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AMA: BackInBlack
Topic Started: Feb 18 2017, 02:21 PM (476 Views)
Wagoo

Oh, no. Oh no oh no oh no o-

Calm yourself.

Ren attempted a deep breath, and tried to take a drink of the coffee can he had used. It was a good thing that he had gone to a café this time when he decided to check Bedlam- and checking Bedlam at home was not a risk he was going to take again, no matter what he was dealing with. Sighing at how sleepless nights would still be the norm, he saw the Black Hood turncoat ask about age. Silently thanking himself that he didn't sign into Tsubouchi when he logged in, he decided to send a response. Upon doing so, he logged out (leaving his coffee can, albeit not the fresh coffee stains on his clothes) and ran as fast as he could back to the apartment, looking as if he'd seen a ghost.

Well, he hadn't seen a ghost, but he did hear about vigilantes.

Vigilantes that wanted to kill him by association.

It's never going to stop, is it?

As long as the current state of affairs persists, you will likely not find peace.

Quote:
 


Post by: كَلام فارِغ

The survey, as conducted by the Research Society of Hanoi, has come to the conclusion that the majority of those in the area are of high school age. It's recommended for tourists to go about their business with this in mind.

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asano_man
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Re: AMA: BackinBlack
 
Posted by: SaintlySinner
Date: 2014-XX-05 at 11:40

Do you think Control has information on you personally, since you were a member? I'd say it's pretty incredible if you haven't been targeted already. These types of organizations don't usually like people who talk.

Speaking of your organization, how did you learn about and join the Black Hoods? I know this might be veering into personal information territory, but please give us as much detail as possible. Knowing how they recruit would be incredibly useful.
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
RE: AMA: BackInBlack
 
Post By: FooledYou
Date: 2014-XX-05 at 11:41

@BackInBlack:

I am old enough to fight off murderers who came after my guardian, and old enough to hear a few curse words without having a stroke. But I sort of lived on the streets for a long time and never learned how to read more than a few words at a time. Or watched much when it comes to movies. And maybe I don't get people in general the way I wish I did. But I want to understand this.

Masumi explained a little to me about the park and all that, but I can't get my head around how people go from not knowing anything straight to killing a bunch of people without even listening when they talk. There's doing what feel you need to, and then there's just being stubborn and stupid. But maybe I'm wrong, and maybe I just don't understand people enough. I want to understand, though. I want to understand why we had to be afraid for our lives that night, because of something neither of us had any control over. Maybe you and your people have felt the same way all this time? Is that why you all went as far as you did?

Kyo called you a "lady" in that other thread, so answer this, too... was it you that night, in the van?

@كَلام فارِغ

what even are you talking about what is with those weird squiggly lines
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Czernobog
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RE: AMA: BackInBlack
 
Post by: BackInBlack
Date: 2014-XX-05 at 12:15


@كَلام فارِغ

None of that makes any sense, and why are you posting with an Arabic screen name? I mean I was surprised enough to find a forum using Youyi Wang 1.6 that was in Japanese.

@SaintlySinner

1) Probably. Control tends to be thorough. I've got a flash drive with headshots of each of the people I gave a codename for. I had to scan those -- Control had everything in hardcopy. Looked like they had been developed in a bath tub. They're all about the same quality as that creepy author photo of Shel Silverstein. Grainy, high contrast.

Besides, we never met Control, but that doesn't mean Control never met us, you know?

2) I was asking a lot of questions around the hospital after the Park. A lot of people were, but I guess I asked the right (or maybe wrong) questions. Some of the people I talked to gave me answers that led me elsewhere. Before I knew it I was the proud owner of a black hoodie and one of those collapsible batons.

I'm not giving more than that.

@FooledYou

I didn't mean to be insulting. I'm not used to dealing with people younger than me, and this whole situation has me a bit prickly.

I'm only going to answer part of your question, because you're kind of mashing the "identity question" button pretty hard and I said that I'm not answering that. So...

Look: Narratives are powerful things. I don't know the academic bullshit. But we understand the world around us based on the stories that get told to us. Language has a main line to how the mind works equal to the senses. Seeing is believing, yeah? But if you don't understand what you see and someone gives you a good story, then you go with the story, because it's better than nothing.

What Control offered was a compelling story. The rumors and the official line didn't fit the evidence. I didn't have a story to make it all make sense. The people I talked to gave me bits and pieces, and I think that was part of it (not to get me in particular, but to funnel people in.) Finding out the truth was a story, but it was also a game I was playing. I was part of the story, and I was playing the role of the investigator. I was putting everything together and laying it out.

I worked for months to make sense of it. But in the end, I had a story that I was invested in because I'd worked so hard to put it together.

So, how did I jump from trying to figure out how someone I cared about got hurt to hurting other people? The easy thing would be for me to just say "It made sense at the time." And it did. I'm still angry at the people responsible. But they're beyond my reach.

That's beside the point though. In short:

I had a need for information. I was smart enough to see that what everyone had been told was bullshit. There was one coherent narrative out there. One that I had to work to unpack. I was conditioned not to trust anyone. I was given evidence that the institutions that society depends on had been turned against the people. I was given evidence that monsters walk among us*. I was already emotionally compromised when I walked into this, and then I was given a sliver of hope, and then I was given a place in a cell, which meant I had two people I could count on to have my back, and the feeling that I was part of a larger resistance**.

In short, they recreated a lot of popular stories about fighting tyranny and used that to funnel recruits in. They made culture into a Trojan, using ideas that had been snuck into us and then getting them to open the doors.

I don't know if that made any sense. I'm attaching some links to movies that explain things. The quality's kind of shit, but my phone is kind of shit, so I can't really judge that effectively.

*: Here is a dubbed stream of a movie called They Live. It might be a better example of how we saw things than the Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
**: Okay, here's a dub of the Matrix. The first...half-hour? Twenty minutes? The bit up to the Red Pill/Blue Pill moment feels like what I'm getting at.

EDIT: Why the hell are the links different colors? How many add-ons have you put on this fucking framework?
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
RE: AMA: BackInBlack
 
Post By: FooledYou
Date: 2014-XX-05 at 12:17

@BackInBlack:

I understand now. Or at least, I think I do? Maybe I don't. It's hard to say. I'm sorry someone you care about got hurt because of all of this. I don't know if that makes it forgivable, but it makes it something I can imagine maybe doing myself if I were in your place, so I think I understand. I'm going to guess it's a "yes" on you being one of the ones who attacked our home, and I'm not gonna pretend I'm happy about that, but I'm willing to put that behind me for now and move on.

I'll watch those movies some time but my connection does not like big files or video streaming, so that's going to take a while. Thanks for the links, though. I've been out of the loop for so long that I know next to nothing about movies.

Related: what's a "framework?"
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Exodin
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RE: AMA: BackInBlack
 
Post By: HotWings
Date: XXXX-XX-XX at 12:19

So there's nobody else you actually know the identity of then? Just the list of people that you gave out earlier? Were the headshots of them located in deaddrops for you all to pick up?
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Czernobog
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RE: AMA: BackInBlack
 
Post by: BackInBlack
Date: 2014-XX-05 at 12:45

@FooledYou

Oh, for the love of god don't FORGIVE me. Understanding is good, acceptance of the current situation is good, but I don't accept forgiveness where I can't look someone in the eye about it.

The software is behaving strangely. That's all I meant. The links show up in weird colors and there isn't a consistent time/date format. It's like it was put together by a team of amateurs and then someone professional tried to fix it up but Youyi Wang 1.6 code isn't too flexible to begin with.

@HotWings

Er...I don't HAVE the dossiers. I've got a bit of the stuff that was electronic to begin with, but the whole network of passing documents back and forth was supposed to be electronically invisible.

The upshot is that what I posted is what I remember and what I could connect to a particular user. When we got a new target we would get a new laminated page that had been three-hole punched. We had one copy of it, kept in a safe location.
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The One True Nobody
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
RE: AMA: BackInBlack
 
Post By: FooledYou
Date: 2014-XX-05 at 12:17

@BackInBlack:

Going to pretend I know what you're talking about with code and stuff, nod, and smile. Computers. I barely know written language at this point, guess I should leave computer language for next year.

I didn't say I forgive you, just that I'm willing to move on. The way I figure it, we can obsess over the past or we can live life and face forward, but we can't do both. That's what I've come to think about my whole life, so it'd be silly and dumb not to remember it when it comes to this. If we do meet by chance anywhere outside of these forums, even if you don't tell me who you are, you can count on me to have your back as long as you don't go back to what you were doing before. I'm guessing we're both pretty low-power compared to the veteran-types on this website, so there's a good chance we'll run into each other eventually.


RE: AMA: BackInBlack
 
Post By: TheBigNo
Date: 2014-XX-05 at 12:18

@BackInBlack:

Which probably means most of the target information is really out-dated. There's no way they could keep track of so many tier jumps and Persona ascensions and get it out to everyone in paper format efficiently without someone noticing what they're doing. I'd say we should all be careful about what we post on this site from now on, though. I've been thinking on it, and "Target Alpha" doesn't sit right with me. It's one thing to know who was at the park, but how did these guys find out who specifically to give "Target" names? Was anyone else involved with the park given a code name like that? Do you remember?
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Nonsequitur
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Re: AMA BackInBlack
 

Post By: GoldenDawn
Date: 05-XX-2014 at 2:48

Friend of the so-called Slasher here. Feeling totally left out the that death squads didn't think to give me a cute nickname yet.

Anyways! Onto the question: The fuck is it with you assholes and fire? As I'm sure Control has cheerfully provided you with her weaknesses, you will not none of them was fire! And yet you lit her on fire personally on two occasions and burn down her house.

I'd just like to know the logic behind that one, if you would?

Also, reminder to everyone that Control is likely a Persona user if he knows the weaknesses of people. So I'm pretty sure it was a day-one information leak with the enemy amongst us the whole time!


Re: AMA BackInBlack
 

Post By: GreatKhan
Date: 05-XX-2014 at 8:15

In regards to the implication of the target list and I assume a relationship with Ruwashi Park: I like how only one person listed was actually involved and of the two most deserving to be targeted, one died a far more dignified death than she deserved and the other is still completely unaccounted for. The rest might as well be names picked out of a hat.

But I suppose there should be a question here at some point, given the nature of the threads.

Was there ever a connection to the previous spite of mob lynchings and the Black Hoods activity now? Were any of your previous cellmates or you involved in this?


Private Message
 

From: GreatKhan
To: BackInBlack

You were the offputting woman with the shotgun who introduced herself as 'Rusty' that one time in the ruins, weren't you? I was the one with the naginata who obviously didn't like anyone else present.


Re: AMA BackInBlack
 

Post By: AnOutsideObserver
Date: 05-XX-2014 at 9:04

Hey! Quick question: How long do you think it will be before your old cellmates turn on you and kill you? Like, can we get an estimate in days? I wanna start a betting pool.

Serious question: What even are your long term goals? Like, what happens when you depopulate a couple of high school yearbooks and there's still more magic people popping up to take their place?

Mainly, I'm curious about the first question though (Less than two weeks is my personal bet, any takers?)
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Czernobog
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AMA: BackInBlack
 
Post by: BackInBlack
Date: 05-XX-2014 at 10:21

Okay. I'm typing this out as I'm headed out the door to work, so forgive me if I don't cover everything.

@GoldenDawn:

I'm not sure that one was ours. You're correct that it doesn't match our usual M.O., and if there was another weakness we could exploit we would have probably gone for that. If fire isn't specifically prohibited and nothing else will work, we might go for it then. On the other hand, it's entirely possible that it wasn't us. It happened before I joined the group and I was told that it was another group of cells who had done that.

It could have just been some random assholes in black hooded sweatshirts. I don't know. I do know from talking to another member of the forum that not all of the reports we were given in our updates were accurate to the situation, including at least one completely fabricated report.

@GreatKhan:

Direct connection. I wasn't part of that, but at least one of my cell mates had been in one of the mobs. From what I understand, people who had participated in those were targeted for recruitment. The reasoning was that if they were going to be violent assholes, they could be OUR violent assholes and stop trying to kill people they suspected of having magic powers and kill people we know have magic powers.

Also, in regard to your PM: That's an off-limits question. Didn't even finish reading it.

@OutsideObserver: First question -- no clue, but your probably not too far off the mark. However, it's not like my money is going to be worth much in hell, so what kind of odds are you offering.

Serious question -- See the bit about narrative I put forward recently. This isn't something any of us were thrilled about, but it's something we were convinced was necessary. We have other evidence (there was a weird video of a monster fight in the old industrial district where one monster eats another monster after getting stabbed with a chainsaw, and then it shits out a naked guy and dies. I'm not quite sure what was going on there.) so it's not all wrapped up in the park thing, entirely, but that is the primary focus.

It's like that bit in a zombie movie where a guy tries to cut off his arm after it's been bitten. Yeah, you're down an arm and will probably die, but you'll definitely die and become a zombie if you don't. It's trying to remove something perceived as an infection. To them, you all are already lost: you're something else pretending to be a person. So maybe "vampire" would be a better metaphor than "zombie" but I have to get out the door and can't switch metaphors around now.
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