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shihalyfie · 3 years

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Hi :) If it's not too much trouble, could you please share your take on why they'd continue the Adventure brand after tri. was such a flop? (and a tangent: what does "dark history" even mean?). We got Kizuna, the reboot, and a 02 movie. Logically, it doesn't really make sense they'd keep investing in it.

This is a thorny topic, and I'd like to reiterate that although I've ended up making more posts related to this series and the discourse surrounding it recently (probably because it's even more on the mind now that another movie is on the horizon and a lot of people are apprehensive for various reasons), I do not want this blog to be making a brand out of being critical of this series. I’m writing this here and in public because I figured that there is a certain degree I need to clarify what I mean about audience reception/climate and how it might impact current or future works, and I’m admittedly also more than a little upset that I occasionally see Western fanbase criticisms of the series getting dismissed by people claiming that the only people mad about it are dramamongering or ignorant Westerners (which could not be further from the truth). However, this is mainly to address this and to answer your question, and is not intended to try and change anyone's existing opinion or impression of the series as much as it's me trying to explain (from my own personal reading of the situation) what practically went down with critical reception in real life; no more, no less.

The short summary of the matter is:

The series was a moderate financial success (albeit with some caveats; see the long version for details) and definitely outstripped a lot of prior attempts to revive the franchise;

However, the overall Japanese fanbase-side critical backlash from tri. was extremely and viciously negative to the point where even acknowledging the series too much could easily result in controversy;

Kizuna’s production and the PR surrounding it very obviously have this in mind with a lot of apparent “damage control” elements.

The long version is below.

Note that while I try to be diligent about citing my sources so people understand that I’m not just making things up wholesale, I’m deliberately refraining from linking certain things here this time, both because some of the things mentioned have some pretty crude things written there -- it’s not something I feel comfortable directing people to regardless of what language it’s in -- and because I don’t want to recklessly link things on social media and cause anyone to go after or harass the people involved. For the links that have been provided, please still be warned that some of them don’t really link to particularly pleasant things.

I am not writing the following information to suggest that anyone should agree or disagree with the sentiments being described. I know people tend to take "a lot of people like/hate this" as a signal of implication "it is correct to like/hate this" when it's not (and I especially dislike the idea of implying that Japanese fanbase opinions are the only correct ones). There's a reason I focus on "critical reception being this way" (because it influences marketing decisions and future direction) rather than how much this should impact one's personal feelings; this is coming from myself as someone who is shamelessly proud of liking many things that had bad critical reception, were financial failures, or are disliked by many. As I point out near the end, the situation also does seem to be changing for the better in more recent years as well.

Also, to be clear, I'm a single person who's observing everything best I can from my end, I have no affiliations with staff nor do I claim to, and as much as I'm capable of reading Japanese and thus reading a lot of people's impressions, I'm ultimately still another “outsider” looking in. These are my impressions from my observation of fan communal spaces, following artists and reading comments on social media and art posting websites, and results from social media searches. In the end, I know as much as anyone else about what happened, so this is just my two cents based on all of my personal observations.

A fanbase is a fanbase regardless of what part of the world you're from. There are people who love it and are shameless about saying so. There are people who have mixed feelings or at least aren't on extreme ends of the spectrum (as always, the loudest ones are always the most visible, but it's not always easy to claim they're the predominant percentage of the fanbase). That happens everywhere, and I still find that on every end I've seen. However, if I'm talking about my impressions and everything I’ve encountered, I will say that the overall Japanese reaction to tri. comes off as significantly more violently negative on average than the Western one, which is unusual because often it's the other way around. (I personally feel less so because the opinions are that fundamentally different and more so because we're honestly kind of loud and in-your-face people; otherwise, humans are mostly the same everywhere, and more often than not people feel roughly the same about everything if they’re given the same information to work with.)

This is not something I can say lightly, and thus would not say if I didn’t really get this impression, but...we're talking "casually looking up movie reviews for Kizuna have an overwhelming amount of people casually citing any acknowledgment of tri. elements as a negative element", or the fact that even communal wikis for "general" fandoms like Pixiv and Aniwota don't tend to hold back in being vicious about it (as of this writing, Pixiv's wiki refuses to consider it in the same timeline as Adventure, accusing it of being "a series that claims to be a sequel set three years after 02 but is in fact something different"). Again, there are people who openly enjoy it and actively advocate for it (and Pixiv even warns people to not lord over others about it condescendingly because of the fact that such people do exist), and this is also more of a reflection of “the hardcore fanbase on the Internet” and not necessarily the mainstream (after all, there are quite a few other Digimon works where the critical reception varies very heavily between the two). Nevertheless, the take-home is that the reputation is overall negative among the Internet fanbase to the point that this is the kind of sentiment you run into without trying all that hard.

I think, generally speaking, if we're just talking about why a lot of people resent the series, the reasons aren't that different from those on the Western side. However, that issue of "dark history" (黒歴史): there's a certain degree of demand from the more violently negative side of the fanbase that's, in a sense, asking official to treat it as a disgrace and never acknowledge it ever again, hence why Kizuna doing so much as borrowing things from it rather than rejecting it outright is still sometimes treated like it’s committing a sin. So it's somewhat close in spirit to a retcon movement, which is unusual because no other Digimon series gets this (not even 02; that was definitely a thing on the Western end, but while I'm sure there are people who hate it that much on their end too, I've never really seen it gain enough momentum for anyone to take it seriously). If anyone ever tells you that Japanese fanbases are nice to everything, either they don't know Japanese, are being willfully ignorant, or are lying to you, because there is such thing as drama in those areas, and in my experience, I've seen things get really nasty when things are sufficiently pushed over the edge, and if a fanbase wants to have drama, it will have drama. This happens to be one of those times.

(If you think this is extreme, please know that I also think so too, so I hope you really understand that me describing this sentiment does not mean I am personally endorsing it. Also, let me reiterate that the loudest section of the fanbase is not necessarily the predominant one; after all, as someone who’s been watching reactions to 02 over the years, I myself can attest that its hatedom has historically made it sound more despised than it actually is in practice.)

My impression is that the primary core sentiment behind why the series so much as existing and being validated is considered such an offense (rather than, say, just saying "wow, that writing was bad" and moving on) is heavily tied to the release circumstances the series came out in during 2015-2018, and the idea that "this series disrespected Adventure, and also disrespected the fanbase.” (I mean, really, regardless of what part of the world you’re from, sequels and adaptations tend to be held to a higher bar of expectation than standalone works, because they’re expected to do them justice.) A list of complaints I’ve come across a lot while reading through the above:

The Japanese fanbase is pretty good at recordkeeping when it comes to Adventure universe lore, partially because they got a lot of extra materials that weren’t localized, but also partially because adherence to it seems to generally be more Serious Business to them than it is elsewhere. For instance, “according to Adventure episode 45, ‘the one who wishes for stability’ (Homeostasis) only started choosing children in 1995, and therefore there can be no Chosen Children before 1995” is taken with such gravity that this, not anything to do with evolutions or timeline issues, is the main reason Hurricane Touchdown’s canonicity was disputed in that arena (because Wallace implies that he met his partners before 1995). It’s a huge reason the question of Kizuna also potentially not complying to lore came to the forefront, because tri. so flagrantly contradicts it so much that this issue became very high on the evaluation checklist. In practice, Kizuna actually goes against Adventure/02 very little, so the reason tri. in particular comes under fire for this is that it does it so blatantly there were theories as early as Part 1 that this series must take place in a parallel universe or something, and as soon as it became clear it didn’t, the resulting sentiment was “wow, you seriously thought nobody would notice?” (thus “disrespecting the audience”).

A lot of the characterization incongruity is extremely obvious when you’re following only the Japanese version, partially because it didn’t have certain localization-induced characterization changes (you are significantly less likely to notice a disparity with Mimi if you’re working off the American English dub where they actually did make her likely to step on others’ toes and be condescending, whereas in Japanese the disparity is jarring and hard to miss) and partially due to some things lost in translation (Mimi improperly using rough language on elders is much easier to spot as incongruity if you’re familiar with the language). Because it’s so difficult to miss, and honestly feels like a lot of strange writing decisions you’d make only if you really had no concept of what on earth happened in the original series, it only contributes to the idea that they were handling Adventure carelessly and disrespectfully without paying attention to what the series was even about (that, or worse, they didn’t care).

02 is generally well-liked there! It’s controversial no matter where you go, but as I said earlier, there was no way a retcon movement would have ever been taken seriously, and the predominant sentiment is that, even if you’re not a huge fan of it, its place in canon (even the epilogue) should be respected. So not only flagrantly going against 02-introduced lore but also doing that to a certain quartet is seen as malicious, and you don’t have as much of the converse discourse celebrating murdering the 02 quartet (yeah, that’s a thing that happened here) or accusing people with complaints of “just being salty because they like 02″ as nearly as much of a factor; I did see it happen, or at least dismissals akin to “well it’s Adventure targeted anyway,” but they were much less frequent. The issue with the 02 quartet is usually the first major one brought up, and there’s a lot of complaints even among those who don’t care for 02 as much that the way they went about it was inhumane and hypocritical, especially when killing Imperialdramon is fine but killing Meicoomon is a sin. Also, again, “you seriously think nobody will see a problem with how this doesn’t make sense?”

I think even those who are fans of the series generally agree with this, but part of the reason the actual real-life time this series went on is an important factor is that the PR campaign for this series was godawful. Nine months of clicking on an egg on a website pretending like audience participation meant something when in actuality it was blatantly obvious it was just a smokescreen to reveal info whenever they were ready? This resulted in a chain effect where even more innocuous/defensible things were viewed in a suspicious or negative light (for instance, "the scam of selling the fake Kaiser's goggles knowing Ken fans would buy it only to reveal that it's not him anyway"), and a bunch of progressively out-of-touch-with-the-fanbase statements and poor choices led to more sentiment “yeah, you’re just insulting the fanbase at this point,” and a general erosion of trust in official overall.

On top of that, the choice of release format to have it spread out as six movies over three years seems to have exacerbated the backlash to get much worse than it would have been otherwise, especially since one of the major grievances with the series is that how it basically strung people along, building up more and more unanswered questions before it became apparent it was never going to answer them anyway. So when you’re getting that frustrated feeling over three whole years, it feels like three years of prolonged torture, and it becomes much harder to forgive for the fallout than if you’d just marathoned the entire thing at once.

For those who are really into the Digimon (i.e. species) lore and null canon, while I’m not particularly well-versed in that side of the fanbase, it seems tri. fell afoul of them too for having inaccurately portrayed (at one point, mislabeled) special attacks and poorly done battle choreography, along with the treatment of Digimon in general (infantilized Digimon characterization, general lack of Digimon characters in general, very flippant treatment of the Digital World in Parts 3-5). If you say you’re going to “reboot” the Digital World and not address the entire can of worms that comes with basically damaging an entire civilization of Digimon, as you can imagine, a lot of people who actually really care about that are going to be pissed, and the emerging sentiment is “you’re billing this as a Digimon work, but you don’t even care about the monsters that make up this franchise.”

The director does not have a very positive reputation among those who know his work (beyond just Digimon), and in general there was a lot of suspicion around the fact they decided to get a guy whose career has primarily been built on harem and fanservice anime to direct a sequel to a children’s series. Add to that a ton of increasingly unnerving statements about how he intended to make the series “mature” in comparison to its predecessor (basically, an implication that Adventure and 02 were happy happy joy series where nothing bad ever happened) and descriptions of Adventure that implied a very, very poor grasp of anything that happened in it: inaccurate descriptions of their characters, poor awareness of 02′s place in the narrative, outright saying in Febri that he saw the Digimon as like perpetual kindergartners even after evolving, and generally such a flippant attitude that it drove home the idea that the director of an Adventure sequel had no respect for Adventure, made this series just to maliciously dunk on it for supposedly being immature, and has such a poor grasp of what it even was that it’s possible he may not have seen it in the first place (or if he did, clearly skimmed it to the extent he understood it poorly to pretty disturbing levels). As of this writing, Aniwota Wiki directly cites him as a major reason for the backlash.

In general, consensus seems to be that the most positively received aspect of the series (story-wise) was Part 3 (mostly its ending, but some are more amenable to the Takeru and Patamon drama), and the worst vitriol goes towards Parts 2 (for the blatantly contradictory portrayal of Mimi and Jou and the hypocritical killing of Imperialdramon) and 4 (basically the “point of no return” where even more optimistic people started getting really turned off). This is also what I suspect is behind the numbers on the infamous DigiPoll (although the percentage difference is admittedly low enough to fall within margin of error). However, there was suspicion about the series even from Part 1, with one prominent fanartist openly stating that it felt more like meeting a ton of new people than it did reuniting with anyone they knew.

So with all of that on the table: how did this affect official? The thing is that when I say “violently negative”, I mean that also entailed spamming official with said violently negative social media comments. While this is speculation, I am fairly certain that official must have realized how bad this was getting as early as between Parts 4 and 5, because that’s where a lot of really suspicious things started happening behind the scenes; while I imagine the anime series itself was now too far in to really do anything about it, one of the most visible producers suddenly vanished from the producer lineup and was replaced by Kinoshita Yousuke, who ended up being the only member of tri. staff shared with Kizuna (and, in general, the fact that not a single member of staff otherwise was retained kind of says a lot). Once the series ended in 2018 and the franchise slowly moved into Kizuna-related things, you might notice that tri.-branded merch production almost entirely screeched to a halt and official has been very touchy about acknowledging it too deeply; it’s not that they don’t, but it’s kind of an awfully low amount for what you’d think would be warranted for a series that’s supposed to be a full entry in the big-name Adventure brand.

The reason is, simply, that if they do acknowledge it too much, people will get pissed at them. That’s presumably why the tri. stage play (made during that interim period between Parts 4 and 5 and even branded with the title itself) and Kizuna are really hesitant to be too aggressive about tri. references; it’s not necessarily that official wants to blot it out of history like the most extreme opinions would like them to, but even being too enthusiastic about affirming it will also get them backlash, especially if the things they affirm are contradictory to Adventure or 02. And considering even the small references they did put in still got them criticism for “affirming” tri. too much, you can easily see that the backlash would have been much harder if they’d attempted more than that; staying as close as possible to Adventure and 02 and trying to deal with tri. elements only when they’re comparatively inoffensive was pretty much the “safe” thing to do in this scenario (especially since fully denying tri. would most certainly upset the people who did like the series, and if you have to ask me, I personally think this would have been a pretty crude thing to have done right after the series had just finished). Even interviews taken after the fact often involve quickly disclaiming involvement with the series, or, if they have to bring up something about it, discussing the less controversial aspects like the art (while the character designs were still controversial, it’s at least at the point where some fanartists will still be willing to make use of them even if they dislike the series, albeit often with prominent disclaimers) or the more well-received parts of Part 3; Kizuna was very conspicuously marketed as a standalone movie, even if it shared the point of “the Adventure kids, but older” that tri. had.

(Incidentally, the tri. stage play has generally been met with a good reputation and was received well even among people who were upset with the anime, so it was well-understood that they had no relation. In fact, said stage play is probably even better received than Kizuna, although that’s not too surprising given the controversial territory Kizuna goes into, making the stage play feel very play-it-safe in comparison.)

So, if we’re going to talk about Kizuna in particular: tri. was, to some degree, a moderate financial success, in the sense that it made quite a bit of money and did a lot to raise awareness of the Digimon brand still continuing...however, if you actually look at the sales figures for tri., they go down every movie; part of it was probably because of the progressively higher “hurdle” to get into a series midway, but consider that Gundam Unicorn (a movie series which tri.’s format was often compared to) had its sales go up per movie thanks to word of mouth and hype. So while tri. does seem to have gotten enough money to help sustain the franchise at first, the trade-off was an extremely livid fanbase that had shattered faith in the brand and in official, and so while continuing the Adventure brand might still be profitable, there was no way they were going to get away with continuing to do this lest everything eventually crash and burn.

Hence, if you look at the way Kizuna was produced and advertised, you can see a lot of it is blatantly geared at addressing a lot of the woes aimed at tri.: instead of the staff that had virtually no affiliation with Toei, the main members of staff announced were either from the original series (Seki and Yamatoya) or openly childhood fans, the 02 quartet was made into a huge advertising point as a dramatic DigiFes reveal (and character profies that tie into the 02 epilogue careers prominently part of the advertising from day one), and they even seemed to acknowledge the burnout on the original Adventure group by advertising it so heavily as “the last adventure of Taichi and his friends”, so you can see that there’s a huge sentiment of “damage control” with it. How successful that was...is debatable, since opinions have been all over the board; quite a few people were naturally so livid at what happened with tri. that Kizuna was just opening more of the wound, but there were also people who liked it much better and were willing to acknowledge it (with varying levels of enthusiasm, some simply saying “it was thankfully okay,” and some outright loving it), and there was a general sentiment even among those who disliked both that they at least understood what Kizuna was going for and that it didn’t feel as inherently disrespectful. (Of course, there are people who loved tri. and hated Kizuna, and there are people who loved both, too.)

Moreover, Kizuna actually has a slightly different target audience from tri.; there’s a pretty big difference between an OVA and a theatrical movie, and, quite simply, Kizuna was made under the assumption that a lot of people watching it may not have even seen tri. in the first place. An average of 11% of the country watched Adventure and 02, but the number of people who watched tri. is much smaller, in part due to the fact that its “theater” screenings were only very limited screenings compared to Kizuna being shown in theaters in Japan and worldwide, and in part due to the fact that watching six parts over three years is a pretty huge commitment for someone who may barely remember Digimon as anything beyond a show they watched as a kid, and may be liable to just fall off partway through because they simply just forgot. (Which also probably wasn’t helped by the infamously negative reputation, something that definitely wouldn’t encourage someone already on the fence.) And that’s yet another reason Kizuna couldn’t make too many concrete tri. references; being a theatrical movie, it needs to have as wide appeal as possible, and couldn’t risk locking out an audience that had a very high likelihood of not having seen it, much less to the end -- it may have somewhat been informed by tri.’s moderate financial success and precedent, but it ultimately was made for the original Adventure and 02 audience more than anything else.

I would say that, generally, while Kizuna is “controversial” for sure, reception towards the movie seems to be more positive than negative, it won over a large chunk of people who were burned out by tri., and it clearly seems to have been received well enough that it’s still being cashed in on a year after its release. The sheer existence of the upcoming 02-based movie is also probably a sign of Kizuna’s financial and critical success; Kinoshita confirmed at DigiFes 2020 that nothing was in production at the time, and stated shortly after the movie’s announcement that work on it had just started. So the decision to make it seems to have been made after eyeing Kizuna’s reception, and, moreover, the movie was initially advertised from the get-go with Kizuna’s director and writer (Taguchi and Yamatoya), meaning those two have curried enough goodwill from the fanbase that this can be used to promote the movie. (If not, you would think that having and advertising Seki would be the bigger priority.) While this is my own sentiment, I am personally doubtful official would have even considered 02 something remotely profitable enough on its own to cash in on if it weren’t for this entire sequence of events of 02′s snubbing in tri. revealing how much of a fanbase it had (especially with the sheer degree of “suspicious overcompensation” Kizuna had with its copious use of the 02 quartet and it tagging a remix of the first 02 ED on the Hanareteitemo single, followed by the drama CD and character songs), followed by Kizuna having success in advertising with them so heavily. Given all of the events between 2015 and now, it’s a bit ironic to see that 02 has now become basically the last resort to be able to continue anything in the original Adventure universe without getting too many people upset at them about it.

The bright side coming out of all of this is that, while it’s still a bit early to tell, now that we’re three years out from tri. finishing up and with Kizuna in the game, it seems there’s a possibility for things improving around tri.’s reception as well. Since a lot of the worst heated points of backlash against it have a very “you had to have been there” element (related to the PR, release schedule, and staff comments), those coming in “late” don’t have as much reason to be as pissed at it; I’ve seen at least one case of a fanartist getting back into the franchise because of Kizuna hype, watching tri. to catch up, casually criticizing it on Twitter, and moving on with their life, presumably because marathoning the whole thing being generally aware of what’ll happen in it and knowing Kizuna is coming after anyway gives you a lot less reason to be angry to the point of holding an outright grudge. Basically, even if you don’t like it, it’s much easier to actually go “yeah, didn’t like that,” not worry too much about it, and move on. Likewise, I personally get the impression that official has been starting to get a little more confident about digging up elements related to it. Unfortunately, a fairly recent tweet promoting the series getting put on streaming services still got quite a few angry comments implying that they should be deleting the scourge from the Internet instead, so there’s still a long way to go, but hopefully the following years will see things improve further...

In regards to the reboot, I -- and I think a lot of people will agree with me -- have a bit of a hard time reading what exact audience it’s trying to appeal to; we have a few hints from official that they want parents to watch it with their children, and that it may have been a necessary ploy in order to secure their original timeslot. So basically, the Adventure branding gets parents who grew up with the original series to be interested in it and to show it to their kids, and convinces Fuji TV that it might be profitable. But as most people have figured by now, the series has a completely different philosophy and writing style -- I mean, the interview itself functionally admits it’s here to be more action-oriented and to have its own identity -- and the target audience is more the kids than anything else. As for the Internet fanbase of veterans, most people have been critical of its character writing and pacing, but other than a few stragglers who are still really pissed, it hasn’t attracted all that much vitriol, probably because in the end it’s an alternate universe, it doesn’t have any obligation to adhere to anything from the original even if it uses the branding, and it’s clearly still doing its job of being a kids’ show for kids who never saw the original series nor 02, so an attempt to call it “disrespectful” to the original doesn’t have much to stand on. A good number of people who are bored of it decided it wasn’t interesting to them and dropped it without incident, while other people are generally just enjoying it for being fun, and the huge amount of Digimon franchise fanservice with underrepresented Digimon and high fidelity to null canon lore is really pleasing the side of the fanbase that’s into that (I mean, Digimon World Golemon is really deep in), so at the very least, there’s not a lot to be super-upset about.

#tri negativity #shiha's ask box #springcrafter

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redrobinhoods · 3 years

Text

Kamas and Commanders | the clone

AO3 Link | 4,200 words (approx) | Chapter 2

A/N: There wasn’t meant to be a romance here when I planned this out, but then there was when I was working on dialogue, so I ran with it and it opened up a bunch of opportunities for the plot going forward. This was also supposed to be a one-shot and here we are with a multi chaptered fic.

The open ending to this story will set up ‘seconds and years’, my next Foxiyo fic, the first chapter of which will release on the same day as the end to this one. So this fic will have an open ending, but the story will reach a conclusion.

Story Summary: As far as the galaxy is concerned, Fox is dead. As the last remaining commander of the Coruscant Guard, Thire has taken his place as commanding officer, promoting Jek and the stormtrooper Seeley to serve as his commanders under him. With tensions running high between the clones and the stormtroopers under his command, Thire tries to keep those under him safe as best he can.

Thire closed his eyes and leaned back into the warm water that ran from the shower tap above him. For a few moments, with his eyes closed, he could go somewhere else. Somewhere where his body didn’t ache, where he didn’t flinch when he moved from the scars that cut through his skin, where he still felt whole. In that place, he wouldn’t have been marked like cattle for market by his commanding officers. But only for a few moments. Life always came rushing back.

“Have you been having nightmares?”

“No?” Thire straightened up and turned to face Jek. “None that I can recall at any rate. Pass the soap?”

Jek sighed as he obliged. When Thire had taken the bar of soap from his hands, Jek gestured to a mark on his rib. “See this bruise? You did that, last night.”

“I’m sorry.” Thire turned away from Jek as he began to wash himself, cringing as he passed over the healing brand that wrapped around his left calf. He could feel Jek’s gaze on him, or at least on the same brand that marked his right shoulder blade. If Thire had looked over, he would have seen the same marks on his brother. Just in case they ever forgot what they were.

“Seeley is beginning to worry about you.”

“I don’t quite care for his opinion on the matter.”

“I’m beginning to worry about you.”

Thire closed his eyes, savoring the warmth of the water for a few moments more as the traces of soap ran off before turning off the tap and crossing the room to the bench that held his and Jek’s towels.

Jek followed after him. “I’m serious, Thire.”

“I know you are. It’s just the job getting to me, Jek.”

“That’s a lie. You’re carrying less responsibility now than you did when it was just you and Fox. What’s really wrong?”

Thire took a moment to bury his face in the towel and sigh. “I’m fine, Jek. Really. I’ll be fine.”

Jek was about to protest when another clone entered the showers, nodding to the two men as he passed by. “Commanders.”

“Impulse.” Jek acknowledged, giving Thire time to escape from his questions. Though Jek still followed right on his heels, there were too many men in the barracks for them to continue the conversation. It wouldn’t bode well for their commanding officers to be seen bickering over one’s health.

It had been six months since Fox was shot. Five months since Thire had last seen him face to face. Three days since they’d last talked. But only he and Jek knew about that. As far as the galaxy was concerned, Fox was dead. He’d died guarding Senator Riyo Chuchi from an assassin. Only six beings knew otherwise, that Fox himself had been the assassin’s target. Of those six, only four knew he still lived. Jek had faked Fox’s death by switching him out for a dying brother and counting on the new rotation of medical staff to be none the wiser to their differences. It had worked. Fox was dead. Then CT-5851 was dead, ‘killed’ in a munitions incident. There was no body.

With Fox’s death, the Emperor had turned over the leadership of the Coruscant Guard to Thire. He’d had no choice, Thire had been the last commander of the Coruscant Guard. But he had changed that. He had promoted Jek to the position that Commander Stone had once held, putting him in charge of the riot squad. There had surprisingly been no calls about favoritism. Jek was the highest-ranking officer who had served under Commander Stone as a riot trooper and he had often been the one to lead the squad under Fox’s command. Thire had also promoted the stormtrooper he knew only as Seeley, who had gained his former rank of captain due to his excellence in the stormtrooper training and, mostly, his father’s economic power, to take over Fox’s duties. When Thire had first voiced the promotion to Fox, he had protested, having spent almost the entirety of one year trying to prevent the two from quarreling. Thire had told him that Seeley would keep him in line better than any other man under his command. And Fox couldn’t argue with that.

After the promotions were made official, Seeley had waited in Thire’s office until they were alone. ‘Why me?’ He had asked.

‘I wanted a new perspective, someone who isn’t afraid to call me out.’ Thire had shrugged. ‘And you’re the only stormtrooper who knows how to aim his blaster.’

Seeley had merely glared at him in response. Thire was familiar with his father from the Emperor’s parties back in the days when he was the Chancellor. He was also familiar with the rumors, that some of the good banker Seeley’s children were illegitimate, mothered by the Umbaran secretaries that worked in his banks. Thire thought that was bullshit and that Seeley was just a grey-eyed asshole, Umbaran genetics unnecessary. But he had been right. Seeley had stayed behind in his office after many meetings to call him out, some things rightfully so, others merely pedantic. But he had never argued with him in front of their men. He, Jek, and Thire could have any honest conversation behind closed doors, but they’d made an unspoken pact that they would never disagree in front of the men they led.

Seeley was not in the Guard offices when Thire and Jek arrived, and one of the sergeants informed him that the commander was taking the lead in a spice trafficking bust.

“Good man. Thank you, Sergeant.” Thire had nodded at the trooper as he and Jek parted ways to their own respective offices. While their private quarters in the barracks had been taken away under the Empire, their office spaces remained. Their last bit of privacy. When Thire stepped into his office, he locked the door behind him and removed the stormtrooper helmet, setting it on the desk. This room hadn’t changed at all since the first day he stepped into it, a wide-eyed lieutenant recovering from the injuries he had sustained on Geonosis. It had been Thorn’s office then. Then it had become their office. Then Thorn was gone, and it was only Thire’s. The room was not meant to be the office of the commanding officer of the Guard, but neither was Fox’s, and Thire couldn’t bear to give it up after all this time.

He sunk into his chair, kicking his boots up into the chair beside it that had once been his, and booted up the computer terminal before him, ignoring the onslaught of messages from senators and their staff that opened up before him, and going straight to the folder that contained the messages from his men. How he and Thorn had once scoffed at the idea of a written message. The Empire now required transcription of all comm messages, for ‘recordkeeping’. But it gave Thire something to read while he waited for the onslaught of datapads and the first catastrophe of the day.

The catastrophe came sooner than he expected when the sound of a commotion in the office foyer caught his attention.

Thire sighed and flung his legs from the other chair to stand up, roughly grabbing his helmet as he strode out of his office. There, seven stormtroopers were shouting at a clone captain, who visibly relaxed upon Thire’s entry. “Commander.”

“What’s going on?” Thire asked, leaning against the edge of the desk nearest the group.

“Commander Seeley has been captured.” The sergeant in charge of the squad answered. “They got between us in the fight.”

“So you left him.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“I would.” Thire turned around to glance towards Jek, who had also come out of his office upon hearing the commotion. “I’ll be back in an hour. You lot, with me.”

“Where are we going?” The sergeant asked even as he and his squad fell in behind Thire.

“To take back my commander.”

---

Commander Ilven Seeley of the Coruscant Guard pulled against the binders that held his hands behind his back. He had not been blindfolded, and his eyes tracked the trandoshan stalking back and forth before him in the small, damp chamber he had been brought to.

“Who’s the rat?” It prodded him again.

“There wasn’t a rat, you idiot.” He hissed. “You think that you can operate out in the open and nobody will notice?” The room didn’t have a door. If he could somehow get the shackles off his ankles, he could flee.

“I think that pretty soon, we will be able to do whatever we would like.” The trandoshan didn’t turn where it had before and made its way to the side of the room. Carefully, it selected an electroprod from a bench that lined the wall. Ilven swallowed hard. “No stormtrooper can stand in ou-.” The trandoshan’s body fell limp to the ground and Ilven’s head whipped around to make eye contact with the blank visor making its way out of the shadows of the doorway. He was almost as disappointed with the sight as he had been at the sight of the electroprod.

“You.”

“Me.” Commander Thire looked over his shoulder as he switched out the magazine on his rifle before making his way around to Ilven’s back. “Your squad is waiting for us outside.”

“You brought them with you?” Ilven pulled his wrists free as Commander Thire loosened the binders, rubbing life back into chaffed flesh.

“Don’t see why I shouldn’t have.” Having loosened the binders from Ilven’s ankles, Commander Thire slipped an arm around his chest and hauled him to his feet before he could protest.

“They’re a bunch of chickens.” Ilven unwillingly threw his arm over Commander Thire’s shoulder and leaned on him as they made their way towards the exit.

“All nat-borns are. You would have never won the war without us.”

He was right, but Ilven didn’t have it in him to concede to a clone. He took in a breath to respond but was saved by a burst of blasterfire and Commander Thire shoving him to his knees on the ground as he fired back, kneeling down to protect him. Ilven had never been this close to a clone before, pressed up against Commander Thire’s chest he could smell the cheap soap that he himself knew from boot camp. When the blasterfire stopped, Thire’s supporting arm fell from his rifle back to Ilven’s waist as he hauled him back to his feet.

He stumbled alongside Thire until they exited the building into a large courtyard, where the seven men who had initially accompanied him sat sullenly in a waiting speeder.

“I will leave the punishment of your squad up to your discretion.” Thire murmured before they reached the vehicle.

Ilven glared at the stormtroopers in the speeder as he climbed in. “Ten men.” Not enough time could have passed for them to forget that they’d lost fellow soldiers that day. “One clone.”

Thire slid into the driver’s seat of the speeder. “Like I said, you would have never won the war without us.”

But while Ilven expected to feel the cold rush of anger in his gut, as per usual when Commander Thire spoke, it never came. The man had used his own body to shield him without a second thought, after coming to save him when none of his own men would. He could have taken the opportunity to let Seeley die and be rid of him. And yet.

---

Thire flipped through the datapad Seeley had provided him on the gang whose leadership he had almost entirely wiped out the day before. One of his sergeants had been keeping track of them months ago until they fell off the radar, rebranded under a new name that one of Jek’s lieutenants had been collecting data for from his sergeants. The files would have to be combined.

Thire grabbed his helmet from the desk and put it on out of habit as he walked out of the door. Not wearing it in his office was rule breaking enough, he wouldn’t flaunt it in front of his men, or give them reason to file complaint against him. Jek’s office was on the far side of the room from Thire’s, with Seeley’s office in the middle. For that reason, Thire was crossing in front of it when he heard his name and froze midstep as Seeley’s voice carried out to him.

“… Thire and I, we’ve never gotten along. We’ve been at each other’s throats since my first day here. But you know what, that doesn’t matter when it comes down to it. We can set aside our personal difference for the sake of Coruscant. And he’s a damn fine leader. I hate the man, but if I could choose, I’d have him be the one to guard my back every time.”

Suddenly very grateful for his helmet, Thire turned and walked back into his office as if he had forgotten something. The door had barely shut behind him when his helmet hit the desk once more and he inhaled sharply as he ran a gloved hand through his hair as he tried to reconcile his thoughts.

This felt wrong.

“Thire?”

Thire’s head snapped around to find a helmetless Seeley standing behind him. “Seeley. I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.”

“It’s only been a few seconds.”

He’d done it again.

“Your headache is back?”

“Yes.” Thire lied. Not entirely untrue. The headaches and the forgetfulness that had persisted under the control of the Emperor had died down now that he no longer served the man day and night, but they had never fully gone away. “How did you know I’ve been having headaches?”

“I asked Jek what the hell was wrong you with. He said you’ve been having migraines.”

“Something like that.” Thire gestured to his guest chair as he walked to his own. “What did you want to speak about?”

Seeley reached into his helmet before setting it down beside Thire’s. “I know you don’t have much access to medications.” He pressed the bottle of anti-inflammatories into Thire’s hands. “Consider this my thank you for yesterday.”

Thire made the effort to shut his jaw before Seeley realized how stunned he was. “Seeley.”

“That’s not all.” Seeley shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “Thire, could we spar sometime?”

Thire blinked for a few moments as he processed Seeley’s request. “Why?”

Seeley found a spot over Thire’s shoulder to stare at. “I never liked you. You’re the best shot in the Guard, you’re cocky, the Emperor favors you, and you’re a clone. You’re like, the perfect clone.” He closed his eyes. “And I cannot reconcile that version of you with the man who saved me yesterday.”

Thire fumbled for a response. “I’m not cocky.”

Seeley opened his eyes to fix Thire with a look of disbelief. “You ran into a building full of criminals to save me just because you could.”

“Anyone in my position would have.”

“I wouldn’t have. If our roles were swapped, I would’ve let them kill you.”

“Ah.” Thire fell silent as he tried to understand. “I guess that’s the difference between clones and everyone else.”

“I guess so.” Seeley shook his head before standing. “I should be going.”

“Tomorrow after work?”

Seeley blinked blankly at him.

“To spar.” Thire elaborated.

“Yes. Yes, I would like that.”

When the door shut behind Seeley, Thire let his guard down, falling back in his chair and bringing up the bottle of anti-inflammatories to examine it. When he concluded that it was a far stronger dose than he could have ever hoped to receive without grievous injury, he set it down and buried his face in his arms.

---

“You’re telling me that you spar, work, and sleep in the same clothes?” Seeley couldn’t have kept the disgust out of his voice if he tried, and he wasn’t trying.

“They’re not the same blacks.” Thire scoffed, continuing to strip his armor off. “I have five pairs, fresh pair every morning.”

“You wear underwear, right?”

Thire stopped to fix Seeley with a look of repulsion. “Of course I do, what, do you think we clones-?” He stopped when Seeley held out a handful of fabric towards him.

“They’re clean. I forgot to take out my clothes from yesterday, I’ll wear those.”

Thire hesitantly took the clothes and unfurled them in his hands. “Thank you, but I can’t wear this.”

“Why not? We have a similar build.” Seeley continued to undress without glancing Thire’s way. “The pants may be a little big on you, but there’s a tie.”

“Not the pants, the, um.” Thire stopped when he realized he didn’t know the name for the shirt he now held.

“Tank top?” Seeley stopped, taking a step over towards Thire, who kept his eyes lowered for fear of having to look at the disdain he imagined in Seeley’s gaze. “Because of the brand.” He spoke far softer than Thire had heard him speak before. The Empire’s marking of their clone troopers wasn’t public knowledge, it would have made even some of the more inclined citizens cringe, but shared showers and shared workout spaces had made them common knowledge to the stormtroopers.

“They’re healing poorly.” Thire confessed. “I don’t want to risk mat burn on it.”

“I’ll wrap it for you. Take your shirt off.”

Thire obeyed silently, sitting down on the locker room bench and grimacing once his chest was bared. He’d never wanted to admit weakness to Seeley, and here he was, baring his scars for him. He imagined that Seeley’s gaze would be tracing the deep knotting on his lower back when he returned with a long wrap of thick bandage. If Seeley did notice, he didn’t say anything as he passed the bandage around Thire’s torso and shoulder, forcing him to move a few times to ensure that it wasn’t too tight. When the wrap was secured, Seeley paused for a moment as if he wanted to say something, before moving away as if he had thought better of it. Thire sighed and lay a hand on the bandage poking out from under the fabric before moving to take off the pants of his blacks. “Why are you being nice to me?”

“I wish I knew.” Seeley scoffed. “I think I liked it better when I hated you.”

“Then why not continue that?” Thire pulled on the sweatpants, tucking the tank into them. Despite it, the clothes still felt too loose.

“I don’t know.” Seeley walked around to stand before him. “I guess it feels wrong after you saved my life. Besides, I’ve learned more about you in three days than I learned in a year.”

“And what have you learned?” Thire asked as he rose to stand before him.

“You’re not infallible for one. You’re kind, even though you don’t think you are.” Seeley’s eyes darted down to Thire’s inner arm. “And you have tattoos.”

Fox had once allowed a piece of contraband to be kept. A few weeks after his ‘death’ Thire had found himself laying on a brother’s bunk as they traced out outlines of a triangle, a fox’s head, and a circle side by side above the crease of his elbow. “My brother did them.”

“For Fox, Commander Stone, and?”

“Commander Thorn. He was my mentor. He’s the reason I’m where I am today.” He was also the reason Thire’s ARC kama lay in his desk drawer, too painful to look at.

Seeley’s brows drew together as he thought over the implication. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m glad he and Stone are dead, they never had to watch our Republic fall.” Thire spat out before he could stop himself. When the gravity of what he said hit him, he closed his eyes and took in a deep, shuddering breath. “Let’s go spar.” Maybe Seeley was feeling friendly enough to not turn him in for treason.

“How many people have you lost? Loved ones that is.” Seeley asked when they were on the floor.

Thire scoffed before answering with a fist. “Nearly all of them, not that that’s unusual for a clone. All of my batchmates except Jek, my first squad, Thorn, Stone.” He hesitated. “Fox.” Seeley tried to use the moment of hesitation to strike a blow to Thire’s rib, only for Thire to block the punch and kick his foot out from under him. “Foundation, Seeley.”

Seeley scrambled back to his feet. “Damn, you’re strong.”

“You’ve never sparred with a clone before, have you?”

“No.” Seeley threw another punch towards Thire’s torso, only to find himself on the ground once more.

“We can take a hit.” Thire held out his hand, pulling Seeley to his feet. “Hold up your arms in a defensive position, watch how my feet move when I strike.”

“Remember I’m not a clone, I can’t take a hit.” Seeley chuckled nervously as he obeyed.

“I’ll just tap you. Watch my feet.” Thire halted his motion before he struck Seeley. “Watch again. Line of movement. If you can understand it, you can predict your opponent’s moves through watching their hips.”

A look that Thire didn’t understand washed over Seeley’s face. He concluded that it was disgust. “Is there anyone else I can look besides your hips?”

“Anywhere, if you don’t want to improve.” Sensing an opportunity for revenge when Seeley’s gaze fell, Thire struck a gentle blow against Seeley’s neck, sending the man stumbling to the floor in a coughing fit. “But you also have to watch your opponent’s hands.”

“You’re an ass.” Seeley coughed out.

“And here I thought you said that I was kind.”

“Kind of an ass.” Seeley rejected Thire’s extended hand to push himself back to his feet. “Is that what they teach you commanders, dirty tricks?”

“I wasn’t made a commander.” Thire took Seeley’s hands in his and pushed his feet into a stronger stance. “I came to Coruscant a lieutenant. But Commander Thorn disagreed with that, and here I am today.”

“That’s more human than being assigned your rank, isn’t it?”

Thire’s lip curled as he glared at at Seeley before taking a step back. “That’s an anti-clone sentiment. We are human. We still bleed if cut. We break, we shatter, we bleed out; that’s pretty human.”

“That’s not what I meant-.” Seeley let his arms drop as he tried to speak, only for Thire to use the opportunity to send him crashing to the floor once more, Thire’s leg pinning his shoulders down.

“No, it’s perfectly clear what you meant, and I’ll concede to the point you were making. We clones are human, but we don’t have humanity in our bodies.”

“Thire.” Seeley protested, still unmoving under his leg.

“Don’t. I’ve accepted my place in the galaxy.” Thire stood, allowing Seeley to sit up. “But I don’t think you have. Get up, let’s go again.”

---

Thire slowly took off the shirt of his blacks, careful not to disturb the bandage that Seeley had placed there earlier that day. The first one had been discarded after sparring, but after they had showered, Seeley had insisted on another one and Thire had lost the strength to argue with him over it. Now, he was almost grateful that he hadn’t protested. The chaffing of his blacks on the wound had been impeded, and for once his shoulder wasn’t burning like it did at the end of the day.

“Riyo called today, while you were gone.” Jek approached with a content smile. “They’re doing well. Says they’ve even got a proper kitchen table now.”

“Good, the heathens.” Thire said as he tossed the shirt into the laundry bin under his bunk.

“Who wrapped you up?” Jek inclined his head towards the bandage. “This is not our grade of fabric.”

“Seeley did, after sparring.”

“Now that just proves my point that you two can’t be in a room without fighting.”

Thire shook his head as he chuckled. “He’s okay. Though we did argue, while we were fighting.”

“Sounds about right.” Jek reached over to clasp Thire’s bare shoulder. “Do you want to share a bunk tonight?”

“Not until that bruise goes away.” Three days later, the mark Thire had made on Jek’s chest was still dark and purple.

Jek nodded gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Sleep well.”

“Goodnight, Jek.”

Thire watched Jek walk away before he lay down on his side, pulling up the thick blanket that he had slept under for the past five years. The pillows in the barracks were new, the same ones that the barracked stormtroopers had received, but new blankets had not been deemed necessary. At this point, Thire didn’t think he wanted to give it up anyways. He knew exactly where his fingers fit in the threading seams, where he could run the bare threads between his finger pads and think about the new side of Seeley he was seeing. Before he fell asleep, he came to the conclusion that this charade of friendship would be up the moment Seeley’s gratefulness had run its course, and there was no use in getting attached to things he could never have.

#commander thire #original character #clone trooper jek #my fics #kamas and commanders fic #i wrote most of these words this weekend so i think i'm feeling better

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tanadrin · 5 years

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untitled ck2-like rpg for a large number of players

This is roughly what my notes for this look like:

PLAYER CHARACTER

Character creation is a point-buy system like GURPS. Characters have four major stats--military leadership, administrative leadership, religious reputation, and secular reputation. The latter two are like piety and prestige in CK2, but mostly function as a kind of currency you can use to buy certain actions or traits--your actual reputation among other important PCs will be determined by what the other PCs actually think of you, so if you want to be considered trustworthy you’ll have to act in a trustworthy way. You also have traits, a rank, holdings, and a family.

Traits give you particular bonuses in leadership or combat situations, which might let you use special abilities or take special actions, but which also serve as a focus for roleplaying your character. These are traits like being a drunk, being a particularly skilled swordfighter, having one leg, swearing unusual oaths, etc. In general, they are fixed at character creation.

Rank, which goes from 1-7 (non-noble courtier to king, roughly), is roughly your degree of temporal power, and more directly your order of precedence and your privileges. Higher rank confers greater freedom of action, greater flexibility in organizing your realm, and makes it easier to change laws.

Family and holdings are inevitably more complicated. Family would probably be represented as an in potentia list of characters with only the points available for actual creation (if that character inherits your position) listed; you could also marry off family members, which would transfer them from your character sheet to someone else’s. Holdings represent tracts of land you control directly, and you derive annual income from them via rents, and can raise armies from them. Holdings track their level of development (”size”), and their productive population (”population”), both of which you can spend money to invest in, and population grows (slowly!) over time. Raising armies outside of the campaign season will seriously hobble your tax base come harvest. (This is the part whose complexity I worry most about, because it basically requires every player to have a public ledger of their holdings and changes to their population/income, and innocent math errors could really fuck things up.)

An important component of developing holdings is building defensive works; these are very expensive in terms of money and labor.

Monetary values are based on the Carolingian coinage (sous, denier, livres aka pence, shillings, pounds), because these were nominal units of account in much of Europe in the Middle Ages even when hard currency wasn’t available (and most rents were paid in kind).

MAP

The game has to have a map of some sort, either a uniform hex grid or some kind of Paradox-style province map, with each cell representing a specific holding. Holdings can be grouped into counties, duchies, kingdoms, etc, but this would be a mostly cosmetic thing. Characters all have a specific location on the map; you can only move a fixed amount per turn. This map could either be drawn by whoever’s running the game, or by players in collaboration. Once the map is drawn, you select your holdings based on your point buys. Then you have a setup round where players can band together into realms, choose a ruler, and set the initial laws of the realm (how succession works, whether vassals can fight wars with each other, that sort of thing).

RELIGION

Religion works a little differently. While any player can profess a religion, being a member of a religious hierarchy is a unique kind of role with unique political restrictions and freedoms. The head of the religion can set doctrinal requirements at the start of the game (though I envision mostly bland pseudo-Christianity and pseudo-Islam ripoffs, in keeping with the theme), and under certain conditions (if the religion permits) later make minor amendments to those, akin to ecumenical councils.

POLITICS AND LAW

Essentially a nomic within the game: governs how things like succession, distribution of land, taxation and the levying of one-off taxes, etc. work, with players within a realm setting their laws at the beginning of the game, and independent rulers with no vassals having sort of a default ruleset. If you want to create a parliament over which the king only has loose control, that’s fine; if you want to make your sovereign an absolute monarch, that’s fine too. Importantly, though, as in real life the law is not a magic spell that binds everybody: if the king wants to levy a tax, his vassals can refuse. They can even revolt. The important thing here is that power has to be a social game, and a key component even in a nominally absolutist realm is going to be making sure you don’t piss off your vassals (who are actual people with their own actual in-game goals!).

So the rules here should be very flexible, and mostly suggestive rather than prescriptive. There are no win conditions; you set your own goals.

OUTSIDE EVENTS

The GMs may want on occasion to spice things up by simulating things like invasions, barbarian raiders, plagues, natural disasters, or peasant revolts. These things in general should add opportunity and excitement, not arbitrarily punish players.

WARFARE

Armies are raised from holdings; whether your vassals join your wars will be determined by the local laws (and, probably, whether they like you or not and think they can get away with not joining). Armies have fixed move speeds. In general, two armies in the same map cell will fight, unless both commanders choose to avoid battle.

My temptation here is to say that battles and sieges are resolved via a Warhammer-like system of tokens and dice rolls, but that would be hilariously overly complicated--however, I want a system with some room for tactics and player leadership.

This is the least developed part of the concept.

Casualties in raised armies will be reflected in the reduction of the population of your holdings. Suffering numerous defeats in wars will greatly reduce the productivity of your land.

TECHNOLOGY

Don’t know whether to include this specifically. This will depend on the span of time a game would actually cover, which depends on both the nominal length of turns (month? season? year?) and on the practical length.

TRADE

Is something I want to include, but I have no idea how to do it sanely. Probably something very simple--represented as money flowing in from trade routes off-map, with specific holding improvements entitling you to a cut of that money, and the ability to redirect how it moves within your own territory.

ISSUES WITH ACTUAL PLAY

Organization of actual play is a big question. If it was all done online, via a forum or a subreddit, you could give everyone a couple of days to decide on the actions to take in their turn, submit those actions to the GMs (where necessary), and announce the results. In person, things would be a little more complicated. Obviously, decisions and actions concerning only one small group of players or one realm only really need to be decided within that group. Warfare and player locations probably needs to be tracked on some kind of central map, to avoid errors in recordkeeping and disputes about the actual situation.

GMing would be a job for multiple people, who would either take no or a small role as PCs in the game itself. Whatever the final ruleset, tweaks to the rules or the setting as agreed upon by the GMs or the PCs would be strongly encouraged, either to streamline aspects of play people didn’t want to futz with, or to transpose things to a sci fi/fantasy/axial age setting as desired.

#this is all very brainstormy #feedback strongly encouraged

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ibelieveinahappilyeverafter · 4 years

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Writing Commission - A Gift of Sunshine - Chapter 1

My oh my it has been a while, everyone! You have my deepest apologies for the lack of content you've seen from me lately, but I've been busy with finals, graduation, and so much else! Finally, though, things are settling down and it's time to get right back to it!

This is my latest story that was written through my commission work and I had absolutely no doubt that you all would love to see it! It's already fully complete and I'll be uploading a chapter a day until it's all finished! It's quite a bit of an AU, but I'm sure you all will enjoy!

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Summary: It is the worst day of fifteen-year-old Aizawa Shouta’s life when he trudges home after a failed entrance test to U.A. – the school made for heroes. His worst day abruptly turns strange, however, when he gets home to find a beautiful sword on his bed with a scroll attached that is addressed from his grandfather.

It turns out that his entire family was descended from a samurai (unsurprising considering he lived in Japan) and the sword was meant to help him become a hero. Shouta hadn’t been expecting the sword to talk, however, and he especially hadn’t expected the sword to have a voice as warm as sunshine itself.

It’s a long journey to become a hero like he wants, but Shouta has a feeling that he and Hizashi are going to do just fine.

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Fandom: Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia

Relationship: Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic/Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead

Characters: Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead

Rating: Teen Audiences

Word Count (Total): 35,935

Transaction Amount: $250 (USD)

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Check out my writing commission information here! Pledge to my Patreon to get exclusive content!

Read and follow the story on AO3!

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<<Next Chapter>>

Chapter One

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When imagining the different ways in which his dreams could have been crushed and ground down into a fine dust that would never again be thought of, Aizawa Shouta had not bothered to contemplate that his world would end due to robots, yet U.A. had, very firmly, set him straight.

Shouta mused to himself, as he trudged into his empty home and kicked his shoes off, that he had been prepared for how difficult the written exam would be. U.A. was one of the top hero schools in the country for a reason, after all, and it was logical to assume their entrance exams would be just as rigorous.

He had also been prepared for the scorn that he would face once his quirk was revealed. An Erasure quirk was rare enough in their world of quirks, but one that could specifically ‘steal’ someone’s quirk when merely looking at them? Shouta had been accused of being a villain-in-the-making more than once, something he took a few bitter seconds to fester over as he trudged to his room, bag thrown somewhere into a corner to rot.

Shouta truly thought that had been prepared for a lot, including a rigorous physical exam that would test the potential students to their limits, but robots? Erasure could be a powerful quirk if used correctly, but it didn’t do shit against something like robots. There had been a chance, at least, if he had been matched against other students. Then, at least, he could have evened the playing field and won just through taking his opponent off guard.

There weren’t any ways to take a robot off guard, as Shouta’s bruised, battered, and exhausted body could fully attest to. It was fine, though. It was fine, because his written exam score would, if nothing else, ensure him a place in U.A.’s general studies program. He would still be getting into U.A. even if it wasn’t as a hero.

Getting into their General Studies department was an achievement all on its own, Shouta knew, but that seemed to do little to stop the frustrated tears that were burning his already dry and aching eyes, forcing him to painfully scrub them away as he stumbled into his room and prepared himself to collapse on his bed and sleep his grief and anger away.

At least, Shouta had been about to collapse and sleep his grief and anger away until he noticed the sword that had already taken his place with a scroll attached to the hilt.

The sword was nice enough, Shouta supposed, with a golden sheath that reminded him of days in the sun and a cord that tied the hilt and sheath together that was as red as Shouta’s own eyes when he used his quirk. The hilt, honestly, was both the oddest and nicest part, being made from what looked like jade that was carved with neatly etched swirls that seemed to follow an unnoticeable pattern.

It was a nice enough sword that Shouta was immediately backing out of his room and looking around the hallways suspiciously, straining his hearing to see if either his parents were about to ‘surprise’ him or if some thief had broken in and put the sword there as an unspoken threat to not interfere with his business.

When nothing happened except Shouta’s pain making itself known the longer he stood still, he relaxed and stepped into his room, attention turning to the scroll that looked like a real scroll as opposed to something that could be bought in one of the train station novelty shops.

A quick inspection revealed that there was nothing that made it seem as if it were a trap, Shouta carefully wiggling it free from where it was under the sword before he was unrolling it just as carefully, scanning the words of the ‘letter’ before his breath came out of him in a rush at seeing his grandfather’s name elegantly scripted at the bottom.

“There are phones for a reason, Grandfather,” Shouta muttered to himself, taking the scroll to his desk and finally sitting down, taking a few moments to let his body rest before he was looking at the scroll properly. His grandfather was an eccentric man, but he had never been the type to write his letters as scrolls all while leaving swords on Shouta’s bed. Settling into his seat, Shouta let his eyes trail back to the top, heart sinking as he read the first few lines.

My dearest grandson,

If I’ve timed the arrival of this properly, then you’ve just arrived home from the entrance exam to the hero school you have your heart set on. You have also failed the physical portion of the test, as my quirk informed me that you would.

Shouta’s grandfather had a quirk that was deemed useless by hero standards, but incredible by the family standards. Bloodlines was a quirk that allowed his grandfather to see future moments that would happen to him or anyone within his bloodline - one of the reasons the Aizawa family was as successful as it was today, Shouta mused. Still, for his grandfather to have seen his failure and not told him… He wasn’t expecting it to hurt that much.

He was half-tempted to put the letter aside, certain that it would be full of platitudes and promises of how his life would be successful even if his dreams of being a hero never worked out. Shouta was tempted, but he was also curious to know why his grandfather wrote to him on a scroll of all things; a scroll that had been attached to a sword.

I don’t need the use of my quirk, however, to know that you no doubt spent minutes debating just now whether you should continue reading this letter or not and suffer through my pointless reassurances, but let me reassure you just once that this letter is not to tell you that you’re better off not being a hero. It’s rather the opposite, in fact. It rather makes sense that of all of our descendants today, it would be you, the little boy who couldn’t stand illogical choices and harmful behavior, to be the one to decide that the world should be more fair than it is cruel.

The sword on your bed, Shouta? It is a gift to you just as it once was to me. In my great-grandfather’s words, and in his grandfather’s words, and so on back to the beginning, it is “a gift of sunshine” that will light your way. In my own words, however, it is a passing of wills, a hope for the future, and a promise.

A gift of sunshine? Shouta frowned as the words seemed to batter at something in his chest, aching fiercely as glanced to the bed where the sword still laid. It glinted in the soft afternoon sunlight and looked less like a dangerous weapon and more like something Shouta almost wanted to call soft.

This is a gift to you because I know that you will not lose your dream here, something that again I have no need of my quirk to tell me. You are too stubborn a fool to accept your loss as anything more or less than a setback, and so this gift will inspire you to not give up on your beautiful dream.

It is also a passing of wills, however, in the way that our family was not always successful with numbers, as in your father’s case. Once, long, long ago, before quirks were ever even dreamed of, our family descended from a samurai.

Shouta couldn’t help his startled snort of laughter that he was sure he would be scolded for if anyone had been in the room with him. His grandfather had always been an eccentric and serious man, but to write on a scroll so seriously that their family was descended from a samurai, well… There were very few families in Japan that didn’t claim such a thing.

Looking back down to find his place, and seeing the words ‘stop laughing,’ Shouta felt mildly chastised and mostly annoyed. Even when his grandfather lived hours away in the countryside, he could still never get away with anything.

Stop laughing, young man, I know what you’re thinking! I was rather amused myself when my great-grandfather told me all of this when I was around your age, but the stories are true - and so is our recordkeeping. Aizawa Adachi was born a farmer’s son before he went on to serve the lord of his land at the time, becoming a fearsome and undefeatable opponent.

He lived and fought with this sword, this sword that he had won through a duel gone wrong and stood by his side afterwards, during the time of the Meiji Restoration and through the end of the Edo period - the end of Feudal Lords, samurai, and the wicked things that crept through the night, or so everyone believed. Wicked things are always good at blending in, as we know even today.

That part, at least, Shouta could believe. There was a reason that heroes had appeared at the start of the age of quirks, and that was because villains had appeared, too. Quirks were beautiful, amazing, and powerful things that defined a person as much as anything else, but they could also be dangerous; they could be deadly.

That much was true, but Shouta still couldn’t figure out why his grandfather thought to put all of this in a scroll and send it along with a sword, especially when they called every few weeks and visited every few months. Hopefully his grandfather would get to the point soon, but Shouta was doubtful. If it was one thing his grandfather could do, it was talk.

Adachi refused to leave his ways of protecting others in the past and traveled the land as one of the ronin, a wandering swordsman who always used his sword to help people and keep them safe during the turmoil that followed the Revolution. He used the same sword that now lays upon your bed.

Because that certainly wasn’t creepy, Shouta snorted to himself, glancing over to his bed to see the beautiful sword that certainly didn’t look as if it were hundreds of years old.

In the old days the Aizawa family kept to Adachi’s oath, protecting Japan from threats both inside and out and keeping the people safe from what lurked in the dark. The times have changed, Shouta, but our wills have not, as proven with you and your desire to protect. You want to be a hero? The names change, but the heart never does.

Quirks may have come into this world, dear boy, but that doesn’t mean it’s not the same world that it’s always been. I know you failed your exam, but I also know that this will be nothing more than a setback to make you work even more fiercely than before.

This sword is a hope for the future. I have seen what it will be through the times surrounding you, Shouta, and I wish I could say that you will be safe, but we both know that the path you have chosen will never be safe again.

You will bleed from the pain that is required for you to follow this path. You will break from the pressure of your dream that is placed upon your shoulders. You will fall apart piece by piece one day and, for a very long time after, you will feel as if you were not put back together right. I have seen all of this, Shouta, and you will know pain and suffering by becoming a hero.

The rest of the words faded away, Shouta jumping at realizing his hands had been shaking enough for the scroll to slip out of them and fall to his desk in a flutter of movement. As much as he wanted to pick the scroll up and keep reading the last few paragraphs, he couldn’t make his heart stop pounding as if it were ready to burst.

It wasn’t new information for Shouta. Everyone knew how serious it was to be a hero in these days, and everyone knew that it wasn’t an easy life. It was possible for most heroes to die while they were active, and pro heroes who lived to see retirement were rare and few. It wasn’t new information, but Shouta had never seen it stated so bluntly in something addressed to him.

To know that his grandfather had seen his future and saw the pain he would go through if he stayed on his path to become a hero, it… It was terrifying. He was fifteen and an entire possible future for him had been seen and recorded. That was as terrifying as something could get, and yet- Well. And yet.

And yet Shouta still wanted to help people with his power. And yet he still wanted to keep people safe the way there were heroes that made him feel safe. And yet, even with his future known, he didn’t want to change his path for anything because his grandfather’s visions meant he did it - they meant he had become a hero. And yet, after the realization that his future would be full of pain, Shouta picked the scroll back up and kept reading.

And yet you will be the most magnificent hero, my Shouta.

You’re so intent on becoming a hero that even if I told you in detail what I saw, you would not waver. So, since you’re so intent on becoming a hero, on becoming a warrior that will protect Japan and all her people, I knew it was time for this sword to be passed onto you.

This sword’s name is Hizashi and once you unravel the red cord that binds sword to sheath, you will be bound by our family’s oath to, one way or another, keep these people safe.

This sword is a gift. It is a passing of wills. It is a hope for the future. It is a promise.

So, if you truly want to be a hero, pick up this sword.

The letter ended there, his grandfather’s signature following in the space left behind with no further explanations.

Setting the scroll down carefully on his desk, Shouta pushed himself to his feet with a wince of pain before walking over to his bed, arms crossed as he stared down at the beautiful sword that sat there, looking more decorative than something that had actually been used in battle and had no doubt killed people.

Uncrossing his arms and leaning over, Shouta trailed his fingers across the sheath, feeling something that he could almost call familiarity before it faded away. “So, your name is Hizashi, huh?” Shouta’s eyes traced the bright golden colors of the sheath, a slip of sunlight falling into his room through the window and hitting a portion of the sheath just so to make it look like it had become sunlight itself. “The perception of sunlight… I suppose it fits for you, doesn’t it?” It was a good name for this sword.

“Apparently my grandfather thinks I actually know how to fight with swords and that, when I become a hero, I’ll use you. He’s never been wrong before, but, between you and me, he’s going mad in his old age.” Taking a seat on the edge of his bed, and still trailing his fingers over the sheath, Shouta sighed softly to himself as he realized that he was talking to a sword, instead of being sane and merely talking at a sword.

Glancing back down to the unmoving sword, Shouta shifted and made himself comfortable. “I suppose if you’re just going to sit there, then you can listen.” Gathering his thoughts and making sure to take a moment to be certain that no one was home that could overhear him, Shouta tapped his finger against the sheath of the sword as if trying to get the attention of someone.

“I failed my school entrance exam today, the one that would teach me how to be a pro hero, because the tests weren’t fair. They were geared towards physical quirks, and mine, Erasure, can only erase quirks. It can’t help me against robots.” Shouta was at too big a disadvantage physically when it was just him on his own. He knew a bit about fighting, but fighting robots with nothing except his hands? It wasn’t logical. His grandfather seemed to think the same.

“I suppose that could be one reason that you were given to me,” Shouta mumbled softly, feeling his other hand clench hard enough to have his nails digging into his palms. “I don’t have the type of quirk other heroes have. All I can do is level a playing field that I can’t even touch.” It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he wanted to do nothing except help, and he was instead given a quirk that was seen as a villain’s quirk.

Leaning forward, Shouta carefully pulled the sword into his lap, eyeing the red cord that kept the sword bound inside its sheath. There was a ‘spell tag’ there for decoration that was dramatic even by his grandfather’s standards. Still, Shouta couldn’t help but to feel something like anticipation.

“Grandfather said you were a promise,” Shouta said softly, feeling something in the air that made him choose his words carefully. “I need to be stronger than I am now. I need to be strong enough that I can protect others without losing myself.”

Shouta’s nails dug under the spell tag, removing it and shivering as he felt something like static burst across his fingertips. For the first time since he realized he had failed his entrance exam, Shouta felt something like hope. “I’m not giving up. I won’t.”

With those words clear in his head, Shouta tugged at the red cord until it came undone, falling limp around his hands and wrists as Shouta looked down at the unbound sword, declaration leaving him before he could think it through or take it back. A strong, clear, “I’m going to be a hero.”

There was a burst of something, Shouta feeling as if the air had been sucked out of his lungs the same time pure energy slammed into him, hands tight around the sheath of the sword that almost looked as if it were glowing.

‘A hero, huh?’ A crystal clear voice spoke brightly from inside him, Shouta staring at the sword and feeling as if it were smiling, of all things. ‘That sounds like it could be fun!’

#boku no hero academia #bnha #mha #my hero academia #erasermic #my writing #original #a gift of sunshine

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strangebedfellows-blog · 5 years

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hc + culture for zant !!

It’s incredibly important to him, and one of few things that wholly capture his interest and attention. It’s born of surprisingly sincere…not affection, perhaps, it’s not personal enough with others to feel a just candidate for the term, but admiration. He’s not purely being Chaotic Evil Stupid Vengeance King, after all – it’s overkill in its extreme, but he feels he’s avenging a grievous injustice done to his ancestors, who he holds in impossibly high esteem.

The vast majority of Interloper culture is gone, either through simple lack of recordkeeping and the unavoidable casualties of being literally ejected from the world / dimension you occupied, and through very normal evolution into Twili culture; Zant takes the distinction seriously, and regards the latter as all-around inferior and almost insulting on all levels. There’s actually something to be said for it, at least in that it’s resulted in a people altogether pitifully weak compared to what they might have been otherwise. ( Which DOES matter even to the Twili, if the whole ‘elective monarchy based heavily on power’ is anything to by, and that Zant’s temperament would have been tolerated for so long and humored so seriously simply because he was - relative to them all - a hell of a lot stronger magically. ) And that Zant is himself so strong can be largely credited to the fact he’s spent his entire life bottle-fed everything his grandfather - his only caretaker - could recall, and voraciously hunting down and reconstructing as much as he possibly could. He values it because he feels it’s honoring a whole crop of people who were given one of the most raw deals in all of that universe’s lore, and because it very tangibly made him strong and useful for his efforts.

I don’t imagine he had any specific ties to the royal family, and rising up through ranks in that system isn’t exactly…..a thing, so it elevated him to a position of power and influence he never could have hoped to attain otherwise, in addition to the more obvious in-your-face magical benefits. Socially, it………mostly made him weird? He was exceedingly particular about seemingly arbitrary things and tended most of his needs himself ( self-healing, either made his own clothes or was breathing so far down the tailor’s neck he might as well have, wrote and fucking bound his OWN BOOKS comprised of what he knew, invented spells, reconstructed spells, grew his own specific food in specific ways – imagine if you lived in a perfectly ordinary neighborhood and your neighbor was for some reason just determined to live as if they were Amish, and you get my point. Contributed a lot to his having something of a reputation as a hermit before the Court brought him into much more consistent and close interaction with others.

He’s got a fairly brilliant mind, really, and it’s a shame he went so far and fast down the road he did.

( And it’s heavily my own stuff, but I imagine it left him in some state of shock after leaving the twilight realm. As I headcanon it, the interlopers were a sort of Sheikah offshoot that focused much more on progressively darker magic and much less on ninja-ing, and so being exposed to any Sheikah-related-anythings sends HARD ALARM BELLS going off in his brain and he takes some time to immerse himself. The Sheikah have obviously evolved and grown and changed just as greatly, but they’re similar enough to garner his attention, and peeling back as much of their history as he can would be……….like fifty christmasses. Please. He needs it. )

A hot take: if you showed Zant a divine beast, sheikah slate, or shrine? He’d actually recognize it, and if given sufficient time and a safe environment for tinkering, potentially reverse-engineer-teach himself more than enough to use them at full potential.

#triiforced #NOR THE FAINTEST BLOOM OF DESIRE ( zant : headcanon )#additional hot take: a human / modern Zant would be like........your weird pseudo-Amish neighbor who wears uncomfortable turtlenecks and is #writing a book in his free time comparing how various cultures preserved spices or some shit like that #he's Kind Of A Genius and very very very very whipped for his predecessors #does any of this make sense I'm a ramblin' mess oh my GOD I love Zant #edit: MY BIGGEST HOTTEST TAKE tied in with the whole 'they're Edgier Magicier Sheikah' angle?#he'd be able to DISSECT Termina #and he's also something of a last active Majora worshipper?#things that are scarier than Zant at full Ganonpower? Zant with Majora's Mask

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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I Care a Lot: Can Professional Guardians and Conservatorships Really Get THAT Bad?

https://ift.tt/3qCWe0N

This article contains I Care a Lot spoilers. You can read our spoiler-free review here.

How odd that in the span of a couple days it seems like everyone is debating the virtues of professional guardianships and what it means to become a legal conservator. Only a week ago, Hulu and The New York Times debuted its social media lightning rod of a documentary, Framing Britney Spears, and now barely more than seven days later, Netflix is debuting J Blakeson’s I Care a Lot, a baroque comedy (or tragedy?) in which Rosamund Pike plays a professional legal guardian who cares. She cares a lot. Just not about her wards.

As becomes queasily apparent early on in I Care a Lot, the things that keep Pike’s Marla Grayson up at night are not the dozens of wards she has a legal responsibility toward, nor necessarily the employees in her company. Rather it’s her clients’ bank accounts where Marla’s interests lie; and she uses them to bill herself hourly rates and underwrites any expenses she incurs while raiding their homes for valuables.

Within the movie’s first 15 minutes, we even see Grayson’s nightmarish con in a nutshell when she has a little old lady named Jennier (Dianne Wiest) declared incompetent because of dementia. Marla shows up on Jennifer’s doorstep with the cops and a court order to lock Jennifer away forever in a nursing home, even though Wiest’s senior has never even seen the inside of a courtroom.

Can something this scandalous and awful actually happen in America? The short answer is yes.

“These stories were horrifying and not uncommon,” Blakeson told The Moveable Fest last September. “So I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole in reading about these various stories happening in various places and thought there was something almost Kafkaesque about somebody knocking on your door and just taking you away for a reason you didn’t think was valid.”

And as has become increasingly publicized in recent weeks, once you get in the system of guardianships/conservatorships, it’s very hard to get out.

Guardianships of course play a pivotal role in modern society. As a legal responsibility created to protect those deemed vulnerable due to a diminished capacity that’s left them “incapacitated” or “incompetent,” guardianship is usually taken up by family members or professionals (mostly lawyers) who agree to manage a vulnerable party’s assets, caring for their estate and possibly their day-to-day person and body. This means a guardian is in charge of their wards’ assets and finances, what doctors they see, what medications they take, where they live, and potentially who they interact with and how they lead their daily lives. One woman in this situation told The New York Times, “It’s worse than incarceration. At least in prison you have rights.”

It’s an arrangement most often used to protect elderly people who cannot care for themselves, but problems can occur when one must decide how to determine someone is “incapacitated” or “incompetent,” and whether a ward needs a guardian in perpetuity. Additionally, just how vulnerable is the position of being a professional guardian itself vulnerable to profit motive?

Most legal guardianships or conservatorships are not egregiously corrupt like Marla Grayson’s racket in I Care a Lot, and many professional guardians will note how difficult it is to manage the affairs of low income individuals who need daily assistance—or how professional guardians are required to step in by the courts when the children of elderly parents enter lawsuits against each other.

However, the details are frustratingly hard to track. The National Center for State Courts estimates the number of people in guardianships is between one and three million in the U.S., but it’s impossible to accurately measure when legal records of guardianships are often sealed and there is no standardized recordkeeping; The Times reported guardianship records are kept separately by each of New York’s individual 62 counties, with no standardized reporting on state or even city totals; and a Government Accountability Office report from 2010 revealed that “we could not locate a single Web site, federal agency, state or local entity, or any other organization that compiles comprehensive information on the issue.”

Rather state by state, and case by case, courts appear to be left to their own devices on how to handle situations—and also uncomfortably relying on what amounts to an honor system regarding professional guardians. As per The Times, the state of New York requires any aspiring professional guardian to only complete a one-day certification course, and according to the aforementioned GAO report, courts require no background checks for aspiring legal guardians. Instead they trust applicants to disclose any previous criminal convictions or recent bankruptcies.

This can create a recipe for abuse and cases as extreme as Pike’s wolfish Marla Grayson showing up at your door with a court order. Famously in New York, Judge John Phillips built a real estate empire in Brooklyn worth $20 million during the 1980s and ‘90s, which included movie theaters that became neighborhood landmarks. Yet after he was diagnosed with dementia and considered incompetent in the early 2000s, he went through a series of legal guardians and somehow was “left to freeze to death in 2008” in a facility unlicensed to treat dementia. While he declined, his guardians had been selling off theaters and various other assets to the tune of millions of dollars.

More recently, and more reminiscent of Marla Grayson, is the case of April Parks, a former Nevada legal guardian who pled guilty in 2018 to six felony charges, including two counts of elder exploitation. The full extent of her abuse, however, was laid bare in 2017 by Rachel Aviv’s harrowing reporting in The New Yorker’s “How the Elderly Lose Their Rights.”

In that piece, Aviv chronicled how Parks amassed more than 400 wards for her guardianship business over 12 years in the state of Nevada—and how each of her wards lost “nearly all of their civil rights.” This is primarily highlighted through the experiences of Rudy and Rennie North, a couple in their 70s who on a fateful Friday morning were greeted at their front door by April Parks and three unnamed associates. Parks was the owner of a company called A Private Professional Guardian—a fact she was so proud about she had her license plate read “CRTGRDN” (court guardian)—and she arrived that day with an order from the Clark County Family Court, which demanded the Norths be removed from their homes immediately.

Unbeknownst to the Norths, Parks had filed an emergency ex-parte petition in the court, which allowed her to claim the Norths posed a “substantial risk for mismanagement of medications, financial loss, and physical harm” without their presence in the court. Indeed, they weren’t even notified the hearing was happening. Parks told the court the elderly couple was at risk due to a rapid decline caused by dementia, as based on a letter from a physician’s assistant Rennie had seen once. Rudy and Rennie had never undergone a single cognitive assessment when the court agreed Parks should move the pair into a nursing home.

It was more than three days before the Norths’ adult daughter Julie Belsche even discovered where they were, with her parents’ home being left empty, causing the daughter to tell her husband she thought “someone kidnapped my parents.”

As soon as the Norths were gone, Parks went through their house with the owner of a company called Caring Transitions, which specialized in estate sales of the assets and belongings of relocated seniors. Raiding the couple’s closets and drawers, in search of paperwork and valuables, had become routine for Parks. Within a month, Parks hired Even Tide Life Transitions to sell off most of the belongings, including two Renoir lithographs valued at $38,000.

The Norths’ case was not unique. As their daughter Julie and The New Yorker eventually unraveled, Parks had wards in nursing homes throughout the county, including 10 in the one that the Norths were relocated to. Many of these seniors were declared in need of legal guardianship in hearings that lasted less than two minutes. Prosecutor Jaclyn O’Malley would later piece together for a grand jury that Parks allegedly built a network of “hospital social workers and medical staff” who helped generate client leads for Parks’ company. In one instance in 2010, the state’s attorney said Parks was “cold-calling” rehabilitation centers in search of a 79-year-old woman who had nearly $700,000 in the bank and no children.

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By Tony Sokol

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But all of this was unspooled after years of hardship for the Norths. As per the American Bar Association, guardianship is generally “permanent, leaving no way out… until death do us part,’” and the Norths seemed to face that truth when they couldn’t even hire a lawyer to argue their case.

Their daughter also reported they were “overmedicated to the point where they weren’t really there” in their nursing home.

All these seeming horrors were committed by a sophisticated engine of care that makes I Care a Lot’s Marla Grayson appear like small potatoes. Yet the legal authority of professional guardians is so protected under the cloud of sealed documents that it wasn’t stories of glassy-eyed medication or the lack of due process that actually brought Parks down. The narrowly defined felonies she pled guilty to involved perjury under oath and double dealing in her accounting—like charging her wards $100 each for the hour it took to deliver unsolicited Christmas “gifts” of cheap socks purchased from the nearby department store.

It got Parks a sentence of 16 to 40 years in prison. Still, the most egregious cases are far from the only ones to care about, and in reality there isn’t a Peter Dinklage there to bargain for each senior who may think they don’t need a professional guardian.

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various-things · 4 years

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#summeromens - 4. camp

Soho, London - 1964

Crowley pushed the door open and stepped inside. “Angel.”

Aziraphale looked up. He was near his cash register, attending to something out of sight below the countertop. The shop was blessedly empty.

Crowley approached. He hadn’t been able to think of much of a preamble, so he just set the book down in front of the angel.

Aziraphale properly stopped what he was doing and leaned forward to examine it. “Partisan Review,” he recited.

Crowley nodded.

Aziraphale lifted his gaze back up to Crowley. There was an unspoken question there—about why Crowley was marching into his shop and presenting him with a new book—all of those things likely a point of curiosity: presenting, and new, and book.

“It’s an essay,” Crowley said. “Well, it’s got a lot of stuff in it. I didn’t bother with most of it. But the part that says Notes on Camp, it was… something.”

“Oh?”

“It’s a fun sort of thing. ’Camp’ is such a…” He shook his head—skipped past selecting an adjective. “And it’s a—she sort of explores it—Susan Sontag. It’s a bit modern for you but I thought you’d enjoy it.”

Aziraphale’s face lit up—softened—surprise and contentment and appreciation all shining out and Crowley stopped himself from literally taking a step back, but it was too much and he desperately thought of a subject change. He seized on the first thing that occurred. “What are you doing?”

That caught Aziraphale off guard. He hesitated, glancing about as if unsure of what Crowley meant, then, “Oh.” He lifted a large book into view. “Recordkeeping.” He set it back down. “But, a good time for a break, I think. Could I interest you in a drink?”

Crowley gave another nod. He waited, while Aziraphale closed up, weaving in place a bit and taking in the view of the shop from where he stood. All the same as it ever was.

They sat where they always did. It had only been a few months—since the last time. Maybe a couple of years, before that. Aziraphale passed Crowley a tumbler of some sort of whiskey. They raised their glasses to each other in a silent toast.

It was scotch. Something oakey and smooth and prohibitively expensive, if the angel had actually purchased it, which he’d almost certainly done.

“So,” Aziraphale said. “’Notes on Camp.’” He’d brought it back with him and was leafing through it. “Your decennial foray into the written word.”

“If that.”

The angel’s lips quirked in a smile, and he was quiet. It was a lie they both played along with.

Crowley did a lot of reading. Most often for practicality’s sake. For work. But not just. He read newspapers, and scientific journals and textbooks and even the occasional history book—to get the human perspective on things—literature, in the prose-as-art sense of the term, was rare.

Occasionally the fact that he’d read something came up. And Aziraphale wasn’t always impossibly thick. With this, he had grace. A fantastically duplicitous, in the nice way, sort of grace where it was their game. He’d either make no mention of the fact that Crowley was rambling on about some paper, or he’d make a joke of it. Ah, the Serpent of Eden has bothered with an intellectual pursuit. What a rarity. A momentary lapse in his very-busy-fiendishly-unscheduled timetable filled with rakishness and miscreancy.

Aziraphale was focused on the open page. “Ineffable,” he murmured.

“Thought you’d enjoy that one.”

“And Oscar.”

“You know what camp is, right?”

A flick of the eyes upwards and a raise of eyebrows. Of course he did. Soho. When had he learned, Crowley wondered. His brain could spin out about that— a flurry of possible scenarios.

The angel’s smile had stayed. He liked it. There was the faint sound of a page being turned in the quiet of the shop.

After moments, something in the text had shifted his expression slightly. Crowley couldn’t bring himself to ask what. And then the angel laughed, a low chuckle. He glanced up at Crowley. “This is very clever.”

“I thought you’d think so.”

“Mmm.” Then, after a few more minutes, “I think you would have liked him very much.” He must mean Oscar.

“I think I would have. He seemed like a fun sort,” Crowley said. Aziraphale tended to befriend the most interesting humans, when left to his own devices and not acting on behalf of Heaven. “You and the Arts.”

“The film references are mostly wasted on me, I’m afraid.”

“I figured they would be. You might like some of them. Um.” Crowley wasn’t sure how to suggest they could watch them sometime. TV wasn’t the same as a theatre. TV was new.

He observed Aziraphale’s reactions—microexpressions holding amusement and contemplation and pleasure as he read through the rest. When he finished, he closed the book—set it on his desk. “That’s very you,” he said.

Crowley made a face. “What’s that mean?”

Aziraphale paused. “Well, a lot of it, but, ’It’s good because it’s awful.’ Though not good, of course, in your case.”

Crowley grinned and took a sip of his scotch.

“That was clever,” Aziraphale said, again. He meant the essay—and refrained from extending thanks.

“I thought so.”

They settled into the afternoon; the conversation turned to other things. Drinks turned to dinner. Day turned to night. Notes: These prompts are from @thetunewillcome Thanks for the prompts! <3 Camp only having one relevant meaning in my brain (and it not involving tents) and this idea finally motivated me to read Notes on Camp. If you're curious, you also can here. AO3 version.

#summeromens #good omens ficlets #good omens fanfiction #crowley #aziraphale #good omens #susan sontag

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clubgazette · 13 years

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REMEMBER THE URGE signing session report 2011.09.04 with Kai, Reita and Aoi

There isn’t that much of interest here, it’s mostly for my own recordkeeping.

The signing session was split in two locations, one with Kai, Reita and Aoi, and one with Ruki and Uruha. As far as I know there was no information about who would be where or how the groups were sorted, but I was lucky and went to the place where Reita was on first try. This was the first signing session they’d done in 7 years, so winning a ticket and being able to go felt like a small miracle. I didn’t know anything about signing session customs, so I didn’t ask them any questions or anything, but it was still a nice experience. A big thanks to Starr for inviting me to come with her and Becca so I wouldn’t be alone.

Kai was first. He was still looking down after signing the last CD when I walked up to him, and when he looked up he looked kinda surprised for a split second, and then he smiled and said "good day". (I was originally planning on saying something like “thank you for doing this”, but I was too nervous, so I just kept to “good day” and “thank you” ww) He looks really handsome up-close. I was really lucky to get to see him in one of my favourite Kai outfits too! I really like his hair in this look, I think it really suits him. He was generally just really sweet and friendly and seemed genuinely happy to be there (even though he must've been exhausted). When he'd finished signing the CD, he passed it on to Reita. I've been wanting to meet him for years, so actually having it come true felt so surreal. I tend to lower my voice and/or mumble a lot when I'm nervous so my “konnichiwa” came out really quiet and I was unsure he'd heard it, but then he looked up, smiled at me and said it back orz He looked up after he'd signed it too (his handwriting is so neat and I love his signature aaaaaa it was fun watching him write ;__;) but I was too shy to look at him properly. He kept smiling at me. Then it was Aoi's turn. He actually didn't look up or say anything at first, but he took his good time to sloooowly write his signature - especially the heart (even though his signature is the simplest lol). He looked up when he handed it to me, and smiled. Ah, Aoi-san (〃∇〃) I almost stumbled off stage www, and I was shaking when I got out of the room. They all seemed like such nice guys, and I really wish I'd had the chance to meet Ruki and Uruha too, but Reita was the most important to me (so I was lucky he was at that location ww) Nowadays there’s M&Gs happening and I’ve been lucky enough to meet them a couple of times more thanks to that, but it still feels so surreal that I’ve actually met them face to face.

The full report is available over at my Livejournal, but it’s full of unrelated bits too so I’ve shortened it down to this here.

#signing session report #the gazette

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benrleeusa · 6 years

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[David Post] Supreme Court Takes Up Internet Sales Tax Conundrum

Last week, the Court granted cert in South Dakota v. Wayfair, a case that challenges the current legal status quo regarding online retailers' obligations to collect state sales tax. It is, I think, one of those unusual cases that is both fascinating, and rather profound, from a constitutional law standpoint, and simultaneously of truly prodigious practical, economic significance.

Here's the basic lay of the land. Early in the Internet Era (1992), the Supreme Court held, in Quill v. North Dakota, that a State may not require out-of-state sellers of goods or services to collect that State's sales/use tax*, unless the out-of-state seller has some "physical presence" in the State - a retail outlet, warehouse, office, or the like. So when an individual from, say, Illinois purchases goods from a seller located in Missouri - via an order placed over the telephone, or on the Net - Illinois may not require the seller to collect (and remit to Illinois) the sales tax that Illinois imposes on in-state transactions.

*Note that Illinois may - and actually does - impose a tax on Illinois taxpayers (e.g., on the purchaser, in my example) when those taxpayers make a purchase from an out-of-state seller. This tax is known as a "use tax" - based on the notion that it is not taxing the out-of-state "sale" but the buyer's "use" of the goods within Illinois - but it is generally set at a rate equal to the "sales tax" rate for in-state sales, and it functions as a sales tax equivalent.

Nothing in Quill interferes with the state's ability to impose those use taxes on its taxpayers, and most States continue to do so. But it does prohibit States from doing, in the context of "use tax" collection, what it does for "sales tax" collection, viz., requiring the sellers to collect the tax that is owed by the buyer and to remit the proceeds to Illinois - unless the seller maintains some "physical presence" in Illinois.

Quill is why most online retailers will, at checkout, say something like "Sales tax will be aded for sales to PA, NY, and IN" - places where, presumably, the seller does have a physical presence - "but not elsewhere."

The Quill Court rested its finding that taxing out-of-state sales is unconstitutional on the so-called "negative" or "dormant" Commerce Clause.

Now, the dormant Commerce Clause is one of those legal doctrines that most lawyers, I bet, still recall from Con Law I - and not at all fondly, finding it either entirely contrary to common sense and/or downright incomprehensible. For me, though, it was love at first sight (h/t to my Con Law I prof, Louis Michael Seidman, who gave us a really superlative introduction to the doctrines many delights), and, love being blind, I've always managed to overlook and forgive the doctine's many flaws.

It's a truly stunning act of judicial creativity, crafted over several centuries of work. Here's the gist of it. In the Commerce Clause (Article I sec. 8), the Constitution gives Congress the power to "regulate Commerce ... among the several States." The Court has, beginning in the early 19th century, found in this affirmative grant a power a corresponding negative, a prohibition on the exercise State power. Congress' power, in effect, is converted into an exclusive power to "regulate interstate commerce," and States may not exercise that power or interfere with Congress' excercise of it by "imposing excessive burdens on interstate commerce without congressional approval."

The Court has identified two primary categories of State actions that unconstitutionall burdens interstate economic activity. First, States may not impose regulations that discriminate against out-of-State entities for the benefit of in-state entities - always a temptation for State law-makers. And second, they may not impose regulations that, while non-discriminatory, "unduly burden" interstate commerce by "subjecting it to haphazard, uncoordinated, and possibly inconsistent regulation" by States, a "welter of inconsistent and burdensome taxation and regulatory requirements" in areas of commerce that "by their nature demand cohesive national treatment"

It was this latter problem - the potential welter of burdensome taxes and regulations - that, in the Quill Court's view, doomed North Dakota's (and, by extension, any other State's) efforts to impose its tax across State lines:

North Dakota's use tax illustrates well how a state tax might unduly burden interstate commerce. North Dakota law imposes a collection duty on every vendor who advertises in the State three times in a single year. Thus, ... a publisher who included a subscription card in three issues of its magazine, a vendor whose radio advertisements were heard in North Dakota on three occasions, and a corporation whose telephone sales force made three calls into the State, all would be subject to the collection duty. What is more significant, similar obligations might be imposed by the Nation's 6,000-plus taxing jurisdictions... [The] many variations in rates of tax, in allowable exemptions, and in administrative and record-keeping requirements could entangle a mail-order house in a virtual welter of complicated obligations.

Many people have complained about the Quill rule, vociferously, over the years, and the South Dakota statute now at issue in the Wayfair case - which provides that "sellers of tangible personal property in South Dakota without a physical presence in the state . . . shall remit sales tax according to the same procedures as sellers with a physical presence" - was clearly designed to give the Court an opportunity to reconsider and overrule it, which opportunity the Court, in its cert grant, has now apparently seized.

Complaints about the Quill certainly have considerable force. Quill allows an online retailer, operating out of her garage in State X, to sell goods to buyers in all other States without charging any sales or use tax, which puts local brick-and-mortar stores in X, who have to charge X's tax to all buyers, at a serious competitive disadvantage. This, many people persuasively contend, is both economically inefficient and has helped to destroy (or at least weaken substantially) those traditional brick-and-mortar retail outlets, with dire consequences for both the health of local retailing and for the state of America's cities and towns. A number of serious heavyweights have weighed in on the question via amicus briefs supporting South Dakota in the Wayfair case - from the National Federation of Retail Businesses to the American Booksellers Association to the American Farm Bureau to the National Governors' Association to the Attorneys General of 34 States.

But I think Quill got it right. The risk of strangling Internet commerce in a morass of complex and inconsistent obligations - 6,000 plus taxing jurisdictions! - makes this precisely the sort of question that demands "cohesive national treatment" of the kind that only Congress can provide.

Of all the amicus briefs (available at Scotusblog), I found one submitted by Chris Cox, the former Republican Representative in Congress from California (and co-author, with then-Rep Ron Wyden (D-OR), of the "Internet Tax Freedom Act" of 1998.- to be the most persuasive of all. He put the central issue this way:

A woman opens a small business out of her apartment in Idaho, selling iPhone cases principally over the internet ... via her own web storefront. Her customers are mostly in the United States and Canada. In a typical week she fills orders primarily to New York, Florida, Texas, Illinois, Colorado, and California, with gross annual sales of $273,000. She rarely sells to customers in South Dakota—maybe four iPhone cases in an entire week. ...

Because she lives and works in Idaho, she is registered with the Idaho State Tax Commission, the Idaho Department of Labor, and the Idaho Industrial Commission. She has paid the Idaho State Tax Commission for a seller's permit, and regularly files Idaho sales tax returns. Compliance with Idaho's rules requires her, like other businesses in Idaho, to be familiar with the State's varying tax rates and definitions of what is taxable, its audit and recordkeeping requirements, and its filing requirements (in her case, the requirement to file monthly sales tax reports).

South Dakota's law, however, does not merely require her to collect South Dakota's sales tax; it subjects her to the full range of South Dakota's tax and regulatory jurisdiction, including the panoply of South Dakota's licensing, recordkeeping, and registration requirements, and would, among other things, make her subject to periodic audit by the South Dakota Department of Revenue - which, in many States, requires an in-person appearance before the Revenue Board.

And of course if the Court discards the Quill rule and upholds South Dakota's law, we can expect other jurisdictions to follow suit.

South Dakota approvingly reports that "many other States have enacted provisions materially identical to South Dakota's," meaning that if this Court upholds the contested law in this case, even the smallest Internet sellers will quickly be subject to nationwide compliance burdens and the competing rules, filing requirements and audit demands of [thousands of] taxing jurisdictions.

This is precisely the sort of regulatory morass the dormant Commerce Clause was designed to prevent. It is yet another illustration of the central problem we face in applying legal rules to Internet communication. As Cox puts it, "the Internet's decentralized, packet-switched architecture," through which every individual website is "immediately and uninterruptedly exposed to billions of Internet users in every U.S. jurisdiction and around the planet," makes Internet commerce "uniquely vulnerable to tax and regulatory burdens in thousands of jurisdictions." Internet content is available to everyone, everywhere, simultaneously; that, however, cannot mean that it is thereby subject to the obligations imposed by all legal regimes, everywhere, simultaneously, because such a scheme is unworkable and incoherent.

Notice, too, that while South Dakota and its supporters argue that the Quill rule discriminates in favor of online retailers at the expense of local brick-and-mortar stores, abrogating the rule will have substantial discriminatory consequences in the opposite direction.

Consider again that Idaho seller of iphone cases. The moment she opens up her Internet storefront, she is subjecting herself to this burden of complying not only with Idaho's regulatory and tax authorities, but with the regulatory and tax authorities in whatever jurisdictions her electrons may enter, i.e., all of them. But her brick-and-mortar counterpart, who sells iphone cases over the counter in Idaho to customers in-store, has no such burden; even if he sells to Floridians or Californians passing through Idaho, his store only has to comply with Idaho's regulatory and tax apparatus. In Cox's words, "forcing one small business, with one location, to bear this burden is discriminatory when a large in-state retailer has no such burden."

There is a solution to this problem - and it is a fairly simple one at that. The dormant Commerce Clause disables States from acting because Congress has the responsibilty for solving problems like this. If the current status quo unfairly discriminates against brick-and-mortar retailers, a federal statute could require all retailers - online and off - to take X% of all sales and to remit that to a fund, administered by the federal government, from which payments will be made to the States based on their particular rates and the location of the transaction. Figuring out what X should be - presumably, some kind of weighted average of all current State sales taxes - and how the payment allocation formula will operate, are not trivial questions. But they're hardly intractable. It would operate, as far as consumers are concerned, as a national sales tax, though it would in reality be just a collection mechanism for State taxes.

It would require, yes, a functional Congress, and that's not what we seem to have these days. But it - or something like it, administered and authorized at the national level by our national institutions - is clearly the right answer to the problem, and if Congress weren't so, um, pre-occupied with other issues there might be a path forward to actually addressing this problem in a sensible and coherent manner. No, I'm not holding my breath - just hoping that the Court doesn't unleash the taxing hounds to go out and tear up the Net.

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oselatra · 7 years

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You're doing your 401(k) wrong

Hundreds of thousands of retirement dollars could be at stake.

If you're among the 79 percent of American workers whose employers offer a 401(k)-style retirement plan, you may have a foggy memory of someone, maybe in HR, explaining the plan to you. It's possible that soon after you heard "401(k)" your eyes crossed and you started daydreaming about lunch. Even now, you may be close to abandoning this article because you can tell there are going to be numbers involved. But first read this: If you are not putting money away in a 401(k) or some other retirement vehicle, you will regret it one day. Retiring with no source of income besides Social Security means you will grow old in relative poverty or be forced to work well past 65, and that's assuming Social Security survives in its current form for the foreseeable future. If you are taking advantage of a 401(k), especially if your employer matches some portion of what you are contributing, you're getting free money (!) to invest alongside your own pretax income that will put you on the path to getting to do what you want after retirement. Unfortunately, among eligible employees of companies that offer plans, only 41 percent participate.

But if you do indeed put money aside in a 401(k), don't relax just yet. Many people with 401(k)s are unwittingly paying fees that add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars lost from their retirement savings. If, say, you're contributing 10 percent of your salary to your 401(k) for most of your working life, it may well be the biggest purchase you ever make. How much will it cost? Most people don't know the answer.

Forty or 50 years ago, many American workers knew they could retire one day because they had a pension waiting for them along with their Social Security benefits. Employers were responsible for saving and investing money, so that when their workers reached retirement age, they received a specified amount, usually based on length of employment and salary history. This pension model is known as a defined benefit plan.

But pensions were expensive for employers to maintain, and in the 1980s and 1990s, many companies eagerly ditched them in favor of 401(k) plans. Named for an obscure addition to section 401 of the federal tax code in 1978, the 401(k) allowed workers a tax-free way to put money aside, but the idea didn't catch on until the early '80s, when a retirement consultant came up with an idea to incentivize participation through a match from employers.

Today, only 10 percent of workers over 22 have a pension, and the 401(k) has become the dominant retirement savings vehicle. With a traditional defined benefit pension, employees got stability and predictability without having to take any action. In contrast, a 401(k) plan is what's known as a defined contribution plan. Employees who take advantage of the plan determine a percentage of their salary to defer from their paycheck, pretax, into mutual funds or other investments (the IRS-defined contribution limit is $18,000 for 2017). Often, employers match some portion of the contribution. Compared to a pension, a 401(k) is more like do-it-yourself retirement, even if it's facilitated and often incentivized by employers. Workers have to make a number of decisions: Should they participate at all? If they do take advantage of the plan, how much can they afford to contribute? How should their investment be spread between stocks and bonds? What specific funds should they select?

Few people answer all these questions correctly, Tim Quillin, of Aptus Financial, says. Not that he blames them.

"Everyone seems to feel like they're supposed to know more than they do," he said of investing in 401(k) plans. "We don't have any problem going to other professionals, to doctors or lawyers, but when it comes to this area, a lot of people feel like, 'I can figure out those fund choices, no problem.' They say, 'Bonds, oh yeah, I've heard of those, I need bonds, or 'Growth, yeah, gimme some growth.' " Or they get lost early in the process and make random selections. Complexity, apathy and embarrassment are three of the main forces of evil working in the 401(k) ecosystem, Quillin says.

Aptus sees the typical 401(k) plan as almost obsolete. It's working to reinvent the model. Sarah Catherine Gutierrez founded the Little Rock firm in 2011 as "a response to how the rest of the industry gives advice." Most financial services companies take money from clients, invest it for them and charge a percentage fee on that investment — or assets under management. Another, increasingly popular model is to invest clients' money for them on an hourly, fee-only basis. Rather than holding and investing clients' money, Aptus recommends a financial plan and directs its clients to execute the plan themselves. For its advice, Aptus charges a flat fee or hourly rate.

Financial advisers who make money based on the assets they manage are often faced with conflicts of interest, and their services cost more than they should, says Gutierrez, who has a master's degree in public policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and spent years working at Stephens Inc. as an analyst. "If you look at the average fees someone would pay up front or over time, we're just a small fraction. When you charge a fixed fee, you're kind of agnostic. We don't financially benefit if you pay off student loans or invest."

Aptus' model requires more volume than other financial advisers because many of its clients are one-time only. So, in six years, Gutierrez and her colleagues have seen hundreds of people. One common theme: Many clients' 401(k) plans include fees that, over the course of an investment, could cost hundreds of thousands of retirement dollars — and they have no idea.

Take Jennifer, a young attorney at a large Little Rock law firm, who makes about $95,000 and whose work involves reviewing financial transactions (her name has been changed). A risk assessment test — with questions such as, "If you had a vacation planned and you suddenly lose your job, would you cancel the trip even though you might never be able to take the trip again?" — told her that she's conservative for her age when it comes to money matters. She's read books by celebrity financial advisers like Suze Orman and Dave Ramsey, and followed their advice to pay off her highest-interest loans first. When she became eligible for her firm's generous 401(k) plan — it matches two-thirds of contributions up to 6 percent of its employees' salary — she elected to defer 12 percent of her salary. "I remember hearing that 10 percent was standard, so I thought I'd do 12 to get a little bit ahead," she said.

But when Jennifer asked Gutierrez to review her 401(k), Gutierrez noticed that Jennifer was solely invested in one fund that cost 1.44 percent in fees. That might sound like nothing, but compound interest adds up over the years. Gutierrez recommended another fund offered by Jennifer's firm, with fees totaling 0.25 percent. Considering a rate of return of just under 6 percent, the fees in Jennifer's original fund could cost her almost $300,000 by the time she retires at 65. It could mean the difference between her annual income in retirement being $37,000 per year vs. almost $49,000.

"I was kind of embarrassed," Jennifer said when Gutierrez explained the cost of her plan. "I felt like I should have known better. I knew I needed to look at it sometime, but I figured if I was putting a certain percentage in every month, I'd be fine."

Jennifer isn't alone in not considering fees. "Most Americans don't know [fund fees] exist," said Sheryl Garrett of Eureka Springs and the CEO of the Garrett Planning Network Inc., a network of 240 hourly, fee-only financial advisers. Garrett's experience is supported by a 2011 study by AARP, which found that 71 percent of Americans don't think they pay any fees at all. Or if they do know about fees, Garrett says, "They say, 'Oh, my employer must pay those." But the industry is fees, Quillin says.

"Because we've had a stock bull market over the last 35-40 years, some of the problems have been masked. This whole industry is set up to generate fees for the companies that service 401(k)s. But [people] will never know. There's no counterfactual. It's not like buying a house and someday selling it and realizing you paid too much."

Another problem with Jennifer's plan? Too many options. "To do what's in a client's best interest is to eliminate the crappy choices," Garrett says. "You want to have fewer, better choices," Quillin echoes.

Quillin joined Aptus earlier this year after almost two decades as an analyst, mostly with Stephens Inc. He was Gutierrez' boss at Stephens and they became friends and stayed in touch when she left. He came to Aptus after the firm successfully bid on managing a small company's 401(k) plan, and Gutierrez and Quillin realized a different take on the 401(k) model could be a growth opportunity. Much like its other individual financial counseling work, for a 401(k), Aptus charges fixed fees, offers a lineup of low-cost funds and focuses on individual financial wellness.

To understand how that model might be different from a more typical plan, consider the three main players with their hands in the 401(k) cookie jar:

There's the adviser, who is chosen by the employer and who selects a lineup of mutual funds and meets with employees to explain the mechanics of the plan. Advisers typically make money based on a percentage of the plan's assets under management, but they could get paid through sales commissions or 12b-1 fees, which are annual marketing or distribution fees paid out of an individual fund's net assets to advisers. Critics call these kickbacks that amount to a conflict of interest.

There's the recordkeeper or custodian, which keeps up with the nuts and bolts of the plan. The recordkeeper is often selected by the adviser. It deposits and withdraws money in accounts and generates all the paperwork associated with a plan. Recordkeepers typically charge per participant, but in some instances charge as a percentage of assets. "That doesn't make sense," Quillin says. The cost of the administration they have to do is only a function of the number of people they keep track of; the work doesn't get harder as a plan's assets grow.

There's the cost of the individual mutual funds or other investment vehicles themselves, for the research or tools the fund managers use to beat or match the market. That cost is often reflected as an expense ratio on a plan's lineup of funds, but there could also be sales commission charges, called front- or back-end loads, which could be charged when participants first buy or sell funds.

Those three parties often work together in ways that obscure what they're charging in a 401(k). Another Aptus client we'll call Amber was a teacher at a private school when she received an email from the school's finance department about her 401(k). It said that one of the funds in the school's 401(k) lineup would no longer be offered and assets in it would be transferred into a new fund if participants didn't act before a certain date. That move would affect Amber — and she chafed at the idea of being forced into a new investment — so she forwarded the letter to Gutierrez, who noticed right away that the fees mentioned on the letter looked off. The plan said it was moving from a Vanguard fund with a 1.04 expense ratio to a Blackrock fund with an expense ratio of 1 percent. "They were saying, 'Hey, tada, we're giving you lower fees,' " Gutierrez said.

The mutual fund company Vanguard popularized low-cost investing and pioneered the idea of so-called passive investing through index funds, where rather than buying a mutual fund made up of a collection of assets assembled to beat the market, an investor buys a specific sampling of the market, such as the S&P 500 index. Because there's no research or staff to speak of necessary to buy the market, Vanguard and other passive funds have much lower fees than actively managed funds. Gutierrez knew that Vanguard charged significantly less for that particular fund, somewhere between .10 and .16 percent. Meanwhile, the BlackRock fund that Amber was being forced into was greatly underperforming the Vanguard fund. With Amber's permission, Gutierrez contacted the administrator in the school's finance department whose name was on the email Amber received. The administrator said she had never seen the email and couldn't explain the rationale for the change and referred Gutierrez to the plan adviser. He also said he didn't know about the change and couldn't explain it. That, at best, was "odd," Gutierrez said.

It's unclear exactly what the motivation for the fund switch in Amber's plan was and who stood to profit by it, but the lack of transparency bothered Amber. "It didn't seem right," she said.

Aptus isn't alone in Arkansas in seeing the inflated costs of an average 401(k) plan as a business opportunity. Allen Engstrom is managing director of CFO Network, a North Little Rock company that provides financial consulting for businesses. Several years ago, he noticed on his own 401(k) statement that his funds were underperforming the market. The more he looked, he found that his embedded fees — "small percentages, each one seemed innocuous," he said — were eating up his return. He took an average salary at his firm and modeled out the cost of fees over the course of the hypothetical employee's career. It amounted to over $420,000, or 38 percent of 401(k) return at retirement. In searching for a better way to have a plan, he researched a range of advisers, administrators and investment platforms. "We ended up with a solution that my employees are happy with that brought our fees down, on average to 5 percent" over the course of their career, he said.

That experience led Engstrom to add 401(k) evaluation as one of CFO Network's services. "Nobody out there that has a vested interest in telling the [401(k)] story. They're all conflicted to some extent. We're totally independent. We don't have a dog in the hunt. Companies hire us as independent consultants. We facilitate the process of understanding what kind of plan they have, model out the fee-impacts on employees, and do a discovery process, where we go through and interview the employees and employer to understand what they want out of their plans. Every one we've done, we've found similar results. Fees were all well north of 30 percent, and we've gotten them down into the mid-single digit range."

The other thing Engstrom learned in his research into his own plan: As the trustee, he was potentially liable for excessive fees. In the last decade, 401(k) investors have filed a number of lawsuits, many of them successful, against large corporations that offered plans with excessive fees under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974.

On June 9, a new U.S. Department of Labor rule covering retirement plans, originally conceived in the Obama administration, went into effect. It requires the adviser on all retirement plans to be a fiduciary, which means she is required to put her clients' interests before her own. "One of the duties of the Department of Labor rule is not to waste clients' assets," Garrett says. "It's interpreted into the wording. I like using those words: We have a duty."

Garrett believes the new rule and more ERISA class-action lawsuits will have an impact on the industry. "I really think we're going to see a very dramatic change in qualified plans offered by employer groups, where the plans will either be changed or switched up. There will be better costs, better transparency and better recordkeeping."

But Quillin thinks real reform will only come from below.

"Nobody in this ecosystem really has a strong incentive to change it. Current providers have no incentive. The [employers], as long as they have a 401(k) and the villagers aren't storming the castle, they're pretty happy with letting things continue as well. Until people care, until employees care, the world isn't going to change. We can have regulatory reform — like this new fiduciary rule, which may or may not help, and may or may not be repealed or watered down by the new administration — but until people really take an active interest in their retirement plan, the world is not going to change." So what do you do know?

The easiest way to figure out how much your 401(k) plan costs is to ask the plan's adviser or whoever is the point person for the plan in your company for a breakdown of all the fees levied. That might be the only way to truly know how much you pay.

Other routes: Look at your statement and note the expenses deducted from your balance. Virtually all plans offer participants a way to access information about their lineup of mutual funds (and possibly other investments) online. There, you can see an expense ratio — a collection of costs charged annually, expressed as a percentage of assets — for each mutual fund. To see a breakdown of those expenses, which could include 12b-1 fees, administrative fees, management fees and operating costs, you'll have to find the mutual fund's prospectus, which is often available on a 401(k) portal. The prospectus may describe certain fees, including front-end load commissions, which are charged at the initial purchase of an investment, in terms of maximum charges. So again, you're back asking for info from your adviser or administrator.

Another thing to look for on your company's 401(k) mutual fund lineup is how the funds have performed against a benchmark — usually an index of the broader market or a segment of the market — over the course of one, five and 10 years. Aptus Financial recommends that 401(k) plans offer passive target-date, low-fee index funds that reallocate among stocks and bonds as an investor moves closer to her target retirement date. Allen Engstrom, managing director at CFO Network, points to target-date passive investments and robo-advisers, which provide automated investment advice at a low cost, as among the ways companies can reduce the cost of their plan.

But true financial guidance can be worth the cost, James Alger, senior vice president and chief compliance officer at Simmons First Investment Group, says.

"When you look at retirement accounts, people's retirement dollars, one of the biggest mistakes that investors make, if they're long-term investors, is getting out of the market. They can be overcome by short-term fears, and fears make them react and they make the wrong move."

Behavioral management can be an important role of an adviser, too, Alger said. "What did you do in 2008, 2009? Did you stay put or did you get out? If you look back, you would have been better off staying put. ... If they got out, they really messed up."

Sheryl Garrett, CEO of Garrett Planning Network Inc., said that though she used passive investments to dramatically lower her own 401(k) plan's fees, costs aren't the only factor to consider. "Everything doesn't have to be less than X percent. Maybe having a little bit of exposure [to a certain market] is important for diversification."

But, Tim Quillin of Aptus said, "The passive vs. active debate is a little bit of a red herring. The issue is really fees." Research shows that actively managed funds have long underperformed their passive peers, Quillin said. It's hard enough for stock pickers to beat the market, but especially so when they have to beat the market and an assortment of fees.

You're doing your 401(k) wrong

#You're doing your 401(k) wrong

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