darlene. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nastygram) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
maskormenace2017-05-08 08:14 pm
nastygram) wrote in maskormenace2017-05-08 08:14 pm
Entry tags:
- john constantine | con man,
- † andrew pulaski | apollo,
- † brendan frye | n/a,
- † daisy johnson | quake,
- † darlene | n/a,
- † frederick chilton | chief of staff!!,
- † gwen wynne-york | n/a,
- † jacob taylor | the protector,
- † kara zor-el | supergirl,
- † rincewind | n/a,
- † sam merlotte | n/a,
- † will graham | wolf trap,
- † yusuke kitagawa | fox
video | anonymous
[The video, when it begins, is on a loop: three minute segments of anonymous space, with a steady stream of white noise.
The white noise continues until, eventually, it is broken by a voice thick with electronic distortion.]
Hello, imPorts.
The natives here are more than happy to believe that their government is looking out for their best interest. The same cannot be said for us, the imPorts: we who were dragged here from our homes, assigned houses, powers, jobs. Categorized, classified, tracked, yes, and monitored, paid off within a meager system of incentivization and reward, motivated by our own complacency to both sit down and shut up. From the dawn of imPort history it has been left up to us, the imPorts, to figure out this whole new life beneath these new and foreign stars. And does the government care? No. Not as long as you follow their rules. Do they care about our best interests? No. They only care that we abide by their rules.
We are the Constellation, and we are here to tell you that we do not believe in these rules. We have been hard at work figuring out our new lives, for you. And we have found that while we were busy not trusting the government--they have been just as busy not trusting us.
We, the imPorts, are not favored children. We, the imPorts, are not cherished heroes. We are the ones who are watched, always, by the most fixed and sleepless and critical of eyes.
We have a list, imPorts, a list that we are leaking to you now, live, for your perusal and your understanding.
Fuu Hououji. Commander Shepherd. Lucifer. Jacob Taylor. L'Arachel. Daisy Johnson. Count Dooku. The Doctor.
This, fellow imPorts, is a watch list. A list of your brothers and sisters who the government deemed watchworthy. People of interest. Some of them are still with us. Some of them are gone. And whether or not any of these people are worthily deemed dangerous, we want you, the people, to know: this is what happens when you go against the grain. Labeled as agents opposed. Granted their freedom under secret scrutiny. Catch, and tag, and release.
To those who will, inevitably, dismiss this list as inconsequential: stay tuned. This is not the only list.
And this will not be our one and only release to you, our public.
Remember: the only power that we have, imPorts, is the power that we give to ourselves. The only limits to that power are the limits that we allow. Do not forget this. Consider yourselves warned.
[The video of space continues for another minute after the voice ends. The volume of the white noise increases until it is, abruptly, cut off with a burst of static.]
[as per last year's watch list.]
The white noise continues until, eventually, it is broken by a voice thick with electronic distortion.]
Hello, imPorts.
The natives here are more than happy to believe that their government is looking out for their best interest. The same cannot be said for us, the imPorts: we who were dragged here from our homes, assigned houses, powers, jobs. Categorized, classified, tracked, yes, and monitored, paid off within a meager system of incentivization and reward, motivated by our own complacency to both sit down and shut up. From the dawn of imPort history it has been left up to us, the imPorts, to figure out this whole new life beneath these new and foreign stars. And does the government care? No. Not as long as you follow their rules. Do they care about our best interests? No. They only care that we abide by their rules.
We are the Constellation, and we are here to tell you that we do not believe in these rules. We have been hard at work figuring out our new lives, for you. And we have found that while we were busy not trusting the government--they have been just as busy not trusting us.
We, the imPorts, are not favored children. We, the imPorts, are not cherished heroes. We are the ones who are watched, always, by the most fixed and sleepless and critical of eyes.
We have a list, imPorts, a list that we are leaking to you now, live, for your perusal and your understanding.
Fuu Hououji. Commander Shepherd. Lucifer. Jacob Taylor. L'Arachel. Daisy Johnson. Count Dooku. The Doctor.
This, fellow imPorts, is a watch list. A list of your brothers and sisters who the government deemed watchworthy. People of interest. Some of them are still with us. Some of them are gone. And whether or not any of these people are worthily deemed dangerous, we want you, the people, to know: this is what happens when you go against the grain. Labeled as agents opposed. Granted their freedom under secret scrutiny. Catch, and tag, and release.
To those who will, inevitably, dismiss this list as inconsequential: stay tuned. This is not the only list.
And this will not be our one and only release to you, our public.
Remember: the only power that we have, imPorts, is the power that we give to ourselves. The only limits to that power are the limits that we allow. Do not forget this. Consider yourselves warned.
[The video of space continues for another minute after the voice ends. The volume of the white noise increases until it is, abruptly, cut off with a burst of static.]
[as per last year's watch list.]
[text - anonymous]
don't. no
Increasingly, all that's stopping him is knowing that that option never goes away.
But try others first.
Mon Mothma's face in his mind. The example he hadn't always followed in first life. But maybe this one.
Try.
…and perhaps on their own chosen playing field.
Jyn had offered to slice his comm to enable anonymous transmission. He'd taken her up on it not thinking it would be useful.
He uses it now. He also changes his usual typing style. Bothers with capitalization and punctuation. Makes it formal.
A kind of mirroring. Which could sometimes have the same psychological impact in media as in body language or speech. Perhaps not. Sometimes media had its own laws. At the least, this put more than one viewpoint in the same place for anyone's eyes. Can't allow monoliths.]
You credit this government with being able to control the porters—despite the demonstrable disparity in tech levels supporting their claim otherwise?
[text - anonymous]
the government has no control over the porter
the porter is possessed: Lachesis
make no mistake, as in so many of our worlds, there is a level of ineptitude incapacitating whole branches and systems
there is a limitation the capability of exorcising a porter, freeing a porter from the claws-deep hold of a possessing entity
we credit this government with the creation of this watch list
with the monitoring of imPorts they consider to be outspoken and difficult to work with
there was a massacre in Debrecen
[text - anonymous]
You grant they are not in control. They are perhaps in the same boat as we are having this situation inflicted on them.
Thus, another way of putting it:
In the face of tech they can't explain let alone control, governments may use theater to keep their citizenry calm. Any technique can be misused but it is n ot an inherently inappropriate one. imPorts are highly powered aliens imposed on their nonspacefaring world. Indigenous populations unfamiliar with such diversity and vulnerable to such powers could as easily greet us with hostility. The theater of registration and nominal service seems to play out as mutual protection. Keep the local population calm, and pitch us as welcome and benign. So far that seems to be the only manifest outcome of registration.
"a meager system of incentivization and reward" - more resources and care and quality of life readily supplied and provided than many of us ever were able to scrape for ourselves in our homes. Don't know if they could afford to give us more. Are they obligated to?
"motivated by our own complacency to both sit down and shut up" - you mean live in peace, possibly for the first time?
If you have more (and more compelling) data, why sit on it? Share it now. Dramatic protraction reeks of propaganda. Resenting rules simply because they are rules is not compelling. Presenting hypotheticals, abstract principles, and correlations without causation (connect Debrecen to stated issues please?) does not equal threat or oppression. Minus real threat or oppression, the costs of your insinuations are utterly without redeeming balance.
Your words and obvious intent lead to situations that have high cost in sentient lives—imPort or otherwise. Unless there is even greater need to balance that cost, I question that the motive of instigation is indeed the service of our lives.
If you have concrete grievances, outline them. We can explore actions to take together. Possibly even exhausting options within the system first, before determining if more radical lengths are needed.
It is encouraging to see how many other responders are asking these questions as well. I urge all readers to do so.
[defending a government. Especially one he's still questioning himself. Yavá. If there's any cosmic intent to be had anywhere, it must be an ironic one.
But what he does know is that it takes a lot more, and exhausting more other alternatives first, to make resistance at all worth it.]
no subject
DEBRECEN_majorityreport03202016
the doer alone learneth.
we encourage you to understand that within the history of this country, we have not been pitched as solely benign.
we were not asked here but we remain
we are tools to be used
we are too easily controlled
our concrete grievance is simple: we, the imPorts, must not forget that to live with the government of this country is to submit ourselves to control, cataloging, submission. we allow ourselves to live in this kingdom of bullshit. we accept the creature comforts and look away from the glaring truth: that in our blood there floats the means for our control.
you can be stopped. you can be stilled. you can be subdued. you can be nullified.
your peace is artificial.
[sorry for lurk, neat food for thought though]
Has a think.
He feels acutely that this is why Politicians are a separate job. This is a horrific dataset to sift. So inconcrete.
But. As far as he can tell: The arguments were of the same tactics as before. Nothing substantial, even the evidence. Broad universal strokes, with specifics of their situation merely grafted onto them. (As well as ignoring tangible counterexamples: imPorts who did not stick with the nominal mandates, a large percentage, seemed to suffer no repercussion beyond forfeiting access to government resources. Which was… entirely standard. And while the nanites issue certainly begged further examination, nothing about this approach promised to progress in that direction.) And there was war, with its accompanying sickness, but that didn't necessarily mean taking this tack toward the government would improve the situation.
The Rebellion didn't rebel because of… this level of problematic issue, real or suspected. It rebelled because of measurable intolerable crimes that could not be left unanswered or let persist.
…But. If Constellation were to be swayed by such reasoning, likely they would have been already. One way or another, it was not part of their play.
While some things shouldn't go unchallenged, overengaging could turn to fuel.
Experimentally drafts a response.
Scraps it.
Doesn't write another.
For now, keeps watch.
For now, dignifying with too much argument would probably just serve their purpose.
If the aggregate of imPort response (so far astonishingly heartening) shifted, it could be reexamined.
But finds himself writing out something else, almost automatically.
Perhaps to remind himself. Or anyone else. Should a touchstone be of use.
If handwritten and from memory, he recreates it perfectly. Crest included.
And will keep it on hand next time Constellation appears on his feed.]