#maybe when I'm still older and get a job I can afford one.... probably XD

[sokkathebluewolf]

I'm very curious about the Fire Nation Military Academy. Could you maybe explain that a little bit further? Is there just one? Can everyone just go there? How got our guards there? How's the training? With which age do you go to the FNMA? Do you really need to cut all ties to your past? How are you getting to the job of a Imperial Guard? I have many more questions but these are the only ones that came to my mind rn. Maybe you can explain a little bit more? That would be cool.

Well, for starters, the current branches of the Fire Nation Army, in Gladiator, are as follows:

Army: land troops deployed outside the Fire Nation’s mainland.

Navy: obviously, water-based troops, warships and the like.

Domestic Forces: troops stationed within the Fire Nation’s mainland.

Guards: special division of the Domestic Forces, tasked with the protection of the Fire Nation’s Palace directly, and the Fire Nation’s Royal Family.

Air Force: the second-newest branch, operating with airships and hot-air balloons.

Enforcers: the newest branch, tasked specifically to deal with all that pertains the enforcement of the new Slavery Laws.

The first five branches are all trained in Military Academies throughout the Fire Nation (they have more than one academy, the others are located in the bigger cities), the last branch is trained specifically at the Enforcers’ Headquarters (currently, only in the mainland).

There’s more than one Academy, like I said, and most anyone is encouraged to join it. While the Fire Nation is quite classist in many regards, and they tend to look down on anyone whose heritage isn’t perfectly Fire Nation, Fire Lord Ozai has been struggling for years with how thinly spread his army is. Hence, while enrolling in the Fire Nation Academy when you’re an Honorary Citizen is prooobably not the wisest thing since it means 1. you’ll be fighting against your people 2. you’ll have to endure a lot of Fire Nation snobbishness... they’re encouraged to join in anyhow. Therefore, social classes are overlooked in the Fire Nation military, but not out of any noble intentions: it’s merely for the Fire Lord’s convenience.

The training in the Academy starts the same for everyone, basic classes all across for all recruits. Within a matter of 2 months, all soldiers should have the grasp of basic combat training techniques (firebending training for firebenders, weapons training for non-benders, and the occasional earthbenders have their own bending training too). 

After a period of refining their skills for about a year, the students at the Academy are either selected by their instructors to serve as Guards (only the students with top marks are eligible for this specialization, whether benders or firebenders), or they can choose their own future career path (Domestic Forces, Army, Navy and, nowadays, the Air Force too). Naturally, the duty of the Guards isn’t exactly easy but it’s a lot less taxing than that of a soldier in the frontlines... so being selected for the Guards is not only considered an honor, but a highly coveted one too: EVERYONE wants to be a Guard :’D still, not a lot of people can pull off top-marks, so you have to break your back in your first year if you really want to be a Guard.

Now, once the first year is done and all new recruits have “joined” a military branch, the students spend their next three years perfecting the skills required to perform their future duties. Back in the war’s heyday, often these three years of finalizing their studies were spent out in the field, outright assisting the troops since, like I said, the army was spread so thin that they needed quick soldier deployment ASAP. Nowadays, as the Earth Kingdom continent has been conquered successfully, the Academies are back to a slightly less hectic rhythm and can work with their students without sending them out to fight when they’re not finished with their education yet.

The Enforcers, new as they are, have a slightly different training regime that’s actually a tad bit more imposing than the one in the Military Academies, since they’re being trained and recruited ASAP. As shown in the story, they’re trained in non-bending combat even if they’re benders, so all of them are equipped with swords of their own. They still attend classes after their first raids begin, and they’re still recruiting, so their growth is ongoing... but as the laws needed to be enforced right away, the Enforcers have had to be prepared for their duties even more rashly than the recruits of the army I described up there. It’s going to get a little easier for Enforcers that get recruited later in the future, they might even get a few years of proper preparation for their roles... but they really can’t afford that for the time being.

Anyways! The training is divided, like I said, depending on the kind of duties each branch handles. Domestic Forces recruits, for instance, have to fully learn city layouts, prison guard protocols, learn about Fire Nation laws and infractions, since that’s the stuff they usually have to deal with. Navy officers are taught water-based strategic fighting, how to man catapults, everything to do with how to navigate... and the army learns strategies for land-based combat, how to mount the animals the army uses in battle, as well as geography of the general world, since they’ll likely need a better understanding of how to traverse diverse lands than any of the other branches will. All branches have further combat training (whether bending or weapons-based) throughout the next three years of specialized training, to hone their fighting skills further.

Now then, the Guards! These guys are the trickiest ones and probably the ones I should have explained further in-story, since their role is by far the most important one out of the six branches, but I never really had a chance.

There’s regular Guards in the Palace: these guys can be benders (exclusively fire, though) or non-benders, and they’re tasked with guarding the Palace walls and its infrastructure, above all else. On their final year of the Academy, the best firebenders within this group are marked as potential future Imperial or Royal Guards: they can undergo some slightly more challenging tests than the rest of the Guards and, if their results impress the Fire Lord enough, they may become Imperial Guards right away. If there’s a member of the Royal Family who is assembling their personal Royal Guards at the moment, they can choose their preferred Guards amongst that year’s graduating class + the top-level firebending regular Guards who haven’t been promoted into the Imperial Guards yet.

The General of the Guards is the absolute leader of the Guards and thus, he’s in charge of this entire branch of the armed forces. The person to occupy this role is typically chosen by a recently-crowned Fire Lord: Shaofeng wasn’t the General of the Guards until Ozai took the throne. Therefore, upon permanently ascending the throne, our potential Fire Lord Azula can easily dismiss Shaofeng and promote someone else in his place :’) this, as well, is one important reason why a royal who’s vying for a throne tries to see at least a few of their Royal Guards promoted to Imperial Guards before their time to serve as Fire Lord arrives. Makes the power switch much smoother :’D

And now I more or less gave you a large number of clues as to why General Shaofeng has been such a pissbaby since the festivals arc, woops... :’D

I think the Academy doesn’t have a set age of entrance, you can find people of different ages learning in it (because of the reasons above, the army is spread too thin to reject anyone just because they didn’t start at the right age). Still, people are expected to only join it only after their regular, basic school education is finished. So the youngest age to start would be 12, but older recruits can join too (I’d say the upper limit is probably around 30, despite a 30yo recruit isn’t very likely to spend a long time serving in the field, but the armed forces are in no position to reject anyone who enrolls, tbh).

The subject of cutting ties with everything else in your life is honestly very specific to Royal and Imperial Guards. Like it’s been portrayed in the story, it’s discouraged, rather than forbidden, to have family or romantic ties when you’re a Royal Guard. Rui Shi hasn’t really gotten in trouble for having a relationship with Song, but if any situation arose where he failed to protect the Royal Family because he was protecting Song instead...? Weeeell, he’d likely get executed, outright, for failing to uphold his vows as Royal and Imperial Guard, as he has to be ready to sacrifice anything and everything for the royals he serves.

It’s more implicit in the rest of the armed forces that they serve the Fire Lord above all else, it’s mainly the Royal and Imperial Guards who are told they shouldn’t have any important ties outside their charges. Everyone else can have families, get married, raise kids, without too much trouble. Rui Shi’s father was a military man just like Rui Shi, but he was in another branch (I think in the Domestic Forces, seeing as he lived with Rui Shi and his mother), Rui Shi was an overachiever and became eligible for Royal Guard status... and then Azula selected him as her captain! :D

So, as far as guards are concerned, the path to becoming an Imperial Guard is...:

Firebending Recruit (get top grades) ===>  Guard Prospect (get top grades again) ===> Take an extra test before graduation to become eligible for Imperial Guard ===> Imperial Guard (if successful at impressing the Fire Lord)

OOOOOR...

Firebending Recruit (get top grades) ===>  Guard Prospect (get top grades again) ===> Graduate with top marks and become a regular Guard ===> Be promoted into Royal Guard status by a member of the royal family ===> Be recommended for a promotion into Imperial Guard status by said member of the royal family ===> Imperial Guard (if successful at impressing the Fire Lord)

I hope things are a little bit clearer now xD most of this is stuff I had in my head but, like I’ve said, I really didn’t have much room to explore it. A full-blown spinoff of the school days of Rui Shi and his fellow Royal/Imperial Guards would be ripe territory in which I could explore all these details x’D it’d be a rather strange slice-of-life story, but it’d probably be the only way to address all these questions narratively.

Anyways, if you have any further questions about this, let me know! :D

#ask #anon #... well damn that got longer than I thought it would #royal guards #imperial guards #fire nation armed forces

[janiedean]

Ok, I know it may come as quite offensive for some people, but it's a real question. I'm upper middle-class, as my parents were before me, I was still living with them during the econonical crisis and I barely felt it and now I have my own job, I have no problem having money for myself. And fortunately or not, all of my friends either come from this social class or got into it with their jobs, so I never had a real talk with someone considered "poor". I'm not trying to brag or anything, (cont)

I'm just explaining where I stand and why everyone in my family (including me) is right-winged (not far-right, thanks god, but very liberal). So there is my question, I see so much talk and post about how the situation is awful for people (and mainly young people) and I don't know if it's an exaggeration (aka the opinion of 90% of the people I know, friends + families) or is there a real problem I fail to understand. Thanks for taking the time to read (and maybe answer) me.

Sure I can answer you XD

So, given that the economical crisis hit differently in different countries so there’s different perspectives to be had, the short answer is: it’s not an exaggeration. Long answer:

if you come from an upper middle-class background it’s highly likely you won’t have felt the repercussions, and if you were living with your parents when the crisis hit because you weren’t old enough for college then I suppose you’re in your early-mid twenties, right? If you are, congratulations, you dodged the millennial bullet, which I will rant about further later. Anyway, it’s not like it’s a fault or anything, but like, upper-middle class = you have some degree of privilege.

Now, I also am middle class, though in Italy, which is a whole different thing than being middle class in the US - now I can’t be knowledgeable about the details of how it works in the US tho I know a few things that might give you extra perspective further down, but anyway, I do have the middle-class privilege that comes with having managed to dodge the economical crisis, but... I’m late twenties/early thirties, which means that I finished studying right when the crisis hit here the worst - it caught up with us a bit later than in the US but when I finished university there was literally nothing for anyone with my background and most people my age I know either are working from home somehow or working jobs that have nothing to do with their skill set or what they studied for or are freelancers or work without benefits and/or it took them years to get to economical stability - like, my cousin got first in this year’s chart to teach middle school in her area and she got two schools (if not three) for one year and is still living with her parents and it took her six years if not more to get there since getting the degree, her brother has worked for an ONG for years but his contract’s is meh and he compensates renting a room in a house his parents bought for him and as far as I’m concerned... it took me two years to get a shitty paid state job for one year and now I have to look again and I might end up trying to end up in a program to get a teaching certification that I don’t even want to do, but it’s STATE MONEY with BENEFITS and after four years and so of working without benefits I’m freaking out about retirement and shit, which brings us to another problem.

My parents’ generation (and the previous one) found jobs in a moment of economical growth. When my mother retires and when my father does, they’re going with the old pension system which means they get 90% of their last paycheck. As it is right now, I haven’t put money towards it at all because I don’t have it, and I’ll have to work until I’m like seventy and I’ll get.... an abysmal amount of money, with the current system, sure as fuck not 90% of my last paycheck. I couldn’t buy a house without my parents’ help or without them backing me up (banks don’t let you have a mortgage if your parents don’t grant for you). And like, the generation before mine all managed to lend decent jobs because the economy was pre-crisis, the one after mine is getting better jobs because we’re out of it and everyone is hiring again, and the one I’m in is fucked because we’re too old or too young or too qualified because if you don’t find work you go back to studying and get titles that then mean you should get PAID WHAT A TRAVESTY or not qualified enough because we ended up taking jobs without proper contracts that you can’t put on your resume and so on. Given that I don’t consider myself old and that I come from a background where I’m more or less covered because the parents have good jobs, the situation for me and my entire age group is shitty af because unless you have uber rich parents and you come from money your retirement money will be shit and our retirement funds are shitty af, and good luck when our parents retire and don’t feed the system with their retirement money.

Like, if I wanted hypothetical children (THANK FUCK I DON’T) I could never afford to give them the same level of wealth/living that my parents gave me and that their parents gave them. I could never. Because even with someone else in the house, if they were my age and in the same work conditions it’d be an utopia.

Now, given all this, I’m still middle class. If I, a person with a relative amount of *privilege*, am fairly screwed when it comes to job perspectives (I mean, in this country you work as soon as you finish uni if you studied engineering or economics and that’s it...), how do you assume someone who actually comes from a low middle class or poor background is faring? Spoilers: a lot worse than me. The unemployment level in between young people here is tremendously high and working jobs without a contract to bring money home doesn’t help either. And like, at least here a lot of people my age just dump everything and leave Italy (and I honestly sort of wish I had when it’d have been easier but never mind) because finding a job tied in some way to what you studied for here is a lottery gamble and then people don’t understand that if all the young people leave who pays for their goddamned retirement money? Anyway, tldr: obviously if I had found a government job at 24 just out of university I wouldn’t be here worrying about my retirement money as much, but I don’t have a government job and the majority of people doesn’t, and given the current times it’s not shaping up to look that much better for us, at least.

On to the US, since I assume you’re from the US: thing is, from what I understand especially right now the part where if you work hard enough you make money and climb into upper-middle class is kind of a myth especially when in order to attend university you have to get loans unless you’re on a scholarship and/or come from money, which means that you end university and you have already 40k of debt to repay on you, which already puts a hinder on anything you do because you’ll have to pay that shit off, same as your car, same as your house and so on, which means that if you’re *poor* it’s a lot less likely to get into college or find a good job unless you go in the military (which is imo another whole level of fucked up but never mind), not counting the people who from what I understand end up in debt or broke because they can’t pay off hospital expenses/insurance expenses if they get sick. Never mind that the entire 2008 crisis spiraled from the Reagan/Thatcher ridiculously terrible economical liberalims that people decided was AMAZING in the eighties, but if I don’t remember wrong, what kickstarted it was basically the fact that a lot of people took loans to buy houses with money they didn’t have and the banks defaulted and it all came tumbling down. Now, the people who lived in those houses basically lost everything and got fucked thrice over, and how do we assume their kids are faring? Not well, most probably.

Now, idk how the situation is there because it looks like by the end of his term Obama had managed to create more jobs and send things back on  a better track (if Trump doesn’t fuck that up obv) but like... Obama was there eight years. It took that long. Anyone who finished college and/or was in my age range and on the job market during the crisis or when it hit most probably got very much fucked, never mind that I’m 99% sure that the US don’t have the same retirement system as here when it comes down to it so people are nowhere near as sheltered when it comes to their retirement. Or to get benefits. Though from what I gathered we have more benefits than the average US worker, government or not, so... a lot of people have real issues finding a job or moving on from their crappy one or meeting the living standards their parents had and which from what I gather they’re expected to have (see the credit cards post I reblogged yesterday). And that’s going to be the majority. And since ‘young people’ are usually considered my age range these days and my group (the millennials of doom) was the one most hit by this fuckery when it came to finding jobs... no, it’s not an exaggeration. I can say it’s not from another country where things are marginally better and coming from a background more like yours, I can’t even begin to imagine how worse it is for people who had it worse growing up and have less welfare to fall back on.

also, we’re talking young people but here a lot of older ones got fucked over thrice because the pension reform hit them badly, and most of them weren’t wealthy and worked time/health-consuming jobs, a lot lost their job and who’s going to re-hire you when you’re fifty-five, and that’s without having lost your savings as it happened in the US. if these people had kids, those kids didn’t fare well, most probably. the crisis was a problem for people from every age, not just for young people.

So, again: yes, there’s a problem, and no, it’s probably hard that you’d notice because if you managed to miss the crisis’s effects and you don’t have the retirement/pension funds problems we have here you wouldn’t have any reason to. However, it’s not an exaggeration at all and like, I don’t want to sound condescending or anything and I have nothing against moderate liberals so like don’t take it as me insulting you or anything because I swear I’m not, and I know it’s hard to know people outside your sphere which is usually someone in your same economical conditions, but if you get the chance to talk to someone who’s less economically well-off than you/your friends/your family is I’d suggest listening to them because a) they’d give you a better idea of it than me since I only know my country’s situation well, b) it’s always a good thing to go outside your bubble (but that’s valid for everyone - all people should, from all backgrounds) and check how things are. I can give my perspective (which is bad) but someone who actually lived it worse than I did could give a better one. Anyway, I hope it was a satisfactory answer - it’s not in any way shape or form comprehensive but as I said I can only speak for what I’m sure of. :) 

#janie rants #politics for ts #the sad millennial way of life TM #Anonymous #ask post