Comlog Entry, Crane Agent Vigilant Wolf - Task Force November Blue Human Edge It has been 55 days since the gathering called Adepticon, 8 long weeks since the Secession. No reports from High Command about reinforcements. Mammoth is currently trying to play away his sorrows. The Yan Huo had finally worked up the nerve to ask out Yuriko, before she disappeared. Now he wreaks audio havoc off the battlefield with that cursed air bladder. I also found Ninja Ame curled up in my favorite seat when I went to watch my regularly scheduled Dramedy. I've had that teddy bear chair since my Academy days, but didn't have the heart to shoo her off. She was the greenest member of our task force and took the betrayal of her mentor figures to the other side hard. Eating my ice cream was pushing it though. I miss Xi. He made the best coffee.
Now I'm envisioning a Yan Huo sulking in the shower, and Ninja Ame sounds adorable. I like this kind of fluff haha.
@Borlois I hope that more join as well. The problem with me is that I have no one around my area who plays Infinity. A tough spot to be sure.
CB have still failed to resolve the situation for affected vanilla players. My stance on boycotting the campaign hasn't changed.
Ill probs run in the campaign until at least the first update thing then when they take a dump on the yu jing efforts like in the last one I can drop it with no ragrets.
The characterizations were result of trying to write fun battle reports for the past two campaigns. One day I'll transfer them to something more permanent, but for now: Flamestrike (Yan Huo Hydra Mammoth appears here) https://flamestrike.warconsole.com/commander/banthafodder Wotan (Ninja Ame) https://wotan.warconsole.com/commander/banthafodder
Let’s see, I’m from Bulgaria. Until 1878 we were under Ottoman rule for 500 years. Mind you, prior to falling in under their conquest, we already had 700 years of history, so we had a distinctive nation. - historically we were not assimilated or enslaved, but ruled, and we had all sorts of freedoms typical for the empire (for example religious freedom). We were citizens of the Ottoman empire, albeit christians, so lesser ones. Treated as the peasants almost everywhere at the time. Yet not Ottomans. - try to tell any Bulgarian it was Ottoman rule and not Ottoman slavery - in Bulgarian we even have a distinctive word I cannot translate directly - it is Турско иго / Tursko igo, with “igo” meaning slavery and forceful rule, word credited to Ivan Vazov, one of the most respected Bulgarian authors. There are numerous arguments in recent history whether it should be regarded as a feudality/rulership (владичество/управление) or slavery. Imagine that for most of us, having generations of people behind us dreaming of freedom, it was slavery, even if was not the “US cotton plantation” sort of slavery. This is why I say the Japanese would have feel it was wrong, they may have been citizens, yet it is another Empire that rules them... easy to manipulate into dissent, and from there through radicalization, to the Uprising.
Short history lesson: no you were not "a distictive nation". nation is not defined by a a long history of "your" nation: it is a very specific (while at the same time vage in it's actual elements), historic term which does not exist - as a term AND a state system - until a specific time period. The 18th century is the point at which many historican can identify at best proto-nations in Europe like the Noble Republic of Poland, where szlachta constructed the idea of a cultural heritage based on the Sarmatians and from there built the idea of "the Pole" and the "state of the Poles" (but only applicable to the szlachta, disregarding what language or religion they had, and excluding every other social group, even if they spoke polish and were catholic). Or outside of Europe a little earlier, like Japanese higher classes and the construction of Japanese uniqueness to China and Korea though the nihon shoki and the kojiki (but again, not including or educating the peasantry and other social groups about it, at least not in the broader scope until the Meiji Restauration). Before that, no - there are no nations. Especially not in feudal europe. This might look like nitpicking, but will play a big role for your further points, because historical, geographical, social,... context changes a lot in such situations. There are a few elements which have to be taken into consideration. a) "treated as peaseant", "feudality" and those terms already make this situation more complex, since in most historical discussions about "servitude" or "un-freedom" (Unfreiheit in the german case) the narrative goes from ancient slavery, to feudalism and medieval serfdom to "modern" slavery because they share a lot of similarities and can vary wildly in scope (like tzarist feudalism, where serfdom was basically slavery - in a very simplistic statement) and specifically in pre-nation, pre-bureaucratic societies (to put it in simplified terms, since "-isms" are always a problem in history) being a peasant or being a noble or cleric makes a HUGE difference - not so much in bureaucratic nation-states or other "modern" forms of states (which we deal with in Infinity - Section9 hinted at one beautiful example of how this influences the world: in a modern, non-feudal, bureaucratic and post-industrial society, using the feudal seperation of society into samurai-peasantry-merchants-eta has to adapt or simply doesn't work). b) you are talking about the modern Bulgaria with specific developments and norms in regards to the construction of nation and national politics and culture of historic remembrance. This varies extremely on the country and time period and political/social/geographic situation. A german, french or british nationalism of the 20th century works completely different. The american is also entirely different. And this is also true for Asia in general, and China/Japan/Korea specifically. To give you an counter-example: I am polish (not that this is important or gives me any credibility - but just to make sure nobody thinks I am critizing another country). You know, from that little space in Europe which tends to get on the nerves of everybody involved - for better or worse, depending on who is involved - with their insurgencies and nationalism since basically the anarchic state of the "golden freedom" of the Szlachta Republic and the following partitions. Where "we do not beg for freedom, we fight for it" is one of those disgusting propaganda slogans of the ruling PiS. (wait ... are we basically the JSA of today ?) In this country, nationalism was extremely limited to the szlachta identitiy in the 18th and 19th century. At the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century this changed to a very specific contra-west and contra-russian identitiy of nationalism, now formed around the general public and screaming "banzai" during the Russo-Japanese War, since they identified more with Japan than Germany, Russia or Europe, as a result of the previous szlachta mythos of the Sarmatians which were seen as similar as the romantic, european idea of the samurai. This again changed drastically in the 20th century with Bismarck, WW1, WW2 and communism and the polish diaspora - or polonia - resulting not only in the construction of the "european martyr" idea but also the concept of the "cultural nation", meaning a nation that is not defined by a continous history, an existing state, a defined geographic space or "blood", but by language, culture and ideals - disregarding where you were. This again changed dramatically with PiS and the second and third generation of the polonia - split into either an extrem inward nationalism like under the PiS now with its pitiful state of an ... "european" ... nation (because we know it is very european to throw historians into prison for up to 3 years simply for stating historical facts) or an extrem pro-internationalism because of the wide spread of polish people throughout the world (often found with polish intellectuals and the second or third generation of the polish migrants). As you can see, the idea and construction of "nation", "ethnicity" or "culture" can not only change and vary, but sometimes even be completely at odds to later forms of that term. As such - while the Bulgarian example is very fascinating - it is a situation in a specific historic context. It can not be simply applied to something like the JSA or Yu Jing. (Just to make sure - this is NOT the same argument as given by psychoticstorm. The infinity universe is not a universe "far far away" with old dudes with lightsabers or a universe where an elf and a dwarf become best friends. It is a universe where our history happened. Where Mao happened. Where the Afghanistan War and Vietnam War happened. Where imperial Japan and the Third Reich existed. As such the societies and discourses are shaped by that historical remembrance - making the "Urpising" even less logical, since it is a universe where at least one Yu Jing or JSA group of historians (or even just PanO or Haqqislam) is right now basically screaming "Imperial Japan is back !" "GMD and Imperial Army atrocities are happening again!" or someone is starting to write a thesis about "the historical similarities and differences between the JSA and the Imperial Army and the influence of the Third Reich on the genocide strategies of the Yu Jing".) Even here, where historical remembrance is a deep part of polish cultural identity of both camps (since partition, WW1, WW2, communism and post-socialist economic struggle influenced both ideas) and propaganda by the PiS is done in a bizarrely efficent way, the country is split on a domestic and international, heated debate about Polands future (to give you an anecdote: this results into a situation where in our family weddings we started to follow a "no politics" rule, since in the last year the PiS disaster resulted in a situation where one half is calling the other half "bloody, cowardly traitors" on one side and "stupid, drunken morons too mentally challenged to realize that the PiS is exactly doing what we fought 30 years ago to eradicate" on the other). Japan - and China for that matter - can not use similiar methods or elements to legitimize "their" nation or form debates around Japan in this way. Especially, because of the Second World War. The only similiarity here is, that Japan also has two camps basically throwing insults at each other in regards to japanese historical remembrance. One big problem for both camps is to actually influence the broader parts of japanese society which - thanks to problems like the freeter generation - simply does not care for history, the lessons of history and historical remembrance (leftist intellectuals struggle as much as the LPD). This is completely different in eastern europe where basically all generations either lived or graced the Cold War period of communist states or saw its aftermath and where historical remembrance and reprocessing only could sincerely begin in the last 30 years. And you think the kuge could indoctrinate an entire ethnic group on different planets (which is already one of the most extreme challenges on ethnicity and ethnic homogenity), where today political parties like the PiS or Putin, with a perfect feeding ground for extreme nationalism, struggle ? Or can even barely keep it hidden ? The kuge are able to do that, despite the new factor of interplanetary life which challenges nationalism and cultural hegemony (with many generations of "Japanese" without direct connection to "Japan") even more than internationalism does today ? You think they could do something, that not even one "nation" could do in human history, while facing even greater odds ? A human history with the Third Reich, which while coming dangerously close, was also not able to do that ? Even if you go the more realisitc route - that the writer of the Uprising has no clue about those historic complexities and how different other time periods, social realities and geographic/inter-planetary constellations would form and change societies and their discourses of topics like nation, ethnicity or even freedom - and just looked at contemporary elements (hinted at by the existence of "kempetai" and the depiction of the Yu Jing): Japan would be very, very, very unlikely to come even close to such an indoctrination (damn, even Imperial Japan had tough times doing that - and they really, really tried).
While I think you make good points, there have been kingdoms, if not nations, for a long time. The King of France was the King of the Francs. It isn't a new idea entirely, by any stretch, and national identities have long existed (Israel is a standout example of a sub culture that refuses to assimilate). Ancient kingdoms would disperse the populace of conquered kingdoms to destroy their culture and prevent uprisings, the Romans would actively absorb other cultures and nations and try to convert them to 'Roman' citizens by having them buy into Roman culture and fight Roman wars. The underlying thing I'm trying to point out is that this kind of National identity has been around a long time, that people absolutely have fought fanatically for God Kings, cold cash, patriotism, revenge, independence, and goodness alone knows what else since before the birth of Christ, and will doubtless be fighting over it far into the future.
It wasn't the point of the post, and yes, you are right, being an empire doesn't make it a nation; yet at the time of Ottoman conquest we were already having "Bulgarians" as opposed to former tribes underrule, with the second Empire already having centuries of history, and not separated into the distinctive tribes that actually formed the initial kingdom back during the Bulgars and later empires initial conquests of the lands. Of course, that cannot be contributed to a nationality. But the long history of the former Bulgarian states and kingdoms, together with the religious freedom (and difference, as wewere Christian), served as to form a nationalism even under the Ottoman rule - a failing of their empire to allow assimilation through better rulership and less so by blood tithes and/or religious indoctrination (apart from the Jannisarries "tax", their use of excessive force was rare). By the 19th century we already had the notion of being Bulgarians under slavery of the Ottoman empire, and that become widespread later (which also has some origins in the Russian Empire politics, able to influence internally the Ottomans, but mostly following the Enlightenment in Western Europe spreading into the conquested territories). Point was that despite we enjoyed far more freedom under Ottoman rule than most of the feudal systems allowed, especially in the last two centuries, these freedoms, and notably the religious one, during and as a result of the Enlightenment we formed a nation that, as a whole, wanted to get rid of the Ottoman's rule, and much later Bulgarians still hold a grudge against the Turks, to the point of referring to these 5 centuries as a time of slavery. Sure it was not a nation prior to their conquest, it was just a well spread Empire. While I see that as a failing of the Ottoman empire, andwe have much to thank to the Russians (yet we also have been their satellites for a long time, and their interests today are varied and/or to be argued, so there are mild pro-Russian and a stronger pro-European movement nowadays (I would imagine it's the same pretty much everywhere in EE now, but we had a communist government(s) that actually tried to make us USSR republic twice). But what brings together these two modern groups* is the viewing of the Turks as our former slave masters; we have their minority here, and a credit to the communists is that they were well integrated (again, up to a point, as they've alienated them as a whole just before the fall of communism by trying to change all names to Bulgarian; I guess we just have these ups and downs every time we do something), but any notion of these parts of Bulgaria that are considered mostly "turkish" because of the people living there, is to be met with a hatred. There was no mass indoctrination of the people for former Ottoman Empire being The Enemy, or later Turkey being some country we cannot deal with for their history; in fact we are good neighbors, yet it's like a gene - based on our history we are against any notion that the Turkey would should become major power brings up tensions. Now, imagine a new Turkish Empire ruling somewhere in the future and us failing under its rule. Sure, not the same, but give it some time to brew and you will be able to easily turn people against their rule. *and yet it also separates them as the Russian Empire help with the Liberation actually didn't lead to independence and they actually opposed it once it became true in the begining of 20th century, so it's both celebrated AND hated, as I explained we just have too much relations with Russia going both ways. Sure, this is a long and complex history, but Japan and China have not been friends, and falling under China rule (whatever the reasons) to the point of conceding local governance, according to the lore was not well met. Using this: http://www.data-sphere.net/japanese-sectorial-army/ (it's quite old) Well, based on what I quoted, and their history, why not? It was forceful assimilation. They were treated as second class citizens, if being instituted as such at all. They held their notions of being Japanese, even up to the point of embracing bushido and keeping up the ranked system, and having their army. I don't see why it would have been so hard to draw a line between them and the the State. Another example, it's far fetched but just to bring a clarity to "greater odds" - as I mentioned we have a Turkish minority in Bulgaria. Do you believe they would actually keep up with the local rule if given a choice between some broader Turkish movement and Bulgaria? I doubt so, they are easy to trigger even by mentioning Erdogan today (and while there is some separation of opinions, it's as if they are defending their own ruler, which in fact may be true, considering most of them have dual-citizenship). Well over 300 000 of them left Bulgaria and went to Turkey (while they were accepted, many returned for they didn't had anything there) at the end of communist era after the forceful Revival Process. There is also them being Bulgarians (too) but one would always become one or the other with the right push. Since then we enjoy ethnic peace, but it's not like there is no segregation. They still consider themselves Turks. And the Japanese are Japanese under YJ flag. Hm... consider these would be so much further back in history. It's like we referring to what happened say 3 centuries before now. Easy to talk about WWII, but even WWI is being disregarded, not to mention how much it gets "too old" if you go backwards from there. Hardly matters nowadays, for the world was reshaped again and again during the time that followed, with more to happen, according to the Infinity lore.
Nationhood, Kingdoms, serfdom, occupation and governance are all very different things from out-right slavery. Well, serfdom is actually quasi-slavery, but case in point serfdom was very widespread regardless of ethnicity under the pre-modern monarchies. The JSA weren't slaves, they had extensive freedoms that the Kuge engineered to remove. If anything since this setting is post-modern, the fact that they were allowed to work (as opposed to forced to work) should moderate the use of the extremely loaded word that is "slavery". Occupied or oppressed is more accurate, and in many cases should more than suffice. @geniusloci you are partly right about 3 centuries past thing, since we are still referring to those times and we still let efforts of our forebears shape our modern politics. Hence Israel came into existence where it is today, for example. On the other hand we have this whole thing with some Americans occasionally and strangely forgetting that it was the francophones that helped them gain independence from the English and not the other way around... Heh. France did a Pan-O when USA were the JSA, which makes the UK Yu Jing! Excellent, pour the tea and bring forth the crumpets!
So... Back to the Future of Yu Jing. I think it was mentioned about making two options for Tiger Soldiers. I’d like separate profiles. Some with Combat Jump, some with Multi-terrain. There’s no way Multi-terrain costs as much as combat jump too. This way we could have a Tiger Soldiers in IA or WB. Their fluff doesn’t say if they belong to a specific sectoral but if I had to guess, I’d say White Banner.
Not arguing that point. In fact, I wasn't surprised when the Uprising was announced. I am appalled at how the Uprising was written. Completely different argument. Most likely White Banner, but they may be in both WB and IA (depends on what niche the Shooting Star AD HI fit into). But yes, I agree that the Tigers should get something like the Scots Guard battalions, where the non-camo'd Scots Guards can link, but the camo'd Scots Guards cannot.
Yeah, got it Saturday the 12th. Been reading it in fits and starts, since I keep wanting to throw it across the room.
