#dossoles

In a different forum, someone once opined:

I feel like the event was pretty clear in the fact that Candela enjoys the city being the corrupted cesspit it is and doesn't care about what happens to it as long as people always come back to indulge their vices.

But that didn't seem accurate to me, so I responded:

While she clearly takes what pleasure she can from Dossoles' corruption, does she really have a choice about it being a cesspit?

This is what Ch'en struggled with in her second Operator Record. She accepted Hoshiguma's advice that increased paychecks would motivate the police of Dossoles to do a better job, but she struggles with that fact emotionally because in Ch'en ideal world, the police should do their best because it's the right thing to do.

What Candela did was accept the fact that humans have base desires for security, control, and pleasure, and decided to exploit all of those desires to her advantage.

Ch'en wants a city to resemble or surpass Lungmen, but Ch'en takes the relative stability of Yan (or Victoria, the only other nation she's lived in) for granted. Bolivar has nothing approaching that stability, so a city like Lungmen is impossible there.

Dossoles isn't the best that Bolivarians can hope for, but it's the best that they can realistically achieve until the three-way civil war ends. It's not the best they could potentially achieve in a peaceful future, but it represents their best hope for surviving as a people until they achieve that future.

Hell, contrary to my fears, it sounds like Candela actually pays the laboring class well! Bolivarians willingly immigrate to her city to work in its farms and factories and no one says they're being worked to death for nothing in return.

We've never seen Candela deny or dismiss or denigrate the idea of virtue or altruism. She wholeheartedly believes that Ch'en is an idealist who wants to help people and promote social order, and she encourages Ch'en to do it.

Hoshiguma doesn't suggest that money alone will motivate the local police to improve, which is why she keeps talking about the example Ch'en is setting for them, and why Hoshiguma helps so much with the law enforcement seminars that Ch'en puts on.

Ch'en had a rough life, but she's never lacked for material security. She's never worried about her home getting blown up in the middle of the night. She's never gone hungry for months with no hope for food.

But she also recognizes that she can't judge Bolivar and Dossoles based purely on her own experience, and that's why she spends so much time and energy talking to Bolivarians and trying to understand where they're coming from.

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There's too many answers pedaling in the engines of my heart:

Midnight, Orchid and Popukar -> The couple that never married but definitely divorced with their kid that they didn't birth. This power trio would win the whole thing AND defeat Pancho, however, it would entirely be through the power of slapstick and gag comedy. Pancho is extremely serious and bitter, so he wouldn't be able to fight the Op.Team 6 trio in a way that matters. Through incredibly funny circumstance and jocose coincidence, the three of them would mess up in just the exact way needed to completely succeed. They would have a harder time with Ernesto, however, since he gives Pop Team Epic-And-One Punch Man Reader energy and thus would know how to fight them with Gag Comedy techniques.

Surtr, Skadi and W -> You'd think that with this much raw firepower they'd win the Dossoles Warrior Championship in what can only be described as a world record speedrun in the war crimes% category, however, ACE DETECTIVES will know that they would get eliminated in the very first round due to in-fighting, Skadi inventing space travel by throwing W all the way to Arknights Andromeda and then double K.O.ing with Surtr after a heated DBZ style fistfight. The event they joined wasn't even the scrimmage, by the way, they joined the eating competition.

Folinic, just by herself -> Would sort out all of these punks into behaving by herself, honestly. Yes, this includes Candela.

Amiya, Rosmontis and Kal'tsit -> Their specs are good, but they would lose the triathlon due to Kal'tsit repeating for the 8th time that hour that Rosmontis is a tragic, tragic weapon, and that you should feel bad. Amiya and Rosmontis, meanwhile, decide cycling that much is not worth it and just have a fun day at an arcade instead.

Specter, Ptilopsis and Nightmare -> We let them loose in Dossoles and tell them to fully listen to their inner voices. Whatever happens, happens.

Mudrock, Phantom and Pallas -> They win the tournament because they are so fucking weird that Candela becomes enthralled by their way of existing and just gives them the prize outright for being so interesting and bizarre.

Blemishine, Weedy and Eunectes -> This team would win because they would cobble together incredible inventions on the fly McGyver-style to win every event with the power of SCIENCE, like a team of three well-oiled Doraemons working in tandem, creating rocket-propelled bikes with a couple of rocks, pocket lint, and a wrench. It'd be like Ed, Edd & Eddy (complete with sound effects) but they are extremely efficient.

Patriot, FrostNova and Faust -> They have a fun day :)