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Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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Ehh.

I feel Expression is leaning a bit close to the "I don't want specific abilities/attributes" border.

It's not quite there, but it's close enough that you might want to get a check on it.
 
[X] Sincerity
[X] Mystery
[X] Mischief

[X][Role] Social Offence

Sincerity, Mystery and Mischief? Why not? The way I see it...
Mischief gives Ling Qi's established cunning and creativity room to play, while Mystery builds on her stealth skills to avoid getting fingered when Wu Ling gets flipped on his head. And Sincerity is for the people we don't want to play pranks on or misdirect and leave guessing. For those we dislike, they become the butt of the jokes that mark the party. For our pals, they get to see, and KNOW our true feelings.
 
Alectai said:
Ehh.

I feel Expression is leaning a bit close to the "I don't want specific abilities/attributes" border.

It's not quite there, but it's close enough that you might want to get a check on it.
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We could say "expression (thematic)" if you want, but I'd say that as a theme it's just as sound as all the others we have here. From a role perspective voting for "social (music)" would be excessively restrictive and unjustified.

Lots of themes inherently lend themselve more to certain skills. Curiosity for example would point towards perception. Cutting would point towards blades. Motion, well, points towards movement.

Otoh, we should possibly be voting for "role: spirit social" instead of "spirits" like we are right now given that we really more want an actual spirit ken art.
 
[X] Mystery
[X] Curiosity
[X] Titles

[X][Role] Infiltration

I'm being contrary, but not aimlessly. Titles are hugely important across cultures and analogous to Ways themselves in some ways, while being something Ling Qi lags in understanding compared to her peers.

Titles, roles, mantles, honours, duties, assignments, stations, this is what I mean by the keyword. The social responsibility inherent in being Titled. Understanding the ties and interplay between the station and the person is pretty much always going to be useful in Imperial culture. And other cultures as well. Hunter, chief, matriarch, shaman, admiral, Muse of Winter... these all mean things. They mean things in the context of the individual and the society. There's a relationship there, a Connection, that is ephemeral yet important. People will die and kill over nothing more than this link.

Vote Titles for try hard pseudo-anthropology. Thank you.
 
I like expression- it fits with a possible development into a laughing bard who reels off poetry and lyrics that nail the honest truth of a situation. Which I think matches everything we have for insights, so I like- we just need to shed our 'forboding' sort of immitation Bai thing, which was narratively indicated anyways. Let's be more like six, if we actually want to be something of a sister to her, and find a cheerful melody. ;)

On the other hand, I consider mischief and sincerity to be locked, so, secrets.

Secrets gives us leverage, and/or an understanding of when someone has something truely devistating (murder of sibling or proof thereof caliber social) that they can back up a bluff with. It lets us play in highstakes games faster. So, I think it's the power move socially and I want it.

Tl;dr- might change secrets to expression, still deciding.
 
Hey
Huo Yuhao said:
After some thought, I am increasingly disliking Mystery due to its interaction with Sincerity. Mystery relies on hiding one's cards and keeping opponents in the dark when dealing with them. It's hard to say that this is in tune with the themes expressed by Sincerity. Can you say that you're being fully sincere when you actively try to minimize the amount of knowledge your opponents have?

There will always be situations where Ling Qi will have to hide information from her opponents. For Ling Qi to be sincere in her dealings, however, it would generally be preferable for her to expose more information about her beliefs, her worries, etc. as long as it's not necessarily harmful for her position. This exposure, in the average scenario, makes Ling Qi less mysterious. Actively trying to make Ling Qi more mysterious in spite of this brings her sincerity into question.

In my opinion, Secrets as a keyword is preferable. Everyone has secrets, and it would be unreasonable to expect even the most sincere person to expose them unnecessarily. Explicitly keeping secrets is far more in tune with Sincerity than not exposing whether you have secrets in the first place. Would this potentially make it easier for Ling Qi's enemies to ferret out more information about Ling Qi than we want them to? Perhaps, but that's the price we have to pay if we want to properly develop Ling Qi's sincerity as a facet of her character.
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You're forgetting that Mystery doesn't have to mean us being mysterious. It could also mean us finding out mysteries :grin2:
 
[X] Mischief
[X] Connections
[X] Mystery

[X][Role] Social

I guess nobody is for social stealth so not going to vaste my vote on it.
Generic social is fine, but social offense and social defense feel too limiting, we would need to that get the opposite art later.
 
Valmond said:
Generic social is fine, but social offense and social defense feel too limiting, we would need to that get the opposite art later.
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I was suggesting people pick up Social Offense/Defense if they don't want to single one out to prioritize, because we've got a social perception art and we don't need our new art to cover that too.
 
picklepikkl said:
I was suggesting people pick up Social Offense/Defense if they don't want to single one out to prioritize, because we've got a social perception art and we don't need our new art to cover that too.
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I'm not sure how much I'd characterise HDW as social perception tbh. I'd describe it more as "radar that happens to be good at reading connections between people". Which isn't really the same thing as what you want for reading the people you're talking to.
 
>Hidden
>Forbidden
>Holy Ground

But more seriously, I am rather interested in seeing what social art comes from sincere spiritual expressions of Ling Qi's self.

[x] Expression
[x] Sincerity
[x] Spirits

[x][Role] Social
 
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Adhoc vote count started by CrimsonOddball on Aug 22, 2019 at 10:55 PM, finished with 127 posts and 57 votes.
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I just want to point out that leaving total elemental freedom to Yrs means that any Wind or Music art that is generated will have a massive mechanical advantage when it comes time for art selection due to the fact that Six would be able to boost them. Comparatively they'll be much more powerful, making any art that lacks them seem much weaker. So instead of picking between 4-5 arts of Wind + Moon, Wind + Wood, etc, we'll get to pick between maybe 2 arts and hope the themes you liked the best made it in those to even be seriously considered.

Putting Wind in the top 5 ensures parity there, meaning we can more freely compare the arts on exactly how they work and how well they suit Ling Qi.
 
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Specifically, Sixian has this:
    • Cheerful Muse's Accompaniment: C
      When Ling Qi activates a non damaging music or wind art, if Sixiang has not already acted that turn, they may activate this technique and enhance one parameter of the art significantly. Valid parameters are Hit, Effect, Duration, or Resist.
It's a large component of what makes our Music arts so powerful. This has obvious implications for a Wind-based social art, and so we want to get as many Wind arts out of this as possible.
 
Huo Yuhao said:
I suppose you can interpret the keywords that way, but I'd prefer for Ling Qi to be sincere as often as possible, not sincere in some situations and mysterious in others. I'm not sure if it's likely for the arts to be designed that way even if you want a clear separation.

Regardless, there are many ways to prevent a connection from forming other than concealing your intentions, the most obvious of which is explicitly showing your intention of not wanting to make a connection. This might make enemies for Ling Qi, but I'd personally be fine with that in most situations.
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That works in the narrow circumstances of working with people you are already likely to agree with, like in this party, or with people who you share beliefs or goals with.

However its one thing to use sincerity as the basis of making social connections and another to play actively counter by refusing Mystery(a core aspect of the Hidden Moon, and Grinning Moon, while a secondary element of the Dreaming Moon) altogether as a social strategy.

This is especially important at court where you geniuinely have to work with people who you detest, and avoidance is not possible.

How would a Sincerity + Mystery art combine then?
The Xuan admirals present one such. Speak only what you mean, but wrap it in symbolism and mystery such that only those who are sincere BACK can decipher the intention.

Notice how what they said sounds like agreeing with you if you align with their point of view, but like an empty koan if you don't? thats one way to do it
Thor's Twin said:
So, I'm going to talk about the scene in the latest update which intrigued me the most. And that is the conversation with Wu Jing.

While I don't think he was wrong, I don't think he is nearly as good at this verbal sparring thing as he thinks he is and if he was actually talking with someone who had more experience and skill (coughXiulancough) he might have been torn apart.

The moment Wu Jing started talking about how Ling Qi doesn't see some other members of the party as peers, he stepped on a potential landmine of how Ling Qi was treated by scions of the Emerald Seas nobility in the outer sect. She was scorned, ridiculed, and dismissed. Even when she became, officially, a member of the nobility nobody invited her to parties, nobody tried to introduce her to other peerage members, and nobody tried to integrate her into the peerage. She only began to attend parties when she became the retainer of Renxiang. Ling Qi, for the majority of her career as a noble, has been treated as an outsider intruding into the nobility.

You don't plant an apple tree and expect a peach tree to sprout, and the actions of the Emerald Sea's nobility as a whole have led to a situation where expecting Ling Qi to have a desire to see the peerage as peers is just as bizarre. Furthermore, Wu Jing's approach of talking about the peerage to Ling Qi opened him up to some brutal lines of discourse.

A person with sufficient knowledge of Wu Jing's position on Imperial culture and with a sharp enough wit could then transition the discourse of a commoner entering the peerage into the hypocrisy of Imperial Culture in regards to commoners. If it is a sacred and honorable duty to protect, nurture, and direct commoners then why are commoners held in contempt when the results of said protection, nurturing, and direction lead to some of them being able to assume some of the noble burdens and become immortals? Should such individuals not be celebrated as proof of cultivators ability to protect and nurture mortals to the degree that some become immortals?

By taking these tracks of discourse, Ling Qi could have directed him into a corner where he had to defend how the Emerald Sea nobility treated Ling Qi and the way Imperial Culture treats commoners becoming cultivators to Ling Qi, or try to disengage as gracefully as possible. This course would have won us no favors with him and his clique, but it could have hurt his reputation and directed individuals who don't like him towards us.

Ling Qi had the information needed to make these connections and take this route, but she certainly doesn't have the skill to actually do it at the moment, or at least not well. Wu Jing could have gone for a safer tactic and discussed how Ling Qi treating this party as if there was something treacherous/insidious when she was invited in good faith, and how disappointing it is to see a retainer of the Cai treating the peerage as if they were waiting to backstab her.

Honestly, I feel that it is good that someone breached these topics to Ling Qi, and that someone wasn't a social juggernaut. It will give Ling Qi some experience dealing with more antagonistical members of the nobility.
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Yeah, this was easymode. Gotta thank Luo for it.
Though thats keeping in mind from his perspective we're invited into an exclusive club via back channels and being hideously uncouth, degrading the club's intrinsic value...while from our perspective we're forced by politics to participate in boring, meaningless events to get what we actually want.

They expect a new entrant to WANT in on the power, or quietly disappear into the Sect. We should have, from their perspective, been reaching out to get invitations, not ignore them.
 
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