Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

[Shroom Man 777]

Zigonians.

Everyone's favorite party lizards. I purposely wanted to turn them into laid back lazy fun-loving siesta-having guys to avert the cliche of the evil predatory reptilian warrior villain thing. So far they've developed rather nicely as excellent background guys adding flavor and spice to the world and I'm overall satisfied with how they were carried out.

Siege helped greatly in detailing them further in SDNW4. True to form, we weren't very serious in tone, but the results were nonetheless entertaining and I'm thinking that we should still incorporate a fair portion of this.

Since in SDNW4 we couldn't have a separate Zigonian nation, Zigonia was incorporated into the USS without much fuss since by the time humans got into Zigonian space, the lizards were just chilling and had no problem joining the Sovereignty. One of the fun weird silly things we made for SDNW4 was how a lot of Zigonians very easily converted into Catholicism and practiced their own version of the creed, but without actually following anything remotely Christian and just having incense-fueled rave parties in their cathedrals during mass time. Because incense is like psychoactive to Ziggies. They're cool like that. Their Pope is Crocodilus Pontifex (a Futurama joke yes) and such and such.

Now I was thinking. This is all fun and good, and I love it. But since we're now into the whole artistic artsy-fartsy fru-fru exploration of conditions and such, I was wondering if we could go deeper into this. We don't want a one-note alien race, and we want something that explores themes and such. So let's try this with the Zigonians.

They're careless fun-loving pseudohedonists who appreciate the finer things in life like chilling out, pursuing happiness, and they don't really care as much for serious business. Not that they don't engage in seriousness, but they don't value it as heavily as us. There's some commonality between them and the Na'vi in the whole spirituality and love for nature thing. Except these are crocodilian velociraptor-looking people partying.

Maybe this has something to do with their senses. Part of how people think is influenced by how they perceive the world around them. Humans are mostly visual and auditory creatures, and this is seen in how we behave and how we communicate and act, our things are mostly visual and auditory, and there is a strict separation of sensations for us.

I'm thinking that the Zigonian inability to separate play-time from serious-time is partly due to a difference in sensory perception. They might have the cliche'd alien trait of being much more sensory acute and attuned than humans. Their reptilian brains might have much larger sensory lobes than ours. Their eyes could see into the edges of the ultraviolet. They might have heat-sensitive pits like snakes to sense infrared and heat more finely. Their forked tongues can taste the air. Their hearing might be better. But not only that. Maybe unlike humans, the way their brains are wired means that their sensory perception isn't as segregated as us. Maybe for them, their perceptions might blend and so they'd perceive things in ways different than us as all their sensory inputs are combined in a much more detailed and much more mixed up way than what humans experience.

A bit like how when taking certain kind of drugs, people can end up tasting colors or seeing sound or something.

This might mean that the Zigonians are a profoundly sensual people, they are very empathic, they are very perceptive, they feel things very finely, and this would affect their emotional and mental makeup and partly explain why they are what they are. This finer appreciation of the senses would be partly why they value having fun more than we do. And their definition of fun might be different too.

Not only that. But this weird enhanced perception might also be why Zigonians love to experience new sensations and why they are so adventurous and why they are so friendly and generally non-hostile. Culturally, this could lead to a Zigonian practice wherein whenever they are the visitors, it could be traditional of them to honor their hosts by taking up or by mimicking or following their hosts' practices. Which could be why when Zigonians are visiting human worlds, they won't make us speak their unpronounceable lizard names, but they will instead assume new names that are more pronounceable and familiar to humans and more in keeping with human traditions and customs (or at least what Zigonians think are human customs). So Zigonian emissary Ssskkrrrlag'shaak Hssss'rrrr when talking to humans will assume his "guest-name" of Therizinosaur Jones. This could be why Zigonians living in human worlds or prolongedly exposed to humans also end up taking up horribly misinterpreted versions of Roman Catholicism.

This is the result of their weird sensory perception. Oh, and also because maybe like certain species of birds (which dinosaurs are closely related to), Zigonians have an instinct to mimic behaviors and sounds. Their sharper senses greatly help in this, and also allows them to read and understand alien body languages better.



But this can only do so much to explain why the Zigonians are Zigonians and I was thinking that there could be an element of tragedy involved in their past. Why do they abhor war? Why are they such non-violent pacifists? Why do they not care for the superficial materialistic stuff people normally care for? Why do they love nature so much? And why is their main world always called "Zigon 5"?

Maybe a long time ago, the Zigonians weren't like the Zigonians today. Maybe they were violent warrior lizards. Or maybe they were just like us (violent warrior... mammals). Maybe the reason why they call their main world Zigon 5 is that there was a Zigon, just Zigon, and they ruined it. In a war, or through pollution, or something. There was a tragedy that could have reshaped their entire people, how they looked at things, their values systems, and now that is why they hate war, they hate violence, they hate selfishness and greed that leads to this, and why they treasure friendship and preserve nature. They could name their new worlds "The Second Zigon", "The Fifth World In Remembrance To Old Zigon", hence the Zigon-numbers. And part of their culture would be to recreate their old world in all its natural splendors, leading to lush cultivated jungles and gardens and the like.

This could've destroyed any notion of nationalism in Zigonians, maybe the only remaining Zigonian nations are vestigial abstract entities "Tooraamal Republic" that do not work in the traditional human definition of states or nations. The Zigonians might not really care about boundaries or borders, and all they care about is that we are all people - no matter what nation, no matter what race or creed, and maybe even no matter what kind of species.

This tragedy could've been the cause of the beautiful way of life Zigonians now treasure. And maybe this could be why Zigonians are some of the most numerous species in the 'verse and why you can see them everywhere. Because they don't have hang ups or anything and are just cool like that.

[Invictus]

Zigonians

And of course, having a repuation as easygoing partymeisters is probably a good survivial strategy as long as you don't care too much about political autonomy. Unless you're facing the Karlacks, or possibly the Bragulans as well.

This also goes a long way towards the kind of not very sovreign state that the Zigonians may possibly exist in - subsumption under the USS sphere of influence is preferable compared to the alternatives out there. In any case, the Zigonians as described do sound like a good match with the USS as described. The humans probably love the shit out of Zigonian action films.

However, does this mean that the Zigonian War no longer happened?

[Shroom Man 777]

Maybe it still did. The backstory will have to be changed a lot though.

But in old SOTS, the Zigonians were like the first alien race humanity (USE) encountered, and the war ensued and shit.

In SDNW4, the backstory didn't have a Zigonian War and people just encountered the lizards partying and being cool with everything.

So maybe the Zigonian War isn't that necessary anymore.

I'm unsure on how much of Zigonia will be subsumed by the USS in Supreme. Since we're not in a constrained setting like SDNW4 (where we just made Zigonia a part of the USS rather than its own nation), I can imagine that a fair portion of Zigonia is still outside the USS but is just all chill. And that independent portion of Zigon won't really be as structured like most other space nations.

Maybe the rest of Zigonia are just a bunch of loose and chill planet-states or something, you can imagine some kind of Space Caribbean.

It's not like they're luddites or backwards. Their technology and science matches everyone, but instead of using it to make more money or to make bombs to blow people up with, they just use it to make their lives easier.

Maybe their terminology for their 'nations' won't be 'Republics' or 'Empire' or whatnot, but just 'People'. So one sub-faction can be the "Tooramal People" and another can be the so-and-so People.

[Invictus]

Maybe the rest of Zigonia are just a bunch of loose and chill planet-states or something, you can imagine some kind of Space Caribbean.

So, a politico-economic backwater in the backyard of a superpower which is very intent on not letting any Bragulan missile bases be built there?

I guess my actual point is, I understand that the Zigonians are a star power of their own and all, but would that help them against the Bragulan juggernaut which is not nearly as chill or culturally tolerant as the USS? The Zigonians are probably a happier people than the Bragulans, but when it comes to blowing each other up I'm not putting my money on the side that invested less of their technology on blowing people up, if you get what I mean.

Sure, you can argue that the Bragulan Way is no way to live, but you must also be able to find a way to effectively counter it to actually keep on living. I'd really like SOTSS to be able to address this bit of thematic tension.

Now, let's stop talking about depressing realpolitik and more about Zigonian action films.

Zigonian films, by nature, do not cater to human sensory perception or how human brains process narrative. A USS citizen can probably borg herself up enough to catch the subtle ultraviolet, infrared, scent and whatever other cues a piece of modern Zigonian media would have, but there's still no guarantee that she'd make any sense out of the ultra-lurid phantasmagoria except hey, two Zigonians are kung fu-ing each other on the screen. It is filled with context that humans won't get unless they have studied Zigonian culture. It's impenetrable exotica, and the mainstream audience are there to have fun not getting it.

But I think the real influence of Zigonian action films on the USS is not when the original imports, these little, densely textured packets of cultural alien-ness are puzzled over in isolation, but when these packets hit the busy solution that is USS culture and burst. Human producers and directors start getting ideas from them, no matter how far out of the original context these ideas may be applied. They start making "Zigonian-style" films filled with those bits of cinematic technique that humans like, and they don't quite care how these ideas are transplanted but only that they're fashionable to ape. Or they might seriously consider how to translate the "Zigonian moviegoer's experience", as it were, to human experience and start making human films in that style. Others take the plots of Zigonian films and make Space Hollywood adaptations. And they'd also fill theaters, either out of reputation or genuine novelty. And then we'd have fattynerds arguing about whether the Zigonian Death Grip really works on Datasphere forums. And Humanity Fuck Yeah types arguing why it would never work on human beings, unlike in that film where a bumpkin Ziggie bumbles around Sovereign Station trying to get his elephantbeast back. And other fattynerds blowing their brains trying to calc space laser gigatonnages from Zigonian special effects.

[Ford Prefect]

One imagines that CJ Monotow's Star Wars might have taken some influence form Zigonian film making, in the manner in which he tried to blend the whole narrative into the psychedelic visual and aural experience. As I recall those films were extremely controversial in a very 'audiences weren't ready' way, but I think maybe we should look back on that classic article as being 'audiences weren't adapted', instead.

Maybe their terminology for their 'nations' won't be 'Republics' or 'Empire' or whatnot, but just 'People'. So one sub-faction can be the "Tooramal People" and another can be the so-and-so People.

The Zigonian terminology for 'state' is probably more like 'A bunch of dudes and dudettes living in this place and sharing a lot of beliefs'.

[Shroom Man 777]

Yes.

One could also imagine that due to their way of thinking, the Zigonians would be one of the few people that Apexai and Apexai artists don't sneer at as being barely-sentient barbarians. The Greys would probably regard them as cute enthusiastic amateurs. There could be some commonality between Zigonian sensory overload media and Apexai arts, except the Apexai take it one step further with the incorporation of mentallics that lead to further psychadelics.

There'd totally be humans trying to ride the Zigonian Wave hitting the mainstream human media. It'd be like in the 70s and 80s where you have Americans trying to do their own martial arts things, and with some Asian starts going over there to show them a thing or two. There could be like a handful of big Zigonian stars who also grace Solarian holofilms with their frills and head-feathers and such.

Yes, Zigonian martial arts will be insane.


Also, yeah. Zigonia depends on the USS for protection against the Brag threat, and maybe the human sphere or at least the USS is like 'between' Zigonia and Bragspace.

The Bragulan mindset would focus on close by proximal threats and/or non-threats to defeat or subjugate, and then further away they'd focus on larger threats over non-threats.

[Invictus]

The whole thing peaks with Space Chuck Norris facing off against Zigonian Bruce Lee in Way of the Lizard.

As to the astropolitics, having the humans between the Zigonians and the Bragulans is a good idea.

[Shroom Man 777]

Before we abandoned SDNW4, Siege and I did contemplate writing a scene of a Zigonian monk going all Master Evil on someone's ass.

[Magister Militum]

Maybe their terminology for their 'nations' won't be 'Republics' or 'Empire' or whatnot, but just 'People'. So one sub-faction can be the "Tooramal People" and another can be the so-and-so People.

The Zigonian terminology for 'state' is probably more like 'A bunch of dudes and dudettes living in this place and sharing a lot of beliefs'.[/quote]

So basically the Zigonians are a collection of slightly more structured anarchist communities? That's a pretty awesome concept.

[Ford Prefect]

You could image that the Zigonians, with their psychology better tuned for living in harmony, man, have probably explored methods of government outside of what is normal here on earth. Collectivist direct decision making or whatever. They might have a highly developed body of political and social sciences that comes from a lot of experimentation, so having all the various clades of Zigon work together as a big political entity might be difficult.

Though, maybe they have a 'League of Zigon' or something, where Zigonian groups get together and share ideas and make resolutions across the whole lot, like the modern United Nations. Zigonian defense is probably handled in the same way: a large supranational entity which handles defense collectively.

[Siege]

In the game the government of the USS was based on a system of real-time election, like a continuous popularity contest. Members of the public could go onto the Circuitry, a permanent assembly inside the Datasphere, and voice their opinion in whichever way they liked. From this arose opinion leaders, just like in every other system, and if a citizen got enough of popular opinion behind her she elected one of only sixty senators. The senators then elected the president. Minor shifts in popular opinion could put anyone out of office at any time, so you could theoretically have senators and presidents who don't last more than a couple of hours. The only people who lasted any significant amount of time were either highly skilled in distilling (or manipulating) popular opinion. Or at least in theory: in reality the masses promptly forgot that they had the ability to choose and usually doggedly stuck with their 'favourite', if they cared to participate at all, which most didn't. This was supposed to be a cunning bit of satire which, of course, promptly fell flat.

Anyway, the Zigonians and Apexai pretty much ran themselves, and just had the right to send their own representatives to the Senate as a courtesy. The Apexai never attended; the Zigonians only rarely did so. The Sovereignty wasn't exactly sovereign over the Zigonians in the typical sense of the word because, well, I don't think the typical sense of the word really applied to any particular bits of the Sovereignty anymore. The place pretty much ran itself, the Senate was mostly the X-Factor on crack, and all the immediate decisions were made by the president and her giant AI bureaucracy, Olympic (thanks, Ford ). And because the place mostly ran itself, most of those decisions involved foreign affairs, and as far as the citizens of the Sovereignty were concerned the outside galaxy might as well not exist. Space outside the Sovereignty, according to the average citizen, was full of mud and Bragulans and stinking baseline colonials who don't know where their loyalties lie, and it didn't have Datasphere connectivity and it was an awful place and why would you want to go there!?

Granted, not all of this may be applicable to the new 'verse...

[Shroom Man 777]

Your rendition of the USS charmed me very much and we should totally incorporate a lot of that here. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be still applicable.

[speaker-to-trolls]

I loved the SDNW4 Sovreignty, but I think that the government structure could possibly be a little more refined. I mean I don't know all the details that Master Siege had in mind, but to me it seems like the only elected government being 60 people right at the top in such an enormous society seems odd. I mean why have those guys having official positions (rather than just unofficially being 'respected citizens', 'opinion formers' and 'political thinkers' whose importance can be measured by the number of friends they have on spacebook) at all if there are that few of them, and if everyone can take part in the process of government directly by computer anyway?

Maybe the Zigonians basically tend to do things on a local level and as such don't really have much in the way of a big interplanetary government, but they have a lot of traffic between planets that allows for cultural-political dialogue and periodically have big sort of conferences/festivals on one planet or another where lots of politically minded Zigonians go to discuss weighty matters. The kind of answers that came out of these festivals wouldn't necessarily be binding, but they would tend to be listened to when it came to making local decisions.

Maybe

[Invictus]

I most definitely like the idea of Zigonian festivals being the same thing as Zigonian parliamentary sessions.

As to the USS political system, I did briefly speculate on MSN that such a cyberdemocratic system is vulnerable to sudden memes and fashions driving people to turn out and vote for crazy things in numbers that completely overwhelm the usual bunch of hardcore electors, upsetting the political process and disrupting national policy. The overriding power of the President, long-term social engineering from the CIs and the general apathy of the USS populace would probably minimalize such shocks, but there probably needs to be systemic safeguards against this.

Or not.

[Fingolfin]

Before we abandoned SDNW4, Siege and I did contemplate writing a scene of a Zigonian monk going all Master Evil on someone's ass.

This reminds me of that Yeshua storyline.

Damn, that was a story that could do with some filling and finishing but ah well.

To Fingolfin: I think Ford isn't so much worrying about you making a 40K knockoff, but more that the whole idea of a society that's defined as being crazy religious fanatics is kind of easy and one-note, whereas this thread was started with the idea of making things more nuanced while keeping them over the top and fantastical.

Well, for a bunch of crazy religious fanatics, we weren't above declaring Bragulans to be pets and happily cooperating with them on some human stomping because it fit within our objectives. We are, as Shroom put it, Space Nazis of a sort.

[Magister Militum]

As to the USS political system, I did briefly speculate on MSN that such a cyberdemocratic system is vulnerable to sudden memes and fashions driving people to turn out and vote for crazy things in numbers that completely overwhelm the usual bunch of hardcore electors, upsetting the political process and disrupting national policy. The overriding power of the President, long-term social engineering from the CIs and the general apathy of the USS populace would probably minimalize such shocks, but there probably needs to be systemic safeguards against this.

Or not.

The wiki article on the USS mentions that their hybrid cyberdemocratic/representative democracy system was meant to be the 'perfect democracy' insofar as the elected senators could act as a counterweight to the excesses and potential tyranny of the majority, while the public could easily remove any senator that got out of line. In theory. In practice, it's more of a pseudo-gerontocratic democracy where the public pretty much forgot the last part and stuck with their favorites for centuries on end, which is what Siege intended. It's kinda like how Americans will hate Congress but consider their local representative to be a hard working exception and stick with him, but taken to its logical extreme.

[Siege]

I do agree with Speaker that the size of the government was odd. This was a choice on my part made mostly for game-related reasons: a tiny number of senators explained the prominence of people like Lyra Saxon or Robert Space McNamara in the political bits, and allowed me to develop them into actual characters with ideologies and agendas.

This reasoning doesn't apply to an actual 'verse (and the Sovereignty will likely have more than 30 member states), so there could be hundreds of senators or more. And yeah they could even just be 'opinion leaders' or something like that. I started with a much more conventional idea of what the Sovereignty looked like, based on what I remembered of old SOTS, and only gradually shifted toward the crazy postcyber hypersingularity technojungle it ended up as. So there's a bunch of legacy terms in there that I kept mostly so I could more recognizably poke fun at American politics.

The idea of Zigonian festivals is utterly brilliant by the way, and I shall now proceed to kick myself for not thinking of it first.

[Ford Prefect]

Incidentally USS electrodemocracy and Zigonian festivals would both revolve around consensus building in their own way, so there's something of a mirror there.

In any case, I like the premise. In writing Mobile Suit Sol Gundam I used something similar: the Cydonian Republic operated on a system called AGORA, a participatory online political debate system allowing potentially anyone to raise issues. Cydonians were often pretty smug about their system compared to other Marsnoids, but they couldn't escape the fact that certain persons with very large reputation networks were essentially manipulating information and facts on such a wide scale that people typically debated in their favour. This sort of system has its positives - in that it is very democratic - but you can easily create circumstances where it is subverted. However, I think I like the apathy angle a lot.

[Shroom Man 777]

It probably helps that these big name Senators like Robert Space McNamara aren't just random schlubs but are institutions on their own. Some of them have served for centuries, and in time have gained ridiculous amounts of experiences, and like no doubt they've got major financial or technological or sociological backing behind them. Maybe the reason why the Circuit is protected from going full retard due to an anarchic datasphere superhighway democracy is because its representatives already embody the essence of the Solarian populace, or the portions of the populace they represent.

I can't forget how Robert Space McNamara was all speechifying about anti-war things and ruining people's graphs back in SDNW4. He embodied something more than a mang. He was legend, Mister Wayne.

These people aren't just flesh and blood. They're heavily modified and augmented, and since they participate in hard core shit in the Circuit doing heavy USS decisions and conferencing at high frequencies with the governmental CIs, you can imagine that they've got customized DEMOCRATIC POST-ORGANS for the job. Maybe this is also how they get in touch with their constituents, through high-processing neural net servers allowing them to coast throughout their constituency's regional datasphere grid. And not every schmoe has this kind of gear, so maybe not just anyone could become a super-awesome Senator. The Senator actually sees the datasphere and the rest of the Sovereignty in a way utterly unlike the common man, they'd be pretty much close to CIs in terms of perspective. Or at least as close as a human can come.

And imagine what it must be like for these Senators to do this for centuries.

[speaker-to-trolls]

The idea of Zigonian festivals is utterly brilliant by the way, and I shall now proceed to kick myself for not thinking of it first.

Why thankyou I'm not sure exactly how these things would look, of course, just that I imagine the Zigonians, from what Shroom's described, would probably integrate art and politics a lot more than the USS, who would find the idea of doing so to be impractical and frivolous (the irony being that their system was influenced a lot by things just as frivolous, only it would be more along the lines of fashion and product placement than art)

Incidentally USS electrodemocracy and Zigonian festivals would both revolve around consensus building in their own way, so there's something of a mirror there.

Yes, but, and this is an oversimplification, I would imagine the USS's decision making process would be a lot more decisive than that of the Zigonians, though at the same time it could be a lot more fickle, because of the Senators, major corporations and interest groups pushing their agenda by any means necessary.

[Shroom Man 777]

It's a great idea.

Incidentally Siege and I had discussed previously how Zigonian psionics would be way different from human psionics. Where you've got individual human psions, or Apexai-Hybrid psions, doing gnarly shit, the individual gifted Zigonian is on the other hand incapable of any feats like that. But through ritualistic communion with his brothers and sisters, even if they are not touched by the divine, allows him to tap into the harmonics of their reptilian spirits and channel the accumulated psychic rhythm with himself as a medium, and so in concert, in this choir, the resultant energies will be a deluge of emotion and power and soul. Awww yeah.

There would be individual Zigonians who might seem all gnarly on their own with mystic lizard fu powers, but that's only because they've attained such meditative levels of tranquility that not only do they channel the energies of fellow Zigonians, but also the innate essences of all living things. But these are rare, and possibly centuries old reptiles who've lived in trance monasteries for countless eras.

Maybe if there is a leader Zigonian, his decisions would be based on the auguries of a group of ORACLES who in the festivals of Zigonia peer into the hearts and minds of the jam packed jamming lizards and like interpreting the formations of tea leaves, they read the waves and tides of the swaying reptilian masses and their combined emotionalities to peer into fate, or if not fate, then at least the inner desires of their peoples.

[Siege]

In the game the Zigonians were a monarchy without a king, because their last legendary king packed up and headed off into space centuries or even millennia ago, and the Zigonians preferred the idea that he was still alive out there somewhere, doing awesome things like wrestling Byzon or visiting planets of paleoraptors and spreading the Zigonian gospel. So they never bothered to get another king, and just... you know, made their society work without one.

I'd like that, perhaps, the Zigonians are alien insomuch as they don't need the frankly rather strict hierarchic structure of human society. I think I would enjoy it if Zigonian decision-making was much more fuzzy than the human equivalent. Not so much 'you can do this' or 'you can't do that', but more a broad visionary consensus that jives with previous ideas, together trending toward the greater vision of 'be excellent toward each other'. Maybe they don't have laws so much as cool and uncool things to do and they don't do the uncool things because... Well, they're uncool.

[speaker-to-trolls]

The only thing with that kind of setup is that one does have to consider how they deal with crime and rebellion, unless this kind of attitude pervades literally everyone in Zigonia (which is impossible because even if it's universal to Zigonians there would be some human emigres to whom it wouldn't be). There would have to be some method of dealing with people who want to enforce their uncoolness on others, or who would use other people's chill nature to take advantage of them. As I said this might only be necessary to deal with aliens, but there would probably need to be a small group of Maintainers of the Cool to keep them to a minimum.

Among the actual Zigonians this might not be a problem because any kind of organised uncoolness would completely fail to gain momentum, and maybe some of that communal psychic stuff would take place that dissuaded people away from that sort of aggression, but individual aberrations would still need to be dealt with.

Still even that could be in a totally alien way. There's a bit in one of the Culture books where a Culture guy explains that if you murder someone in the Culture they just have a robot follow you around and make sure you don't do it again.

'But noone would invite you to parties'

'Ah, but in your Culture, could you not simply gatecrash them?'

'Well, yes, but noone would talk to you,'

Something like that.

[Shroom Man 777]

Hmmm yes.

There'd still be authorities, but their society is so loose in the way Siege describes, maybe because of their keen synesthesia which influences their communication - they are able to chill because they can jive with each other in ways few beings ever could.

Zigonian offenders would be ostracized merely through the display of subtle social cues, pheromone releases and facial color changes by his fellows that signal their disapproval of him, and to the sensual Zigonian this would be an ultimate condemnation - the treatment - and to be known forever as "that guy" would be terrible, and to redeem themselves they would have to go do feats to proper themselves or embark on journeys of understanding or right their wrongs.

For non-Zigonians, yeah, it would be tough. Maybe to contrast their easy fully cooly attitudes, when an ignorant gaijin pushes them over the edge, they can also do shit like give a Zigonian karate chop or lizard palm strike to rebuke foolish impudent fools. And so this duality of otherwise chillness punctuated by rare outbursts of martial arts badassery could cement the Zigonian image into the minds of humans and such.

They could have appointed really chill guys who have ultimate understanding of the flow and ebb of society and are totally enlightened, yet when provoked or when no other solution is available, are fully capable of flipping out and doing the Zigonian Death Grip on fools to be pitied. They could be called... Prefects.

Man, I love these guys.

[Siege]

I wonder if, because they're so in tune with each other and whatnot, it wouldn't be possible for Ziggies to nip most offenders in the bud before they become real grievous cases. Like, they'd notice much sooner if someone is going off the rails so they could provide counseling much earlier, when the offender is still a minor nuisance, etc. It probably wouldn't be fully foolproof because no system is, but at least it would explain why they get on with each other so much better.