Remove ads

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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
Very initial thoughts:

Combination techniques are incredibly cool. However, they're tricky. You have to have each person contributing effort which is meaningfully representative of themselves, the combination needs to be plausible and plausibly effective, and there needs to be problems to which the combination can feasibly apply. That's kind of a tall order if you look at the ingredients and enemies we have, imo. There's also the concern of ingredients going stale(arts/techs getting dropped/modified) and just general changes of circumstance which render them if not moot, then outdated.

Doing the deeper mutual dive on themes and philosophy seems like the more enduring approach to me, honestly.

Also, objectively there's no real reason combination techniques can't crop up over time anyway, while the window of opportunity for the second is more limited by the nature of cultivation. I know this is also a game/quest, so choices, but it doesn't really make sense that combinations stop being a possibility if we go with the other option. They'd just not be an imminent one.
 
[] Because she wanted him to be happy, and she wanted to be part of that. (Tech alteration route)

The reason I like this one is that it fundamentally is about inspiring him and being inspired in turn. We've seen this sort of pattern emerge between our spirits and it is a pretty robust one that does not require anyone to be of a certain level of power to contribute, which is important as we will be losing peers as we advance. It doesn't even necessarily require much in the way of overlap of cultivation.

Also mutual happiness is a really good basis for having relationships to begin with. I've wanted LQ to think that happiness is a valuable thing by itself for a while and a vote to that effect is nice.
 
yrsillar said:
[] He was her little brother, and she wanted to work on something as equals. (Combination technique route)
[] Because she wanted him to be happy, and she wanted to be part of that. (Tech alteration route)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
From looking at the options, I'd rather take out the brother/son context (because they're distracting as all hell) and focus on this

yrsillar said:
she wanted to work on something as equals. (Combination technique route)
she wanted to be part of that. (Tech alteration route)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
To me, first option focuses on working as equals, both Ling Qi and Zhengui both work together and give something in this relationship. Also Combination tech sounds cool as heck

For the second option, Ling Qi seems to put more effort in this one. She's the bigger giver in this. Now at the moment, that's not necessarily a bad thing as it can give more insights into how Zhengui works in the future.
Now admittedly tech alteration worries me a bit, but it can also be made to make room for development in some of our future arts like FSS+ which we were gonna try to alter with our insights in mind anyways. Zhengui's themes of renewal can shine some insights there. With that said, clunky mechanics are also just as likely for me in this area.

I'm more open to the idea of second option now (I'm still leaning towards first), though people bringing up the son context annoys the hell out of me and makes me want to stick with the first even more.
 
[X] Because she wanted him to be happy, and she wanted to be part of that. (Tech alteration route)

This speaks most strongly to me for several reasons, most of them unrelated to the fluff of the vote itself.

Recall that, when we were choosing what form and theme the garden project would take, we chose:

[] First Sun of Spring (Fire and Ice)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Explicitly to explore and grow closer to Zhen's more unexplored character and thematic, in [Renewal]. To me, this represents the best avenue for Ling Qi to grow to empathise and understand Zhengui's worldview from a personal and philosophical perspective. To shamelessly quote myself:

It kinda harkens back to Wang Chao's musing on the issue of striking at the surface of a lake, or Cai Renxiang's grappling with the nature of tyranny and rulership. Approaching and reconciling such incompatibilities or contradictions in your current approach is how cultivators grow. That's not to say that Ling Qi is necessarily completely divorced from Zhen's nature - for example, the FSS insight on the nature of endings is certainly lays a good foundation for examining the issue.

This isn't, after all, an issue with an approach to combat - it's our son Little Brother. If we want to properly make this partnership work as a partnership, we can't just stick to what we know well - we'll have to step a little bit outside our current comfort zone, which I think is a good thing overall. It should help Ling Qi develop a more nuanced and wholistic worldview, and generally grow as a person.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

In a very literal sense, arts and techs influence how a cultivator views the world - see, for example, WHR's effect on how Ling Qi views connections. The process of introducing elements of thematic syncretism should help both Zhengui and Ling Qi cooperate on a very fundamental level, aligning a portion of their worldview and philosophy through the lens of renewal. From a character perspective, I think that would speak volumes about how much they've matured as people over the past year.

As an aside, the garden arc is slated to end around turn 13, which is precisely the time when we'll be starting to work on FSS+. Endings and Renewal is a very strong thematic wheelbase from which to build an art, and is very much in line with both the FSS insight that we originally obtained, and other insights as well (eg. SCS), growing and expanding upon Ling Qi's prior character development.
 
Last edited:
[X] Because she wanted him to be happy, and she wanted to be part of that. (Tech alteration route)

I don't care about "brother" or "son" or whatever. That's totally irrelevant to me. The thing I care about is this:
yrsillar said:
the second will lead to eventually altering one or more arts to better fit Zhengui's themes, who will alter some of his techniques as well.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
For this to happen, almost certainly Ling Qi will have to directly think about and probably talk about Zhengui's themes with him, which has never happened. We've never had a scene where Ling Qi sits down with Zhengui and asks him what it means to be him: what is growth? what is renewal? What is his kind of both those things? She's asked other people for their guesses about him, but never him. And now he's old enough to tell us, especially with this really interesting bit from this chapter:
yrsillar said:
"There is no room, for I, Zhen to be," his other half said.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This would make a great segue into trying to understand what his themes are, from his perspective. And I want that scene more than I want a combo attack or a modded art or whatever.
 
[X] He was her little brother, and she wanted to work on something as equals. (Combination technique route)

EDIT:
Hey! I just arrived at my 1000th post in this thread. Happy 1000th post day! 🥳🥳🥳
 
Last edited:
[X] Because she wanted him to be happy, and she wanted to be part of that. (Tech alteration route)

I just feel like the way Ling Qi usually approach her connections is more about their happiness than being equals. Oftentimes when we vote about something it's about encouraging our friends towards what Ling Qi and the questers think is best for them, we spend pages of discussions about which option is best for their development. We're shaping them, raising them, helping them, Manipulation A-ing them into being their best selves. It's not about being equals, the goal is taking a role in a relationship that most fit with what these lonely people need.

We're not trying to be equals with Hanyi, we're raising her where Zeqing cannot. We try to help Renxiang be her own person, we are a friend to Meizhen when friendship is what she needs most, and to Xiulan while being supportive yet checking her well-being, we are even Xuan Shi's dedicated friendmaker now. We chose not to introduce Su Ling to the Wang group because it was her first week in Inner and she's our asocial friend who we thought wouldn't be comfortable. We always try to do our part in making our friends happy, equal or not, and while being equals might be a good way to do it with Zhengui it's not as much the fundamental motive.
 
Last edited:
Well, let me just explain why I thought the second option was the 'son' option even if Yrsillar didn't intend for it to be read as such.

It all comes down to A Very Goofy Movie.

No, stay with me here, don't run away: just watch this clip.

and go to around 1:35

Max is trying to assert his independence and Goofy replies something like 'I know you have your own life, I only wanted to be a part of it!' This is, I think, the healthiest way to look at a relationship between parent and child: you try to be a part of their lives even as they pull away from you, recognizing that they do have their own lives, but that you as a parent will want to be part of it, as much as they will let you be a part of it.

It's a different dynamic compared to a sibling one and it's very much aware of its eventual fate. It is truly very difficult for me not to read this vote as a sibling vs child one because the themes of it speak so strongly to me.

But, in the meantime, I do get to harp on healthy family dynamics so silver lining.
 
lioli said:
The Name for Zhen is [Renewal], the destruction that clears away the old to make way for the new. For Zhen, the Sect grounds are insufficiently wild to be comfortable. To make a stab at the problem, the Sect to too controlled and bounded: Zhen's Fire nature can't be let loose without brushing up against places ordered and claimed by the Sect, leaving him feeling restricted and constrained, incapable of expressing himself fully.

In other words, Zhen perhaps needs more places to burn than he has? And thus, the future land needs of Zhengui has to take into account a degree of expendable area.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Fire also makes ash which is good fertilizer for crops, if what you grow doesn't have anything that can be fed to ranch animals. So if Ling Qi's future fief was all Farmland of something other than wheat or rice then the fires of Zhen's renewal could be literally burning away the old plants after a harvest giving back what was taken from the land.

The specific combination of [Growth] and [Renewal] that is Zhengui's existence is essentially an incarnation of agriculture.
 
[X] He was her little brother, and she wanted to work on something as equals. (Combination technique route)

Voting for this because I am worried about the dissolution of LQ´s themes. I like LQ as her Winter Muse of the Moon. Having her become the Winter Spring Muse of Renewal and the Moon just feels to disjointed.

I am just going to ignore the Son vs Brother thing also due to us getting WoG that it will be stuff about that later.
 
[X] He was her little brother, and she wanted to work on something as equals. (Combination technique route)
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top