#well. take that kind of logistical difference and scale it up to society as a whole... | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stillness-in-green · 3 years

Text

Ahistorical, Absurd, and Unsustainable (Part Two)

An Examination of the Mass Arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front

Introduction and Part One

PART TWO: Logistics Problems

The Initial Arrests

Looking over the events above, one thing becomes apparent almost immediately: the only one that involves numbers even resembling those at the villa are the Rice Riots, and arrests there were scattered across two months. The only thing I could find that even came close to the idea of arresting the entire PLF in a day was a mass detainment in India in 2011: in the run-up to a separatist rally[7] that had stated its intention to be a “Million Man March,” police reportedly detained 100,000 people to stop them from attending. To do this, they used auditoriums and stadiums, not actual detention facilities.

And you can see why! We see a few pictures of the Gunga Villa group in the aftermath, but they’re pictures that raise more questions than they answer. Consider this one:

The detainment and relocation of the PLF. (Chapter 296)

This is but the tiniest fraction of the people captured, but every single one of them has had their hands and arms bound. The ones we see in the basement are restrained similarly. Where did all those restraints come from? Who got them all here? Were they, perhaps, made by the man in the center, who conspicuously has lengths of the same restraint wrapped around his wrists? If so, how did he make them all so freely, when most similar quirks we see rely on a certain amount of body mass or caloric intake?

Or take those transports in the background. How many people can each hold, and how long will it take to move a group of 17,000 into secure facilities? How are those 17,000 being kept docile all that time, especially once they’ve been moved onto the transports? Will there be a hero onboard every one, making sure the prisoners don’t get the opportunity to plan amongst themselves? Were there similar transports parked at every other raid site across the rest of the country? Enough of them and their assigned heroes to move the other 98,000 people?

Consider what we know about the Paranormal Liberation Front.[8] While easiest to compare numerically to widespread protest movements, they’re unlike any historical mass arrest in that context because they are, every one of them, combat-trained and ready to give their lives for the cause. There's no one there to tell them all to stand down, at least not that we see give such an order. Trumpet, perhaps, could have, but why would he have done so? Re-Destro gave the order back in Deika, but Re-Destro seems to have lost consciousness following his battle with Edgeshot, and I much doubt he’d have given the same order here as he did when facing Shigaraki in any case.

My Hero Academia has a long history of treating police custody as something like a status effect, like once a villain has been subdued, they’re In Custody, and magically become incapable of attempting to mount an escape. But why should this be so? There’s a relatively common misconception I see in fanfic that the police have “quirk cancellation restraints,” but let’s be clear: no such device exists in the series. This is the ostensible reason All For One and Muscular are restrained so unforgivingly; it’s why the prisoners in Tartarus have guns pointed at their heads at all times. It’s why Overhaul’s drug was such a big deal and it’s why the only way to stop Gigantomachia was to drug him or have Best Jeanist bind him in steel cables.

There is no way to stop someone in MHA from using their quirk except convincing them not to, via diplomacy or intimidation, or rendering them unconscious. Which of those tactics, pray tell, is in use here, such that the enormous numbers of people at issue remain subdued until they can be moved to secure facilities?

The Liberated Districts

Another problem quickly presents itself. We’re told that the PLF’s “other bases” around the country were hit, but we weren’t shown what that looked like. We saw Slidin’ Go and another hero in a prisoner transport; we know from bonus material that people like Class 1-B and Mirio—and presumably any number of other high school hero interns from around the country—were involved in those other raids. Still, we didn’t see what those base raids actually entailed.

That’s not surprising, because “base” is not really a very accurate word to describe the scale of the problem. See, with the intention of the raids being to put a stop to the PLF in one fell swoop, rather than risk a drawn-out conflict with a force that Hawks describes as, “On par with, maybe even greater than,” the power of their hero-saturated society, the Commission would have had to take into account an aspect of the MLA that readers learned about during My Villain Academia: what Trumpet calls “liberated districts.”

Deika was a liberated district—an entire town where an enormous chunk of the population was made up of members of the MLA. Ominously, the fact that Trumpet had a ready term to describe it—“a” liberated district, not “our” liberated district, or even “the first” liberated district—suggests that Deika was not the only one.[9] Further, Curious describes what we can expect the heroes would have to contend with in such areas: people who look like everyday civilians but are actually combat-trained warriors. Combat-trained warriors not gathered in one conveniently isolated compound or solitary building, but scattered across miles of homes and businesses, schools and parks, anywhere that an ordinary person might be found spending their day.

That is an entirely different can of worms than raiding one single building; thus it is here that the logistics really start to strain. Mass arrests of a civilian populace don't work at all the same way as a round-up of people all in a single area—how do you arrest an entire town? Well, there is such a thing as martial law, or military occupation, and maybe those tactics would work if the PLF had sent all their ace combatants to the villa and all the people remaining in the target city were terrified and unarmed civilians who could be ordered to keep inside their houses until further notice lest they start getting shot. That is not at all how the bulk of the PLF—that is, the ranks of the MLA—have been portrayed, though.[10] Again, Re-Destro and Curious characterize their 116,000 warriors as all being trained, combat-ready, prepared to rise up to answer the call. That is not a population that you're going to keep cowed with a certain minimum police presence, especially as time drags on.

Anyway, an occupation is clearly out-of-keeping with how the text presents the operation being run. We’re given no reason to assume other raids were any different than the ones we saw: a team of heroes launches a coordinated assault with a backline set up to catch stragglers. We’re told, after all, that the other sympathizers were “rounded up,” so extended detainment-in-place clearly wasn’t the intention. That just returns us to the problem, though.

According to Trumpet, Deika was 90% MLA. Presumably it was one of their higher-concentration bases, yes, but the situation isn’t any simpler in places that are “only” e.g. 80%, 70%, 60% inducted. It only becomes complicated in different ways.

Imagine a 70% liberated district. PLF-adherents are in the government, the municipal operations, the schools, the stores. How does this town keep running in a state of mass arrest? If the 70% are removed, what are the other 30% to do? Is the town even livable in that state? Will the remainder have to relocate? Can they afford that, and if not, what measures will be taken to help them? How quickly can those measures be enacted?[11]

The liberated districts present a bevy of other problems, too, but we’ll come back to those in Part Three.

Detainment Facilities

Let’s look at some more real-world facts and numbers.

As of 2018, Japan had 184 penal institutions, a term which covers prisons, detention houses, and juvenile facilities of either type. There are 70 prisons, 108 detention houses (eight of which are major facilities; the rest smaller branch locations), and 6 juvenile facilities. Their official capacity—that is, the number of occupants they are considered able to house without becoming overcrowded—is roughly 89,000. Their current population is around 48,000.

This puts Japan’s prison density—how close they are to being at full capacity—at 54%. They could not even double their occupancy without becoming overcrowded. Looking back to our PLF numbers, this tells us that real-life Japan could take an influx of 17,000. They absolutely could not take an influx of 115,000.

Here’s another way to look at it: in Japan currently, the rate of incarceration is 38 people per 100,000, in a population of 126 million. Adding the PLF to those numbers would mean they're incarcerating 130 per 100,000—more than triple the amount.

There’s another problem on top of the capacity issue: in Japan, penal institutions are divided up by what kind of prisoner they’re intended to house. Remand prisoners—that is, pre-trial detainees—are to be housed in different facilities than convicted prisoners. Convicted prisoners are sorted further by demographic traits, the type of offense they’ve committed, whether or not it was their first offense, and so on. For example, there’s an entire prison in Chiba Prefecture dedicated to housing men convicted of traffic violations; elsewhere, even murderers are subdivided according to criminal affiliation and likelihood of reoffending.

The relevance here is obvious. The problem isn't merely that there is limited prison capacity, but that that capacity is further limited by what space is available in the correct type of prison. And I am very prepared to bet that All For One prioritized targeting prisons that held violent offenders; he even implies as much when he describes the people he freed as violent escapees.

Speaking of All For One’s prison breaks, let’s take a look at some canonical numbers. They offer both information that mitigates the problems above, but also present new reasons to be concerned.

All For One, the night of his escape from Tartarus, targets seven other prisons, managing to free at least some inmates from six of them. Including the Tartarus escapees, 10,000 convicts are freed.

10,000 from seven prisons. Consider again the numbers above: Japan currently houses less than five times that many in twenty-six times as many penal institutions. In general, prisons don’t hold anywhere near those numbers—the largest one in Japan houses just barely over 2,000; even one that houses 500 is considered to be a large inmate population.[12]

I did some math based on the numbers I had available, and my rough estimate is that, in Japan, about 88% of the carceral population—42,000 people—are housed in the for-real prisons; the other 12% are remand prisoners and a negligible percent are incarcerated minors.

The MHA numbers are wildly, wildly higher. Now, this makes sense. In this post by @codenamesazanka, she notes that the first My Hero Academia movie describes Japan’s crime rate as a somewhat vaguely defined 6%, and estimates that this means the crime rate in MHA’s Japan is seven times higher than in real life—and that this is drastically lower than anywhere else in the world thanks solely to All Might! In other parts of the world, the crime rate is over 20% at minimum. So it seems reasonable to assume that Japan’s carceral capacity has increased likewise. Not, I think, to the degree that they automatically have the prison space to match their crime rate, but certainly more space than in real life.

Assuming, then, that MHA’s Japan has far more and/or far larger prison facilities, that also means they must need that kind of space—which means the space is already in use. Which, again, takes us back to the problem of overcrowding. If not—if the country is easily capable of dumping 115,000 people in prison without even causing a ripple of difficulty—then that implies its own deeply harrowing things about the rate of incarceration in the country. Either way, it sounds like a country that badly, badly needs to find a better way of doing things.

Legal Proceedings

Here’s another issue to consider: the legal proceedings. See, Edgeshot says this:

The hero Edgeshot explains why protecting the country requires these sixteen-year-olds be on the frontlines in a fight with people absolutely ready to kill them. Words cannot describe how much I wanted Re-Destro to knot this guy around a tree. (Chapter 263)

“If any of them get out, they could keep terrorizing other places.”

So assume for a moment that everything went exactly according to plan. Virtually all 115,000 members of the Liberation Front got rounded up, there’s easily enough room for them in Japan’s correctional facilities, and now the entire organization is awaiting trial. What happens next?

The Judicial Process

To provide some context for those of my readers whose only exposure to the judicial process is pop culture depictions, the very first thing that should happen after a person is arrested in the U.S. is a pre-trial appearance, at which people are formally told what the charges against them are and bail is set or denied. Non-violent offenders, provided they have someone able to post bail, are usually able to await their trial date at home, albeit under travel restrictions. Typically this pre-trial hearing should be within two business days; if a detainee hasn’t seen a judge in that time, the prosecutors’ office is obligated to let them go.[13] This doesn’t necessarily mean the person is off the hook entirely, of course; they can be arrested again later. It just means they’re free to go for the time being.

I don’t think for one second that Japan’s legal system can handle processing an influx the size of the PLF in just a few days. For comparison’s sake, in 2018 (the same year all my incarceration numbers come from, incidentally), 206,000 people were arrested in total, for the whole year. So will the overflow just be let go? Released to their homes to wait for the police to come back when they have more time? Yet that doesn’t seem to track with how Edgeshot was talking, does it?

On the one hand, if you look at the numbers from some of my historical analogues, it’s very consistent that only a small portion of people swept up in mass arrests in Japan ever actually reach trial. For the Rice Riots and the March 15 Incident, that portion is about a third—quite sizeable, given the numbers involved—but the others are lower still: the long-term arrests under the Peace Preservation Laws saw only about a twelfth of those arrested actually brought to trial; for the Righteous Army, it was less than a tenth.

Frankly, you don't arrest those kinds of numbers and then actually prosecute all of them; you arrest them to scare the shit out of people, and then you try the ringleaders and whichever others you have the most dirt on. This is the pattern in every other instance that involves over a thousand people being arrested.

On the other hand, even setting aside the fact that people can apparently be dropped in Tartarus without trial now,[14] a significant difference between the U.S. and Japan is that pretrial detention can stretch on and on and on in Japan. Legally speaking, charges should be filed with 72 hours, but prosecutors can request ten more days twice, then repeat the process over by adding other potential charges about which they need to question the suspect. So, yes, I suppose that, if the authorities do have the facilities to keep the PLF in, there’s nothing stopping them from dragging this detainment out indefinitely—it just isn’t very in-keeping with the historical record to do so with all of them.

As you might expect, lengthy detainments are a massively controversial aspect of the Japanese legal system to human rights activists both locally and abroad, since the loophole of detainees not yet having been charged or tried allows police to get around a lot of the rights that are supposed to be guaranteed, particularly the right to legal representation.[15]

So, now that I’ve brought up the right to legal counsel, here’s another procedural issue: due to a generally non-litigious culture and a very difficult bar exam, there's a dearth of attorneys in Japan. Defense attorneys have a particularly hard time; thanks to the presumption of guilt of those arrested by police, and an oft-vicious ostracization of criminals, it's seen as something of a blemish on one's character to willingly defend the accused, so defense lawyers are frequently unpopular and underpaid. I have to assume MHA is facing similar problems.[16] Good luck finding all the people you need to investigate and defend the new glut of people in the system, though!

No, the reason real-life Japan’s legal system can go on functioning even with a shortage of lawyers is, I suspect, that compared to how long pre-trial detention can go on, trials are fairly quick. Legally, they're required to last no longer than a few weeks. There is, however, concern among some in the legal profession that cases are not being examined closely enough, leading to preventable errors and miscarriages of justice,[17] due to both the haste with which trials are conducted and aspects of Japan's “lay judge” system.

Lay judges are a unique feature of Japan's legal system, in some ways similar to—and in other ways very distinct from—a jury of one’s peers. As in a U.S. jury, lay judges are a panel randomly selected from the citizenry to hear evidence and render judgement. However, where jurists are a passive audience to the presentation of the case, only debating the merits behind closed doors after the case concludes, lay judges are encouraged to take active part in the trial process, empowered to question witnesses and challenge evidence. The lay judges are joined by a smaller number of professional judges; a verdict requires a majority vote of the judges' panel, in which at least one vote is that of said professional judges.

As to what this has to do with concerns about justice, consider, if you will, how the requirements of a system that demands active involvement from its participants might intersect with the (self-)perception of the Japanese people as modest and not wanting to “make trouble” for others, particularly when combined with a widespread belief that suspects would not be brought to trial if they weren’t guilty. Additionally, in the specific context of My Hero Academia, consider how bias about villains or “villainous quirks” will influence such judgements.

I’ll talk more about the presupposition of guilt in Japan and how it relates to the treatment of suspects by both officials and the public in Part Three, but for now, let’s consider the trial itself. What will the charges be? What will the sentences be? How long will the PLF members be in prison? And will that time in prison do the slightest thing to prevent them from going right back to what they were doing when they get out? Are they just going to be imprisoned indefinitely? Until they say they change their minds?

When I began my research, there were two main things I wanted to examine in regard to crimes the PLF at large might be on the hook for: membership in an illegal organization and conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism.

Japan and Illegal Organizations

So here’s the thing: Japan doesn’t criminalize membership in organizations categorically. Because of the government’s history abusing laws to crack down on labor organizations and political dissent—e.g. the March 15 Incident—any attempts to legislate the process of banning criminal organizations get significant pushback from freedom of speech advocates. After all, critics say, the police may say that your community activist group doesn’t count as a terrorist organization now, but what’s actually stopping them from categorizing it as such in the future?

Now, that’s not to say Japan doesn’t have ways to regulate such groups at all! I’ll talk more about this later on, but briefly, groups that are found likely to be advocating for “terroristic subversive activity” can be forcibly barred from e.g. printing their organizational material, holding public assemblies, or owning property under the group’s name. One thing that isn’t mentioned in those prohibitions, though, is actual membership in the organization. That’s because, as I said, Japan is hugely gun-shy about criminalizing membership in any sort of organization, even organizations that have been declared criminal.[18]

It’s illegal to pick mushrooms on conservation lands if you’re doing it to raise money for your terrorist organization. It’s illegal to use protest sit-ins against new apartment buildings if you’re doing it on behalf of the mob. But it is not illegal to simply be a member of a terrorist organization or the mob—not even if that group has been formally dissolved by the government.

We can see a few places where this holds true even in the universe of My Hero Academia. The Shie Hassaikai is, like many yakuza groups, under police surveillance, but not barred outright from existing. Likewise, whatever prohibition there might once have been on printing material in support of the Metahuman Liberation Army has clearly lapsed, otherwise Curious would never have gotten away with reprinting Destro’s memoir.

Being a member of the MLA was likely not illegal as such, not any more so than membership in Aum Shinrikyo (currently calling themselves Aleph) or yakuza groups are in real life—they’re surveilled, sure, their activities curtailed, absolutely, but banned outright? Not so much. And membership in the PLF certainly wouldn't be banned even if it were legal to ban such memberships, seeing as it's brand new and, at the time of the raid, would not yet have been targeted for restrictions on its activity, lest such targeting tip the group off that the government was aware of its existence.

Keep that last point in mind; we’ll be coming back to it later, too.

Conspiracy

So, if membership in the PLF isn’t illegal in and of itself, what else can the government use to charge the 115,000 people they preemptively arrested?

Well, in general, for someone to be tried for a crime, they need to be either caught in the act or caught in an attempt. An attempted crime is something that is in immediate danger of happening—for example, if someone tries to kidnap a baby from the pediatric wing of a hospital but is caught by security before they make it out of the building, that’s an attempted kidnapping. An attempted crime may or may not be punished with the same severity as a successfully enacted crime, depending on the nature of the offense and the local laws.

What an attempted crime differs from, however, is a planned crime. If someone was planning to commit tax evasion but decided not to, they cannot be charged with tax evasion. This is how most criminal charges work—you can’t be charged with something you didn’t at least try to do, regardless of how close you came to it, and a policeman who tries to goad someone into such a crime should rightfully be running into charges of entrapment.

There are, unsurprisingly, some exceptions. It’s not uncommon for countries to criminalize planning insurrection or treason, and in cases like that, police are under absolutely no obligation to wait around for an active attempt before they respond. They can and will move as soon as they have sufficient evidence to get an arrest warrant. For lesser offenses, though, the legality of the advance-planning of a crime varies from country to country, and this is where we start getting into conspiracy.

Conspiracy in the legal sense has a couple of elements: it must be something that 1) two or more people 2) knowingly 3) discussed a plan for, which 4) led at least one person in the group to commit a “preparatory action.” i.e. do something to advance aforementioned plan.[19] All of these elements have to be proven to get everyone in a group on a conspiracy charge, though not all members of a group have to be in on all parts of a plan. If these elements are met, then everyone in the group can be charged with any and all crimes committed over the course of the plan being carried out, regardless of each member’s individual involvement.

What all this means for our purposes is that, because the heroes made the first move, they have to get the PLF on something that is illegal to even plan, not something that only becomes illegal in the attempt.[20] Huge portions of the PLF may wind up being released if the police can't conclusively prove not merely their association with the PLF, but also their direct knowledge of the relevant plans—not difficult for the ringleaders, obviously, but much dicier when you start getting out into the liberated districts. If the prosecution can't prove that knowledge, and lacks confessions otherwise—and as I’ll discuss in more detail later, a confession in and of itself is not considered sufficient; there has to be corroborating evidence[21]—huge swathes of those people are going to get cut loose.

So what are police going to be looking for? What crimes can the PLF be charged with under current law, and what are the sentences for such crimes like?

Prior to 1952, conspiracy was only illegal in the following cases: insurrection, treason, or aiding/abetting/instigating either of the above. Conspiracy to commit treason as a charge is right out—everything the PLF is doing, they’re doing for their own sake and for the sake of the future of Japan, not for the sake of a foreign power. Conspiracy to commit/instigate insurrection is more debatable, but, surprisingly, shakier than it might appear at first. This is because of the specific, legal definition of the term.

Japan’s Penal Code defines insurrection as rioting for the purpose of overthrowing the government, usurping the sovereignty of the State, or otherwise subverting constitutional order. The middle clause, the one regarding territorial sovereignty, is obviously not at issue—the PLF is not attempting to stake out land for a new country and secede. It’s the rest of the description that’s debatably more applicable, but still, to my eye, not an easy guilty verdict.

Firstly, per Hawks’ description of the plan, the PLF at least wants the government and the constitutional order intact enough for the Hearts & Minds Party to “storm the political world,” which to me suggests that their target is public opinion, not the intangible apparatus of the government itself. Further, even if you did argue that their manipulation of public opinion constitutes subversion of the constitutional order, you’d also have to argue the rioting part, and we have no idea whether any of the PLF’s plans actually involved a significant number of people mobbing in public as opposed to e.g. small strike teams.

So is the PLF off the hook? Not hardly! The Penal Code was established in 1907, after all—it’s been expanded lots since then, and those expansions are where the PLF really starts to run into trouble.

The Subversive Activities Prevention Act of 1952 criminalized a number of conspiracy-to-commit crimes—crimes like arson and homicide—if said crimes were to be undertaken “with the intent to promote, support or oppose any political doctrine or policy.” For example, conspiring to burn down a bank was not criminalized. Conspiring to burn down a bank as an act of protest against a new tax law became illegal as all get-out.

This gets us where we need to be for the PLF, as, on top of the crimes laid out in the 1952 act, I am very prepared to believe that acts of villainy (that is, illegal quirk use) in advancement of political ends have been folded into this particular branch of Japanese law.[22] So then, what kind of conspiracy charges are we looking at here, and what associated crimes?

I see two major possibilities at this point, and they hinge on exactly how much the prosecution ties Shigaraki’s attack on Jaku and Gigantomachia’s destruction to the run-of-the-mill PLF member sitting in a backwater town somewhere doing nothing more involved than e.g. quirk training and attending weekly meetings to get updates on where the plans stand for their local regiment’s part of the big push the following month. It’s difficult to say how feasible it is to make that connection—there are provisions in Japanese law for group criminal liability, but they tend to require things like joint actions, or specific knowledge and intent regarding the crime in question.

Obviously, random PLF members nowhere near Machia’s path of destruction didn’t take joint actions to abet it, so the pertinent question is, was Machia going on a rampage part of the plan? How about Shigaraki’s destruction of Jaku? If so, how much did random PLF members know about it? How specific does that knowledge need to be? If, say, the original plan had Shigaraki decaying the greater part of Hosu, does it still meet the specific knowledge requirement if he wound up decaying Jaku instead? If Machia was supposed to stampede across Tokyo, do the PLF members who chased after him count as furthering a conspiracy to do so when he stomped across Osaka and Kyoto instead?

Frankly, I don’t think we can say for sure how much a randomly selected member of the rank and file would have known. Any knowledge they had would have been many steps removed from the people actually making the plan; I would tend to think that the outer reaches of the PLF mostly knew about whatever plan their specific group would be tasked with, but would have much patchier knowledge of plans beyond that immediate sphere. As to how much that matters to the courts? Well, let’s take a look at the final logistics problem: the sentencing.

Sentencing Standards

First things first: I absolutely do not think the death penalty is on the table for the rank and file. People like Shigaraki and Dabi, yes, based on their pre-PLF crimes alone; Re-Destro and the other lieutenants are certainly a strong possibility. But the rank and file? No. Looking at our historical referents, it has never been the case that every single person involved in a mass arrest incident has been sentenced equally harshly, even in the case of the February 26 Incident’s outright uprising against the state! And that was in a time where human rights were considerably less enshrined in the constitution; in the modern day, the death penalty is usually reserved for murder cases,[23] typically only those involving multiple murders or particularly aggravated cases involving torture or ransom.

Whether or not the courts could attempt to punish all of the members of the PLF for all the deaths caused by Shigaraki and Gigantomachia under group criminal liability provisions, the degree of mass international outcry sentencing 115,000 people to death would involve is difficult to fathom. Egypt's 2014 mass trials of the Muslim Brotherhood are a good referent, and they “only” involved about 1,200 people.[24] Multiplying that number ten times over? I very much doubt Horikoshi is prepared to even imply that the system all these cute kids want to grow up and join is anywhere near that grisly and authoritarian.

Anyway, if the MHA government were that quick to hand down death sentences, I very much doubt Stain or All For One would still be alive—or, indeed, that Tartarus would serve much function at all. It's described, after all, as a place that houses those who threaten Japan's security on a fundamental, national level. That's the kind of thing countries keep death penalties around for.

That said, let’s assume for the time being that Shigaraki and Machia will be treated as their own thing, and what the PLF are going to be tried for is more in tune with the plan as Hawks laid it out. Remember again that the heroes attacked preemptively. This means that, in this scenario, all the conspiracy stuff is on the table, but it’s the only thing on the table—because it’s all the PLF had time to get to! There might be a few other charges—for example, if the black market support good proliferation is part of their plan, and the weapon proliferation is already underway, the whole group could feasibly be charged with whatever crime covers illegal weapon distribution. However, whatever crimes those support goods would be used to commit haven’t happened yet, so on that front, the PLF is still only on the hook for planning them.

Here, then, is what the Penal Code and its relevant revisions have to say about conspiracy sentences:

If they do wind up getting the group on conspiracy to incite insurrection:

A person who prepares for or plots an insurrection is punished by imprisonment without work for not less than 1 year but not more than 10 years.

(…)

A person who aids the commission of any of the crimes prescribed above by the supply of arms, funds, or food, or by any other act, is punished by imprisonment without work for not more than 7 years.

So that’s kinda bad! Not as bad as if they’d actually gotten to the insurrection, which is when death penalties and life sentences for ringleaders and key figures start cropping up, but still pretty bad! Seven years in prison is almost certainly enough time for a lot of those people to do some serious reconsideration of their life priorities!

As I already said, though, I think the insurrection charge is shaky. So what if they wind up instead charging the PLF with conspiracy to commit villainy for political aims?

Well, that’s why this whole section is in the logistics portion of this essay, because the sentencing for politically motivated villainy probably looks a lot more like this:

If it’s a crime on the level of, for political aims, preparing, plotting, inducing, or inciting:

Arson, illegal use of explosives, homicide, or robbery involving assault or intimidation: imprisonment with or without work for a term not exceeding five years.

A public disturbance: imprisonment with or without work for a term not exceeding three years.

A hazard for a train, tram, or vessel: imprisonment with or without work for a term not exceeding—oh, three years again.

The assault or intimidation of a public employee in the performance of public duty[25]: spoilers, it’s imprisonment for not more than three years again.

Five years or less. Three years or less.

Is that enough time to make people reconsider their life choices? Especially people who have been raised all their lives to follow the cause of Liberation?

Remember that when the heroes attacked, the intention was a clean sweep, a preventative tactic to stop the villains before they could enact any of their terroristic plans. Yet if they intended to stop things at a point where only conspiracy would be punishable, is three years in prison all that Edgeshot thought these people would be in for when he said that if a single one of them escaped, they might go on to terrorize other places? What was Japan’s government and/or the Hero Public Safety Commission planning to do in three years, or five years, or ten years, when 17,000 to 115,000 people were released en masse from prison, free to return to their lives? It certainly seems like they had more stringent consequences in mind, does it?

Of course, there are other factors to consider.

Lots of these people would, presumably, be up on multiple charges, compounding their sentences. Certainly, if Shigaraki and Gigantomachia are tied to the rest of the group, their tolls of death and destruction could potentially be applied to any and all co-conspirators. And maybe the penalties for conspiracy to commit politically motivated villainy are worse. Maybe the prosecutors will push for insurrection conspiracy charges regardless of their applicability, and the Japanese courts will just let them, because there will be a profound thirst for “justice” after Gigantomachia’s rampage and a few human rights violations or abuses of the law will seem like just what the Paranormal Liberation Front members had coming to them.

Maybe, behind the immediate logistical problems presented by this mass arrest, there are a whole fleet of problems of a different nature.

Next time: let’s talk ethics.

-----------------------------------------------------

Footnotes (Part Two)

[7] Whose supporters were eventually successful, by the way. Look up the Telangana movement.

[8] For example, “Skeptic can access such high-tech satellites that he can get up-to-the-minute views on the heroes approaching Gigantomachia, but he somehow didn’t notice a literal hero battalion bearing down on the villa until they were charging out of the tree line? Seriously?”

[9] Frankly, another 2-3 Deikas is the simplest way to explain how they can have a group that big and still be totally unknown to society at large. Far easier to maintain a cult’s required isolation and secrecy when your strongholds are more “this town and everyone you know and love in it” and less “this fancy resort that everyone has to drive thirty minutes to an hour to get to from the totally normal towns they actually live in.”

[10] And frankly, I don't know that that the, “All their really good combatants are at the villa,” assumption is even justified, given that you'd think the people at the villa for the “conference” are more likely to be the people who are going to be involved in coordinating the upcoming assaults—lots of great combatants, sure, but also people who are going to be doing the organizational work, the supply work, etc.

[11] Presumably, at this point, our hypothetical 30% will be instructed to relocate to one of the hero school shelters, but that obviously wouldn’t have been in the plan from the beginning, given that the shelters were only opened after heroes started retiring in droves.

[12] For comparison, a mid-sized prison is considered by the American Jail Association to have 50 to 249 beds, and we’re way more prone to incarceration than Japan is.

[13] For example, in 2005 in Baltimore, so many arrests were being made based on quality-of-life crimes like loitering that the system couldn't keep up, leading to thousands of people having to be released because they just couldn't be processed in time.

[14] When AFO was first brought in, we were told that his remand to Tartarus pre-trial was without precedent. However, Chapter 297 describes Tartarus as a detention facility that only calls itself a prison—remember, in Japan, remand prisoners are supposed to be kept separate from tried and sentenced prisoners. Thus, Tartarus should be reserved only for those who are sentenced to it, or it shouldn't contain sentenced prisoners at all. But with 297, we find that such is no longer the case, as people can be put there “regardless of their sentencing status.” It's unclear whether this change was a rapid case of slippery slope in-universe or whether it's a simple retcon.

[15] Suspects get one visit from a “duty lawyer” for free during detention, but otherwise, the right to counsel only kicks in after charges are filed, and lawyers are not allowed to be present during questioning.

[16] Among many other factors, it would certainly help explain why All For One hasn't even been brought to trial yet. Hell, we don't even know if he's really been formally charged, though Pixie Bob’s comment back in Chapter 184 could easily be interpreted as meaning that the questioning process is still ongoing. AFO needs a Yasuda Yoshihiro, clearly.

[17] Though both acquittals and convictions can be appealed.

[18] An “organized criminal group” per Japanese law has a few qualifications to meet. They need to be committing crimes in an organized fashion, obviously, and there are laws determining which crimes qualify, but further, they need to be a sustained organization, one in which members have assigned roles and duties such that those duties advance a common cause sought after by the organization as a whole. Ergo, a yakuza group definitely qualifies, while an impromptu group of people who got together to murder their boss but who have no further common cause afterward does not. Groups like the Metahuman Liberation Army and the Shie Hassaikai obviously meet these standards, but e.g. the League of Villains, lacking much in the way of a common cause or defined roles, might not.

[19] Like buying a ski mask if their plan to rob a bank involves ski masks.

[20] This, obviously, applies only to members of the PLF who haven’t already broken other laws. The League is boned no matter what. Likewise, there are laws against e.g. harboring criminals that could be brought to bear against whoever maintains the villa, and so on and so forth.

[21] Though one huge issue is that other peoples' confessions can be counted as evidence against you, and yours against others.

[22] A highly controversial anti-conspiracy law in 2017 criminalized the planning of a whole array of new crimes, some bizarrely innocuous-looking, but because it was aimed mostly at the yakuza and other groups engaged in human trafficking, the new roster was generally criminalized on the basis that they were crimes intended to gain some material benefit for the organization planning them. The PLF’s plans were going to do a lot of things, but provide material benefit—a legal term for something that has monetary value—is decidedly not one of them.

[23] Though there are 19 offenses for which it is legally invokable.

[24] The greater majority of the sentences were commuted to “only” being life sentences, but that only by virtue of a relatively powerful upper court, which Egypt’s president has been working to diminish ever since. The state of fair trials and humane prison conditions in the country is pretty appalling right now.

[25] Continued, “committed collectively by carrying any deadly weapon or poison, against any person engaged in prosecutorial or police duties, any assistant to such official, any person who guards or escorts persons in legal custody, or any person engaged in an investigation under this Act.” There are a lot of riders on this one.

#bnha analysis #bnha meta #paranormal liberation front #meta liberation army #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #bnha spoilers #my writing #plf arrests #stillness has salt

32 notes · View notes

letterboxd · 3 years

Photo

We Bought a Cryptozoo.

As their kaleidoscopic new film Cryptozoo lands in theaters, filmmakers Dash Shaw and Jane Samborski talk to Jack Moulton about misguided compassion, the beholder’s share, Akira, Watership Down and life imitating art.

“Occasionally we watch a horror movie together, but I like to do things while I watch and Dash wants the lights down. We spend so much time together working so when it comes time to relax, I want to be as far away from him as possible.” —Jane Samborski

“Jurassic Park on acid.” This is the mystical world of Cryptozoo, the new film from personal and professional couple Jane Samborski and Dash Shaw. Cryptozoo takes place in a 1960s hippie society where mythological beings—griffins, krakens, unicorns, gorgons and the like, collectively known as cryptids—live among humans, though unhappily, since people have a habit of hunting them down.

We meet Lauren (voiced by Lake Bell), a protector of cryptids, on a mission to rescue a baku—a Japanese supernatural creature that devours dreams—from the military, who plan to weaponize its powers. However, in collecting all the cryptids into a sanctuary that feels more like a mall (echoes of Disney’s Epcot are plainly hinted at), the cryptozookeepers begin to realize that those they’re trying to safeguard are likely better off without their assistance.

Loaded with clear allegories for xenophobia and colonialism, Cryptozoo has proven both a hit and a miss among Letterboxd members with the nature of its metaphors, even if we can all agree it absolutely skewers white-people-savior complexes. Shaw and Samborski placed careful focus on the casting, for example, enlisting Greek actress Angeliki Papoulia to portray Phoebe, a Medusa-esque character from Greek mythology, who assists Lauren in her journey to locate the baku, and provides an essential perspective and critique on Lauren’s overzealous activism.

Steeped in detailed and surreal world-building, the kaleidoscopic, hand-drawn approach can become pure sensory overload. More than a few of our members felt compelled to light up first and check it out again if it ever hits Adult Swim. But among those happy to be overwhelmed, Andrew found himself “captivated by its tactile imagery; its texture and sketch and color, the full-body chills and immense sense of self—it is beautiful and passionate.”

Cryptozoo premiered earlier this year at Sundance, where it picked up the NEXT Innovator Award for its makers. (Although only Shaw is credited as director, Cryptozoo uses an ‘A Film By’ credit to emphasize Samborski’s visionary contribution as animation director.) The couple had previously collaborated on Shaw’s debut feature, My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea, which is much more of a roughly sketched-out daydream, whereas Cryptozoo represents a more serious shift, and a step up in ambition and craft.

Making films is far from Shaw’s only enterprise. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, he has written comic books, graphic novels, lyrics and plays. Meanwhile, Samborski has appeared in several films as an actress, and lent her animation skills to productions including Netflix’s Thirteen Reasons Why. Among their animation influences, the pair have mentioned the films of Ralph Bakshi, Suzan Pitt’s Asparagus, René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet, Takeshi Tamiya’s Astroboy and the century-old films of Winsor McCay and Lotte Reiniger (especially The Adventures of Prince Achmed).

Shaw and Samborski sat down with Jack Moulton for a chat about expanding the scale of their work, life imitating art, the “heft and violence of Watership Down” and the best comic-book film ever made.

‘Cryptozoo’ director Dash Shaw and animation director Jane Samborski.

What stuck out to me when I finished the film was your ‘A Film By’ credit; it wasn’t just Dash, it had Jane’s name as well. How were the directing responsibilities divided in order to explain that credit? Dash Shaw: It just felt like the most accurate way to describe the movie.

Jane Samborski: I make a lot of the decisions about character acting and I’m taking the voices and using them to inform my understanding about the characters. In some cases, I was able to use video reference of the actors, but most of their physical mannerisms are coming from my brain, so in that way I’m taking a directorial role. While there’s a huge amount of the aesthetic direction that’s coming from me, Dash is definitely the one steering the overall ship. There were a few instances in the film where I got a little off-message and he pulled me back.

DS: Maybe it’s even more confusing with animated movies because people are doing a lot of different things, so when it comes to crediting we talk about what we think makes the most sense. We could have written our names on the backgrounds to try and figure out who drew what, but it just seemed like a film by the both of us.

JS: Everything is by us, except this thing, and this thing, and this thing…

What I found really interesting about the film is the way that all the characters are so fallible. It demonstrates how an egocentric allyship can do more harm than good. Why was it important for you to explore that idea of misguided compassion? DS: I think that that happened while trying to do something else. I had seen this Winsor McCay short, The Centaurs, and I wanted to write something Jane would enjoy painting. My first idea was about mythological beings, and then the next idea was that they were from actual mythologies in our culture and instead of being a fantasy world, they’re in our world.

That is when my mind went to these things that you talked about, like museums attempting to take imaginations from all over different cultures and introduce them to the public, and how that often damages the power of those artworks. There’s definitely a Cryptozoo movie that could’ve been made by a different person that didn’t get into any of this stuff, but because of my personality, those things ended up being embedded in the script.

You embraced the opportunity to utilize thin lines in Cryptozoo, as opposed to the thicker lines of My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea, which opens up what you can achieve cinematically. Can you talk about expanding that scale and how that may have approached your limitations? JS: It definitely was one of the first aesthetic decisions that was made in the film. There’s a broad simplicity to High School Sinking, so we wanted to zero in on fewer but more specific drawings. I was doing quite a bit of minor puppet work, especially in the latter parts of High School Sinking. I really love working in that way, so this was a match that played to an aesthetic that I responded to for a long time. It was logistically a lot more difficult as it’s very hard to turn in space with a puppet, so there were definitely times where we would run up against a problem and then throw out our rulebook and do cell animation. But I think that is the joy of setting up your own rules—you keep them as long as they’re useful to you.

Your film acknowledges very early on that “utopias never work out”. On the other hand, perhaps utopias never work out in movies because they’re just not dramatically interesting to explore when they succeed. What are your thoughts on sculpting a utopia in commercialized fiction? DS: You kind of know that it’s going to fail as soon as the movie starts. It’s a good fall. I find utopian art very inspiring and beautiful and that’s what I like about a lot of the art of the 1960s. I would not put this movie up against that imagery.

JS: Yeah, a utopia is certainly something we all want to experience but not necessarily something we want to hear a story about.

DS: That’s something that’s famously said about what’s really powerful about early seasons of Star Trek, and seeing all of these different people working together.

I imagine it was strange to be working on Cryptozoo for so many years, and then you have a storming-the-capital scene in your film, which premiered at Sundance only a couple of weeks after it happened in the real world (for very different reasons). How did that make you feel regarding the film’s timing? JS: It was a bit of a freak out!

DS: It was strange, even if we didn’t have that line in our movie, just to see that going on. It made me think of this art school thing, the “beholder’s share”, where the artists make 80 percent of the work in their time and place, and then the last twenty percent is completed in the viewer’s mind, in their own time and their place. You have to love that hand-off.

JS: The world changed so much over the course of making the film. Dash wrote the film before Trump was elected President. We started out with a script that we thought was talking about really interesting things that felt a little bit further away. As we worked on the project, it got closer and more real, so we just hoped that we were able to talk about it with honesty. The project feels like something larger than us and that’s really exciting.

When you look at some of the reactions, you can see how it’s really easy for audiences to dismiss the movie as too weird, but I do feel there are many accessible and mainstream elements to the plot. What are your instincts for playing in and out of the comfort zone? DS: One of my first ideas for wanting to make animated movies is that they would have a pop-art quality. They would be blockbuster movies that have been defamiliarized—they’ve been messed up, disorientated, changed, altered in some way. High School Sinking is like Titanic, and Cryptozoo is like Jurassic Park. There’s a blockbuster movie inside of them, but we keep veering away or disrupting it in some way that might make it seem stranger. It was right there as one of the first missions of making these films.

JS: I feel very differently. I love the experimental stuff, but if there wasn’t a clear story through-line, I would get bored. It’s the perennial music-video problem—it’s all gloss and no heft. So we have that clear action-adventure storyline to pull you through this crazy ride. We feel differently about what it’s doing for the audience, but it seems to be working, whichever one of us is right!

Are there any hidden or background details in the animation that you’re concerned people will miss? JS: For me, if somebody felt that there was so much going on that they wanted to watch it two or three times and they found something new each time, that would be the best thing ever. The idea that I would be able to make something that is worth multiple viewings far outstrips worrying that somebody is going to miss something I did.

What was the film that made you want to become a filmmaker? DS: I wonder if Jane is going to say Watership Down…

JS: I am! That was my favorite movie as a child. I liked to torture my friends with it. It’s particularly that segment right at the beginning when they tell the myth of El-Ahrairah—it’s so expressive and less representational, but it also has this heft and violence. It was definitely the first adult animated film that I saw. My parents wouldn’t buy it for me because it was at the local library, so we’d rent it again and again and I’d watch that beginning segment over and over and it would get scratchier and scratchier, so eventually the VHS just snapped from me watching it so many times.

DS: I would have to really dive deep to come up with a really good answer to that but for some reason the one that pops into my head right now is Todd Haynes’ Poison. I saw it at the School of Visual Arts. Poison felt like a collage movie with three different parts that kept pulling a special combination of ingredients. It felt like an art film and it also had very overt genre elements that were being used in an unusual way. It was one of the key movies to me that had a great independent spirit.

El-Ahrairah faces a challenge in the prologue to ‘Watership Down’ (1978).

What animated films have you seen recently that blew you away? DS: I want to plug an incredible movie we just saw at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Bubble Bath, which is a restored Hungarian film from 1980. I hope it will get a US release.

JS: We were also lucky enough to see an exhibit [at Annecy] for Michel Ocelot. I had seen the Kirikou films, which are phenomenal. I really like his work.

Do you have any movies that you often watch together? DS: We really don’t watch movies together. I wish she would watch movies with me!

JS: Occasionally we watch a horror movie together, but I like to do things while I watch and Dash wants the lights down. We spend so much time together working so when it comes time to relax, I want to be as far away from him as possible.

DS: I’m really glad we saw Bubble Bath together.

JS: That one was just amazing.

You’re a comic book writer, Dash. What’s the greatest comic-book movie ever? DS: Akira.

JS: Yeah, hands down.

Related content

Our animation correspondents Kambole Campell and Alicia Haddick in conversation about the 2021 Annecy International Animation Film Festival

Letterboxd’s Top 100 Animated Feature Films, a list by Rahat Ahmed

Vulture’s The 100 Sequences that Shaped Animation list on Letterboxd

Follow Jack on Letterboxd

‘Cryptozoo’ is currently screening in select US theaters.

#cryptozoo #animation #animated film #dash shaw #jane samborski #ralph bakshi #psychedelic animation #2d animation #hand-drawn #hand-drawn animation #letterboxd

3 notes · View notes

ekebolou · 3 years

Text

Oh, wow, @dharmagun now look what you’ve done

I’ve gone and developed whole-ass ideas for how everyone goes to the bathroom in Kostas. And it’s all your fault.

(dude, I’m having blast)

Bathroom talk under the cut

I don’t know a good way to include your reply, so I’m going to just talk back :)

So, yes - underground water in the Capitol! That’s one reason this otherwise fairly fertile area wasn’t very densely settled - there’s enough water, but it can be hard to get to (and it’s an easily-accessible plain that basically got razed over and over again as different conquests of Ainjir happened, and those happened a lot)

So, this part of the country comes down from higher land in the northwest, flattens out a bit, and then you’ve got lots of hills to the east and southeast. It’s kind of like the Snake River Plain (but no river), or maybe more the Upper Rhine Plain (but still no river) since there’s jungle to one side and low mountains/hills to the other - I dunno, honestly pretty far outside my expertise as to the geological/ecological logics of this and I should probably stop talking about it, especially because most of the ecology I originally based on China but wikipedia didn’t have great info on Chinese aquifers - BUT ANYWAY there’s a shitload of basalt under the Capitol, columns & caves, etc, and palace is on the higher side of the land because it was originally built around an Artesian well (the old song goes that the King was on an unsuccessful hunting trip during a very troubled time time and laid down for a nap and got up and was blessed by finding a new stream of fresh flowing water where he had taken his rest, and thus blessed & future peace secured & rights of kings, blah blah blah - somebody added a ribald verse about ‘ground penetration’ and what other streams might possible run down the King’s sleeping leg and the original song is rather rarely remembered these days)

GOING ON, the city’s development was rather haphazard (in part because it wasn’t always the capitol, in part logistics), but before Keadar-Ainjir’s coup, it was to varying degrees illegal to screw around with the King’s water - it all depended on how into enforcing the rules about well-digging and dumping and whatnot any given ruler was, and whether they were even there or not. But there was no easily-accessible nearby stream for dumping, and water infrastructure was poorly developed, so the city was both not very clean except in certain areas, and had a very hardworking and well-developed strata of people responsible for waste management (that not everyone had equal access to, of course).

Then Keadar-Ainjir takes over and SHIT GETS REAL (in more ways than one, lol - fun aside, other than needing to kill every member of the royal family to complete his coup, it was a good idea for him to take the Capitol by storming the Palace because it had the best access to water, and if they got reverse sieged they could hold out until reinforcements came). This city is a paper-heavy society fro the get go, so people are using chamber pots/dry toilets and paper, and everything is getting hauled out by night soil people for use as fertilizer (mainly on non-food crops - Ainjir is a major cloth producer and supplier, but there’s also hemp, bamboo, dyestuff, etc - but there’s still probably a fair amount of pathogen transfer going for local edible produce). There’s pumped water for cleaning (hands, occasionally butts) and vinegar (yet another delightful city-smell), but no city-comprehensive sewage system outside of the public baths and royal fountains.

This would of course NOT DO for a campaign-trained general, who knew the value of not shitting where you eat, so the major mining projects that brought up most of what he used to build the Academy also created a city-wide sewage and drainage system. They don’t have a systems as grand and far-reaching as the Romans, but something like what Romans and Minoans had: indoor plumbing, waste water separation, public access to water for multiple uses (maybe not pressurized showers - the Academy has a deliberately jury-rigged version of pressurized showers that’s part of the Academy Dayz stories). It doesn’t work as well in the originally-shitty parts of old town, as a lot of the piping is above-ground and depends on rainwater collection to compensate for lacking underground access (they couldn’t dig under the shitty old town without destroying it). Nice old town had good enough systems in place, and just got a little update.

In Ainjir, this elaborate system of wastewater management in the Capitol is fairly unique; other places have it, but one a much smaller scale. Adineh, Wulsh, and the conglomeration of republics to the south have their own systems, which are honestly more evenly distributed (except in Wulsh, where it can get very spotty).

BUT, all of this to say: people in the Capitol are a fairly clean lot, between the public baths, sewage system, indoor plumbing, etc. People, especially in the public privies, still use the plentiful paper (another fine use of the broadsheets) to go about their business, and (if you’re not nasty) wash hands afterward with a water-vinegar mixture from a basin (you are supposed to smell a little more like vinegar than like shit coming out of the restroom - fancy people smell like perfumes - but the systems have been in place long enough that people sort of expect that sharp tang to hit them if you’ve just excused yourself to tcb, and it’s a little suspicious if you don’t). Fanciest people use water from specially-spouted (long, thin spouts and very round reservoirs) pitchers or very, very special little water pumps (thankfully these are rare, since they mess up the dry/ wet ratio of the waste which can affect composting).

Peeing in the street is still a problem, though. They installed a bunch of little ‘privacy areas’ but it’s basically just to make it harder to stare rather than handling the waste - it goes in the common street gutter, rather than the side of someone’s house though, so that’s good.

BUT NOW what am I gonna do about butchers and tanners and other city livestock management? Thank God hats aren’t super popular - and if they are, they’re made out of straw or cloth - or there would be a lot more mercury in the system.

#kostas stuff #worldbuilding notes #dharmagun

1 note · View note

bladekindeyewear · 4 years

Text

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-04-02

Alright I’ll fix the broken images later right now lets goooooo read the updaaaate I’ve been only spoiled on the chapter title

I don’t even wanna guess. Jake? This makes me think of Jake for some reason, even though that doesn’t make much se-- oh right the Vriskas are locked in a school closet with a dead clown.

> CHAPTER 7. Distress Call From the Closet

Yep.

Also, this is how a car design looks when it was invented to have its first appearance be it flying with a human named Tavros looking out from an open side door.

(I’m not ENTIRELY against designing something for its immediate-art-use-purpose first and functional or historical-origination thought later, but usually when you make it that obvious that that’s what your doing it’s best to make that fact funny. Like the Conveniently Shaped Lamp.)

Also I appreciate this using of Candy as kind of more lighthearted breaks in the action?

> (==>)

I thoguht that protruding fang (?) was drool for a second and wondered what the fuck they were up to in this closet all of a sudden.

Vriska, thriving on it, has not felt so decadently alive in a very long time. Tavros has never in his tragic existence felt so close to death, which is surprising to him.

Vrissy is trying her best not to grapple with any cosmic truths at the moment, since she’s getting a phone call in the middle of hiding for her life.

Vrissy’s implied to be somewhere in-between all that by this joke. I bet she’ll be comparing herself to Vriska and Tavros alike throughout this mess, wondering where on the spectrum she lands and being ashamed of it AND both of them regardless. Vriska Original had a ghost version who went on a fair bit of a Page dress-up thing and personality shift, so maybe we could expect Vrissy to struggle with being caught in the middle of the scales... or does that qualify as overthinking it classpectways?

VRISSY: Yeah Harry I would say we are Extremely Aware of the Situ8ion. VRISSY: As it Unfolded the fuck all around us.

Good Christ, Vrissy’s selectively-capitalized Kanaya-isms continue to be cute.

Oh, he’s on speakerphone.

> (==>)

Yep, telling Rose and Kanaya would be the smart thing to do, but it isn’t the Them thing to do.

--ROXY’S PLACE?!?? Hoo boy. On the other hand, though, we get more Roxy, so it evens out.

Also, I like how Harry Anderson has to spell out Harry Anderson’s entire name for his Harry Anderson chat tag every single time. Harry Anderson.

> (==>)

Part of the reason, Tavros thinks, that he’s been so game to continue on with the worst plan anyone has ever concocted, is that the more bullshit they endure, the longer they can put off actually doing anything that matters.

If he’s getting sprayed with a sprinkler and getting clown feet in his face, it’s a farce. It can’t hurt him. But if they get to the part where he’s shoving the uncooperative weight of his uncle’s corpse in an incinerator, he will stop floating in protective semi-consciousness above his body and it will all be real.

Ouch.

Can’t one of you assholes just captchalogue him? Or did you leave all the appropriate-strength moduses at home? Even you Vriska??

Oh, right. Everyone knows and you can just leave him here. Good call. I mean you don’t really have to worry about forensic evidence with the pictures circulating.

> (==>)

VRISKA: 8ye 8itch.

Oooh! That feels satisfying! Yeah, tell off Gamzee’s corpse!

...Wait.

If they just leave Gamzee there, Jane can revive him, can’t she.

Fuck. Maybe it’s up to Jake to try and stop that.

> (==>)

Karkat and Meenah resistance-time, then, with them presumably hearing about this development on the internet. Wow, Meenah’s horns are getting long fast. Plus a hint more of her grown-up self’s height. I didn’t think she’d keep maturing so fast with her absurd lifespan ahead of her.

Oh shit, I didn’t see at first--

Right, Candy might still be lighthearted compared to the broader plot just due to lowered stakes, but it’s still the Carpet-Bombing-and-War-Filled Shituniverse.

Trolls are made for the battlefield.

From the moment a troll oozes out of the mother grub’s pulsating sphincter, through the trials of the brooding caverns, across the brutal day to day slog of Alternian society, all the way to their Ordeals, to the sucking void of space. They are bred for nothing but endless war.

But Commander Vantas...Commander Vantas is different.

Is... is Meenah narrating right now? Because fuck.

Or so all the pamphlets say.

The actual Commander Vantas has blisters on his heel and has been taking pot-shots at scouting drones for the last six hours. He could use a bath, honestly.

Or is this one of the trolls on the side narrating who’s kind of internalized the stories of trolls’ prior warlike nature?

> (==>)

MEENAH: yo nubs is that u MEENAH: pretty rank KARKAT: OH MY GOD. KARKAT: I FLATLY REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT YOU CAN SMELL MY NATURAL MUSK OVER THE STENCH OF BLOOD AND BURNING FLESH.

I guess it probably was Meenah narrating, then. Unless it’s a really biased alt!Callie doing the talking.

MEENAH: didnt i warn u bout thinking tho? KARKAT: GOD DAMMIT MEENAH, DON’T MEME AT ME.

I don’t know what meme this is and I really don’t want to know.

They have had this argument more than once. In fact, both of them could play either side of it. Karkat has done his time in the field, of course, leading small guerilla operations to free prisoners and sabotage Crocker’s supply chains, but Meenah and the rest of the council is right. Which is why he’s here, instead of at the front lines with his rebels, where he belongs.

His true value is his face. His symbology. At the end of the day, he is a fucking ad campaign.

...is KARKAT narrating here???

SWIFER: boss check the news!

Oh shit, right, Swifer is in the resistance in Candy instead of just a breeding assistant in Meat as the bonuses remind us.

KARKAT: OH FUCK. MEENAH: what KARKAT: JESUS CHRIST. MEENAH: nubs i swear 2 god KARKAT: IT’S GAMZEE. KARKAT: HE’S DEAD. MEENAH: oh MEENAH: well shit KARKAT: I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS. MEENAH: u okay KARKAT: NO!

Huh. Them’s some complicated feelings that could fall in basically all directions at once.

Also, I can’t believe Karkat has hung around humans enough to fully internalize the full-throated exclamation “JESUS CHRIST”, which wouldn’t even really be a thing on Earth C with people who aren’t from Earths B or A.

MEENAH: u outlawed fishpuns i gotta make my own fun

How could you, Karkat.

KARKAT: AND I GUESS IF YOU CALL AN OBSCENELY PUBLIC PALE ACT, PERFORMED IN A FUGUE OF DESPERATE PANIC INTENDED TO PREVENT HIM FROM MURDERING ALL OF MY FRIENDS INSTEAD OF JUST HALF OF THEM “A THING”. KARKAT: THEN YES, I GUESS WE HAD A THING. KARKAT: BUT IF YOU’RE ASKING ME IF I’M SAD THAT HE’S DEAD? KARKAT: ABSOLUTELY THE FUCK NOT.

Okay, I’d hoped not, good...

KARKAT: THAT’S NOT WHY I’M SAYING FUCK A BUNCH OF TIMES. MEENAH: u need a reason to say fuck a buncha times KARKAT: SHUT UP. KARKAT: LOOK AT THE PICTURE.

--Right! That’s a good reason to not be okay.

KARKAT: I DON’T THINK SO? I CAN’T SEE HER EYES IN THIS PICTURE, BUT SHE’S COVERED IN BLOOD, AND SHE’S CARRYING GAMZEE, SO SHE’S CORPOREAL AT LEAST.

I love this form of analysis somehow.

KARKAT: OKAY...HERE. OH. OF COURSE. CROCKER IS CLAIMING HER SON WAS KIDNAPPED AND FORCED TO PARTICIPATE. KARKAT: AND THEY’VE NAMED ME AS THE MASTERMIND. MEENAH: well we woulda taken credit for it anyway so this saves us the time MEENAH: thanks jane owe u one

Meenah isn’t the “concerned” type. Lemonade out of lemons.

> (==>)

That middle tweet is my favorite.

Oh dear, “#GamzeeAnon”...

KARKAT: SHIT. OF COURSE THIS WOULD HAVE TO DO WITH FUCKING SERKET. KARKAT: LITERAL MONTHS OF PLANNING, HOURS AND HOURS OF LOGISTICS, AND ALL OF IT GOES UP IN SMOKE BECAUSE OF ONE SPIDERY ASSHOLE. KARKAT: SHE *WOULD* FIND SOME WAY TO WRECK MY SHIT FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE.

indisputable

KARKAT: NOW? KARKAT: NOW WE PIVOT FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS.

Um...

What does that mean?

I’m having a lot of trouble not only understanding the basic meaning of what he’s saying, here, but understanding why KARKAT of all people would employ it.

......it’s a meme, isn’t it. Gotta be.

> (==>)

(Ooh, an eyepatch designed to invoke a Strider-shade. Nice.)

KARKAT: I NEED TO TALK TO EGBERT.

But....... why??

> (==>)

Oh right, cause his son’s girlfriend is involved.

> (==>)

Oh my goooood what a pair of John and Roxy caaaars! :D

He is too busy with these mental gymnastics to notice his father’s car parked outside.

Ah right. John’s... not on the best terms with him, I recall that.

> (==>)

Ohhhh myyyy goooood what an image!!!

John, Roxy, and Harry Anderson proceed to have the tail end of a conversation they had before, in another medium.

What the fuck!? Harry had that conversation WHILE this dead body situation was going on?! Let me reread that linked bit...

(And she has such a somber smile on her face, but given the conversation content it’s not surprising.)

Harry Anderson looks at the two of them all teary and laughing and hikes his bag higher on his shoulder, shifting his weight. Roxy sees a muscle tighten in his jaw. Her beautiful, smart boy. She wants to run over and hug him, to protect him from the possibility of pain at talking to his father, but she doesn’t. She knows how much he’s wanted this, no matter how much he jokes about it.

She looks back at John, and sees her own awe mirrored in his face. She wills him not to cry, not to fall back on his self-imposed suffering and blame loop. Something about the last hour must have done the trick, though. John stands up, brushes his hands on his jeans, and walks, back straight, toward his son.

JOHN: hey harry anderson. JOHN: it’s really, really good to see you. JOHN: do you wanna go for a drive?

The muscle in Harry Anderson’s jaw clenches a few more times, but when he smiles, it is genuine.

HARRY ANDERSON: yeah, dad. HARRY ANDERSON: that could be cool.

Oh son of a bitch. Well isn’t that entertaining. Harry you’re just going to ditch your friends for I’m kidding, this is life fulfillment you’re aiming for, of COURSE you’re going to agree. (Too bad bringing the current situation in is gonna throw a wrench in things.)

> (==>)

Oh right, that means more of THIS Vriska and THIS John. They’ve had a good start talking already, I wonder what more they can learn from each other.

HARRY ANDERSON: but no worries, i asked my mom to pick me up some snacks so she’ll leave to go to the store in a sec. HARRY ANDERSON: just sneak in after she leaves and hide in my room, and i’ll be back in a bit.

Harry you enormous shortsighted asshole. And John’s about to learn all this from Karkat over the phone to blow his cover.

> (==>)

aaaaa roxy art i cannot :D

Wonder if her stealthiness attunement is gonna catch them in the act?

> (==>)

From this jealousy bit, I wonder to what degree Earth C humans are used to Troll quadrants and their various interplay mores.

> (Room: Examine yourself.)

Oh, a proper room introduction for Harry Anderson! Very fashion-focused, very liking the spotlight--

Oh wait, shit. This is traditionally where classpect associations are hinted more obviously than anywhere else. Time to stop holding back on the classpect stuff and take in every fucking word with capital-C Classpect fully in mind.

A bedroom stands empty. There is no boy standing in this bedroom, or indeed anyone else. However, if the boy whose bedroom it was were here, one might remark that his name was HARRY ANDERSON.

And FUCK, one might say, does he like MUSICAL THEATER.

Spotlight, definitely. But is it for the attention? The possibilities? The acting?

He has been in his fair share of school plays, but he has LOFTY ASPIRATIONS to STAR in bigger and better productions. He especially appreciates modern MUSICAL REMAKES of classic OLD EARTH MOVIES. It's a craze that not everyone is happy about, but in the absent boy they have found a DEVOTED FAN. There is also just enough overlap between his taste and his father’s to allow for SOMEWHAT STILTED CONVERSATIONAL BONDING from time to time.

Hmmmm. Is it about the majesty of important works of media (I see “Pokémon” and “Alien vs Predator” up there...), or is it about the fact that they’re remakes of past works? Those are a lot of awards and stage lights now that I zoom in to look... and hats... hats could be important......

The boy who is not yet here has also been known to dabble in ACCESSORIZATION. He could be described as a COBBLER ASPIRANT, a NEOPHYTE MILLINER, or even a BIT OF A WHIZZ WITH A NEEDLE AND THREAD.

Oh, interesting! Not just putting out different outfits, but making them? And Milliner is hat-specific creation...

His mother got him his first SEWING MACHINE when he was 10, to keep him from using hers all the time. His looks are HAND-CRAFTED, often IMITATED, but never DUPLICATED.

Space is obviously possible from sewing, but-- A focus on uniqueness!!! The broader theme is getting VERY specific. You might feel where I’m leaning already.

His COSTUMES appear in various AMATEUR PRODUCTIONS, the devising of which takes up most of his FREE TIME. His friends are usually LESS APPRECIATIVE of his attempts to dress them up than he would like, though.

Holy fucking shit. He dresses up and makes unique HATS for his friends and others. Specifically so they can use them as COSTUMES to act parts!!!!

And the other unique thing mentioned about him here took the time aside to note how he appreciated the intersection in personal interests between him and his father for it.

So you all know what I’m thinking, right? HATS??? It’s got to be Heart, isn’t it. Maybe even a Page of Heart, with his long-off aspirations and talent for arming others with it. Any other additive/giving class might do the trick, too, like Sylph or possibly Maid. Knight could technically still fit pretty well, but I feel Page is better given what little we know so far, what with so much outward focus bleeding out.

(You can comb through the saga on my infamous hats tag or the summary on the Aspect Duality post, but the gist is that hats (and others’ clothes, but especially the hats. even shoes -- SO many shoes in that picture!) represent the gist of an expressed identity, personal uniqueness whether innate or affected ala a costume. Nepeta, Dirk, Terezi, and even Stitch have given us examples, some of them deeper than we realized, MOST of them probably overthought bullshit like I thought when I first created the hats tag and started tracking the wonderful importance of hats. ¬_¬)

I’d like to see anyone else’s interpretation. (EDIT: One more potential Nep-allusion in this room.)

> (==>)

Oh nooooooo!!!! Tavros’s sprite is the saddest looking thing I’ve ever seen!! D: Like a mix of Jane and Jake that thoroughly regrets his entire existence! Which he practically does! D: Why the Caliborn-like clothes though?

(Some hint at “how different alt!Callie’s Caliborn must have been” like the commentary suggested exploring in fanfiction? Was the suggestion meant to divert attention from the idea that it’d be addressed in the plot? Andrew pulled that trick a time or two, why not these authors?)

Also:

Pffff. Vriska just accessorizing immediately-- Oh, wait. That might just be a bandana she had at some point coated in Gamzee’s blood.

Tavros is looking at the news on a borrowed phone -- nice call on disabling the tracking on yours, Tavros.

> (==>)

TAVROS: It’s getting a bit surreal to see my, uh,, frozen mask of horror on every news site,, TAVROS: It’s a good shot of you,,, though, Vrissy, VRISSY: It really is Shockingly well composed.

Heheheh. It’s fun that Tavros knows exactly what Vrissy/ka would care about.

And yes, Vriska is over there trying out ALL the bandanas.

> (==>)

VRISSY: Oh, is trying on all my 8oyfriend’s accessories not passing the time well enough for you? VRISKA: Desper8 times call for desper8 measures, Vrissy. VRISKA: And this is some dire shit.

They stare each other down. Did she mean the fugitive situation, or Harry Anderson’s fashion choices? Vrissy feels silly wondering this, but despite the situation they’re in, she can’t help but feel more acutely anxious about Vriska’s presence.

She likes her life, and she trusts her own choices. But now, looking at everything from Vriska’s vantage point, it all feels silly. Unimportant. Childish.

She can’t tell if she wants Vriska to rip in to Harry Anderson or if she wants her to stay silent. To put off the moment where she has to defend him or join in.

Real interesting. Like she’s caught between these worlds after all.

> (==>)

They say it was a long drive, but...?

...WOW. What a chill, disinterested-looking affect his sprite makes for. Huh.

He kisses Vrissy’s temple and she leans in to the warmth of him.

HARRY ANDERSON: aren’t you a sight for sore eyes. HARRY ANDERSON: so sorry it took so long. HARRY ANDERSON: can’t rush a heart to heart, you know how it is.

Stop making me deliberate whether you’re trying to drop teasing Heart-aspect hints. You already know I’m going to be obsessively scrutinizing every word of dialogue around Harry to see if it fits, story. No need to rub it in.

VRISSY: You actually had a Heart to Heart with your dad? How many times did he Cry?

I DIDN’T EVEN READ THE NEXT LINE QUIT SAYING HEART TO HEART YOU EVEN GAVE IT PROPER CAPS THAT TIME

HARRY ANDERSON: but god, it was a mess. i had to keep talking to keep him from looking at his phone or turning on the radio. HARRY ANDERSON: i may have told him more about my deep passions and emotions in the last hour than the whole rest of my life combined, just to keep him from hearing the fucking news.

Holy shit. You exploited conversation about your deep passions and interests for a separate goal???

Aaargh! Classpect everywhere! I’ve relapsed!!! D:

> (==>)

JOHN IS SO HAPPY

John Egbert has not had a day like this in a very long time. He can barely keep track of this series of epiphanies he’s having. He stretches out on his couch to relax and process the gifts of advice and connection his friends and family and ex-family have just given him.

OH RIGHT TIME TO RUIN IT WITH MAXIMUM SHENANIGANS

JOHN: hey karkat! great timing! JOHN: so much just happened and im kind of reeling about it. KARKAT: YEAH NO SHIT.

Ohhhh. Much of the time I hate dramatic irony, but those moments before someone is about to be let in on the discrepancy... oh man I love that.

JOHN: is something going on? i just spent the afternoon with my son, and i think he would have told me if something was up with his friends? KARKAT: OH MY LUSCIOUS SHITTING CHRIST JOHN LISTEN TO ME. JOHN: listening!

"Luscious”?? Did they try to type “Lusus” and get autocorrected?

Who’s writing Homestuck on their phone???

> (==>)

J...John?? Are you okay?? XD

This picture. These two paragraphs. I fucking love them.

(Wow, being closer to the “canon” story due to ridiculous shenanigans right after his back-to-back self-insights and outlook changes have really been healthy for him huh. He can probably sense HS^2 reaching him out here. And you can see the helpless comedian his probably-still-depressed ass became on Earth B in his reaction here. EDIT: Also, how appropriate that even by DYING, the Bard of Rage managed to fulfill his role and shatter the last vestiges of John's narrow-outlooked despair?)

John can’t answer. He can’t speak. His body has given itself over to the long-lost feeling of manic euphoria. It had felt like Harry Anderson was holding something back on the drive earlier, but he had already told John so much. He hadn’t wanted to press for more.

Yeah... after what John’s gone through across his life and session, finding out Harry managed to hide THIS for a whole car-ride is the best sort of punch-line for him.

John can’t breathe. Something is happening. Something is finally fucking happening, and he’s finally awake enough to appreciate it.

--yep. I was just guessing earlier, but this kind of confirms it’s in part a closer-to-relevance, closer-to-canon feeling bleeding in. Something is happening that’s important enough to SHOW onscreen and not skip over. I guess he really does like being anchored in Light after all.

> (==>)

John wheezes himself into relative calm. He has to get Karkat to understand. He clears his throat and breathes.

JOHN: karkat, this can be how we win. JOHN: i know what we need to do.

...holy SHIT.

Karkat, how did you know calling JOHN about this would work out this well??

John actually taking confident action to solve a problem, in a way that isn’t going to end up depressing like his attempt to provide Tavros escape in the Epilogues... this should be interesting.

See you next time. (I had to image-fix some stupid linked hat posts for this blogpost and I’m out of energy, so I’ll fix the other old post I promised that asker to fix in like, a day or two; I’ll post when I do.)

#Homestuck #hs2 #Homestuck Liveblog #upd8 #Homestuck^2 #bladekindeyewear #blastyoboots #hats #Heart and Mind #Harry Anderson

30 notes · View notes

starsailorstories · 4 years

Note

So! Given, uh, everything, any chance you could talk about how various Astraea cultures deal with sicknesses and quarantine? Especially since some (especially Bell Town) are extremely or entirely genetically identical, and so more at risk?

Also, how would the cast members react to self isolation and social distancing?

FIRST OFF, sorry this took 10 years to answer, I was super busy and there’s kind of A Lot Of Spec Bio to discuss here

Also, this question made me feel very Seen lol…why yes i DO use worldbuilding as a coping mechanism for the stress of watching the wet tissue paper my country calls a social safety net dissolve

Most sickness that astraeas deal with day to day isn’t actually contagious*, but more a result of individual reaction to the environment (in terms of public health response, think seasonal allergies, although physiologically speaking it’s nothing like that). Communicable, infectious disease tends to be a less frequent problem but purely for that reason is more feared, especially as the most common source for novel diseases is interplanetary shipping (like, astraeas on one planet who have immunity to something unknowingly ship contaminated goods to another planet where people don’t). All that is nowhere near as devastating as it could be in a human context–for one thing astraeas’ bodies are hella dry compared to ours, so if a microbe isn’t airborne it’s almost a non-issue (on the other hand, infection is almost a guarantee if you have an open wound)–but most planets, stations and orbiters have a list of OTHER planets, stations and orbiters categorized by how long it’s been since first contact and how long shipments need to be in quarantine based on that, and that kind of thing runs the same gamut from “rigorously evidence-based” to “completely political and petty” that it does on earth.

Speaking of which, the issue of genetic similarity as a disease risk is as politicized as you’d expect in a society where people said “oh, with our genetic technology we can just design the working class to be however we want.” The Hyperians, being, you know, A Rigidly Hierarchal Interstellar Empire In A Space Opera as they are, tend to present the genetic homogeneity as sort of a good thing, what makes Us Us and Them Them, and the royal family themselves subscribe to the very historically royal (and also very eugenicist) idea that genetic “purity”–which for astraeas mostly just means having children in a very chemically controlled environment–helps keep em’ royal or something. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t it just makes hemophilia, and the more conservative Basileans minimize the environmental variance that keeps them from wiping each other out like some kind of aggressively graceful banana monocrop, the easier it is for epidemics to escalate in general because whole colonies become vectors together.

You won’t read about it in your galactic history book til after the revolution, but the dangers of genetic homogeneity were actually observed by lux units, who noticed that “variant” and “off-order” clones were a bit more likely to survive outbreaks of disease. Supervisors in clone factories have tried HARD to excise the superstition that variant units who remain un-decommissioned into adulthood are good luck to have on your cabin crew or manufacturing-plant shift, but it’s never completely gone away, and once Bell Town goes topside their medics and scientists immediately get to work testing, peer reviewing and proving the mechanics of diversity as a factor of public health because it’s a helpful argument for legitimizing their seizure of the means of their own reproduction and fighting the prejudice against “defective” lux that don’t fit the mold.

To really get into your question, Bell Town at least has the advantage of being small and having a busybody mom friend for a de facto head medic, so I don’t think they’ve ever had a quarantine situation get much bigger than four or five people just because Bolt is very up on how everyone’s doing and very very persuasive–the medics know that that’s just a matter of luck though, and I’m sure a factor in the push to go topside is the potential for tragedy involved in having a settlement of mostly/nearly genetically identical people in somewhat adverse and scarce conditions. That’s not to say there’s no plan–the shortages in Bell Town tend to be of immediately consumable raw materials, like air and fuel and very basic multi-use medicines, whereas raw materials for manufacturing specialized equipment are a lot easier to get because organized factories in DT’s network can have them smuggled out. And a majority of the town’s population, at least by vol. 2, are former manufacturing-plant labor with working radio receivers in their heads, so it’s fairly feasible to expect even a small portion of them, with an emergency push, to manufacture A Lot of vaccines, or intensive care equipment, or whatever was needed practically overnight with the direct guidance of the medics to ensure as much safety in the process as possible (they do just that with medical and defense supplies in vol. 2 for various spoilery things).

Up top, the aula’s responses to any and all large-scale social crises tend to be erratic but sweeping. There are some advantages–in terms of expertise, there are certainly things that well-paid doctors with fully equipped research hospitals can accomplish that a dedicated crack team of self-educated medics can’t, including proactive study of new strains of disease. There’s also feudal insanity–technically individual hospitals/institutions aren’t supposed to issue info without the aula’s permission, though legally local nobles can give it on the Hyperians’ behalf if they’re willing to risk Drama. The internal weirdness of the court both logistical and interpersonal (which I need to make a post about) can sometimes mean, in any emergency, that different parts of the empire receive conflicting information, or an edict followed after a day’s delay in the satellite network by a retraction. Public trust (among citizens of relative status at least) that the Hyperians know what they’re doing tends to decline exponentially as you move out from the inner Rings for this exact reason.

Derafior City on Caesura B dealt with a wave of multiple epidemics a couple hundred turns before the official rise of the empire that still affect how the city is laid out–leaders at the time issued quarantine orders in cooperation with individual colony matriarchs, and as those orders became enforced in physical “zones” neighborhood identities, reputations, and rivalries became increasingly defined (Crater culture being what it is, quarantine boundaries were often pretty literal battle lines as the situation became desperate). A lot of historians trace the factionalism of the Crater to this era, although outside imperialism was also a major instigator of both factional conflicts and disease exposure. Keep in mind too that while outsiders like to portray Derafior as violently fractured and there’s a grain of truth to that, there are just as many deep loyalties between neighborhood/colony factions as there are rivalries and as we see in vol. 3, Caesurans are certainly not allergic to closing ranks when shit really hits the fan.

I don’t have specific canon examples from other ante-dome cultures but another thing of possible interest that I’d like to talk about is that in places touched by Basilean culture, a lot of what we consider “social distancing” is just normal because cleanliness is highly ritualized and valued. Although platonic adult friendships tend to be very cuddly by American and British standards, at the same time, hand touches between strangers outside specific social rituals are seen as quite inappropriate, so things are more thoroughly designed to prevent them–for example, most trading of goods is done purely on paper at the point of sale and nothing actually passes from hand to hand, you go get it out of the crate or pick it out of the field yourself (which is also a practicality of the relative non-ubiquity of flexible currency–and actually, one of the complaints about the use of currency among more traditional astraeas is that it spreads germs). Basically everyone who can afford it wears gloves in public, which are changed and washed every time a person re-enters her home (disposable gloves are mostly limited to medical and laboratory settings, although it’s not unheard of to use them in a pinch if you don’t have a place to launder gloves at home. Side note, if you’re translating directly Altamaian actually refers to manual labor that makes it impractical to wear gloves as “barehanded” labor and the summary conceptualization of such as unhygienic represents a MAJOR vein of classism among Basilean citizens). The reason for the glove thing is that for a species with an exoskeleton regular hand washing can be kind of involved (You know how sometimes it takes a lot of scrubbing to get the dirt out from under your fingernails? Now imagine you have fingernails all over your hands).

Oh and to answer your second question: out of the main cast the one you’d think would suffer most with self-isolation is Bolt, but being a healthcare worker she’d still see people. Rugsy would complain the loudest but also paradoxically be secretly kind of relieved to not have to worry about People for a while. DT experiences virtually no change from her normal lifestyle lmao

*There’s two kinds of disease that can affect astraeas–what they call “miasmic”, and infectious. Miasmic disease (which as you might guess I named after the precursor to modern germ theory–it’s kind of true in this instance!) is basically when an individual’s body and light chemistry can’t maintain its normal balance in certain atmosphere conditions. A big reason for the kickoff of the artificial atmosphere industry after the settling of Altamai is that the cloud cover tends to trap a lot of carbon dioxide, and for i.e. Basillans and Sitherians (who have come to be based on G-type stars, like the sun, and K-type stars, slightly smaller and cooler than the sun) there’s just not enough hydrogen atoms in there to run their bodies optimally. This mostly affects very young children, the elderly, and those whose cores were formed in suboptimal conditions (comparable to a human who has a chronic health condition because of a birth defect) and if it can’t be remedied by a move to more hydrogen/helium rich air, it’s treated by sucking the pure hydrogen out of a water electrolysis device through a hose on the daily, which side note, is also a reliable hangover remedy for them.

#sweet chariot #worldbuilding #onwardmotley #ask me to tag

4 notes · View notes

johnnybravoedu-blog · 5 years

Text

Quick Records of Special Training

Moreover, I have been a mainstream everyday training teacher who taught ordinary training inclusion instructions trying to decide out a way to fine artwork with some new special education instructor in my class and his or her special schooling college students as well. And, in assessment, I have been a completely unique education inclusion teacher intruding at the territory of some ordinary education teachers with my precise education students and the modifications I concept the ones instructors must implement. I can let you realize first-hand that none of this provides and take among particular training and ordinary education has been smooth. Nor do I see this pushing and pulling becoming clean anytime fast.

So, what's precise schooling? And what makes it so specific and yet so complicated and arguably now and again? Properly, unique schooling, as its call suggests, is a specialized branch of schooling. It claims its lineage to such people as jean-marc-Gaspard itard (1775-1838), the medical doctor who "tamed" the "wild boy of Aveyron," and Anne Sullivan may (1866-1936), the instructor who "labored miracles" with Helen Keller.

Special educators educate students who've physical, cognitive, language, mastering, sensory, and/or emotional skills that deviate from those of the overall population. Particular educators provide training in particular tailor-made to satisfy individualized dreams. Those instructors essentially make schooling extra to be had and reachable to students who in any other case could have restricted access to education due to anything incapacity they're suffering with.

It's miles no longer genuinely the teachers even though who play a position in the history of specific training in this u. s. a. Physicians and clergy, which include itard- stated above, Eduard o. Seguin (1812-1880), Samuel Gridley Howe (1801-1876), and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787-1851) desired to ameliorate the neglectful, frequently abusive treatment of people with disabilities. Lamentably, training in this USA changed into, extra often than now not, very neglectful and abusive whilst handling college students which can be distinctive come what may.

There may be even rich literature in our use of that describes the treatment provided to human beings with disabilities inside the 1800s and early 1900s. Regrettably, in those stories, as well as inside the actual international, the segment of our the populace with disabilities turned into frequently limited in jails and almshouses without first-rate food, garb, private hygiene, and exercising. For an example of this distinctive remedy in our literature, one wishes to look no similarly than a tiny time in Charles Dickens' a Christmas carol (1843). Similarly, usually, people with disabilities have been often portrayed as villains, collectively within the e-book captain hook in j.m. Barrie's "peter pan" in 1911.

The triumphing view of the authors of this term will become that one has to post to misfortunes, both as a form of obedience to God's will and because of the fact, these seeming misfortunes are at the end intended for one's very own fantastic. Progress for our human beings with disabilities became difficult to come returned via currently with this manner of questioning permeating our society, literature, and questioning.

So, what changed into society to do approximately one's humans of misfortune? Properly, all through an exquisite deal of the 19th century, and early inside the 20th, specialists believed humans with disabilities were nicely treated in residential centers in rural environments. An out of sight out of thought type of problem, if you could...

But, via the end of the nineteenth century, the scale of these establishments had elevated so dramatically that the goal of rehabilitation for humans with disabilities sincerely wasn't operating. Establishments have become devices for eternal segregation.

I've some experience these segregation rules of education. A number of it is right and a number of it is not so accurate. You notice I have been a self-contained instructor on and off throughout the years in multiple surroundings in self-contained school rooms in public immoderate schools, center colleges, and basic colleges. I've additionally taught in multiple special schooling behavioral self-contained colleges that in reality separated those university students with disabilities in managing their conduct from their mainstream friends with the aid of using placing them in absolutely one-of-a-kind homes that were every so often even in exclusive cities from their houses, buddies, and friends.

Through the year's many unique education specialists have become critics of these establishments referred to above that separated and segregated our kids with disabilities from their friends. Irvine Howe became one of the first to endorse taking our children out of these huge establishments and to place out citizens into families. Regrettably, this workout became logistical and pragmatic trouble and it took a long time before it can come to be a viable opportunity to institutionalization for our students with disabilities.

Now on the effective side, you are probably inquisitive about understanding but that during 1817 the primary precise education college within the USA, the Yankee asylum for the schooling and guidance of the deaf and dumb (now known as the American college for the deaf), changed into setting up in Hartford, Connecticut, thru Gallaudet. That college remains there these days and is one of the top faculties inside the U.S.A. for college kids with auditory disabilities. A real fulfillment tale!

However, as you may already accept as true with, the lasting achievement of the American college for the deaf has become the exception and no longer the rule of thumb for the duration of this time period. And to feature to this, in the overdue nineteenth century, social Darwinism modified environmentalism because of the primary causal reason for those humans with disabilities who deviated from those of the overall population.

Unluckily, Darwinism opened the door to the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century. This then brought about even similarly segregation or maybe sterilization of people with disabilities which consist of highbrow retardation. It looks as if something Hitler has become doing in Germany additionally being completed proper right here in our very own the United States of America, to our very own humans, by the usage of our very own people. Kind of frightening and inhumane, could no longer you settle?

In recent times, this sort of remedy is manifestly unacceptable. And inside the early part of the 20 century, it turned into additionally unacceptable to some of the adults, particularly the parents of these disabled kids. Because of this, concerned and irritated parents long-established advocacy organizations to assist carry the academic desires of children with disabilities into most people eyes. the public needed to see firsthand how wrong this eugenics and sterilization motion changed into for our college students that have been one of a kind if it changed into ever going to be stopped.

Slowly, grassroots agencies made development that even led to three states developing felony guidelines to protect their citizens with disabilities. For example, in 1930, in Peoria, Illinois, the first white cane ordinance gave human beings with blindness the proper-of-way even as crossing the street. This will become a begin, and other states did, in the end, comply with healthily. In time, this community grassroots' movement and states' movement added about enough stress on our elected officials for something to be completed at the countrywide stage for our people with disabilities.

In 1961, President John f. Kennedy created the president's panel on intellectual retardation. And in 1965, Lyndon b. Johnson signed the fundamental and secondary education act, which provided funding for primary schooling, and is visible through advocacy agencies as increasing get admission to public training for youngsters with disabilities.

While one thinks about Kennedy and Johnson's file on civil rights, then it probably is not this type of wonder finding out that these presidents also spearheaded this national movement for our people with disabilities.

This federal motion brought approximately segment 504 of the 1973 rehabilitation act. This ensures civil rights for the disabled inside the context of federally funded institutions or any application or pastime receiving federal economic assist. A variety of those years later as an educator, I for my part cope with 504 cases every single day.

In 1975 Congress enacted public law 90 four-142, the training for all handicapped children act (eh), which establishes a proper to public training for all children regardless of disability. this modified into some different nicely components because of the reality prior to federal rules, parents had to in most instances educate their youngsters at home or pay for high priced personal schooling.

The motion stored developing. In 1982 the case of the board of training of the Hendricks Hudson essential faculty district v. Rowley, U.S. exquisite courtroom docket clarified the level of offerings to be afforded university students with special goals. The court docket ruled that unique schooling services need only offer some "educational benefit" to university college students. Public faculties were now not required to maximize the instructional development of college students with disabilities.

In recent times, this ruling won't look like a victory, and as a rely on reality, this equal query is all once more circulating through our courts today in 2017. However, given the time period, it will become made in, it has become a victory because it stated unique training university students could not skip through our faculty gadget without getting to know something. They wished to investigate something. if one is aware of and is acquainted with how the criminal tips paintings on this The U.S.A., then one is aware of the laws commonly progress via tiny little increments that upload as lots as an improvement over the years. This ruling became a victory for particular education college students as it introduced one more rung onto the campaign.

In the 1980s the regular training initiative (REI) came into being. This was a try to go back responsibility for the training of college students with disabilities to community faculties and regular schoolroom instructors. I'm very acquainted with the everyday schooling initiative due to the fact I spent 4 years as an REI trainer within the late Nineties and early 2000s. In the intervening time, I was certified as both a unique schooling instructor and a regular education teacher and became running in each potential in a dual function as an REI instructor; due to the fact, that's what turns into required of the location.

The Nineties saw big growth for our unique training university college students. 1990 birthed individuals with disabilities training act (concept). This becomes, and is, the cornerstone of the concept of a free and appropriate public schooling (face) for all of our students. To make a certain face, the regulation mandated that every student receiving unique training services also has to also accumulate an individualized education software (yep).

The individuals with disabilities act of 1990 reached past just most people colleges. And perceive three of ideas prohibited incapacity-based totally discrimination in any place of public lodging. Whole and equal enjoyment of the products, offerings, facilities, or accommodations in public places have been predicted. And of course, public inns moreover protected most places of schooling.

Additionally, in the 1990s, the full inclusion movement won some of the momenta. This is known for teaching all college students with disabilities in the everyday school room. I am moreover very acquainted with this component of education as well, as I've additionally been an inclusion trainer from time to time over my career as an educator on each aspect of the aisle as an everyday training teacher and a completely a unique training instructor.

Now directly to president bush and his instructional reform collectively along with his no toddler left within the back of law that changed President Johnson’s number one and secondary training act (sea). The NCLB act of 2001 said that unique training has to hold to attention on generating results and together with this came a sharp increase in duty for educators.

Now, this NCLB act becomes proper and horrible. Of course, every person wants to look at consequences for all of our college students, and its miles just common experience that accountability allows this kind of issue seems. in which this sort of went crazy end up that the NCLB demanded a number of latest matters, however, it did not provide the price range or useful resource to gain the one's new targets.

Furthermore, instructors began feeling squeezed and threatened more and more by means of the new motion of huge enterprise and agency education moving in and taking over schooling. Humans without an educational historical beyond now found themselves influencing training insurance and getting access to a whole lot of the educational finances.

This responsibility craze stemmed via way of excessive standardized trying out ran rapidly and of route ran downstream from a group of well-related elite Trump-like figures saying to their decrease echelon academic counterparts, "you are fired!" those surroundings of seeking to live off of the radar with the intention to keep one's assignment, and beating our kids over the pinnacle with sorting out strategies weren't pinnacled for our educators. It wasn't really for our students. And it truly wasn't suitable for our more prone unique schooling college students.

A few wells did come from this period although. As an example, the updated individuals with disabilities with the training act of 2004 (idea) befell. This, in addition, required schools to provide individualized or precise training for children with qualifying disabilities. Under the concept, states who get hold of the public price range for education should provide specific training to qualifying kids with disabilities. Like I said earlier, the regulation is an extended gradual device of tiny little steps along with as much as progress made through the years. Ultimately, in 2015 president Obama's every scholar succeeds act (a) changed president bush's NCLB, which had replaced President Johnson’s sea.

Underneath Obama's new essay faculties had been now allowed to backpedal on some of the testing’s. With a chunk of success, the standardized checking out craze has been established test. However, the best time will tell. The essay additionally again to more community control. You understand, the sort of manipulating our forefathers intended.

You notice the U.S. charter provides no authority over education to the federal authorities. Training isn't stated inside the constitution of America, and for a proper motive. The founders desired most elements of an existence managed through individuals who were closest to them, each via way of the country or nearby authorities or with the resource of families, groups, and other elements of civil society. Basically, they noticed no position for the federal authorities in schooling.

You spot, the founders feared the concentration of strength. They believed that the first-rate way to guard individual freedom and civil society turned into to restrict and divine electricity. However, this works every method, due to the fact the states frequently find themselves asking the feds for added academic money. and the feds will best provide the states extra money if the states do what the feds need... hmm... assessments and balances, similarly to compromise, maybe a virtually complex aspect, huh?

Soon goes the warfare in training and all the to and fro pushing and pulling among the federal authorities and the states and nearby government, similarly to specific education and regular schooling. and to add to this warfare, currently choose moukawsher, a kingdom decide from Connecticut, in a lawsuit filed in opposition to the country by using the usage of the Connecticut coalition for justice in schooling funding rocked the educational boat a few more whiles in his ruling he protected a message to lawmakers to suppose again what degree of services students with sizable disabilities are entitled to.

His ruling and statements seem to mention that he thinks we are spending an excessive amount of money on our unique education students. And that for a number of them, it clearly isn't properly really worth it due to the truth their disabilities are too severe. You can agree with how debatable this modified into and what form of it angered some human beings.

2016 us presidential election brought about something that few humans noticed coming. Real belongings rich individual and reality large call Donald Trump received the presidency and then appointed anti-public educator Betsy Davos to head up this USA's department of training. Her fee, given to her through trump, is to substantially reduce the department of education and to push ahead private charter colleges over what they call a failing public educational machine.

How that is going to have an effect on our college students, and in particular are more inclined unique education college students, no person knows for sure in the meanwhile. However, I also can permit you to recognize that there aren't many human beings handy that enjoy cozy with it right now. The simplest time will inform wherein that is all going to head and the way it will have an impact on our unique schooling university college students... So, as I said earlier, in all likelihood the most important, most pervasive trouble in specific training is it's dating to sizeable schooling. Each my very own travels and our nation's journey through the large realm of training over all of those years has been an interesting one and a complicated one plagued with controversy, to mention the least.

I can despite the fact that it doesn't forget when I first have come to be a unique training teacher returned in the mid-1990s. A chum's father, who became a college main on the time, instructed me to get out of unique schooling as it wasn't going to remain. well, I've been internal and out of unique schooling for additional than a long time now, and every now and then, I do no longer realize if I am a regular schooling teacher or a unique education trainer, or each. And sometimes I think our United States of America's educational machine might be feeling the same internal warfare that I'm. But, regardless, these types of years later, unique schooling stays here.

In very last, in spite of the fact that itard did not normalize victor, the wild boy of Aveyron, he did produce dramatic modifications in victor's behavior thru education. In recent times, current specific training practices may be traced to itard. His artwork marks the start of considerable attempts to educate college students with disabilities. Rapid forwarding to 2017, for what takes vicinity subsequent in the future of schooling and special schooling in our united states... nicely, I wager that depends on anybody...

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

#education #knowledge #blog post #tips

1 note · View note

coopdigitalnewsletter · 3 years

Text

19 Aug 2021: Code red for humanity. Personalised funerals. Remote work.

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter.

[Image: IPCC]

Code red for humanity

“Unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5°C or even 2°C will be beyond reach.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report on climate change. The press release is here. The full report is here - very detailed, very doubled-checked. A good, quick version is the summary for policy makers - a punchy read. And a good third-party summary is here: The era of rapid climate change has begun.

Here is Co-operatives UK on the IPCC report:

“It’s clear ‘business as usual’ is not a viable response to the climate emergency. Global government action is needed, but we don’t have to wait. Businesses – and indeed every single one of us – can take action today to reduce our carbon footprint. Many of our co-operative members are already making changes – from The Co-op Group developing the first compostable plastic bag to Greencity Wholefoods trialling deliveries by electric trike to reduce diesel emissions. We want to see all businesses, from PLCs to community businesses, following suit to take action for climate change.”

Co-op Group and climate change:

5 steps we’ve taken towards our sustainability ambitions in 2021.

And our wider climate plan. (Though after reading the IPCC report, you may think: every organisation’s plan needs to be more ambitious.)

Co-op Power is the biggest energy buying co-operative in the UK - it helps businesses save money and source energy in an ethical, sustainable way.

We know that our world has been borrowing from future generations, leaving them what we might euphemistically call a “carbon debt” that’s constantly growing and already hard to pay back. Delay kills and speed is everything. It’s warming rapidly, and almost everywhere. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Net zero carbon globally is needed as soon as possible. Carbon offsets aren’t going to be enough (some of those carbon-capturing forests are burning right now). Fossil fuels need to stay in the ground. Fixing it means more than just fixing energy (ecosystem degradation, water shortages, food security, biodiversity loss and more are also critical), though fixing energy is a good place to start.

You should improve the insulation of your home, yes, but the speed of response required means that the meaningful change will have to come from institutions. If you thought digital transformation was spiky and disruptive, wait til you see carbon transformation. It is going to feel like the sudden reinvention of many things we take as given today - jobs, education, housing, industry, families, society, the world. And it has to be done fairly, and we have to work so hard and so fast at it. Because home is always worth it. We have no choice.

Previously: climate change right in front of you, the climate/carbon plans of the larger supermarket businesses in the UK.

Retail news

Lidl is launching a “scan as you shop” pilot in south west London - first scan-with-app move by a discounter?

Warhammer maker Games Workshop hands staff £5,000 bonus after lockdown sales surge - UK firm praises workers for “exceptional performance” during pandemic.

Woman sues McDonald's after Big Mac advert 'forced' her to break Lent - as she’s suing for the equivalent of £10, this seems like a PR opportunity for McDonald’s in Russia.

Interesting comment on supermarket executives joining NHS Test and Trace, ending with:

“Because surely maturing a new public health service needs a different kind of leadership to establishing new infrastructure and logistics at speed? It’s a bit like [Test and Trace] is perceived to be a massive pop-up shop, not a semi-permanent public service.”

Remote work works, if workers have power

Two views of remote work. If workers have some power, remote work unleashes productivity and places additional value on results, rather than managerial politics. A couple of quotes from it:

Remote work makes who does and doesn’t actually do work way more obvious. [...] Remote work empowers those who produce and disempowers those who have succeeded by being excellent diplomats and poor workers, along with those who have succeeded by always finding someone to blame for their failures. It removes the ability to seem productive (by sitting at your desk looking stressed or always being on the phone), and also, crucially, may reveal how many bosses and managers simply don’t contribute to the bottom line.

But if workers have no power, it probably looks different, maybe like this:

“For workers with little power – who lack either a union or a high-demand skill/experience mix – "work from home" is a thin euphemism for "live at work." Not only do you provide your boss with rent-free space in your home, he gets to colonize your whole house and family.”

That second quote is from a good and entertaining rant about power and warehouse, white collar and gig workers living in a work panopticon. Of course, employers with office workers are still working things out. Ocado will allow staff to work remotely from abroad for one month a year. Google is cutting pay for those who don’t go to the office on the grounds that “we always pay at the top of the local market based on where an employee works from” - raising the question of whether you could get a pay rise at Google by moving to Ashgabat in Turkmenistan.

Personalised funerals

Trend: personalising your funeral. First, the ceremony: "My wishes, my way" - how the rise of funeral personalisation is helping to celebrate the lives we live. Co-op research finds that 35m want their own farewell to be a celebration of the life they have lived. 75% of the nation who would like to have a funeral now feel comfortable talking about their wishes. 20% of Britons would like their coffin personalised.

Second, the memorial: cremations are increasingly popular, so it follows that it’s becoming more popular to turn someone’s ashes into a different and personal kind of memorial - stones, diamonds, vinyl records, soil… there’s a startup for every idea.

Previously: startups in life and end-of life planning.

Federated co-operation

Co-op Foundation and Luminate are partnering with Noisy Cricket and Paper Frogs to deliver the next phase of the Federation programme. Co-op alum Linda Humphries says:

“We’ll be challenging the ways tech and data reinforce inequalities and encouraging co-operation. We want digitally-enabled products and services that are inclusive, respect people’s rights and safeguard their privacy.”

Various things

Hundreds of AI tools have been built to catch covid. None of them helped. - Some have been used in hospitals, despite not being properly tested. But perhaps the pandemic could help make medical AI better.

NHS Data Injection: Will It Hurt? - Should British patients be worried about their medical data being placed in a central database?

The slow collapse of Amazon’s drone delivery dream - mass redundancies and job transfers as it winds down a huge part of its UK drone delivery business.

Some English schools are using AI to help students catch up after Covid-19 - the AI personalises learning.

Why apps get worse: “No Product Manager in history has ever said “This seems to be working pretty well, let’s leave it the way it is.” Because that’s not bold.” - the downside of bias to action? (and not all product managers, surely).

Co-op and Co-op Digital news

Reflections on the first year of our degree apprenticeships.

Thank you for reading

Thank you friends, readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc by replying or to @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading, please tell a friend! If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters.

0 notes

wmshappen · 5 years

Photo

For international Women’s Day, we asked some of the team about their experiences working at WMSH.

1. Tell us about your role at WMSH.

Megan: As Senior Creative Producer, I am fortunate enough to work across experiential campaigns, stunts, events and festivals, from pitch stage right through to delivery and management. Part of my role includes idea generation in response to creative briefs from clients. Ideas then must be articulated through visualisations, which either myself or the design team will undertake, budgets, which show a greater level of detail on build and materials, and written content on how the idea aims to benefit the client. My role then involves producing successful projects, which can include sourcing and liaising with build and materials suppliers and venues, logistics, working with the design team to create any assets that may be required and so on.

Lorna: I am an Event Producer at We Make Stuff Happen. There are many different aspects to my role, which I like. I work on the creative and production process ahead of events and can be found on site at some of the live events. I also work closely with all of our clients leading up to jobs, as well as meeting potential clients.

Lucy: I have recently joined WMSH as a Creative Producer. The role involves taking briefs from clients, creative brainstorming with the WMSH team, budgeting and supplying costs for every aspect of the project, and liaising with the workshop to ensure production runs smoothly to bring the ideas to life.

JD: I’m Co-founder, which as job titles go is gloriously undefined. Day-to-day, I oversee the creative on most of our projects, drawing on my background in advertising to ensure whatever we’re proposing has the client’s message at its heart, and sign off every budget that goes out the door. I’m a big picture thinker who hates stagnating, so I’m also very focused on strategy and where we’re going as a company. I oversee our business development team, spend a lot of time analysing how we work and seeing where and how we can do better, seeking out new opportunities, and making plans for WMSH’s future.

Alice: I'm a Senior Event Producer at WMSH. I work with clients to budget and plan their events, from conception, right up to the day of the event, where I'll then be onsite as the Production Manager or Event Manager, putting the plans into action and problem solving anything that arises. I split my time between working remotely from home in Glasgow, and travelling for client meetings and events, mostly to London and the Midlands, but have also worked on WMSH events in New York, Ibiza and Berlin.

2. What do you most enjoy about working at WMSH?

Megan: I love that every day in the office is different. You might be looking at how to make a water-tight umbrella from an old tent one day, and then a giant sculpture made from plastic waste the next. Every time the email pings with a new brief, it is impossible to guess what we might be asked to achieve. I’d say my favourite aspect of the job is generating ideas in response to client briefs. We will often be given an idea of what the stunt or campaign needs to deliver, in terms of generation PR coverage, or simply getting people through the door, and I enjoy working within the parameters to come up with something that will give the client bang for their buck.

JD: Building a community of likeminded people and getting a chance to create the change I want to see in the world. Growing up, my life was very unstable and I lived in an area where there were few opportunities and high economic and cultural poverty. That taught me that work (or the lack of it) can cause stress, distress, and hardship on both an individual and a wider social scale. Because of that, I see it as a responsibility to create good quality jobs and secure interesting work for us all, and to offer opportunities to people who might not otherwise have access to them. One of the founding principles of WMSH is that the team can do more together than any of us could alone, and seeing that in action every day is a fantastic privilege.

Lucy: What I love most about this role, having come from a similar background, is the complete diversity in projects that we get to be involved in. The creative scope is endless and allows you to really use your creativity and imagination.

Alice: No day is like another. There's always something different happening and new conundrums to solve. I don't think I could do a job that was the same every day. Every project is different and even the events we work on annually always come with new challenges and developments. WMSH is growing, so I'm always learning, and constantly getting the opportunity to take on bigger and more complex projects. I love getting to know our clients, figuring out how they work, what they need, and how we can do the best job for them. People don't always know exactly what they want, or what they need, and I enjoy taking their vision, and trying to create that for them. Occasionally I've had the pleasure of getting the WMSH office number diverted to my mobile, and that's always a fun day. It's a constant stream of bizarre calls...."We want to create a giant egg, that gets up and walks around". I love taking something like that and breaking it down...."ok, no problem....when you say giant, is that as big as a person, as big as a van, or as big as a house...?"

Lorna: What I most enjoy about working at WMSH is that no two days are the same. We get endless amounts of weird and wonderful requests which keep us excited for a run down every time the phone rings with a new brief.

3. Any dream clients or projects that you’d love to work with or on?

Lucy: I love detail and colour, the application of textures and multiple fabrications. The more bonkers the better. Some of the creations at festivals are among the most jaw- dropping and innovative. I would love to be involved in a creative installation for ‘Burning Man’ or to work with Morag Myerscough & Luke Morgan on their fun and colourful and interactive creations.

Lorna: My background is in hospitality and I am very passionate about food and drink, so I would love to work with some more big brands or festivals that are in this field.

JD: We’re very lucky in that dream projects come in all the time. I always love working with causes, whether it’s an organisation campaigning for Living Wage, sustainability, human rights or something for Pride. I enjoy the challenge of delivering something inspiring that might not have a massive budget, and there’s nothing more gratifying than seeing the general public interact positively with something that has a real message to it. It’s always good to have a reminder that most people are kind, generous of spirit, and open to change.

Alice: Glastonbury. WMSH did do a project at Glastonbury with Oxfam, which unfortunately I wasn't involved in, but as someone who loves to work on festivals, getting to see behind the scenes of the biggest festival there is, is an ambition. I've heard that it's organised like many mini-festivals, all knitted together, and it would be awesome if WMSH ever got to run one of those. Also, it's an ambition of mine to work with Nickelback. Shoot me down if you must, I know it's silly, and they say never meet your idols, but my career goal has always been that one day our trajectories will meet, and I'll get to work on a Nickelback show. I got to work with Theory of a Deadman once ("Nickelback-lite" for those who don't know them). They invited me onto their tour bus for drinks after the show, and I'll never forgive the polite English girl inside of me who (before I knew what she was saying) said "oh no, thank you, but I must be heading home". I want to work on a Dolly Parton show too - she's so talented, and seems like such a professional, it would be amazing to see her set up up close.

Megan: I have always loved and admired Guinness as brand, from its mad, conceptual advertising campaigns to the weird and wonderful experiential activities that it undertakes. I would love to receive a good chunky brief from them to create something totally new and inspiring. We recently worked with Oxfam on a summer-long campaign around creating awareness around clothing wastage in the UK, and ultimately asking people to pledge support to make better choices in the future. The project turned into a bit of a dream brief, which involved huge amounts of creativity from the team, and an array of beautifully made campaign materials as a result.

4. Tell us something about yourself outside of work.

Megan: I have a very busy household with two boys, Herbie (4) and Bon (2), we are soon to be joined by a third who is yet to be named. To add to the chaos, we have three dogs, which have been described as akin to small horses in size, Bully, Buddy and Florence. Phew.

Alice: I go to a lot of gigs, and buy a lot of CDs. I play on a netball team, The Glasgow Flames, currently in Division 3 of the local league. I'm also on the committee for the club, helping build our ranks and develop the club. I am married to Graeme, a doctor of Engineering at the University of Glasgow. We live with 2 ferrets and 2 pole cats (who I love) and a terrapin/angry rock (who I do not). While I've not played as much in the last 5 years or so, I also play the guitar and sing. My favourite musical achievements were getting played on Radio 1 with a song I wrote, playing to a thousand people at the St Andrews grad ball, and at the St Andrews Rock Music Society Reunion Ball, standing on a table, and belting out Don't Stop Believing to a pumped up crowd, while wearing high heels and gothic fairy wings. That was a lot of fun.

Lorna: When I am not in WMSH HQ or on site with a hi vis on, I can be found eating out in the evening with friends or my boyfriend, Will. I spend most of my weekend days going for long walks around Brighton with my dog, Reuben, binging on Netflix series or swimming.

Lucy: I am kept very busy by my two kids Noah and Lottie who love to hear about all the different projects I get to work on. Bikram yoga keeps me sane and allows me to dream of being in a hotter climate. I try to get to music and comedy gigs as often as I can.

JD: I’m a voracious consumer of music and former DJ, so in my free time I’m usually listening to the radio, trawling Spotify, or crate diving. I enjoy a mooch around secondhand shops and flea markets looking for bizarre objects no one else will love, collect and propogate succulents, and also read a lot of Stoic philosophy in the ongoing pursuit of a calm, worthwhile, and happy life.

0 notes

beastsoulsauthor-blog · 7 years

Text

Beast Souls Volume 2

Beast Souls Vol. 2

By Aaron McCoy

2/26/2015

(Scene: We start with Blaze looking over the sheet. As he hears a rush of feathers he steps outside excited. Stepping outside he finds Argyl arriving with a young blonde boy about 4’11 feet tall. The boy has a bowl-type cut with rough bangs. The boy has a “scraggly scholar” look, a white dress shirt with brown vest (both wrinkly) along with a loosened tie. Think old style London prep school. With khaki shorts and slip on loafers.)

Blaze: “Is THAT him!?”

Argyl: “Yes, may I introduce to you, the young master Eugene.”

Eugene: “How do you do? It is good to meet you.”

(Scene: Holding out his hand for a handshake, Blaze kind of ignoring it)

Blaze: “You’re shorter than I thought you’d be! Argyl, you SURE this the same guy from the sheet? The sheet said this guy was a “Combat Specialist”.”

(Scene: Pulling his hand back Eugene shrugs and states)

Eugene: “You’re more brash, and vulgar than I thought a LEADER would be.”

Argyl: “Easy you two. Yes, Blaze, he is a combat specialist. No one is better at disposing of threats in an effective manor with minimal effort and damage to surrounding area. He’s also a master strategist.”

Blaze: “Strategy doesn’t mean SQUAT in the heat of the moment. Instincts will get you farther in a fight than some lame chess-like moves!”

Eugene: “Excuse me? You do realize I’ve caught twice as many rouge souls as you, and with HALF the collateral damage. Do you realize how much work you create for the society when you go burning buildings and trees to the ground!?”

Blaze: “Yeah, SO!? What’s a few trees and buildings when it comes to the safety of the world?”

(Scene: As they are replying and forth they get closer and closer until they are nose-to-nose)

Eugene: “Sure, burn down someone’s home or business just to catch an AMATEUR user. Cause THAT’s necessary!”

Blaze: “IT IS WHEN I FIGHT PIP SQUEEK!”

Eugene: “EXCUSE ME YOU FIREY FRAT BOY!?”

Argyl: “ENOUGH!”

(Scene: As Argyl yells the two immediately stop and turn toward him hands by their side.)

Argyl: “You guys will HAVE to get along. If you are going be Proud Souls, then this is who you must work with. If you guys can’t manage to get along then the whole thing will be called off and you BOTH can go back to hunting amateurs for the rest of your lives! Do you WANT that!?”

Blaze and Eugene: “No Sir!”

Argyl: “Good. Then try to understand each of you has different strengths. These strengths complement one another. You’ll find this in time. For now, get along for your own sake. I will be bringing you your first order in a couple hours. Feel free to explore your new home and get settled in.”

Blaze: “Alright, I guess its fine, just try not to slow me down in the field ok Eugene?”

Eugene: “and YOU try not to BURN the field.”

(Scene: As Argyl disappears the two head into the house to sort out their bags and explore their new home. The following scenes show the two heading through the house and finding the same exact room they want in a comical fashion. At the last moment both realize they are setting up a bed in the same exact room)

Blaze: “What do you think YOURE doing!?”

Eugene: “Obviously I’m setting up my living space.”

Blaze: “Oh, no no no! Out this is my room!”

Eugene: “What!? No! This is the most tactical room! It is the first room on the first floor facing the entrance lot. A perfect view should we ever be attacked”

Blaze: “I don’t care about that, but the sun will come through the windows at JUST the right time of day.”

Eugene: “Good if we ever are attacked you can just stare into the sun”

Blaze: “and what’s THAT supposed to mean lab rat!?”

Eugene: “That you’d function better as a blind mascot than the leader! You Hot-head Punk!”

Ember: “Remember Blaze, Argyl told us we have to get along if we want to KEEP this position.”

Scene: (Blaze Takes a sigh and starts to continue to make his bed.)

Blaze: *SIGH* “Fine! Just keep your stuff over there.”

Eugene: “Gladly. After all it can be beneficial for the leaders of a unit to share a room.”

Blaze: “Yeah, sure…. whatever.”

Scene: (After a couple hours, while sitting in the kitchen the two hear the familiar flapping of Argyl arriving. He comes in the door before they can stand)

Argyl: “No need to stand. I can debrief you here.”

Scene: (Blaze and Eugene sit back in their chairs after glancing at one another.)

Argyl: “Your first mission will be in the far north. In the American State of Alaska. It appears something troubling is occurring with the magnetic fields which cause the Aurora Borealis. Lately scientist in the area say the lights have been dimmer, unpredictable, and one night they didn’t even show up at all. As you know this most likely indicates a Rouge Soul in the area. We believe he’s somehow using his powers, whatever they may be, to affect the magnetic fields in the area. We need you two to go investigate, find the reason, and if it’s a rouge soul……capture them.”

Eugene: “Hmmm……interesting, to affect such a grand scale astronomical magnetic field they are either a very special, or very powerful user.”

Blaze: “Good. I finally have an excuse to use my big guns!”

Eugene: "That's just the mindset that will get us in trouble!"

Argyl: "Regardless you should BOTH get going. I have feathers that will take you there now."

(Scene: Argyl shoots feathers forward as they touch Blaze and Eugene, the two explode into a burst of feathers)

(Scene: Reappearing now in a land of ice and snow. Alaska a barren coordinate with an outline of a science station in the distance.)

Eugene: "Holy hell! It's freezing! Brain, Jacket." Stuttering*

(Scene: The Brain appears floating just above them. A strange stereo-typical UFO shaped object, with a large-headed green man as its pilot. Underneath the UFO shaped object, a cone of light appears. Within that light; cloths and jackets start being threaded together as if by the light itself.)

Blaze: "Meh, I guess it is a little nippy?"

Eugene: "At least put cloths on to TRY and blend in!"

Blaze: "Alright, alright, I will."

(Scene: The cloths drop to the ground as Brain disappears. Blaze and Eugene begin picking up the clothing.)

Blaze: "WAIT! How did you do that!?"

Eugene: "What summon cloths?"

Blaze: "Yeah, PLEASE tell me you do more than that?"

Eugene: "OF COURSE I DO YOU IMBECILE! That was just one of Brains functions, Brain is my beast soul."

Blaze: "Oh yeah, what else can it do?"

(Scene: Blaze starts a floating fire keeping them warm as they quickly change, and Eugene explains.)

Eugene: “Brain can answer any logical question within reason. He uses my soul as direct energy “fuel” for the questions answer. The harder the question, the more of my soul’s energy is needed to answer. So, things like asking about the future, or questions concerning death and love are too strenuous. He can also manifest “inventions” if I can contemplate their creation in an adequate logistical manner. Essentially, he can make technology from about some 50 to 80 years in the future.”

Blaze: “Most of that kind of went over my head, but you’re saying he answers questions and spawns techno-marvels?”

Eugene: “Essentially, yes.”

Blaze: “That may actually be useful!”

Eugene: “And here I was just waiting on your approval of my usefulness.”

(Scene: As they finish with their conversation and wardrobe change they notice a set of concrete squares in the distance, some with large satellite dishes perched on top.)

Eugene: “That must be an arctic research facility lets go get more info on these strange events.”

(Scene: They approach the plain looking scientific buildings, as they approach the largest Eugene has a surprised look across his face.)

Eugene: “I almost forgot! Our paperwork!”

Blaze: “Paperwork?”

Eugene: “Of course! Why would these government scientists feel the need to answer two random strangers’ questions, furthermore how would we explain getting out here in the first place? We need a cover. I have just the thing, Brain two government ID’s please.”

(Scene: The Brain appears again above them spawning ID badges just the same as he did with the cloths before. The two don their badges.)

Blaze: “Says here we are “Fund Coordinators”?”

Eugene: “Indeed, nothing scares scientists into talking more than thinking they’re going to lose their funding.”

Blaze: “I see, so are we ready to knock NOW?”

Eugene: “Yes, but please, let me do most of the talking.”

(Scene: Scowling at this Blaze allows Eugene to rap the door. As it opens a pudgy man with disheveled black hair, clean shaven, and a lab coat opens the door. His name tag read “Dr. Belliam”. As he spots the two and sees their badges he frowns.)

Dr. Belliam: “What is the meaning of this, we were not supposed to be reviewed for another six months, and you guys never come out personally. Couldn’t you have called?”

Eugene: “I regret to say that a phone call would not suffice. We’ve been hearing about the strange reports of the lights not behaving like normal. We want to make sure this isn’t affecting our investments negatively.”

Dr. Belliam: “I see…Well we have been having, disturbances. Nothing yet, has disturbed our research. Come in and I will give you the details.”

Eugene: “Thank you sir.”

(Scene: The two follow the pudgy man down corridors till they reach his office. As they enter he motions them to sit and offers them hot coffee.)

Dr. Belliam: “A little something to warm you up. No one gets used to this level of cold I promise you that.”

(Scene: The two accept and begin sipping as the doctor goes into explaining.)

Dr. Belliam: “About two weeks ago our reading of the magnetic interplays of the Earth, the Sun, and the lights began showing what we call, regular irregularities. The magnetics are usually predictable down to a T, based on solar flare activity. Yet, every night around 3am, the readings above the frozen lake to the north go haywire. They spike sometimes, other times they disappear completely. The exactly location changes nightly. Also, it’s incredibly dark out there. Catching whatever is causing this anomaly is becoming impossible. We have been thinking of setting up cameras.”

Eugene: “I see, cameras would be an un-needed expense, I believe my partner and I’s government training will suffice. We will go out on the frozen lake tonight and locate where the strange readings are coming from.”

Dr. Belliam: “Are you sure? This could be dangerous we don’t know what’s causing it. Magnetic fields of that strength can be dangerous!”

Eugene: “As I said my partner and I can handle it.”

Dr. Belliam: “Well, who am I to argue with the government. You’re welcome as guests till tonight.”

Eugene: “We thank you for the hospitality. Is there a private room which my partner and I can discuss tonight’s operation?”

Dr. Belliam: “Certainly, I’ll show you two to your guest bunk.”

(Scene: The three head down more corridors until they come to a small room with two twin size beds, two bedside tables, two desks, and two couches.)

Dr. Belliam: “A bit modest, but I hope it serves.”

Eugene: “This will be fine, thank you.”

Dr. Belliam: “If you sort all this mess out I’ll be the one thanking you two!”

Eugene: “We can hope.”

(Scene: With a smile at the doctor Eugene begins to close the door as Belliam walks away. Once Eugene is sure he is far enough down the hall he turns to Blaze.)

Eugene: "Good we could convince him to let us handle it, even better he had not already set up cameras."

Blaze: "Yeah, I doubt normal people last very long against Soul users."

Eugene: "Yes, and the Society clean-up crew are sometimes not so clean."

Blaze: "Very true. What do we do until 1am?"

Eugene: "He did say we were guests. Perhaps we are entitled to a meal?"

Blaze: "Yeah! Now we're talking. Hard to get anything done on an empty stomach."

Eugene: "For once we both agree."

(Scene: Eugene uses the intercom system to request meals. Shortly after a rap on the door signals the arrival of food. After eating in silence awhile they speak.)

Blaze: "So, I've been thinking. Since I'm the leader of this unit, and you're my co-captain, we should know more about each other, right?"

Eugene: "I suppose. More info is hardly, if ever, a bad thing. What would you like to know?"

Blaze: "Your Beast Soul, it’s one of the most unique I've seen. Even its powers are strange. So, I'm curious, how did you come by your powers?"

Eugene: "It's not a pleasant story, though I'm sure most Beast Soul births aren't. I suppose I can tell you if you really wish to know.

Blaze: "Honestly, yes, I do. I've never had the chance to openly talk to another Beast Soul user casually."

Eugene: "Hmmm. A sentiment I can relate with. Alright, I'll tell you the story of how Brain came into being. It starts in the days of my early childhood."

(Scene: As Eugene Narrates we see images of the things he talks about, the bullies, the fancy boarding school, the birth of brain.)

Eugene Narrating: I grew up in a rich family. Naturally they shipped me off to boarding school in Welsh-lands as soon as possible. At this school the dumb kids were praised for their rugby ability and the smart kids were praised for their grades. While I've always been hyper intelligent, my ability to communicate this at the time was less than sub-par. Causing many problems for me. Both with grades, and with bullies. After years of being called "stupid" by cruel kids on both sides, I was broken. I didn't understand how everyone could consider me stupid. Then one day the bullies got particularly cruel. They started beating me, making fun of the way I talked, the observations in class I had made. As I struggled against them I remember thinking "This is how I die". I deeply wished that my mental strength somehow translated to real strength. That wish crystalized; hardened into something real using my fear of death as catalyst. Thus, Brain came into being. When he appeared in a flash of lights the bullies dispersed running confused away from my battered body.

(Scene: Back in the room now food and plates being stacked and collected.)

Eugene: "After that they avoided me. I couldn't help but use Brain for some harmless pranks against them. That's when Argyl first appeared with my warning from the Society."

Blaze: "I see. Thank you for sharing. I understand why Brain is what he is."

(Scene: A rap at the door signals food clean up. Afterwards Blaze and Eugene lay in their respective beds.)

Eugene: "So, what about you, how did your powers surface?"

Blaze: "Well, since you shared, I will too."

(Scene: A couple panels showing time passes and Blaze retelling his story from volume 1. After the story is over we see them getting comfortable again.)

Eugene: "Interesting. I believe our powers were highly reflective of circumstance and innate nature of character. I wonder if this is the case for most users."

Blaze: "I don't know. This is the most talking I've done to anyone NOT Ember in years. I'm exhausted."

Eugene: "That's understandable. We should rest before tonight anyways. Shall we take a nap?"

Blaze: "Sounds good to me!"

(Scene: At this comment they both get comfortable and shut off the lights. Eugene is sure to set the alarm for 12am. At 12am they are awakened by the alarm. They get dressed and prepare for the long cold walk to the frozen lake. As they leave they are stopped at the front door by the doctor.)

Dr. Belliam: "You guys going out to the lake? Here's a map to it so you don't lose your way. Please be careful, and let us know what you find."

Eugene: "Indeed we shall. Thank you."

(Scene: They grab the map and head into the cold night.)

(Scene: Being led by clues on the map, the two find themselves and a giant frozen lake where, in the distance, a strange man stands with arms and hands outstretched. At the end of those hands, black foggy orbs float ominously, seemingly affecting the northern lights above.) Blaze: "It seems the society was right, that's got to be a Beast Soul user!" Eugene: "Yes, those orbs, they must be linked to his power." Blaze: "We have the drop on him, this will be easy" (Scene: Before Eugene can argue, Blaze forms a Fire-Gun Finger shot and lets loose charging from cover. The man turns; stern stone-like features, blonde hair, and tall broad build. From head to toe dressed in an immaculate white suit with black accents and bright red tie. He raises a black orb to the flame, and it's absorbed completely) Blaze: "Neat! But there's more where that came from." (Scene: Charging forward Blaze begins bending Ember's flames to his will. The stoic figure and Blaze dance in a interplay of flames being absorbed by black fog-like orbs.) Stoic Figure: "Imbecile!" (Scene: The figure raises his right hand as a more solid black orb forms, as he does Blaze is sucked forward toward him violently) Blaze: "Waugh!" (Scene: Blaze flies through the air at high velocity toward the man, as the his broad figure pivots and slams Blaze's gut with a resounding bone-crushing punch.) Blaze: "Ugh" *coughing blood; passes out* (Scene: As Eugene curses, he stand from behind cover.) Eugene: "I've got it! Brain, Rad-Wave Pistol!" (Scene: Brain spawns beneath him in his regular fashion a small ray gun device. He turns toward the man standing over Blaze.") Eugene: "So you think you're strong because you pick on people smaller than you!? You think that’s what strength is? Try me." (Scene: Saying this he fires the gun, as a solid green bolt flies toward the man, he raises his hand and orb in defense but upon absorbing it there is an explosion) Mysterious figure: "Argh!" (Scene: As the smoke clears a purple glowing scar is shown across the man's right arm) Mysterious figure: (strong German accent) "Damn you both! You will regret this." (Scene: As the man says this he uses both hands creating an orb around himself. As it shrinks he disappears with it. Eugene turns to Blaze, frowning he finds the feather. Pressing it to his head the scene changes to a hospital. In a plain hospital suite Blaze lays asleep with Eugene at his side. Blaze slowly wakes.) Blaze: "Where, where am I?" Eugene: "In the hospital they have on this research base." Blaze: "What happened to the Rouge Soul?" Eugene: "I hurt him badly, but he escaped." Blaze: "Damnit, I wasn't strong enough!" Eugene: "Strength had nothing to do with it, you still don't see do you? He controlled gravity. His orbs sucked the oxygen out of your flames! That is WHY they were useless." Blaze: "...Then how did you defeat him." Eugene: "As soon as I realized what his power was, I knew what could stop him. An unstable particle under insanely high pressure becomes an atom bomb, so I fired a radioactive particle into his black orb." Blaze: "You defeated him in one shot..." (Scene: After this profound statement, Eugene nods softly as Blaze turns to look out the window. A long silence passes between them.) Blaze: "I'm sorry. I realize why you were made my co-captain. How you show your strength is different, but I respect it." Eugene: "No need for apologies. I thank you for the compliment. I admire your physical raw power as well. Between the two of us...there is nothing we cannot do." (Scene: Hearing this Blaze smiles, nods his head.) Blaze: "Thanks for saving my life, and next time we won't let our mark get away. Teamwork first from now on." (Scene: Saying this Blaze outstretches his hand) Eugene: "Teamwork first" (Scene: Eugene shakes firmly as the issue closes with a shot of them determinedly staring at one another smiling.)

#beastsouls #beast souls #comicstory #Comic story #fiction #creative writing #fantasy #manga inspired #comic idea #comic in progress

1 note · View note

ruffoverthinksthings · 7 years

Note

I'm dying to know about the interactions between Claudine and Phoebus. Knowing them, I feel that it would be a mixture of hilarious hashing about life and routine vs. a hit-and-miss about the best courses of action regarding the VKs. After what Claudine's gone through, how would Phoebus' humor be effective? Especially with Claudine. Btw, you're awesome, keep on turning out the headcanons. You're doing better than the actual canon material.

God Help The Outcasts (Part 3): The Traitor

Warning: Referencesto Past Sexual Abuse.

Claudine’s bigpublic outburst obviously had massive consequences, reaching far pasther getting dragged off-stage, the sanctions on her permanent recordand her probation in Auradon, and extra Remedial Goodness classeswith Quasimodo.

On a larger scale,it opens up a massive rift in the public, split between those thatsay she was completely out of line for exploding like that and usingso much profanity and rudeness (in front of children, no less), andthose that believe she was completely justified, as they had beenusing the “proper channels” to communicate with the governmentand had either gotten apologies before being ignored, or wereoutright oppressed as with the case of the Magic Ban.

In the words of oneof Claudine’s sympathizers, “She was just making sure youcould hear her now!”

Either way, she’scharged with disruption of the peace, obscenity, and corruption ofminors.

Because of thespecial and highly politically charged nature of a VK being taken infor a crime/s,* she gets sent to a very high ranking member of theRoyal Guard who has experience handling “crossing a minefield,whilst blindfolded, dizzy, and drunk” cases:

Captain Phoebus ofFrance.

For logistical andconvenience reasons, he flies in all the way to Auradon Prep, wherethey meet at the interrogation room of a local garrison. The air ismusty, the furniture old and long unused, and the whole place wasobviously just cleaned since its last use a couple of months to ayear back.

Claudine is escortedin without handcuffs, and at Phoebus request, her guards aredismissed, leaving the two of them alone but for the camera, and thestenographer and emergency guards watching behind a one-way glass.

“Do you know whyyou’re here?” Phoebus asks, his expression and tone completelyserious.

“Because I calledout your whole society on their bullshit?” Claudine replies.

“No, you’re herebecause of your fashion choices: it’s illegal to show thatmuch skin. Do you realize how many pedestrian and vehicularaccidents you could have caused just by walking by?”

Claudine blinks.“What.”

Phoebus smiles.“That was a joke. In all seriousness, though, you are in bigtrouble for that tirade you had yesterday—excellent choice ofwords, by the way, never heard those specific combinations of cursesand insults before, they made quite the impact.”

“You learn a loton the Isle,” Claudine replies flatly. “And I’m not apologizingfor it, if that’s what you’re getting at! Throw me back on theIsle for all I care, I’d rather be back there eating garbage, thanbe a bunch of fucking Pharisees like majority of the ‘Good’people running around here!”

“I expected asmuch, which is why I’m here to offer you a deal.”

Claudine sighs, andstarts unbuttoning her shirt even more than it already is. “So longas I don’t have to swallow, pretend you’re amazing, or fake anorgasm…”

Phoebus looks awayand shields his eyes. “Not that kind of deal! Please, buttonyour shirt back up.”

Claudine laughs.“Why? Afraid your wife will find out her tits have gotten too oldfor you?”

“No, because one,I respect you too much to let you degrade yourself like this, two, Ilike being the guy that puts people into jail, not being the guybehind bars, and three, my wife’s breasts are perfect, andI’ll never want for anything more than what she has, thank you verymuch!

“Now would youplease make yourself decent again…?”

Claudine sighsheavily. “Alright…”

A few moments ofsilence and shuffling.

“You’re stilltopless, aren’t you?”

Claudine smirks.“How’d you know?”

“I’ve got asixth sense for whether or not a woman is in a state of undress;blame a wife who likes to lounge around the house completely naked.”

“You luckybastard, you,” Claudine says flatly.

Phoebus smiles. “Iknow, I still can’t believe it myself! Anyway, about that deal Imentioned, one that does not in fact involve you getting naked nor usdoing the do-diddly-dangeroo…”

Claudine sniggered.“That is the dumbest fucking innuendo for ‘fucking’ I have everheard.”

“Ah, but it madeyou laugh, didn’t it?” Phoebus says, pointing a finger at her.

“Only because itwas so offensive I have to laugh to keep myself from dyinginside.”

“Touché, but Istill count that as a win. Now, do I throw out some more jokes andtry to make you laugh, or do you want to get serious and hear out myoffer?”

“I can’t takeyou seriously if you can’t even look me in the eyes, ‘Captain,’”Claudine says playfully.

“I will onceyou’ve put your clothes back on.”

Claudine sighs.“Fine.” A brief moment of silence and more shuffling. “I’mcovered up now! Seriously this time.”

Phoebus carefullyopens his eyes, and is pleased to find she’s about as decent as shecan get with her get up. “Happy to see you didn’t pull a ‘madeyou look!’ on me.”

“Trust me, it’sonly because I want to know what it is you actually want fromme…”

The plan is rathersimple: an hour’s detention after-school Monday-Friday, wherePhoebus is supposed to teach her how to interact with people in apolite way, keep her cool, and not have another outburst or rant likethat, either in social media, in public, and especially anothertelevised event.

“I understandwhere you’re coming from,” Phoebus says on their first meeting.“Everyone talks to everyone, and the internet makes that easierthan ever. But that doesn’t mean you should just say whatever is onyour mind, and more importantly, that you don’t reply to everyonethat talks to you, those who insult you especially.

“And moreimportantly, you have a secret weapon on your side: Part One of ourBig Master Plan.”

Claudine raises hereyebrows. Images of IP traces, royal guards bursting down doors, andinternet trolls pissing their underwear come to her mind. “I’mlistening…”

“This secretweapon, the most powerful move you have against your Pharisees, oneyou can rely on to be 100% effective when used properly, is this:

“Ignore them.”

Claudine stares athim. Then, she scowls. “Are you shitting me right now? Sowhat, I just let their shit-talking stink up my air, never give themcrap back for their bull?”

“No, and beforeyou continue, let me explain: a lot of people don’t realize this,but insults only have the power to hurt you if you let them. YourPharisees are like vampires, sucking out your self-worth, confidence,and good feelings, but also like vampires, they can only hurt you ifyou invite them into your house.

“Your reaction iswhat the Pharisees want—they want to know that they hurt you, thatthey riled you up so bad you find you have no choice but to payattention to them.

“If you deny thempermission to ever enter your front door, they’ll just glare at youthrough the windows, yell at you to let them in, before they leaveand find someone else to feed on. In my experience, they’re reallynot that picky.”

“But even if Idon’t let them in through the door to bite my neck, I can stillhear them through the walls; it may all be bullshit, but it stillfucking hurts, you know…?” Claudine says with much lessbite.

Phoebus eyes soften.“I know. Trust me, I’ve been where you are. But that’s a storyfor another time, as we’re going to move to step two of our BigMaster Plan:

“Be a betterperson, with better problems.

“Find people whoseopinion you should listen to, who you need to listen to, and willwant to listen to. Think of reading troll comments on YouTube, vsreading a really good, well-reasoned blog-post as the differencebetween gorging on potato chips, vs a nice, baked potato with chivesand gravy.

“One, you canreally savour and enjoy, the other, you just shove into your mouthwithout a second thought—baked potato’s healthier for you, too.”

The two take a quicktrip to a vending machine, before resuming.

“So what’s step3 of the Big Master Plan?” Claudine asks as she settles in with apack of Oreos.

“You removeyourself from your Pharisees,” Phoebus replies as he opens up a bagof nuts. “Get out of their circles and comment threads. Keep yourdistance, and just observe. Watch how they talk, act, and/or screaminsults into the void, hoping someone will take offense and engagethem.

“Then, askyourself: ‘Why?’

“Why do they dothis? Why you specifically? Why do they spend so much of theirprecious time and limited days on this world to bother you?”

Claudine nods. “Andis step four confronting them, now that I know my enemy?”

Phoebus shakes hishead. After swallowing his mouthful of nuts, he says, “No, that’sstep five; four is to go out and compliment people, engage in realconversation, and civil, reasonable, fruitful debate. Acquaintyourself with how people really talk when they want to make aconnection with someone and exchange ideas. See what it’s like whenyou don’t reduce yourself to sound-bites, mean flits, and memes.

“Maybe even havethem face-to-face.

“And this is wherewe get to step five: return to your Pharisees. Ask them, why do theydo what they do? Why the hate? Don’t they have anything betterto do with their lives?

“This iscompletely optional, by the way, but whether or not you do it, everytime you find yourself tempted to reply to a stupid insult onStorybook, just repeat step one.”

To help with this,he teacher her all about humour, “the art of making something funout of terrible, awful things.”

He relates to herhow incredibly tense things were immediately after the Great Uniting.Before, when it was just communications through rifts in reality andthe occasional ambassador, it was all good will, excitement, andbeing on their best behaviours, “like all the different realms weredating each other.”

“The Great Unitingwas all of them getting married and moving in together, and formajority of the people, this is when the reality finally hit themthat they’d have to live with each other, every single day ofthe year, for the rest of our lives.

“Metaphoricallyspeaking, we had to share our bathrooms, see each other when we wokeup in the morning before a shower, pants, and a nice strong pot ofcoffee, and be keenly aware of all our bad habits, our flaws,and whenever we indulged in our, ahem, baser pleasures.

“It was a roughtime, even with the translators to help smooth the transition intoEnglish.

“Sometimes, it’d actually make things worse when atranslator decided to soften, change, or completely cut out the badparts of whatever a Grecian said to the woman from Corona, and theyhappen to have a bilingual friend who could tell them what theyreally meant.

“The honeymoon wasover, and lots of people were having regrets. They were feelinghomesick, and even if they had literally brought home with them,Auradon definitely wasn’t the Kansas. Things were lookinglike we were headed to a divorce, and an ugly one at that.”

“Did things everget to the shouting and breaking dishes level?”

“For some, yes.But that was inevitable and expected when you pulled off something asbig, complicated, and messy as this. The rest, however, we had todefuse before things really got ugly, with the one universallanguage all of us could understand:

“Humour.

“I’ve yet tomeet a culture that doesn’t like to laugh—and if they don’t,Beast and the others passed them over for the final list.

“Using comedy wasthe perfect tool. It defused tensions, it broke the ice, it letpeople find something they had in common so we could start buildingbridges there. And as a wise man once said, ‘If your enemy isdoubled over in laughter, he can’t club you to death.’”

Claudine smirks. “Ibeg to differ, but I get the point…”

Phoebus becomes aguide, a protector (for both external aggressors and Claudine’sworse impulses), and a third regulating force in her life, a properfather figure for her whom she frequently hangs out with every otherSunday to go out and bond, be her chaperon for when she starts datingagain (and seriously, this time), and being one of the people she canalways call when things go wrong.

She also calls him for advice, and often times, when he catches wind of her getting into trouble, offers helpful advice, like this one tacked onto the end of many lengthier pieces: “… But most importantly: don’t punch anyone in the dick, or where they would have one if they’re female.”

The humour helps her get over her natural distrust of authority, seeing as that’s what caused and enforced the Isle, and Maleficent’s guards aren’t saints themselves, or follow much of a “code of honour.” Claudine often timescalls him when she can to ask him to tell a joke. One of them isthis:

“One day, a nunliving in a convent in a forest comes across a hunter trying to bagsome deer. As she gathers herbs and berries, she watches as thehunter nocks his bow, takes aim, and misses.

“’Goddammit, Imissed!’ the hunter cries as his prey gets away.

“’Oh mygoodness, what foul language!’ the nun says to herself. ‘God,please give this man the strength, so he may never take Your name invain ever again.’

“Later, the nun isgetting some water from the river, and she sees the hunter trying tobag some deer again. Again, he nocks his bow, takes aim, and misses.

“’Goddammit, Imissed!’ he cries as his prey gets away yet again.

“’Oh mygoodness, what a horrible man!’ the nun says to herself. ‘God,please show this man why you do not take Your name in vain!’

Suddenly, the skydarkens, clouds roll in, and a bolt of lightning comes shooting downfrom above, striking the ground just beside the hunter!

Then, they hear adeep, rumbling voice echoing all throughout the forest:

“Me-dammit, Imissed!’”

* The Rotten Four’s“forgiveness” at the end of the first movie was not nearly asclean and quick as was portrayed in canon.

#god help the outcasts #Descendants #Disney #headcanon

6 notes · View notes

marketinginusa-blog · 6 years

Text

5 Tips for Dealing with business development for the USA Market

ONE: Take a difficult take a look at your service capacities A vital, very first step is a truthful evaluation of your service. Establishing export markets takes time: it is not unusual for producers to spend three years of emphasis, power as well as expenses before obtaining an initial order. So while you are concentrating on your export service, you need to ensure your regional operations are operating efficiently. Acquiring export success can develop volatile demand projections causing overstocking or understocking in addition to production variations that restrict the ability to total orders on schedule. Merchants require to be mindful that 'particular niche,' as well as 'little' in the US, is different to Australia. For example, if you win a contract with a 'store' supermarket with ten stores, it might seem manageable. However, it's not uncommon for boutique" grocery stores to draw in over $300 000 a week in revenues.

Scaling up production promptly to meet enhanced need inevitably needs boosted investment for extra devices, supply, logistics, staff as well as advertising. Likewise, exporting includes an added complexity to normal company capital administration, particularly when prices outstrip export sales returns.

TWO: Research, study Export research should be rigorous. Uncovering too late that an effective local brand cannot be used in the United States can show tragic. You need to understand the business society you are most likely to operate. The socio-demographics for your item in Australia might well be various in the US where for millions of people English is a second language. Along with different clients and also operating methods, you will certainly encounter different regulations, taxes as well as documentation. You will certainly also have various prices, regards to profession policies as well as settlement timetables. Weather patterns in the US are severe. Not permitting severe warmth or cold snaps can wreck distribution timetables. You likewise require to account for extensive ranges in the supply chain, along with products and also handling and shipment issues, and also unstable market problems. Service issues require to be taken into consideration. If your recognized United States market wants a24/7 solution, it might difficult to supply from central NSW. You will certainly need to think about supplying straightforward return plans, delivery guarantees, 1800 kind assistance numbers, and internet access to ensure you meet minimal the United States customer service expectations. THREE: Recognize your competitive benefit United States markets are extremely competitive. Purchasers have an interest in dealing with services and suppliers that comprehend their requirements and also can deliver on their pledges. United States customers are extremely willing to attempt affordable goods as well as services offered they can see the tangible advantages in switching suppliers. Figure out what potential consumers truly want, as well as what their current provider is not providing. Create your very own benefit.

Leveraging residential success makes sense. It might be that what jobs well with neighborhood consumers might also function well with their US counterparts. Solicit some neighborhood recommendations. Offer possible US consumers an opportunity to try your offering. Develop some United States referrals. Importantly, you require strategy to present a brand-new product or service releases right into your offering regularly. US consumers and buyers anticipate seeing brand-new items/options or material to maintain them engaged with you. 4: Select a reliable sales network Employing a salesperson or group in the US lugs high expenses. Utilizing a network companion, on the other hand, provides less risk and also reduced entrance prices. Their market experience may outway the higher margins and also less control over customer partnerships. There could be a situation for utilizing a combination of the direct sales design and also using network companions: different designs for various sectors. A channel partner it well experienced in recruiting as well as managing resellers and also taking brand-new offerings to market quickly. They can additionally assist with training, installment, as well as support. Ultimately your decision-making should be based on how well you can best offer your clients. 5: Evaluation of the future A reliable strategy is crucial for creating a business in the US. The plan must be a living record. It needs to cover sensible objectives in addition to information on just how and when they will certainly be attained. The plan must consist of all the conventional parts of an organization strategy: from market overview and evaluation, client and also product assessment, circulation, promotion, and capital financials. A vital path outlining turning points ought to consist of along with backup prepare for unexpected impacts as well as suggestions on how you will manage them. It must consist of information on how you will certainly determine your success so you can much better balance your client and also monitoring needs at a residence with your export endeavors.

0 notes

whiskeyandwildfire · 4 years

Text

SOME of its parts...or The Ship of Theseus has a Fire Sale.

Webster’s dictionary defines (Fill in the Blank) as (one thing or another) and humanity takes that definition, often ignores it, and does whatever serves them best. I believe we’re living in a time of definitions. Categories. People in “furnished, insulated, with 2 day delivery on decor that defines them” boxes.

Essential and not.

Healthy and not.

Artist or advocate, but definitely not both.

Definitions can help when we speak the same language we already understand each other a little bit on an individual level. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes of talking with someone to learn what’s most important to them, what they are afraid of, even how they think they’re being represented in the world if they have a specific job or position that falls under the public eye in the way that health care workers are currently (and how they have in the past) These workers are essential to sustaining human life and to bettering human life in the future. Doctors have their jobs and no one asks them to do it from home (except for when they do ask them, but that’s a different story). The point is that Doctors just can’t function like that...they need to be in a room with a human to run tests, gather samples, and diagnose disease...even when they don’t need to be in the room, its never easier to treat a patient without knowing everything you can about them.

Something that we have learned from the Covid-19 pandemic, whether we knew it before or not, is that Artists are unessential in a time of crisis.

Should we be though?

And why weren’t we in the first place?

Just as the automotive industry, (workers, managers, logistic support, et all) shifted gears (No time for puns Sean!) to making masks and ventilators - just as they shifted during WW2 to make bombs, helmets, and ammo - that is the kind of shift in services provided that artists are capable of if the country knew what the full range of our skills actually entail.

Now, I’m not necessarily selling this for a non profit model. Non profits have stakeholders making us beholden to our community moreso than our national government (although with any government subsidies there should be a place for Artists in the response plan)

I brought this up in conversation and was asked “What’s stopping you from going and volunteering “the full range of your skills” to those in need? Do you need the government to tell you where to go and what to do when you get there? Or as an Artist can you do as you’ve always done and look for problems that you can apply a creative solution towards?””

My problem there lies with the issue that - in a crisis - everyone wants to help. All of the sudden everyone has a medical degree from Google University and goes out to “help” with whatever problem takes over the internet that day.

So definitions. Essential and not. Artist or Entertainer. Helping or in the way.

Once upon a time there was a Greek MF-er named Theseus. Theseus has a boat made of wood (first mistake bruh) Everyday Theseus had to replace a piece of that boat with metal (like...maybe go with that in the first place)

So at what point is this new metal boat no longer the same wood boat?

This example was famously supplied as a philosophical thought experiment by Thomas Hobbes, the British philosopher of the English civil war, into which he was born (he said that he was born twins with fear), but he drew the example from Plutarch, a Roman writer, and, of course, Theseus comes from Greek mythology.

In order for this session to be philosophically fruitful it is necessary to understand the philosophical subtleties involved in an exploration of the thought experiment. The embedded question to bear in mind in this whole discussion is if it is a new ship when all the parts are replaced then at what point does it become a new ship? (https://www.philosophy-foundation.org/enquiries/view/the-ship-of-theseus)

Hey, that’s what I said! So when is it? When the first piece is replaced? When the last one is replaced? When the 735 part is replaced? Huh?

Or is it when they bought the metal, knowing what the future held?

Or if not - if it’s the same ship - not just because Theseus still owns it therefore making it Theseus’ Ship - but if it’s the same ship because we say it is then why is that?

What are the definable “wooden parts” of the Artist? What about the anatomy of our social responsibility can be laid out and dissected so that we may know better where we are best utilized in a war.

Not to say that no one has thought about this, but a crisis of this scale has not happened in our modern world and anyone that seems like they have it all figured out needs to remember that they’re experiencing this for the first time as well.

Artists have skills that are fluid and cross over between industries and disciplines - we can imagine, we can create, we can inspire - We can come up with creative solutions (and do) We can provide services to help with the effects of toxic stress and post traumatic care (and do) We can inspire and organize movements to effect legislation that shapes how we respond in the next crisis. (And we’re doing this even if WE’RE not doing it)

Everyone has a part to play and ours has to be bigger than stay home, do your normal job however you can because what you were doing before isn’t that essential to our society anyway but we need funny videos to watch while people die because it��s just SO SAD - we have to do and be more. I think this starts with a long conversation about who we were in the first place.

0 notes

bobbynolanios88 · 6 years

Text

Blockchain’s Potential to Disrupt Banking Services – Part 1

Blockchain is transforming everything from payments transactions to how money is raised in the private market. Will traditional banking embrace this tech or be replaced by it?

Blockchain technology provides a way for untrusted parties to come to agreement on the state of a database, without using a middleman. By providing a ledger that nobody administers, a blockchain could provide specific financial services — like payments, or securitization — without using a middleman, like a bank.

For use cases that don’t need a high degree of decentralization — but could benefit from better coordination — blockchain’s cousin, “distributed ledger technology (DLT),” could help corporates establish better governance and standards around data sharing and collaboration.

Following are some of the banking services that could be disrupted.

1. Payments

By establishing a decentralized ledger for payments (e.g. Bitcoin), blockchain technology could facilitate faster payments at lower fees than banks.

Blockchain technology offers a high-security, low-cost way of sending payments that cuts down on the need for verification from third parties and beats processing times for traditional bank transfers

90% of members of the European Payments Council believe blockchain technology will fundamentally change the industry by 2025

If you work in San Francisco and want to send part of your paycheck back to your family in London, you might have to pay a $25 flat fee for a wire transfer, and additional fees adding up to 7%. Your bank gets a cut, the receiving bank gets a cut, and you’re charged exchange rate fees. Your family’s bank might not even register the transaction until a week later.

Facilitating payments is highly profitable for banks, providing them with little incentive to lower fees. Cross-border transactions, from payments to letters of credit generated 40% of global payments transactional revenues during 2016.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum are built on public blockchains that anyone can use to send and receive money. In this way, public blockchains cut down on the need for trusted third parties to verify transactions and give people around the world access to fast, cheap, and borderless payments.

Bitcoin transactions can take 30 minutes or up to 16 hours — in extreme cases — to settle. That’s still not perfect, but it represents a leg up from the average 3-day processing time for bank transfers.

More importantly, developers are working on scaling cheaper solutions for cryptocurrencies — like Bitcoin and Ethereum — to process more transactions, faster. Other cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin Cash and TRON, already have low-priced transactions.

Some examples of payments through blockchain

While cryptocurrencies are a long way from completely replacing fiat (like the US dollar) when it comes to payments, the last couple of years have seen mostly upward growth in transaction volume for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Some companies are using blockchain technology to improve B2B payments in developing economies. One example of this is BitPesa, a blockchain company focused on facilitating B2B payments in countries like Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda. The company has processed millions of dollars in transactions, reportedly growing 20% month-over-month.

Another example is BitPay, a Bitcoin payment service provider that helps merchants accept and store Bitcoin payments. The company has over 40 integrations, partnering with e-commerce platforms like Shopify and LemonStand to facilitate Bitcoin payments. Additionally, Ohio has become the first state in the US to accept Bitcoin tax payments, and the transactions are enabled by BitPay’s platform.

2. Clearance and Settlements Systems

Distributed ledgers can reduce operational costs and bring us closer to real-time transactions between financial institutions.

Distributed ledger technology could allow transactions to be settled directly, and can keep track of transactions better than existing protocols, like SWIFT

Ripple and R3, among others, are working with traditional banks to bring greater efficiency to the sector

The fact that an average bank transfer — as described above — takes 3 days to settle has a lot to do with the way our financial infrastructure was built.

It’s not just a pain for the consumer. Moving money around the world is a logistical nightmare for the banks themselves. Today, a simple bank transfer — from one account to another — has to bypass a complicated system of intermediaries, from correspondent banks to custodial services, before it ever reaches any kind of destination. The two bank balances have to be reconciled across a global financial system, comprised of a wide network of traders, funds, asset managers and more.

If you want to send money from a UniCredit Banca account in Italy to a Wells Fargo account in the US, the transfer will be executed through the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Communication (SWIFT), which send 24 million messages a day for 10,000 financial institutions.

Because UniCredit Banca and Wells Fargo don’t have an established financial relationship, they have to search the SWIFT network for a correspondent bank that has a relationship with both banks and can settle the transaction — for a fee. Each correspondent bank maintains different ledgers, at the originating bank and the receiving bank, which means that these different ledgers have to be reconciled at the end of the day.

The centralized SWIFT protocol doesn’t actually send the funds, it simply sends the payment orders. The actual money is then processed through a system of intermediaries. Each intermediary adds additional cost to the transaction and creates a potential point of failure — 60% of B2B payments require manual intervention, each taking between 15-20 minutes.

Blockchain technology, which serves as a decentralized “ledger” of transactions, could disrupt this state of play. Rather than using SWIFT to reconcile each financial institution’s ledger, an interbank blockchain could keep track of all transactions publicly and transparently. That means that instead of having to rely on a network of custodial services and correspondent banks, transactions could be settled directly on a public blockchain.

Further, blockchain technology allows for “atomic” transactions, or transactions that clear and settle when a payment is made. This stands in contrast to current banking systems, which clear and settle a transaction days after a payment.

That might help alleviate the high costs of maintaining a global network of correspondent banks. Banks have estimated that blockchain innovation could cut at least $20B worth of costs from the financial sector by providing better infrastructure for clearance and settlements.

Examples of transactions using blockchain

Ripple, an enterprise blockchain services provider, is the most prominent player working on clearance and settlement. While the company is best known for its associated cryptocurrency XRP, Ripple — the venture-backed company — is building out blockchain-based solutions for banks to use for clearance and settlement.

SWIFT messages are one-way, much like emails, which mean that transactions can’t be settled until each party has screened the transaction. By integrating directly with a bank’s existing databases and ledgers, Ripple’s xCurrent product provides banks with a faster, two-way communication protocol that permits real-time messaging and settlement. Ripple currently has over 100 customers signed up to experiment with its blockchain network.

R3 is another major player working on distributed ledger technology for banks and wants to be the “new operating system for financial markets.” It raised $107M in May 2017 from a consortium of banks like Bank of America Merrill Lynch and HSBC. It’s also lost some key members, such as Goldman Sachs, which departed because it wanted more operational control over R3.

Projects like Ripple and R3 are working with traditional banks to bring greater efficiency to the sector. They’re looking to decentralize systems on a smaller scale than public blockchains by connecting financial institutions to the same ledger in order to increase efficiency of transactions.

3. Fundraising

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are experimenting with a new model of financing that unbundles access to capital from traditional capital-raising services and firms.

In initial coin offerings (ICOs), entrepreneurs raise money by selling tokens or coins, allowing them to fundraise without a traditional investor or VC firm (and the due diligence that accompanies an investment from one)

Blockchain company EOS raised over $4B in its year-long ICO ending in 2018.

In an ICO, projects sell tokens, or coins, in exchange for funding (often denominated in Bitcoin or ether). The value of the token is — at least in theory — tied to the success of the blockchain company. Investing in tokens is a way for investors to bet directly on usage and value. Through ICOs, blockchain companies can short-circuit the conventional fundraising process by selling tokens directly to the public.

Venture capital firms have taken notice, with Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, and Union Square Ventures, among others, all directly investing in ICOs, as well as gaining exposure by investing in cryptocurrency hedge funds.

Venrock partner David Pakman has said, “There’s no question that crypto will disrupt the business of venture capital. And I hope it does. The democratization of everything is what has excited me about technology from the beginning.”

Examples of fundraising through blockchain

While the majority of ICOs thus far have been for pre-revenue blockchain projects, we’re seeing more and more technology companies build around a paradigm of decentralization.

Telegram, the messaging app, for example raised $1.7B via ICO. The idea behind the ICO is to sell tokens to users and bootstrap a payment platform on top of the messaging network. If, as blockchain advocates predict, the next Facebook, Google, and Amazon are built around decentralized protocols and launched via ICO, it will eat directly into investment banking margins.

Several promising blockchain companies have emerged around this space. Companies like CoinList, which began as a collaboration between Protocol Labs and AngelList, are helping bring digital assets to the mainstream by helping blockchain companies structure legal and compliant ICOs. CoinList has facilitated more than $400M in token sales since August 2017.

It has developed a bank-grade compliance process that blockchain companies can access through a streamlined API, helping projects ensure everything from due diligence to investor accreditation. While CoinList’s platform is designed for blockchain projects, its focus on reducing the logistical and regulatory load around fundraising is being mirrored in the public markets. Investment banks today are experimenting with automation to help eliminate the thousands of work hours that go into an IPO.

Of course — given regulatory pronouncements — ICO activity should be taken with a grain of salt, and the rapid rise of ICOs over the past year looks like it was a bubble. And there’s no doubt that many of these projects will fail altogether. What’s interesting is that they’re testing out blockchain technology that could replace functions of traditional banks. This is not just limited to company fundraising, but also to the underlying fabric of securities.

So as you can see there is lots of potential.

This is just part 1 of Blockchain’s Potential to Disrupt Banking Services series, stay tuned for part 2 covering more examples of how blockchain could disrupt securities, loans and credit, and trade finance.

Excerpt originally published by CB Insights, How Blockchain Could Disrupt Banking.