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[Exalted] Ain’t No Devil

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Much as I love Daji, I'm concerned how Sidir is going to take it if we're just going too gung-ho on being happy with Daji. We should probably try for an intra-soul balance to some degree.

[x] Hold Daji back. The last thing you want is to look like you're hiding behind your soul. You chased the shadow down here. You provoked Leviathan. This is your responsibility.
[x] Tell her the one thing you've never told anyone else. What made you what you are and set you on the path that brought you here. Maybe then you can make her believe that you could never judge her for what you've seen.
 
So, as something we've all apparently forgotten about as a result of all this that I remembered this morning, leading me to sit bolt upright in bed,
ZerbanDaGreat said:
<He's planning to come back in time to see Lilunu so he can properly participate - says she's responsible for coadjutors so it'd be incomprehensibly rude if he didn't - he just needs time to freshen up and straighten out for the big meeting.>
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We forgot Sidir is in our head prepping for the interview of our life, or worse, he just watched all of that. Sidir I'm so sorry you have to deal with all this, you deserve better man.
 
[X] Let Daji speak. Anything they have to say is probably going to be more insightful, and definitely more eloquent, than you ever could come up with. You want their perspective.
[X] Tell her about you and Daji. The good and the bad. That moment of deep, unsettling, nauseous uncertainty of who you were and who you were becoming. Daji may not have had the... condition Leviathan has but maybe, just maybe, the two of you can figure out how to manage your souls together.
 
[x] Hold Daji back. The last thing you want is to look like you're hiding behind your soul. You chased the shadow down here. You provoked Leviathan. This is your responsibility.
[x] Tell her the one thing you've never told anyone else. What made you what you are and set you on the path that brought you here. Maybe then you can make her believe that you could never judge her for what you've seen.

really good points have been made for tag-teaming the daji options but i really do want to see this option played out

i appreciate the shared absolute vulnerability here--it might not really make sense in the real world, but "i've seen a deep secret of yours that causes you great shame, here is one of my shames, both as recompense and as a reason for why i will support you" has a lot of mythic appeal to it that stands out to me
 
Revlid said:
I mean, one of Orabilis' souls sails around Cecelyne throwing acid into the faces of sex workers, iirc, and the other is a union-busting assassin who exists solely to murder beggars and revolutionaries.

Fuck Orabilis.
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It's been A Bit and my knowledge of Exalted lore is just kinda this weird shitty gingerbread house with there 2e (Canon) is collapsing into the 2.5e (Fanon) while the 3e (Canon?) wobbles real unsteadily, but from what I remember Orabilis is basically like...his whole deal is that he's Hell's Censor, he decides what is permitted, what is propagated, and what is prohibited and by doing so controls the context, the conversation. And he uses this control, implicitly and explicitly, to undermine anyone who would accumulate too much knowledge and climb too high, to blind and deceive, and to just relish his superiority because he's honestly just a prick. "Class war is absolutely real," says Orabilis, as he stands on the edge of the ladder, putting his boot on people's faces to casually kick them back down is the vibe that I have. And to an extent he represents how Cecelyne manipulates people by shaping the pressures and passive forces of their life, til they don't even realize how they've been twisted up and fucked up and pinned down. The metaphorical boiling water that you don't feel at first 'cause it's ambient rising by degrees.

...So basically in TOOL 2020 Orabilis is definitely on twitter is what I'm saying. 😔

zang269 said:
So, as something we've all apparently forgotten about as a result of all this that I remembered this morning, leading me to sit bolt upright in bed,

We forgot Sidir is in our head prepping for the interview of our life, or worse, he just watched all of that. Sidir I'm so sorry you have to deal with all this, you deserve better man.
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Sidir has just been staring into the void for the last thirty minutes. Vibing with the universe slowly moving towards heat death. He's probably not even surprised anymore tbh.
 
Being Cecelyne (and her Soul Hierarchy) is suffering. Like, from her perspective: you used to be the law of the universe, all-beholden and all-beholding until all of the sudden a bunch of people rose up, defied everything you'd shaped your existence around and broke you. They shattered your infinity and turned the fragments into a prison around which yourself and all your Demiurge companions suffer forever, for a crime you do not understand. They showed you that the only law that matters is the law written by the victors - the laws that only exist to punch down, to keep the weak and powerless in their place. Laws shaped by anger and malice.

Also I'm sure that Cecelyne's nice souls (the jackal-headed judge with the scale and the feather, the nice old lady who shows up at court hearings to ensure that everyone present acts with noble compassion, the revolutionary who works to ensure that the rulers are held accountable to the same laws they enforce upon their subjects) were probably very easy for the Exalted to kill.
 
[X] Let Daji speak. Anything they have to say is probably going to be more insightful, and definitely more eloquent, than you ever could come up with. You want their perspective.
[X] Tell her about you and Daji. The good and the bad. That moment of deep, unsettling, nauseous uncertainty of who you were and who you were becoming.
 
JustGazzer said:
Suffering is mandatory and it sucks.
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There is even whole ministry which assures that suffering properly distributed. Unfortunately they are utterly corrupt(minister is one of ED's souls).

[X] Hold Daji back. The last thing you want is to look like you're hiding behind your soul. You chased the shadow down here. You provoked Leviathan. This is your responsibility.
[X] Tell her about the shadow. A part of you you still can't name, a part that came before even Daji but still evades you, still refuses to be known. A part that, whether knowingly or unknowingly, led you here. Maybe that counts for something?
 
KymmeSeventh said:
Being Cecelyne (and her Soul Hierarchy) is suffering. Like, from her perspective: you used to be the law of the universe, all-beholden and all-beholding until all of the sudden a bunch of people rose up, defied everything you'd shaped your existence around and broke you. They shattered your infinity and turned the fragments into a prison around which yourself and all your Demiurge companions suffer forever, for a crime you do not understand. They showed you that the only law that matters is the law written by the victors - the laws that only exist to punch down, to keep the weak and powerless in their place. Laws shaped by anger and malice.

Also I'm sure that Cecelyne's nice souls (the jackal-headed judge with the scale and the feather, the nice old lady who shows up at court hearings to ensure that everyone present acts with noble compassion, the revolutionary who works to ensure that the rulers are held accountable to the same laws they enforce upon their subjects) were probably very easy for the Exalted to kill.
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I think it's worth noting, that before you feel too much sympathy for Cecelyne, a. She was entirely pleased afaik to rule the world the Primordials made and the world they shaped, she shaped, was not a kind one. Details are scarce but the Gods were essentially slaves, treated as thinking tools without agency or will at best and much, much crueler at the worst. Humanity was somewhere between pets and cattle, with all that entails. B. Cecelyne never suffered fetich death so even if the variously roles and perspectives of her 3CD have (very likely) shifted over the course of aeons- Iudicavisse and Orabilis were still there. They were there at the beginning, they were there when the Exalted rose up, and tbh they probably 100% deserved it.

The thing about Cecelyne is like- I see her largely (or at least a large aspect of her) as Depression Handled The Worst Way. The thought that there's some kind of nobility or sacred insight in despair or suffering, that anyone who strives to rise should know better, that if you can't be happy or get your shit even kind of together then why should anyone else have that privilege. It's telling that Iudicavisse's ultimate goal is to make existence in Hell even worse for everyone for the sole purpose of getting to say that she and nobody else is Queen Bitch and she and nobody else was right all along and you- well this is for the best. This is righteous. This is what you deserve. All her laws are just- she wants to hurt people for the sake of hurting them and feel righteous about it.

Any kinder parts of The Endless Desert aren't currently in the driver's seat. Orabilis and his boss are.
 
[X] Let Daji speak. Anything they have to say is probably going to be more insightful, and definitely more eloquent, than you ever could come up with. You want their perspective.
[X] Tell her about you and Daji. The good and the bad. That moment of deep, unsettling, nauseous uncertainty of who you were and who you were becoming. Daji may not have had the... condition Leviathan has but maybe, just maybe, the two of you can figure out how to manage your souls together.

Yeah the arguments about working with Daji to demonstrate a healthier(?)* souls/family relationship and working with Daji with both Jirou and Daji being kind of shitty at this won me over.

I also think its just a better scene

*Jesus H. Christ
 
I gotta say, in hindsight I find the way @TenfoldShields put the reasoning for the vote to be really compelling. On one hand, Daji shouldn't have to speak up for Jiro, but Daji might feel the need to express their own feelings and I don't think Jiro would want to deny them that. My brain tangled on whether sharing with Lilunu something so vital that he hasn't been able to share with his own soul passengers would be... sensible, or good in the long term, because it would come as a surprise and a raw moment for all of them, but the story has really been progressing towards the building of trust with Daji and hopefully Sidir, soon, and bringing up such a thing now, for Lilunu, might compromise the emotional reception a bit. It is tempting to spill it all, but maybe that would be too much for Lilunu, as well.

I agree it's important that no response is going to hit every note right, and that can't be helped, we can't expect Lilunu to be okay in any meaningful way after this experience, or think that it's simple for Jiro to make it better. But he can show that solidarity, he and Daji can share something that is difficult and pertinent to both in a way that may well be similar to how this torture is to both Lilunu and Leviathan, he can show that he's not ashamed of it and that he isn't going to censure or think less of Lilunu for this. It would build more directly on several of the last few updates by involving Daji and potentially addressing some things they don't understand yet.

I might change my vote, but looking like that's not gonna be needed. :p
 
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I was all set to post an insight about how of course Jiro has a soul about running away from his problems, but then the second half of the update happened and uh

uh o.o
 
Nervaqus987 said:
Not sex workers.

Florivet will, when his advances are rejected, either react in good cheer or throw acid in their face. The later is described as more rare, but uh.......that doesn't make it better.
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Florivet is weird, he used to be a dutiful scholar until he wandered off to live the life of a sinful adventurer sailor. He's entertaining when his temper isn't up, but still an asshole when he's in a bad mood. He's the reflective soul of Orabilis, so there's probably some meaning in there about how censorship lets him seem pleasant, or how you can be as brutal as you want as long as you pave it over with things that make you look good.
 
zang269 said:
Florivet is weird, he used to be a dutiful scholar until he wandered off to live the life of a sinful adventurer sailor. He's entertaining when his temper isn't up, but still an asshole when he's in a bad mood. He's the reflective soul of Orabilis, so there's probably some meaning in there about how censorship lets him seem pleasant, or how you can be as brutal as you want as long as you pave it over with things that make you look good.
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I hear that story and it just makes me think that maybe Orabilis has long since bought his own propaganda. He no longer spends any time at all wondering "Wait, why am I doing this? What do I want out of life?" and instead just keeps mercilessly maintaining the status quo. So Florivet, his capacity for self-reflection, has been on vacation for a while.
 
zang269 said:
Florivet is weird, he used to be a dutiful scholar until he wandered off to live the life of a sinful adventurer sailor. He's entertaining when his temper isn't up, but still an asshole when he's in a bad mood. He's the reflective soul of Orabilis, so there's probably some meaning in there about how censorship lets him seem pleasant, or how you can be as brutal as you want as long as you pave it over with things that make you look good.
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Honestly if anything, sorta blearily thinking it over, but I think the hook with Florivet and Orabilis (and this is just me speculating, the relationships can get real occluded or inkblot test depending) there's the additional angle ('cause I do think you're largely right) that...for Orabilis it's not about knowledge. It's not even about duty. He enjoys what he does, the power he wields, the freedom he has when he has the freedom to strip others of life and liberty on a whim. He gets to treat people like things and break them and scar them and kill them or let them be about their way absolutely untroubled This Time as the mood takes him and he's ultimately accountable to no one but the Endless Desert herself.

Orabilis might act like the put upon bureaucrat or a man who's a simple (if important) cog in a grand machine, and he might act like he really has no choice, it's just the demands of his station. But as the update highlights real succinctly to an extent that's all bullshit. The man loves his work and he milks it for all its worth, the petty cruelty, the pain- that's not incidental that's the point.
 
Adhoc vote count started by Petrichor on Oct 22, 2020 at 5:35 PM, finished with 33 posts and 24 votes.
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