powersthatbe | The Edric Ljosalfr Better World Grant.

The Edric Ljosalfr Better World Grant.

Grant Mechanics

The winner of the grant competition will be settled on by player vote, taken at the time the grant projects are turned in on the 29th. Characters are free to decide on their own department projects, & there are some suggestions below.

If no projects are selected by the 13th, default projects will be assigned by the mods - but any department assigned a project will have a 5-vote handicap assigned. Please be as specific and imaginative as possible with your submissions - brainstorm in the comments, feel free to argue and question and come up with a dozen ideas before settling on just one.

Characters who sabotage projects, bribe faculty, or play at departmental politics may assign additional vote penalties to their opponents at the mods’ discretion, depending on how it plays out. Getting caught doing these things will impose a penalty on one’s own department.

The success or failure of the Investigation is dependent on which project wins; the Trumps have a favorite and may indicate it via hints in Liminal Space.

Suggested Projects

Technical Systems & Support: Restoring advanced computer systems, upgrading the generators, upgrading the radio tower, demonstrating the functionality of a new device or a freshly reverse-engineered one, creating more durable and survivable tech for the wastelands, scavenging something truly important or surprising.

Ecological Sciences: developing a new strain of crop with a useful trait; cleaning terrain more efficiently; modeling or understanding the wastelands better; advancing medical treatment for chemical or radioactive contamination; documenting a novel mutation in a plant or animal species; collecting & saving a new species from the Wasteland.

Cultures & Humanities: restoring a lost work of cultural significance, translating an obscure document with measurable & practical importance, achieving an innovation in technique or medium; demonstrating a nuanced anthropological approach - unfortunately Cultures & Humanity projects are likely to be a little more subjective, winning hearts & minds more than demonstrating utility.

Progress

(none so far)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

/FINALLY BREAKS THIS POST IN

Hello friends, this is Dana, player of Ukyo here, finally coming in to talk about that Student Gallery idea that I had for all the Cultures & Humanities students to participate in! Since I'm pretty sure I got enough interest in the OOC Plotting pre-jaunt, I’m gonna go ahead with the idea! Ukyo will probably be mentioning it to some of his infiltrator buddies (and then some) in his threads that are in the current Jaunt Log so that should be enough to get the ball rolling ICly.

Now what is the gallery? The gallery will, regardless of the options below, be something that Ukyo sets up to likely occupy one of the rooms in Le Tour Ivoire. He’s going to open it up to all sorts of opportunities for the arts. It will be a traditional gallery in the sense that there will definitely be actual art of whatever medium is provided as well as photographs, but he’s also going to try to space it out enough that there can be multiple live performances and demonstrations going on as well. That way theater students, music students, literature students, and whoever else are still able to perform and share their talent with the public. So I hope this doesn’t limit anyone in what they want to contribute to the gallery. If you have anything that you can think of that might be difficult to demonstrate still, please let me know!

Most likely I will end up making an open post in the coming week if your character needs to be openly approached about the gallery in order to participate. I really don’t want anyone to think for even a moment that it’s impossible to make happen if they want to join in, because I’ll do everything in my power to try to accommodate anyone!

Now as for how the gallery might play into the large plot-

Option A: The gallery can be an event that’s organized by Ukyo (with ~~shittons of~~ some help from CR) and the gallery in its entirety isn’t the actual grant project but rather it’d be used to display the grant project, whether it be a salvaged artifact or translated document or anthropological discovery – whatever else is proposed and decided on! So it’d be like the gallery is happening and the actual grant project is sort of the Super Shiny ~*Main Event*~ for it.

Option B: The gallery is absolutely in no way tied into the grant project! In which case it will likely happen after the grant projects are due, when everyone is done being stressed about them. It’ll be something that invites all the students to just interact and destress together.

Option C: Admittedly this is something that I’m very hesitant to propose but the gallery can be the grant project in its entirety for the Cultures & Humanities department if no one has any objections and we don’t have any other suggestions for a grant project. I fully admit that I would rather this be a ‘last resort’ kind of option because neither Ukyo nor I would expect the gallery to be that relevant! That said since I'm competitive and would like to avoid a 5-vote penalty, I'm also willing to step up for this.

Option D: I AM SURE THERE ARE MORE OPTIONS THAN THESE THREE, but I wanted to make this post as simplistic as possible since there's already tons of info in it. Please, please, please feel free to suggest other options! c:

Please be decisive and tell me your opinion as to how the gallery can help you! I’m super open to plotting and different involvement. If you want to participate in it, please do! If you want to sabotage the hell out of it, I’m excited for some shit to go down! If you want to walk around and pick your nose and decide that your booger is the truest example of Sophisticated Art in the entire place, go right on ahead with your bad self!

IC Details:
- If you target Ukyo, this will be so easy to sabotage. The guy is easily distracted by his emotions, not cut out for organization, and honestly not even remotely qualified to host an event of this size. Though he’ll obviously be enlisting help for exactly these reasons.
- If you’re interested in CR or your character getting involved, please feel free to talk to me about helping! I already have some helping hands but Ukyo is a mess of a human being and will undoubtedly need more.
- Ukyo is vehemently against The Ground getting shut down because he ~~loves the manager with the passion of a thousand lifetimes~~ really likes ~~Mai~~ …. coffee. So depending on further plotting, he might try to get The Ground to cater the event to demonstrate its important to the student populace! Whether or not this will actually happen shall be announced at a later date and based on what you all think.
- In case it hasn’t been made clear enough, investigators are so, so, so welcome to use the gallery for whatever they need in terms of plot purposes as well.

TL;DR RE: Gallery - TELL ME WHAT TO DO WITH IT. HELP ME HELP YOU!! PLEASE. Also I'm sorry for how long this is, omg.

Edited 2014-07-10 01:37 (UTC)

If the gallery is part of the submission, and it looks likely that it might receive the grant, it's possible that Armin might sabotage it! Depends heavily on what else happens with it.

It'd admittedly be easy to sabotage! Honestly the simplest ways I can think of is to mess with Ukyo's organization or otherwise just mess with him. Like I said, pretty easy target.

If anyone wants to sabotage any actual works of art or performances I'd actually recommend pinging the players of the artists in question. c: But that could just be more fun for CR-

I'd totally do this with Leo and provide a submission, but Leo would have to be asked in some way. He wouldn't just join on his own because somehow, he thinks his own art is purposeless and flat. (Like, seriously dude. How do you think this. My muse is a dork.)

CUE DISTRESSED UKYO PLEADING-

But yeah, Ukyo can totally approach Leo about it if you need someone to give him an extra push! Honestly Ukyo will be asking anyone who's even remotely involved in the Humanities and Culture department if they're interested in contributing so.

I would love it if Ukyo caught him drawing something. Because Leo is always drawing in his notebook or doing something else in there!

Awesome!! Then I'm definitely going to put up the Ukyo post soon - I'm thinking Monday or Tuesday! He could come across Leo's doodling there and then invite him to the gallery?

IF IT'S OKAY Anduin isn't really a performing arts type guy, but he'd gladly help you plan things and organize it, no matter if it's in the submission or not!

Oh man, that's totally okay!! Just for curiosity's sake, is Anduin an investigator or an infiltrator this round? And do you have a top-level comment somewhere where Ukyo can approach him?

He's an investigator but entirely the most friendly person and would gladly help even if he just got there THAT'S HOW YOU INVESTIGATE RIGHT!

I don't have a top-level comment yet, but I was going to make one tomorrow! Sorry about the wrong journal!

THAT IS CLEARLY HOW IT'S DONE and regardless Ukyo would be very happy to receive the offer!

oh awesome! then I'll definitely look out for that so Anduin is welcome to help out. also no problemo!

I think Option A is the most likely version! Art itself is great, and so are the talents of the students, but I don't think that the department would be likely to consider the gallery a grant proposal in and of itself. But housing and demonstrating the methods to which they would like to apply the grant money they are hoping to receive? That sounds like a great plan.

Alcuin's unlikely to provide anything for the exhibit himself, except tireless effort researching for the proposal and offering himself as inspiration for any number of art pieces people might wish to do.

Oh definitely! I was hoping for A anyway, ahaha. Ultimately I think that's what's going to happen. Time to switch gears and think of an actual proposal-

but Alcuin is such a friend, thank you for all your help, Alcuin.

I happen to like A or B as options, and Momo could easily be roped in to perform or display... really... weird-looking art. Ukyo could also become a bro in no time flat, so if he needs help, she'd do her best to lend a hand.

Then again, if you've got Momo performing, there's like a 96% chance her power will activate and draw in a crowd and people may get swarmed oops.

HAHAHA Momo performing sounds amazing and also like a great IC reason for characters not in the department to be there if they want to mingle! That sounds like fun.

But yes I believe it will end up being A! And.... Momo helping would make Ukyo so happy, he'd be so touched.

I do like option A the best! Like someone said above, the gallery itself probably wouldn't be considered grant material on its own, but if you surround the grant project with all this STUFF that the students do, then maybe it could subconsciously sway whoever is deciding who gets the grant money. Look at all this talent! You can't let it go to waste!

SNEAKY, SNEAKY.

As for Ibuki, I told you in my plotting post that he would definitely be potential for submitting something to the gallery, and that is still the case. He might need a bit of prodding, however, because he's not the most confident in his work and wouldn't just throw stuff up where people can see unless someone convinces him his stuff doesn't suck. Go ~~gently~~ bully him, Ukyo!

HAHA. SNEAKY INDEED and that sounds excellent. A will most likely be happening since that's what I got the most feedback for. TIME TO GET THOSE GRANT PROPOSAL IDEAS GOING TOO

But oh awesome! I'm probably going to throw a post up with Ukyo on Monday or Tuesday to really kickstart the IC prep for the gallery. I'll do my best to ping you when it's up so Ukyo can gently begin nagging Ibuki to join in.....

I would be down for option A! It seems to me that the gallery would be a great hands-on way to demonstrate the impact of whatever the C & H department is really doing to get the grant money, such as reenacting historical scenes if the grant project has something to do with translation of historical documents.

As for CR, Minato might stop from time to time to make sure Ukyo is doing okay. :D

Option A it is! But yeah, that definitely sounds about right! I want the gallery to do its best when it comes to supporting the department as a whole since it'd be hard for the proposal to encompass EVERYTHING that Cultures and Humanities is. But at the same time it can be a really good supplement to the proposal too. SO MANY OPTIONS.

But oh no Minato, you're such a bro. Ukyo probably will not be doing okay (he's not built to handle responsibility) but just the concern will be enough to lift his spirits.

A or C works for me.

If Break thinks that this grant project is what the Trumps want to make the Jaunt succeed, he'll sabotage it. Otherwise he'll play the perfect servant (he can actually do this when he wants to) and host, and do everything he can to ensure things run smoothly.

A will most likely happen! \o/

BUT HAHA OH WOW BREAK. I guess we'll see what happens then. At least Ukyo is easy to both help and hinder, depending on what you want to do.

If we all want to go with option A and still haven't come up with a proposal for the true project, Leonardo has a notion to go into the stacks and dredge up every uncatalogued work in Italian/whatever the language here is, and start translating them. That could be an interesting project, since a lot of what he's looking for are historical texts that might not have seen the light of day since the disaster! (Possibly even before that, really.) And as everyone knows, history has a lot to teach us.

I'm in favor of A or B

As far as proposals for the actual grant, Felix would probably push for translation/reprinting texts on the philosophy of governence and social justice, with the idea if people are going to be rebuilding civilisation, these are ideas they should have.

I am for this. Phedre handles chemicals for her photography all the time, so she might be able to do something to restore inks or something...or take pictures of ruined texts and enhance them in some way.

Or...do photoshoots to illustrate the ideas in the texts?

Or...even just be a coffee delivery girl/cheerleader for the people doing the actual work?

I dunno. I do like the idea, though.

Photographic enhancement for salvage would be useful! And she could probably do like, artsy photos of books or something for the gallery

Then this proposal has our full support! ^_^

Top-level for communal brainstorming and stuff!

I personally am leaning towards something along the lines of developing a new strain of crop OR documenting a novel mutation. This is because either of those things are in the areas that Shuu is researching ICly. :V

Cleaning terrain would be cool too! I think this would could be easily combined with creating a new strain or documenting a novel mutation.

Trying to think of other things but I'm drawing a blank right now. I think, in general, something that targets the Wasteland specifically would be a good idea, since ~healing the land~ is something whose accomplishment could be spun as being something only EcoSci could make happen.

Neeshka has her mutant hybrid thing (the gryphon hatchling) that she's studying, if they want to use that as attempting to learn adaptive traits in the new environment that they could then try to apply to human adaptation. I've been told that they do not have DNA sequencing or gene splicing, so creating a new mutation itself would be fairly dicey and uncontrolled, but studying already-existing mutations could also have benefits.

There could easily be a plant mutation whereby it sucks up radiation, stores it, and can later be disposed of. Then the soil and water in that area would be far reduced in radiation levels! Leonardo would be all for this once he learns radiation = bad.

It wouldn't necessarily even have to be a mutation, since there are plants that will accumulate and store radioisotopes as long as they're rendered processable. IIRC, the more effective ones can reduce the contaminant level in soil they're planted in by up to 3% per growing season just as the wild type plant. They could work on a project pairing selective breeding for that trait to up the percentage with more effective soil treatments to render radioisotopes more accumulable by plant life, maybe?

(Or use symbiotic bacteria or radiotrophic fungi somehow possibly, instead of direct soil treatment.)

Maybe we could combine a couple ideas... Let's say that there's a plant that's already known for helping cleanup radiation, and a certain patch of it's been found to have some kind of mutation that makes it more efficient at what it does. The grant proposal could be to study the mutation with the aim of creating a strain of this plant that has the mutated trait.

I think this could also work with radiotrophic fungi or bacteria... It's a matter of figuring out what kind of plant would be most plausible for the department to find/know about and easiest to grow in the tower's climate, really.

I'm not sure how much help this can be but reckon I'd throw it out here anyway.

Botan's infiltrator background involves researching about radiation decontamination from plant life but I imagine that without grant (and tbh equipment since gene splicing isn't a thing that can be done yet iirc?), it'll mostly be in the theoretical side of things. She might be of help...?

That aside, I think unleashing a new wild plant or bacteria life might play more havoc with the ecosystem (despite how wrecked the current one is) so I'm more for selective breeding a plant that's fairly populous within the nearby surrounding regions. It's supposedly France, isn't it? Maybe we could choose something from here.

I like the tree idea. Clean up some of the CO2 in the air probably as well since I'm sure that was never fixed before the apocalypse happened. Fungi are also a very likely choice - France has all manner of mushrooms, like truffles, button mushrooms, chanterelle, etc. and they might be a little easier to grow in irradiated soil.

They can probably further market it from the perspective that if this succeeds in decontaminating the atmosphere, they could also have their next step related to decontaminating the rest of the food chain as well.

That might be moving a little too detailed into things, granted.

Ooh! Perhaps they can prove this gene is common in other plants as well, by having a few different specimens who exhibit it? They could start breeding for it in a lot of plants.

New refugee researcher guy here might be SUSPICIOUSLY unsure about what even radiation is but he sure as heck is gung-ho about reclaiming the land and making it livable again. How to go about that is... a good question BUT HE'S DOWN FOR IT.

Former Professor Cecil, who now works as a gardener, has published many books on plants and radiation, and how to (theoretically) reclaim lands and water with nature. The student ~~he literally stressed to death~~ had a project very similar to what Leo has proposed, but Professor Cecil killed his dreams by telling him his math and genetics were alllll wrong. He keeps the dead young man's paper in a drawer in his writing desk. Anyone is free to "borrow it" and pick up where the guy left.

Edited 2014-07-10 17:24 (UTC)

Also, because torturing my character is important and canon references must be made, the flower his student was researching on was the Solomon's seal. :')

Something that might be neat is attempting to recover some of the old DNA sequencing techniques, or to re-establish something like insulin producing bacteria. The former would be wildly useful for mapping mutations and other DNA damage caused by radiation, and the latter has very useful medical applications.

I love option A, too! Levi might contribute some creepy shit if asked, and he would also probably encourage his students to do the same. Make the dept look good, kiddies 8D

He'd probably help setting up and shit too, he isn't the type to sit around on his ass.

WHOA NEARLY MISSED THIS hi

BUT LMFAO LEVI that sounds hilarious. feel free to do whatever you want with it! Ukyo isn't even really the type to say no......

and the help would be appreciated too. he might ask levi for help even in the planning stages because levi seems a lot more put together than he does-

Time for brainstorming some ideas!

So I got two option that you guys can pick from! I thought about mushing two project ideas into one go but this is what I have!

A. We can upgrade the generators into something where even the toughest weather can't destroy it? And make it extremely difficult to break down even when others try to destroy it?

B. We can also upgrade the radio tower for the purpose of seeing if there are any other people out there in the wastelands? While there might be bandits and warlord out there, we can think of ideas on how to prevent that kind of stuff?

C. Your pick!

I'm good with anything really so I would to hear your options of whatever project ideas you want!

personally, i'm down for the radio tower! maybe we can also incorporate the restoration of advanced computer systems into the tower project to help better control the signal or something of that nature, especially since the bandits/warlords are a concern?

IN ALL HONESTY THO i'm down for whatever! this girl here's an A-class prodigal engineer, so as long as she can do some kachunka-chunka-ing, she's a happy chickie.

That totally sounds like a sweet plan! And Leonardo will need someone to help him learn about all this new tech stuff, but once he figures it out he will be ALL UP ON THIS YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

That sounds good to me! That will always be a good way to have everyone in the Tech and Salvage program help each other out!

We are the most pickiest people ever aren't we?

Can we please build a plane

/most professional player

But there is precedent for it on plurk!

The radio tower really seems like the most feasible idea to me, given the sorts of skill sets we have available.

I know some people wanted the plane, but, uh. Let's be real, huh?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The Edric Ljosalfr Better World Grant.

C&H Gallery Proposal

no subject

no subject

Re: C&H Gallery Proposal

no subject

no subject

no subject

Re: C&H Gallery Proposal

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

OH RIGHT MY PLANS

no subject

no subject

no subject

Re: C&H Gallery Proposal

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Re: C&H Gallery Proposal

Re: C&H Gallery Proposal

Re: C&amp;H Gallery Proposal

Re: C&amp;H Gallery Proposal

Ecological Sciences

no subject

Re: Ecological Sciences

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Re: Ecological Sciences

Re: Ecological Sciences

no subject

Re: Ecological Sciences

no subject

no subject

Technical Systems & Support

no subject

no subject

no subject

such alliterative

Re: Technical Systems & Support

Re: C&H Gallery Proposal

Re: C&H Gallery Proposal