....Did Ling Qi cause a cultivation snarl on Meizhen by rejecting her heartfelt confession?
uh, Meizhen was having a snarl from that combined with her embrace of Earth. Both of which were re-orientations sparked by her interactions with us. The epilogue of Forge talked about Meizhen straightening out the snarl from that. If she's referencing that instead of, I duno, some snarl we didn't notice between then and now? Maybe about Fear.
CRX on the other hand is having a problem knowing that CRX believes she was made to cover her mother's blindspots but there's no confirmation of this and it doesn't seem like she recognizes that Shenhua could make mistakes. I fully believe that Shenhua is fallible and it's possible that CRX-as-blindspot-spotter isn't intended and was the result of Shenhua's mistake that harmed her child and the path the child was on. We know that the puppet coat is more than willing to override CRX's free will, but Shenhua also provided CRX with the saber that can slice that influence.
Shenhua's unique way that catapulted her to White might not be reproducible in her direct lineage, instead only usable by individuals that are close in spirit to her own. It's incredibly self-sincere and self-expressive, which means that if you (the individual) are not in-line with Shenhua's other views on Order and Justice you're just not going to be compatible. There is a risk here that the Way Correct path is a downgrade to our SL because we're a subordinate. A useful, but painful one and we'll never be able to give her the comforting lies and denial-of-self that would have saved her from her mother's early trauma.
The comforting route is keeping the SL for sure but it's not being what we *literally just said we would be* and that sucks. Because we don't have the social arts or skills to pull this off. We're going to remind Meizhen of how bullheaded and hurtful we can be and how shitty that is, and at worst she'll be right that we aren't close enough to CRX as her subordinate to be that hurtful and recover that relationship.
I duno. I would write in: Panic and Withdraw if I thought that would be any better, but it wouldn't be. Ugh.
[X]
Offer Encouragement. It was only a single art, and everyone knew that a cultivator could not perfectly copy another. Like Ling Qi's own problem, it was only a bump in the path.
we've got no social arts, no Six bandage over that fact, and I would rather be snarled than hurt others being too incompetent to not hurt them. We can circle back to this when we have the social ability to communicate with our Traumatized Ducal Liege without hurting her badly in the process. Take the punishment for the sake of others, and throw out the old math cabal numbers. We need to do social arts (especially the safe expression of self kind) real bad. This feels a lot like the social comeuppance we deserve for not taking that aspect seriously at all.
