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Do you think there's a spirit of Black Friday?
Operation Weihnachtswunder (A CK2 Style Quest to Save Christmas!)
- Thread starter Novus Ordo Mundi
- Start date
Ebenezer had a very fraught run-in with the spirit of May Day back when it thought he was still an enemy of the proletariat
SmashQueen
Professional duck-cat.
Popping in real quick to throw in my two cents. With Black Friday becoming more and more advertised now days, with even "early Black Friday deals!" days or weeks in advance, it could be argued that Thanksgiving might be annoyed at the fact that more people look forward to buying stuff than about celebrating the actual Holiday that comes before it. If so, I can't see this Holiday joining in with Amazon so easily. New Year's and Halloween, though, probably.
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- The Usual Room
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So, the current plan is to work on Cecilia tomorrow. I would like to know, what kind of inventions do you want to see?
Thematically, I think she'd be trying to build armor and other types of protections after her experiences. Especially for Krampus, due to her Minor Trauma. Maybe full-on steampunk mecha suits that transform into a sleigh for transport?
There probably isnt one spirit of may day. There are alot of them, and they are very well organized and tightly linked but unfortunatly hate eachother over small dumb diffrences like a most of the left unfortunatly does.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Thanksgiving is pretty localized, though. Like, I think it's maybe only the US and Canada. If you're going go include that one on the list of suspects, then you ought to start considering possibilities like Diwali Day too.
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- The Usual Room
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Good morning! How is everyone today?
I do enjoy Dwarves! And Europe has so much interesting shit to draw from!
Okay, that gives me an idea. +1 to ???
Is now researching Diwali Day.
I do enjoy Dwarves! And Europe has so much interesting shit to draw from!
Okay, that gives me an idea. +1 to ???
Is now researching Diwali Day.
Could it be an older holiday trying to make a comeback from the shadows rather than a current one? Could Midwinter Solstice be trying to retake an old spot by muscling out the usurper Claus?
It wouldn't have a lot of power, but it might have backdoors into a lot of the winter related stuff now associated with christmas.
It wouldn't have a lot of power, but it might have backdoors into a lot of the winter related stuff now associated with christmas.
- Location
- The great frozen north
Yeah if we go through mortal courts, choice of venue will be important. Amazon is stubborn and this will probably go all the way to the highest court in the land, meaning we'd NEED a country where the Supreme Court or equivalent is still relatively fair-handed. So not the United States, I'm saying.
Also, I see a lot of our actions this turn had the effect of unlocking new actions. I know we're still in the set-up phase of the quest, but I hope this is not a long-turn trend. Too often CK2 quests get bogged down in Action Economy Hell because pulling at interesting threads just make the to-do list chonkier.
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Let's be real. We wouldn't be looking for "fair-handed". We're looking for "biased in our favor".
Also, while it would be in our favour this one time, I don't think "magical creatures are not covered by human laws" is a prescedent we want to actually set.
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- Dragyxx
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No, we want to establish that magical creatures are covered by human laws.
Because then we can hit Amazon with the fact that slavery is illegal.
If magical reindeer are animals, they can be owned, bought, and sold. But if magical reindeer are people, then they can't, and the contract could be declared illegal and dissolved.
Which is why one of the big problems here is that Blitzen is a reindeer, and currently reindeer are legally animals.
Because then we can hit Amazon with the fact that slavery is illegal.
If magical reindeer are animals, they can be owned, bought, and sold. But if magical reindeer are people, then they can't, and the contract could be declared illegal and dissolved.
Which is why one of the big problems here is that Blitzen is a reindeer, and currently reindeer are legally animals.
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- The Usual Room
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So, just as a teaser, where exactly do you see Cecilia? Because there will be a vote at the end of Cecilia's portion of the Interlude.
(Also, taking some online classes! I forgot how much I hated homework...)
(Also, taking some online classes! I forgot how much I hated homework...)
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Thinking about it... it seems like our power really does flow best along the path of Christmas Specials. So if we want to beat Amazon in the courts, the *first* thing to do is to pick a jurisdiction... and then to give a number of lawyers, justices, and/or influential governmental figures of that jurisdiction Significant Life-Changing Experiences where they become filled with the Christmas Spirit and come to Understand the True Meaning of Christmas, ideally while coming to recognize the problems inherent in the growing commercialization of the world and/or feeling personally indebted to us and/or our people for the blessings we brought into their lives and/or the problems we saved them from.
Honestly, we're probably best off picking the UK as our jurisdiction, if only because of our increased access here, and our ability to leverage the Mandatory Reporting/Krampus combo.
Honestly, we're probably best off picking the UK as our jurisdiction, if only because of our increased access here, and our ability to leverage the Mandatory Reporting/Krampus combo.
no mention of easter?
if fae are involved one take could be that it's a particularly nature-associated holiday, but hard to say. also worth noting easter has some religious overtones too, which could be a factor either way tbh (means it's harder for it to be screwed with, but there may be religious shenanigans going on already, or maybe something to do with how christmas and easter are linked?)
hoping to find the physical copy may be the least risky, as so long as we're sneaky there's no issue with being forced into a painful legal battle. though doing so would probably mean we need to get around amazon's defences (and find a single document that's probs kept hidden and secure), which we're currently not capable of (the coat could help, but we're still intrigue 1)
i think the assumption is that any fair court would go "wtf of course you can't enslave sentients either" so it's fine so long as they're good people, but that's probably a bit biased of ourselves now i think about it
...huh
weird question, but can we figure out something to just make Blitzen *not* a reindeer for a short while? do that, he's a human so covered by the law, contract immediately poofs into irrelevancy because it's self-evidently unlawful, the effect runs out, things are good
if it requires overturning their entire mythology that says "blitzen is a reindeer cmon" it might be *crazy difficult* but i'm sure there's a whole bunch of christmas-adjacent things where an animal turns into a human or vice versa that'd give the magic some structure that we could take advantage to for this?
as in, where in the house do we chat? wherever they currently are, probably?
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- The Usual Room
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Good Morning! Update is fighting me a little bit, and I have a doctor's appointment for my arm. But I'm going to post a little preview! (Remember, it's not canon until it makes it into a proper Update!)
--
"Did you know Christmas Spirit can be a renewable resource?"
For Cecilia, this meant listening to her as she told you her ideas.
Cecilia has taken over the one remaining table in the workshop, and had already gotten to work putting up plans, schematics, and tools all over the place. It's fine for now, as you don't have enough employees to fill all the tables for one shift anyways.
You raise an eyebrow. "Really? How so?"
Plop!
As a response, Cecilia drops a tiny brick of Christmas Spirit onto the table.
"Think about it! We spread peace, goodwill, charity, and toys!" She loudly proclaims as she turns towards what looks to be a small brass toy train, with a little hole in the back. "And in return, we get Christmas Spirit! Now, raw Christmas Spirit is pretty much a tangible gas of possibility. It can be molded, spun, folded, and etched and whittled with tools. But you know what really helps give it form and use?
You do know, thanks to a set of working instructions that came with the Workshop Seed. But Cecilia seems like she's on a roll, and you don't want to stop it. "Why don't you tell me?"
"The Will of the Shaper!" Cecilia yells, as she shoves the brick into the toy train, before closing the door over it
--
"Did you know Christmas Spirit can be a renewable resource?"
For Cecilia, this meant listening to her as she told you her ideas.
Cecilia has taken over the one remaining table in the workshop, and had already gotten to work putting up plans, schematics, and tools all over the place. It's fine for now, as you don't have enough employees to fill all the tables for one shift anyways.
You raise an eyebrow. "Really? How so?"
Plop!
As a response, Cecilia drops a tiny brick of Christmas Spirit onto the table.
"Think about it! We spread peace, goodwill, charity, and toys!" She loudly proclaims as she turns towards what looks to be a small brass toy train, with a little hole in the back. "And in return, we get Christmas Spirit! Now, raw Christmas Spirit is pretty much a tangible gas of possibility. It can be molded, spun, folded, and etched and whittled with tools. But you know what really helps give it form and use?
You do know, thanks to a set of working instructions that came with the Workshop Seed. But Cecilia seems like she's on a roll, and you don't want to stop it. "Why don't you tell me?"
"The Will of the Shaper!" Cecilia yells, as she shoves the brick into the toy train, before closing the door over it
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
Somewhat ironically, this characterizes Christmas as essentially a profit driven enterprise.
Resources and labor are acquired through
Blake Midwinter and Jeff Bezos aren't evil because they're doing a capitalism, they're evil because they're bad at it, optimizing the wrong targets and making the wrong numbers go up.
Their greatest achievement, clearly, is breaking the old Claus Monopoly and returning the spirit of the free market back to the holidays.
Meanwhile, we're the good guys not because our motivations are any more moral, but because the very moral fabric of the universe bends to make the actions we take for profit, also be the ones most moral.
Like, this isn't meant to be some harsh criticism (and I know this is sounding harsher than I intend it to be), but it's an odd feature that a quest centered around the fight against the increasing commercialization of Christmas, has the profit motive as it's core mechanic, and is populated with enough marketable figures to qualify as a marvel crossover movie.
But wealth isn't inherently good, while the increase of Christmas cheer probably is. Bezos' Christmas is going to make global cheer decline because it's focused on accumulating something morally neutral/bad instead of accumulating something morally good.
So yes, it's capitalism by another name, but in-universe it's justified as moral.
So yes, it's capitalism by another name, but in-universe it's justified as moral.
Is the goal hoarding as much Christmas Spirit (aka mythical capital) as possible?
Or is CS just a resource we need to be able to fulfill our main purpose (spread peace, goodwill, charity, and toys)? (With our engineer noting its a virtuos circle, spreading peace etc (main purpose) generating CS (resource) which we can then use to spread more peace etc (main purpose)?
Bezos main objective isn't spreading his money among the people.
Santa Scrooges main objective is spreading the Christmas Spirit.
Bezos:
Have money (main purpose), use some of it to make even more money to have even more money (main purpose).
Santa Scrooge:
Spread CS (main purpose) gaining more CS to spread.
Bezos embodies the dragon disease, Santa Scrooge doesn't.
But they do have parallels. And Santa Scrooge could theoretically be corrupted to become another Bezos.
(Even communism would try to increases the means of production to better be able to suit the needs of its people)
Sirrocco
Pedantic
Well... the internet does have quite a lot of imagery in varying degrees of pornographic where the various reindeer are humanized to whatever level while still being visibly themselves... and "Santa gave me this fantastic present" is often part of the paper-thin justification....