Theo Anders and the Black Exaltation[Worm/Exalted][Hiatus]

[X] Darklight

Always go for the awesomest!
Be the dragon!

 

Yeah. If we actually stunt things in a reasonable way our shit will stink


Maybe something no is a thing?

 

No, I don't think so. Intimidating and aggressive body language and tone leading to someone being intimidated and backing down is in no way indicative of a master power. It happens mundanely all the time, in fact. Shadow Stalker's not so well known as socially unstoppable that her knuckling under would set off alarms.

Aside from that, literally all anyone has to do to no-sell a social attack- even a good one like this- is spend some willpower, so it's entirely possible that she won't back down at all. The stunt has a contingency for that, and if it proves to be the case, the idea that we'd be pinged as any kind of master becomes utterly laughable (as indeed it is, because no master power is involved). With all due respect intended, claiming that we'd get considered a master for this under any reasonable evaluation of events is baseless fearmongering.

 

Except getting aggressive just makes shit worse, and the slow stroll over is very much so deliberate. Despite all of the capes or socialites in the room the centre of attention is Theo. The fact that he's so calm despite what has happened helps to set the scene, there's no reason for anybody to do anything because he's got complete control of the situation.

 

What does it make worse, exactly?

Our relationship with most people is likely to increase if we are seen to be aggressively defending our date, because people generally like those who are perceived as loyal and protective. Basically everyone will respect us more if we're aggressive and it fails than if we try for politeness and that fails, because Shadow Stalker can spend willpower either way and tell us to fuck off, and make a thing of it. Certainly, Sabah would probably rather have us show up right away and go on the offensive than show up after she's been lying on the floor emotionally pinned for a few agonizing seconds and then start dropping bullshit lines about how we admire Shadow Stalker's zeal and sympathize with her intentions. An aggressive action in this context is socially forgivable and even admirable where an attempt at being a smoothly casual, polite operator is likely to come off as smug snake bullshit in the event that it fails.

In fact, if Shadow Stalker spends willpower to laugh off Plan Bii's stunt, it'll make us look awful because it'll show that the whole appearance of control that we're trying to present is nothing more than an empty facade, while if she spends willpower to laugh off the order to leave in mine it'll look like we're willing to start a fight in defense of our date even when the opposition has superpowers, which is likely to be perceived as hotheaded but nevertheless emotionally appealing and worthy of acclaim. In both cases she looks bad to the crowd, so that's essentially the same either way.

Either of them will be of significant benefit to us if it works, but I believe that the success state of a more aggressive social move is more beneficial and the failure state isn't as bad.

 

Well, it certainly doesn't involve any shouting, and while your opinion may differ on this, I'd say that when someone has been physically shoved to the ground a scene has already been made, so we won't be making a new one no matter what we do. Neither plan even involves any escalation, since the farthest that my stunt takes things is aggressive posturing and strong words- both of which have already been used by the other party. Indeed, even at the stunt's most aggressive point it's still less "making a scene" than Shadow Stalker has already done since she actually used physical violence, so she bears ultimate fault for scene-making in the eyes of any reasonable observer. There's only the question of whether we respond to this provocation quickly and decisively, or carefully and politely.

And, well, as long as we're very politely slandering each others' plans, I don't really respect people for taking their time to act when their friends are being threatened. Which is what your plan involves.

 

[X] Plan Bii

 

FTFY!

[X] Darklight

 

I have to agree with DarkLight here.

 

[X] Darklight

I'm changing my vote because I agree with darklight in that it's to slow. Sabah is being reminded of her trigger event and being emotionally traumatized. I prefer a non agreesive response but not when it means sabah has has an extra twenty seconds of feeling threaded and emotionally crushed..

 

So here's what I'm trying to figure out. Plan Darklight is basically wrong in every single way possible and it's actually kinda funny:

First of all there's the fact that apparently his plan is better because Bii's doesn't have him magically teleport across the room to Sabah's side, and instead bothers to show him moving over there and gives a reason as to why other people are letting him handle it. I'm not really sure how ignoring the fact that other people could interfere is somehow the better way of handling it but I'm sure that there's some sort of logic behind it.

Then there's fact that apparently instead of trying to act mature in front of people and calming things down, therefore establishing that even if we fuck up every single roll and everything goes terrible, people will still remember "Oh hey, she was the one that started things and then continued even after that guy came in to calm things down." instead of "Holy shit that guy just tried to kick out a Hero from a party that he's a guest to. The fuck is wrong with him?"

Like, I'm just trying to reconcile your plan with your comments about Bii's plan. You talk about how Bii's plan is flawed because it doesn't take into account what happens if it doesn't work. Lets uh, do a quick comparison of what happens if the plans fail vs if the plans succeed in a best case/worst case scenario.

Plan Bii Works:

• We save Sabah and her reputation, making her feel like she owes TDP even more since not only did he help cover up her mistake but if anything he made her look better in front of potential customers.
• We look good in front of the general public since we took something that could have been a minor scandal and easily smoothed it over.
• We look good in front of all of the Wards since they know how Sophia can get and we were able to handle her easily.
• We look good in front of the Protectorate members there (especially Armsmaster) since we handled a potentially awkward scenario for them in a mature manner that instead of vilifying a member of the Wards, instead made everybody look fine to the general public.
• We manage to snub Emma publicly and fuck over her social standing, and in such a way that to her, the only way to get it back is to make up with us. Thus giving us another useful minion.
• We managed to impress Sophia because she knows exactly what we've done and that we've given her a simple choice, either go against us and look like a bad guy and make shit even harder for herself or she can take the lifeline we've given her and not have to worry about fallout from her actions.
• Basically, literally everybody (but Emma) wins and gets a better impression of us. It's a pretty good outcome.

Plan Bii Fails:

• Sabah appreciates what we've done and what we try to do, but somehow shit went badly and now we'll have to salvage her reputation and career. Because well, if we don't then not only has she lost pretty much all of the progress from tonight, but she's probably lost her job as well.
• We still look good in front of the general public since well, it's very obvious that we tried to keep shit civil and calm, but somehow things went badly despite our best efforts.
• We still look good to the Wards since they know how Sophia can get and well, they know how bad she is at listening to reason and sorting shit out calmly.
• We still look good to the Protectorate since we had tried to avoid a scandal that would have made the PRT look shitty, but now they've got to deal with this mess.
• We don't really do much to Emma, although she's probably not a big fan of us.
• Sophia thinks we're a bitch and will just look down on us. (Which could be all kinds of hilarious later on)
• So basically, shit's not so great for Sabah, but overall we still come out ahead.

Plan Darklight Works:

• Sabah is grateful that we saved her, although uh, now everybody is looking this way and we didn't actually do anything about her accusations, all we did was get rid of Shadow Stalker. So uh, better than nothing?
• We get a mixed reaction from the public. On the one hand we were protecting our date, on the other we basically ordered around a Ward in a party that we're just a guest to, who the hell do we think we are?
• We get mixed reactions from the Wards, sure Sophia is a gigantic bitch and it feels so amazing to watch her get taken down a peg, but she's still part of the team and they kinda need to side with her.
• The Protectorate are very much so not fans of us because now they have to deal with this PR clusterfuck.
• Emma is just glad that nobody is looking at her.
• Sophia is probably thinking about ways to get away with murder.
• So overall, we kinda save Sabah and we get mixed reactions (or worse) from everybody else. Yay?

Plan Darklight Fails:

• Sabah is mortified because holy shit we just tried to order around a Ward and now we've both been kicked out of the party. Also, her reputation is basically ruined, everything she gained from tonight has been destroyed, she's probably lost her job and to top things off it's going to be pretty much impossible to find work in Brockton Bay. Oops?
• We've gone from being a mysterious and cool stranger to a laughingstock. We were that dick that actually tried to order around a Ward as if we were anybody important, what an idiot.
• The Wards all feel sorry for us, so hey, at least that wasn't a total loss.
• The Protectorate now has to deal with the fallout of this, they're not really big fans of us.
• Emma found the entire things hilarious.
• Sophia thinks that we have brain damage.
• Overall we've managed to fuck up everything in every way possible, because despite what we though: No we don't have anywhere near enough money to win against the PRT, no the PRT would not throw her to the wolves because they're afraid of us (friendly reminder that she literally got away with murder thanks to the fact that as a cape, she's Useful to them) and no it's not too hard for them to spin the fuck out of the situation (especially if we go and make shit worse).

And to top things off, lets just look at how poppa Kaiser will react to shit depending on how things turn out:
Plan Bii Works - Good job Theo, you handled the situation great.
Plan Bii Fails - You did a good job, but at least you're not getting dragged down by her mistake.
Plan Darklight Works - Well, the other members of the Empire are going to be happy, but we're going to have to play safe with all the extra attention.
Plan Darklight Fails - I honestly have no idea what the fuck you were thinking.

 

[X] Plan Bii

Darklight plan is too aggressive for me.

 

We saw Emma feigning disgust at Sabah touching her, right?

This is probably because of a desire for attention. Something along the lines of "I look so great even girls like me!". She wasn't planning on returning those advances, but she was allowing them to continue because they made her feel wanted.

At least, that's what it looks like to me.

 

[X] Plan Bii

 

The distance between Vista and Shadow Stalkers little areas is about ten Theo steps away. Like 15-25 feet ish. Far enough away that Theo and Vista wouldn't have heard, or Vista who would have had a decent angle to see SS probably wasn't paying attention.

So TDP can move with purpose and without rushing to get to Sabah in 3-6 seconds. So Bii's imperial march of the Dark Prince works as well as DarkLights swift dark hunter prince. And take a up a good chunk of the time that Sabah might try to say something or the amount of time it takes Stalker to realize what she just did in public. Who knows Stalker and Emma might dig themselves a bigger hole.

Aegis might react fairly quickly bit wouldn't get there before you.

Umm, any other concerns? I'm away from my computer so its a tad difficult to track all the posts.

No update today.moving sucks the motivation for serious stuff right out of me. And I have to do some rule booking.

But I might post something silly before I get sucked into reading or doing other stuff.

 

[X] Darklight

 

[X] Plan Bii

When in doubt, go for a more rational, calm course of action. Throwing a hissy fit is not how a productive leader or hero acts.

 

[X] Plan Bii

While I do appreciate the emergence of alternatives, I find that a calm approach is vastly more productive in such situations.

 

[X] Plan Bii

 

QQ bot tally's look like poo. Here have a better looking one.

Vote Tally : Theo Anders and the Black Exaltation[Worm/Exalted] | Page 50 | Questionable Questing
##### NetTally 1.1.9
[X] Plan Bii
No. of Votes: 15
Biigoh
Anasurimbor
AZATHOTHoth
derkan
Drak4806
Firedon
fitzgerald
gibbousmoons
Kerfirou
kinglugia
mishie
Nyrath
prandom
Reklaw
Tt409

[X] Write in (counted in Plan Bii)
-[X] Work out what happened. Why it happened and then retaliate with ABSOLUTE force politely. See below for stunt
-[X] Use personal motes for Scathing Cynic Attitude [3m], Exquisite Etiquette Style [1m], 2nd presence Excellency [6m], leaving you with 5 motes.
No. of Votes: 2
Biigoh
kinglugia

[X] Stunt [sometimes, you gotta smack a bitch and hope she drops some dice] (described in original post)(Counted in Plan Bii)
No. of Votes: 2
Biigoh
kinglugia

[X]Plan DarkLight
No. of Votes: 9
rogthnor
1986ctcel
alethiophile
GiftofLove
john doe
moontheir4
ryuan
SerbobIV
SwiftRosenthal

[X] Write in
-[X] Sabah is yours and she is under attack; in no way is this acceptable. All the networking you've done tonight has been the velvet glove, but smiles and charm mean nothing if not backed by the iron fist where appropriate. Hit back with maximum acceptable social force, and break the will of others before you.
-[X] Use personal motes for Scathing Cynic Attitude [3m], Exquisite Etiquette Style [1m], 2nd presence Excellency [6m], leaving you with 5 motes. (Stunt follows in original post)
No. of Votes: 1
DarkLight140

[X] Bank
No. of Votes: 3
Biigoh
kinglugia
Snake/Eater

-[X] Plan See
No. of Votes: 1
Snake/Eater

[X] Write in
-[X] Work out what happened. Why it happened and then Turn yourself into a victim of Cape brutality by provoking Sabah's attacker while acting innocent
-[X] Use personal motes for Scathing Cynic Attitude [3m], Exquisite Etiquette Style [1m], 2nd presence Excellency [6m], leaving you with 5 motes.
No. of Votes: 1
Snake/Eater

[X] Stunt [turns out provoking crazed parahumans is my natural born gift]
No. of Votes: 1
Snake/Eater


Total No. of Voters: 26

 

[X] Plan Bii

 

... That last one terrified me the least.

 

At least it's not Lisa. that would have been a bad end for our Dark Prince.