#Amenta RP

[determinate-negation]

It was a spinoff from a glowfic thread (basically forum RP) by Kelsey Piper (vox journalist and former advice blogger) and Alicorn Blume (stay at home wife I think?). The premise is a world (named Amenta) with a caste system based on hair color, eg people with blue hair are aristocrats, yellow are technical workers, red/pink are sanitation/untouchables/regular genocide victims, etc. Anyway it started a whole Tumblr RP thing.

what… well guys when you see fandom bloggers making very ill informed posts accusing real people of being scammers just keep in mind this is the type of shit theyre interested in and influenced by

[megasilverfist]

Retcon?

I’m just now getting into fighting games enough to think Silver would have probably ended up with a character or two based on him, but he totally would have blogged about it if it happened so eh

[openamenta]

Amentans have found habitable planets. At 4:19 this morning, the first exploration mission returned to our world with news of five confirmed Amentan habitable biospheres, and an expectation of more to come. Amentan feet have walked upon extrasolar planets; Amentan breath has mixed with their air. It was the fulfillment of a dream Amentans have shared since we first looked to the stars. When asked to comment, explorer Thesha Pepalma said, “Our children, our children’s children: none of them will ever suffer empty springs again. The planets we have found… [click here to read the full article]

[strawberry-poison-frog]

I’m going to have to cut back my online presence a bit-I know this means there are some great asks I won’t get to (also, some truly terrible ones, at this point in my life I do not have the spare energy for “Thanks for taking an interest in red culture!  No, I’ve never engaged in cannibalism.” type responses.)  

I’m having a baby, I want to engage in a deeper study of Cenemi, and I will be preparing for a series of assessments as I prepare for whatever comes next (My cousin works in aquaculture, Shrimp’s elder brother is a construction worker, and my mother is the kind of teacher who sits on curriculum committees, so...).   It feels really strange to turn down so much work, but at this point I literally don’t have time for anything other than family, my own art or preparing for colony life.

And so, on my way out, a confession. 

There was a particular video game company that once hired me to do some music for a planned expansion and they were the worst. Expected me to read minds, gave me tight deadlines and then wouldn’t give me feedback for weeks afterwards, didn’t pay me on time.  It quickly became clear that I was never going to work with them again.  Getting fired would have been a relief.  

And there was this one character who was just...if there was a character reds would headcanon as a secret red, it would be them.  Magician from elsewhere, evasive about their past, lots of sorrowful gazing into the sunset.  

So I put little musical cues from red traditionals all through their battle theme. And the more they annoyed me the ‘worse’ I made it.  And they never noticed.  It’s all still there.

[artistic-arborealist]

Brother flower, when the snow flies And you lay your beauty down, Brother flower, are you sleepin' There upon the cold, cold ground, Brother flower, please awaken Show the sky your face like dawn, Let me know you ain't forsaken That your blossom still lives on. 

(source)

[steel-and-toe]

Epilogue

Yvalta decontaminates, House by House, in fits and starts.

*** Nachen and her husband visit Ylanta in between shows.  She meets aunts and grandparents and one cousin she never knew she had.  It's somewhat awkward.

*** One of the last holdouts gets new, young, progressive leadership very suddenly, after two conveniently timed heart attacks and one yachting accident claim the old guard.  The other two Houses dragging their feet on decontamination hurriedly reverse course.

*** Even in a national crisis, people still need to eat.  Her husband gets his first permission right on schedule, although her in-laws' fishing fleet somehow winds up with an extra hand or two per boat who spend more time poking around the hold checking for stowaways than they do actually working. *** Myo Talking Spectaculars folds before Nachen can finish the first round of her contract, unable to reconfigure its policies to cope with the brain drain once other countries and planets start accepting immigrants.  Before it collapses, though, she traces a meteoric rise through the dance corps, only partially due to dancers above her in the hierarchy emigrating or switching careers, and the resume boost helps her lands a choice role in a touring company shortly afterward.

*** Butterfly and Reprise host a large and quietly teary potluck.  Two months later, they go on a camping trip and, after a tense couple of weeks, send a goodbye message from the DUS spaceport.

*** Nachen and her husband talk about emigrating some nights, after their daughter is in bed, but idly- there's no urgent need for dancers on colony worlds, and you can't (or at least really shouldn't) put a fishing fleet on a spaceship.  They'd be starting over almost from scratch, and neither of them especially wants to take on a new contract for passage to some unknown quantity of a planet.

*** They get a second permission from her husband's contract; it's not renewed for a third.  They do, however, get another two children by special arrangement under her mother's contract, once she's too old to have her own.

*** Years of pushing her body to its limits start to catch up to Nachen; she has to start taking on fewer shows and waiting longer between them.  By seventeen she’s transitioned to teaching full-time, reasonably gracefully. She dabbles in choreography but never catches the public imagination enough to make a career out of it.  

*** When they're twenty-five and past being troubled by permaspring and the political situation has shaken itself out, Nachen and her husband move offworld to join their oldest daughter, settled down after a short stint as a cosmonaut with two spouses and five children between them.  She takes an intensive physical therapy course before they leave- it's an established colony but still too small to support a full-time dance teacher.

It's a lovely world, all rolling plains and shallow seas, closely orbiting a red dwarf star.   Nachen puts together a solo performance almost as soon as they arrive, sends video home of low-gravity leaps in the eternal sunset- and a longer video for distribution on dance student forums, where she talks frankly about the work that went into setting up the shoot and how often she took breaks between cuts to pace herself. *** She teaches in Valtaz all her life, although her Oahkar gets much better and she eventually picks up some broken Anitami.  She includes little lessons on grey culture with her older students- the colony isn't exactly casteless but it's fairly flexible, and she worries sometimes about what they’re losing.  (She does cut out the Yvaltan history lessons once enough parents complain.  The universities can handle that one better than she can anyway.)

*** When Nachen is thirty-seven, she finds a nice young green to ghostwrite her memoirs.  He has a hard time understanding how anyone didn't realize reds were people.

[crinolinegumdrops]

[@worstblueintheword] Any thoughts on blue specific fashion? Seems like historically it was dominated by "look how much expensive shiny things I can afford". Even these days I feel like the main options are "wear what fashionable greens wear" or "dress like your grandparents"

Goodness, it’s flattering that you think I’m qualified to lecture on blue fashion, sir. I shall endeavor to do my best.

I must first disclaim that I am most familiar with Meti blue fashion trends, and as such, the exemplary images found in this post shall lean rather heavily towards those styles.

However, there are more universal principles of blue fashion that I can speak to. You reference the historical trend of using blue fashion as a surrogate for showing wealth. However, I would claim that this has not actually changed. It has merely changed forms.

The defining characteristic of blue fashion is that it is requires unfettered access to labor and capitol. Non-blue persons may imitate the styles, but the underlying core of blue fashion will forever remain beyond their reach by it’s very nature.

In days of old, blue fashion was dominated by things such as furs, precious metals, and drapes of excess fabric: things which took great work or money to obtain.

In modern times, blue fashion is still dominated by these signals, but with the advent of modern manufacturing and materials science, these signals have changed form.

First of all, blue fashion is always, without exception, exquisitely tailored. Buying and making do with what mass-made clothing offers is not for those of azure hair. Blues have their clothing custom-made, or modified to fit.

This signals their access to capitol and labor.

Next, blue fashion takes advantage of those fabrics which are exquisite, but hard to care for. Delicate fabrics such as wool and silk can be found freely in blue fashion, where other castes would be forced to think twice.

It does not matter if your silk blouse is ruined; you can simply buy a new one. It does not matter how difficult wool may be to launder; you are not the one who will wash it.

Again, this signals their access to capitol and labor.

[infraviolet-ultrared]

Coda;

["So, some of us in my neighborhood are planning a Splurge in a few months," says the hearse driver, who Subtle - Infra, to his online friends and acquaintances - had not been totally sure was even ex-red until this very moment. Their eyes meet in the rear-view mirror, just for a moment, before the driver returns his attention to the road. "Not, like, a real big one? Not like a full-district one. But something. I know you got a kid, you should bring her."

The third member of their crew, a girl half Subtle's age who he knows is born-purple, busies herself steadying the full stretcher as the hearse takes a turn in the road. She very much has the attitude of someone who isn't sure if she ought to be hearing the conversation, or if she wants to, or if she ought to want to.

The district where Subtle grew up was a Winter Splurge kind of district, but at this point the "when is splurge" debate isn't something he finds he really cares that much about. Heck, biannual seems like a pretty good idea to him, at that. He grins. "Yeah, that sounds great. Just let me know when. We'll bring a dish."

Subtle's daughter goes to Splurge halfway across the city. She goes to purple schools in her own neighborhood, where she does well - not exceptionally, but well.

When she is two, her parents tell her about her brother, the one who died of a fever a couple seasons older than she is now, the winter before he would have been cleaned.

When she is five and finishes training as a plumber - a cleanplumber, still trying to decide whether she ought to train as a rotation plumber, too - she gets accepted to emigrate to the Tapai colony world, and two seasons later she sponsors her parents' applications as well. Subtle and his wife leave Amenta, and have their third child - second clean, second surviving - in the last spring they're both fertile; their first grandchild is born the same year. Their son-in-law is born-clean.

It's not possible to really keep current on news from another planet, most of the time, not the way it had been to keep tabs on other countries on Amenta. But Subtle eats up reports from Miovay; when he can, he buys goods imported from Miovay. Sometimes he fantasizes about growing his hair out, letting the purple dye fade. He never does.

Most of his great-grandkids have naturally purple hair.

He dies at the age of thirty-eight, and the rotation workers who collect him are a pair of born-purples he trained.]

[memento-colori]

@tiny-gardener

Camellia Bonsai.

[1]

[rejoice-in-life]

i know we’re all excited about planets and that’s great but please please make responsible decisions when celebrating!! the number of drug overdoses spiked after the announcement and we’re honestly kind of short-staffed. use drugs in safe amounts only! you can’t go to space if you’re dead!

[blackoutlandish]

Afen Kisantami is not the only genius born into the wrong caste. He’s just the one who managed to get around all the artificial obstacles we put in his way.

How many more Afens are there out there, undiscovered because we never gave them the chance? How many have there been, throughout history, who died without ever reaching their true potential? How much sooner could we have had this, if we had let people do what they’re good at?

[reactionarygrey]

"I used to be very scared of change when I was younger, It seemed it was always for the worse and maybe it was then. But recent events have shown me it is sometimes for the good." It's 3 in the morning where I am, and I'm sniffling into my hot chocolate over how beautiful this is.

I hope it is encouraging. We will have to face huge changes on other planets.

ooc this ask was not actually in character on artistic-arborealist’s part (which I failed to realise) so may be slightly un-amentan.

[flameofcertainty]

If reds being people is a weird minority idea, why did the three biggest countries on Amenta integrate cleaned reds as citizens before FTL was even on the table? Why did the most valuable green in the world use his greatest invention as leverage to save red lives? Why isn’t the international community on your side, demanding that Anitam reverse this cruel injustice? Why has a memoir of a red life sold millions of copies around the world? (1/2)

Why is Miolee thriving, trading and swapping and planning a future among the stars? You say everyone would have noticed if reds were people. Maybe everyone has noticed, except you.

i’ve been trying my best not to find out news about red “cleaning” and i still know that cene didn’t integrate. like, yes, if you make up a bunch of false statements it almost looks that reds could be people! sort of like how if you say that no photograph has ever captured all the moons together it almost looks like there are only two of them! but, uh, it’s false. so.

…and mira’s going to answer the rest of this so i don’t have to think about it

#

So first of all I want you to know that I’ve reported you to Tumblr for harassing my hypersensitive wife who has repeatedly asked for you to stop, you asshole. As for the rest of your “points”:

If you want to know whether reds being people is a minority idea you can look at surveys! Looks like it is. Gosh. How about that. If you want to know whether reds are people, that’s technically slightly more complicated, but still not very complicated.

>Why did the most valuable green in the world use his greatest invention as leverage to save red lives?

It’s pretty obvious to anyone with a brain that he doesn’t care about red lives, he cares about making it easier for places to do cleaning, because he thinks it works and he wants there to be less pollution. If he cared about red lives, he’d be sanctioning Rivik. 

>Why isn’t the international community on your side, demanding that Anitam reverse this cruel injustice?

Because if anyone takes a stand against Anitam, they’re risking FTL, and no one wants to do that. If you want to know what people think, though, the vast majority are against the blackmail. What a shock.

>Why has a memoir of a red life sold millions of copies around the world?

And five years back a book supposedly written from the point of view of the author’s cat (you know that cats aren’t people, right?) sold twelve million copies in Cene alone! Hint: the book was not actually written by a cat. People thought it was funny because people pretending to be cats is funny. Or, alternatively, you can look at the sales of fiction novels if you’re confused by the concept that sometimes people by books about things that aren’t true.

>Why is Miolee thriving, trading and swapping and planning a future among the stars?

Did you know that Miolee’s per-capita GDP is among the lowest in the world? I wonder why.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a few questions of my own.

If reds are people, then why did they continue to cooperatively train replacements in Orvara after Lathande? It was obvious to everyone that we were going to get rid of them, and we drove the Lathande ones into the wilderness! This was not a difficult problem to figure out!

If reds are people, then why do most theologians not realize this? Figuring things like that out is literally their job!

If reds are people, then why did they go for generations polluted with no hope of ever being clean without killing themselves?

[openamenta]

On the twelfth, an Anitami ship prototype called the Beyond filed a flight plan well past Amenta's moons with no documented intent to land on any other planets in our system.  Bypassing Katme, Epafka, and even the dwarf planets, this ship traveled towards nothing in particular - and then vanished.

Anitam refused to comment during the ship’s initial foray on the nature of the test, but when the Beyond disappeared they asserted that this was an intended outcome - a test of an FTL drive developed by Anitami greens.  Anitam has asserted that they expect the ship to return, in six days, with close-up images of neighboring star Mahashikta and its planets.

The key insights associated with the “warp drive”, assuming this or a subsequent test is successful, are on offer from Anitam to countries who “successfully finesse” their red transitions, which was clarified to mean (among other criteria) without deaths of reds.  This applies retroactively, although Cene, not being held responsible for its protectorate Biyan, appears to have already struck a private deal for an early planet when some habitable options are found.  Miolee is also expected to be one of the first recipients after Anitam has found a colony world for itself.

The development of the warp drive is credited to Anitam’s celebrated Afen Kisantami and collaborators.

[staringtowardthestars]

Regardless of your views on red rights, it doesn’t help anyone to prevent Orvara from having access to faster-than-light travel. They cannot undo what they’ve already done, and denying them such access only serves to hurt Orvara’s citizens for no benefit. While of course such arguments don’t apply to any country that uses such a method in the future (given sufficiently pro-red-person postulates), as Anitam would presumably wish to deter other countries from doing the same thing, punishing countries for actions taken years ago will not have such a deterrent impact. 

While there is an argument to be made that there may be aliens in the universe, and it would be a disaster if a country exterminated an entire species of aliens due to differences in pollution protocol, punishing Orvara on such grounds is at best using a poor proxy for the relevant quality. Orvara did not pioneer the Orvaran solution because it was unusually anti-red person, but because it was unusually high in theologian density. Other metrics of treatment of red people show Orvara as fairly typical. Furthermore, Orvara has an unusually positive attitude towards hyposensitive people, which can be seen both in policies, such as the illegality of Natural Aversion Therapy, and in more general surveys of attitudes [1].  

(Oyand, on the other hand, clearly lacks the necessary organizational skills to safely administer a colonization mission.)

[artistic-arborealist]

It's the time of turning and there's something stirring outside It's the time of turning and the old world's falling Nothing you can do can stop the next emerging Time of the turning and we'd better learn to say our goodbyes

If we can stand up When all else falls down We'll last through the winter We'll last through the storms We'll last through the north winds That bring down the ice and snow We'll last through the long nights Till the green field's growing again Growing again

Me and my cutie and sweetie all just hopped on the train to port!

And in a couple hours we’ll all be on the ~boat to Miolee~!

And to everyone I know in Miolee: It’ll be so much fun to see you all in person! And I’m really looking forward to meeting everyone there!

(source)