DomeKart

please tell me the Shattered Cup is literally just a broken ceramic messhall mug /really /obviously glued back together and stuck on a wooden plaque
(and then maybe each year it gets mysteriously improved. one year the name goes from painted on to being burnt into the wood [machinists misusing dome equipment? what? no…] and the next, the plaque is nicely stained; the next the name is inlaid bits of metal
But one year someone spray paints it gold and there is /uproar
mysteriously, when the time comes to award it the gold cup has been replaced by another busted up messhall mug, /obviously not the original [tho really, the Marshal wonders, who /deliberately breaks a mug to make a jury-rigged trophy] and everyone pretends not to notice because TRADITION
shmoo
I was thinking there was a while early on where the PPDC /actually used ceramics before they transitioned to tin (are Tendo’s mugs tin? I don’t remember)
The appearance of the new/replacement/‘proper’ Cup after the transition to tin is what raises Xiong’s eyebrow because where do you even /get a ceramic PPDC cup now, did they steal a staffer’s, or get it from a giftshop or what…
(I did think about this before, I just wasn’t sure about whether or not everything in the movie was tin. I think it was?)
Yes: plyboard. Exactly. The general idea is that it’s the mankiest, most-jury-rigged prize possible and that’s /part /of /its /charm. It’s okay to improve little things, like staining the board, making the title more legible, but spraypainting it gold is like WHOA MATE a step to far, reel it back, Nelly, you’re overstepping your bounds (some poor, new, unsuspecting tech/intern/dogsbody is spending a fortnight doing muck work for that mess-up)
shmoo
Re mugs: I thought so. But that kind of just makes it even more wtf that they found another ceramic to, ahem, aggrandise. So who yielded up their mug (because it’s important to this mythos that it was a voluntary sacrifice not a convenient happening :P )
shmoo?
P.s. Someone makes a Last Place award that’s just two triangles of metal welded together and slapped on another bit of plyboard with an equally wonky inscription ‘You thought you were trying but you really weren’t at all’ a la tumblr stars. 
Getting rid of /that award is a relief
shmoo
But then how does the original Shattered Cup get broken…?
Okay how about…: there’s the original, then the replacement, then (through a series of unfortunate events that may or may not be related to cats, squabbling, and unsafe work environments in the Staging Area) the Cup is properly broken and it’s decided that they need a more durable trophy
enter the Shattered Tin Cup, this time /welded back together (with copper detailing)
(there are some mutters about banning the Cup from being displayed in the Staging Area where a careless winning-team tech might, say, slip on spilt lubricant and fling the Cup twenty feet across a bay - or, more viciously, banning tech crews from playing at all - but those are swiftly quashed)
(There would have been no such qualms if the Cup had been broken in an analyst’s office, or fallen off a desk in LOCCENT, but there’s a distinct undertone of academics vs blackhanders, and anyway there are occasional fits of distemper that primarily-tech crews have a know-how advantage over crews with one or none)
shmoo?
I think so, yes? 
(And Mako may or may not drop by while some enterprising tech is welding the tin one back together and suggest kintsugi, but who has gold *le shrug* so they find some copper used for soldering and voila)
shmoo?
o.O I take it back, what if it’s not Mako, it’s Tendo who suggests it, back when he was still skipping around the lower ranks and slumming it
(“You know what’d make this thing even better? /Shiny bits.” Half a bagel in his mouth. Crumbs falling out at he talks. Classy af.)
shmoo
hahaha yes, crayon
something obnoxiously bright and ridiculous
v neat
but ridic
(like, fuschia copperplate or something)
shmoo
That might be a little bit too much? I can imagine someone grabbing a random crayon to write, but for it to be legible, I can’t really see someone sitting there swapping through colours… hmm.
shmoo
Oh I gathered it would be a Fei Yen intervention thing; but I’m also thinking that for all the folks who are cheerful and baby-loving there are plenty who aren’t, and a combination of that and the fact that slapdash or not this is still a big-deal prize (sort of) would mean whoever was putting it together might get the bit between their teeth and decide that a baby wasn’t going to interfere with their construction [that and the Cup feels like a J Tech arts-and-crafts kind of thing that would emerge from the depths of the Staging Area like some Lovecraftian monster, and I don’t see Fei Yen being allowed to roam around there even with supervision. Too many sharp things.]
https://www.tumblr.com/inbox/after/125798481378
Category:Meta
Category:DomeKart
Category:Rorykurago
Category:Artificiallifecreator