Wind and Dust

8, red

[existing-while-green]

[IC this is posted the day after strawberry’s latest song.]

[Audio recording: the Anitami version of Sing In The Stars With Me, sung by a male tenor accompanied by an alto. Both have Doetaran accents.]

@strawberry-poison-frog : your latest song inspired my brother and I to upload some more of our own singing, although neither of us has your talent for composition.

[strawberry-poison-frog]

Wow!  This so beautiful and it really means a lot. Especially coming from other reds (do I still count as an ‘other red’?  I really want to.)  You and your brother have beautiful voices and it’s so good to sing as a family.  I sing with my cousins sometimes but they’re too shy to let me record them.

(Did you know that they saved the Orvaran version?  Someone in decontam sang it.)

[existing-while-green]

You have shared experiences with reds. Your parents were red. You have memories of being red. That makes you red if you still want to be, as far as I’m concerned. I would count solidarity between reds and ex-reds (or clean reds, if you prefer that terminology) as caste solidarity, even though we aren’t legally the same caste anymore. 

Singing together is a wonderful thing to do. Sometimes the most important things you do with your family are the ones you don’t share with the rest of the world; I wouldn’t worry too much about convincing your cousins to let you record them. Just enjoy it in the moment.

I’m so glad we didn’t lose the Orvaran version of this song. Every nation’s red culture is precious and should be preserved. (Do we know if the Biyani version is out there somewhere?)

[cannothurtyou-blog]

Some folks are compiling what can be found of the culture of reds in various districts of Biyan and Orvara [link]. They don’t have that particular song for any of the Biyani districts yet, from what I saw, but they’re nowhere near done.

[chameleonlife]

Purple Mod Says:

They’re letting the boat go!  They are going to sail the rest of the way to Miolee!  Isel has personally paid for a Mioleen decontamination facility right by the harbor so they can be cleaned there and Miolee is granting them citizenship.  I’m so relieved.

[cannothurtyou-blog]

oh

they

oh

I didn’t expect

wow

[radicalredrights-blog]

[cannothurtyou-blog]

shit, and they landed in Calado

[strawberry-poison-frog]

So close!  They almost made it they were so close if they would let us send boats we would be there.  

 Everyone is staring at the boats and staring at each other and staring at the boats and the organizers keep reminding at us that we can’t, we all know we can’t, except its the fake sort of can’t. 

[cannothurtyou-blog]

Could you even get away with them? It – shit.

If they’d gotten a little closer –

[strawberry-poison-frog]

If we could get them on the boats we could!   We know our waters and our shoreline and they think it’s all benighted useless jungle.   It’s just that we would still border Calado in the morning.

[cannothurtyou-blog]

And then they’d die anyway, along with a bunch more people.

Shit.

[cannothurtyou-blog]

shit, and they landed in Calado

[strawberry-poison-frog]

So close!  They almost made it they were so close if they would let us send boats we would be there.  

 Everyone is staring at the boats and staring at each other and staring at the boats and the organizers keep reminding at us that we can’t, we all know we can’t, except its the fake sort of can’t. 

[cannothurtyou-blog]

Could you even get away with them? It -- shit.

If they’d gotten a little closer --

[cannothurtyou-blog]

shit, and they landed in Calado

[cannothurtyou-blog]

I thought everyone else died how did they survive holy shit

[cannothurtyou-blog]

holy shit

[openamenta]

@blazar

They need a lot more money to do a large batch and they don’t have it.  And they want to play wait-and-see with Shasali Aven and the others.  But they’re working on it.

The first batches were handpicked by organizers but if they ever do a large batch they will have a process to apply.  If you want to start thinking about it here are the things to think about.

- The new process doesn’t involve sterilization, but outside credits cost a lot more.  You can’t bring children yet and it is more likely you will get in an early batch if you are willing to come alone (no spouse or other family).  It’s probably not a good idea if you don’t have kids yet and want them and are older.

- They’re letting us self-select castes but you might need to pass tests of some kind to get into some of them.  I don’t have more on this yet.

- We can’t run out of essential services in any district.  Talk to your organizer about how thin your neighborhood can stretch.  If you aren’t ready to leave on your own in an early batch but you’re prepared to take more shifts or move to a city that needs your profession, let them know that too.

- The priority is money.  Shasali Aven is blue but that didn’t make her blue-rich, she’s still living with Isel and does actually need to look blue and fancy with whatever money she does get as our representative.  Our greens aren’t raking it in either at the scale we need.  You can’t get clean just to get clean.  You have to have a plan for a job you can do so you can support yourself and pay back in.

- We want a mix of castes.  Purple is going to be most popular, and if you want to be purple that’s fine, but we think yellow is going to be the highest-leverage per-person - they have in-demand high-paying jobs and can still get away with living very frugally in a way Shasali Aven can’t.  Oranges are going to have a more difficult time hitting the ground running without verifiable clean credentials, but, again, if you want to do clean medical school or something, you can plan on that - just might not be an early batch priority unless we do better than expected on money.

- You have to be spotless.  We absolutely fucking can’t have clean ex-reds committing assault or theft or so much as jumping a turnstile.  If there is a ghost of a rumor of you being anything less than an ideal flagship candidate you have to wait until there is better public confidence in the project.  Shasali Aven cannot protect you even if you go yellow; she’s not touching anything to do with reds because she has to look impartial.

- The money thing and the spotless thing mean you are not going to be in an early batch if you depend on drugs of any kind.  Paying half your wages to the liquor store is definitely not inside money.

[openamenta]

THE SECOND BATCH IS DONE

THEY LET HER BE BLUE

SHE’S BLUE

SHE’S BLUE!!!!!

[reject-your-reality]

I'm so glad that we have oranges like you doing social work in red districts! I don't know what those poor reds would do without social workers to help them. It's people like you who brighten my day :-) (It's pretty obvious you're a social worker. Oranges who care about reds almost always become social workers so they can help the reds out.)

Hi anon, thanks for entering the guessing game!

+1 point for a very specific guess—you didn’t just pick a caste, you went for a specific profession! Very courageous.

+1 point for complimenting me (yes, people, your judge is susceptible to flattery).

+1 point for being in favour of my red-positive attitude, I guess? It’s sad that this is rare enough to be worthy of a point.

-1 point for making assumptions and talking as if you’re definitely right, rather than guessing or asking.

+1 point for having a piece of evidence to support your conclusion.

+1 point for guessing a caste I haven’t ruled out yet. Congratulations on having basic reading comprehension.

-2 points for reaching the wrong conclusion. I’m not a social worker and never have been. In fact, I’m taking off an extra point because Doet doesn’t even have social workers for reds, so there’s no way I could be one.

Final score: 1 point.

Not a record, I’m afraid, but you did a lot better than some. At least you ended up in the positives! Better luck next time, nonnie. I’m rooting for you!

[cannothurtyou-blog]

I think you counted off an extra point somewhere, but I’m going to pretend that’s for ‘also social workers to reds are terrible and not there because they want to help’ (I’m pretty sure ours were coordinating with the government to wipe us out, those last few seasons, looking back on it now.)

[radicalredrights-blog]

do you want everyone to feel like the only way to avoid you is to kill you, or not? because you are sure going out of your way to make sure that the only way to avoid you is to kill you.

They. Can. Avoid. Me. By. Blocking. Me. This is a VERY SIMPLE SOLUTION.

[cannothurtyou-blog]

blocking people is slightly complicated due to this site, you might want to link a guide ([link] and [link] are both decent), but... yes. This is very easy to solve.

(Also there is a guide to blocking things by keywords [link] which covers multiple addons that do that, and one that does key images, although the adaptive version of that costs money).

[openamenta]

"Hm if we're going to murder a bunch of people should we give them a really heads up first so they can coordinate? Yes, obviously." -Biyan, apparently

[highlighter-flowcharts]

Oh. This is a good point. Cutting off the credits is evidence that they are not or at least were not planning to kill them all. Because if they were, then they would not gain anything by not also killing the babies, but cutting off credits is worth doing if they expect red jobs not to be done by reds anymore.

Suddenly cutting off credits is predictably upsetting to them, even if it is a sign of not intending to kill them all, because suddenly finding out that there is literally no chance of having a baby is upsetting. I am not sure if they have any other channels than rioting to communicate that they are upset to the blues and have the blues care about it? It would obviously be preferable to have different severity of response available for expected mass-killing versus being doomed to a lifetime of empty springs.

[cannothurtyou-blog]

We know everyone who is not red hates us and wants us not to exist and are only held back from making that happen by the fact that they need us.

Not issuing red credits signals not expecting to need reds any more, which means we will be killed. And perhaps it will take years, but no one is going to keep us around any longer than they think they absolutely have to.

And we do not, generally, want to die. But given the choice between a slow, miserable death, and death but a chance at helping caste-members elsewhere...

Well. You can see what the Biyani reds chose.

[light-up-the-stones]

I just hit the first ice field level in Alarmadillo and my armadillo is now wearing a fuzzy little winter coat

when he rolls up he looks like a pompom

[cannothurtyou-blog]

...I just downloaded the demo for this game and it is precisely as adorable as advertised.

[to-find-the-sun-deactivated]

I’ve been lobbying my government to try and get them not to do what Orvara did, which was easy enough since half the purples in the country agreed with me on that.

the only way that my government won’t do this, is if it goes catastrophically for Biyan. to that end, I hope it does go catastrophically for Biyan.

[cannothurtyou-blog]

Okay, thinking about this:

It doesn’t sound like they have people trained to take over the work yet. So. They might be able to get some Orvaran purples and oranges in to train their people, but not enough to cover the demand quickly.

So I think they’ll at least have a very unpleasant transitional period, which might make blues elsewhere ‘okay but we can do better’, but... they are also likely not to take risks with that.

[openamenta]

No-frills breaking report watch this space for more details as things develop -

Biyan announced its credit allotments for this coming spring and issued no red credits.  In what may have been a response, reds are up in arms to a degree never before seen on Amenta.  FOOTAGE (discretion advised!)

[cannothurtyou-blog]

shit

[reject-your-reality]

Breaking news: some random internet blue has announced that reds can’t read. 

@existing-while-red, @cannothurtyou: thoughts?

[cannothurtyou-blog]

Again?

I mean, obviously you can’t verify I’m not using speech text conversion, but I would talk even less than I already do, if I was.

But how do they think we know where to go for work? For that matter, how do they think we drive?