Man, this was an intense update, and it's just the beggining.
I wonder what effects this clash is having in reality.
Then we have a quite interesting vote.
First of all, I don't think this vote is about Contributing or Not Contributing. Our sole role here is to maintain the General on the dream and not dying. The skulking option doesn't intend to draw SWD's attention by straying from the General, just as the soaring option doesn't intend to more actively assist her.
It's also not about being more or less safe. We are going to be in danger in any case. The skulking option may make the General's protection less effective, but soaring with her may us more vulnerable to SWD's attacks on the General as well as her own flames.
No, this vote is about Power. That's the focus of LQ's toughts at the end of the update, as well as the core theme of her Cultivation Project, Winter's Crown.
I think this vote will define how LQ will wield power from now onwards. In particular, it will determine how she will employ soft power, as in societal, political and cultural power.
LQ had already internalized that there exist many types of power, and this update solidifies Shu Yue's teachings about the nature of Power: power is the ability to make your convictions affect the world, to change it or preserve it.
That includes the ability to make people with hard power, and also the mass of less powerful people, act in ways that advances your vision.
Then the vote will determine LQ's approach to that kind of power.
[ ] She would skulk as was her wont, her nature. In the boiling mist and the burning labyrinth, she would be as a shadow, a voice singing unseen.
As I see it, the most important part of this option is the "unseen" descriptor. Singing is the way LQ describes her application of soft power, of influencing people and the world around her; as we can see in this bit.
…That was what she had done. What her songs did. She sang, and sometimes, the world listened. Small as she was meager as her personal power was…
This option will lead LQ towards the path of manipulating people and society as a whole from the backstage, imo. Without seeking fame and glory, satisfied to be changing the world for the better even if she will be ultimately forgotten by history.
She will let other people take the spotlight, let other people be the valiant leader brandishing the banner of a new era, while she works from the shadows to ensure those changes happen.
I don't think it's a bad option per se, and it is the option most similar to Jiao's own path, but is it really how LQ has been acting during the events leading to and the Summit itself?
[ ] She would soar, one spark among the conflagration. Today she was a voice of fire and steel, better to embrace that.
This option, on the other hand, recognizes that even if she is yet only a facilitator for greater powers she is still part of the changes they bring about, and holds responsibility for that.
On contrast with the previous option, LQ will take a more central, open and active roll in influencing and steerring society and the high powers towards the world she wants to build with Renxiang and the others.
She won't simply subtly nudge the hard powers to act as she wants them to. She will directly face and appeal to them, bringing them over with sincerity.
This is how LQ has approached the whole diplomatic Summit.
Since the moment she (the thread) decided she couldn't just leave the matter of the WS to the Argent Sect; she needed to take the matters on her own hands and make contact with the WS herself.
She has spearheaded it all. She negotiates and she concedes, but without giving up her core beliefs.
She doesn't sing quitely, whispering into people's ears to inadvertently change their minds. No, she sings loudly and confidently, describing the world she yearns for and declaring she will achieve it.
LQ decided to burn SWD because they stand on the way of her goals. The General is the instrument she is using to do so. LQ has to face that, own it. Not hiding in the shadows and observe it from afar as if she wasn't responsible for it, as if she wasn't a part of it.
[X] She would soar, one spark among the conflagration. Today she was a voice of fire and steel, better to embrace that.
