I don't really like the idea of picking of option 1 solely for our friends to mess with him. Both of them have their own reasons for them to be here, and just relegating them to distract someone we didn't have to bring into our circle seems rude.
Meizhen is working as the embassador for the Bai. She has her own political objectives here, and then dragging in a random element for her to deal with doesn't sound nice. I mean, she's already dealing with Zheng Fu a bit.
As for Xuan Shi, picking option 1 specifically so that we can throw him at Tae to annoy, when he's here specifically to help us stop a cycle of conquest (and maybe bring legitimacy if his chicken is rare) seems disrespectful. This will be directly after saying "You know, I haven't really respected you in the past. I apologize. Let's start our relationship anew".
IMO, it'll just be like the Xuan Shi/Luo Zhong incident you complain so much about.
Edit: I won't deny that there won't be Xuan/Jin tension. They're like the Bai/Sun. But LQ has wanted to ask Shi to help for a long while (since the underground fight where she nearly dissolved iirc). She's been putting it off since she could never find the right time, until this turn. After all of that, just using him as a blocker to Jin Tae seems... limited? Awkward? Because we wanted him in the team before we even knew Jin Tae existed
Remember, my complaint with how the Luo Zhong incident went down was that after interaction was thrust on us, we chose not to challenge him and make him justify his trespass. Superficially, it might seem like taking a hands off approach keeps Jin Tae further out of Xuan Shi's space, and to a certain extent that's true, but moreso than that it keeps
us out of Jin Tae's space,
both their spaces by extension, and most fatally of all out of the know. This leaves us, Ling Qi, ill-equipped to back Xuan Shi up when it comes to aspects of foreign diplomacy that are important to him and the Xuan, that they would prefer we don't compromise on for the precedent it sets. Because without engaging with Jin Tae and the MoI's positions seriously, we're likely to just have big blindspots in strategies they're employing to set those precedents.
Look at it another way, more narrativistically. The Jin and MoI have been introduced as antagonistic, or at least skeptical, domestic forces. Part of the plotline is to navigate their influence, preference, and so on. There's also a specific rivalry between Xuan Shi and Jin Tae that has been foreshadowed. I ultimately don't think it works from a story perspective for us to be
able to sidestep the complications of their involvement. The entire point of their presence is to provide some level of complication, or they wouldn't be present. With that in mind, it seems preferable for that contact to occur in a context where we're actually making a dedicated effort to dig into what they're doing and influence them on the issues. There's also the fact that, because of that foreshadowed rivalry, minimizing Jin Tae's presence in the story very likely means minimizing
Xuan Shi's presence in the story as well; it's like half his available plotlines at the moment. And that's something I don't want to do.
So. Proactively feeling out the threat, even if it exposes us for what we are a bit ahead of schedule, so that we can recognize and respond to any threats that represent challenges to our friends, so that we can work together with those friends in reciprocal aid against any ill-actors. We actually have a decent number of cards to play, but to do that we kind of need the players to be sitting at least in the same room if not at the same table. If everyone is spread out over strung together ad hoc encounters, we can't actually have anything like a strategy. It'll just be putting out fires we don't understand and hoping for the best, forever.
Option 1 has definite risks. But it's the choice that adheres more of the action together and preps it for smoother advancement, in my opinion.
Edit: also, to clarify, at no point did I ever suggest reducing Xuan Shi's role to
only messing with Jin Tae. That's an uncharitable reading and/or just making things up. Jin interdiction is just blatantly something Xuan Shi will be tasked with performing be his own clan and he'll want to do it, among his other contributions. Using Xuan Shi to attempt to curate Jin Tae's influence on the project is genuinely in his own interests, and I specifically said "coordinate" with Xuan Shi, not boss him around or anything. It seems crazy to me to shrink away from working with Xuan Shi for both of our benefits because we'd also benefits.
