So a little while back, my table established that in our version of Halcyon City, Rosie the Riveter was a badass…

So a little while back, my table established that in our version of Halcyon City, Rosie the Riveter was a badass superhero during World War 2. It was just a bit of table chatter, so we haven’t really dealt with her legacy in-game directly yet, but I’ve given some thought to what that legacy actually is, and I figured I’d share.

So, World War 2 was when a lot of early superheroes were emerging. There were heroes and villains before that–avatars of various deities, alchemists, the occasional time traveler or other aberrant–but WW2 was the Golden Age, the first real generation of supers. And a lot of them joined up with their nations’ armed forces, to go and Fight the Good Fight.

But at the same time, villains were also emerging, emboldened by the sudden lack of competition. Most of the able-bodied heroes had volunteered or been drafted and been sent overseas, so America was going through a war-time economic boost and there weren’t many heroes around to defend it.

Enter Rosie the Riveter: the Woman of Steel, stronger than a rhino and tougher than a tank. She lead from the front, on billboards and TV spots and in the crime-ridden streets of Halcyon, encouraging women with powers everywhere to come out of hiding and fight villainy on the home front. And lots of new female heroes did exactly that.

It became a huge movement, and while the boys in capes were overseas fighting the likes of Ubermensch and Hitler, a whole generation of people were growing up with women as the only superheroes they’d ever really seen firsthand. And those people would eventually be known as the Silver Generation.

That legacy left a lasting mark on superhero gender dynamics, and gender dynamics in general. So in our version of Halcyon, if you ask the average person on the street to name their favorite superhero, they’re way more likely to name Plasma or Melonica than they are to name Sir Percival or Dr. Impossible.