- Location
- Leeds
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Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
- Location
- Greece
Yes, they do make new arts. Prolem: making new arts require a powerful cultivator, and the more powerful he is, the narrower the set of arts they are willing to make. Its why old houses have an immense library advantage: they slowly branch out, with one powerful cultivator that expands their library a litle to this not antithetical to their way direction, and another to a different one.
I do not want Biyu to stand from scratch because reasons, as you dismisively say. My reasons are specific and described. I want us to support her as much as we can, but I want her to follow her own way even if she lacks resources because we have objective empirical evidence (Meizhen, Fan Yu) that having a Way that opposes your clan slows and/or stumps your cultivation, and that factor is imho more important than having good arts, especially when we do not have so many clan members and we care so much about our family.
As for bootstrapping, we just need enough money to send her to the Sect. Yes, she won't have the best arts, but fast and efficient cultivation from arts that can give you better insight is more important than getting kickass arts, as Meizhen's tournament victory can attest, and argent cultivation technique may not be our uber darkness technique but its good enough.
Edit: Also, as I mentioned in my next reoly to a quote below, a lot of the newer clans may allready be doing the starting from scratch method by milking the sects, giving their progeny some good low level techniques for initial self defence but instructing them to do what they want in order to advance.
That is fair. After all, the Sects as a powerful institution are a relatively new thing, and most clans are either stuck on their old ways, are too poor to send people to the Sect... or they have "milking the Sects" as a strategy allready, as was mentioned a couple of times, The reasons they do so may, in fact, be the exact stuff you mention.
Yes, thank you, I am not advocating we do not support her or something stupid like that.
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- Location
- Fabulously Rainbow Ireland
Dancing shoes are boring and the Encylopedia is very time consuming and expensive to put together (printing press doesn't exist) plus no nerds(!) so
[X] Arts and Crafts set (including paints and the like)
There, kids love getting messy and it gives her an excuse to enjoy looking at the outdoors and fuzzy animals more by painting them.
[X] Arts and Crafts set (including paints and the like)
There, kids love getting messy and it gives her an excuse to enjoy looking at the outdoors and fuzzy animals more by painting them.
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Pretty much every sect art we've seen, minus the argent arts, have been weaker than arts we've been gifted.
And this is where you aren't making sense. Everyone takes their own thing from arts, no matter what those arts are. Biyu will not learn the same thing LQ did, for instance.
And your "empirical evidence" Is nothing of the sort. Meizhen certainly didn't start from scratch, in fact almost her entire art set she recieved from home. She's even talked about it. And I don't recall us spending nearly enough time with Fan yu for you to even suggest that.
And this is where you aren't making sense. Everyone takes their own thing from arts, no matter what those arts are. Biyu will not learn the same thing LQ did, for instance.
And your "empirical evidence" Is nothing of the sort. Meizhen certainly didn't start from scratch, in fact almost her entire art set she recieved from home. She's even talked about it. And I don't recall us spending nearly enough time with Fan yu for you to even suggest that.
LucidProp
Pocky Eating MafiaDoka
There's a difference between Floor 1 Arts and Great Spirit Arts.
I wouldn't be surprised if, at the higher floors, we could get arts of decent or even great quality. Though, this is all really secondary to the fact that we were only able to meet those Great Spirits and get arts from Elders due to us being in the Sect in the first place.
Not necessarily?
People above a certain talent have been noted to figure out cultivation on their own. It's actually quite possible that they learn from spirits who take an interest in them.
But we don't really have any examples, so all I have in conjecture.
Well, Conjecture and two words of Yrs. He mentioned that people who are talented tend to find their own way of cultivating, and Xin mentioned that if we didn't follow the moon, another spirit would have probably approached us eventually.
TBH, I don't think art libraries really go over late green. By Cyan, you are making your own arts.
But the sect is more than just it's library, and teaches more than arts.
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- Location
- Florida
Who wants to bet that Xiulan training with her family will include dancing? When we do meet up with her again I can't wait for her to gush over Biyu they just seem so alike.
And a little off topic but when did Fan Yu get stumped by his family arts? I don't remember that.
And a little off topic but when did Fan Yu get stumped by his family arts? I don't remember that.
OK a problem with the tally is that is that there are literally half a dozen variants of book votes that seem to have similar intent (maybe? who knows) but differ
[] Big Picture Encyclopedia: Emerald Seas
[] Big Picture Encyclopedia about Animals in Emerald Seas
[] Emerald Sea Myths and Legends Story Book with a Focus on Dog Shaped Spirit Beasts
[] Emerald Sea Fairy Tale Storybook with a Focus on Dog Shaped Spirit Beasts
[] Illustrated Emerald Seas Beasts Book
[] Illustration Book of Myths and Fables
Also there's two stray [] Dance Shoes votes as well
Combining results in a tie
If not
[] Big Picture Encyclopedia: Emerald Seas
[] Big Picture Encyclopedia about Animals in Emerald Seas
[] Emerald Sea Myths and Legends Story Book with a Focus on Dog Shaped Spirit Beasts
[] Emerald Sea Fairy Tale Storybook with a Focus on Dog Shaped Spirit Beasts
[] Illustrated Emerald Seas Beasts Book
[] Illustration Book of Myths and Fables
Also there's two stray [] Dance Shoes votes as well
Combining results in a tie
If not
- Location
- Greece
Your first sentence... has multiple problems.
Firstly, art gifted by who? Duke families, Sect elders and Great Spirits. We are none of those things, our arts won't be that good, unless we regift, and while we can regift the arts we were given by Shenhua to kickstart our house (and indeed, they must be available for Biyu), they aren't significantly stronger than inner Sect arts. As from the others, well, I am not sure we can regift them, and I think a Great Spirit art would be actively harmful to someone incompatible with it.
Secondly, art strength is second fiddle to cultivation. Once again, I present you Fan Yu, who went from decent to trash because of art incompatibility despite his family being really swole, and Bai Meizhen, who went from genius to supreme genius because art incompatibility was fixed.
Moreover, Argent arts are weak only if you do badly. Nearly every member of the student council got valuable techniques, except for 2 out of 3 Duke family heirs, which let's be real, we cannot replicate the level of archives of a Duke clan. This proves that for a family as high up as Marquis, Sect arts are valuable enough if you do well. And even a Duke family member, Meizhen, got much more than her money's worth, even though she replaced stuff with her family's archive arts shortly thereafter, because she fixed her imbalances and thus beat a rival with equivalent art access who never did.
Moving on to your other aguments... no, not everyone takes their own meaning from all arts. An art holds multiple possible meanings, but as CRX has very explicitly shown, they are not infinite meanings. None of the meanings of one art may fit someone, especially if they are elementally incompatile as a personality.
I also never claimed Meizhen started from scratch. I did claim, however, that the system of her family hurt her cultivation while infusion from other sources healed it. As for Fan Yu, I think the story made it pretty explicit he hit a bottleneck mostly due to elemental imbalance.
Finally, I believe that representing my argument as "making her start from scratch" is a severe mischaracterization of my arguments. Let's see what she'll have that we didn't, shall we?
-spirit stone stipend from us. Really important, as it basically means she can deck out equipment day 1 and always cultivate with max spirit stones without fear.
-prep on how the Sect works. This means she won't be caught off guard.
-Her choice from our house's arts. Thanks to Shenhua, this means she'll likely get at least some compatible arts. If we get stronger, we may even be able to tailor make one for her, and although it'll be Baron class, it'll be imho more useful than a Duke class incompatible one.
-bodyguard arts. Arts that make her stronger. Sure, they give her no insight but they cause no long term harm either,
-Whatever political connections and alliances we have up to that point.
That is a lot of stuff. I am not advocating against any of these. What I am advocating against is trying to fit a square Biyu into our circular core arts hole just because they are the strongest arts we got, because that'll deal more harm than good. Even the most calcified family doesn't pass their core arts to everyone because even they know they may be incompatible.
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Y'know all this talk about whether to encourage Biyu to share our interests and cultivation kind of makes [] Dancing Shoes more attractive to me. I'm all for the balanced upbringing in giving her a book about something she's interested in, but I'm getting ideas to introduce her to all the things we cultivate but does not excel at: physical combat, scholarship and socializing. These are all things Ling Qi has incorporated into her build but doesn't embody personally. Biyu might become that kind of person that is artistic and expressive where Qi sees Music as a tool, that loves philosophy and learning for their own sake where Qi seeks wisdom and practical self-improvement, that becomes a dashing rogue to Qi's Moon Wraith. What can Qi's path do in the hand os one with a happy, hopeful childhood instead of Qi's lost one?
The reason I like both Encyclopedia and Shoes is that they both take something that is of Ling Qi but she does not life by. She isn't a scholar or a dancer, though she cultivates both those things. But Biyu can take the resulting Arts and tutelage and turn it into something altogether her own.
The reason I like both Encyclopedia and Shoes is that they both take something that is of Ling Qi but she does not life by. She isn't a scholar or a dancer, though she cultivates both those things. But Biyu can take the resulting Arts and tutelage and turn it into something altogether her own.
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Do we know when the first cultivator that reached the white stage occurred?
I was thinking back to Yrsillar's comments on Cultivation being an arms race and was curious if a cultivator ascending beyond white but managing to stay in the world is an actively researched 'Manhattan project'.
I was thinking back to Yrsillar's comments on Cultivation being an arms race and was curious if a cultivator ascending beyond white but managing to stay in the world is an actively researched 'Manhattan project'.
You can't just combine all of those, though, because if you look you'll see that for some of them the same person has approval voted for multiple versions of the book idea.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
The tally is smart enough to deal with that; it doesn't just add the numbers associated with each vote you bucket together, it puts all the voters in a single bucket, then counts the number of distinct votes for the conglomerate option. So if A and B vote for option 1, and A and C vote for option 2, and you combine 1 and 2 in the tally, it will show three votes for 1+2, not four.
- Location
- Greece
Wish there was a sigh of relief react. That means the vote is not unfixably broken.
- Location
- Colorado
In our last dream walk thing with Sixiang didn't we resolve to expermint with artistic stuff other than music? Us making an (obviously incomplete volume 1) picture encyclopedia of Emerald Seas natural/spiritual wildlife seems like a great way to do that.
just give her an allowance and let her decide on her own
Don't really care about the broader argument going on here, but Meizhen and Fan Yu aren't good examples of what you're arguing.
The reason Meizhen struggled was because her mother was executed, her father was an outsider with a super screwed up Way which didn't allow him to garner respect or advocate for her effectively, and the Bai clan is a pit full of snakes. Internal politics, not her character or inclinations, is the reason she had issues in/with her clan. She wasn't left out in the cold because she was a weirdo by Bai terms, she's, at least partly, a weirdo because she was left out in the cold. Her specific lack of talent with Metal arts has always been depicted as a Bai Suzhen idolization thing, not a failure to meet Bai expectations broadly.
For Fan Yu, the issue is more a lack of discipline and having 'merely' average talent for a noble than an incompatibility with his family's Way. He lacks the clench factor to live up to the ideals he believes in, being a badass protector who makes his fiance swoon and whatnot, but that doesn't make those ideals the source of his mediocrity. There's no real indication his issues is a misalignment with his family's values as opposed to being a too-normal teenager.
- Location
- Colorado
Also researching said book will give us excuses to hang out more with Su Ling and go on more hunts with the nobles we're supposed to be making connections with.
- Location
- Greece
Well, I do care about the broader argument, but guess I'll have to defend my examples.
The reason Meizhen got out of aligment is immaterial to me. I never argued the primary reason was that she was on a Duke family, after all, Ducal archives are a reason Ducal families are superior. I just claimed that her being out of aligment is proof that being out of aligment lessens you even with top tier arts. Lets consider the evidence, shall we?
-She was struggling with martial genius and certainly-not-a-training-slacker Sun Liling, to the point their fight ended in a draw, or maybe even a slight loss for her
-She got training in an element more suited for her by an elder after some character development
-She now consistently dunks on Liling without the match even being that close (although the possibility of her loss is still there)
As for Fan Yu... frankly, he seems to have no less talent that Han Jian, and the second works even less. But we got multiple clues his personality is incompatible with his arts, and that throws his personality and his progress out of aligment. Admitedly, it is not as explicit as to e definitely provable, so I am willing to bring it down to likely possibility.
Frankly, even without those examples, we have seen CRX struggling due to an art she had to internalise being non internalizable and our protagonist being debuffed due to extremely minor domain conflicts due to her personality and situation forcing her to confront them. And a specific Elder also got dunked really hard not ecause of a contradiction, ut because his personality meant he just couldn't go down that path.
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Meizhen won using a Bai-archive Earth element. Her issues were lack of advocacy and close and/or sympathetic training/guidance. People can and will fall through the cracks, always.
We also have no clue of the consistent outcome of Bai Meizhen vs Sun Liling match-ups, because as far as we know there literally haven't been any since the tournament. It also was fairly close.