#211 Breaking Up
They say that break up is hard to do, but they weren’t dealing with superpowered drama queens so they don’t even know. When you want to break up with the people you’re fighting crime with, things are going to get very sticky very fast. Whether it be calling it quits on your partner, dropping your sidekick or disbanding your entire team, we’re going to try our best to guide you through this complicated transition as smoothly as possible.
Calling it quits on your partner When you’ve been teaming-up and fighting crime with the same person for a while, things can get kind of rote. The banter gets stale, you both like being the handcuff guy, and you’ve discovered that that combo move that you guys do where your super strong partner picks you up and uses your metal body to bludgeon bad guys is actually very bad for your back. So, you make the decision to end the partnership. That’s fine, there’s no shame in that, people grow apart. (Edit: We feel the need to make it clear here that we are talking about emotionally growing apart. This is not a reference to Miketosis, the amazing budding man.) But now you’re left with the unenviable task of breaking this news to your partner, who could very well be four buses glued together and granted sentience by the Allsource of Allmagic. (Edit: This is also not a reference to Miketosis. This is obviously talking about Busses 4 Dayz. Come on Mike, it couldn’t have been more obvious. Stop emailing me. You’re clearly reaching here.)
When breaking up with your partner it is important to be kind and gentle. Tell them that you don’t think any less of them as a crime fighter and that you look forward to seeing them succeed in all of their future endeavors. Assure them that this isn’t the end of your friendship, merely your partnership, and that should they ever need a helping hand in their fight against super-crime, you’ll always be there. It’s important to couch the news that you’re done with this partnership in positive terms, because if this goes badly, you might be creating a whole new nemesis for yourself. As we’ve said dozens of times, superpowered people are generally just one bad day, or even one bad moment, away from going full blown supervillain. (Edit: Miketosis, come on, how could this be a reference to you? That doesn’t even make sense. You haven’t been spurned by someone you thought of as a friend and turned into a full blown disease-weaponizing, grenade-catapulting supervillain. Wait a minute... are you saying this is your supervillain moment?) If you slip up and tell them that the reason you’re breaking up is because you hate the way they yodel whenever they see a crime take place, I guarantee you that the next morning you’re going to find them astride a giant hellhorse (think hellhound but bigger and with a taste for sugar cubes) and strumming a guitar (that they pronounce “gee-tar”) and announcing to the world that they have decided to start committing crimes. So be careful. Let them down easy.
Dropping your sidekick Maybe you read our many rants about the dangers of having a child sidekick. (Reason #29 why having a child sidekick is a bad idea: They can easily be turned against you if your enemies just have better snacks.) Maybe you came to that conclusion all on your own. Maybe you somehow haven’t figured that out yet but you just think your child sidekick is annoying. Either way, you now have to dispose of this acrobatic ten-year-old that has grown rather fond of kicking criminals in the head alongside you. If you, for reasons known only to yourself, adopted this child at some point, then things get considerably trickier. Of course you could always just erase the child’s memories of your time together and then abandon them in an orphanage and never contact them again. That would be the simple solution. (Reason #42: You’re eventually going to convince yourself that this was a good idea and once you believe that, you’ll believe anything.) It is also the correct solution. Lobotomize and traumatize a child. Just go for it. It’s the only thing you can do. This is why you should never have a child sidekick and even if you are a fool and recruit a child soldier, you should not adopt them. Then you’re not only endangering a child, you’re endangering your own child. So don’t expect to win any parenting awards. (Reason #106: They’re going to keep posting your location on social media or live streaming your fights, which will allow other villains to find you.)
Children are notoriously temperamental. And they tend to be averse to change. So when dropping them from your team, expect to be met with some pushback. (Reason 6: That child doesn’t even know how to walk yet! What are you even thinking???) They’ll ask you why they can’t come with you any longer to fight the giant garbage monster in the Pacific Ocean like you guys used to do every week without fail. They’ll cry, they’ll beg, they might even kick you in the shin if that’s something you’ve taught them. But you must stay strong. Under no circumstance should you be bringing that child to fight the garbage monster. It’s bad enough you’ve already done it 51 times. But no more! However, you’re in an interesting position now. Because this child has been trained in hand to hand combat, and also might have superpowers. If you’re not wiping their memories and abandoning them, then that is potentially dangerous small child. So you need to keep them in your sights, just keep them out of the field. Give them a less combat-oriented roll on your team. Make them the head of your social media and youngsters-outreach program. Put them in charge of picking the phattest music for your battles. Or just agree to keep training and mentoring them until they’re old enough to fight crime for real. (Reason #1000: Uh hate to do this one again but I feel like it bears repeating but the child is a child.)
Disbanding the team It’s very rare that a team will just disband entirely. It’s far more likely that someone will just become disgruntled, have a tantrum, throw a table through a window and then get sucked into the vacuum of space because you can’t just be smashing windows in the space base. And then all you gotta do is replace that guy and window. So when a team breaks up for real, you know something dicey went down. Maybe some new fancy law came out and everybody disagreed over whether or not it was a lawful law or an awful law. Maybe one of the team members revealed that they’d secretly been coming up with elaborate plots to murder everyone else on the team. In case of emergency of course. Maybe you all just got hit with the pretty irked plague (which is a watered-down version of Karalaxus’ rage-plague that just makes people irritable) and now you all can’t stand one another. Regardless, things have become untenable in your HQ and this team needs to be disbanded.
If you want to fully shut down a superhero organization you need to make decisive moves. Decommission and condemn the team’s headquarters. If another team moves in, then they’ll be seen as your team’s spiritual successors and we can’t be having any of that. Crash your team’s vehicle into a swamp. (A swamp is just a watered-down version of Karalaxus’ goo-ocean of foul smells, which is what Neptune is now that Karalaxus has wreaked havoc on it.) Whether it’s a car, or a long tandem-bike or a space shuttle, that thing needs to go into a swamp pronto. Just make sure you don’t crash it into a swamp that is inhabited by a swamp witch. Because they will ruin your day at the slightest provocation and crashing a space shuttle into their home is a little bit more than the slightest provocation. We need it to be completely unusable. Trademark the team’s name and sue anybody else who tries to use it. If some other group of heroes just starts using your name then did the team really disband? Or did it just get all new members? We don’t want there to be any room for interpretation here, we want this team gone.
Once all that silly logistical business is wrapped up, you need to fire all the members of your team. If you don’t have the power to do that, because you either didn’t read our post on leadership or messed up one of the steps, then you need to get everybody else to quit. (Our post on leadership is just a watered-down version of Karalaxus’ seminal “Proclamation of Sovereignty” in which the doom-bringer proclaimed that all life is forevermore subservient to the might of Karalaxus. It’s pretty compelling stuff and i invite all of you to give it a read.) Getting people to quite a superhero team is pretty easy. You just need to constantly show them up, rob them of their spotlight, and all around just publicly embarrass them, any chance you get. Superheroes like to save lives sure, but they also really like being recognized and praised for it. So by embarrassing them or just all around being better than them, you don’t risk them quitting superherodom entirely, you’re just going to push them into leaving your team and forming their own, without you. With any luck, this plan will just result in your team fracturing into several new superhero teams. Which is great, you’ve achieved your goal in the best way possible. Just be careful to avoid causing a superhero civil war when your team splits apart. You want things to me amicable between the former members of your team. You just don’t want them to be so friendly that they continue being a team. (Friendship is just a watered down version of Karalaxus’ concept of the circuit of souls, the never ending loop of life, which shall one day be completed, bringing about the reign of Karalaxus as was foretold by the prophecy passed down from the son to the father to the son to the father to the son and on and on and on until the day in which all shall become one.)