Redefining Role

[JCD]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

I made a thread a while back "Things to do in Heaven when you're dead" and one of the suggestions was helping train angels in how to pass for human.

Would Jordi have a similar program for animal Roles?

It's not a bad idea, and cultural and technical stuff can certainly be taught there. Smythe's place deals less with that then with the physical dynamics of vessel manipulation (what, you thought it was instinctive? YMMV) as well as more refined and realistic social interactions then one would find in movies.

As far as Jordi goes...how would anyone except a naturalist know if an animal was behaving oddly? (Anyone wonder if Animal Control was an Infernal move to sideline Jordi? Why else the sudden spate of tranked bears everywhere...)

[ladyarcana55]

AND the mandatory spay and neutering for pets.

[tHEhERETIC]

Originally Posted by ladyarcana55

AND the mandatory spay and neutering for pets.

So snub Jordi and Eli in one blow? Awesome move for Hell, that.

[William]

Originally Posted by tHEhERETIC

So snub Jordi and Eli in one blow? Awesome move for Hell, that.

Your problem may be with the "mandatory" part of this, but spaying and neutering most household pets is a hygienic, economical and safety-improving idea. Puppies or kittens are very cute, very briefly, and most casual pet owners have neither the intention nor the funds to raise an entire litter of animals to adulthood. There are far more dogs and cats around than are required for adoption, and runaways or abandonments have led to serious problems with stray overpopulation in cities.

Eli probably doesn't have too much of an opinion on birth control for animals, at least nonhuman ones. Jordi respects human preeminence in the Symphony but wishes they acted more in line with what he perceives as their relative place as a special animal among many; enmeshed in a web of relationships; having responsibilities to an animal who offers companionship and trust is an important part of that. Jordi also deals with animals, in many cases, on the species level; nature is red in tooth and claw, after all, and he favors neither the lion nor the antelope. On the species level, significant population control for domesticated animals is a good thing for those species, bettering quality of life for the individuals of that species.

Jordi's pretty well known for thinking that significant population control could be applied to humanity with similarly favorable results, for that matter. (It's been suggested, in fact, that if Heaven has an Angel of Birth Control (or, less slangily, Population Management), it's one of Jordi's Word-Bound: one of his that isn't species-related, and among the few angels he has that gets along halfway well with Jean and Marc.

[JCD]

Originally Posted by William

Jordi's pretty well known for thinking that significant population control could be applied to humanity with similarly favorable results, for that matter. (It's been suggested, in fact, that if Heaven has an Angel of Birth Control (or, less slangily, Population Management), it's one of Jordi's Word-Bound: one of his that isn't species-related, and among the few angels he has that gets along halfway well with Jean and Marc.

Hmph! No doubt. And nature red in tooth and claw, no doubt has some ideas for improvement of the species in it's application, much as did Sanger.

So, Jordi might find himself with an embarassment of riches in help from the other side of the aisle, from Malphas using unequal applications to justify ethnic division, to Baal who prefers preemptive casualties, to Andrealphus for obvious reasons.

As the religious philosopher Kelly Bundy said:

"Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to conceive..."

[Acolyte]

Another factor here is that celestials, unless they need to be active in the Marches, don't sleep. And didn't sleep in Heaven, and rarely were created and pushed onto Earth the next day.

I just generally assume that when not working for their Word or on current plans or fighting the opposition, celestials are learning as much about humanity as possible from TV, watching people in cafes, and from listening in on conversations in the subway. And before they came to Earth they spent years and years talking with the souls of the dead and observing from afar.

And note that celestials are typically much smarter than humans. To memorize a jingle we need to hear it a lot (unless Eli wrote it...), but an angel might remember the name of every minor character to appear on an episode of Friends.

What this means for me and in the games that I run is that celestials don't appear egregiously out of place, having picked up a good amount of things, but are always a little bit off, with humorous gaps in knowledge or with a poor ability to differentiate between what someone on a TV show would do and what a real person would do in a given situation. And it means that angels are at a disadvantage dealing with really selfish people (as the people they knew in heaven weren't selfish), and vice versa for demons (how much can you learn from someone when your job is dunking him in a pit of lava until he gives you some Essence?).

Generally, though, Roles and "basic training" provide for celestials to superficially fit in with humanity, though a Soldier who knows several celestials might be rolling his eyes a lot and only the most experienced, humanlike celestials will appear perfectly natural.