Misc.

I REALLY tried to do away with a Miscellaneous section for the site, but my efforts have proved worthless. Point blank, sometimes as a writer you come up with too much stuff that can't really be categorized so easily. So here's a list of random factoids that I don't know where to put/aren't strong enough to need their own section.

• Puerto Rico is recognized as a sovereign nation. How this happened, I will not go into. Because I feel like if I go ANY deeper than that, I'll turn into one of those crazy 'Alternate History' dudes who are low-key racist with takes like 'Japan's occupation of Korea following WW2 was a good thing'. Trust me. I keep bumping into these types. They're very much real.
• It will become very obvious, but Pro Wrestling in this world is a real shoot sport.
• College tuition is free in most states because I don't want my characters to deal with the burden of debt and student loans. So most folks who save up money for school usually save up for supplies, dorm stuff, rent, etc etc.
• Guns exist, but are heavily stigmatized. And not for the allegorical reason you might be thinking of. Rather in a world of martial arts and metahumans, where many global contests are no longer settled via war, guns are seen as the weapon of a coward. To quote President Stephen Austin, "Anyone can pull the trigger, but it takes a real man to meet you hand-to-hand".
• On the topic of 'things that exist but aren't really all that popular', superheroes are a real thing in the Toughverse. But they're very few and far between, and are basically on the brink of extinction. Point blank, it's because a considerable amount of the population has Vigor. So when you're living in a world where Billy No Mates from down the street can bench press a bus, you're really gonna have to try hard to stand out from the crowd to make a name for yourself. Those who do try to keep the dream live tend to keep things very local, similiar to Japan's real life local tokusatsu heroes.
• Here's somethng that might come as a shock: Most sports in the Toughverse are played in earnest without Vigor, thanks to Vigor inhibitors embedded into various Sportsgear. There have been attempts to create Vigor sports leagues for the likes of baseball, but attempts never took off or lasted more than a season. Sports ain't no fun if everyone's a Sammy Sosa.
• Much of Canada as we know it has been taken back by nature following a devastating megastorm from decades ago that blanketed much of the country in permanant snow. Much of what remains are major cities such as Vancover, Ottowa, Toronto and Quebec, with everything north of these cities being apart of what's now known as 'The Northen Expanse'.