That said, in general I hope the EU won't try to 'punish' the UK or anything like that, but that they can instead talk it over like reasonable people.
Ehehe. 'Bout everything I've been seeing in this immediate reaction stage is pointing to the EU very reasonably* putting the thumbscrews to the UK over this, to a fair extent. Much of the official statements and whatnot coming out of them have been politispeak for "Yeah, fuck you too." Don't get things wrong, it won't exactly be over punishment (though there will no doubt
be some of that, since the UK has now declared that at least 52% of the part of it that managed to vote wants to be in an adversarial relationship with the EU, whether that was their intent or not
), but it's likely going to be pretty rough regardless. They've got whole hosts of pretty good reasons to play fairly hard ball, and a few fairly bad ones (like spite, and there's no doubt that the EU's members can be pretty spiteful), too. They'll talk it over like reasonable people, but to the detriment of pretty much everyone, the reasonable discourse in this case is probably not going to be pretty.
*Not even really a joke, there. The immediate pressure to get the A50 started and over with ASAP is a direct benefit to the rest of the union a small majority of the UK just told to fuck off, ferex -- the sooner investors and whatnot know exactly what's going to happen instead of this variable maybe state, the quicker their economies stabilize. And if that happens to screw over the UK worse than a slower process would, weeelllll...
Unfortunately for everyone, as near as I've been able to tell the leave side of things actually had no idea what the blue hell they were going to do if the referendum fell in their favor :V