#no that's a little niche we can't all be Cable

[thetruearchmagos]

Thoughts on Swift Seas And Whirlwinds

After spending so much time worldbuilding for Chainbreaker, a few thoughts've come to mind with SSAW and the conflict on which around centers, the Islander War.

Can't really think of a coherent format for it, so you're getting the raw stuff. Also, I'm writing most of this while half awake, so... apologies for incoherency.

Tagging @athenswrites @theprissythumbelina @hessdalen-globe @caxycreations @nerdexer @lividdreamz

3rd-Party States;

In coming up with the reasons why the Republic of Nouvolouis decide to start a war, I've decided it be more interesting to have a few to play with. One of them has to do with the RoN's relationships with the - currently unnamed - other sovereign states that made up the former Goilac Empire.

The gist of it is that, with the fall of Raimond's democracy, many imperial-era ideals and leaders would gradually creep into the Republic's institutions of government. Internally, this would lead to further oppression of the Aukarugyal minority of the Republic's southernmost province, and externally it would undermine previous republican attempts at repairing relations with those newly independent nations to the north. Successive regimes would amp up their coercion, but with the ascension of the Republic of Ngaionui - a former Imperial client state and colony - to the United Commonwealth, it seemed that the UC was going to be getting uncomfortably involved in the region's affairs. Now, this isn't actually too accurate an assessment of the UC's fairly reserved policy towards the fallen empire, but it did serve to stoke fears amongst the most revanchist elements of Nouvolouian government that the rest of their former subjects might get funny ideas.

From this paranoia would spawn the plan for a war. A short, sharp invasion of the westernmost and nearest island of Ngaionui would seize the island. After successfully repelling any Commonwealth counter stroke and suing for a fait accompli that would recognise RoN hegemony over the island and region at large, any other states considering joining the UC would have seen just how risky and ultimately pointless such a decision would be.

Unfortunately for the regime, reality, and the UC Navy, would be less kind.

---------

A Joke;

Something I've always wanted to explore in the 12 Worlds was media and the cultural 'zeitgeists' of the various societies and groups in it, and humour is one way of doing that. It is, however, pretty hard to make a niche, in-Setting joke funny in an understandable way, at least without diluting the exposition and sentiments I'm trying to convey through it. Here's a try at one I've been thinking about, communicated very poorly.;

"That a letter from your brother out at Rooster?" "Yes, sent last week, surprised it got here this early. He asks how the new roads are." "Oh, can't complain." Of course, there were no new roads, as Jean's brother damn well knew. They'd all helped put up the posters promising new roads, bridges, even schools and power cables, soon to appear winding all across the untamed jungle between every Auk village and the civilised country. But the diggers and builders never went past the last outpost, and wouldn't for as long as angry people with guns still stalked the trees like jaguars. That was precisely the reason men like Jean were here.

And now it's time to poorly explain the joke, a key component of humour as we all know. Rooster refers to... well, nothing right now, but I'm thinking it'll refer to some sort of well built up military base / depot in the rear, closer to that 'civilised country', which covers all the land firmly and solidly under military administration. 'Jean', who I've made up solely for this piece, is currently posted at one of the dozens of outposts the Nouvo Army built across the 'Auk' province. This forms part of the government's attempt to remove what little autonomy its population have, under the facade of providing them with the same services and infrastructure enjoyed by the Goilac majority in the heartland. Such development would also ease the exploitation of the province's natural resource wealth, as seen by the construction of various canals running across the jungle. That many culturally significant landmarks to the Aukarugyals rest on or near sites of interest to the Regime is somewhere between an unfortunate coincidence and a happy accident.

[morlock-holmes]

So I have a question about your Bowling Alone discussion: why do you find it hard to arrange a game night? In my experience it's because everyone I'd do it with is already busy a lot of the time! You seem to be saying that everyone is lonely but also unwilling to do fun things for... Some reason?

Okay, Anon, fine, you goaded me into doing actual work instead of just half-remembering things. I hope you’re happy.

The following quotes and screenshots are taken from Bowling Alone chapter 6: Informal Social Connections:

“The bad news is that we are [connecting with each other] less and less every year. Consider some of the startling evidence of change over the last quarter century. In the mid- to late 1970s, according to the DDB Needham Life Style archive, the average American entertained friends at home about fourteen to fifteen times a year. By the late 1990s that figure had fallen to eight times a year, a decline of 45 percent in barely two decades. An entirely independent series of surveys from the Roper Social and Political Trends archive confirms both going out to see friends and having them over to our home declined from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s (See figure 18 for details.) Yet a third archive (that of Yankelovich Partners) reports a decline of nearly one-third between 1985-86 and 1998-99 in the readiness of the average American to make new Friends.”

Then we are referred to Footnote 15, Page 458, which says

“15. The top half of figure 18 is based on DDB Needham Life Style data; the bottom half is based on Roper Social and Political Trends data. Because sampling and wording differ between these two archives, the two halves of figure 18 are not directly comparable, but the fact that two such different archives show similar declines in social visiting is all the more significant. DDB Needham Life Stye surveys also show that dinner parties (given or attended) declined from 7.1 per year in the mid-1970s to 3.7 in the late 1990s. Yankelovich Partners Inc. report that that agreement that “I have very little room in my life for new friends these days” rose from 23 percent in 1985-86 to 32 percent in 1998-99… Mediamark Research annual surveys show a drop of one-fifth between the early 1980s and the late 1990s in the frequency of “entertaining friends or relatives at home.” Finally, eight times between 1938 and 1990 Gallup pollsters asked about one’s “favorite way of spending an evening.” Over the whole period “dancing” and “playing cards and games” dropped sharply, and after the 1970s “visiting with friends” and “dining out” also dropped. “Watching TV” and “home with family” rose over this period, suggesting a cocooning pattern consistent with the Roper and DDB Needham data. On the other hand, because of changes in wording, I am less confident about the Gallup trends. (See George Gallup Jr., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion [Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources Inc., 1986] 104, 130.) According to the General Social Survey, the frequency of spending a social evening with “friends who live outside the neightborhood” more than once a month rose from 40 percent in 1974-76 to 44 percent in 1994-96. Of the six national survey archives that I have discovered with trend data on friendship over the last several decades, this is the only series that does not show significant decline. (Unlike other measures of friendship, this GSS metric is also inexplicably more common among men than women.) See also Robert J. Sampson, “Local Friendship Ties and Community Attachment in Mass Society: A Multilevel Systemic Model,” American Sociological Review 53 (October 1988): 776-779; Fischer, To Dwell Among Friends; Claude S. Fischer, Robert M. Jackson, et al., Networks and Places: Social Relations in the Urban Setting (New York: Free Press, 1977)."

Bolding mine.

Putnam, in Bowling Alone, doesn't address the niche hobby of RPG game playing, but as you can see some of the data he looked at was collected in a way that would be expected to measure time spent on games in general.

There's a left-wing and particularly rat-adj narrative where "atomization" is good, because it represents the triumph of chosen pursuits and chosen friendships over coercive groups such as the church.

But the data Putnam collected shows a decline even in purely voluntary social pursuits. He doesn't see massive increases in the prevalence of dinners with friends, time spent in gaming groups, etc, but rather a decrease in the prevalence of these pursuits.

And I get frustrated because the response is just blanket denial. @self-loving-vampire has sort of responded with "I feel like I do this a lot, which means that there can't be a downward trend."

It's like if I said, I don't know, cable subscription rates were down and a bunch of people said, "But I still have cable!"

Like... Who cares? I didn't say that nobody has cable, I said that rates were declining.

And denial doesn't come with different polling data, it's just a blanket denial. There must be a constant upwards trend in positive, voluntary social engagement because...

I really don't know why; I have yet to be offered any reason why the positive things that "Atomization" is supposed to bring must be actually increasing, there's simply this emphatic, committed declaration that it must be so.

It must be true that found families and voluntary connections have been getting stronger and more prevalent over the last half-century.

Why though? Why must it be true and how would you explain data which seems to suggest exactly the opposite? If we value these kinds of voluntary, found connection for their emotional and material benefits, then shouldn't we want to look at actual data about whether they are really increasing in prevalence and power? Shouldn't we be concerned about data that says that they aren't?