""Enjoying the wrist-grip of your new, wary Claws, anyone "Virginial"…?"" :: suddenly, that +Watchful enhancement makes a kind of sense, after-all…!
to quote a quote, far above::
""Dr Ortho pins a deep crimson rosette to your lapel. "She might be onto something," he confides, "No one can outrun Virginia.""
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edited by Doctor_Static on 7/24/2019
[quote=Senforza]Alright, I’ll bite. Let’s even go so far as to assume that Virginia’s secret motive in this entire election is to save London from disaster by preventing the fall of a sixth city - same as Shoshana. I still don’t see how building a spa (or even the general improvement of physical and spiritual fortitude) gives us a quantifiable advantage, any more than Shoshana’s platform of love stories does. You’re talking about staving off destruction, but no candidate can provide definitive proof that their agenda would do so. Better resist the Masters how, by doing what?! Say Virginia makes the average Londoner more spiritually stable and physically fit. How does that do anything to prevent the Masters’ scheming?
At least with Shoshana’s platform, you could make the argument that the Masters have reason to keep the city around as long as it continues to generate love stories for the Bazaar.
You’re saying that it’s "painfully obvious that we need to strengthen our resolve to resist the Masters’ plans." You’ll have to forgive me, then; I fail to see the obvious. If her platform were to ‘strengthen Londoners’ resolve against the Masters and the Bazaar’ you could more soundly make the argument that her plan has anything to do with the Masters at all, but even if you make that assumption ahead of time, you can’t say that her motives automatically make her means a realistic solution. If you can somehow demonstrate what exactly the Masters’ plans are and how Virginia’s platform of public health derails those plans, then by all means, go on. Saying they do doesn’t make it so.[/quote]
My apologies, Professor for not being clearer.
I never meant to imply (much less state) that Virginia’s "motives automatically make her means a realistic solution." If that’s how my words came across, I apologize again. All I intended to convey on the subject of motives was this: The Masters want us ALL wiped out, the sooner, the better. Virginia has a strong motive to oppose them, since Devils have a vested interest in keeping a supply of Abstractable souls on hand, which cannot be done if we are ALL wiped out.
Answering your spoiler with mine:
My spoiler tags aren’t working now, clearly. I’ll update this when they are.
As for why a Londoner improvement plan (like Virginia’s - a spa, per se, is only one part of it) is needed, and how it can help:
When you quoted me, you neglected to complete my sentence (which explained what I meant). The full sentence was, "And it’s painfully obvious that we need to strengthen our resolve to resist the Masters’ plans, when some Londoners are weak (or blind) enough to subscribe to the Plans of other candidates, which would actually HELP the Masters to destroy us all." What I meant by that is that a vote for Plenty or Shoshana is a vote for the Masters, and hence for London’s destruction. A vote for Virginia, is not.
I’ll grant you that Madame Shoshana correctly puts her finger on the problem (the French falling in), but when asked what Madame Shoshana means to do to avert the danger, her assistant, Philonous the Uncanny, states, "London requires psychic protection. We mean for the Ministry to get involved." The Ministry is RUN by the Masters. Shoshana’s getting them involved would put them in charge of protecting us FROM THEMSELVES! It’s like asking Napoleon to defend England from Napoleon. If that strategy sounds reasonable to you, then vote for her, and hasten our destruction.
Mrs. Plenty’s husband is an Aide to a Master. And even IF she herself is not actively complicit, her plan is to do nothing for a year, while the Masters arrange to drop the next city on our heads. "Fiddle while Rome burns" is essentially her platform. Does that sound good to you? Then vote for her.
You ask, "Better resist the Masters how, by doing what?! That’s a fair question. Well, for one thing, by seeing through the suicidal platforms of the Masters’ puppets Mrs. Plenty and Madame Shoshana, and not voting for them. If enough Londoners wake up and that happens, maybe we won’t need quite so much improvement, after all.
My spoiler tags aren’t working now, clearly. I’ll update this when they are.
EDIT: for some reason my spoiler tags aren’t working now. I apologize to everyone!
edited by Vorwoda Hawksby on 7/24/2019
edited by Vorwoda Hawksby on 7/24/2019
edited by Vorwoda Hawksby on 7/24/2019
(I have a more OOC response over in the discussion thread specifically for this theory where Jolanda cross-posted this, but my character’s a Campaigner this season! They must rise to defend their thesis with all their heart. Between the two, I cover different points, so I’d encourage taking a look at both.)
[quote=Jolanda Swan]Honestly, I enjoyed Azothi’s analysis of why, if one squints just right, Virginia plans to save us, but I somehow doubt she would neglect to mention it in her election platform.[/quote]It’s not that Virginia plans to save us; it’s more like Virginia’s plans can help us save ourselves, more than Shoshana’s plans (or, more precisely, her lack thereof) can, especially in the face of evidence that Shoshana’s ideas are the opposite of those among the powers that be with a genuine interest of keeping London around.
Even if you don’t accept that Virginia’s hidden plans are to the benefit of London, I find it hard to deny that the benefits her platform offers - benefits that she cannot take away - will not help Londoners. Would we deny the health advantages of physical exercise? Would we not deny the mental health benefits of relaxation? Would we not deny that the construction of public works aids in improving the quality of life and closing the gap between the rich and the poor?
[quote=Jolanda Swan]I mean, it sounds like something you want people to know when you are asking about their vote.[/quote]Virginia is not the Prophetess of London, as Shoshana is named; nor is she the Grand Dame, a title evoking authority and control. No, Virginia is named the Heroine, and the question she poses is simple: "Don’t we all have room for a little improvement?" The theme of her campaign is self-improvement: taking destiny into your own hands rather than letting it be prescribed by high above. The heroine is the triumph of the individual, charting the way so that others might know the way or chart their own paths.
Virginia understands the failure of the words, "I alone can save you." She understands the deception of rhetoric like "only London having a Mayor Shoshana will avert the disaster." It goes against everything her campaign stands for. Listen to her diagnosis of London: corruption, degeneracy, paucity of ambition. These self-inflicted wounds hold London down. She cannot heal these. All she can do is chart the way forward. A change enforced at gunpoint will not stand. That ambition cannot be awakened if Virginia forces herself onto the helm, promising that by electing her, they can be saved. Virginia has no aspirations for power; she intends to do her work and be gone. She becomes the opposite of the politician: what she offers is the tools to save ourselves.
Virginia is an ancient being. She remembers what was once was, and she remembers their failures. Cities have stood for hundreds and thousands of years; we haven’t even been here for forty. She has studied the destruction of the Fourth City, not by natural forces but by an enemy that razed it to the ground. And now she’s studied the failure of their wards, and she’s made adjustments. We don’t have to be told that forces plot London’s destruction: we already know this. It is a premature annihilation that we must be wary of, and we must hone ourselves to not go gentle into that good night. Virginia is not here to proclaim doom for the sake of winning the Mayor’s Office. Virginia is here to ask us all that question: "Don’t we all have room for a little improvement?" We have that potential. London has that potential. In the spirit of Virginia’s anachronism, allow me to bring forward a quote that embodies this: Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
The mistake is assuming that Virginia will take any measure to win this power, that she would defeat the point of her own campaign - one built on self-improvement and ambition - by nipping those in the bud, choking the potential out of London by making her the figure who will save them. No, what she offers is the tools to improve ourselves: public works for those who could never afford it alone; modern medicine to give us the time and the energy to act; physical exercise to strengthen our minds and bodies, to let us live healthier lives; and ambition to bring this together and create a better London. Her campaign is the fight to overcome the fear that this is not possible, that fear that has driven Londoners to blind themselves to corruption, to flock to those who make false promises, to accept the easy way forward that leads to failure.
Dear Azothi, I would probably vote you for mayor with a platform like that. And if I ever run for mayor, I will give you half my cider to spin my campaign.
But when a murdering Devil aristocrat, an agent of a foreign power no less, and one who hunts people for sport, professes to possess the qualities you describe, just a month before the elections and without any prior display of the slightest sliver of compassion, no manner of spinning can work.
And Virginia doesn’t even pretend that she is that kind of person. Now, we can spin a fairy tale about her being the hidden savior of the city because we like her style, and see if it catches, or we can avoid the mental gymnastics and admit she is who she is and who she presents herself to be.
Isn’t it kind of insane to attribute to her an entire novel she never asked for herself?
[quote=Vorwoda Hawksby][quote=Senforza]
EDIT: for some reason my spoiler tags aren’t working now. I apologize to everyone!
[/quote]
For some reason the forum software only allows one spoiler per post.
It’s very cute that people are worried about their souls. The only responsible choice is to destroy the horrible little things, or failing that, personalize them in your own special way. The care of a devil is almost as good though, especially down here in the dark. It’s not as if…
…they use them for anything, after all. They’re pollinators without anything to pollinate. And I assure you, as a gentleperson of great worldliness, crossing over to the far shore with your soul still quivering between your ribs is an infinitely more excruciating experience than any torment ever perpetrated in Hell.
And ask yourself, you who still regard Virginia’s plans with distaste: Shoshana’s plan is what? To expedite London’s production of love stories? If her sources tell her that will be anything more than a temporary and ultimately ineffectual papering-over of the problem, then her sources are intentionally misleading her, a possibility one must consider seriously.
Mrs. Plenty I have nothing against, except that her plans sound frightfully dull. For such an exciting woman she has committed herself quite thoroughly to the cause of the quotidian, a cause Londoners are already far too willing to take up on their own. Does anyone really want fewer cults, fewer foreign ambassadors, fewer dream apocalypses? Whatever would we do with ourselves? More importantly, what would I do? Putter around the garden and put the damper on my daughter’s parties?
I have nothing against either of them, except that they’re altogether wrong for London. Virginia promises a grand and fascinating experiment! A transmutation of the very soul of London, a metamorphosis into something lush and strong and dreadfully new. It is incumbent on the serpent, after all, to shed its skin when it grows too tight, to leave behind the scars and aches of each new moon, to grow bigger and stronger by unburdening itself of the lessons it has already learned. So we too must learn to change, step by step, from what we are, into what we desire to be! ^_^
I think Gul Al-Ahlaam just made the most convincing argument possible against Virginia. Well done.
Shoshana does seem to have two separate plans in place, and one of them has already proven to work for a different city BUT after that endorsement I would rather sip some rose and wait.
[quote=Optimatum]
For some reason the forum software only allows one spoiler per post.[/quote]
Thank you, Optimatum, that explains it! Then here is my first redacted spoiler from above (in answer to Professor Senforza’s spoiler.
The Masters’ plan is not necessarily to provide love stories for the Bazaar, it’s to hurry the Bazaar through the seven permitted cities as quickly as possible, in order to end the Masters’ servitude to the Bazaar and get them back out among the stars in the shortest possible time. The quicker all seven cities are dropped, played out and ruined, and there ARE no more love stories for the Bazaar, the happier the Masters will be.
And I’ll post my second redacted spoiler in the next post below.
edited by Vorwoda Hawksby on 7/28/2019
You ask, "Better resist the Masters how, by doing what?! That’s a fair question. Well, for one thing, by seeing through the suicidal platforms of the Masters’ puppets Mrs. Plenty and Madame Shoshana, and not voting for them. If enough Londoners wake up and that happens, maybe we won’t need quite so much improvement, after all.
Or maybe we’ll still need it to grow strong enough to give all the Masters the Mr. Eaten treatment, and then kill the Bazaar. That would eliminate the threat of a Sixth City permanently.
Rather pleasantly surprised by Virginia’s administration - the spa is rather nice.
I’m wondering if the Railroad content that’s been teased is going to be connected to Virginia’s term in office. If so, it would be the most significant legacy to date.
Could be!
Apparently, Virginia brought some spa physicians from out west that are related to ‘the Dynamite’, someone who the Brass Embassy doesn’t like much. Perhaps we might meet or even be sponsored by the Dynamite in our railroad project?
Whose that CC member who likes setting off bombs again? :P