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Re: Julian Assuming he doesn't have any kids of his own, he's doing pretty drat well for a reformed-criminal/bachelor trying to raise teenagers who are both a headache (teenager default) and have a shitton baggage, not all of which he knows about. Re: Julie Yeah, PTSD is pretty much the bare minimum she is going to have to deal with.
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Jun 27, 2018 16:09
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Jun 27, 2018 20:46
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Ice Phisherman posted:One of many. Back during my college days I dove deeply into the common practices of the prison system and I'm a fan of the Fresh Out series on youtube where an ex-con talks frankly about his time in prison while dispelling myths. It's pretty good if you're interested in prison culture. Given what little I know of USA prisons as a layman, I don't want to image the truly terrible things that happen there. But it's the sort of things people need to know, else it will stay that way. Ice Phisherman posted:While I 100% agree, it would feel strange or out of character for anyone with the exception of Sasha suggesting counseling. If Sasha had a real grasp on what Julie was going through beyond reading her emotions maybe it would have made sense, but she saw that Julie was in pain and suggested pizza and ice cream. It's a very girls night thing to do and is a way to show care. Well, I think Marco would suggest it. That he didn't apparently know how bad the situation is telling about his and Julie's relationship. Fuzzy not knowing about it does makes sense. So: Fuzzy - she's not suprised by this turn of events - she knows that Julie's hurting, after all. At must, it will be "do they really need to take her?". This will not prevent her from being worried about it, even if it's not news. besided that, epends on how she is "sold" on the idea - if she's introduced to it as a something effective, she'll be glad and relieved that Julie's get's the help she needs. But if she's being told it's a waste of time at best and harmful at worst, she will have much more problems with it - after all, it means that she could not help while Julie's stuck there. Kenji - He didn't know that Julie's is in that bad a spot, IIRC (she didn't have these conversetions with him, or I misremember?) - he's blindsided by this, and is very worried about it - even if he think that the ward is a good idea, just that she needs it (and he didn't know) is enough. (We ain't voting on Oli, but given that Julie's mentoring her...)
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Jun 28, 2018 02:37
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Oli and Sasha - Monday, July 22, 2075 - Morning - Blake Island “Sasha, right?” asked Oli, “You’re um...Julie's friend?” “That’s right,” said Sasha, “And you’re Oli.” “Uh huh,” said Oli, “Nice to meet you.” “Nice to meet you too, Oli,” said Sasha. Sasha popped open the white takeout box she’d received from Oli and beamed. "Oh, they're so cute," cooed Sasha, "Are you sure you don't want one?" Sasha and Oli walked together down the dirt trail away from the docks, past the school and towards the student cabins. A plain white box was open in Sasha's hands as she walked down the trail, flanked by unlit solar lamps. She was currently marveling over meat buns that looked like cute pigs. "I'm fine," said Oli, "I had a big breakfast." "Okay, just offering. They're almost too cute to eat," complained Sasha. "Kenji got them for you and Fuzzy to share," said Oli. A smile spread across Sasha's face as she closed the box. "Aww, that was really nice of him," she said, happily, "I'll have to thank him." They walked for a little longer. Now away from the school, they followed the trail into the tree line. Blake Island was a temperate rain forest after all and the canopy was thick so there were dappled shadows that swayed on the ground. This part of the island was not wild as the ground cover from plants and moss had been tamed enough to make walking safe. The further one got from the northeast corner where the school was located, the denser the forest became. They passed the senior cabins as they were the closest to the school before Oli spoke up again. "Sorry that you got stuck with me," said Oli, self-consciously. Sasha looked over her shoulder and frowned as she continued to walk. "What?" asked Sasha, "No, it's fine. I'm not stuck with you. Most everyone got pulled away by teachers and I don’t want you to get lost since you’re Julie’s friend. I'll show you around after we drop off your stuff." Oli sighed softly as they continued to walk. Soon after they passed the path to the junior and sophomore rows, then they turned towards the freshman row. Soon enough, they could see wooden cabins that were flanked by tall trees. There were fifteen on each side of the trail to make up for a total of thirty freshman cabins. "Which cabin are you in?" asked Sasha. "Twenty-nine," said Oli, “That’s what the message from the school said.” "Oh, near the back," said Sasha, "That's okay." Oli looked from cabin to cabin, each one with the same build, the same color, brown, the same small porch, the same windows, the same mail box and two blank wooden signs near the road that flanked the small path towards each cabin. Each sign had the student's name at the top, but below it was a large blank space. They walked to the back to Oli's new cabin and stopped in front of the signs. "Why are there two signs?" asked Oli, "My name is on both of them and they're up to my waist. What are they for?" Sasha shrugged in response. "I don't know," said Sasha, "They weren't here last year. I asked Julian about it and he said to wait for the school assembly." "Okay," said Oli, warily, "Weird, but okay. So these are the girls' cabins?" "What? No, these are the freshman cabins," said Sasha, mildly confused. Oli paused as she came to grips with this. "So they don't separate the girls and the boys?" she asked. "No," said Sasha, simply. "Why not?" asked Oli. Sasha leaned against one of Oli's signs and thought about it. "I guess that they could do that, but they don't," said Sasha, "People sneak around and having all of the girls and all of the guys in one place might encourage even more sneaking around. I think it would be easier for the boys to mess with the girls if they’re not your neighbor and vice versa. The school does keep tabs on people though." Sasha plucked at her uniform and pointed up at a tree with a discreetly placed camera on it. "There are tracking beacons in our clothing and cameras on the island," said Sasha, "It's mostly so people can get found if they get hurt on a nature hike or so they can get a talking to if they're sneaking off to go fool around with each other. Speaking of which, don't get involved in the dating scene here. It's really toxic." Again there was an awkward pause as Oli's eyes drifted down to her doughy body and then back up to Sasha. "Right," said Oli, slowly, "I'll try to remember that." There were another few beats of awkward silence before Sasha replied. "Sure," said Sasha, awkwardly. Even more awkward silence followed. Oli’s gaze drifted to the ground. “Do you want to get settled in?” asked Sasha. “If that’s okay,” said Oli, quietly. “Sure it's okay. It's your cabin. Do you want me to wait out here?” asked Sasha. “No, please don’t,” said Oli, quickly, “You can come inside.” Sasha thanked her and together they approached the cabin door. Oli briefly searched for some keys as she'd never been given any, but after some prompting from Sasha, Oli just opened the front door. This startled her. Touristville was a nice place, but everyone locked their doors. What startled her even more was the cabin and its contents. Inside of her cabin was a double bed, a nightstand, a couch, a simple, wooden table with two chairs, a stand in closet, a door to a bathroom and to Sasha's surprise, a kitchen with cabinets overhead and underneath, a spice rack and a full refrigerator beside an oven. "Oh my gosh, you have a kitchen?" asked Sasha. "You don't have one?" asked Oli, nervously. Sasha put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. "No," groused Sasha, "I'm not mad or anything. Not at you at least. I'm just betting I won't have one. I don’t have a fridge either, just a mini fridge. Fuzzy and I cooked together a lot over the summer. We burned half of what we made but it was still fun. Does your magic have to do with cooking or something?" "Uh, yeah," said Oli, “I’m good with my hands. Art and cooking is what I’m good at.” Unsure of what else to do, Oli wiggled her fingers. Sasha cast her gaze at Oli and after a few seconds she took her hands off her hips and giggled. "Sorry, I'm not trying to make you nervous," said Sasha, “People who specialize in magic sometimes get special rules to develop their talents. Specialists get to bend the rules to benefit their powers so long as they don't flaunt it. Fuzzy gets to have her dog and her owl but other people aren’t allowed to have animals. I get to keep my cyberdeck, but I can’t really do much with it right now. So you get a kitchen.” On a hunch, Sasha opened one of the cupboards. Inside of it were unopened boxes full of kitchen utensils and appliances: A knife block with new knives, a toaster, a combination food processer, juicer, mixer and blender, a kettle, pots, pans, silverware and other sorts of odds and ends. Oli paused for a moment, bent down and picked up the toaster. Her brother had bought this exact same model with the money he’d gotten from his gang. He'd been forced to return it when her dad found out where it had come from. “At least he earned it,” whispered Oli. “Nice, right?” asked Sasha. She hadn’t appeared to have heard Oli’s mutter. “Sure, I guess,” said Oli, sadly. Oli put down the toaster on what small amount of counter top she had. It was all so nice. Her bed wasn’t made from old foam, her nightstand wasn’t made from an old crate with a blanket over it and the walls weren’t bare stone. She had kitchen appliances that weren’t falling apart, that is if her home had them at all. Everything was nice and clean. The light came from the sun instead of a bulb. She’d done nothing to deserve any of this. The only way that Oli felt she could deserve any of this is if she worked. “Sasha, I really appreciate you helping me out, but I need to sketch something out before I forget it,” said Oli, contemplatively, “I’ve got to do my best to pay my way through next year.” “You and me both,” sighed Sasha. Oli stopped half way through pulling off her book bag. “Doesn’t your corporation pay for that?” asked Oli. Sasha winced and looked away. Oli suddenly felt bad, though she didn’t know what she’d done wrong. “I’ll get out of your hair,” said Sasha, evasively, “Maybe we can meet up for lunch. It’s the building with all of the picnic tables outside.” “Yeah, okay,” said Oli, “Thanks again. I’ll see you at lunch.” The pair waved goodbye and Sasha exited out the front door. Oli didn’t sit on her bed to sketch out her idea. It felt too good for her and so did the couch. Instead she sat at the simple, wooden table on one of the hard chairs. Sketchpad soon in hand, she began to draft her idea for her next painting and used her feelings and surroundings as her inspiration. Open, dirty hands filled with fine things piled high. CYOA Time So Sasha glitches the roll. She has a ton of edge though so that glitch becomes 2 hits on a success on 7 dice. Oli gets 1 hit back on 5 dice. This is mostly to establish how the conversation goes. It's a bit awkward and stilted, but positive. Oli gains inspiration for her art. She keeps getting handouts from people which she doesn’t feel like she earns. She creates a piece where dirty hands are piled high with fine things. To create a standard artistic piece, which I’d consider something between an 8x10 to a 16x20 it’s a task action. She needs 20 hits total for a piece of this size. The average of those hits gives her dice that she can roll to determine price. The higher the average of those pieces over those rolls the more she gets. Her mental limit normally effects how much she can roll, but I spend edge if it can potentially clear the mental limit if she feels inspired. Oli will never spend edge unless she feels inspired at this time as her self-esteem is not good. Artisan 4 + Intuition 4 + Nimble Fingers 1 + Drawing Specialty 2 + Improved Ability Artisan 2 + Improved Facilities (if on the island) 2 = 15 I roll three times. Since she’s inspired (and so am I) I will be using edge for each roll which gives her +7 and she can reroll 6’s. Oli isn’t good at much, but she’s really good at making things with her hands. She gets 24 hits total over 3 days. The formula for small pieces goes like this: (Average of all rolls rounded down d6) (average roll) (size of the piece (piece is small, so the multiplier is 1)). I rolled and the formula looks like this. (41x8)(1) = 3280 nuyen. It is a fantastic piece which conveys emotion. Note that the money doesn’t just fall into her hands. Kenji still has to find a buyer. Olisha will not buy any more paintings from him, but she may introduce Kenji to her contacts if he pleases her. Currently she is his only art contact. Olisha is not interested in a cut of the profits. She’s interested in Kenji making her look good; basically she wants him to generate prestige for her. On the positive side, Kenji is a fantastic negotiator and every hit he gets compared to the person he is negotiating with gives 5% more to the base price. Oli will create a few more pieces over the next two weeks when things will begin to ramp up again and so it won’t just be this piece he’s selling. However, this is the big one that will earn the most. One painting, base price 3,280 nuyen. Took three days. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Dec 25, 2018 |
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Jun 28, 2018 05:17
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drat good start Oli. Wish we had another way to fuel your art rather than self inflicted misery but welp.
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Jun 28, 2018 08:02
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RickVoid posted:drat good start Oli. Wish we had another way to fuel your art rather than self inflicted misery but welp. Isn't that most art anyway?
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Jun 28, 2018 15:54
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Extreme emotions either way hopefully. I want Oli to be so happy she draws a picture that when people look at it they cry with joy and warmth.
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Jun 28, 2018 16:07
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Deadmeat5150 posted:Isn't that most art anyway? A lot of art. Toughy posted:Extreme emotions either way hopefully. Yeah, I come from a school of thought where I don't value art unless it speaks to people. Art has zero intrinsic value like food or shelter, so if it doesn't evoke some feeling in me I don't consider it of any personal value. It's expected early on that a young artist will experiment so it may not all be wretchedness, but she doesn't feel good right now. She feels undeserving of what she's been given and that's what she's drawing upon to fuel her art. All of the nice things in her life art not hers. Everything that belongs to her that she bought herself is shabby. So she's wrestling with those feelings right now through her art.
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Jun 28, 2018 16:21
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A real shame about Oli's current situation is that she could make a lot more money in the short term by doing graphic design for album covers, clothes, and so forth - but that would likely damage the 'fine art' purity that she and her patrons are shooting for with this high-end market. It'd be cool to see her become an Andy Warhol, though.
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Jun 28, 2018 17:55
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jagadaishio posted:A real shame about Oli's current situation is that she could make a lot more money in the short term by doing graphic design for album covers, clothes, and so forth - but that would likely damage the 'fine art' purity that she and her patrons are shooting for with this high-end market. It'd be cool to see her become an Andy Warhol, though. Actually she could with Kenji as a go between and use a pseudonym.
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Jun 28, 2018 18:53
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jagadaishio posted:A real shame about Oli's current situation is that she could make a lot more money in the short term by doing graphic design for album covers, clothes, and so forth - but that would likely damage the 'fine art' purity that she and her patrons are shooting for with this high-end market. It'd be cool to see her become an Andy Warhol, though. She could probably make more money that way, sure. However, Kenji is most interested in further access to the wealthy and more importantly, their money. By going through a team lead for graphic designers or going freelance, he's removing himself by several steps from the wealthy. It's pretty lucrative, especially if she creates something that becomes a meme. The steady option is in doing commercial design. The long term money maker is in gaining access to the wealthy. Toughy posted:Actually she could with Kenji as a go between and use a pseudonym. Kenji could 100% pose as the actual artist. The art world is highly superficial and often based on what has nothing to do with the art. So Kenji, either being himself or shape shifting into someone in particular could work his natural charms and inflate the price. This would deprive Oli of credit for her work though. So the tradeoff would be money versus a potential hit to or stagnation of loyalty.
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Jun 28, 2018 19:24
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Ice Phisherman posted:"I don't know," said Sasha, "They weren't here last year. I asked Julian about it and he said to wait for the school assembly." Okay, color me intrigued. Ice Phisherman posted:“At least he earned it,” whispered Oli. So, we come to it at last. Time to Grab at that Brass Ring, Oli. I had been wondering how this would play out, and how Oli would reconcile her background with this Brave New World in to which she is stepping. To be clear, I don’t expect an automatic success here; I would liken this to kids who goes to their first semester of college and withdraws 6 weeks later because ‘they just miss home too much’, or something similar. There is no growth without struggle, and no (re)birth without pain and blood; things haven’t even begun to go sour for her and her Touristville relationships yet, wait until Tek and her friends hear about her private cabin and accoutrements. I hope she pulls through, I really do; it’s one thing to let her embarrassment and unresolved shame fuel her drive, it’s another to let it hold her back. Hopefully she doesn’t take it too badly when Tek et al start calling her a ‘sell out’ and tells her to just ‘stay at that fancy school of yours, we don’t want you back home lording your expensive education over us’. Ice Phisherman posted:“Yeah, okay,” said Oli, “Thanks again. I’ll see you at lunch.” Let me guess, she’s your standard creative type who completely forgets about time and space when she’s working?  Ice Phisherman posted:Open, dirty hands filled with fine things piled high. Wow. You’re not pulling any punches on this one, huh Ice? Ice Phisherman posted:CYOA Time Am I missing something here? Didn’t see an actual CYOA decision? Ice Phisherman posted:One painting, base price 3,280 nuyen. Took three days. Nice. For now, I would say let’s just focus on school and turning out small pieces of this nature, so that we have an actual collection to show. Around Christmas break, we start hitting up the gallery and sponsor circuit, see if we can drive up interest with the ultimate goal of throwing an ‘Oli Scholarship Fundraiser’; we’re not going to be able to get next year’s tuition through one-off art sales.
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Jun 28, 2018 21:41
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Jayvon and Coach Bolt - Monday, July 22, 2075 - Morning - Blake Island "Nice to finally meet you in the flesh, sir," said Jayvon. The dwarf clumsily extended a hand. Coach Bolt met his hand and shook it with his free hand as his other contained a small, white cup. Coach bolt was a short, stocky, powerfully built man of below average height. He looked like an athlete in his late-middle age. Past his prime to be sure, but still powerful. He had a slight tan, which was saying something in the normally overcast Pacific Northwest. His brown hair was horseshoe shaped as he'd lost much of it to male pattern baldness. Restoring hair was an easy fix these days, but for some reason he just didn't. His arms and leg were hairy, as his other leg was chrome colored and and obviously cybernetic. His eyes were too blue and didn't blink enough which spoke of even more cybernetics. He wore a tight fitting black t-shirt, blue shorts, black trail running shoes and a whistle hung from his neck. "Good to meet you, Jayvon," said Coach Bolt, "I'll show you to your cabin so you can settle in." His tone was deeper than the young dwarf's, but his own Southern accent had been dulled by years among people who didn't share it. His voice also tended to come from the side of his mouth as that kept tobacco juice from spilling out. The young dwarf put his hand back on his crutch and he steadied himself. Coach Bolt nodded in the direction of the cabins and Jayvon began to hobble down the dirt road next to the teacher, who walked slowly, but not so slowly as to offend. "Much appreciated," said Jayvon, "I look forward to taking a class with you as soon as I'm able." "You have to get your magic right first," said coach, "I can't teach you how to get it back. You'll have to talk to Julian about redeveloping it or do it on your own. Physical adept class could help you get situated with your cybernetics, so it wouldn't be a total waste once you get a grip on how to move your body." "I was talking about your combat class," said Jayvon, smoothly. Coach Bolt snorted derisively and spat tobacco juice into his cup. "You can talk about that all you like," said Coach Bolt, "We make allowances for specialists, but that's for small stuff. My class is available to third years and above. No exceptions. Most everyone is too wild for combat magic before then. In fact there are a number of people that I reject out of hand altogether for combat magic. I can instill focus and discipline in a student, but only if they're willing." "I'm willing," said Jayvon, quietly. Coach Bolt shook his head, and spat more tobacco juice through his rueful smirk. "I don't mince words, so I'll tell you this," said Coach Bolt, coldly, "You're worse than wild. You're well trained by someone that's not me. That's not me being prideful, I just don't know you well enough is all. Some talking over the matrix ain't enough. Physically you're about as broken down as you're ever going to be, and that's a hard thing. I know a bit of how that goes from experience, but that means you have something to work on. I did that once, even if you had it way worse than I ever did." Coach Bolt made a fist and beat on his cyberleg and it rang with each strike. The student and the coach stopped, and the young dwarf looked up at him with his chin raised far higher than was necessary. "Now I know that you started on a martial track at your last school and did plenty more growing up. You've got the discipline, you've got the training and you've got the stubbornness to come back after getting the hell kicked out of you," said Coach Bolt, "That earns my respect and then some, but you'll impress me further by learning and demonstrating restraint. You'll have a year to show me before you can take my combat class. That's plenty of time." "You want me to roll over for the first person to mess with me?" asked Jayvon, coolly. The cup in Coach Bolt's lifted and he spat out more juice along with a laugh. "Absolutely not," said Coach Bolt, "If someone messes with you then you should show them what you're made of, but you're going to have to figure out how to do it in a different way. You have an impressive martial skill set, but not all problems should be solved with that set of skills. You're not in the CAS anymore, this is the UCAS. People here don't duel. You can't solve your problems or the problems of others like you used to. Down in the South you'd be looked at as a duelist and last I checked they were feared and respected. Do the same thing here and you'd viewed as a violent bumpkin. Corporate types in the UCAS don't handle their disputes with duels and duelists. That's a Southern thing." They spoke of their respective countries. After the United States fractured into a dozen successor states, the UCAS was what was left of much of the Northeast, Mid-West, parts of Canada after integrating with them and Seattle, the last of which was only holding on the west coast that the UCAS had. The CAS was made up of what made up the old Southern confederacy with some differences as Florida was missing a southern piece to the Caribbean League and Texas had a big bite taken out of it by Aztlan, which used to be Mexico. Jayvon grumbled at the news. He'd known as much coming here, but hearing from one of his countrymen that people here weren't civilized was disheartening. It was better to get all of that violence out of the way all at once rather than to constantly watch his back and get a knife planted there while he wasn't looking. Not that it didn't happen, he was a living testament to how nasty that knife in the back could be, but getting caught using stealth and subtlety outside of the lead up to a duel was heavily frowned upon in the CAS corporate culture. It took some minutes to reach Jayvon's cabin on the sophomore row. Neither he nor the coach talked as Jayvon pondered this strange and uncivilized country. He waved goodbye to Coach Bolt who waved with his free hand before he left. Then with great care he tucked his crutches under his arm and used the rail on the steps to carefully walk up to his cabin. His legs shook. Not from strain or effort, but from the still forming connections that his brain was making with his cybernetic body. He opened his door and stepped inside of his cabin. Fuzzy, Kenji, Sasha, Oli and Julian - Tuesday, July 23rd, 2075 - Morning - Blake Island Julie's absence had been noted and remarked on at lunch and dinner on Monday, but so had Oli's as she'd been engrossed in her art. Kenji made an appearance for lunch and dinner, but they were brief. So Fuzzy and Sasha spent yet another day alone as Kenji was far too tired to do anything but eat and sleep. However, Julie's absence became troubling the next morning at the school assembly. More than a hundred students crowded together on wooden benches that faced towards a raised platform. "Where's Julie?" whispered Oli, to Kenji. "Not sure," whispered Kenji, "Maybe she slept in?" "Should we go get her?" asked Sasha. "I'll go get her," whispered Fuzzy. She began to stand up when suddenly the cartoon mascot that everyone loved to hate appeared. "Welcome to Blake Island!" said a cheery augmented reality mascot as it swam about in the air. "And to those of you who were here last year, welcome back! I'm Sammy the salmon!"  "Grrr," growled Fuzzy. She sat back down as the assembly began. Someone else yelled out what everyone else was feeling. "You suck, Sammy!" yelled one of the juniors. Much of the student body laughed. Mother Bear shushed them loudly. Sammy the salmon wasn't programmed to notice the complaints of the students. It was designed to educate children by educators desperate to stop educating. Just like last year, it launched into the exact same speech. "You're here because you're some of the most talented magically active teens of your age. Your teachers are here to mold that talent into something truly special. Well, your teachers and me of course," teased the fish as he swam around jauntily through the air. "Now Blake Island just isn't a school for magic, oh no. It's chock full of history too! Did you know that the Suquamish tribe used this very island as a camping ground and that according to legend, chief Sealth was born here? Seattle is named after him you see so, he was a very important chief indeed! Bet you first years didn't know that! Also in 1993, Bill Clinton visited this very island. Neat, huh?" "Who's Bill Clinton?" whispered one of the freshmen. No one answered him. Coaxed as they were to interact with augmented reality, of course someone tried to connect to the matrix. Several someones in fact. A young man was the first to audibly complain. “Why can't I connect to the matrix?” he grumbled. On a whim, Sasha pulled out her commlink and tried to access the matrix. She knew it wouldn't work, but something tickled at her brain. The augmented reality fish swam into her view. "Sorry kiddo," said the second Sammy the salmon, only to Sasha, "No outside social media access on the island. If you want to link up to a social media account you can ask me later about Salmon Run!" She looked hard at the terribly animated fish, nodded to herself and stuck her commlink back inside of her pocket. Sasha and the freshman student hadn't been the only ones to figure out the lack of matrix access. Cries and groans of dismay could be heard sporadically from the freshman class as they realized that they'd be almost completely cut off from the outside world save for weekend visits and news on the trideo in the lunchroom. Sammy launched into all of the fun they would be having this year at school as well as going on about Salmon Run, the dead social media site for the school. Eventually the fish made his goodbyes and it disappeared. Seconds later, Julian walked onto the stage. He held a shovel in his hand and rested the head of that shovel on his shoulder. "Welcome students," he said, voice amplified by speakers, "I have a few announcements before you all go to class. We're a day behind, so I'll try and be brief as I can, but this will take some explaining. I'll need your full attention. Put your commlinks away please." A few of the students who had checked out of the Sammy the salmon presentation looked up. The few who didn't were prodded by friends with fingers, hands or elbows to check out the shaman with a shovel. "There have been some changes in our rules since last year," said Julian, "First, we're going to talk about travel. As you may realize, the harbor is crowded and Seattle is going through what one might generously call unrest. As a result, we're changing the drop off point to a safer location as there have been months of protests that have been scheduled and the police are currently unable to provide safe passage. As a result, the pick up and drop off point is Vashon Island." There were a number of audible groans and complaints from the unwelcome news. Vashon Island was not connected to the Seattle metroplex. Like Blake Island, Vashon Island was part of Outremer, the name for the few islands west of Seattle. While much bigger than Blake Island, it wasn't big. It was a high security suburban wasteland with little to do as it was considered a place to escape from metroplex life. The students were shushed into submission before Julian continued. "This is for your safety," continued Julian, "Vashon Island has a private police force that isn't connected to Knight-Errant or Lone Star so things are calm at the moment. It has ferry access and it's close. It's only twenty minutes from here to there and as harbor traffic is going to be clogged for the foreseeable future, the docks over at Vashon are clear as it's not a major port. If you wish to leave Vashon Island, you may apply for permission through the main office with permission from a parent or legal guardian. We will turn that around as quickly as possible so you may have your full freedom of movement as long as they agree. If approved then you will be allowed to leave Vashon Island as there are fast boats that can take you from Vashon Island to the docks near the aquarium in Tacoma. If not, you'll be safe in Outrememer. I am aware that this will take more of your time, but we have plans for either allowing you to have more time or restricting it depending mostly on your behavior. So I'm going to get to the meat of the changes for the year. We're going to talk about the new punishment and rewards system and why I have a shovel over my shoulder." Julian paced the length of the platform while continuing to look at the students. He idly turned the shovel and the shovel's head swiveled this way and that. "Today we will be talking about carrots and sticks," said Julian, "Last school year, we had a serious problem with bullying. One event became bad enough that it endangered the lives of students and non-students alike. We're not tolerating an event like this again. Not ever." Julian's face briefly became grim and gazes shifted towards where Fuzzy, Kenji, Sasha and Oli all sat together. Julie, the target of all of that event, was noted as absent by every student in the know. Fuzzy fidgeted nervously, Kenji did his best to look bored, Sasha stood still and Oli shrank down under all of the attention. Even a few of the freshmen knew who they were it seemed, or they just looked where everyone else was looking. Then Julian's voice cracked out like a whip and everyone looked forward. "Now! We have a new system for keeping civility," Julian snapped out, "It'll be tiered. Unless the offense is awful enough, the offending parties will go through a conflict resolution process. There will be no punishments doled out. You will simply sit down with a student mediator and hash out your differences. This will take time though and so if you can't be civil, you will be spending your own time and the time of others around a table where you will talk about your problems. If you want to become a student mediator then please apply at the office." Many of the students sighed. Some rolled their eyes. One made farting noises with their lips. As if he'd anticipated this, Julian flicked his arm. The shovel moved in an arc and made a sharp smack against the platform which again called everyone's attention. "Which brings me to this shovel," he said, coolly, "On this island, we have a shame pole. If someone is bad enough, they are tied to the shame pole and are forced to recount their shame to anyone who approaches. Yes freshman, this means you too. This was only one of the purposes of the shame pole. Historically, it's other purpose was to stick in front of someone's home if they gave great offense to someone or owed a debt that they were unwilling to pay. Totem poles don't just stand up on their own though. Ten feet of it sticks out of the ground and it goes five feet deep. If conflict resolution doesn't work or your offense is bad enough, we will put a shame pole in front of your cabin. We will strip you of one of your days off and you will dig the hole until..." There were shouts of shock and outrage. A few of the students stood up and they bristled with anger. Six students argued as they left their places on the bench. Their complaints were varied and loud. "This isn't fair!" shouted a boy. "I didn't do anything!" exclaimed a girl!" How dare you treat me like this?!" "I'm not digging anything!" screamed another boy, "Dig your own holes!" "You don't have the right to do any of this and I won't put up with it!" shrieked a girl. "I didn't have to do any of this at school!" yelled a boy, "Are you going to start torturing me too?!" "I want my lawyer!" called out another girl. The students on their feet openly displayed their outrage while many of the sitting students grumbled from their seats. Others silently stewed in their anger. Some didn't care and some thought it was fair as they rarely got in trouble anyway, but everyone paid attention. It was a jumble of different opinions from different people, though it was only the incoming freshman who were on their feet and loudly complaining as they didn't have groups of friends that they sat with yet. No amount of shushing quieted the loudest students. Julian merely leaned on his shovel and looked to one of the teachers. He nodded and soon enough the voices of the yelling students were dampened. Half stopped in surprise, but the other half only yelled harder to compensate. Julian made a motion for the half who stopped to sit down, and reluctantly they did. Of the final three that were standing, one was still yelling while the other two glowered angrily as they caught their breath. Two boys and a girl, fresh out of the corporate world and freshly minted with powers. This may have been the first time that they'd been treated with anything other than deference by someone who wasn't a direct superior of theirs. So Julian straightened up, briefly left the stage and came back with two more shovels which clattered on the ground along with the one he'd been holding to make three. The implication was obvious and the yelling student, his face a shade of purple, silenced by magic but either uncaring or unaware, immediately stopped yelling. Julian made a gesture and heavy panting could be heard from the young freshman. Julian pointed at each of the disruptive students. "You three," he said, his voice firm, "The ones who sat down. You'll be on the shame pole at lunch time for yelling at a teacher and disrupting an assembly. Mother Bear will instruct you as to how you'll behave and how long you'll be there. You three who kept yelling, report to Coach Bolt after school for your shovels." No one looked happy, but they knew yelling wouldn't work this time. "Finally, for punishments, for those who the shame pole doesn't work on, we have our signs," continued Julian, "They are on the trail in front of your cabin. The shame pole can be removed by adequately making amends. If you refuse to make amends then we will engrave what you did on your sign. You will pick the words and we will either accept or reject them. If you waste our time with rejected words you will regret it. If it's accepted, these wood engravings will be rough and so you will sand them down with increasingly fine sandpaper. You will be there every day after school for two hours for a week making sure that your sign is perfect so everyone, including you, will know what you have done. We will also fully revoke your off island privileges until you make amends." Julian looked out over a sea of mixed expressions. With the students all focused on him, this allowed the other teachers to get a read on their emotions in the astral. It would be good to know who the hard cases were. Not all of them would stand up and shout about their displeasure. "Now let me be clear, I don't expect you to be nice to everyone," said Julian, "You don't even have to be civil. You can just say and do nothing or if you have a problem with another student you can come to us and we'll help you find a solution. Failing that, ignore the people you don't like and they can do the same for you. We'd rather you get along as we are a small community and you will run into these people over and over again for the rest of your lives, but if you can't be civil, be silent. The faculty at this school sat down with hundreds of parents and dozens of corporate representatives over the course of months to gain the cooperation necessary for us to create these new rules. They were eager for solutions and thus this became possible. So if any of you are thinking about writing home or to your parents or corporate lawyers, think again because your parents and corporations already know and gave us the discretion necessary to make sure we don't have a repeat of last year. You have plenty of ways to find solutions and make amends before you get dirt under their fingernails or you're tied to the shame pole, just like it was before. We're taking punishment seriously this year ." Julian sighed, and even from as far back as they were, most of the students could see him suddenly grow tired and sad. "This is for your safety and our good name," he said, softly, "Not the school's good name, but our good name as shamans. One of our own lost her mind and shot a Christian Theurgist in the stomach while invading the home of one of our students, not to mention putting a community in danger with armed private security. This is what people remember about us. Not Blake Island shamans, but all shamans everywhere. You are the next generation and we're going to hold you to a higher standard than before. The six who stood, stand back up." After some shuffling around and uncertainty, the six students who stood and yelled reluctantly stood back up. Julian ran a hand through his hair and the tiredness and sadness seemed to evaporate. "If you apologize now for your behavior, those are scheduled to dig the hole will simply go on the shame pole and those who go to the shame pole can walk away with a warning," he said, "What will it be?" "Sorry!" said a teenage boy. Some of the new freshman looked around at the boy that apologized immediately, which raised some sneers and looks of disgust from the other students. Publicly apologizing had a social cost among their peers, but now that someone did it first, others could do so with smaller penalties to their reputation and pride. "Sorry," said one girl. "Sorry," said another boy. "I apologize," said a boy. However, a boy and a girl, those confined to the shame pole, decided not to apologize. It seemed that no one was eager to dig holes, but it was easier to take a stand on the shame pole, even though they'd be allowed to sit down. They didn't apologize. Neither the students nor Julian said anything else. He left the stage and they sat down. Before the students could consider themselves dismissed, Mother Bear ascended the stairs with slow, shuffling steps, back slightly bent and with her hands behind her back. She tapped at her collar. "This thing on?" she asked, and her microphone was indeed on, "Good. I'm here with the good news. Carrots and sticks. I'm here with the carrot and I'll keep it brief. Good grades and good behavior will get you more time off the island." This caught everyone's attention. It didn't mollify the angry ones, but they were listening. "If you have no infractions and keep a B average for the semester then we'll let you come back on Monday morning instead of Sunday evening," said Mother Bear, "That's an extra twelve hours for you to goof off and we'll give that extra time come the midterms. Plus you get your positive achievements on a sign that you won't have to sand down. Or you could be modest I suppose and not put your achievements on the sign. Do what you like. Conflict resolution does not disqualify you so long as you actually settle your differences. If you don't, but decide to just ignore each other, that's fine too. You don't have to like and get along with everyone, that's not practical. Try and make the effort though. The magical community is small, especially when you're working within a single tradition. Speaking as someone is old and seen just how small our community is, trust me when I say you’ll be seeing the people here over and over again for the rest of your life. Anyway, those who are good enough at the end of the semester can leave on Friday evening starting in spring semester. Be good. Don't make me randomly drug test you, because I'm very good at randomly drug testing people. That's all. Go to class." A few seconds of silenced reigned before there was an explosion of intense murmuring as most everyone got up. Some of it was angry. Some was intrigued. A few people laughed and either didn't care or pretended not to care. Kenji's mind raced while Fuzzy tried to make her way towards Julian. However, being only five feet tall meant she had a hard time seeing over the crowd. Short girl problems. As students dispersed towards class, he lingered and came to her. Julian opened his mouth first, but Fuzzy interrupted him. "Where's Julie?" asked Fuzzy, quickly, "You kept talking about Julie, but I don't see her. Where is she?" Julian looked briefly irritated. She could see that hangdog look when someone hadn't slept in a while. That explained his lack of decorum and etiquette during the speech. Blond stubble, barely visible against his pale features stood out on closer inspection. "I'll explain everything at lunch," said Julian, tiredly, "Come by my office." Without waiting for a response, he left Fuzzy to nervously fidget as he walked towards where Kenji and Sasha were talking. -- No CYOA at the moment. This is just going long and I want to split it up. So a new system of punishments and rewards are in. The system is tiered in a way that discourages the students from being jerks to one another and rewards good behavior and achievement with extra privileges. 1. Conflict resolution. A student will be chosen from each class who is interested and well suited towards conflict resolution. Those with a conflict will be sat down and the conflict will be worked through until it is resolved. 2. If the offense is egregious enough or the conflict isn't resolved, the offender or offenders gets a shame pole gets placed in front of their cabin. Historically, shame poles were used when someone gave offense to someone else or owed a debt that they were unwilling to pay back. Having a shame pole in front of your cabin means you have to come home a day early from your weekends on top of everyone seeing that the offending party is being publicly shamed as it is taller than all of the cabins. So if you leave on Saturday morning, you have to come back Saturday evening. If you leave Sunday morning, you have to come back Sunday evening. It turns a 36 hour leave from from Saturday morning to Sunday evening to barely 12 hours as there's still an hour of transit time each way. More now that they're being routed through Vashon Island. Also, as the totem pole is about ten feet tall, the offending student will have to dig the hole by themselves, which will need to be anchored at about five feet, which will keep them busy and make them sore and filthy. They'll still be tied to the shame pole at lunch time and continue to go through conflict resolution. 3. If someone messes up in a way that can't or won't be resolved through conflict resolution and is especially egregious, they get to pick what their sign gets to say so long as it's approved. They will then get that permanently engraved on their sign and the students will spend the next week perfectly sanding down the words on that sign as it will come back roughly cut. Each day they will use increasingly fine pieces of sandpaper. Their off island privileges will be revoked until the faculty feels that they have learned their lesson and/or they make amends. The process will take two hours every day over the course of a week and leave the offending party with aching hands and arms, and they'll still have to dig that hole to dig too. This won't be perfect about keeping the students from being lovely towards one another, but it will keep the bullying to a dull roar and single out the worst offenders for punishment. On the other hand, good grades, personal achievement and good behavior will gain extra awards and these will be engraved on their other signs for all to see, though only if they so choose if they wish to remain modest. Those whose behavior and grades are good will be allowed to come back on Monday morning with the teachers, which extends their weekend break to 48 hours. Those who are good for two semesters in a row can leave on Friday evening and come back on Monday morning, which extends their weekends to a full 60 hours from its original 36. I'd like to note that suspending students doesn't work on those with often busy and therefore neglectful parents and access to large amounts of money. Students are kept on the island because suspending them just means that often times they can do whatever they feel like. To many, it's a vacation. So the normal punishments don't work on them. Shaming, pointless manual labor and revocation of privileges, which the corporate nobility are not used to, are really the only sticks that work within the corporate culture that these students are ingrained in. At least those are the only sticks that the faculty has access to. I thought about it, and Fuzzy will be allowed to leave Blake Island for Vashon Island, though Sasha won't as she's not safe in the metroplex at all if anyone knows who she is. Due to Seattle's volatility, especially the downtown area due to the numerous protests and gang violence, students are being routed through Vashon Island before being allowed to go elsewhere. Vashon Island is far larger than Blake as it has about 50k people on it and its security is tight enough that it has no major gang presence. It's primarily made up of suburbs and has a heavy private security presence, though it's not Knight-Errant as they're too military oriented for people who want a comfortable life nor Lone Star as they're a bunch of jackbooted thugs. People live in Vashon to get away from the chaotic hustle and bustle of the metroplex. Everything tends to be oriented towards the elderly with a small pool of parents with small children. Imagine an entire island where the only thing to do if you're a teen is to hang around outside of the gas station or maybe go see a movie. There is nature stuff too, but it doesn't have anything Blake Island doesn't have. There are beaches and boating opportunities (currently closed) if you're into that, but that's it. There is nothing to do on Vashon Island and no opportunities for jobs that fit Fuzzy's skill set. There's just nothing there for her. Kenji will not be allowed to leave at all until he's cleared to be among people again without his supervision. Julian estimates that it should be about two weeks. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Jul 12, 2018 |
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Jun 30, 2018 18:17
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Well then. They lead with the stick instead of the carrot to provoke people into being made an example of, but then gave them an out in the spirit of the whole disciplinary setup. An interesting way to handle it. Man those freshman in particular are going to hate him, though. Not that he can't handle it. Probably.
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Jun 30, 2018 21:24
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Dr Subterfuge posted:Well then. They lead with the stick instead of the carrot to provoke people into being made an example of, but then gave them an out in the spirit of the whole disciplinary setup. An interesting way to handle it. Man those freshman in particular are going to hate him, though. Not that he can't handle it. Probably. I have it in my head that the freshman tend to be the worst. They're coming in off all that corporate indoctrination and discipline is a four letter word. The mumblers and those who stayed silent obviously didn't get punished. It was just the ones who openly challenged his authority. I rolled a d6 to see how many jumped up and another d6 to see how many backed down. All of them could have thought better of it and taken their lumps and I also rolled to see how many stayed standing while being suppressed. These are kids who are not used to any structure whatsoever beyond their corporations and they're being told to do manual labor and to waste their "very valuable" time. Normally this sort of punishment system would get shot down immediately, but one child of upper management corporate nobility shot another of those same people in the belly. Blake Island was slow to respond due to needing consensus so they'd actually have an incoming class of freshman and returning students next year, but this is their response. If they're lovely to one another and it becomes a problem, they go for conflict resolution. If that doesn't work they can simply agree to not talk to one another. If that doesn't work, they start digging holes. Digging holes and being publicly shamed is a choice that they escalate towards, but it's not the first choice. Not unless they do something like try and shout down a teacher at an assembly, as it probably still hasn't sank in that the Blake Island faculty aren't the normal sort of teachers that they can push around. Even then, they were allowed a chance to back down. The purpose isn't to punish them. It's to get them to behave, or at least curb their nastier instincts. They had to respond and there was a ton of political will to get rules passed that would keep another shooting from happening. So this was presented as extreme, but it's mostly about shame, manual labor, wasting time and either curtailing or giving more freedoms for the weekend. In actuality it was made to be a much bigger deal than it was. In my experience, delivering all of the bad news at once allows people to grow used to it faster. Doling out that bad news little by little makes it worse over time. There are also clear paths to both privileges as well. So it's not just stick. There's something to motivate the people who want more freedom to do better while occupying the time of the people who are causing problems. Also, Julian is grumpy. He got no sleep and feels like he failed Julie. So he wants to be harder on the students in order to protect them from each other. He's used to being the bad guy when the time comes and it's a role that he's good at. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 23:43 on Jun 30, 2018 |
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Jun 30, 2018 23:01
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Being the designated bad guy ain't so bad, but it serves a very real and useful purpose. Good on our binge-blonde-boning elf guardian.
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Jun 30, 2018 23:32
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Everyone hates on Firebringer, even when he's doing them a favor or keeping them safe. Julian (who still looks like Tuvok to me) is the Eternal Martyr, the Desigated Villain. Its gotta be hard.
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Jul 1, 2018 08:54
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Just caught up. Good writing, though recently there's been a lot of telling instead of showing/timeskips with 4th wall breaking/ important information gated behind the"here's how the rolls went" sections. I don't know if the earlier parts got edited to flow better or if IP just get fed up with the slow pace. I like a slower, more detailed pace much better myself. For example, it was pretty jarring going from "Okay, Julie, hold on a minute" to "Now Julie is in a mental institution." Did I miss a post, or what? Overall, though, it's better fiction than most genre fare and better than licensed pulp fiction. The character interactions/reintroductions/normal behavior are the best part.
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Jul 1, 2018 22:38
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Deadmeat5150 posted:Everyone hates on Firebringer, even when he's doing them a favor or keeping them safe. Julian (who still looks like Tuvok to me) is the Eternal Martyr, the Desigated Villain. Its gotta be hard. Hard agree. Firebringer archetype tends to go with a sort of martyr trickster. Julian is doing what he thinks is necessary, but it's physically, emotionally and mentally draining while also being largely thankless. He's not the wise old wizard trope that is found in almost every story. In fact, I poked fun at that as early on he wanted to be Fuzzy's wise old wizard despite being neither wise nor old. He's a good instructor and wants to be a good person, but he's a person with a lot of flaws and he occasionally isn't in control of his own life. I feel bad about how much poo poo he goes through though. I may throw some more blondes his way at some point and he can crawl his way out from under a pile of blondes before going back to his his often thankless job. Butt Discussin posted:Just caught up. Good writing, though recently there's been a lot of telling instead of showing/timeskips with 4th wall breaking/ important information gated behind the"here's how the rolls went" sections. I don't know if the earlier parts got edited to flow better or if IP just get fed up with the slow pace. I like a slower, more detailed pace much better myself. I'm glad that you enjoy my work. Welcome to the thread. For example, it was pretty jarring going from "Okay, Julie, hold on a minute" to "Now Julie is in a mental institution." Did I miss a post, or what?[/quote] You didn't miss it. I revealed the "Julie went to an institution" too soon in the metasense is all. I apologize. In retrospect I think it should have went from evaluation to Julie's realization that she needs help to committing herself and I just jumped the gun. Sometimes I forget what I should erase from my notes. Fuzzy, Kenji and Sasha are going to get a sit down with Julian to discuss things and Julie is going to be one of those things that is happening soon. As for pace, what I like doing is focusing on important events and then skipping around. If I kept up the pace that I am now in terms of day by day, blow by blow, year two would be multi-millions of words long. This is more of a reintroduction of certain characters and how parts of the world is changing. I don't talk much about what the characters look like that much for instance and I figure after four books it takes time to reintroduce people and places as people do forget. Julie is also going to take a back seat for Kenji's book as I reintroduce and introduce this year's new secondary characters of Oli and Jayvon as well as two out of the three antagonists that I have planned for year two. She's going to be away, and that will allow me some breathing room to explore new characters as this story is primarily about Kenji's journey, not Julie's. Julie gets the next book and she'll be featured prominently. I also want to talk about what hasn't changed. Blake Island has stayed the same, but I want to give it a real sense of place like I did Touristville. Blake Island as we know it right now isn't as fleshed out as I want it to be, though it's gotten some fleshing out. Touristville got half of an entire novelette to flesh it out as well as a lot of Julie's story and the occasional foray by Fuzzy into Touristville. I want Blake Island to have a sense of place and to explore some of the people that fill up that place beyond the teachers, protagonists and secondary characters. And as I give it a sense of place, I also want to complicate it with people with conflicting views. However, while Julie the character will be absent (save when people are able to call or visit her), her absence will be felt both at Blake Island and in Touristville. At least that's the hope. The thrust of what I'm trying to accomplish at the moment is to flesh out Blake Island as a place of safety and security while just a few miles to the east, the Metroplex is full of angry people who despise the police and are actively resisting them. So the slow pace is deliberate, because I want things to be rapidly changing over in Seattle at a scary pace. And then I'll juxtapose those moments with normalcy and security within a familiar school environment. That said, I occasionally do make jarring reveals. This is a rough draft after all and it is still in need of polish. Meanwhile, unlike most authors, especially like those who do web serials, I don't have a dozen chapters in the chamber to fire twice a week. This is a story that happens in real time which I don't have full control over, which has some drawbacks, but is one of its greatest strengths in my opinion. People have been super great about helping me edit and I'm thankful for that, but I also need to just give it a second pass to smooth things out. I'm also garbage at creating names. Manny is used twice, Mother Bear's name is Paige Turner because I am dumb about names, Min Yun sounds pretty close to minion if I read it too fast, Marco and Marcus have similar sounding names and all of the protagonists' names end with the same sort of vowel sound. In short, part of getting a look at the creative process is also seeing my mistakes. I have to say that I'm great at writing individual chapters (though some still miss the mark) as well as put a lot of thought and effort into making satisfying conclusions. It's the mid-term stuff that I need to work on. The mini arcs or acts you might say. Luckily, I can fix them because I get that feedback. I'm not fed up with the slow pace. I just don't want to linger for so long that I waste peoples' time and bore them. It's a strange balancing act and I'll never be able to please everyone, but I want to at least make it entertaining and keep the transitions smooth. I'm also having to be flexible. I thought Julie would be present for this act on Blake Island, but that's not going to be the case due to Julie's PTSD getting noticed by Mrs. Maureen. She was essential to the ending I had planned (no matter which way it went, really) and the rolls messed that up as I'm committed to my creative process. It's both good and bad. Good because it gives me more breathing room. Bad because I won't be able to use her character like I wanted. What happened to Julie specifically sinks the climax of the story. quote:Overall, though, it's better fiction than most genre fare and better than licensed pulp fiction. The character interactions/reintroductions/normal behavior are the best part. Thank you. I'm glad that you enjoy those interactions. I have to say that Kenji and Octo's interactions are probably my favorite part of writing Blake Island, even as few and far between as they are. This is part of the slice of life genre, and I love writing slice of life, but in the west at least, slice of life on its own doesn't sell. It has to be packaged within other genres. When you talked about how jarring it was, I agree. I am in many ways learning a new style and even when writing romance I barely considered myself professional as I had to conform to certain narrative tropes and styles to sell anything. Romance is highly formulaic and deviating too much from that formula means that I just wasted a lot of my time. So this is the first time that I've experimented in years. I'm writing at a...Well it's hard to evaluate my work, but I'm writing at a semi-professional and occasionally professional level with a cyberpunk school story in the vein of British School dramas, popularized by Harry Potter and then followed up by works like the Persona video games which are also school stories, though told in a more adult fashion. While school dramas are nothing new, cyberpunk is a pretty new genre as it only really goes back to the 80's with Gibson's sprawl trilogy. What I'm doing, to my knowledge, is not new, but the fusion of the two genres is new and as I am still a young author and I'm developing my style, there are going to be growing pains. Back to cyberpunk. As a genre it's new enough and experimental enough but not so popular that it feels stale. So it reinvents itself every few years. It begins (in my head, I'm not a cyberpunk expert) with Blade Runner in 1984. Then in 1986 we have Gibson's sprawl series which later is followed Snow Crash as some of the original cyberpunk works in the original vein. The Japanese take a look at it with 1989's -1990's Ghost in the Shell as a sort of high level police procedural while also dealing heavily with ideas which are even now ahead of its time. Shadowrun has its own take around that time by introducing fantasy races and going cyberpunk urban fantasy. Then it gets all gumshoe with Altered Carbon (which is on Netflix and it's amazing, go watch it). I'm probably missing a lot of that. I guess this work is just another interpretation of cyberpunk with a genre that I'm very familiar with. As the story evolved, I became interested in showing the lives of young people in a cyberpunk dystopia. The protagonists aren't hard boiled detectives or sociopath mercenaries. They're kids who are outsiders, but not so outside that they can't integrate and find their place. We see from both the said of those with privilege and the side of those without it, and at the same time, I'm trying hard not to make specific judgement calls on what is right and what isn't. I want people to make those decisions largely for themselves. Cyberpunk makes some essential decisions early on about corruption which I feel are obvious. Corruption is bad. But we tend to see it in a simple way. We rarely if ever get a good, hard look at why things become corrupt in the first place and the human element tends to get ignored. Giant corporations seem monolithic, but they're still run by people and people make decisions that are often irrational. I wanted to start everyone off without a true political stance. Julie is a minor exception to this, but she mostly is just dealing with her racism. Jayvon is the only person that is political out of the gate, and he's a weird fit for a leftist as we'll soon see. One of the things that I'd like people to see is that these groups which we regard as monoliths are made up of tons of factions with different reasons for being there who on occasion are allied for a single cause. But they're not automatons, they're people. I will say that in year two I'm going to make some judgement calls which I feel are obvious: Corruption is bad (in this case, when it comes to church) and Nazis are terrible. So I do have opinions and I want to establish a baseline of what I'm about as well as discuss what is happening in the world right now in a way that people can understand, but with nuance that is often completely lacking or just flat out wrong as it is told by mainstream news and mainstream media. So while I'm not going to empathize with Nazis, I am going to talk about how they get to be one in the first place. How Nazis prey on young men, especially the depressed, the poor and those with a weak identity is tragic. How we deal with these ethical baselines that I'm going to establish in Kenji and Julie's story, respectfully, is going to be up to the thread. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Jul 2, 2018 |
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Jul 2, 2018 01:32
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Ice Phisherman posted:
Small bit of feedback I wanna give. Usually, when you're 'neutral' narrator rather than 'third person perspective' you keep things relatively neutral and let the behavior of people speak for themselves. But here, especially the bold part it seems you, the narrator, are pointing fingers and saying 'man, those folks are jerks', and while I do agree they're jerks, it is a little bit jarring. All the more because I can't really blame students for loudly objecting to 'public humiliation' being used as a discipline tool, per sé. So that's why this scene doesn't work as well as most for me.
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Jul 2, 2018 02:19
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Shogeton posted:Small bit of feedback I wanna give. Usually, when you're 'neutral' narrator rather than 'third person perspective' you keep things relatively neutral and let the behavior of people speak for themselves. But here, especially the bold part it seems you, the narrator, are pointing fingers and saying 'man, those folks are jerks', and while I do agree they're jerks, it is a little bit jarring. All the more because I can't really blame students for loudly objecting to 'public humiliation' being used as a discipline tool, per sé. So that's why this scene doesn't work as well as most for me. I see your point. I'll go about smoothing that out. Thank you. Edit: As for the public humiliation thing, it is supposed to be jarring. That's the point. I'll go into why later. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Jul 2, 2018 |
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Jul 2, 2018 02:30
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Ah, I wanted to ask: has Sasha asked "Can I have a cable to plug directly into my cyberdeck in my cabin?" Earlier, the spell was specifically mentioned as counteracting wireless. So, just plug in. If they say no, just go invisible and splice into the feed to the trideo in the common area. Shadowrunners have to have tools to surreptitiously splice into hard networks, so Kenji should be able to help hook Sasha up if asked.
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Jul 2, 2018 02:54
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Also, even if Julie can't astrally project yet, can Chip send letters for and from her and the pack on the island? Maybe he could grab her a copy of "Astral projection for dummies" to read in the off hours.
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Jul 2, 2018 03:26
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NVM misread.
Toughy fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Jul 2, 2018 |
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Jul 2, 2018 03:28
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Butt Discussin posted:Also, even if Julie can't astrally project yet, can Chip send letters for and from her and the pack on the island? Maybe he could grab her a copy of "Astral projection for dummies" to read in the off hours. As someone who’s been to some low rent rehab facilities, I can say I had a ton of time on my hands to learn a new skill, and I have ( I can only image how it is at a top of the line rehab today, much less in Shadowrun times, cause you know the girl who shot Marcos’ company is on the hook for this), but as concerned as they are with the kids getting hurt with magic, I’m sure they’d want her on the island to do any non-mundane classes, unless that’s something the rehab would teach. numerrik fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Jul 2, 2018 |
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Jul 2, 2018 03:31
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Julie should spend the extra time wisely and study something useful, not just sit around bored waiting for corporate psychologists to "observe" her until they figure out what diagnosis will maximize their charges while minimizing their work. At least Julie's got enough baggage that she doesn't need to talk about the riot/vision. She won't run out of other terrible things to talk about in only two weeks. If she could astrally project she could visit friends at home, at least. Letters through Chip are the next best thing.
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Jul 2, 2018 04:01
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Ice Phisherman posted:. Have you considered doing what every good GM does and fudge the numbers so that you can obey the Rule Of Cool?
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Jul 2, 2018 06:49
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Butt Discussin posted:Ah, I wanted to ask: has Sasha asked "Can I have a cable to plug directly into my cyberdeck in my cabin?" She hasn't asked yet. She may. I'll see what feels right and how the dice shake out. However, year, she could definitely splice into a hard line if she could find one that connected to the outside. That's the easy part. The hard part is not getting caught. Volmarias posted:Have you considered doing what every good GM does and fudge the numbers so that you can obey the Rule Of Cool? So before I start, I want to say that this isn't criticism. It's just an explanation of my method. I've considered fudging dice rolls, sure. More than once. Way more than once. I don't though. Sometimes I look at the rolls and just walk away from the computer for an hour because they're bizarre or terrible. They tell weird stories and I somehow have to craft that into something that not only makes sense, but is enjoyable. Normally what I do is roll everything up first and then write the story around the rolls. This means that characters can succeed or fail and it eliminates Mary Sue and Gary Stu style characters who are good at everything because the main and secondary cast have character sheets, as well as a few minor characters that have sheets too. Mary Sue and Gary Stu exist not because they're great at some things, but great at everything, and character sheets specifically defeat those kinds of characters because they allow for failure. I guess that I could minmax or power game, but I'm not interested in that. Currently the character with the highest dice pool in anything is Julian with 18 dice in instruction. I find it funny that he's great at such a normally useless skill. I may still include Julie in the ending, just not the way I originally intended. Or I might not. For the ending of year one I went through dozens of endings, most variations and refinements of those endings, some of them all new as I discarded the old ones. Then I came to one that I felt was satisfying. Intensely satisfying in fact. Each time I went with spectacle over substance until the final ending. Me arriving at Fuzzy fighting Kenji and not some big, bad villain felt right. Edward was the antagonist that Fuzzy and Kenji dealt with directly and he made Kenji delay and eventually fight him, which worked. LeBlanc completed her mission, offered Sasha a place among her number and while Sasha gave LeBlanc what she wanted to complete her mission, she resisted the temptation to join her. And that happened directly because of how the thread treated her. Edward on the other hand was fully aware at the end that he was getting used. He cared, but he was so lonely that he allowed himself to be used because one of LeBlanc's characters provided him with the attention that he craved. He was just a lonely, frightened young man who hoped he was doing the right thing. He was desperate to do a good thing that meant something. Anything really. However, if he'd been asked to do a bad thing, he would have did it if he'd gotten that attention as his need for it was a craving along the lines of a mental illness. He was so eager to please and so lonely that he would have done absolutely anything for the person supplying him with attention. Edward was a villain, a hero, a victimizer and victim all at the same time. His motivations were simple but his roles were complicated and took shape based largely not only what he did, but how the reader perceived him, because he was all of those things at the same time. I left his role up to interpretation. The opinions were varied on him and I provided no clear answer as to what his role was within the story. It was up to the reader to define his role for themselves and people had wildly different opinions. I loved it. The rest of the characters were making significant changes in over the story, but they weren't aware of their full implications. Everyone understanding almost everything that went on was always a possibility, but due to the thread choices every single one of the characters worked with and to an extent is still working with incomplete information about the plot. Kenji knows about LeBlanc, but not about the prophecy. Julie knows about the prophecy, but not LeBlanc. Fuzzy knew a little about the prophecy as it pertained to Sasha, but not the rest. And they all acted in the way that they thought was best. I liked that. And the climax of the story was deeply personal for the characters and myself. I never would have arrived there if I weren't constantly tinkering with the story and the twists and turns that the thread and the dice throw me for is interesting. It was also personally exciting because I was never sure where the dice rolls were going to go. And when I get stuck somewhere with writer's block, sometimes I just use the dice to help aid me in giving me a framework in how to proceed. If I start fudging the dice rolls then I feel like the story will start becoming more and more predictable. That would just leave the thread's choices and then we'd be on more firmly defined rails. That said, about every other chapter I make where I script the actions out extensively, the story I write takes me in a different direction than I intended and those original rolls become useless. The rolls aren't 100% set in stone if I feel the story carry me in a different direction. Telling a good story is more important than dice rolls, but I don't abandon my method if I feel like the story isn't going "my way", because the story isn't just my story. If I feel like I can improve the story and the rolls no longer inform it like I want I just start over with new rolls from the point where the story deviates. Good rolls, bad rolls, normal rolls, doesn't matter. They get dumped and I create a new framework from where I deviated. I feel like I'm flexible enough that I can create a satisfying ending without my original one in mind and the ending I came up with at the end was far superior than the one I started out with. So yeah, the rolls I made sank that specific climax of this story, but that's nothing new to me. I'm a writer and a tabletop GM both at the same time. A good GM is forced to be flexible. It's improv. And while I'm no improv wiz, given time I think I can make something interesting that's worth reading. If I begin fudging rolls because things aren't going my way, then I feel like I'll get lazy. I also think that the story would lose much of its wildness and strangeness which are definitely strengths. I'd also become less interested in continuing. It's taxing to think up everything all of the time. The dice help me offload some decision making and free up brain power. In a way it allows me to produce work faster and at a higher quality as I don't have to constantly be thinking about this or that small interaction and if someone should or shouldn't fail, only how they do as it's already decided by the dice. It helps me be true to the characters as the dice are reflective of their strengths and weaknesses. They act as a range where any of the characters can fail and succeed, and I think it's failure, or at least the possibility of failure, that makes stories interesting.
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Jul 2, 2018 08:04
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Mind you, thinking about Julie, one of the problems with her committing herself is that puts her possibly life-destroying secret at a more serious risk of being discovered. A counselor who's just trying to help people get healthy' might respect someone saying 'yes, there is some secret, but I won't tell anyone', but in a mental institute people might push hard enough to get her to reveal it, and this mental institute cannot be trusted not to tell. So I'm surprised Julian would let it happen. And yeah, it feels... odd to have it happen? I mean, the dice are dice, but I feel like committing to a mental institute is for when you're an imminent threat to others and yourself, and while Julie definitely has issues, it never really felt like she was one bad conversation away from doing something like that. Yeah, the emotional shutting down is unhealthy, but it was a very stressful reaction. So while I can understand things escalating a bit, I am still scratching my head at this particular plot twist. Shogeton fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Jul 2, 2018 |
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Jul 2, 2018 11:03
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Shogeton posted:Mind you, thinking about Julie, one of the problems with her committing herself is that puts her possibly life-destroying secret at a more serious risk of being discovered. A counselor who's just trying to help people get healthy' might respect someone saying 'yes, there is some secret, but I won't tell anyone', but in a mental institute people might push hard enough to get her to reveal it, and this mental institute cannot be trusted not to tell. So I'm surprised Julian would let it happen. I think a big part of the problem was accidentally dropping it without context. I did it without understanding the full ramifications as I was going for expediency. I don't really like stopping in the middle of a scene if I can help it. Julie isn't just going to decide to do that without talking to anyone or taking precautions. It's a process, but the rolls don't reflect that. They just reflect what happened. A lot of my rolls are personal notes to myself. I remember a few people in the thread asking me to post them more and that's my mistake for not editing them as much. I will ask for your patience. I am trying and on occasion I'm going to mess up as I'm doing this in real time. I do very much appreciate the feedback because that means I can course correct when it's too jarring. Normally an editor would help me with this and would call my attention to the problem. At least that's the hope. After that it would be beta readers who give feedback. Normally the beta reading process is closed, but this is more of an open beta if I'm using the terminology correctly. Ice Phisherman fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Jul 2, 2018 |
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Jul 2, 2018 15:55
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I really liked Julie's chapter up until the "welp, now she's going to be institutionalized" drop in the liner notes. But, after reading these chapters with characters wondering what happened to her, it does feel like this is the sort of gradual introduction of the concept that would make things less jarring and probably even more exciting. With those notes there I could feel the narrative lurch (and as you explained, Ice, it was a lurch even for you), but it seems like the story itself is on a pretty good path to introducing this turn of events.
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Jul 2, 2018 16:33
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So I’m going to suggest we let Julie grab a rank in something not related to school work, I wasn’t kidding that rehab gives you tons of free time, maybe she hits up the library and studies conventional medicine/first aid for like 2-3 weeks. Something to help with the triage at the riot. So yeah, Julie can prepare in her own way. Let Julie Learn First Aid (or similar/medicine) in her free time while she works on her emotions in the facility.
numerrik fucked around with this message at 16:53 on Jul 2, 2018 |
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Jul 2, 2018 16:49
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numerrik posted:So I’m going to suggest we let Julie grab a rank in something not related to school work, I wasn’t kidding that rehab gives you tons of free time, maybe she hits up the library and studies conventional medicine/first aid for like 2-3 weeks. Something to help with the triage at the riot. So yeah, Julie can prepare in her own way. Let Julie Learn First Aid (or similar/medicine) in her free time while she works on her emotions in the facility. Didn't she just pass an EMT course over the summer?
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Jul 2, 2018 17:11
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Toughy posted:Didn't she just pass an EMT course over the summer? You’re right, we can change it to a specification related to the rioting, such as triage, blunt force trauma, burns, or similar. Basically I still want her to do something to prepare while out of the loop
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Jul 2, 2018 17:24
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Toughy posted:Didn't she just pass an EMT course over the summer? Yeah, she's got her EMT-B now, I believe. Studying some pharmacology could make sense, though. Pick up some ranks of Medicine as she studies drugs for fear if getting doped up while in a hospital setting. She's the 'research poo poo to ward against being victimized by it' type, considering her prison Law hustle.
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Jul 2, 2018 17:26
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numerrik posted:You’re right, we can change it to a specification related to the rioting, such as triage, blunt force trauma, burns, or similar. Basically I still want her to do something to prepare while out of the loop jagadaishio posted:Yeah, she's got her EMT-B now, I believe. Studying some pharmacology could make sense, though. Pick up some ranks of Medicine as she studies drugs for fear if getting doped up while in a hospital setting. She's the 'research poo poo to ward against being victimized by it' type, considering her prison Law hustle. Yep, she got her EMT-B license. I abstracted that as a specialization in +2 gunshot wounds when doing mundane healing. Julie had a trial by fire in helping a lot of people who were caught in a turf war along with the gangers who caused it by sealing up a lot of bullet wounds at the tail end of her class. Magic only goes so far after all. I imagine that sealing up the wound before the bullet is out is only done if the patient is going to die. Otherwise you're sealing a wound with a bullet inside of the patient. Preparation while out of the loop is possible too. When we get there I'll give he option about what she can study.
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Jul 2, 2018 18:23
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Ice Phisherman posted:Yep, she got her EMT-B license. I abstracted that as a specialization in +2 gunshot wounds when doing mundane healing. Julie had a trial by fire in helping a lot of people who were caught in a turf war along with the gangers who caused it by sealing up a lot of bullet wounds at the tail end of her class. Magic only goes so far after all. I imagine that sealing up the wound before the bullet is out is only done if the patient is going to die. Otherwise you're sealing a wound with a bullet inside of the patient. GSW is a good First Aid specialty in Shadowrun, and your premise is supported by the rules. Your can do First Aid and then Heal to get the benefits of both on an injury, but once you've done Heal it's no longer possible to do First Aid. Heal sort of 'seals' whatever mundane First Aid did (or didn't) get done before the spell was cast. The as a result, the best Magical healers are, without exception, people who also have a mundane medical background.
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Jul 2, 2018 19:13
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Just finished reading through the thread. Now ready to wait for new content. One thing I would enjoy seeing would be Kenji sneaking Octo over in order to find out what's locked away in the old social media network and former local wireless node. Especially if the end result is a sprite taking up residence in Sammy. Also because Octo and Sasha interacting would be interesting, what with the latter being a mage-decker and the former a technomancer. Might even be some cross-pollination between the two in terms of ways to look at their powers and the Matrix.
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Jul 3, 2018 02:13
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I think Julie should think about getting a low-grade DocWagon certification. It would drum up more business for the clinic as DocWagon would now consider the clinic to be a safe zone. Benefits include having DocWagon on your side, at least one armed guard courtesy of DocWagon, and exposure.
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Jul 3, 2018 05:50
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Deadmeat5150 posted:I think Julie should think about getting a low-grade DocWagon certification. It would drum up more business for the clinic as DocWagon would now consider the clinic to be a safe zone. Benefits include having DocWagon on your side, at least one armed guard courtesy of DocWagon, and exposure. Is DocWagon willing to only supply Orc guards?
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Jul 3, 2018 20:28
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