2010-09-30: They're asking for help.

[ChunLing]

It may be "natural" to side with the elves, but it's more than a bit likely to be suicidal.

Which doesn't mean that the people who live on a flying rock in the sky won't pick that option. It just makes it not a very smart choice.

[taltamir]

but lets say the USSR and China were less ideologically aligned than in reality

um, apropos of nothing in particular, but you do know that the USSR and China were basically at each others' throats from about 1960 onwards, right? There were some border skirmishes in the late 60s that could easily have been the start of WWIII if things had gone slightly differently (...I think it's Kissinger's memoirs that have the story of Breshnev calling up Nixon in 1969 with something like, "Hi, we're thinking about nuking China. Wanna join in?" at which point Nixon decided that perhaps a trip to Beijing was in order...)

Yes, I am aware that the USSR and China as entities in themselves were not exactly best of friends. But they were on the same side of the major bifurcation of the world at the time: they were both communist countries, rather than capitalist countries. If a Martian-Death-Ray-powered-Random-Guy were to vaporize Moscow and Beijing, the US could very well just think "Hey, someone's offing commies for us. Right on, Random Guy!"

You are kidding? more like "holy shit aliens are attacking! they are probably gonna kill us all and steal are wimmin / resources / atmosphere / planet / cattle / eat us.

now if a KNOWN entity was attacking the russians during the cold war (say, an alliance of european countries)... then the USA would be happy and friendly towards them... random unknown genocidals are scary though.

[Forrest]

now if a KNOWN entity was attacking the russians during the cold war (say, an alliance of european countries)... then the USA would be happy and friendly towards them... random unknown genocidals are scary though.

Well that's the point I was making about why Tsuiraku would side against Ian by default. (He's a random unknown blasting the hell out of two major seats of civilizations). I was just adding the caveat about my analogy in that, if the random scary thing is so far only attacking things in a certain pattern and you don't fit that pattern, your reaction might be to stay uninvolved in hopes that you stay outside its pattern of attack; whereas, if the random scary thing's targets are non-discriminatory, you will do very well to expect it might pick you next.

To reverse the analogy, lets say Emerylon was an Elven city as was Praenublis Atsu. In that case, Tsuiraku might think Ian was only attacking Elves, and not worry as much that he might attack them next. Likewise with my analogy involving Russia, China, and America; it's conceivable someone attacking both Russia and China might be seen as only attacking communists, and America might stay out of it until they can be sure whether or not that's the pattern.

That's the only reason I mentioned Russia and China's ideological ties: that is a dissimilarity in the analogy. Emerylon and Praenublis Atsu have no such similarities which might indicate a pattern to the attacks that would exclude Tsuirakushiti.

[ChunLing]

Well, neither of them is a built on a flying rock. I'm sure that other, less immediately obvious factors come to mind if one thinks about it.

The thing is, we've already had this conversation between Sarine and Gramps. In that case, the Tsuirakuens came down pretty firmly on the side of not cooperating with the elves. What exactly has changed? Their |absolute| threat assessment of Ian has actually decreased (incorrectly, but that's how they've chosen to interpret the Mejinilis thing so far), the elves have proven themselves obnoxious and weak but with a high willingness to engage in dangerous stupidity, and intelligence on the motives driving Ian to attack elves and all associated persons have firmed up a bit.

Tsuiraku is a major power, not a super power. Even if their recent history has given them cause for confidence, they have to think seriously about the possibility that they can't just have things their way.

Unless...they are stupid. Which is more than possible. But explaining an action by reference to stupidity doesn't require complex analogies to other stupidity, except to demonstrate how stupid it is.

[Kerostasis]

The thing is, we've already had this conversation between Sarine and Gramps. In that case, the Tsuirakuens came down pretty firmly on the side of not cooperating with the elves. What exactly has changed? Their |absolute| threat assessment of Ian has actually decreased (incorrectly, but that's how they've chosen to interpret the Mejinilis thing so far)...

I can see two possible ways to interpret their changed threat assessment. (Most likely, there are factions within Tsuiraku who believe each of these theories, with Gramps seeming to come down on the second side.)

(1) -- Seeing how relatively non-powerful Mejinilis was, maybe this Ianilis guy won't be as bad as we thought. And...since the Elves are doing so damn bad at handling any of them, maybe they aren't as scary as we thought either. In that case, we could probably probably go in and help out with relatively little risk of failure, and then the Elves would owe us!

(2) -- We know the Elves are damn strong. We know they wouldn't ask for help unless they were getting their asses kicked. We don't know exactly how dangerous either Ian or Meji is at this point, but based off the Elven reaction it's probably safe to assume they're more dangerous than they look. So...let's do whatever we can to help delay global thermonuclear holocaust.

Basically they have two conflicting pieces of information and have to decide which one is more likely to be accurate.

[Forrest]

Well, neither of them is a built on a flying rock.

No, but America is far, far away, and surrounded by rather large oceans which, at the time, served as a rather effective means of isolation from the rest of the world. So that actually fits the analogy (Tsuiraku:flying::America:surrounded by oceans) quite well.

[ChunLing]

...

Ian can fly.

[Forrest]

So could the Japanese.

[ChunLing]

...

No, they really can't.

[ChunLing]

And, even if they could, I'm not sure how that would be relevant.