u/EclipseMT

This day, 8/08 is a holiday declared such to celebrate the oneness of the Octoling species following the Sundering (the event which saw the fragmenting of one Octoling species before recorded history into the various clans and other factions that exist today). It's a relatively recent holiday, declared such following the conclusion of a Great Council which took place on that day a handful of years ago between the heads of several prominent Octoling clans to acknowledge that while our own regionality is a great pride to have, for all of us to maintain our own solidarity as a species beside our regional identity is an important step for Octo-kind.

The different Octoling clans, the different Octo-majority regions, and their cadet branches had initially tried to propose different days for the occasion:

* The Takowasas wanted Octavio's Ascension
* Hitachi wanted the day ending the Great Turf War.
* Ezo and the clans from it wanted Ezo Day.
* The Splatlandian Octolings wanted a day significant to Clan Hohojiro (forget which one).
* Other clans effectively wanted their own clan's patron day to be it, or partnered with other clans in their region to push that it should reflect their local customs

In the end, the eighth day of the eighth month was decided upon as a neutral day (otherwise insignificant to any particular group except for the general affinity of the species for the number eight) to hold the Great Council and henceforth declare the day as a holiday to celebrate the newfound unity of the species whilst acknowledging the innate identity our kind has toward their own individual clans.

There's a cinema near Ink Square that was showing the Octolinguan dub of some classic films in commemoration of the occasion (fun fact: most older dubs in the language are produced in Ezo and sometimes with talent from Mutsu).

So in between Ink Battle and fixing and tuning weapons (she has a very selective clientele), Rinnie has been busy trying to repair these ancient-looking musical keyboards and trying to squeeze interesting color tones from them. I mean, we have a band that we occasionally jam together with (it's been inactive as of late thanks to some of the other members' commitments), but kid, you need to lay back a bit.

One day I come home from a trip and see Rinnie asleep, head lay down over her latest project, in our common space with a dim work lamp providing the only illumination. My partner is already in the bedroom sound asleep (remember: I tie up close to midnight), and here is this wooden cabinet with an utter mess of wires and an even more nonsensical contraption on the inside clearly visible as I try to set my work gear down. I tell you, this kid is manic.

The next day was a day off for me, and Rinnie is already up still doing work on this whatzit that has plagued her for three days now. Of course I try to offer her to come along for some errand fulfillment and eventually a trip to the Square's Shoal and some more leisurely shopping, but this kid will not say anything but "No thank you." So my partner and I acquiesce and just spend some time to ourselves.

When we return, we walk into a very otherworldly sound filling the room, and Rinnie is just showing off playing a really fast keyboard riff from >!think the intro to Boston's Long Time!<. My partner can only remain stunned in awe. I ask her what was wrong with that board, and it's that parts were needed to fix an amplifier circuit, and I entertain her explanation before asking what's next. She says she has a handful more old keyboards and synths she is looking to resurrect.

I cannot wait for school to go back in session. Thank goodness for the workshop and its creative space in downtown Ajikawa for the future, but I don't know why she decides to do all this workshopping in our small condo. All this gear she manages to bring home is just absurd and not at all going to fit our meager living quarters (need I remind you, it's only a 1DK). If a local recording studio wasn't willing to compensate her for her handiwork, I would not have allowed this.

Then again, I was no different before I got the job on the railway, but I had to stop doing a handful of my hobbies as a result of taking the job. I am hideously out of practice with repairing electronics.

It's kind of far-fetched to ask for this, but in the spirit of the ongoing Splatfest, do we happen to have anyone who has worked on a Shifty Station back when Pearl and Marina ran Fests? I'd like to interview them about their experience, and I presume since this has become a matter of interest for this board, how it was like to be among the first defectors from Octo Valley or Octo Canyon, if the rumor is to be believed.

So mostly rumor confirmation and just general experience sharing.

Board, would this be possible to arrange?

Pardon my rather misguided surface-born ignorance to this issue, but what stopped the Takowasa Shogunate from building on the surface of Octo Valley and Octo Canyon (their territorial holdings) and made them resort to just building underground, like [half-unjoke for lack of a better in-universe analogy: a colony of insects]? Granted, from what I have read, at least for Octo Canyon, the terrain through the river was considerably ravaged in the pre-Great Turf War era thanks to extensive mining operations, so that might explain things.

Can anyone on this board enlighten me as to why underground domes were the solution rather than...anything else that could be reasonably built in a rough canyon?

Title. I guess if you want to answer this question in multiple facets, you can describe when you first spectated an Ink Battle, and when you first partook in an Ink Battle.

These past couple of days have just been crazy such that I have overlooked that the Inkadian Day of Reintegration was just under five days ago as of this writing.

Happy belated Reintegration Day. While there have been challenges to the ideal which this holiday commemorates as of late, it is imperative that Inkadia at-large stands against the faction supporting dissent among all Turflings.

Take care out there.

Mikkie here, your Octoling train driver in residence.

I ought to go on the record and clarify some things in the rail life since it has evidently become a point of interest here on this board, and it has been making me feel a little dreadful over the meager response to the AMA I had launched a couple months ago specifically to talk about this subject. In any case, here is probably what I should have brought up in that post! Not trying to be brutally honest here, and I want to try to be brief.

A lot of the things I will say are strictly applicable to Inkadia Rail, but some are universal across the industry with minor adjustment. I know the other legacy carriers (i.e. Ezo Railway, Splat Central, Western, Awacount Railway, and Southern Isles) do mostly the same thing, but I've heard that all the large private carriers (I use this term despite the fact that the legacies are also privatized and have been for 35 years now, except for some outstanding shares held by the shell company that resulted to assume certain debts - too long to cover here), third-sector carriers (e.g. Nerikara and Tsubokara), and also Inkopolis Metro (which operates the subway in Inkopolis) employ similar practices.

Big things: We are a union shop. That means you pay your dues. But in return, all of our work rules and policies are on paper. Operational guidelines are published by the carrier. Most importantly, any of the rules that dictate how the carrier can treat us are published in a booklet which is the result of very fierce negotiation between the Railway Workers Guild, Inkadia and the Inkadia Railway, and also based on the provisions of the Railway Business Act published by the Transportation Cabinet. But again, the legacies are private. None of our management are appointees from the government, and the biggest extent that the TC gets involved is that they step in only to enforce the RBA.

Onboarding: Most of the time, you are onboarded on platform duty or anything station-side (Green Window, information, etc.) Very rarely do you get hired off the streets as a conductor or a train driver unless they are actually desperate for labor (to put this in perspective, I, an Octo from Ezo, hired on as a station agent and did that for a short time before putting in, and that was in a self-proclaimed dearth of talent - an Inkling friend of mine was in my hiring class). Usually plat term will last you a year or two. Some stay because they like it. But the only way that they open conductor or train driver for off the street applicants is when they have exhausted the prospective internal candidate pool (again, thanks to a strict CBA). But say you make train crew. Conductor training is roughly six months of combined classroom and practical instruction. Driver training (done separately and after a term as a conductor) is an additional nine months, and even more for practical. Both involve strict examination (90 percent or higher is considered passing) and licensure before you can even touch a cab unsupervised. To put this into perspective, I have had seven years with the carrier as of this writing, and only three of those have I been driver qualified. That also factors being able to apply for conductor only a year in.

Scheduling: When I mention how tough our schedules are, this is what turns prospective applicants off. If you want normalcy like a regular desk job or the flexibility that Grizzco offers, this is not for you. Punctuality is everything on the rails. But once you are released from training (which has relatively normal shifts), here is how they look. If you are lucky, you get a four-day, 16-hour duty cycle. If your base is generous, you can get a working day of 8-12 hours, but five days on a week. If you are unlucky, you get an 18hr-24hr duty cycle with generally alternating days on and off, and the need to overnight at some very spartan crew bunks provided by the company for a rest period that is usually no longer than six hours. All of this is based off of seniority. Once a month, every single conductor and train driver bids their schedule for the following calendar month (based on when the trip starts): which trips they want to take on which day, as well as preferred days off, and this bid process is in seniority order. Seniority will always nab the "easy" trips, and those trips also tend to contain faster legs. Number one driver on my base's roster works Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays every single week from 05:00 to 22:00, and gets exclusively Special Rapid trips on the Central Line throughout that cycle. Meanwhile, I, with my seven years of time with the carrier, am only able to hold only certain Saturdays off (I do manage to get the ones I do want off), I work most every Sunday, and generally subject myself to the longer days (10:00-01:00 on a four-day cycle), and the trips I get throw me all over my base's normal operating area. If you are really, really unlucky (edit: or if you decide to; we do have some individuals who do), you have the magic status known as on-call reserve: you have a designated call window every single day where the carrier can assign you to fill in a vacancy on a trip originating from your base (there are rules to this outlined in our CBA, including whether we can declare to be on long call reserve - 2 day notice, short call - two hour notice, or terminal reserve - report to work at a designated time, and carrier can assign us on a whim for the window we are there), notwithstanding any trip that would violate your off-duty rest minimums.

Pay: couple things to tackle here. The big thing is that we crews are paid by the mile (OOC: what even are units for distance in this verse?) whilst we are considered "on the road" (i.e. in command of a train that will move anywhere on the line). This is one big reason why seniority loves Rapid services: they are long-distance and get their trips done in a short interval than an all-stops trip on the same. The nominal starting rate is 100g/mi with the possibility to top out at 225g/mi based off of seniority (OOC: 100g would be the rough equivalent of 1 USD). Do the math for the Tide Rider Line, a 21 mile loop that takes a little over an hour for one lap - every train does every stop on that line (edit: my base at Ajikawa gets no trips on the Tide Rider Line, but the Central Line is about the same in terms of distance). Top of scale will take home well over 4500g for every single lap they do on the line (I'd be somewhere around 3100g under the same conditions). Add on things like guaranteed hourly minimum for ground time (i.e. when we aren't in the cab - this rate works out to less than our nominal on-the-road rate), hardship pay for time worked during major commute rushes or special events (the Tide Rider Line is prime real estate if you want that Splatfest hardship), and premium pay for qualifications, and daily, one can expect to take home about 60kg on average (I'm around this ballpark with seven years of seniority). This is before factoring in the Extra Time rules involved when someone drops a trip and we decide to add it in our schedule without dropping a trip ourselves (which I will not explain). Some of my more-experienced colleagues have fatter paychecks because of this.

That's all I have for now. Any other questions, please ask. Ultimately, life on the rails is tedious, tends to be inglorious, days are long, days off are handed irregularly, but it pays for a modest 1DK condo right next to the crew base that can house both me and my partner (she used to work road crew but has since hopped over to local RTC), and even allow my sister to board overnight during Turfing season (i.e. weekends, and when school is not in session, though in practice she is one rail trip away whether she is going to school or to the city).

This is really one of those "interesting albums I had found on consignment that I just decided to dig back up" moments. I decided to put Sashi's third album So I Quit in the stereo just for fun - their third "rock opera" style album, and the last album that featured a younger Pearl Hozuki before she left the band due to burnout (so I presume the title is quite on-the-nose).

The album booklet notes are hilarious. There is a photocopy of a handwritten note that lambasted their A&R representatives saying that they forced the band to make this album, how they wanted to just stop at two, but were contractually beholden to a third release with that label, and begging fans to lower their expectations because of how their last album Paranormal (another rock opera) would be a hard act to follow (supposedly, they let a production assistant write a track in the album).

Altogether, though, it featured SashiMori's trademark heavy metal sound throughout, though I feel the burnout may have seeped into some of the tracks - so much so that I think the album booklet notes were the most standout part of the album (If you want me to transcribe it, I will).

I need to try to get a copy of the other two albums from this series. With all due respect to Paul and the modern band, this is an interesting era both in terms of Pearl's and the rest of the band's careers.

(OOC:) Yes, I subscribe to the theory that Pearl used to be tied to SashiMori before forming Off the Hook. This would have been the time she recorded Dudes Be Sleeping

(edited because mobile can't format)