trans_9 | Open Hours [open]

Entry tags:

Open Hours [open]

Hiccup was seated in his forge, the fire was turned off to keep things cool and more comfortable, and various plans for machines and weapons and other interesting gadgets scribbled on parchment and pinned up to a cork board. Candles procured from Orongo were lit around the room, though the wide windows let a light of light in, creating a comfortable workspace. Right now, he was sketching out the intricate designs for...something. It may have been designs meant to go on an axe. Perhaps.

After putting out his omnicomm message, he waited to see if anyone had something to say.

"Here goes nothing, bud," he said, the "bud" tacked on out of old habit, before his eyes widened slightly as he was reminded by the following silence, once again, that a certain dragon wasn't there to listen like he usually was.

That was okay, though. He was going to keep busy. Throw himself into doing the best he could to help the crew. Not that it took much more than a few fish to earn the dragon's love and affection, but Toothless would be proud of him when he finally woke up again. His father would be too.

And you know what? If he did this right, and helped people that deserved helping, deserved someone else working towards their best interests, he could be proud of himself.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Knocking assumed," Hiccup said jovially. "Come on in."

And so the book did, or rather his minion nudged the door open with her foot to carry the book in.

"So," Zetta said, sounding cheerful now that that little social awkwardness is over. "Welcome to the cool kids' club."

"Is this the part where I learn the secret handshake? Can you even teach me it when you don't have hands?" he jibed playfully.

"I can walk you through it. Step one, slap yourself in face."

They were both in good moods, clearly. And... kind of scarily.

"Actually, I'm here because believe it or not, I think you and I are close to being on the same page now I'm doing it unconsciously, for Magog's sake."

Edited 2011-06-17 02:22 (UTC)

"Same page, ha--sorry," he snorted, and then cleared his throat. "Same page on what exactly? I assume you mean Council business, but I'm curious as to which Council business."

"If I remember your campaign thing, I kind of skimmed it because it was long, you're not thrilled with the Council seeming secretive and out-of-touch. I've been hearing those complaints from people since around the time I got on. Not that I've been able to do much, but that was for other reasons."

Like losing 33300 years of his life.

"Still, I've been through a meeting or two by now. I want a sneak preview of your plan. See if the thoughts of an Overlord and current Councilor can help them out."

"This is part of it, keeping hours like this. I don't know how much I can make the others do, but I can act as a go between between people and the rest of the Council. It's a way of opening things up, and having someone act on their behalf. You could do it too, announce times you're willing to have people come to you with their concerns. If they choose not to do it, they can't really argue the Council's not listening when a few members are."

He went on, "I was also thinking for major issues that affect the rights of everyone here, we should sometimes hear the thoughts in an open meeting like there was a little while ago--but before the decisions are made. We shouldn't let our decisions be shaped by every whim of the people here, but there are some things they deserve a say in, and we need to give them more chances to have their say. Then there are some less pressing issues but ones that affect people that we could occasionally put to public vote--and possible appeal if they adversely affect someone and they can make their case that we shouldn't go with majority vote on them."

He tapped his pencil against his desk. "I've been reading a lot of things on different systems of government and I remember--things from when I had that fake life in Fairplay. I was decent at history and civics, and--it seems to me we have two major problems. Communication between people and their representatives, and no appeals process. This group is almost small enough for direct democracy rather than representative democracy. They need to be more involved in the actual process, because then even if we have to tell them no, we'll have a chance to tell them why, and we can do it in a way that makes it seem more like we're taking their concerns to heart."

"Anyone who knows me knows they can talk to me about stuff. Or at least anyone who knows me and actually talks to me." Zetta was well aware that there were more than a couple people who found a demon Overlord book to be a bit too much for their tastes.

He listened to the ideas more carefully than one might give him credit for -- but he'd been a ruler of a Netherworld for a while now, and not a terrible one.

"Hmm. Not a bad idea, but I think there's one problem with it right now, and that's how freaking insane this crew is. Not crazy insane, but we have a ton of people who you literally can't get to agree on things. The last meeting we had, the after-the-fact meeting, proved that. The people who didn't want Azula released weren't gonna be convinced otherwise, and even if we'd let them all speak their piece before we made the decision, they'd still think we were ignoring them if we let her go. Big freaking shouting match is all it was.

"I figure that's why we have the Council. Some people gotta make decisions, because if everyone just voted, you'd have bad will and division in the crew. Same thing'll happen if we have big open meetings beforehand. Shouting match, everyone things the people who don't agree are idiots, everyone's glaring at each other."

The book considered all this. Listen carefully and one might hear the ruffling of pages.

"So. Take people's opinions, but not in public. They can come to a Councilor they trust or just send a private message to one or all of 'em. When the Council makes its decisions, we can say what people said and why we agreed or didn't agree. Might make people feel more confident about speaking up if they knew they weren't gonna get called on the carpet by some loudmouth for their opinion."

It was a little more complicated than the Netherworld, but there, people wouldn't hesitate to make their voices heard to the Overlord if he was a decent one. Demons were, bizarrely, a lot more laid back than most people on this ship.

"I don't know, I'm not sure the Azula decision was the right one. It might be bias, since Zuko's my friend, but I do think that violent actions aren't excused by craziness, that just means they have to be reacted to in a different way. I think she needs treatment and needs to be kept somewhere nicer than the brig, but needs to be somewhere where she can't hurt anyone."

"They might not have been happy but by letting her go loose, they were effectively ignored and the severe injury of one of their own was completely dismissed."

"We can't make everyone happy, but they're not crazy. They have legitimate reasons to believe what they believe is right--all of them do, that's the problem. Treating them like something to be dismissed because we disagree, creating an Council vs. them thing? That's your first mistake. Some things we have to put our boots down on and say yes or no to, but there's a way to do that where you make it clear you understand the concerns were legitimate, and that you can show that you're not being unduly dismissive. It's how both sides talk to each other that's a problem, and there's ways that can change so there aren't sides."

Edited 2011-06-17 03:01 (UTC)

"I fought for her release," Zetta said, mildly. "I would've done it if I wasn't on the Council, too. In her position I'd probably have done something pretty similar. And this is exactly what I'm talking about. You make a decision that someone spoke against, they feel ignored. Whether or not you listened and just didn't agree. THAT's nothing new, dealing with people, though.

"What I mean, though, is that it's not just 'us vs. them', 'crew vs. Council'. The bigger problem is 'crew versus crew'. You wouldn't have to look too hard to, I don't know, find ten people who think torture is always bad, and ten people who think we should torture a prisoner if it'd get us information we needed. They're never gonna agree. The way I see it, the best thing to keep everyone playing nice is not to give them a formal place to shout at each other. Keep their arguments directed to the Council, not each other. As much as we CAN anyway."

"They won't agree but they need to be able to see why others think differently. It's not hard, and they need guidance to do it. That's what I mean with the decisions. My dad, he has this way of explaining things so that even if you completely disagree with him, you at least see the sense. You see the sense of why he does things the way he does them. He was always like that at moots. People would yell at each other and sometimes yell at him, and his voice would go quiet and he'd just...explain things in this way where people who saw completely opposite on something, they'd understand the other wasn't just set against him."

"It means even more talking, yes, but the end result would be more trust, more faith in the Council's decisions, and a smoother running crew. It's how the talking goes that has to change and that can be--well, not controlled but influenced."

"Everyone at your meetings came from same culture, though," Zetta said. "Same town, same world, same basic underpinnings. And from what Ruffnut tells me you put a lot of emphasis on your tribe."

Even someone as dense as Zetta could learn a thing or two from even someone as dense as Ruffnut.

"There's lots less common ground here. And some people are set against each other. Let's face it, I can't see the sense in a LOT of the things you humans do, and you'd probably think a Netherworld was the worst place you'd ever seen. There are gonna be things that explaining just can't get through."

He frowned, thinking.

"We can at agree that Councilors should be available to talk to and people should feel okay doing that with at least one. And the Council needs to not keep secrets of any sort, I think we can agree on that one too. I'm with you on that for sure."

"The problem is to survive this? We have to be a tribe."

Hiccup scrunched his face.

"There's a word. I know there's a word for it. On the tip of my tongue. It was for when people of different cultures come together and sort of blend... melting pot! Okay, so it was two words, anyway, we're a melting pot. There's going to be conflict, yes, because of the differences, but we have to learn to understand other people and how they think to even do what we need to do. Enough for people to care about protecting the warrior at their side. That's going to mean a lot of yelling it out, and it's going to be harder than my dad's moots, yes, but it has to happen, and unfortunately for the Council, decisions on public policy are going to be the battleground where everyone has to duke it out until they reach mutual understanding even if not mutual agreement."

Wiggling the pencil between his fingers idly, he said, "I'm telling you, we can do this. There's also other things we can encourage other people to do. Like...I remember that Aang kid mentioning the idea of community dinners? Places to eat and discuss things, share cultures? The Council could make themselves available there, help host them, get people talking. Make the lumps in the melting pot melt together more. It'd look good too, the Council trying to bring people together that way. Seems more inclusive and more like we're on their level."

"We need better dinners for that. Good food improves morale. The stuff we get..."

Ugh.

"Actually, that gets me to something else I seem to have different feelings on than a lot of the Council. The election I ran in, everyone was talking about getting people to work together and live in harmony and crap. Now, sure, that's important, I get that. But, call me crazy, it seems to me the best way isn't to sit around talking it out. It's to do stuff. Grab a bunch of people, get 'em working together on a project, and trust them all to figure out a way to work together to get it done. Builds connections, improves communication, and at the end of it everyone can feel good that they did something important. There's a ton of stuff we could do to make life and the war go better for us all, and it's a lot harder to tell the guy next to you he's a mindless idiot when you just spent a week building, I don't know, a dining hall that's made of stuff that ISN'T the ship."

"...You actually have a really good point there. you know, back home, we had to rebuild the village practically every other week for the longest time because of the dragon attacks? And...it was a lot easier to break up a fight when you reminded someone that the person they were fighting with helped them rebuild their house and gave them a week's worth of milk from their cow."

"There's a lot we could do on this ship, and I think the Council should be doing some more to direct the departments," Zetta said. "Both for the sake of the improvements themselves, and the feeling that people are working to make things better. The bathhouse is popular and that was done by what, one dragon in her free time? So how about this: we toss the idea of focused projects out there for everyone to chew at. Try it your way, because I don't think people are gonna have deep-seated, ironclad moral positions on building a housing complex in the City, for example, so there probably won't be much real anger under any arguments."

"Sound like a plan."

The book grinned. Hey, they had managed to have a productive conversation! Who knew it was even POSSIBLE?

"That just means we gotta get a meeting going to run this by everyone else."

"This is the part that worries me. Are they going to listen? I know Kang will, because he and I are friends, and that alone means he'd take what I said seriously, but they don't seem to be aware there's a problem, at least from what I've seen."

"If we sell it as a way to get people working together, I think that'll get us some leverage with a couple of the others." Zetta considered a moment. "Should be enough to get us going. There's not really a good reason for the others to say 'no', really."

"Then it definitely sounds like a plan." Hiccup grinned broadly.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Open Hours [open]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject