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Infernal Conundrum: [Exalted/Worm] - Part 2: Hell is Other Exalts

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veekie said:
Somehow the point I was making was entirely missed.
Mostly that:
1) Taylor was FAR from close enough to Amy to let herself go like that to a virtual stranger. She COULD do that with Danny and it'd be perfectly normal. But not to someone she'd had all of 3 meetings with.

2) Taylor was stressed, but also far from where said stress imposes any impediment to her function as Exalted(they tended to feel powerfully, but barring a Limit Break, they were usually capable of moving forward despite emotional turmoil). Tears may be natural, but they did not provide any significant catharsis like some may be assuming.

3) Trust is a thing, and she doesn't quite trust as easily since Emma turned on her. This part should be unchanged to date, though she necessarily trusts Uncertainty, it was more for lack of choice in the matter. At present, she's more likely to weep in private to avoid distressing Danny, followed by with her father in line with the increased openness we've been developing for them, and then a long way after, with someone else.
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1 &3: Fair, but trust often has to be earned or, at times, given with the expectation that it will be proven justified after it's been given. And in 3's case: Uncertainty did recommend her finding a confidante. That requires trust, yes, but if you give no one a chance to earn it, no one ever will. Canon Taylor never had anything that seemed sufficiently weighty to counter-balance her trust issues. The fear of loss of self...that is, to a degree.

2: Catharsis isn't a panacea. It's a pressure valve. If the source of the pressure remains, it can be needed to vent more than once to cope with a source of stress. As to the other half, impairing her ability to function...that's already impaired. Her ability to do what she considers her function is currently on hold while she's stuck on the Protectorate Rig. She can't fix the city from there. She even work towards it, beyond some basic foundation-work for her hero career. In that respect, her function comes pre-impaired in this situation, which adds a sense of restlessness and claustrophobia to her current circumstances. In some respects, despite best intentions, the whole situation is reminding her of Winslow to a worrying degree, as she is presently stuck somewhere she does not want to be, for reasons she has no control over, and she is depending upon the competence and actions of others who have already been demonstrated to be negligent or incompetent at best or actively malicious at worst for what she wants and needs to happen.

Mind, none of this is to say that I agreed with the forced-meme approach. If she'd ended up in tears (or if she does going forward) it would have been for reasons I would've endeavored to have be self-evident. Certainly it'd be something built toward during the conversation itself.
 
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I've been thinking. Is it just me or do my topics for venting seem overly specific and disjointed?

Spreading the mess with Sophia around would make things awkward with the PRT and sharing the specifics of the dreams out of the blue seems like a very bad idea.

Thermite could be extrapolated into promise keeping into unpleasant dreams, Tinkertech could be the awkwardness of being in a holding cell while you're in protective custody... the body adaptation stuff is what's been on Taylor's mind recently so that's something she can vent about plausibly.

Anybody see a heart of what we may want to vent about instead of just possible expressions of an underlying issue?

Edit: Ah. The protective custody has left us with little better to do than stew on our situation.
 
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Conjured Blade said:
Edit: Ah. The protective custody has left us with little better to do than stew on our situation.
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Until enough people get pulled off of the hunt for Sophia and keeping an eye on gang tensions to actually get the ball decently rolling on our situation. Or, y'know, she's found. We kind of showed up in the midst of what the local Protectorate/PRT are considering a "defeat snatched from jaws of victory which snatched them from the jaws of a prior defeat" situation. The local hero commander just had an asshole epiphany. A probationary ward has (apparently) attempted murder. Worse (to Piggot), she compounded her offense by escaping from custody after her arrest. They have a what was already a convoluted PR and logistical nightmare (the whole series of events around our Exaltation which were, as a reminder, highly visible enough to show up on national television) which has somehow managed to not only get worse in a highly public manner, but to also get more convoluted in an as-of-yet non-public manner. And the longer it takes them to resolve any and/or all of these things, the worse it is likely to be for the careers and circumstances of essentially everyone involved.

Short version: do the PRT/Protectorate want us happy and on board? Hell yes. So far, our willingness to play ball is one of precisely two potential saving graces they even have in the situation, one of only two even theoretically positive developments that have managed to come out of this entire awful situation. And at least one, if not both, of those developments is currently looking entirely likely to blow up in their faces precisely because of the other. And all of this is in addition to the fact that they were, arguably, the most comically over-worked and under-supported PRT/Protectorate regional branch office in the country which wasn't actively dealing with the aftermath of a A+-Class scenario or the aftermath of an actual natural disaster, and that was before any of this happened.

It...hasn't exactly helped.

EDIT: And now there's eldritch-looking text about prophecies I didn't add to this. Huh.
 
Bugs said:
It is, actually. It's the same as being called dull.
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It literally came from the latin word for dull or blunt (i.e: not sharp). Saying someone is obtuse is saying they aren't the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Obtuse:
  1. 1 a : not pointed or acute : bluntb (1) of an angle : exceeding 90 degrees but less than 180 degrees (2) : having an obtuse angle <an obtuse triangle> — see triangle illustrationc of a leaf : rounded at the free end

  2. 2 a : lacking sharpness or quickness of sensibility or intellect : insensitive, stupidb : difficult to comprehend : not clear or precise in thought or expression
obtusely
adverb
obtuseness
noun
 
Life stuff has kept me from making significant progress on the latest update. I have some bits I've gotten plotted out in the last few weeks, as well as a few things I've drawn up based around possible charm selections / just odd scraps and ideas such as, for example, what it might look like should players/Taylor decide to develop a Fourth Soul Devil Domain any time soon. I still have a job interview in just over a week, and have been prepping for that and the probable necessity to move out of my apartment one way or another whichever way it ends up going.

If I get the job, I will ideally be able to spend times on the weekends once I get settled into an apartment and adjusted to the work to get back to a steady posting schedule of at least once-per-week. Until then updates will remain erratic at best.
 
On the other hand...once I figure out how to do so, I'll try to get the image posted if I can get it off my computer and onto the internet. Well...and if it wasn't really crappy, since I can't draw for anything.

Side note: rolled for a few things...um. Taylor would have a modest-sized city in her head/soul/spirit. Thousands of rooms, numerous mansion-equivalent areas complete with Malfean basalt and metal flora on the grounds. Should we be going by the purported Word of God from Wildbow that it's located where Portsmouth, NH is, which I am, then Brocton Bay is in the neighborhood of 17 square miles in footprint if it's in equivalent geography.

If she picks up the Tiger Empire upgrade...well, since I alter charms to use the same system of measurement the game line and the other component of the crossover both use, well, it'd add an area about (pi x [roughly 1.5x the area of Brockton Bay]) to the preexisting radius of the Domain. And that's the first time. Then E4 hits and it'd add a minimum of "the area of Brockton Bay" all over again.

If we say, arbitrarily, that the original domain had a radius of at least 2 or so miles...which it'd probably have to have a 2 to 3 mile radius just to fit all the stuff mandated by a rating 5 Sanctum. So we're talking an area of {[pi x (4 or 9)] + [pi x 25] + [pi x (9 to 100)]} x 10 miles. Aka... {(12.5663706143592 or 28.2743338823081) + 78.5398163397448 + something between ( 28.2743338823081 and 314.159265358979)} x 10 miles.

Meaning that if we assumed a radius or 2 miles to the original space, and Essence 10, Coadjutor 5, eventually it'd be slightly over 24 square miles larger than the eponymous Big Island of Hawaii...the island which is roughly 2/3rds of the actual land-mass of the state. Or, put alternately, about 50 square miles larger than Los Angeles County.

And to head off any commentary, yes. Doing the measurements that way does add nearly half-again to the area in question. Yes, that's deliberate. Yes, I disagree with the charm being in metric, so I house rule it, since Exalted doesn't use metric and both accurate conversion to maintain size parity between the two versions and converting everything else in Exalted to metric are both far more work than altering any homebrew that uses metric via the find-and-replace method. Ultimately you're adding extra work for yourself by using a non-standard measurement for the game line's setting/context.


Of course, that may be entirely irrelevant, given that it requires a Pantheon charm and a geomancy charm. On which note, Fires Lit Within is still around and a Pantheon-keyworded (or whatever the name of the canon SWLiHN mote-expander was, since frankly it was more elegant in terms of design than the Revlid expander. And Revlid didn't give SWLiHN a geomancy charm. I mean, I'm keeping the canon one, but it's a shaker/master effect that masters anyone who lives there or studies it, so it's categorically incapable of being approved by the PRT PR department, no matter how pretty it is.
So...yeah. And since Adorjan isn't geography but climate, she doesn't have a geomancy charm. The closest canon geomancy charm Malfeas has is the one where he radioactively blights the area around him for miles...so the homebrew Malfeas geomantic charm would actually be the best bet for Taylor short of delving far enough into a non-favored/caste Yozi to pick one up.

TL;DR for that last paragraph: not likely to happen anytime soon unless reasons occur to prioritize it.
 
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Thief of Words said:
Meaning that if we assumed a radius or 2 miles to the original space, and Essence 10, Coadjutor 5, eventually it'd be slightly over 24 square miles larger than the eponymous Big Island of Hawaii...the island which is roughly 2/3rds of the actual land-mass of the state. Or, put alternately, about 50 square miles larger than Los Angeles County.
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Assuming she doesn't go full Devil-Tiger. Then she gets a full-scale world inside her soul, just like every other Primordial except the Ebon Dragon.
 
Also interesting: apparently Brockton Bay replaced what in the real world is an Eco-municipality. I.e: Wildbow took a city with social justice hard-coded into its laws and made it E88 central.
 
Thief of Words said:
Also interesting: apparently Brockton Bay replaced what in the real world is an Eco-municipality. I.e: Wildbow took a city with social justice hard-coded into its laws and made it E88 central.
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Well then. That's quite ironic.

However, I think you're forgetting one important detail. Nazi's are all for Social Progress!


...Social Progress of the Master Race, that is.
 
Also, about three to four months after the fact, I finally figured out how to articulate why Adorjan favored.

We were dealing with canon parallel Taylor at that point. Adorjan is early Worm Taylor's stress response: she responds to stress by going silent and withdrawing. She keeps her distance from her father because the attachment hurts. She compartmentalizes the parts of her life, especially the parts that hurt the most. She fixates on things, and between that and her isolation, she tends to have an easily skewed perspective. Further, her escapism is Adorjani escapism, as she is running to where past torments cannot reach her.
 
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I discovered this site in October, and this thread at the start of November. I've only now caught up with the thread enough to cast a vote.

I'd like to thank Thief of Words for making a story good enough to keep me up at night, and I'd like to thank the rest of you for creating a discussion lively enough to make me grin or laugh out loud many times.

That out of the way, my votes:

[X] Have a private conversation with Amy about your body issues and the fear that your powers will turn you into a monster.
-[X] Try not to cry.
--[X] Cry a lot.

[X] Respond in Kind
-Lisa left you a message on PHO. Maybe leaving a message there would be best, given you remain at the Protectorate's base.

[X] Your place?
-Convince them to let you meet the Wards at Wards HQ, since if you're going to end up working with them you'd need to be familiar with it.
 
Oh, wow. I didn't realize I never closed that last vote. Um. I guess Vote Closed. It's been most of a month, after all.

Vote Tally : Infernal Conundrum: [Exalted/Worm] - Part 2: Hell is Other Exalts | Page 207 | Sufficient Velocity
##### NetTally 1.7.3.2

[X] Write in: Have a quiet rooftop tea/snack with Amy.
-[x]Remember to turn off your lie detector if you're using it. Notify her it's off to set her at ease.
-[x]Awkward small talk while you figure out how to bring up your issues without sounding like you're whining.
-[x]Settle for being courteous about it. Ask if she has anything she wants to vent about or if she'd rather you start.
-[x]If she's fine with you starting:
-[x]Issues adapting to your new body, the persistent distraction of how weird tinkertech is when you look at it, how unpleasant getting attacked by thermite is, disturbing dreams without going into specifics.
-[x]Go into specifics about disturbing dreams if she volunteers anything sufficiently apt you could use that to commiserate with her.
-[x]Otherwise:
-[x]Do your best to listen
[X] Respond in Kind
[X] Your place
-[x]Between the fact you survived being attacked by thermite, and your disguise power, you don't see how you'd be undergoing a significant risk by going there.
No. of Votes: 8
Conjured Blade
landcollector
Schielman
the DragonBard
Twei
veekie
Vesperian
Wyverntamer

[X] Have a private conversation with Amy about your body issues and the fear that your powers will turn you into a monster.
-[X] Try not to cry.
--[X] Cry a lot.
[X] Respond in Kind
[X]Or mine?
No. of Votes: 2
Ashmaker
Monotov

[X] Write in: Have a quiet rooftop tea/snack with Amy. No pressure, no expectations. You are both under a lot of stress, so the focus is just to be an excuse for each other to avoid that.
[X] Respond in Kind
[X]Or mine?
No. of Votes: 1
ClawClawBite

[X] Write in: Have a quiet rooftop tea/snack with Amy. No pressure, no expectations. You are both under a lot of stress, so the focus is just to be an excuse for each other to avoid that.
[X] Respond in Kind
No. of Votes: 1
Frakir's brother

[X] Write in: Have a quiet rooftop tea/snack with Amy. No pressure, no expectations. You are both under a lot of stress, so the focus is just to be an excuse for each other to avoid that.
[X] Try to call
[X]Your place?
No. of Votes: 1
SaltyWaffles

[X] Have a private conversation with Amy about your body issues and the fear that your powers will turn you into a monster.
-[X] Try not to cry.
--[X] Cry a lot.
[X] Respond in Kind
[X] Your place?
No. of Votes: 1
Aoinfinity

Total No. of Voters: 14
 
Just a brief update on where I am for now. Still not able to write successfully. Got a second interview with the job thing. No word yet on if they want to hire me. Started working part time. Physically exhausted from part-time gig. Internet still limited to one week per month, which ends for me tomorrow. Will update as able or if there's news.
 
Thief of Words said:
Just a brief update on where I am for now. Still not able to write successfully. Got a second interview with the job thing. No word yet on if they want to hire me. Started working part time. Physically exhausted from part-time gig. Internet still limited to one week per month, which ends for me tomorrow. Will update as able or if there's news.
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Second interview at the same place? Good signs if so.
 
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