Zhen expressing a desire to meet Atamai reminded me of something Ling Qi has in common with Ling Qingge. They both have kids who've never met their fathers. Probably best we don't make it a family tradition.
Though that did give me another thought. If/when Ling Qi gives Qingge the cliff notes of the Zhengui/Kohatu encounter, and the reasons Ling Qi went to the effort of facilitating the face-to-face, I could see Qingge deciding to start sending out missives inquiring after a certain nomadic caravan. Probably not to give Ling Qi an opportunity to meet her biological father, guy doesn't really matter. Rather, to give Ling Qi an opportunity to meet the culture. The broader reality of one half of her origin.
Qingge's a thoughtful woman, a wistful woman, and attentive to Ling Qi's signals. When you look at the ways Ling Qi approaches culture(s), both of the past and of non-imperial strains, I can see Qingge at least sending out some feelers/inquiries. It'd be a neat kind of initiative to see her taking.
[X] Plan: Preparations for Winter
As usual, I have an obnoxious bundle of priorities informing my vote.
Easy thing to get out of the way: the winter theater/shrine is a priority for a few reasons. We're in early winter, so getting it set up now make sense. Doubly so since Hanyi's absent and Ling Qi's going to be gone north for a while; the project gives the common folks a way to placate winter spirits without us. On top of that, Ling Qi being the Winter expert, she's kinda gotta be around for the project for it to make sense. It can't be offscreened during the months we're away for. Okay, that's done and locked in.
I'm looking at things in terms of what makes a good narrative transition/denouement for the tail end of the current arc that we're tidying up here. I think the granary does a decent job, because it's semi-related to Zhengui's Growth. It's not much, there's not really any direct thematic throughline, but it touches on a subject he's involved in. I think the Snowblossom Shrine does a worse job because, although Zhengui does have a Snowblossom connection, the context of the project does not center him or any effort/reality rooted in his concepts, which makes it unsuitable for a transition scene. I think the wall does a
terrible job, because the conceptual link for the project to this arc would be 'defense', but it doesn't actually work at all because there is zero similarity between the two forms of defense, and trying to write a parallel would just be a confusing disservice to the new, as yet unexplored, art. Directly counterproductive.
I'm also not a fan of the Snowblossom shrine because double-dipping in priestly projects is just... a lot, narratively. Makes it a whole Thing, and it's a thing that doesn't really fit this moment in the story particularly well. It'd be jarring or stretch out the pacing awkwardly.
I am additionally against the Wall project because I don't think it makes any sense, in or out of universe, for Shenglu's defenses to suffer in our absence, here. Not when we're going to be absent due to an effectively mandatory social event, as Renxiang's retainers. Ooc, yrsillar is not going to have the settlement attacked while we're at the wedding, because it would cause a ton of character drama there's no actual time to get into. It'd be a counterproductive distraction to the plot points he's trying to hit. Ic, Shenglu getting messed up would undermine the legitimacy of the Cai because it's the furthest south/closest settlement to Xin'an. If that happens on our watch, okay sure, Shenhua's a crazy person that's inside the bounds of testing us. But it doesn't make sense when all the people she's testing are absent
because of her. That's not even a test anymore, it's just stupid.
Shenglu is going to be fine during the wedding. There aren't even going to be defense rolls. Especially since the pallisade gets thrown up literally one month later, regardless. The worry over defense is silly at this juncture, imo.
