Let's repeat this one more time: for an American, I'm a great big Canada geek.

Over on the LJ community sages_of_chaos, characters from multiple fandoms are acting as advice columnists both to other characters and to real people. I’m playing three of the advisors: Sgt. Preston of the RCMP, John Constantine, and Detritus the troll. (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, respectively.) One of the other characters, played by kali921, is an ateva from C. J. Cherryh’s Foreigner novels. In a post in Preston’s journal, they’re RP’ing out a nice, polite little meeting over dinner in the Yukon circa 1899, and trying to explain their various societies and roles to each other. Jago, whose people have a near-biological need for structured authority, asked the following question:

"Your duty, Preston-ji*, is to both the people and the Queen. The Queen is the aiji**, nai-ma, and the Mounties are within her man'chi*** and serve her, throughout the Association, but also all the people within her association. And the Hudson Bay - the Company - may or may not be within her man'chi, nadi****? What happens, Preston-ji, when there is haronniin*****? When there is conflict between the man'chi of one and the man'chi of the other? And when the Queen and the people conflict?"

*-ji is roughly equivalent to addressing someone as ‘$NAME-san’
**aiji- leader, person in authority, liege-lord, Big Kahuna
***man’chi- sphere of authority, jurisdiction, organizational structure reporting to a single aiji
****nadi- mister, miss, sir, ma’am, etc.; polite without being as terribly formal as the repetition of ‘sir’ would be in the English language
*****haronniin- seriously bad mojo, loosely equiv. to the Pratchettonian concept of ‘Aagragaah’, which is the trollish word for the moment when the landslide is about to happen; generally the only way to defuse haronniin is to call in the Assassins Guild and have them take someone out before they drag everyone kicking and screaming into the Abyss

Preston’s answer required rather more time to write than I had previously thought, and considerably more Canadian history than I think most Americans ever get in school. Lord knows I don’t remember learning any of it. ( The long form )

Although, really, after reading up on the material I needed to make the response, I could probably have answered much more simply:

“The years 1870 through 1885.”

BAD BATMAN. NO BISCUIT.

Scott-san?

You were right.

Batman issue #78 WAS specifically taunting me.

Make the hurting stop.