It’s been a little more than a year since our last piece.
It’s been a little more than two years since we’ve started the 2016 miniseries.
There’s a lot of things that I want to say, but the more I sit and think about it, the more I realize, what I want to say have been said already by a lot of other people. So, instead, I’m going to talk a little bit about how I feel instead.
This post is a general update on 2016, which includes information on the physical release.
Prior to 2016 (the book), our team’s activities are largely relegated to Asia. Handling logistics in China, Japan, and the SEA is a large enough challenge already. Handling the logistics for China to the USA was only a bigger one. China cracking down on printing shut our physical portion down for a good six months was a challenge, too. So was setting up a store presence here.
Regardless, after all that, it’s here. We did it, and I’m very happy about that. The book’s made. You can find it here.
However.
DO NOT GIVE US YOUR HARD-EARNED MONEY UNTIL YOU’VE READ THROUGH WHAT’S ON OUR SITE.
For old readers, feel free to read below. For new readers, feel free to start with the timeline.
(2/21/18: Here’s our team’s ebay page. For some reason, the page isn’t updating the listings. We have a few combinations (e.g. book + poster, Trump poster, Clinton poster) for those of you interested. We’ve got people working on it now.)
For 2016, we did everything ourselves. From its creation (both artistically and physically) to customs to transportation to packaging, my small team of all-volunteers followed it through every step of the way. I’m damn proud of the fact that we managed to produce this thing (spoilers: holy moly shipping to America is INSANELY expensive) under complete financial independence.
Every dollar that went into its production? It’s our own money that we’ve earned through our own hard work. Not a cent from any crowdsourced shenanigans, not a cent from the various peoples that wanted to monetize it, and not a cent from anywhere else but the team’s own pockets.
We’re not against making money. Believe me, we’re tremendously grateful for all the support our readers have given us throughout the years. However, this book is a promise.
I promised our readers that they’ll see a physical copy of this book. I promised them, like all of our other books, that we’re going to foot as many parts of the bill as we can. We took a look at our own finances and decided that this was something that we could do on our own, and we simply weren’t comfortable asking you for money BEFORE we’ve done anything to earn it.
This is a hobby for us, folks. We’re a doujinshi circle with international reach, translations into multiple languages, a direct link to printing/production of both small and high volume works, and much more, but at the end of the day, we’re a bunch of enthusiasts. That’s what the term doujin means in Japanese. This is our hobby. We do our best to produce the best content we can, but we’re not a professional organization. Pacific – Hon-haka – is a small group of twenty-something volunteers numbering in the single digits. We’re here doing this because it makes us happy, and that it’s a reflection of our own values.
That book you see up there linked on ebay is a book we made for you. It’s pretty much the 2016 series you see linked here, in book form, but it has some interjections and comments from our own characters from our mainline work, Pacific. As with all of our own releases, we’ll release our books electronically, free of charge, whenever it’s ready. In the meantime, if you do plan on buying a copy to support us, thanks, but please look at what’s on the site, read the rest of this post, and decide if that’s what you really want to do.
Now, I am going to admit to something, too. There’s a few small printing errors in the book itself. While I’m a bit annoyed that the errors slipped by, it’s what it is, and we’ve never not been completely transparent with our readers. This is actually fairly common within doujinshi as a whole – people aren’t perfect, and the only thing we can do is do the best we could next time.
However, we’ve always gone above and beyond what is expected. If you look at our own activity here on the site, we have consistently sent out copies of our book free of charge to any reader that had encountered errors or issues pertaining the books, be it within or without our control. Here’s one example of a site-wide announcement we did. Here’s another. We’ve always treated our readers as, well, how we’d want to be treated ourselves.
Regretfully, we can’t do that for this book. We simply don’t have the cash on hand to reprint and ship to America on this kind of a scale for 2016. The only thing we could and will do is to update the electronic versions of our books and to make sure that one’s better than the one before.
The electronic copy will be free of charge to all of our readers. If you find someone selling the stuff, let us know, because that’s definitely not sanctioned or approved.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that, we’re a bunch of really old fashioned young people. I’d be very happy if you simply read our book and enjoyed our artwork. We’re doing this for you. Anything you do for us – be it buying a book or poster in support of us or simply passing the word to your friends – is something that we cherish tremendously, but …
To use a favorite analogy of Zero’s (since I think this explains the team’s mindset perhaps better than anything else). The creations of the Pacific team, or how we operate, it’s a bit like a house party. We’re inviting you over here to our house and sharing stuff we’ve made with you. Dinner’s on us. We pick what we’re serving. We’re feeding you. That’s what you’re here for. No self-respecting or honorable host would demand that the guests help with the dishes, though of course we’d certainly appreciate the help if you really wanted to help out.
Make sense? Hope it did.
Now, onto 2016 itself.
Below is purely stuff from me. It doesn’t represent the views of all of our team members. Reminder that the political ideology of this team ranges from far left to far right – we even have bonafide members of the Chinese communist party working together with basically a Japanese neo-imperialist. So…
Anyways.
2016 has been a hilarious chain of events, and I’ve received many, many, many emails asking me if we plan to do more of this stuff. “Will there be a 2020? What about 2018?”
The answer is probably. We’ll just have to see if the artists have time. They are full-time professionals (as is myself, but writing takes less hours than drawing!), but you’ll make time for your hobbies.
What I can definitely tell you, however, is that because of our Asiatic release, we will definitely have more art covering the events in 2017 and beyond. There’s plenty of fodder to go around, from Rocket Man to the various special elections to Congressional deadlock that we’re spitballing ideas for.
What does this mean for 2016? Well, it simply means that – like I said above – we’ll be updating the 2016 series on our site and the electronic versions of our book with new art.
Am I still a Trump supporter? Absolutely. He might not be perfect, but he is doing all the right things, in my view, to Make America Great Again. What is remarkable to me is how much stuff he’s getting done despite unified opposition from the Democrats, the definitely not Democratic Republicans, and the media.
I like to link Harvard’s study here since it is illuminating. I am fond of history. I wouldn’t have made Pacific if I wasn’t. However, I don’t think we’ve got a single moment in history where there are so many things stacked up against a single president, and things are still progressing as they are.
Let’s just give one recent example. Look at the chaos that is currently unfolding with the FISA/FBI/CIA/Justice Department story. I’m well aware of the extent to which the country is polarized, in the same way as our country is polarized over matters such as protecting illegal aliens over our own citizens or calling anyone who disagree with you a Russian bot.
However, ask yourself this. Why is most of the media eager to simply bury the news on the matter? Why are we so eager to just call something fake news or Russian trolling and move on? Why not allow people to talk, think, and reach their own conclusions?
Stuff like this.
Now, before you start cheering MAGA or throwing stuff at me for being an alt-right troll, here’s Mueller’s report. For this one particular instance, the report clearly says that in this specific instance that’s investigated, there is no evidence that these disturbances affected the outcome of the 2016 election.
I’m more than willing to give the left the benefit of the doubt. There might be more investigations coming. However, we’ve been screaming Russian hackers, Russian trolls, and finally Russian collusion for the last year and a half. Every single government interferes with every other government’s political structure. Finding out that Russians ran twitter bots and organized pro and anti Trump rallies on the same day and spent the bulk of their money on anti-Trump efforts AFTER the election is proof that Trump “colluded” with the Russians how?
Would it seriously be problematic just to say what it is? No collusion was found in this report?
No. Of course not.
Forcefully pushing an agenda like this will work to a point, but the instant someone starts thinking about the possibility that there may be another angle to the story, the instant someone starts questioning the narrative…
Once someone sees the bias inherent in our media system, and the insane degree to which the media bends to protect its own favored policies and politics, the illusion comes apart. People realize then that this is a battle of ideological survival, and the war is heating up.
If I want to know to what extent did the Obama administration wiretap its political opponents using “evidence” yet to be verified from its own party, does that make me a Russian hacker? If I want to know why a train full of Republican congressmen almost got derailed, does that make me a Russian troll? Why is any viewpoint that even slightly deviates from whatever the leftist viewpoint of the day automatically dismissed on the grounds of who’s making the argument, rather than what the argument is? Why is it that we are only allowed to frame our conversations within the boundaries defined only by the left – for instance, “illegal alien” versus “undocumented person?”
I’m mad. I know I’m not the only one judging from the uptick of people starting to ask the same kind of questions as me. I’m sure as hell not going to just sit by and let them run amok. Of course not. I could be on reddit. I could be on /pol. I could be in the comment sections of youtube or dailymotion or twitch. I could be anywhere and anyone on this wide, wide space we call the internet.
You could have seen me somewhere else, perhaps under a different name. Might have gotten inspired by my words, or you might have disagreed with it. It might have made you think, or it might very well have made you uncomfortable.
But, honestly, what difference does it make? It doesn’t matter. We fight and win in this intellectual domain not through cults of personality or personal credit, but by the arguments and values we present.
To me, I don’t care at all for people to agree with my ideas or Morgane’s ideas or any of that. What matters to me is for people to hear those ideas. So long as there are places remaining on the internet and in the public that allows for the unfettered exchange of ideas, I remain confident that this country can grow for the better.
So, we’ll keep on doing our thing. You do yours.
Now, a few other commonly asked questions.
Where can I read 2016?
Here on this site. The timeline documents the entire 2016 experience. For an actual electronic version it’ll be up soon enough, but we’ll also put it front and center in the timeline.
Who are the anime girls in 2016?
The anime girls are characters from our own creation (Pacific). You can check out the about us FAQ page to get an idea for what Pacific is. For the purpose of 2016, they’re stand-ins for US states. Think of a voter or someone who is interested in civics from those states.
Of course, because the Pacific-verse is quite different (the timelines start to diverge at around 1950 or so) from our world, some viewpoints may be a bit different.
How big is the book/the poster?
Our teammate, distributor, and former US Army Veteran has this to show.
The book is a bit larger than the books we typically make, but it’s about that size. The posters are about that size too. Due to eBay’s listing shenanigans (we had a loooong period of technical difficulties) we’ll have the poster listings up soon enough.
EDIT (2/22/18): We’re having trouble with eBay. Here’s the listing with the posters included. In this one you get one of each poster, too.
If you just want the posters, they’re 10$ each.
Is this book produced in the USA?
No. We look forward to the day where we can actually produce our books in America. US-based printers either couldn’t (or wouldn’t) take the book or tell us up front that they print in China anyways, and even then that’s still more expensive than the deals we have.
Funny how things are, isn’t it?
Are you going to create more 2016-related material like trinkets and etc?
Eh, we originally planned a set of keychains. However, in the course of mass production we found that it was too costly. Again, see our reluctance to use other people’s resources above.
If we do end up finding something appropriate, we’d just go ahead and do it.
I have other questions!
Sure. Leave a message on the message board, drop by the Discord, or email me at USNfleetcollection@gmail.com. Feel free to go say hi to Sima on his Pixiv as well.
Thanks for dropping by! Take care.