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

[X] Truth and lies are the weft and warp of communication. Clarity, understanding, these determine the quality of words.

Gonna vote for this cause I think it is more directly applicable to Liming situation.

[X] Trust arises from choice. Love arises from trust. There can be no perfect safety, save in death. For love or trust to exist, so must the chance of heartbreak and betrayal.

When we were told "Don't make your job your Way, don't craft your Way after one person or job or duty"... how much more does that apply to Cai Renxiang? How much more is CRX another example or exemplar of how such a thing can weigh heavily on a person?

... I also wonder fearfully if there might be some weird "In Case My Heir Does Not Rebel..." reasoning behind Liming being a ragebeast and hating Cai Shenhua.

... Or maybe it's the part of CRX that hates Shenhua for what she did to CRX, but Shenhua cut that part of CRX out, leaving only a sort of dull hollow uncertain fear/distrust/anxiety in Renxiang towards Shenhua, with Liming being the rest of the young child's emotional reaction to what Shenhua did to her.

Is Tienli meant to goad CRX? To serve as a backup? Or serve as a backup rebel in case CRX doesn't rebel? ... Or was Tienli born because Diao-whatsername wanted a child of her own from Shenhua, rather than CRX? Or maybe a weird mix of all those reasons, or the potential for all of those things as backups or just-in-case's, because while Whites can be Uber Inflexible they can also take acts that accomplish or serve or aim towards many objectives at once, or the potential for many objectives at once. Or a tl;dr; family can be a mess and people can want children and to leave a legacy behind, despite or in the middle of many fuckups and missteps and contradicting desires and problems and complications, and Whites might not be exceptions to that.

The option I want is winning by a landslide so I'll just toss a pity vote at

[X] Though a path might be hard and lonely, it has worth if you can present something of beauty to those you care for at the end.

yrsillar said:

"You said before that you had reached… some kind of accord?" Ling Qi said carefully.

"That is overstating the matter, I was able to," Cai Renxiang paused, furrowing her brow. "Impress upon it my resolve. To defy Mother, but not in the way she intended."

"She." Ling Qi said quietly

Cai Renxiang frowned. Then she closed her eyes. "As you like."

Ling Qi considered her liege, reaching out to pour a warm stream of tea into her own empty cup. "Do you want to reach an accord with Liming?"

"I do not know that such a thing is even possible. Liming is… a thing of hatred and spite, even if much of it is aimed toward my mother..."

Liming snarled, cloth rippling. Ling Qi's eyes widened and so did Renxiang's. Qi pulsed off the garment, rippling cloth pulling away from Cai Renxiang's body. The heiress' sword was in her hands in a flash of light, fingers gripping the wrapped hilt tightly. A pulse of metallic qi followed, and Liming went limp and silent.

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Okay several observations here, because Liming cannot communicate:
-Liming does not like being referred to as an object, which Renxiang repeatedly insists on doing so, even after agreeing with Ling Qi.
-Liming's reaction is to attempt to separate from Renxiang, which the sword is required to suppress. This is very unusual because as we have been informed object spirits personalities derive from their function. A dress should not even conceive of rejecting being worn by its rightful wearer.

yrsillar said:

Ling Qi stared. It was the first time since she had awoken that she had not understood something. The Hound spirit Qiu's barking was legible, even the infant chick in Xuan Shi's care had conveyed to her the basic sort of concepts an infant could comprehend in her cheeping.

Yet Liming's snarl was still nothing but a noise, a wall of wrath and hate to her senses no different than it had been before.

She remembered the threads of adamant stitched through the spirit's lips in the form she had seen inside Renxiang's mind.

Cai Renxiang's fingers tapped along the hilt of her sword. Cifeng's thrumming purr Ling Qi could understand.

[Triumph][Conviction][Smugness][Order][Suppression]

There was little in it. The weapon was not a complexly minded spirit by her measure

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Confirmation that Sovereignity deliberately bars Liming's communication, not lack of intelligence. Ling Qi can literally understand a rock if she focused and it was trying anything. And Liming had just demonstrated understanding words enough to get angry at their content.
Only the passion leaks through.

I have to wonder just how much damage Shenhua did to herself in doing this - it is counter to her nature to silence Truth, making her creation unable to communicate on purpose has got to have done major damage to herself.

yrsillar said:

"Contracts and accords are always desirable. To have rules defined, behaviors regulated… I would find this a comfort," Renxiang said after some time."But a contract may only exist between equal parties, or the presence of an overriding guarantor. Without such, they have no worth."

Ling Qi understood that. It was the most basic legal theory really. That was why vassals would approach their lieges to mediate deals, it was why the Ministry of Law had been made, to allow for the Empire to judge disputes between their subjects with the weight of the throne behind a more local judge.

"And you are not equal."

"We are not, only Cifeng guards me against their control, along with whatever behaviors mother stitched into… her at creation. Behaviors I have not been made fully aware of."

The only obvious one was if her life was in imminent danger.

"I wonder, doesn't Cifeng change that balance, as you've just done?" Ling Qi said carefully. "If you have a tool which may…"

"You recall our exit from that dream trap."

Ling Qi paused. She did remember; the memory of Cai Shenhua vanishing, then confronting Liming on their way out and… the spirit deliberately impaling herself on the representation of Cifeng there, to get closer to Renxiang. "I see, however I can guarantee that she did not like that, being cut off as you did. Why then?"

Could a spirit as wild and unfettered as Liming even prosecute a lengthy lie?

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Because Liming's only form of protest is self harm. She cannot do anything else. She cannot speak, cannot act, shackled to someone who hates her and whipped with Cifeng whenever she expresses herself in ways not limited.

Liming would literally rather die.

yrsillar said:

"I would. Were it possible. I would define our position, such that the bleeding could stop," Cai Renxiang said quietly.

"I think that is the correct impulse. One which a ruler should have," Ling Qi said, bowing her head. "I will not pretend to know what is possible between you. If Liming can be reasoned with…"

She felt those eyes upon her, the pressure in the air, banked and weakened by the blade in Renxiang's left hand. "You have my aid, whenever or however you should want it."

"I do not know that I will ever require it, but as always, your loyalty and dedication leaves me in good stead, Ling Qi," Cai renxiang replied, taking her cup back up. But… truly, I would like to end this line of conversation."

"Understood."

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Qi is talking to them both here I think.

First, consider the core(s) of Renxiang's issues.
-On a Way of administration, justice and fairness, Family is most often encountered as an obstacle to all of the above for Renxiang. Family is the first exception people make, which opens the path for more. Family is one of the reasons birth order or connections override merit and ideals for determining leadership and patronage.

-Control. Renxiang has lived a life where she had very little control over anything, and everything she loved and trusted was used to hurt her at some point. She cultivated hard from a young age for love of her mother and was torn apart for it. She trusted Lin Hai to protect her from anything, but he couldn't do anything when Shenhua chose to do so. Her instructions for reform fell flat because the bureaucracy she trusted simply ignored them. Her enforcers in the Outer Sect promptly exploited their role for personal benefit. And in turn she fears that she might misuse or fail the trust others placed in her.

-Suffering. Renxiang has gotten hurt a LOT. She is quite understandably reluctant to open herself up for more, especially to uncertain benefit. S

[ ] Truth and lies are the weft and warp of communication. Clarity, understanding, these determine the quality of words.

-This draws from parallels to family rather than directly referencing the issue. Just as careful doses of deception can augment rather than undermine communication, so can small amounts of human factors enhance administration. While an organization is a machine, the parts are not. A machine comprised entirely of steel will function perfectly and optimally until the parts grind themselves to dust. It needs lubrication to last.

-On control, it addresses the part where failure of control stems from poor clarity. Where young Renxiang, Lin Hai and Shenhua were wrapped in a tragedy of miscommunication despite not having a single untruth involved. Where Ji Rong's culture misconception was coupled to Renxiang's assumption of malice.

-On suffering, its got nothing much to work with.

This doesn't much address Liming directly, but it helps progress towards opening up lines of communication which might.

[ ] Trust arises from choice. Love arises from trust. There can be no perfect safety, save in death. For love or trust to exist, so must the chance of heartbreak and betrayal.

-This translates the family issue to a trust issue. It truly doesn't matter whether you put your trust in bonds of kinship, systems, or personal connections, for the trust to matter, it can be betrayed. Family is not unique. Your subordinates can betray you. Your students will find new interpretations of your teachings that declare the opposite of what you intend. Systems made to ensure protect certain rights can be perverted to limit people ONLY to those rights as time marches on.

-Directly addresses failure of control as a reality of the world, no matter how mighty or how well planned, it still depends on other people doing what you want of their own accord, from their own factors.

-On suffering, it accepts it as a necessary risk of tribulation and moves on.

This addresses Liming more directly. Trust has to be extended to progress, and Renxiang is in the strange situation where both Renxiang and Liming hold a great deal of power over each other that normally involves trust, but where there is no trust between them, in an oddly inverted parallel of Ling Qi and Sixiang's thoughtless initial trust, it was forced upon them both.

[ ] Though a path might be hard and lonely, it has worth if you can present something of beauty to those you care for at the end.

-This evades the family issue entirely.

-It addresses loss of control, in that it is something to be endured as long as your goal is good.

-It focuses on the endurance of suffering for a greater purpose as a virtue in its own right...though this seems a bit spicy when offered to a prospective supreme ruler.

This addresses Liming via the avenue of turning around and facing the traumas head on. VERY likely to get Liming's respect if it works.

If.


So in conclusion
[X] Trust arises from choice. Love arises from trust. There can be no perfect safety, save in death. For love or trust to exist, so must the chance of heartbreak and betrayal.

Welp, I can't not vote for this

[X] Though a path might be hard and lonely, it has worth if you can present something of beauty to those you care for at the end.

[X] Trust arises from choice. Love arises from trust. There can be no perfect safety, save in death. For love or trust to exist, so must the chance of heartbreak and betrayal.

Somehow the scene from Incredibles popped into my head, Edna Mode saying "Go! Confront The Problem! FIGHT! WIN!"

Also, I've just remembered, is Cai Renxiang wearing PANTS this entire time? I need more pants reminders from the text lol otherwise will assume intricate dress.

[X] Trust arises from choice. Love arises from trust. There can be no perfect safety, save in death. For love or trust to exist, so must the chance of heartbreak and betrayal.