"Even if your power was controlling bugs?"

"Yeah? I think there are less violent solutions that might require more work later but are still better? What would you do?"

"With a bug power? Are we also specifying that I'm for some reason in a supervillain gang, because I think I probably wouldn't be."

"Uh, for practical reasons I'd like to figure out what I'd do with my trench digging power and supervillain gang resources but I'm also curious what you'd do with bug powers."

"Spider silk is a good concept, at least, maybe I'd also make honey. De-pest people's houses for 'em. Discover species in the Amazon and get them named after me. Wear a butterfly in my hair at all times."

"Those things are pretty great, though uh, I was specifically wondering how you'd deal with the situation of aggravated robbery in a territory you were running."

"What aggravated it?"

"The family woke up and the robbers broke a... leg, I think, of one of the family members who attempted to either fight back or flee, I forget, and then they threatened another family member until she divulged where they kept various valuables."

"Well, for one I'd hope to be implementing a policy I came up with well in advance for how to handle violent crime. I'd probably copy an existing justice system as a starting point and want, like, police officers."

"Hrm, there are still police - they're just spread too thinly to be useful in a lot of cases. Handing someone over to them is still doable, but I'd be worried about recruiting my own people to do the catching and handing over part?"

"Why are you worried about that and not about recruiting people to staff your hospital and orphanage?"

"Because one of them requires people who are going to be directly involved in violence and coercion by necessity and the others don't. We have a few mercenaries I could use as cops, but I wouldn't trust them to consistently refrain from excessive force or taking bribes."

"You may have an excessively rosy view of how much coercion is involved in childcare and some forms of medicine. Anyway, normal cops don't consistently refrain from excessive force or taking bribes. But they don't have any bullet ants, which is a plus."

"In this particular case the cops would be drawn from a smaller population, and the obvious picks for cops are generally already cops. The next obvious pick are essentially gang members and I... probably the way to go is to pick a few people I actually trust - taking applications and such - and then have them supervise a broader group closely? And coordinate with the local police, which is going to be a hassle but maybe doable."

"Is being a gang member disqualifying in your situation? Or worse than the current protocol, in which a gang member, but with extra bullet ants, did it herself?"

"I definitely think it's possible to do better - Skitter was operating under the assumption that scaring people would lead to fewer crimes and she doesn't seem to be entirely wrong but I'm unsure if this is still true if you account for crime rates in the city as a whole. Also, bullet ants are very a crime. Plausibly the answer is just that I need to manage a larger group of enforcers than I'd like to have, because the alternatives are worse."

"Yeah. A lot goes in to making a functional society and if you're trying to take over all those functions at once you will need to have a lot of people working for you in those capacities and it will be difficult to manage them!"

"Skitter is in fact able to multitask with her power - though I can't."

"But she can't multitask enough to catch the burglars before they break anyone's legs."

"She took a day off. Apparently some people noticed."

"So she can't run her territory on that! She needs enough people to cover days off - does she sleep -"

"I am guessing she wouldn't want me to answer that but most capes do."

"Well, even if she doesn't sleep apparently she takes breaks, so she needs some kind of coverage sufficient to operate when she's not participating - and if she doesn't want everybody knowing when that is, they need to be at least as visible on other days too."

"I think she's been prioritizing rebuilding, medical attention, and food personnel."

"Which is a great set of priorities on paper but leaves her on the back foot when burglars show up and she either has no plan and must make something up on the spot, or, worse, she has one and it's bullet ants. What is there to stay in this city for, like, what here is still working such that not everyone is literally packing a bag and walking to a suburb?"