I was more referring to your conclusions such as "state sanctioned war-crimes" etc. I wasn't trying to imply anything regarding your background or training. More, that conclusion is an assumption. The text doesn't say that explicitly. It may be a valid reading, but it is still heavily influenced by whatever perception you bring to the table. Because the text does include some examples of incompetence and doesn't include other examples to the contrary. Yes the assumption can be that the imperial service and yanjing might have been incompetent. But that is still an assumption. One that doesn't have to be made... and for those of us who don't make said assumptions, means trying to make absolute statements about what the fluff is supposed to mean to everyone comes off as pushy and demanding. And its easy to get defensive, as I have, and assume that its based on being upset and wanting validation from everyone else that CB is fucking up at every corner. Yeah I guess. But theres easily a void there where you can fill that in. The fluff certainly doesn't imply that everything he achieved was without any kind of help/luck and a good dose of the some of the best infiltrators in the sphere. Given that the ninja clans would have thrown in with the kuge without YJ knowing, there could have easily been an period of some serious double agenting by Yu Jings primary intelligence/assassination wings.
I assume you're just messing with me. The point was that someone moving shadowy clean-up teams around that happened to coincide with the Gray Man's movements would help give the impression that there was some extra work being done to help conceal the coming Uprising.
Yeah I'm with you on that. Could've been a good touch. I may re-read the Dire Foes narrative section to see if anything along those lines actually happened, basically all the characters tangentially touched on that plot.
Red is the commonly used moderation colour I've seen around on forums. Some forums even have moderators directly edit people's posts with red comments when a specific post gets out of line (see below). Only forums I've seen other colours on is where the colour scheme doesn't really function with red, such as when there's a lot of red elsewhere on the page or when the overall colour scheme is leaning green. A quick look at what colour blindness does to people's vision, a purple is probably better, but there's no real good colour that catches them all mostly because tritanopia is so much different from the other versions of colour blindness. The common one, above all with men, is red-green so you either want a purple colour or an orange colour if that is a concern to you. On second thought, maybe not orange. I suggest purple. It's a very imperious colour. - Off-topic comments removed. -PS
This. Despite being myself a long-term dedicated PanO supremacist, the hysteria around Uprising event is going to force me to join the Yu Jingese. The Tiger does not submit to terror!
I would recommend something other than red as it is very difficult for myself, and likely others afflicted with similar flavours of colourblindness, to differentiate it from regular black text. The orange you have there appears to work but I would also include bold and perhaps a different font if that's not too many steps for you. A vivid blue could also work as long as it's dark enough to be seen on a white background but not so dark as to once again be too close to black.
I'll just leave this here http://www.colourblindawareness.org/colour-blindness/types-of-colour-blindness/ Half-way down the page there's a really informative slide for people, like me, with full colour perception. There's no perfect answer because humans see a mix of three colours and there's one type of blindness for each type. Red-green blindness is the most common and most common among men, either deficiency or blindness.
I share the opinion, ISS have been oppressive force for as long as I know, they just crossed the line as far as general public is concerned. I've always accepted them for the YJ version of the Soviet NKVD, and let's not get into their atrocities.
I've never saw them as nice or even good. I also don't remember anywhere in the fluff that they're the premier elite counter insurgents. They seem to me to be the muscle of the emperor. Great at hunting down enemies of the state/emperor.
Yanjing's job is to watch for exterior threats, ISS's job is to watch for interior threats which includes insurgents. Kanren are the arm of ISS devoted as specialists as the first line of defense against insurgents. "However, it is within, inside our own home where our enemies can easily hide themselves, spreading their venom into the ears of our citizens, corrupting them with their liberal ideas that are the antithesis of the Party's program of well-being. To watch and monitor all subversive activity the Imperial Service has created the Kanren (Bold Edge) Counterinsurgency Group. This unit is made up of brave men and women that track all kinds of insurgent, subversive, or radical groups that may want to implant themselves in Yu Jing. Their modus operandi is based on undercover infiltration into their ranks to gather information and learn everything necessary about said movements. Before delivering the blow that will break the group apart, Kanren operators identify and locate all of its leaders and members, as well as their sources of financing, support networks, and allies. In this manner, they ensure the insurgent movement is completely destroyed without any possibility of regrouping, guaranteeing the security of the StateEmpire." As for premier elite counter insurgent agents, it kind of goes hand in hand with dystopian futuristic police state schtick Yu Jing had going. Well, before it just evolved into straight up evil empire genocide mode.
Note that the Kanren explicitly chase down all the funding, support networks, and allies, so that when the Imperial Service as a whole drops in to say "hi, do you have a moment to talk about sedition" the Imperial Service gets everyone involved. And by extension, doesn't get anyone not involved.
What I'm getting at is that nowhere does it say anything that makes the uprising and events leading up to it unplausible.
Apart from the whole ISS and Yanjing were taking a nap because Gutier needed them to hold an idiot ball to make his narrative work and didn't do their job at all in the lead up to Uprising, sure. It's not that it couldn't happen, it's that it requires 2 separate agencies to be completely oblivious and behave incomprehensibly incompetently when they are supposed to be on the bleeding edge of their field crafts (forcing the creation of the Hexahedron etc). You can write "this happened like this," but the critique coming back is "this doesn't make sense in the context of the other stuff you wrote elsewhere." Requiring the use of an idiot ball in your works is commonly the sign of a low quality narrative. In wargaming circles it's also a sign of codex power. In your codex, you always win despite what common sense or other fluff accounts dictate and most codexes will contradict each other in some way. GW is probably the original and best example of this. It's possible CB are starting to go down this path with Uprising essentially being Codex: Japan. Just like Space Marines are the baddest bad ass mofos in the galaxy, unless they're being shot at in someone else's codex where they get wiped out constantly, Yanjing and ISS are really, really, good at their jobs until Codex Japan needs to sneak an Uprising past them.
Do you think an extremist group could convince over 99% of the population in, say, Puerto Rico to start a rebellion without the FBI (or whatever agency looks for that kind of stuff in PR) knowing what was going on? And do you think that the EU could shove a fleet in between Florida and PR without the US being able to fight back and without the US considering it an act of war?
But this was, like, totes super part of the kuge's plan all along. You see there is, like, this guy who goes around and everyone believes he's this, like, useless blue collar guy who does nothing at all... but actually he's like, the L-host lovechild of mata hari and the rosembergs. So he's like super cool and stuff and everything goes just according to keikaku. So the kampeiguys bomb and kill, like, everyone, and the ISS is like - oh my god what's happening nobody told us - right? So they, like, also start to kill everyone. But they cannot do that, and kinda everybody in the human sphere comes together and kick YJ around. Then cobra commander screams "I'll get you next time GI Joe!!!" PS. just taking the piss (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ Not parroting anyone or intending to offend. Hugs & kisses
Puerto Rico and 99% of the population? Maybe not that much but after the hurricane and how terrible the conditions are I could totally imagine someone able to stir up anti government sentiments down there. I could imagine people saying they're tired of being a US colony and want their own country. As for the fleet no but that's because the US is the THE super power on earth and doesn't always listen to the United nations. Do I think the US could move its fleet somewhere in the EU and it not be an act of war. Absolutely which again is a perk of being the predominate military power on the planet.
The operative bit being here, could they do that without the FBI or CIA being aware of it, especially if it was an armed insurrection large enough to possibly allow them to actually succeed. Because that's what happened here. It isn't that they couldn't possibly incite wide-spread unrest (although doing it simultaneously across the whole sphere, on populations that are many generations removed from their ancestral homeland... to the point where it would be like me, as a third generation Canadian Scot, getting up in arms over Scottish independence back on the home isles... and in my case it is on the same fucking planet, not lightyears away and centuries removed). It is that they did it without tipping of any of the intelligence agencies. Certainly doesn't sound like a totalitarian police state if they can remain that oblivious to unrest right under their noses. As to the second bit, this isn't an analogy that works in the Infinity-verse, because PanO isn't the dominant military power in the whole sphere. In fact, the background of the NeoColonial war got to pains to explain that Yu Jing actually has the superior fleet, so much so that they dictated the theaters of engagement during the Second NeoColonial War. As it is, PanO isn't militarily superior enough to browbeat Yu Jing and historically, when they openly engaged Yu Jing, it went less than well for them in a variety of ways. This is why being able to strike Yu Jing a heavy blow with utter impunity in their own territory makes little sense, because none of the super powers have shown that they realistically have the capability to beat the other outright which is kind of the whole point of the Cold War-esque setting. Having PanO pull off the Iron Wall with zero negative consequences changes the entire tone and balance of the setting. Because they didn't have surprise on their side (how could they? There was public outcry for support of the Japanese and moving enough assets to completely dominate Yu Jing iside of Yu Jing territory without any retaliation would basically require the whole StateEmpire to be asleep), they just rolled in and killed (at a conservative estimate) thousands of Yu Jing soldiers. Considering the O-12 is apparently powerless to stop open acts of warfare and no one has direct veto, is begs the question as to why PanO hasn't just beaten Yu Jing by now. But we know why, because Yu Jing is on close enough to equal footing with them and any kind of open warfare will not be cut and dry. Basically, for PanO to have grown the pair needed to attack Yu Jing the way they did, they would have needed to read the script before thinking that risk would be worth their time. If PanO was actually looking to make a bid of support for Japan, then they likely would have done what big nations do to each other these days. They would call for sanctions on Yu Jing, make a big song and dance about how terrible they are, and then secretly funnel weapons to extremist groups that serve their interest without getting their hands dirty. Super-powers only make overt military moves when they know they'll win them (because unlike the ISS, most military commanders listen to Sun Tze :p ).
