Ranking Site

Ranking sites and Betting sites are websites dedicated to rating and ranking parahumans.

Modus operandi

These sites track the wins and losses of capes, both hero and villain.<ref name="R1"/>

Ranking sites would base a high rating on whether the cape was "trending" in the news and winning fights. If the cape laid low, or was overshadowed by a larger news story, their rating dropped.<ref>Bambina has been in the top 40 most ‘trending’ villains, and is calculating her villainy to maximize her reputation. She let herself get low, planning a big stunt, only to be overshadowed. - Comment by Wildbow on Drone 23.2</ref><ref>“You fucked up my rankings for a straight week, worst fucking time, too.  I’d planned an escapade, was supposed to rise to number thirty, but your news took the front page instead, and I dropped to forty-five instead.  I haven’t been that low in a year!” - Excerpt from Drone 23.2</ref> Capes could get income from these sites paying them to host live streams or be interviewed online, or offer prizes.<ref name="R1"/>

Ranking sites sometimes sponsor parahumans, hero or villain - as a form of promotion, similar to a corporate team but with less conditions, one of the few is the capes maintenance of their ratings.<ref name="R1">

• Ranking Sites - (Bambina talks briefly about these) - sites that track hero/villain wins and losses sometimes offer payment to qualifying heroes, host streams or interviews, or do a kind-of-corporate-but-less-strings-attached sponsorship that's often contingent on holding a good position.
• Betting Sites - Some sites allow people to bet on outcomes. Will a fight happen between Poison Apple and Dojo? Put $30 on the site, leave it sitting there (site makes money off of the interest of said money), and if a fight happens and your choice wins, you get good money. Heroes can bet on themselves. Some specifically cultivate and go after low odds. Authorities allow this to go on as long as it's aboveboard (no killing) because it promotes fairly inoffensive conflict. - Can rogues make a living as a hero? (Wildbow, Reddit.com, 2017-03-06)</ref> Bambina received money from sponsors, even though she was a villain, based on her ranking; when it dipped, she received less money.<ref>"Rankings!  Don't you even pay attention?  It was embarrassing.  My mom's still giving me a hard time over it, and it's like, that's less money from our sponsors.  So I'm going to make you deepthroat my fist, okay?  Break your arms and legs and make you suckle it." - Excerpt from Drone 23.2</ref>

Betting sites lets anyone bet on who would win in a matchup between two capes, the participant puts money on their prognostication of who would triumph. The site holds the money, collecting the interest, when and if the two capes meet and fight the site pays out the result to the to prognosticator.<ref name="R1"/> Other times chance is removed; people pay to watch two capes fight head to head,<ref name=fight>Meathead and Ova met when earning some side pay for a 'brute fight' on one of the hyperviolence online channels, pounding the snot out of each other (and their surroundings) before wrapping up, drinking together, and pounding each other later that evening in another fashion. - Community Team-Building Game (Wildbow, Reddit.com, 2017-05-05)</ref> betting on the results. The site can operate free of oversight as long as they meet some base guidelines.

Notable users

• Bambina
• Meathead and Ova<ref name=fight/>

Trivia

• Wildbow provided an example of how a Weaverdice campaign centered such sites could work.<ref>Fantasy Capes
  
  A complicated 'fantasy cape team' website surfaces, allowing people to put together teams of capes and gain points based on media attention, wins, results against other capes, and special effects based on those who switch teams or participate in Endbringer fights, among other things.
  
  The real trouble arises when, seemingly overnight, a code starts to get traction on the website. There's an option for people to set challenges for capes to meet (if the cape is signed up on the website), giving the cape money and the individual points if the challenge is met, but the rules are strict about what the challenge can be. 'Hand [cape] something red' is code for drawing blood, in this new shorthand. It doesn't take much to reason what this smattering of 'hand [cape] something black' means. As hundreds of 'something reds' and 'something blacks' start popping up, the website creator is silent and the cape community is getting restless. Soon someone with a grudge is going to see the total amount offered reach a high enough total that they'll decide to go ahead and do it. - Weaver Dice Plot Hooks (Wildbow, Reddit.com, 2016-11-18)</ref>

References

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