for the fact that in 2018 Ingrid Day was revealed to be The Locust in a conflict where Enid tried to defend her against a militia group who had been hired to take her down, being shot and presumably killed in the process. As The Locust she had been terrorizing Boston for over a decade trying to take it over and being involved in the deaths of over 70 people. (Which irl btw would make her like, the 8th most prolific confirmed serial killer of all time, Yikes!) Wright Industries, desperately needing to prove their hard stance against metahuman criminals and needing a PR stunt to deflect from their connection to their former CEO re-awakened Erato. They weren’t the most powerful or best performing of the Muses, but they were above average, obedient, and had an easy enough to monitor and control power set with little risk for property damage to boot, the perfect choice. Erato then took to the streets of Boston acting basically as a vigilante, following orders, stopping minor crimes, and sometimes working alongside the police. They attracted the attention of The Viceroy, a semi-retired 56 year old hero who never registered in spite of it being compulsory legally. They both have the ability to copy the powers of others, though he can just by sight, and he has body elasticity too. These make him durable and extremely adaptable, add to that his detective skills and he’s something of a local Boston legend. He took them in as his Protégé. Though they remained distant for quite some time with Erato still coming and going between his place and Wright Industries, having promised not to reveal his assistance to the doctors who Erato reported their work to. It was this way for about a year and a half before the campaign started and Erato began living with Viceroy full time, no longer wanting to go back to Wright Industries as they began to think more independently and consider what they wanted for them self more. During this time Erato had chance encounters with each of the other characters a few times as they also did minor vigilante work, peaking with a villain who is a member of Superhuman, an extremist pro-metahuman group, attacked the school that Josephine, Les, and Amanda all attend. After that incident Erato was prompted by Viceroy to contact each of these other young potential heroes to form a team, The Upstarts. Additionally during this time Viceroy took in Enid who had been abandoned by her biological father and had been getting bounced around foster care. Over time the three of them have become kind of a weird family, living in a warehouse full of cats with a couple of bedrooms grafted on and an ultra secret basement lair underneath full of advanced stuff Viceroy makes. Though Erato and Enid have definitely had their ups and down, more recently in the story (and we’ve been doing this campaign for well over a year now) they’ve been putting in serious effort to better their relationship and be good adoptive siblings to one another. I love their relationship a lot, they’re good kids.

That gets us up to the start of the campaign but hoo boy, I’ve been writing for like, an hour now. Since then Erato’s helped take down a nazi-aligned terrorist organization, they’ve got a boyfriend in their teammate, Les, and they’ve made friends outside of their core group of teammates. They’ve also enrolled in school doing well on some classes and poorly in others, namely learning how to Code and Woodworking. Currently they’re at a sleep away summer camp for superpowered kids called Camp Justice, about 10 miles outside of Boston. They really, really hate it there. Constant supervision, being made to do tests, things scheduled out against their will, inability to leave the area? Yeah that certainly reminds them of something. The difference between it and school, which does share these features, is they wanted to go to school. They very much Did Not want to go to camp. As a result they’re finally going to have to start facing the trauma they’ve got from their origin and also actually tell the others other than Les and Amanda about their sisters. Whiiiiich...Enid saw one of them disassembled and showed off in parts at a school science fair display set up by Wright Industries to gauge interest in students. And she hasn’t mentioned this to Erato...for 4 months Uh Oh! Lastly, here’s my tag I use mostly for art I make of them, it includes some texts posts and picrew dumps too though, lol. Feel free to look!

[yahoo-puck-daddy-blog]

Puck Daddy Bag of Mail: What's the ideal Stanley Cup final?

The Predators and Bruins would make a compelling Stanley Cup pairing. (John Russell/NHLI via Getty Images)

We are now officially one week away from the start of the playoffs, and no one seems to be thinking too much about anything else.

Well, that’s not totally true, because the Sedins are retiring and I got one question about them. It’s understandable and I love talking about the damn Sedin boys, so I’m all for it, but otherwise, it’s all playoff stuff, baby.

And I want to send out an extra special thank you to the question-askers this week for not asking me anything about the MVP race, which has broken the brains of many otherwise smart people, including some very good friends of mine who maybe used to run this site. Anyway, not getting a single MVP question this week has done my heart (Hart, ha ha ha) good, and tells me I have cultivated an audience of exceptionally smart people who do not exist solely to antagonize. It’s better than I deserve!

Anyhow, lets get to it:

Brad asks: “Ratings implications aside, what would be the most interesting Cup Final match-up?”

I gotta tell ya: I truly can’t care about the ratings. I know as a professional hockey writer I’m supposed to gnash my teeth if they’re down a fraction of a percentage point, but people are gonna watch what they’re gonna watch, and if that’s another episode of Young Sheldon then what do I care?

And I have a boring answer for this one, too: I think it would be most interesting to see the Bruins and Preds absolutely smash each other. They’re the two best teams in the league, they’re both exciting to watch, they have fun personalities on both sides, etc. I would also accept Tampa and Winnipeg as a good Cup matchup. Hell, even throw in the Leafs.

Basically I think there’s a solid top five of those teams and then the rest are kind of less engaging to me as options. I just feel like there’s a big gap between them and everyone else in terms of being interesting.

Harry asks: “Should the Caps keep Trotz around?”

Of course they should.

Look, we all thought the Caps were gonna take a step back this season, and potentially kind of a big one. Instead, they won their division again, which is really not that much less competitive than it was last year in a lot of ways, and cleared 100 points again.

They lost a lot this summer to free agency and necessary trades, and it seems to have affected them very little, if at all. Some of that can be attributed to luck (they have the third-highest PDO in the league) and the overall quality of the players still sticking around, but you have to say Trotz did a pretty good job managing the reduced talent.

Put another way, the question of “Should ________ keep _______ around?” should always be followed with, “… and would his replacement do a better job?” While there are probably coaches who can maybe wring a little better of a process out of this group (they’re running a sub-48 Corsi share) but with this group, I’m not sure how much.

Basically, I don’t know how you let a guy like Trotz walk unless you’re sure his replacement would be as good or better. If Joel Quenneville becomes available, half the teams in the league might fire their coaches to try to get him, and if that’s something Washington could do, then sure.

But otherwise, I let him ride out the rest of the Caps’ window.

Tony asks: “Nashville and Winnipeg are the two obvious favorites to come out of the West, and the rest seem like they’re all in the same tier. Who’s your favorite of the bunch?”

The easy answer here was to say Minnesota. They’re still running pretty hot, and have been for months, but I’d need to see more proof of concept since Ryan Suter got hurt.

I can see San Jose doing some damage, especially if they get deep enough into the postseason to get Thornton back. Maybe LA if Quick can get on one, which has certainly happened before. And maybe, maybe you say Vegas, but I think everyone knows where I stand on them.

After that, I don’t have a lot of faith in any of the three other teams in the wild card hunt.

CF asks: “Was the review in the Panthers vs. Predators game a sign that goaltender review is trending in the right or wrong direction?”

I think it’s going in the same direction as before. Which is to say, “Nowhere anyone likes.”

Let’s not forget, everyone hates this, but the GMs did almost nothing and the league’s solution was to tell everyone, “Please stop complaining about this.” So now, instead of NHL referees in the rink not really understanding the rules and making a call anyway, you have former NHL referees watching on TV not understanding the rules and making a call anyway.

But here’s where I say something people won’t like: That overturned goal was a 50/50 call, moreso than any other controversial review in recent memory. I can see the argument that Luongo got pitchforked a little bit, and I can see the argument that he turned himself a little bit.

My whole thing now is that video review is ruining the NHL and we should probably just do away with it until we can just microchip everything and write better rules, because there’s so much subjectivity on goalie interference and offside that it’s effectively guesswork and a coin flip. Everyone hates it, so you have to change everything.

Tom asks: “Is there a model now on how to ‘rebuild on the fly’? Three years ago I thought the Bruins and Penguins windows were closed.”

I’m not sure I agree that either were really rebuilds on the fly. The Penguins just stopped giving middling wingers $5.5 million AAVs just because they were playing with Crosby and Malkin, traded for Phil Kessel, and let some expensive defensemen walk. Some of their contributors were certainly drafted and developed in-house but these are guys with skillsets better suited to what Crosby and Malkin needed all along.

With the Bruins, I’m more convinced that this was a successful rebuild on the fly, for sure. But they lucked into no one picking Charlie McAvoy before 14, and that includes THREE other defensemen. Other than that, who are their newer contributors among the young guys? In this argument I’m not counting David Pastrnak since he’s been in the league four years now.

Only one was a first-round pick (Jake DeBrusk, and they shouldn’t have taken him there), and a few more were taken in the second. I guess I’m wondering how much of a skill it is to have a handful of third- and fourth-round picks come in for you, and how much is luck. Certainly Don Sweeney seems to be doing better than most people would have expected, but he still traded away an elite defenseman for picks, so…

As with any other rebuild, I think the ones on the fly only work when teams get a little (or a lot) lucky and have elite players already. If you want to call that a formula, go for it, but it seems tough to replicate.

Cornelius asks: “How [BS] is it that Chara has only one Norris?”

Extremely. He’s the best defenseman of his generation and got screwed out of at least two, one of which (the Nick Lidstrom lifetime achievement award) was total and utter BS to an alarming extent. He’ll be a first-ballot Hall of Famer and the fact that he was only recognized as the best defenseman in the league once is a bit silly, no?

Hey speaking of underappreciated Hall-of-Fame careers…

ZA asks: “The consensus in British Columbia seems to be ‘The Twins are no-doubt HHOFers.’ Are Canucks fans in for a fun new type of disappointment?”

You never say it’s a sure thing with the Hall of Fame because those old white guys hold grudges and make dumbass decisions all the time.

That said, I think they’re pretty safe because they’ll have a pretty strong advocate in Brian Burke really banging the drum for them, and they deserve it.

Among players with at least 800 games played since the turn of the century, they’re fifth (Henrik) and seventh (Daniel) in points, with Marian Hossa — another slam-dunk pick — between them. This despite spending a lot of time on rotten teams, often playing with subpar players. They’re not quite on Jarome Iginla’s level of scoring a ton while not exactly having a lot of help, but they’re certainly in that conversation.

Walker asks: “Why do colleges put such emphasis on hiring a coach with previous ties to the school? Minnesota added Motzko, Michigan hired Pearson, and Wisconsin got Granato to name a few. Why do ADs immediately cull their options so dramatically?”

First of all, thanks for asking a college hockey question.

Second, I think this is a function of a couple issues being in play. First, alumni, who tend to donate a lot of money, love stuff like that and might see other guys as being more mercenary or not really Understanding The Culture of the program or school or whatever. Second, I think it probably engenders a lot more loyalty to the team and, if you do well, might convince you to stick around despite some potentially better offers.

Take, for example, Norm Bazin at UMass Lowell. He played there in the early 90s, met his wife there, was an assistant coach there after his playing career ended, all that stuff. He then went to other programs as an assistant, got a few years of head coaching experience in Div. 3, and got hired at Lowell. In doing so, he beat out guys with NHL pedigrees like Ron Rolston, among others.

And obviously it’s worked out great for all involved. Bazin wins a ton of games for his alma mater, and his alma mater sells a lot of tickets as a result. Plus, Bazin’s contract was expiring after this season, so last summer he interviewed for the AHL job in Utica a number of times. How serious he was about taking it isn’t for me to say, but my guess is, “Not very.” He used it to leverage a slightly better annual salary and a new deal out of the school.

In the long run, if you can get a good coach who isn’t likely to leave your school for greener pastures when the opportunity presents itself (like, say, I don’t know, Bob Motzko), that’s extremely valuable. It shouldn’t be the primary determining factor, but it should probably be in the mix.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

All stats via Corsica unless noted otherwise. Some questions in the mailbag are edited for clarity or to remove swear words, which are illegal to use.