Terran Franklin

This is a supplementary response to the article 5 Ways to Stop Trolls From Killing the Internet by David Wong from Cracked.com.

The source alone would be the equivalent of Mark Hamill’s Joker finding that the Batman is just a little boy in a playsuit, crying for mommy and Daddy. “I’d laugh if it weren’t so pathetic!”

It should be more telling than it feels when a humor site is more insightful than most more respectful internet sites out there.  Which just comes to show how widespread trolling has spread.  You don’t have to look long to find examples of this.  You type ‘encyclopedia’ on Google, and the first suggestion (and until recently, the first site on many searches of names including my won) would be the infamous troll site Encyclopedia Dramatica.  The Random board on picture site 4chan can totally screw someone over if they can get enough yucks out of it.  Just ask the parents of Michael Henderson, Lori Drew, or any Scientologist.  The creme da la creme on troll behavior has to deal with Jeneane Garofalo when she called everyone who attended any Tax Protest party people who get their jollies out of putting someone’s scrotum in their mouths.  I guess we should thank her for not calling us “Faggots” as well, like she likes calling people when she cruises the net under anonymity.

And the way the left use the label “Racist” all the time, they would probably switch to “fucktard” and probably be just as effective these days.

And you don’t have to use Fifth Grade style vocabulary to show this dynamic.  There’s plenty of web comic forums where the users just rag on the artist, rag on the artist, rag on the artist, and eventually by the constant ragging even the thickest of skins just get grounded raw.  It’s because of this a plenty of would be web comics lose heart in their projects and even their skills and talents.  I think that’s what happened to me with the Decade of Failure I had.

This is one of my choice topics that I watch over, the trend on real life troll activity and how to combat them.  Granted, you had dicks before, but their online actions were far worse these days than they were before the WTC attacks.  My theory is that the mainstream media and the elitists in Big Government and Business trolled down the reconnectiveness most of us went through after the attacks (the dynamic that the 9-12 project wants to recover) and the tendency to see another person—either across the country or across town or in come cases across the fucking room) and not see him or her as a fellow countryman or even a person for that matter.  And they turn on that person with vitriol that could rival anyone with Bush Derangement Syndrome, or can I say that the Shrub would have been gotten off easy in comparison?  (Chris-chan.  Enough Said.)

“I can’t tell you who I am, but I have to tell you—” [CLICK] [BLOCK]

An actual online conversation I had.  (I do not converse with anyone without a working identity, even if it is an alias.)

By far the best thing to do with trolls is not to address them directly; that never ends well for you, but to have your own little corner of the world and keep the trolls away from it.  That means using your own web site instead of social networking sites, stomping flames flat the instant they come on your web browser, and never going anywhere where people are acting like total dicks.  Go ahead and lurk at forums and comment lines, and all that, but if the comments start reminding you of /b/, bail out like Ba Rock at an Auto Show.  (I’m not the only one who says this, Bill O’Riley has a more general—and real life—version of this in “Who’s Looking Out For You?”

(Note:  Yeah, yeah, I know you’re not supposed to talk about /b/, but I can’t find of a better yardstick to measure dick activities by.)

Back to the Cracked.com article.  David Wong lists a whole lot of actions people can take to deal with Net Assholes.  Some would be more effective than others.  A true troll will listen to his remarks recited by Microsoft Anna and masturbate to her voice.  Filters and real-time bleepers can only go so far.  Not everyone has a cadre of moderators at the ready to deal with flames 24-7, but they’re quite effective, and having the forum users police themselves with the Karma system makes a fine alternative.  (People do care about those stuff.)

Why do I feel like stripping off a troll’s vowels to make him look totally retarded on the screen is going to end in tears?

By far the best way of keeping the trolls away would be to create an online environment where they’re just not welcome.  Most of the time, it’s requiring them to put a screen name with an e-mail address that they’re actually going to use.  Like what I said above.  If you’re going to talk to me, use an identity I can reference, even if it’s a fake one.  If a user comes on with an e-mail that just bounces back to me when I verify it, it’s going straight into my banfile, do not pass Go.  This might make me feel like there’s tumbleweeds in my forums, but at least not every response I get to everything I do online would be abrasive.  And SomethingAwful really did themselves a service by requiring people to pay to register, although financially putting them out of the reach of trolls who won’t pay for their fapping material would be a bit much.

A lot much, on the other hand, is what was in the bottom of the list, at the Number One way to deal with trolls:  Make Anonymous Internet Use illegal by law.

Folks, this is the online world’s version of the Nuclear Option, a real life Superpowers Registration Act.

Oh, sure, they’ll try it.  Nothing like Big Government and Big Businesses to get together and show the little guys how to effectively screw somebody.  Not only is it going to be trampling on someone’s right to free speech, but this said act will be open for abuse.  And the RIAA and MPAA would just love to be able to track down anyone they think is downloading anything.  To me it’s just about as difficult, if not more so, for this to go through than bi-partisan Health Care Reform.  You’ll see a mass of people in Gothic Lolita outfits and Code Name V masks on the National Mall, it’ll be sizzled over the media and the internet, and you can bet that the real trolls will make it their lives work to make the lives of any proponent of such legislation a living hell.  They’ve done it before.

But the thing that got me worried is that, something like that might actually be attempted in today’s congress.  Especially if they do pass Health Reform.  And there’s no guarantee that having the Republicans take over congress in 2010 is going to keep it at bay.  They come for the cigarettes, the cars, the food, and now your right to exist.  (You’re on your hands and needs begging for your worthiness and only hearing masturbation noises regardless of it’s an Insurance Company or a Death Panel.)  Your right of Anonymous Internet use, something which can be considered a First Amendment issue, might be next.

You’ll know where I’ll be.

“Treat each other with kindness, fairness, and friendliness; because the world outside and life in general has a tendency of not being kind, fair, or friendly.  Any person’s lives is hard enough without you adding to it.”  Eric Krockett, a future BAM story.

If the people online would consider each other as actual human beings and don’t think of them as less of a person just because you don’t know them, we would never have to think of what I’ve just talked about.  The best way to keep both the trolls and the government out of our lives is to be connected to each other.  Or at the least, not treat each other like shit.  Cracked.com has many an article on this, and if I have my way, so will the 9-12 project.

Every now and then I run into something that just boggles my mind, and it’s not an easy thing to do.  A favorite topic for my “Holy Fucking Shit!” moments comes in the form of fast food.  Ever since Hardees came out with the Monster Burger, store chains have been coming out of the wood work promoting meals that are less like meals and more like a Middle Finger to the Food Police.  And while I am well in favor of flicking off the CPSI in their collective faces, I have to admit that some of these burgers are making me put up my hands and taking things a bit too far:  Fully Loaded Fries, Angus patties, Meat as a Condiment, I can go on.

But now we have Coronel Sander’s pride and joy not only flicking off the Food Cops, they’re also flicking off an important part of the sandwich, the fucking bun!

Behold KFC’s Double Down.  You will NOT see this on the KFC’s web site and for good fucking reason.

I wished to GOD that was a photoshopped pic.

Fried chicken patty, Special Coronel’s Sauce, Slice of pepper jack cheese, 2 slices of bacon, another slice of pepper jack cheese, more Coronel’s Sauce, another Fried chicken parry.

NO.  FUCKING.  BUN!

People actually eat this.  Oy Vey.

As some of you notice, while I have a pro-American stance, especially with Blood&Metal, I don’t show any preference in any ideology; politically I’m a free thinker.  I could go either or, but rarely an extremist view.  There are times I even side with Obama, which I list here on this blog.

It was only a matter of time before I find something I differ from Glenn Beck, and I found it in this concept.  If you only heard of Net Neutrality from that show, you don’t know all of it.

Net Neutrality has been going on for quite some time, probably since it’s been popularly used by millions like we do now.  I’ve been watching this topic for some time now, and I have a politically neutral stance on it. In a nutshell, the ‘Neutrality’ in Net Neutrality has to do with the kind of internet you get from a particular service.  Meaning, you get to the same Internet from Comcast as you get from AT&T or from a local ISP.  While they have some controls on speed and can even make separate venues between web page download and torrent use, but they cannot restrict parts of the Internet because it’s part of another company’s services.  Any use online, be it an IM chat, an E-Mail, a large download, et al, can not be legally blocked under Net Neutrality.  This principle promotes standards in file formats and open source systems, as well as innovation and easy competition, things I’ve always supported.  Any anyone who knows when there was an IBM system, an Apple system, a Commodore system, an Atari system, and so on and so on and never two of them shall meet.

By now the extremes of the Net Neutrality debate are presenting themselves, and they basically look the same IMHO:  Pro-Neutrality zealots claim that companies like Comcast, AT&T, Charter and the other providers want the internet divided into sections that cannot be crossed over; you can get to Comcast’s Internet but not AT&T’s, making the Net into an assortment of Bulletin Board Systems.  (AOL vs CompuServe, anyone?) Glenn Beck is telling of a similar circumstance but under control by Barack…or rather, a cabal of extremist liberals who would throttle any kind of information that they don’t agree with.  Either side, of course, is an oppressive environment, and probably wouldn’t stand by the general public.  Both extremes, of course, are also going at each other throats and endangering the very thing that they are fighting over.

Basically an Internet that is pretty much Neutral, right now.  Granted, some companies might want to have a bandwidth cap on torrents and porn so that they’ll have room for professional business transactions and educational research, and more power to them, but they won’t go, “Okay, you reached your daily limit of use on Fox News, here is your daily requirement of Pr0n.  Stop being butthurt, fagtard, hurr hurr hurr.”  No Internet Provider would remain in business if they do shit like that.

Nor will a political party in control of almost all of Washington stay in office if they do the same.  Not even pulling a Chavez and writing off term limits and elections will save them in a country where not everyone has given up their guns.

I believe that there can be an answer that is in the middle of this spectrum, where everyone can be happy with the Net Use.  This will require cooler heads, honest debate without ripping into each other, and a middle ground that everyone can settle for.  And especially to leave alone the parts of the internet makeup that pretty much has Net Neutrality.  If something isn’t broke, do not fuck with it.

If you wanted me to tell you what is wrong with America today, I usually point to the elderly Connecticut man who was flipped over by a speeding hit and run driver, and was left there to die while everyone who passed him basically had a good lul over the poor soul.  Nobody bothered to help.  Nobody even called 911 or blocked traffic.  He was nearly run over by a cop who just happened to be around and would have been arrested for jaywalking.  We know of it only because someone hacked into a security camera and posted the video of the event on You Tube.

I show it because in my mind, it is the result of the extreme partisan bickering that existed from 2002 to today, where the connectedness that existed after the 9-11 attacks was routinely shredded by the media and the political fringe at both ends.  It showed a dynamic that is more prevalent than racism but must be fought just as extremely; the general detachment people feel toward their fellow man.  It’s when people are so focused on their own person because of the lack of any higher goal, that they wouldn’t even think of another person as, well, a person.  Or if they did they’ve probably think of that person as if he was Chris-chan.

“This isn’t the kind of America the Founding Fathers thought of,” I’ve written in the liner notes of BAM 01 when I mentioned the event, “And it certainly is not the America I want to live in.”

I found another example of this recently:  Vicious Homecoming Dance Gang Rape May Have Been Videotaped, Watched by Dozens

A fifteen year old girl was walking home from a Homecoming Dance, where she turned the wrong corner and ran into almost a dozen gang members who summarily gang raped her.

More than twenty people just watched.  Some of them even published it on You Tube, and probably it’s on Encyclopedia Dramatica with “I DID IT 4 TEH LULZ!!!111!!” emblazoned on the pics.

I don’t know which is worse, the gang raping or the people watching it as if it were porno.

What can I say about this what probably hasn’t been said in Fox News, Fox News Radio, or The Fox Nation.  Or if I hope right, any other news channel or even the occasional picket fence.

All I can say is this:

“This is not the kind of America the Founders wanted to make.  And this is not the kind of America I want to live in.”

That’s why I’m writing Blood&Metal.  And why I’m a 9-12er.  I wanted to live in an America that crap like this isn’t accepted.

see more Political Pictures

Eric:  So Drink up, Dude!

Last evening, I’ve been to the first informational meet-up for the year over at Wise Choice Coffee in Edwardsville.  And while I was there I typed up some of BAM 02 before and after the meeting.  Someone had a camera and had pictures saved on the group’s Flickr Account: (Note:  All pictures are taken from said account.  Hope nobody minded.)

I wasn’t always in the back.  I sat up front for a but until the fashionably late people showed up.  And someone needed a chair so I faded back to my machine.  I also showed my proof copy of BAM 01 (which was the 2008 NaNoWriMo project) to show my progress, as well as some others who did the same.

Man, some people here can be more shy than me.  Come on, at least I have Aspergers to blame; what’s your lame excuse.

I was the shmuck in the back with the glaring yellow 9-12 t-shirt here.  And it got some play when I was describing the path I’m taking BAM.  I also said my favorite Glenn Beck cracks.  (My biggest fear?  Bees, Peanut Butter, and uncooked cookie dough.)  When I get on the Glenn Beck show, I’m going to cram a whole bag of Chip’s Ahoy down his throat, I swear.

When I get into my serious typing mood, I do not feel that the compact keyboard on the Lenovo as enough.  And that thumbpad is not in the best place to boot (my thumb knuckles always end up resting on it and it screws up the pointer.)  No, for serious writing, only the ergonomic keyboard and mouse can do.  I also had the forethought of bringing along the coolpad to rest the precious machine on.  I do not mess around when I type.  And fsk Wordpad; I got into the Microsoft Word 2010 preview just for bookwriting, and by Chutulu, it’s going to be used on Scarlet Origin 01!

The guy on the high chair really kept looking over how I type.  (Especially how I put HTML style formatting codes into the first draft.)

Chris Batty:  Where’s my flying monkeys?

Fuck you!  I hand code web pages in my spare time, it’s how my brain got wired.

And ugh. they’re right about the camera adding fifteen pounds or so.  Or maybe it’s the General Tso’s Chicken I had before I came in here.  No, it’s the camera.  It also broke when the owner tried to take a picture of himself.

Oh, along the way, someone brought up a misconception about NaNoWriMo.  Somebody in this group said that they were typing at their book and got about a K of words already and someone called them on it.  (<Starter Gun>  <Second Starter Gun> Beep Beep Beep Beep <Konami>FAULT!</Konami>)  That is purely a misconception, which goes along the line of having to start blind with a virgin WordPad file.  (If you have to plan, for God’s sakes, make one.  That’s what I do.)  The idea is to go from zero to 50K in the month of November.  It doesn’t say that you have to start with that virgin WordPad file, does it?  Of course, you have to subtract the word count you made when you jumped the gun from your total word count if you want to be official.  (Or do what I do and break up the first draft into multiple files) But if you need a set up to get started, feel free.

I have to confess that I tend to False Start as well.  BAM 01 started late in the evening on Halloween.  I just went, “Aw hell, it’s smucking Midnight somewhere,” and started typing.  It might happen again; Halloween falls on a Saturday, and I don’t know if I’m working on Sunday or not.  I usually do, and I don’t really feel like wanting to take over the keyboard when I drag that overweight carcass back to the apartment.

And note that I said Overweight.  Not Obese.  Never mind what the BMI says; I don’t need a forklift, a mobility device, or a sledgehammer to get to my upper floor living room to pull me out.  I have no rolls of fat for dead animals to hide in, nor do I need to call up NASA to go to the john.  I’m nowhere NEAR Obese yet.  I’m rambling.  I should shut up now.

Earlier this month, I told you about NaNoWriMo and that I’ve already planned a book for it.  Now I feel like talking to you about it.  It’s one of my more famous projects and is fascinating for both furry fans and amusement park aficionados.

Some people have seen how amusement park costumes had progressed over the years, and how lifelike they can get.  For example, Disney now has versions of their Fab Five character costumes with articulated mouths.

What if these costumes can do more than just move their mouths and their eyes.  What if they can practically come to live if you put one on, and live and breathe with you along for the ride inside?  With their own thoughts and personality quite different form your own, or not.  Kinda like a furry version of Venom only without the pathology.

And what if there was an amusement park fill of these characters, with an goal to knock Disneyland out of the water?

And the people who wanted to run it . . . . well, let’s just say that they’re a cross between Eisner’s Disney and Haliburton?

Enter Scarlet Foxfire.  She is originally one of those character costumes who saw things done to the castmembers that could only exist in a Fox Science Fiction series.  Some how she got herself out of that madhouse and into the apartment of unemployed cop Jim Goodlow, whom he took up as his partner.  Or rather, his new identity.  Remember what I said about needing to be put on in order to come to life?

Scarlet becomes the pretty face in Orange County Police’s Amusement Park District, a special branch of the police force that deals with cases that occur in the many amusement parks in the Central Florida area.  Something goes down in Disneyland, Universal Studios, Sea World, and any of the others?  They call this department.

And the cases get more than just line jumpers and lost kids.  In the first book I wrote, there was a Homicide.  In Main Street USA.

“UGH!  Disney and Gore should never mix.  Ever!”

– Scarlet, Murder in Main Street USA

I had two attempts at an origin story in comic book form.  Both of them kinda fell flat, mainly because of the way I felt constrained by the format of a web comic.  I found out that my creative juices flow the best in novel form.

Hence my NaNoWriMo project.  This year, I’m going to take the story and write it in novel form.  Pretty easy to do since I practically have the story already plotted earlier (Both in the web comic, and as a plot deck) and I pretty much know the story by heart.  I just wanted to have it done right, and better to have it done now than ten years down the road, like with Blood and Metal.

I also have a plan on how to publish it.  I’ve been looking into making submissions to magazines and Scarlet PI will be what I’ll be publishing with, and I’ve looked at the various submission guidelines to use.  Most of the magazines allow submissions of up to 20,000 words in length.  I hope to make three 20,000 word stories and make that into a 60,000 word Book 1.  Fair size for a NaNo project.

This is what I’ll be working in this November, and what I’ll be sharing with the other NaNos in the Southern Illinois Region.  You’ll also see me working on it at the new downtown hangout “The Wired Wedge” at Niederinghaus and 19th, across the intersection from the 7-11 and across the street from where the new Cinema is bring built.  I look forward to seeing many of the locals and cheering me on.  I hope.

People who go “Yiff In Hell, Furfag!!11!!1!” need not apply.

I tend to keep track of my word count among all the pieces I make while I’m writing books. And I found out that I’m just at Eric’s entrance into Vintnaos and I’m already at 30,000 words, almost half of the 60,000 words I keep as a first draft limit. I don’t have enough space to put in all of what I have right now. I think I expected this to happen; It ain’t uncommon for someone’s plot not to fit just right into the book you’re writing. (This is why I prefer to do series.)

I needed a little plot bunny where I can fit into the remaining <30K words. And I think I got it with the help of a certain Watchman:

Adrian Veidt: You wanna know my past? Okay. Happily. It’s a matter of public record that by seventeen both my parents were dead, leaving me alone. I guess you could say I’ve always been alone. I mean, they say I’m the smartest man in the world, but the truth is I’ve often felt stupid at being unable to relate to anybody. Well… anyone living, that is. The only person with whom I felt any kinship died three hundred years before the birth of Christ. Alexander of Macedonia. His vision of a United world, well… it was unprecedented. I wanted… needed to match his accomplishments, and so I resolved to apply antiquity’s teachings to our world today, and so began my path to conquest. Conquest not of men, but of the evils that beset them. Fossil Fuels. Oil. Nuclear Power. Like a drug, and you, gentlemen, along with foreign interests, are the pushers.
Business Partner: Now listen.
Adrian Veidt: No. You Listen. The world will survive. And it deserves more than you’ve been able to provide. So let’s cut to it, shall we? Privately I’m worth more than all of your corporations combined, I could buy and sell you three times over, which is something you should factor into your decision should you choose to make out disagreement public. I think you know the way out.
Veidt’s Secretary: The toy people wanna talk to you about some new villains for the Ozymandias line. Seems all the old villains are dead.
Business Partner: Mr Veidt?
Adrian Veidt: I think I have some ideas.

 

Fortunately for me, I have a character in Vintanos who is pretty much like Ozymandias.  I just hope he doesn’t summon Cthulhu anytime soon.  That would be Eric’s job.

The little plot bunny I found came from one of Mr. Veidt’s plans for unlimited and clean energy.  It concerns the source of Vintnaos’ power grid, which is a combination of hydraulic and coal.  My Ozy, who is running that power grid, finds coal as a necessary evil and would be drawn to the Clean Coal technology shown in the magazines in King Acorn’s probe.  He’ll also be interested in using Wind and Solar to supplement the power grid.  This is countered by a couple lizard oil execs who are trying to push oil from a foreign company and get Vintnaos to go to the new automobiles instead of what could be one of the better public transportation systems on Maatla (Two Words:  Cable Cars.  Cable Cars are Love.)

It’s a combination of two of my favorite environmental and civil planning topics.  The first is the popular demand for a clean power grid.  As much as some would want to, a sudden jump from oil to clean power is unfeasible to America.  What could be easier for America is a gradual process:  First off, have all of your oil come from domestic sources—Unfortunately, that means drill, at first.—but the use of the local oil resource can be used as a stepping stone as we make a transfer to the cleaner energy sources, and over time reduce our use of oil in general—domestic and foreign.  To us, oil is a necessary evil, but it shouldn’t be as evil as some environmental fucktards claim it is; remember that they’d rather see America reduced to third world living qualities.  (They even fap to the idea.)

The second part is what I’ve seen in St. Louis History . . . and from other cities.

And an animated/live action film form the 80s:

Doom: Several months ago I had the good providence to stumble upon this plan of the city council’s. A construction plan of epic proportions. They’re calling it a freeway.

Eddie: Freeway? What the hell’s a freeway?

Doom: Eight lanes of shimmering cement running from here to Pasadena. Smooth, safe, fast. Traffic jams will be a thing of the past.

Eddie: So that’s why you killed Acme and Maroon? For this freeway? I don’t get it.

Doom: Of course not. You lack vision. I see a place where people get on and off the freeway. On and off, off and on, all day, all night. Soon, where Toontown once stood will be a string of gas stations, inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards reaching as far as the eye can see! My God! It’ll be beautiful.

Eddie: Come on! Nobody’s gonna drive this lousy freeway when they can take the Red Car for a nickel.

Doom: Oh, they’ll drive. They’ll have to. You see, I bought the Red Car so I could dismantle it.

Car companies wanted as many people driving as humanly possible, and sees public transportation as an obstacle to that.  So they buy the public transit systems and intentionally run them into the ground.  We had a decent street car system here in St. Louis during the depression era, but General Motors screwed it up.  Literary.  In the streets.  They forced people to get a car if they ever want to see beyond their immediate 3-4 city blocks, instead of being able to hit the Metro and go anywhere they wished.  The result is congested roads with heavy traffic at rush hours—at times even rush hours before the fucking sun is up; urban sprawl as people started looking into the suburban regions to have some resemblance of a civil life—or to show up on their neighbors and friends; the inability of youth to find a place where they can hang out within walking distance; that’s part of the reason why children are fat, the need to get in the car to go somewhere; and the possibility of gas fumes being worse for the environment than coal emissions because of the sheer number of cars out there.

And that’s not counting the billboards that plague the St. Louis area.  Or all of Missouri, for that matter.

I’m not completely against cars, if you need one, go for it.  If you need an SUV so that you can take your kids and groceries out and about, feel free.  I just say that there should be options to just taking the car everywhere.  In my Metro East home in Madison County, we have a public transit system that’s state of the art, with not only high class busses and bus stations, but also a system of bike routes which the busses assist—they even have bike racks on the busses.  It’s not perfect, but for some people who can’t afford cars or shouldn’t be driving, it’s a good benchmark for other cities to use.

And with this plot bunny, Eric uses this tactic to defend Vintnaos’ street cars, and his friend’s power grids.  I’m convinced that it’ll show a lot more of the story’s main city, and help establish more of the main players in the game.

No Cthulhu, though.  I call no Cthulhus.  Sorry, Ozy.

Something tells me that I might need to reopen that Wiki (It’s still in the same directory if you remember it) to collect the notes I need to show to people.  The first of which involve the calendar Maatla uses, which is starkly different form the Julian Calendar we know.

The year number starts from the birth of Donnovan, an important religious figure, 2058 years before Eric’s not-so-grand entrance. The months are taken from Maatlan’s version of the Chinese Zodiac:

Spring: Rat, Dragon, Monkey

Summer: Ox, Bear, Rooster

Fall: Tiger, Horse, Dog

Winter: Rabbit, Sheep, Pig

Months are 28 days each, broken down into four weeks of seven days, with days noted by the seven elements known in Maatla: Sunday, Moonday, Earthday, Fireday, Airday, Waterday, and Spiritday. Spiritdays, like Sundays on Earth, are considered a day of worship and rest, and most businesses do not operate at that day. Some businesses and most schools do not operate on Sunday as well.

Holidays differ from country to country, but nearly all countries celebrate Rat 1; the first day of each year. It is the designated birthday of Donnovan, and is usually called Advent. It is similar to your Yuletime holidays, such as Christmas or Hanukah.

More such tips will come up as they are needed.  If you’d like, you can help out by calling out whatever questions needed answering in the story.  I’ll do my best to answer each one as they come up.

You wanna know why I try to support the President despite (1) Not voting for him, and (2) being a 9-12er?