Ikiru

Kanji Watanabe: I can't afford to hate people. I don't have that kind of time.

Always true.

 

The Triumph of Primal Terror

I always knew this was going to happen. I always knew that skepticism and science were mere psychological decorations and vanities. Deep in our alligator brains we all know that the world is just chock full of evil and monsters and sinister forces aligned against us, and it is only a matter of time until they show up. Evolution knows this too. It knows what to do when the silent terror comes at you from out of the dark.

     - Alfonzo Smith

The Yozi Perspective

Nephilpal, on why the Yozi (Titan-like, Primordial beings) and their Akuma (evil Exalted) servants are completely incompatible with the well being and free will of every other entity in the Exalted RPG setting:

You spread a picnic down and the ants come. They do that, those ants. Not to worry, you can squash the ants. But ack! Something is wrong! They have spiders and the spiders are biting you and you are helpless and now they are wrapping you in a cocoon and the ants are crawling all over your picnic and eating it and you can't do anything about it. Damn the bugs! Damn them all! You wish you could squash them, but you can't. You hate them. You hate them all. The Exalted aren't heroes, they're just bugs with nasty venom. They all need squashing or taming into completely harmless pets... yes, train spiders to kill spiders. That will show them! 

. . . 

The akuma plan isn't really the akuma plan. It's the Yozi plan, which says "All of you are wrong. The setting is wrong. The universe is wrong. The war ended wrong. We made this. We should be in charge. Now, stop rebelling. Get off my damn picnic and give me back my Gameboy, you damn, dirty bugs!"

Raising The Wind

"Made idle by cynicism, these two bored intelligences turned to the study of prophecy and magic. While still young they learned of each other's existence and fame in such arts. They met secretly in Jerusalem and there made a pact to perform an operation known to occultists as "Raising the Wind". Then they separated and returned to their respective countries, where they patiently set to work preparing the operation. 

"This operation (which has never ever been successfully completed) involves the selection of an ordinary human conflict by powerful magicians who recruit for it's armies occult assistance and thereby raise the conflict to a higher power, investing it with apocalyptic significance. Finding Man's story long and wearisome, they wished to force the coming of the Antichrist and, what must follow, the coming of the Messiah and the End of All Things. To slake their boredom they wished to stage Armageddon in front of the pyramids. 

"The Father [of Cats] took the side of Islam, Cornu that of Christendom. The Father recruited healers; Cornu recruited the sick.  The Father summoned up assistance from the Alam al-Mithal [the dream world, the world of images]; Cornu struggled against the phantoms of the dream world."

      - The Arabian Nightmare, Robert Irwin

Modern Plutocracy

The Vernon Hotel at which The Twelve True Fishermen held their annual dinners was an institution such as can only exist in an oligarchical society which has almost gone mad on good manners. It was that topsy-turvy product--an "exclusive" commercial enterprise. That is, it was a thing which paid not by attracting people, but actually by turning people away. In the heart of a plutocracy tradesmen become cunning enough to be more fastidious than their customers. They positively create difficulties so that their wealthy and weary clients may spend money and diplomacy in overcoming them.

. . .

The waiter stood staring a few seconds, while there deepened on every face at table a strange shame which is wholly the product of our time.  It is the combination of modern humanitarianism with the horrible modern abyss between the souls of the rich and poor. A genuine historic aristocrat would have thrown things at the waiter, beginning with empty bottles, and very probably ending with money. A genuine democrat would have asked him, with comrade-like clearness of speech, what the devil he was doing. But these modern plutocrats could not bear a poor man near to them, either as a slave or as a friend. That something had gone wrong with the servants was merely a dull, hot embarrassment. They did not want to be brutal, and they dreaded the need to be benevolent. They wanted the thing, whatever it was, to be over.

     -  The Queer Feet, G.K. Chesterton