#liu ren

[killyridols]

火种 - 小男孩 (spark - little boy) by 刘任 (liu ren), 2023, straw paper, oil, fishing rod, & fishing line, 270 centimeters

[captainmvf]

When you take seven years of Mandarin through grade school but then get a compliment when you're nervous so you start speaking some German you picked up.

[yibo-wang]

let’s be honest they’re all cinnamon rolls

[suddenfossilfightersheadcanons]

Frontier Branch Leaders, pt. 3: Drake and Liu Ren

Pt. 1: Background Information

Pt. 2: Sean

Drake

-I stated in an earlier post on this blog that he's 27. Please forget that. He's probably on the cusp of 39 (circa 2015, at the beginning of Frontier).

-Originally from Sweden; moved to Copenhagen a few years before Frontier started.

-Absolutely hates the sensation that occurs when he enters his ancestral battle trance. To him, it's as being possessed, not to mention being utterly exhausting. Starting in his teens, he'd often have periods of abruptly losing control of this trance, and lashing out, sometimes violently, against tormentors and, in worse cases, family. Violet's interest in mysticism allowed her to help him work out what was going on, and slowly learn to detect when a wave of possession was imminent.

-Loves his Ankylo BO because he needn't fear injuring it during one of his trances. He feels most comfortable around padded and armoured vivosaurs.

-For a long time, he tried, desperately, to minimise the length of time he had to spend around children and, by extension, the youngest of the Wardens. He's terrified of hurting people accidentally. Moreover, he finds most people too loud, too much, too extraverted to deal with.

-Has a surprisingly excellent relationship with Sean, who quickly worked out that Drake was intensely sensitive to Sean's typical loudness. As such, Sean usually drops his volume around Drake, and where possible, emails or texts him, instead of talking, on bad days. When Drake's overloaded trying to handle the caseload that comes with managing not only Europe, but also cases in Africa, Sean will often offer to take over some of Drake's more menial duties. Drake, in return, bakes for him, and brings him odd fossil trinkets and weird rocks.

-Despite how much he hates loud people, he loves Scandinavian death metal.

-Known to abuse the World Gate to conveniently escape people. ('Sorry I can't come to your birthday, friend. I'm in Chile right now.')

-Suffered significantly with OCD from childhood, being at his worst in his teens and mid-twenties. He waited for almost 15 years before finally seeking help. While he still has intrusive thoughts and compulsions, they're far better managed now. His social anxiety is also significantly better than it once was.

-Was diagnosed with autism at age 4. Will scream if someone enters his office unexpectedly.

-Has some of the same powers as Violet—however, while she can communicate with spirits and occasionally see the future, he can merely hear spirits and detect psychic energy, but can't actually manipulate them well. Generally, if he can hear his ancestors chattering, he knows his bloodthirsty side is about to take over.

-Blows off frustration by punching pillows. If he punches walls instead, he will leave cracks in the plaster.

-Speaks Swedish and Danish fluently, as well as German and English proficiently. Has a very, very strong accent.

-Visits Switzerland all too often for the sole sake of buying too much Toblerone. Violet can and will raid his supply if there's any left by the time he returns to Fossil Park Europe, so he has about three days to consume everything he buys before she can find him.

-INTP 6w5 sp/sx.

Liu Ren

-Originally from Shanxi. Swears he's forty-eight years old, but Drake and Violet both detect a particular spiritual energy coming from him that's far too immense for him to be a normal forty-something. Writes exclusively in traditional Chinese, never mind that simplified characters have been in use since well before the 80s. Moreover, he's clearly far smarter than he lets on. Violet and Drake are both absolutely certain he's at least a century old, and aren't entirely sure he's human.

-Writes his name as 劉仁, but Violet swears that certain Qing-dynasty documents by 劉陽磊, a mystic and self-proclaimed witch, give off the same energy as Liu Ren's own writings.

-Fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, six other Chinese dialects, English, and Portuguese.

-Tends to playfully rib Tria for her extremely strong Sichuan accent.

-Consumes obscene amounts of Sprite and Coca-Cola. Nobody knows how his teeth are still intact.

-When other Wardens get injured, he'll tell them to cheer up, and inevitably have a story of a similar injury. As such, he's been poisoned, burned, bruised, and broken over and over. Nobody knows how he's had time to suffer all these abuses, let alone recover.

-Drake and Sean both overtly dislike him. In part, it's that Fossil Park Asia has a longstanding rivalry with Fossil Park America, and that rivalry means that Sean tends to interpret Liu Ren's gestures as patronising, instead of circumspect, and Liu Ren thinks Sean to be green and overconfident. Drake's suspicions about Liu Ren's history remind him of his own supernatural tendencies, leading him to deeply distrust Liu Ren. Stryker is the only one at HQ who isn't concealing some kind of misgivings about Liu Ren, and even then, Stryker is notoriously unwilling to take orders. While Liu Ren has been there far longer than Stryker, and Stryker owes some success to Liu Ren, they exasperate each other.

-He's been in the job for over 25 years, and looked the same then as now. Though few people like him well, he's still impossible to boot from the position, as he's never actually done anything overtly wrong. Fossil Park America claim that he's overpowered and obsolete; Fossil Park Asia claim that he's done more for INTERFOL than Fossil Park America has in the last three decades combined. He's possibly the most experienced person in INTERFOL, and doesn't seem to be running out of momentum; as such, he's invaluable, even if he's incomparably ill-liked.

-Though he's not overtly frayed at the edges in the same way that many, many Wardens are, he can and will go very, very quiet if someone mentions anything to do with Cosmonium, and when he touches the stuff, he claims that it burns. Drake is starting to wonder if Liu Ren's apparent agelessness might have something to do with Cosmonium, and if there may be some awful incident at the heart of what drove him into contact with it.

-Occasionally takes partners for a night, but doesn't appear to be seeking companionship. Has a portrait of a wife in his office, but it's old-fashioned, in black-and-white, and nobody has ever met the woman herself. Mei Lian once worked up the courage to ask her name. Zha Youjing. When Mei Lian looked at the photo of Youjing and called her gorgeous, Liu Ren looked as if he'd seen a ghost.

-ENTP 3w4 sp/so.

[portraits-of-iris]

Somnambulate Palace

Liu Ren

2007

[suddenfossilfightersheadcanons]

Taking a glimpse at Captain Stryker’s 2021 considerations

- Fossil Park funding framework

The Fossil Parks, much like the UN, the WHO, and the OECD, are an international organisation, hence funded by their composite nations. Unfortunately, unlike the UN, they have a mind-bogglingly complex fee calculation system. Officially, all three continental branches are meant to a third each; but whilst Europe consistently pays 38~40% of the total, America and Asia take turns falling behind. Individual countries’ contributions are decided based on GNI per capita and area of country occupied by dig sites (or DSA). In America, the USA is levied accordingly, and whines about it incessantly; Japan and Singapore likewise do the heavy lifting and complaining on Asia’s behalf.

The complex formula for fee calculation – a formula that would be simple were it not for DSA – has caused enough headaches that Fossil Park America and Fossil Park Asia have a feverish rivalry. The higher into management one goes, the more potent the acrimony. Sean and Liu Ren’s camaraderie is completely threadbare, and the former’s predecessor infamously resigned in a fit of fury at the latter. The poor relationship between the two branches is enough to impede meetings – Asia cannot propose any ventures without America criticising the smallest details, and Asia’s occasionally vetoed good ideas thanks to Liu Ren’s spite. Stryker’s been accused of siding with both continents: Though he’s lived in South Korea since 2007, the head of China’s fossil parks notoriously him a Western impostor in an international court, and the head honcho in the USA has accused him of being biased in Asia’s favour. (It doesn’t help that Australia, where Stryker grew up, is also part of Fossil Park Asia.)

Stryker is determined to leverage this acrimony for good by the end of 2025, and he’s certain that changing the fee calculation system is the best way to go about it. Sometimes, he considers removing DSA as a variable – but there are some countries with gargantuan GNI PPPs, such as Liechenstein, Qatar, and Singapore, that have little to no fossil fighting scene. Another method he’s contemplated is using the profit from dig sites to determine payments, but he’s fully aware that could disproportionately affect relatively poor regions with a vibrant fighting sector, such as the Philippines and Thailand.

On one hand, COVID-19 has made any kind of economic overhaul reckless, as the Fossil Parks aren’t faring fantastically following iron lockdowns and gut-wrenching death tolls in many participant nations. On the other, such a change has the potential to stimulate economies. The course that 2021 takes will determine whether Stryker takes a proposal to the table this year or next.

-Dead body regulations

The current protocol for fighters who find human remains is to leave them untouched. Numerous television programmes (not least of all Off-map) have made a point of violating this, but many news outlets remain critical of those breaking this rule. Stryker is fully aware of the disrespect to the deceased implied by leaving them to fester in bogs and by roadsides, and believes much could be done for missing fighters’ families by making an official change to this protocol. Though aware it’s difficult to do more than report remains to the nearest warden or staff member, he’s certain that there can be a more humane way of handling those that once lived.

-Bonk ban

The ban on relationships between colleagues was enacted in early 1999 in the wake of Bill Clinton’s impeachment. Few doubt that it was established with good intentions, but in practice, it’s difficult to manage. Some say it’s led to too much prying into private lives; others believe that such a degree of scrutiny is permissible if people can’t keep their love life out of the workplace.

Once upon a time, Stryker sat firmly on the fence. Now, knowing he’s at risk of demotion if he’s caught in his own relationship of three years with a coworker, he’s decidedly in the former camp. As he remembers that the incredibly well-admired Annick Dufour, the second-last head of Fossil Park Europe prior to Drake, was relegated to finance for being caught dating a subordinate (who was himself made redundant), he’s considering using her case as an example of the legislation’s shortcomings. Otherwise, he fears, his ulterior motive will be far too clear – and God knows, the last thing he wants is for his staff to suffer for his own official perfidy. Morally, breaking the bonk ban is fine by him – but if an employee were to be derided due to others’ suspicion, he’d be shattered.

-Fossil Park Africa

Whilst the fighting industry is booming in some African countries (such as South Africa), there is no Fossil Park Africa to speak of. However, the short-term economic cost of establishing a Fossil Park Africa could prove crippling, especially in light of COVID. Stryker is determined to go through with it, but all three continental heads have been trying to dissuade him for months. Liu Ren, Drake, and Sean hold more than enough power to veto this proposition, and if Stryker doesn’t make his case firmly enough, they almost certainly will.

[tworobocops]

Liu Ren, Zhou Qiaoyun, and Luo Wei