Yu Jing Fluff - Perception, Reality, Desire

I'm not an expert but PanO shooting to YJ carriers on YJ territory in center of YJ civil war is bullshit. I can understand US intervening in third world countries affairs but YJ is Superpower to match PanO. It's like US sending their planes to Chechenya and start shooting to russian soldiers. :/

 

Why are the Imperial Service holding an idiot ball in this circumstance? They run an intergalactic empire-state... they should be good at their jobs. The fact that Yu Jing is portrayed as politically incompetent in this fiction is a problem.

The Infinity setting is built on analogies to contemporary and historical political situations. Saying "don't compare it because then you can use basic logic to show how stupid these story points are!" isn't a viewpoint I respect.

Firing on Yu Jing military elements on PanO's part should have been the opening shot of a massive war.

 

So the people that tortue, brainwash, and weaponize their own citizens turn out to be recklessly violent? That's so out of character!

Of course they'd resort to overt cruelty to put down open rebellion. That's their job. They expected their crimes to go unnoticed - as always - but news reports got out.

And, as started already, YJ was politically pushed into a corner. If they choose war for their own pride, it would be a war they would lose.

 

You mean it's like russia sending tanks and artillery to crimea? ;-P

 

However, considering that PanO has the most military power in the Solar system, PanO declaring a no fly zone or blockade of all the combat zones they could would be fairly simple to do, especially if 1) it didn't start right away and 2) had the support of O-12. YJ, even at its peak, wouldn't be able to go toe to toe with all of the other powers and O-12. And who's saying that an further conflict *isn't* likely? YJ has lost this round, at this point. PanO being the overall loser of the Ariadnan Commercial Conflicts didn't prevent them from continuing to look for ways to undercut YJ, nor did YJ getting their claims to Huangdi prevent constant skirmishes all over Svalarheima.

 

Regardless of how violent they are, they're very aware that it's important to not be seen as being murderous and bloodthirsty. Modern China is very good at this sort of information control; ask someone from the PRC about the Tianenmen square massacre and you'll probably get a lot of incredulity when presented with the facts. Controlling the flow of information, or blaming their crimes on the opposition, would definitely be something they'd be actively doing. And if they couldnt... they might not do it. Because they aren't idiots, and they're not cackling evil maniacs against RIGHTEOUS AND GLORIOUS NIPPON like you seem to think.

How Yu Jing managed to get itself so politically defanged that it cannot retaliate to an attack by a foreign power on its own soil is also an act of immersion-breaking incompetence. Its just shit writing, and I expected better.

 

And with the Kuge having established those relationships, it made the war even harder for YJ, since all the JSA had to do was hold out long enough and establish a favorable enough situation on the ground for the recognition votes/treaties/etc to work through the Oberhaus and the O-12 courts. The JSA (behind the PanO air and space blockade and with support from free Companies) only had to hold enough land for enough time, which is why all of the holdings off Shentang are independent, and those on Shentang are occupied territories under full martial law.

 

What attack? A blockade, especially one that goes into place later in the conflict, with the support of all the other major powers, is a different kettle of fish. If you've already had to spread your fleet and resources thin, across multiple systems and supporting multiple fronts, suddenly confronting a fleet larger than yours and with the possibility of your Circular access being cut if you're too aggressive, means you have to fight with what you have on hand, and win an overwhelming victory in a shortened time frame.

 

@A Mão Esquerda its not that further conflict isn't likely, it's just that attacking someone's military assets in their own territory is on the level of the Pearl Harbor attack. O-12 supporting PanO in this is O-12 saying that Yu Jing has no right to defend itself when attacked; treating the lives and freedoms (such as they are) of Yu Jing people as worthless next to that of the Japanese and PanO citizenry. If things don't move to outright war it's essentially saying that Yu Jing is surrendering it's sovereignty. Or it would, if the story was thought through.

 

Those territories should be either turned into wastelands (you obviously relocate the industry first) or the population forcefully relocated.

That's the best way to stop silly irredentist and insurgency attempts.

It worked for the Soviet Onion, it should work for Yu Jing.

 

I guess that means you won't read it, since you've already made up your mind.

 

Why read something reviews and precedents have shown you you will most likely find extremely unpleasant? Why would anyone do such a thing? Do you really think a rational person would read it just to know how it ends while hating every page?

---[looks at the entire terrible Eragon tetralogy on the shelf]---

Okay, I did that once. Or twice. Maybe six or eigh- twelve times. But still.

 

Now, go back and read this thread.

This is the whole problem. What you write here is the end result of flanderization that we're reacting against.

Yeah, but no. Russia did what they could to discredit any reports that it was them who did it. Ukraine is a good example of asymmetric warfare, but that's not what's been described. What's been described is Pan-O doing what USA did over Iraq (twice) and that was formal wars and what USA has avoided doing over Syria because it would have been a formal war and risk escalating it to a formal war with Russia.

 

It's similar but they were "volounteers" and not "russian military". What I understood was that PanO sent their airforce as PanO airforce.

This happened before O-12 recognized Japanese independence so PanO wasn't enforcing international resolution but entering air space of another country, with good portion of their planetary airforce, without permission.

 

This is in Uprising as well, the Kuge lost most of their power when they joined with China,

Interesting enough in Uprising it states that the average Japanese citizen had more rights in YJ then they did in Japan as over the years Japan devolved back into a more feudal society. They only supported independence as they had forgotten how bad it was before they joined YJ (as it had been generations) and propaganda from the Kuge.

 

This statement bugged me so much I don't even know where to begin. Collaborative efforts can be good, but the run the risk of "designed by committee' syndrome, where stuff isn't really bad, but it is equally not really good. A single source of fictional writing has the greatest potential. Potential to be bad as well as good, but the greatest potential.

It is absolutely not impossible to avoid burnout. I am no Guttier, but I myself have GMed campaign worlds that have lasted over a decade. And I wasn't even getting paid! I don't see how you could even make such a ridiculous claim. It seems you don't read very much. I have bookshelves full of works of authors that have written in the same fictional universes for decades. Not only is it possible, it is not even that uncommon.

Maybe Gutier has lost it, maybe he hasn't. This thread is fully of lively debate on that very matter. I hesitate to chime in, having not read the material in full yet. But, just because you may not personally be able to perform a task, do not be so prideful to think no one could. . .

 

For what it's worth, Sun Tze advised against the brutal tactics that helped the Uprising succeed politically.

I don't get why you're arguing with the source text, though. The author has made it very clear that Yu Jing is an oppressive authoritarian state with extremely cruel practices against dissidents and the minority Japanese population.

These are not good people. They committed war crimes not because it was an effective way to put down a rebellion, but instead because that's just who they are. The author is telling you that this is a predictable end result of state-sanctioned violence.

 

And we should also remember that YJ has, for a while according to the background, considered the Japanese to be second class citizens at best, reacting brutally to the actions of the Takenotai and the Kempetai. This isn't coming out of left field, but, as you stated, is simply the progression of the earlier state of affairs.

 

Maybe if you considered Uprising as a story of all Yu Jing's rivals plotting against the StateEmpire, you might better appreciate the situation. Because that's exactly what happened. The burgeoning JSA rebellion gave everyone an opportunity to take a cut at Yu Jing and they did exactly that.

 

Why we're reacting against source material? Source material is evolving in a direction people, including me, don't like. That's why we're reacting. Yu Jing used to be significantly more nuanced than this, but the Evil Flanders side is increasingly taking over and it fucking sucks.

@A Mão Esquerda Oppression due to rebellion, not the other way around (even if oppression tends to fuel such rebellion more, but that's not the point here)