Yes last year the whole starting point was about a chapter she was in it was literally about her.
Hoisted by my own petard.
I'll get you next time Gadget.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
I'll get you next time Gadget.
BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
You brought up a post from June during November during a Plan Turn Vote. Not because she was brought up recently into the narrative.
The person who brought it up was just reading to catch up to the thread and commented then you commented on his comment and then I do that thing that I do (Not to put word in x's mouth) and give air to it and then it's spiraled from there it was just a conversation about a chapter that Boo600 had just read.
I didn't disagree with his point and there was a conversation going on so I got in.
Okay. Not sure where the misunderstanding is, because I'm being completely honest when I say that I think you're attributing the wrong motive to my argument.
"Only I am good enough to be god-king"
Is fundamentally different from:
"Very few people can be trusted with that sort of unchecked power, you should avoid handing it out because more likely than not it will end poorly"
Which is just true; there's a reason Cincinnatus is famous and it's not because leaders of the Roman Republic were commonly great at handling the role of dictator.
You didn't, or I certainly don't recall it that way. What you did was argue against Wikipedia on a foundational bit of literary analysis:
Trying to improve people's lives doesn't mean trying to improve them this way is a great plan.
Fair enough, but for the record; the specific thing that killed your argument for me was the Bull of the North. To my eye claiming him to be anything but the kind of classical hero you and Wikipedia disagree on the existence of is ridiculous.
I mean, your own citations described him as a racist old man who thought the southerners were entirely too rich for how soft they were. Which he took as permission to conquer himself up an empire and generally be an asshole to people who'd done nothing to him.
He was the good guy to his people because he made them rich and because he fucked up people from an ethnic group they didn't like. If that can be heroic then anything can be and the term has no moral weight.
I'd appreciate you not putting words in my mouth.
One of my issues with the discussion on releasing exaltations is that the potential for harm is minimized or ignored. They won't be universally hostile, but risk analysis is all about how likely a bad outcome is and how damaging it would be if they occurred. The greater the harm, the less likely it needs to be to be very risky to undertake.
This whole argument on statistically being okay in the end strikes me as bloodless and actuarial in a way that I'm honestly surprised you and Yog are okay with.
Let's make this more immediate. Four exaltations got out. We didn't mean to do it and have to deal with the outcome, but it still happened. Let's say they're dramatically more predisposed to "good" than "evil" by the standard set by the Bull of the North.
How much human cost are you willing to make other people pay and still call that a desirable outcome?
If one pops up in a war torn region and we end up with a Dusk who will help us fight the outside as long as we don't stop them from subjugating their neighbors is that fine? If a crime lord like Marcone has some standards that make crime less bad, but still totally extorts innocents and murders with impunity is that okay?
Perhaps I'm taking this a tad too seriously for a game, but I think one of the most common failures of leadership people make is in not imagining what it would be like to sit down in a room with the human cost of your decisions and explain yourself.
There will always be negative side effects of major actions, and that conversation would always be hard, but some versions of it are much easier than others. Sure if you compare it to death almost anything can be justified, but the standard is what else you could have done instead.
In practical terms ("no exalted should ever be released if at all possible" is your argument, as I understand it to apply to our plans of actions) you are arguing for the former, not the latter. And, as I can see it, you are arguing for it in absolute terms. Releasing celestial exaltations is always a thing to be avoided, no matter the preparation, or setup, or circumstances, or the method of release (mass or individual, with prepped candidates or not, etc).
If you said "this is the list of criteria that I would consider sufficient to trust someone with an exaltation" or "these are the preparations required for me to consider the risks reasonably mitigated" or "these are the circumstances where the risk of releasing exaltations is less than the risk of not releasing them" I would have something to engage with. As far as I can see, there are no such criteria, preparations, or circumstances under which you would approve of more exaltations to be released. Yet, you are not arguing that Molly should remove herself from the world entirely, or bind herself in geas and magically enforced oaths, or rewrite her mind to prohibit herself certain actions, or appoint some manner of review board with power over her, or anything else, really. You trust our own actions to be good, you trust, within the confines of the story, in Molly to be good with this power, the power which is ever growing.
This is, in all effect "only I am good enough to be god-king" position.
If I am misreading your position, missing your arguments, forgetting the conditions you listed, I apologize
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BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
I have to say though, this is a rather strange thing to say seeing as this is a Quest and Molly is a Player Character. If I proposed that we burn down an orphanage just because Anaja would throw a fit for example. It could be argued that she is already bound.
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BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
As far as judgement goes, let's be real and say it like it is.
One one side you've got a character being modeled by a single person to act on their own judgement however they seem fit.
On the other side you've got a character whose judgement is the result of a collaboration of beings that have access to the canon timeline of Dresden Files, interludes, several quotes from the original writer of the setting, Butcher, and get to have the world in story stand still, sometimes for several days, as they deliberate over important decisions. Then at the end of it a majority need to vote for a single debated action for a movement to be passed and those people aren't perfect but that does mean that often times a lot more thought is being put into Molly's actions with a lot more information available compared to Non Player Characters.
Wait actually. What kind of position even is this @Yog. Of course our judgement is better what the fuck.
One one side you've got a character being modeled by a single person to act on their own judgement however they seem fit.
On the other side you've got a character whose judgement is the result of a collaboration of beings that have access to the canon timeline of Dresden Files, interludes, several quotes from the original writer of the setting, Butcher, and get to have the world in story stand still, sometimes for several days, as they deliberate over important decisions. Then at the end of it a majority need to vote for a single debated action for a movement to be passed and those people aren't perfect but that does mean that often times a lot more thought is being put into Molly's actions with a lot more information available compared to Non Player Characters.
Wait actually. What kind of position even is this @Yog. Of course our judgement is better what the fuck.
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Ok, I'll try to explain my position. There are two main lines of reasoning to be made here, one watsonian, where we discuss Molly as a character inside a story, forgetting about how it is a story, and another doylist, where we discuss the standards of reasoning of a group of anonimous people on the internet engaged in what is ultimately a form of creative entertainment.
Let's start with watsonian reasoning. Molly Carpenter is not a saint. She is a troubled teenager thrust into being world power and endowed with tainted cosmic power. Her judgement until the moment she exalted could be summarized roughly as "bad decisions mainly fueled by teenage rebelion, her mother's hangups, and active machinations of world-ending inhuman threat of cosmic proportions". Since her exaltation the following influences were added to her judgement process:
1) Usum. His position is certainly not what we would call heroic "in the modern sense".
2) Better attributes and abilities, and, for brief moments, Excellencies. I strongly maintain, and will die on the hill of "abilities are not virtues" in the sense that getting Empathy to 5 doesn't automatically make you a good altruistic person.
3) Cosmic awareness of certain things (the Crown, her kingdom). It allows her to make more informed decisions, but doesn't compel her to value certain things more or less.
4) Michael is a 5 dot mentor formally, but she basically had that already
To summarize: there is exactly zero reason for me to believe than a random person would be morally worse if given an Exaltation than Molly is with hers, and, on the face of it, at least some reasons to believe that she should have been worse than many. Statisically, the sample size of 1 is meaningless, but it goes both ways - there's no reason to assume they would do as good as Molly, but also no reason to assume they would do worse.
Now, doylist argument, and hoo boy. Molly's actions are controlled by committee as a form of escapist entertainment. The argument I heard is that this makes her much more morally good than a realistic person would be in her situation, because we don't risk anything by taking altruistic decisions. I find this logic flawed. And also deeply misantropic to be honest. If we compare our decision making to that of an actual person in the circumstances Molly is in, we are certainly less involved, less informed, and less intelligent. We certainly feel less for the characters than a real person would feel in her situation. We certainly don't profit from her actions in a way that a real person would. Etc.
And, remember, we (or at least I) are talking good/evil and heroic/villainous here. We are certainly more informed, yes. But our core decision making is based on our morality, and I don't think it's any better than that of an average person. So, again, I don't think there's any reason to believe that a given person with an exaltation would do worse than Molly is doing. Some would do worse and be more evil. Some would do better and be more good.
EDIT: I don't think I am explaining this well. Sorry. But I don't like the argument "we are playing the game, therefore the person we are modeling is better morally". I find it depressing.
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Ivar
Dark Reaper
- Location
- Russia Moscow
I think the bigger question is not how moral other exalts are, it's RNG in fact with the size of planet earth and sample. And how fast will they progress in comparison to Molly. Pessimistic version is that it's the same. Optimistic they won't progress as fast as Molly.
Vote closed.
BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
I'm sorry man but you can't actually separate the two. We started molding the character into something else from the first chapter. She doesn't do or make any significant choices without our say so due to the short chapter Quest format. The Doylist is far far more important than the Watsonian, especially these many months in.
Okay in order.
The way you describe this is a bit disingenuous.
I've seen countless moralistic arguments for the side of good and to be doing good things and to give people a second chance etc. The intent of said committee is quite important here, the majority clearly doesn't want to play as a "bad guy". I didn't say moralistically anything. I said that our judgement would be better. I prefaced the post you are quoting with "as far as judgement goes". I'm assuming that when you say that you're talking to me and not BronzeTongue.
Why would you compare our decision making to that of an "actual person"?
This is a Quest being written by DragonParadox. He isn't actually experiencing these events either.
You are arguing as if these people are actually real instead of being simulated.
This bit in the second paragraph about us being more informed contradicts your earlier statement of us being less informed.
Seriously though. You are ignoring that this is being written by a single person. So it's their judgement simulating several other people's judgement versus the collective judgement of X amount of people with all of the details involved in our decisions as I described them earlier.
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But by the same reasoning most people don't want to be a bad guy either. And power doesn't corrupt, it enables. "mercy is the privilege of the strong" is a saying for a reason.
It is simulated, but it is simulated well. All presented actions are plausibly in-character for Molly, and I am pretty sure that if we voted to "kill Michael and eat Amoracchius", the option wouldn't be allowed. There's also less... I am not sure of the correct word - detail required to simulate people's behavior? We aren't seeing though their eyes at all times.
But I think the argument has drifted away, and might have at least slightly fallen apart.
Arc 15 Post 58: Catching Breath
New
Catching Breath
Elsewhere, Time Indeterminate
"Up!" the word bursts from your lips almost without meaning to, for once not the least curious to linger. What have I done? The question bounces around your brain like a stone bouncing down a spiral stair and nothing Usum says can take away the mounting dread. Deathknights, able to parry a Sword of the Cross with their bare hands, disarm a knight by sheer skill, master essence and bestride the elements. All in service to that thing...
So the world rushes past, at the speed of the wind, barely able to constrain yourself not to run faster than the others can keep up with, trying to escape not just the place but the deed.
Stop. I'm not a kid running out of the house so I don't have to show a bad report card. Breath ragged you focus on the rough texture of the stone under your hand, some kind of basalt maybe, if rock classifications mean anything down here. The path up to the angel's tomb is still long fathoms and hours away, if either could be said to be in this place, but the ocean below is just as distant, a stop upon the steps, a place liminal.
The sound of something small and light being set down draws your eye, Lydia putting down Aakebushu. You stare.
"What? He has small legs and you were going fast."
"I really should be keeping a scoreboard for times like this," Tiffany mutters.
"How can you... Why are you so calm about right now?" Some small part of you hopes the once-Fallen has some secret insight about what you just did, a way to return the shards of darkness to their secret tomb.
"Well... do you want me to sugarcoat this? Normally I wouldn't ask, just do it, but you're good enough to notice."
That is a weird compliment to be getting, admittedly, but it clearly is a compliment so you take it as such. "Give it to me straight."
"Hand a human a cosmic prybar and set them loose on the foundations of existence eventually something important is going to come loose, to my mind it was only a matter of what and when. I guessed that something might happen, though I could hardly speak up given what I am and how I came to be. All that said you must to blame someone feel free to make it the... messenger with whom you spoke." Even as she flips her hair with offhanded elegance as if she wasn't just running up steps for the last while, she avoids Uriel's name.
"No, I have free will and... so do will they, the black sun children." The realization is new but solid as the stone beneath your feet. Once are they Chosen that they may evermore Choose. Exaltations were made for men to use as they see fit.
"Well there you go, Heaven can't be that upset with you can they?"
"Should you be giving advice on this?" Lydia asks, almost in spite of herself. No sooner had she finished the question that she worried she had overstepped, but Tiffany waves her off.
"I have been giving advice for millennia, young one. True all the people bar one I gave it to came to bad ends, but it's not because I was ever bad at it, it's because I was malicious."
"Malicious... bad... aren't those the same thing?" Lamentations of the Void asks, looking between you with honest befuddlement.
"One is doing harm by accident, the other with intent," Tiffany says, frowns. "How much power do you have over the... what do you call them? Buds? Hyphae? Drones?"
If one had expected some kind deflection fit for a being of old secrets one would be thoroughly dissuaded of the notion. As far as you can tell Aakebushu sees little reason not to speak truth: "They are less than me and more than me, they wear the faces of the dead. Without me they are dust, without them I am blind. Can I see the sun now?"
There's a beat of silence as you internalize the question before asking. "If you step beyond the veil as you are what happens?" Rain of blood? Locust plague? Zombie horde? All of them seem disturbingly possible, though it might just be you feeling shaken from down below.
"I... don't know but if bad things happen I will step back and it will no longer be bad." The grey-skinned corpse-child then sketches an X in front of his chest with the tips of his fingers, funerary wrappings butn and flesh sizzles, but he doesn't seem bothered. "Cross my heart."
What do you reply?
[] Agree, you promised to help him make a change, this is a step on that path
[] Refuse, you need to get to someone with scrying capabilities, the Senior Council, maybe Mab, you have to find them, the four
[] Write in
OOC: Incidentally this is worth a lot of XP.
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Rolls
Willpower to not freak out... Molly is taking this calmly, don't even have to roll for Tiffany to help out m
Willpower to not freak out... Molly is taking this calmly, don't even have to roll for Tiffany to help out m
BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
Yeah and the road to hell is paved with good intentions but if multiple people are building that road and need to work together every step of the way for it to get built at all it's probably way way less likely to be built compared to a road that can be built entirely by a single person.
I could make an argument for how we could get DP to let Molly try and kill Micheal and eat Amoracchius barring that some prerequisites are met in story. Umm I had more typed up but your probably right about having lost the plot here.
- Location
- Canada
[X] Agree, you promised to help him make a change, this is a step on that path
We've clearly crossed a line a while ago (probably back when we declared ourselves Exalted and summoned up a bunch of mortwights) and we should've stopped long before, but I have no desire to stop.
We've clearly crossed a line a while ago (probably back when we declared ourselves Exalted and summoned up a bunch of mortwights) and we should've stopped long before, but I have no desire to stop.
Ivar
Dark Reaper
- Location
- Russia Moscow
[X] Agree, you promised to help him make a change, this is a step on that path
I don't think we'll have time to intervene before the critical problem of the newly awakened. So let's show him the sun. And then we'll deal with the angel and... I think Evil Bob will be rolled into the floor.
And so here we have confirmation of his connection and that we will be able to remove most of the Neverborn agents in exchange for free guns that are ten times more dangerous than all the Black Court Vampires that have ever existed.
Also, we just did a Godzilla Threshold around the world. Why not
I don't think we'll have time to intervene before the critical problem of the newly awakened. So let's show him the sun. And then we'll deal with the angel and... I think Evil Bob will be rolled into the floor.
And so here we have confirmation of his connection and that we will be able to remove most of the Neverborn agents in exchange for free guns that are ten times more dangerous than all the Black Court Vampires that have ever existed.
Also, we just did a Godzilla Threshold around the world. Why not
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[X] Agree, you promised to help him make a change, this is a step on that path
The bolded part is just not true at all. Groupthink is a real thing (and also Sidereal Great Curse), as are many other group mental distortion phenomena.
BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
*Reads article* *Thinks about thread voters*
Ooooo. This is actually very interesting. I can even see it. Not much of it at times because we have quite a lot of discourse due to strong personalities and opinions here but no I can definitely truly see it.
- Location
- Maryland
[X] Agree, you promised to help him make a change, this is a step on that path
Too late to back out now.
Too late to back out now.
Yeah. There are a lot of things like that in social psychology, emergent behaviors that can lead to various wrong results. It's an interesting thing to study.
Well, at least our proclamation was followed by a very convincing proof. We are, indeed, Exalted.
We removed certain danger for a greater potential one, but one where we have a chance to avert it, and maybe even a chance to turn it to the side of good. That's a win, I think. If a risky one.