We Clean Up Nice

Resources and tips on ex-red life

[artistic-arborealist]

Don't be silly, reds are lucky to get any clean's attention. They're always so grateful for it. You can't 'rape' a red, goodness.

So, by “grateful” what you ~actually mean~ is “afraid to say no because of the overwhelming possibility that they would experience harm because of it”!

Because with a power differential as large as there is between reds trapped in their district, and the clean people who control their access to things like food, and clothing, and ~not being beaten to death~, you really can’t be sure that they aren’t just pretending to be okay out of fear of ~what you’ll do to them if they aren’t~!

When you can have someone’s entire family tortured or killed with very little difficulty, you can’t assume they’re consenting just because they ~don’t actively stop you~!

And really, even if you were using that standard with clean people only, it would still be terrible!

If you aren’t sure that they ~actively want~ to do something, then you need to splashing ~ask~!

~Stop being a rapist~!!!

[chameleonlife]

Orange Mod Says: How exactly are you imagining the conversation will go if the anon corners a red and says, "Tell me you really want me or I won't fuck you"? Like, what is the outcome you envision of this exchange? Do you think the red will say "since you asked, I'm actually not in the mood, thanks for your concern"?

[blackoutlandish]

ok, so i get why there’s fic about red experiences

i don’t so much get why there’s fic that – from what i can tell based on the summary – treats red experiences as not horrifying in any way. not the simplistic “eww reds” way, not the unfortunately common “reds are evil” way, not the ow-too-real “look what society does to reds” way.

is the author assuming things must be okay and not thinking about it – but then why would they write about reds at all? is it wish fulfillment? imagining a world where being red was, somehow, okay? that seems plausible, i guess, i’ve seen wish-fulfillment fanstuff before, but it’s usually short-form; you’d think it’d get cloyingly saccharine somewhere before the six-figure wordcount mark.

i’m really, really not sure i want to read the fic to find out.

(and before you ask, no i’m not vagueing about any fic in particular. i’ve seen this more than once.)

[chameleonlife]

Purple Mod Says: Sometimes we like to think of our lives in a smaller context. Like, have you seen the movie Alapin's Farm? It's set during the occupation! You can tell from the costuming, since they were pretty careful, and the interviews with the screenwriter confirm. It's set in occupied Anitam during the occupation, but it's based on a real person's diary, and a thing happened to him that wasn't about being occupied, even though that was happening too. Cousins like to write about things that aren't about society being horrible to reds, but while being red is happening too so the stories are still ours.

[memento-colori]

Explanation

I feel like I owe people an explanation because apparently people were worried about me. I am sorry if I made you worry.

It is going under a cut because I don’t know how long it is going to be.

Keep reading

[chameleonlife]

Orange Mod Says: You sound like you need a swap to Miolee as soon as possible. Yellow in Voa won't be a hard sell, you can almost certainly get one.

[chameleonlife]

what is your opinion on bears

Purple Mod Says:

The two-tone ones are cute.  I had a stuffed one that was blue and yellow when I was a kid.  The zoo has a purple and white one which is also a good combination.

[memento-colori]

If you could be financially successful in any business, what type of business would you want to start?

I think museums count as businesses because you still have to have the people come to them? I would like to make a Red History Museum.

I think that is probably more of a green thing but I could maybe find someone who would like to collaborate and there’s probably something involved in that that I could do without it being OOCI.

We could have exhibits on red art and life in red districts around the world, and twice a year host an authentic Splurge because no one can agree if that’s a summer or winter thing.

[chameleonlife]

Yellow Mod Says:

There’s one of these in Tapa, now.

[chameleonlife]

If you could be financially successful in any business, what type of business would you want to start?

Yellow Mod Says:

I’d start one of those legal assistance groups that walks people through civil cases or helps present criminal case information to judges.

Orange Mod Says:

Social work practice for cousins.

Purple Mod Says:

Historical costumery shop!

[chameleonlife]

What's the most unethical thing you can imagine, and under what circumstances would you do it?

Yellow Mod deletes this ask.

[chameleonlife]

So I know this isn't normally what you deal with, but I found out today that my boyfriend is ex-red. And obviously I'm not going to keep dating him, especially not after he lied to me like that, but I don't want him to think I'd murder him or out him to his boss or anything. How do I break up with him without scaring him?

Orange Mod Says:

You say, “I want to break up”, and if he says, “are you going to [out me to my boss / hurt me / steal my stuff / tell our friends / report me to the dating site where we met / inform the landlord / threaten to do any of those things if I don’t let you have uncontested custody of the houseplant], you say “no, of course not, I'm just breaking up with you”.

[chameleonlife]

I recently found out that my boyfriend is only attracted to me because he fetishizes red hair, and he admitted that he doesn't care about my personality at all. He says that if I break up with him, he'll tell everyone at my job that I'm ex-red. Any advice?

Purple Mod Says:

I’m not sure I understand - are you using a wig instead of dye at work?  I don’t see how otherwise either they wouldn’t know already or he wouldn’t have red hair to look at but wigs are much less safe than regular dye.

At any rate that sounds very scary and I’m sorry it’s happening to you!  I don’t know what might work but there are a bunch of things you could try at the same time - maybe he would like to see openly ex-red sex workers with your permission, and at first this can be in addition to you but maybe later you can have more room without provoking him.  Maybe you can make friends and start trying to network in another city in your country.  Maybe someone in Miolee or another country where ex-reds live would love to be where you are and you can get on the swap list quietly and see if that pans out.

And don’t introduce him to anyone in your family he doesn’t already for sure know about.

[chameleonlife]

Clean hurricane refugees wouldn't have gotten violent. They might have been afraid, but no country would murder clean people whom they could easily send someplace they would be welcome. It's also easier to comfort clean people, since you don't have to avoid touching them. The escort could have mingled with the crowd if they were clean. You can blame Rivik for making a massacre seem likely, but once the reds became violent there was nothing else their escort could have done.

Yellow Mod Says:

Clean non-cousins have riots sometimes.  Unpopular judiciary decisions [1], sketchy business practices [2][3], prolonged Internet outages [4][5][6][7], disease or pollution outbreaks [8][9][10][11][12], tensions with linguistic/cultural minorities [13], and in one case the controversial ending of a long-running comic franchise [14] have all led to violent deaths.  If it was announced that a bunch of people were all going to be gunned down, they might find it less plausible than a group of reds, but it’s by no means impossible for them to buy it enough to freak out and escalate the situation.

Hurricane victims, like I suggested, aren’t always clean.  Infrastructure isn’t capable of holding up under those conditions.  I think that if the refugees hadn’t had a chance to shower because there were too many of them and were going to be transported polluted to get them home and clean sooner than their host country could handle, the soldiers might have managed to deal with the possibility that they’d have to take showers after work.

I don’t know exactly what escorts for hurricane victims would have done.  I’m not a hurricane victim escort.

But I think they would have likely lived even if they were terrified and lashing out and filthy.

[staringtowardthestars]

A question I don’t think I’ve seen anyone address is, starting from the premise that it was bad for Oyand’s red people to die, what ought to have been done.

There is an argument, given that premise, that the guards ought to simply have let themselves be murdered. There were more red people than guards, and therefore it is arguably better that those guards die than that the red people die. There are a few problems with this argument, even postulating that the life of a guard is exactly equivalent in value to the life of a red person.

First, if people generally don’t defend themselves against other people trying to kill them, people will be more likely to try to kill other people, knowing that then they have only to evade detection by the police. A single incident would most likely not have been enough to trigger it, but it’s a risk that bears consideration.

Secondly, the red people weren’t merely killing guards – two civilians died as well. If the guards had all been killed, it’s entirely plausible that they would have continued to riot and continued to kill civilians, eventually leading to a higher death toll.

Third, even if it would have been more ethical for the guards to allow themselves to be murdered, asking people not to defend themselves when under attack is not the sort of request very many people will honor. Any plan that will fail if a single person defends themself against violence is a plan that will fail if there is violence.

It is possible that, after the logistics mistake and commencement of rioting, the situation was still salvageable. It is possible that the officers had non-lethal options available that they did not exhaust. It is possible that they could have been contained, and that the officers could have vacated the area. It’s not clear whether either of those are actually the case, but they are possibilities.

But fundamentally, if you want anyone to take your claims of wrongdoing seriously, you need to have an alternative. Logistics is neither a grey job nor a purple one; the officers and civilians who died were not at fault for the error. None of the people claiming that Oyand’s officers acted incorrectly have been able thus far to provide a legitimate alternative that they should have taken, which suggests that there isn’t one.

[chameleonlife]

Yellow Mod Says: This blog has been quiet for a while; we're all busy. But I want you to think about what would have happened if the greys had perceived themselves, in the first place, as providing security and escort for a refugee population from some disaster in the country next door that had agreed to peacefully leave their shores to make more room for their children. Suppose a bunch of people in Baravi fled from hurricane damage into Oyand, and were going to get on boats to go to a safer, un-hurricaned part of Baravi. Going home. Suppose the Baravic refugees panicked because someone shouted that the Oyand officials had lied to them and weren't going to send them home at all. Like shouting "fire" but a little wordier and expecting danger from the greys, not some incendiary. The greys know that these aren't their orders, that it's *not true*. They know that they aren't going to shoot these people, that what they are there to do is get them on boats so they can go home. I don't think a panic based on a falsehood some confused Baravic refugee shouted would have resulted in this many deaths. This doesn't require the greys to have any information they don't have. They know they aren't there to shoot. They know they aren't there to kill people. They know it's *not true*, the thing that's frightening their charges into rioting. They opened fire anyway. And only a quarter of their refugees got to go home.

[chameleonlife]

What are you teaching your children who are born clean about being red?

Yellow Mod Says:

The one of us with a child is planning on being careful about using age-appropriate facts throughout the child’s childhood; if they have to dye their hair, there’s no hiding it outright and they’ll have to drill being discreet harder than they would otherwise, but there’s also nothing good that can come of explaining atrocities to one year olds.

[chameleonlife]

Purple Mod Says:

The Anitami Cousin Coalition has declared today unofficial National Red-Cousin Day.  To celebrate, here is a list of famous cousins you may have heard of or want to look up!  I’m including foreign ones even though other cousins’ organizations haven’t confirmed that they want to share the day and make it International Red-Cousin Day this year.

Shasali Aven (first ex-red blue; Anitami judge)

Mishike Ampelin (one of the test batch of three, murdered so we can give her name safely; Anitami)

Silha Pafnik (Anitami memoirst and novelist)

Safei Tis (Anitami actor)

Isham Mio (Anitami ambassador to Miolee)

Elyalai Maratsi (prince consort of Ereith)

Coordinator Amee (Mioleen head of state)

Sube Ilai (Mioleen spokesperson during negotiations of the country’s founding; reporter)

Imiyu Irend (Mioleen porn star and decontamination nurse)

Koivan Arata (captain of the ship of Orvaran survivors)

Yohahk Log-N-Time (Meti open source code contributor; pseudonymous, recently came out under this name as ex-red)

Eta Miska (Tapai sculptor)

Sho Aptikeu (Tapai Cousins Group leader)

Apimektaha Epechi (Tapai actor)

[chameleonlife]

Congratulations on your baby! I worried that even with cleaning we were still sentencing you all to die childless. I'm so pleased to hear you're adapting to your new castes well enough to afford a credit! May you all three have one soon!

Yellow Mod Says:

Cousins do and will probably continue for a while to have lower rates of credit purchase than non-cousin peers everywhere but Miolee.  We start with no savings, need to catch up on or compensate for educations our castemates got for free, and face discrimination in the job market if we slip up at stealth.  A lot of us are compensating by living farther below our means and in more tightly cooperating groups than non-cousins of the same caste do.  But we are managing to have children, and that’s very encouraging for the future of integration.

[memento-colori]

The Little Red

So. Um. Here’s the first part of that story I was talking about, as best as I can piece together from memory. I didn’t think I’d have it done so soon but Blush (nosy cousin!) has been pestering me.

Warnings: mention of pollution, mention of babies, red pronouns used to address reader (which might not translate to other languages)

Keep reading

[chameleonlife]

Is it okay to ask if the baby is SMALL and SOFT and CUTE and CLEAN and WONDERFUL?

Purple Mod Says:

The baby is ALL of those things!!!

[chameleonlife]

Is it ok to ask if the baby's hair colour matches their caste?

Orange Mod Says:

No information about the baby, sorry.