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
- Europe
[X] In her own mind, with Sixiang, pondering the meaning of insights, and the demon gnawing at her heart.
Know your enemy and know yourself, then you will not once be defeated in a hundred battles.
In this case the heart demon is the enemy and knowing it is also knowing Ling Qi.
Know your enemy and know yourself, then you will not once be defeated in a hundred battles.
In this case the heart demon is the enemy and knowing it is also knowing Ling Qi.
You keep saying this but I straight up disagree. The vote wasn't between coddling Renxiang or hurting her, it was between trusting in Renxiangs ability or bypassing trust with certainty. Ling Qi, as she always has, chose not to trust.
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
Insert Tally
Hmm, yeah, I guess so... Same sort of reaction and decision, right? "I can't take that risk. I can't take the risk here!"
Ling Qi did pick the one party member she felt she had the greatest shot at succeeding in the challenge at. And then she did pick the 'this is sure to succeed' choice on top of that.
Though the difference here is that she had the whole group trapped-in-a-dream-maze riding on her. Rather than just her being face to face with a shadow-of-a-White and not being willing to stand up to them over some villagers she didn't even know and in a dream to boot.
Put like that, it doesn't... quite exactly compare, exactly. Maybe in terms of trust issues, certaintyness, risk-judgment, and so on, yeah. In other ways, not really.
Mmm, actually I'm going to back off on here a bit, as well as my discussion on how she feels about things that harm her progress.
Because while it is true that she kind of has a workaholic problem, and sees any time spent on things that aren't her cultivation as slightly wasted... she can handle that (at least in moderation). She can justify spending time with her family. If all Zhengui and Hanyi had demanded was more training with big sis she would have happily provided that imo.
The issue that we saw both there and arguably here, was concerns about conflicts with her ability to take what she sees as the best tactical or strategic actions.
Maybe the problem is in framing it as "I have to take the 'best' tactical or strategic options/actions!" when it's really just insecurity or fear instead.
Easier to swallow it. If you tell yourself "It's just that I don't want to be inefficient, I don't want to slow down or fall behind" -- certainly that's a far more flattering self-assessment, right? Rather than being nervous or unable to risk/trust/etc or whatever.
- Location
- Spain
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Drifting into the conversation between Gan Guangli and Meng Dan on the Mountain folk, where Hanyi sat listening idly.
It seems pretty clear it's supposed to be the same heart demon imo:
Any interpretation that tries to treat them as separate rather than different expressions of the same underlying values conflict seems questionable I think.
- Location
- Earth
[X] In her own mind, with Sixiang, pondering the meaning of insights, and the demon gnawing at her heart.
Mmm, I'd be careful there though. People have brought up the King of the Forest, but her issues around fear there - and why she was so unhappy - was that she made a cowardly selfish decision. She blinked just to try to save her own skin rather than at least look out for her friend. Indeed, her later decision to throw herself on a knife to reduce risk to Xiulan can be seen as an overreaction to that - her doing the exact opposite.
And here, the decision wasn't about saving herself at all. It wasn't comparable to that old thorn in her side. She was trying to make the best decision to protect all of them and their mission - and we could contrast that with the King of the Forest where if she did have a mission, she bailed on it as soon as she got scared. Similarly, the actual issue that Zhengui and Hanyi objected to was her leaving them behind and operating separately from them - even though we'd generally chosen to do that for very good reasons. Those reasons don't have to do with personal fear - indeed, they were largely around LQ trying to do her missions in the best way possible and protect other people. It again isn't really the same issue imo.
- Location
- E
[X] Outside the pavilion, where Xia Lin sat beside Zhengui's bulk, staring thoughtfully out into the snow.
We're the closest thing to a friend Xia has in our group and the dream had a huge impact on her. Even if LQ doesn't get anything out of it and we just end up brooding in silence together, I'd still like to ensure she's ok. After all, she is our companion and a fifth of our fighting force.
In addition, LQ's view of progress is limited and ultimately driven by deep-rooted anxieties rather than thought. Having an extra perspective or even expressing our own understanding should highlight some of those weaknesses.
We're the closest thing to a friend Xia has in our group and the dream had a huge impact on her. Even if LQ doesn't get anything out of it and we just end up brooding in silence together, I'd still like to ensure she's ok. After all, she is our companion and a fifth of our fighting force.
In addition, LQ's view of progress is limited and ultimately driven by deep-rooted anxieties rather than thought. Having an extra perspective or even expressing our own understanding should highlight some of those weaknesses.
DimensionalGuy
Lazy Bastard
- Location
- Sweden
[X] In her own mind, with Sixiang, pondering the meaning of insights, and the demon gnawing at her heart.
I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing though. When you take into consideration the potential risks, I feel like the best choice is always to trust your own strength. Unless, by trusting the strength of others and leaving them to handle a situation, it frees up space for you to take other matters into your own hands that are also important. At the end of the day you only know your own strength the absolute best. So when the time comes to make a decision that can potentially ruin everything and you have to choose to count on someone else or yourself, the best answer is always yourself. Unless, like I said earlier, by not choosing yourself you can apply yourself elsewhere. Because then there's a reward for your risk. Everything is risk and reward.
In the knife incident (I think that was where she had the choice between evading the blow and then tackling the assassin with the sect or landing a hefty hit herself and as such guaranteeing victory, but then not evading the blow? ), I believe it was also stated that the only guaranteed way to get the assassin was if Qi tanked it. The potential risk I believe was the assassin escaping and then going on to kill her friends or something (I don't exactly remember, it's been a while). It's risk and reward, again. The reward for trusting her friends and it working out is, Qi doesn't get hurt. The risk is, if it doesn't work out, everything goes to shit. That's why I don't think these vote options have been fair to Qi.
The potential reward does not outweigh the potential risk to Qi. If Qi was this classic Xianxia protagonist that really only cared about their own safety, then she would've chosen to rely on her friends every single time, since the risk to herself would be too great. But then she wouldn't really be trusting her friends, she would just be using them as a shield.
The ultimate problem here is not, in my eyes, that trusting her friends in a situation where failure is guaranteed to ruin everything is too much of a risk. The problem is that if she does trust them, the only gain to Qi is potentially not getting hurt. And to Qi, that literally means jack shit. That only means something to her friends. And the only reason this even matters is because her doing this makes her friends unhappy, which she can't handle. That's the whole issue, I believe.
So, logically speaking, I believe Qi is in the right. She knows her own strengths the best and these situations don't have a great risk/reward ratio for her if she relies on others, so she chooses to rely on herself. It just so happens, that her acting this logically, makes her friends unhappy.
sorry for the long response btw, my fellow brother. Hope I didn't bore you.
Last edited:
With everything we know of the Xia as a clan broken and reforged by Xia Ren, and of Xia Lin's Insight to always move forward I feel like she as a character explores the story's theme of Renewal. In that context her tears and words after the dream hinting that her desire was something painful to see suggests that it was about something she loved which has since been destroyed. So it's really tempting to start a conversation about what she saw with our own spirit of Destruction and Renewal there. It'd be a really good chance for character exposition for both of them.
But we also need to take care of ourselves and Ling Qi really needs to have a therapy session about her Heart Demon before we have to vote on it. So Xia Lin can wait in my mind.
[X] Outside the pavilion, where Xia Lin sat beside Zhengui's bulk, staring thoughtfully out into the snow.
[X] In her own mind, with Sixiang, pondering the meaning of insights, and the demon gnawing at her heart.
But we also need to take care of ourselves and Ling Qi really needs to have a therapy session about her Heart Demon before we have to vote on it. So Xia Lin can wait in my mind.
[X] Outside the pavilion, where Xia Lin sat beside Zhengui's bulk, staring thoughtfully out into the snow.
[X] In her own mind, with Sixiang, pondering the meaning of insights, and the demon gnawing at her heart.
- Location
- foraging for beans
You know, framing LQ's heart demon, and the specific situations that aggravate it, as being about trust has always rubbed me the wrong way. A heart demon is a conflict between insights that are in the domain, and looking at it now, that's because the framing of LQ's domain has nothing to do with trust. It's framed in terms of what she wants, her desires.
Here's the list of domain insights:
Notice the lack of Trust as a domain concept there. It's all about LQ wanting to present herself sincerely, to never stop growing, to find beauty and satisfaction in her life. You know, things she wants. And the insight most revelant to this heart demon, "One person's desires cannot, alone make a home nor a family.", isn't about trusting family, it's about accounting for their desires. And this whole mess is tied back into how LQ doesn't want to be bound, but does want the ties that come with family.
So to look at the last vote: LQ knows that CRX wouldn't ever want LQ to put the mission at risk, even (and perhaps especially) if the cost of that is CRX getting hurt. LQ doesn't want to hurt her friends, ever, and has put herself at risk in the past to avoid doing so. So now the choice is between doing what LQ knows CRX would want and what's best for the mission, or doing what LQ wants and putting the mission at risk to avoid hurting a friend. Trust really has nothing to do with the heart of the dilemma here, it only really shows up in the aftermath: does LQ trust CRX to keep it together, does LQ trust her own ability to beat a cyan spirit at her own game?
And you can frame the inciting incident of the heart demon, the assassin, in the same way. LQ prioritized avoiding harm to her friends over avoiding harm to herself, and so she throat-tanked that blade to ensure that they wouldn't be hurt. Even though she damn well knew her friends and family wouldn't want that at all. And the backlash from that choice made LQ realize that continuing to disregard her family's desires would also hurt them, and indeed could cause her to lose them eventually, which is intolerable to her.
So yeah, LQ's a greedy girl. And (to my reading, anyway) this heart demon's about what she wants - a family, enough power to never have to do things she doesn't want to - and how the desires of her family might force her to do things she doesn't want to do in order to to avoid hurting or alienating them.
Here's the list of domain insights:
Notice the lack of Trust as a domain concept there. It's all about LQ wanting to present herself sincerely, to never stop growing, to find beauty and satisfaction in her life. You know, things she wants. And the insight most revelant to this heart demon, "One person's desires cannot, alone make a home nor a family.", isn't about trusting family, it's about accounting for their desires. And this whole mess is tied back into how LQ doesn't want to be bound, but does want the ties that come with family.
So to look at the last vote: LQ knows that CRX wouldn't ever want LQ to put the mission at risk, even (and perhaps especially) if the cost of that is CRX getting hurt. LQ doesn't want to hurt her friends, ever, and has put herself at risk in the past to avoid doing so. So now the choice is between doing what LQ knows CRX would want and what's best for the mission, or doing what LQ wants and putting the mission at risk to avoid hurting a friend. Trust really has nothing to do with the heart of the dilemma here, it only really shows up in the aftermath: does LQ trust CRX to keep it together, does LQ trust her own ability to beat a cyan spirit at her own game?
And you can frame the inciting incident of the heart demon, the assassin, in the same way. LQ prioritized avoiding harm to her friends over avoiding harm to herself, and so she throat-tanked that blade to ensure that they wouldn't be hurt. Even though she damn well knew her friends and family wouldn't want that at all. And the backlash from that choice made LQ realize that continuing to disregard her family's desires would also hurt them, and indeed could cause her to lose them eventually, which is intolerable to her.
So yeah, LQ's a greedy girl. And (to my reading, anyway) this heart demon's about what she wants - a family, enough power to never have to do things she doesn't want to - and how the desires of her family might force her to do things she doesn't want to do in order to to avoid hurting or alienating them.
Last edited:
[X] Drifting into the conversation between Gan Guangli and Meng Dan on the Mountain folk, where Hanyi sat listening idly.
- Location
- The United States
- Pronouns
- He/They
[X] In her own mind, with Sixiang, pondering the meaning of insights, and the demon gnawing at her heart.