- Location
- Virginia
"You've finally managed to secure some vacation time..." seems like a great, if troll-y start to a Sidereal quest.
General Exalted Thread
"You've finally managed to secure some vacation time..." seems like a great, if troll-y start to a Sidereal quest.
- Location
- Library
"...Our protagonists had submitted the forms in triplicate, and filled out the necessary secondary paperwork, and had enough time reserved to go ahead plus collected all informal, but required permissions from faction Elders... nothing could spoil their well deserved vacation. "
Yeah, I can see that.
Touch of Sepia
Artisan of the Vital Tincture
- Location
- Connecticut
It really does. That said, how bad could it really be? The Elementals do their jobs as they always have for the most part. The gods jealously protect and grow their purviews, as designed. The world has many old shadowlands that can be healed in canon, but the Sidereals just leave those jobs on the desk. The Lintha are still at large - a huge and known Yozi cult, building ties ever more deeply into An'Teng.
Then I think - you know? Creation is a lot smaller, the Lunars in canon do next to nothing and the Solars were gone. Since the Contagion, 800 years ago, not much has been going on. Compared to the First Age, with the Solars breaking the laws of Creation every first Friday, the job could have only gotten easier. You see this whole good old days - so much less work! Personally, it seems more like the Sidereals (who tell their own story from their perspective) have fabricated this great sob story that they work so hard. A sob story all the louder now that the Solars have returned and they see more work on the horizon. They look around at the gods, beings who largely can watch over their purviews passively with little worry, and yearn for such lazy days. The Sidereals seem like 9-5, 5 days a week kind guys, surrounded by welfare recipients and trust fund babies. They are bitter about having to work at all. That work call they got last Saturday - work has my ass whipped 25-7. Being on call for emergencies, ya we rotate that out among 25 guys so you're only on call one weekend a month = I work 25-7.
You can't work your tail off like the Sidereals claim, for as long as they claim, and learn something like Sidereal M.A. or sorcery or anything. Rather, the gods don't even like them because they lost friends after the First Age when purviews were destroyed. Creation is a pale imitation of what it was, so most gods purviews suffered and they felt it in the pocketbook. What can the Sidereals do but create this false narrative of selfless overworked civil servants to protect themselves. A grand mask they collectively wear about themselves for protection and pity.
Then, the only reason you can't get a vacation, is cause Steve won't trade patching nights with you and no one will cover your shifts.
If anything, I'd expect a lot of time to be eaten up with Gold Faction Sids preaching automation of their duties - while Bronze Faction Sids fear monger about oversight and Skynet. All this around the watercooler as they screw off and avoid doing any work, then segwaying about how hard they all work and patting each other on the back.
I see that in teaching all the time. Reality is that it is not a 7am-8pm Monday-Saturday job, but that's not the narrative. Did Science Olympiad keep me late for like 15 days out of 186 and a single Saturday? Sure, but that does not mean I'm going to weave a false narrative that I work all the time. I usually (95% of the time) work 7:30-3:30, that's pretty freaking sweet and I'm not going to bs about it. Take a small group, stick them in an isolated setting for long enough, watch the sickness that can set into their minds. Poor Sids, they work so hard, they don't laze around like those 1000 Dragon Kings on welfare over in the run down Panoply of Grunge. Then the Sidereal heads home, picking up his 5 star Heaven food and settles into his manse to watch tivo of the Celestial Games, Luna and that thigh gap, o boy! They have too much entertainment, security and safety to be productive or see the time they waste. They are us (modern society) - I refuse to pity them.
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I'm pretty sure the Dragon Kings in the Panoply of Grunge also eat 5 Star Heaven food. Honestly even being a hobo in Heaven is a pretty good gig.
Bullshit. I know this is bullshit because I know plenty of people who do work their tail off like the Sidereals claim, for as long as they claim, and learn tons of things not related to their job, despite:
1. These things being unrelated to their job (compared to SMA or Sorcery, which are huge force multipliers for Sidereals)
2. Not having access to teachers with Training Charms
3. Not having Exalt benefits like superhuman resistance to disease.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
I'm curious as to what you hope to achieve by making stuff up.
I mean, I'd normally assume "oh hey it's some neat homebrew", but you're presenting this take as fact, and it isn't engaging or interesting or (I hope) meant to be either of those things.
So you just made up a much more boring, less engaging take on Sidereals, then made up some more stuff to support that take, then presented it as fact.
What's your endgame, here?
Also, hm, while I don't want to turn this thread into your blog... are you a teacher's assistant? A support staff? A receptionist?
I ask because I've worked as support staff in schools both private and state, and your take on staff hours is totally alien to me. Hell, when my mother was a 3-days-a-week part time primary school teacher, she was still effectively working a 5-day week, which we considered an improvement because it meant she wasn't working a 7-day week any more. Your skewering of the "false narrative" that teaching eats up hours doesn't ring true for me in the least.
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- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Welcome to BigLaw, hope you enjoy your stay.
If real life lawyers can work 66+ hours a week, when they have to maintain a balance between work and normal life, Sidereals sure as hell can work the same when their work is their life.
Reminds me a lot of the Young Wizards universe, in that regard.
Which makes sense, considering their role is much the same. Less official bureaucracy (though more than you'd expect going in) and less kung fu (though, again, more than you'd expect...), but the concept is quite similar.
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Surgeons and doctors need to constantly keep up with new medical discoveries, procedures, equipment, and best practices. Despite this, they manage (and need) to put in an obscene amount of hours working at hospitals. Fancy that.
- Location
- Spain
This is probably unpopular, but honestly i prefer the version where Sids aren't based in Yu-shan at all (instead divining fate through good old star gazing) and are instead a secret conspiracy distributed through the Realm and the kingdoms of creation manipulating events and advising rulers for their own ends.
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My read is similar to yours, she's a Critical Legal Theorist at this point-she doesn't believe law has any force, it's entirely politics, and politics is war by other means. When she talks about the law now she should sound a bit like the radical feminist crits who are like "why should I care about the history or the precedent of the law? All that matters is the political consequence." But even the crits recognized that law was something more than a random set of taboos. And a random set of taboos doesn't make a mockery of the idea of the law.
Fundamentally a random set of taboos doesn't mock the idea that law matters, it just... is there. To mock the idea that law matters Cecelyne needs to have written law so unfair and so biased towards her, that if people follow it, she laughs, as they are fools who believe some pieces of paper and words will protect them, and if people violate it, she laughs, because they are proving her right.
Touch of Sepia
Artisan of the Vital Tincture
- Location
- Connecticut
Sidereals don't claim to work like your buddy, they claim they work literally *all* the time. You buddy has weekend off or a floating schedule with days off. They work at the most 80 hours a week, leaving 32 hours a week of free time around a full 8 hours night sleep every day (many adults sleep 6 hours to give themselves more personal time, so 46 hours is more realistic.)
46 hours a week, it would only take a few months to learn something new to a decent level of skill with that degree of free time - if you don't waste it all watching Football and hanging out shooting the shit with your buddies.
In reality, your buddies claim that he's working his ass off is defeated by his ability to learn new things. It is defeated by his ability to maintain a friendship with you and it is defeated by his ability to continue as he is for long periods of time.
I feel Sidereals are blowing smoke up our ass - why should we give them pity when they cry? They are living an easy life with perfect job security and 5000 years of life in front of them. I would not be surprised at all to see Sidereals taking sabbaticals when they have the seniority to saddle a younger exalt with the responsibilities. The very old Sidereals like Karjack are going to have responsibilities that are almost entirely political. He would be basically like the House Majority leader (and a typical senator works 133 days vs the 240 day work year of the normal American), so I'm not crying for him either.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
...literally what is your point? Like I'm sorta staring at a mass of words that doesn't really seem to mean all that much, one way or another?
That's nice. Where's the proof that supports these feelings?
Azrael
Sakura Saber
- Location
- Throne of Heroes
He seems to be railing against a strawman. Quite aggressively so, in fact.
So you suggest, first, that Biglaw is a place where people work "at the most 80 hours a week" despite the fact that 80 hours a week tends to be the average and everyone at Biglaw has had A Story of the 100+ hour week they've had to work when something came up, despite not knowing anything about the field. And then you have the temerity to suggest that this level of workload is one which doesn't count as "working your ass off." Seriously?
Yes, yes you believe Sidereals don't take their job seriously despite the fact that they demonstrably do. Any new revelations?
Touch of Sepia
Artisan of the Vital Tincture
- Location
- Connecticut
Violation of Rules 3 and 4: Do not precipitate thread-derails, do not make unfounded accusations of gaslighting
I am a full time Physical Science teacher, my school is ranked a 9 on Great Schools, and my Science Olympiad team scored 2nd in the state. It's an easy job - sorry your mother found it to be so much work. I don't.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
The person above is right. It's some weird strawman. Like, working 80 hours a week *is* working your ass off, since as a normal human (Exalts are probably immune to some of this) it's probably past the point of diminishing returns, wouldn't it be? Where you're really just ruining your life because you have to, and aren't doing as good of work as if they just had you do fewer hours and then had someone fill in for it?
Or is Biglaw immune to the Japanese Peacock's Tail thing?
I wouldn't know, so I'm legitimately deferring to you here as to whether 80 hour weeks are even a good idea in the first place.
- Location
- Library
Warning For Marginal Behavior
Everyone was distracted, because Touch of Sepia is wrong on the Internet.
*xckd link I am too lazy to provide*
Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
lol @ editing my quote
Everyone can read what was actually written, dude.
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- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh no, I totally agree; I stole the idea of Yu-Shan as a delightful city upon a mountain, surrounded by heavenly slums and homeless gods from @Revlid. Sidereals don't live in Yu-Shan, and most of them do indeed not work all the time, because that's insane; Sidereals can only be in Yu-Shan for work purposes and Chejop Kejak simply never stops working and therefore he can stay in Yu-Shan as long as he wants. Sure, he has no personal life or friends or free hours, he's using magic all the time to keep himself awake and functioning as a human being but that's a feature, not a bug because the Maidens want Sidereals who do their work, and he definitely does his work!
Most of the time, Sidereals are in Creation and solving Creation problems, ruthlessly politicking with each other and manipulating Creation for their own as well as their faction's benefit. Now, I distinctly recognize and acknowledge (like you) that this isn't canon at all, but merely a preferred take on Creation (one that I find is much more fun, because Siderels can't nuke you from orbit anymore).
Adorable; a lawyer working for a moderately large law firm in Denmark tends to do an average of 66+ hours, lawyers in BigLaw do around 80+ hours per week if I remember correctly.
Touch of Sepia
Artisan of the Vital Tincture
- Location
- Connecticut
66 hours is not bad, you can pursue a life with that. The way I see Sidereals is they make claims of way more - I think it's just their perception as compared to the gods that make up 99% of the lifeforms around them.
Besides, my uncle is a lawyer, it is not a foreign concept to me. He was a JAG now he's a senior partner - he finds the work easy. *shrug*
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Oh wow. Huh, that's "clever." I mean, I'd say it was almost in bad faith, but it was too lazy and easy to fact check to be?