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

The great and the small, the subtle and the strong, amplify in unity.
Seek the broadest possible base from which to build your power.
I really don't like the word Unity here. I'm all for cooperation, but not to the point of merging power into a single gestalt entity or somesuch? Getting weird vibes.

No individual is great in all. Power united is greater than its parts.
Noone is a great at everything. Help cover for each other.
Like this one better. Seems to fit better with how we've seen power work here. Less onerous expectations of how broad our notion of cooperation needs to be.

[ ] Power is the ability to act on or resist the world, it manifests through many forces. The great and the small, the subtle and the strong, amplify in unity.

This feels like the most wide spread view of Power.

"The union purpose across many fronts builds power" aka "Many bricks are needed to build something strong"

Or

"The uniting of many into a single front is stronger than any single power" aka "By your powers combined I AM."

T_of_A said:

"No individual is great in all" feels like something LQ really shouldn't be accepting as an insight. Sure it pushes you towards cooperation, but I think it risks becoming too limiting as we reach higher Realms.
High-end Cultivators are already focused and specialized. Let's avoid taking any insights that would explicitly reinforce that. Sure it's good to recognize that you can't truly be omnicompetent, but let's not do anything that risks encoding "I cannot do things that aren't in my wheelhouse" into our Cultivation ongoing soul-surgery.

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Thats not really how it works imo. High realm cultivators aren't specialized because they chose to be, they are specialized because carving away chunks of your soul is how imperial cultivation works. Unless LQ awitches styles entirely, being narrow and specialized is an inevitability. Pretending that you are great at everything is imo the far more dangerous trap than acknowledging that others will have strengths that you lack.
It's not not "No one is capable in all" its "no one is great in all".

The two options are similar. But distinct! And there's a bunch of ways you can look at them. There's the immediate effect on the art. There's kind of a sliding scale between Palace of One and Huisheng ideals(both are both). Something else I forgot cause I got distracted.

[ ] Power is the ability to act on or resist the world, it manifests through many forces. The great and the small, the subtle and the strong, amplify in unity.

The key phrase in this, in terms of how it approaches power, is "amplify in unity". This option is about forming united, singular effects. I'd expect the various Beast God avatars to feed into each other in ways that emphasize one over the others. This option leans more into Palace of One, in that it's about creating a unitary force, though it's reinforced, and much of its brittleness removed, by a more Huisheng-esque acknowledgement of Multitudes.

[ ] Power is the ability to act on or resist the world, it manifests through many forces. No individual is great in all. Power united is greater than its parts.

The key points in this option, for understanding its intent, are "no individual" and "its parts". This option is about distinct effects used in unison for a common purpose. I'd expect the various Beast God avatars to set each other up in ways that maximizes the impact of their niches. This option leans more into Huisheng's philosophy of Multitudes, in that it values actors that are unlike one another, but utilizes that value constructively by tapping into the Palace of One emphasis on common cause.

Noticeably, there's a lot of similarities! Seems intentional. The biggest distinction, I think, is that option 1 focuses on fusion techs, whereas option 2 focuses on combo techs. Reminds me a bit of the "how do we want to cooperate with Zhengui?" vote we had at the start of the ill-fated Garden Arc, where we had the same mechanical choice. 1 is voltron, 2 is tag-team. They're both Power of Friendship.

allmightytoaster said:

Thats not really how it works imo. High realm cultivators aren't specialized because they chose to be, they are specialized because carving away chunks of your soul is how imperial cultivation works. Unless LQ awitches styles entirely, being narrow and specialized is an inevitability. Pretending that you are great at everything is imo the far more dangerous trap than acknowledging that others will have strengths that you lack.
It's not not "No one is capable in all" its "no one is great in all".

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You're missing my point.
All high realm cultivators are specialized to some extent, because of how Imperial Cultivation works. But it's definitely possible to deliberately specialize more than normal (see: sword cultivators) and I want to avoid accidentally building a Way that's even more constraining then normal.

T_of_A said:

All high realm cultivators are specialized to some extent, because of how Imperial Cultivation works. But it's definitely possible to deliberately specialize more than normal (see: sword cultivators) and I want to avoid accidentally building a Way that's even more constraining then normal.

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I just don't see how you would get that from "No one can be great at everything".
Deying that doesn't mean constraining yourself, it just blinds you to the fact that other people may be better at things than you. Which Imo is way more dangerous for a high level cultivator imo. The belief that your way alone is best for everything is one of the biggest problems high level cultivators face, to the point that Shenhua has turned her own daughter into a contingency for when she loses the one person who she accepts as sometimes actually knowing better.

T_of_A said:

You're missing my point.
All high realm cultivators are specialized to some extent, because of how Imperial Cultivation works. But it's definitely possible to deliberately specialize more than normal (see: sword cultivators) and I want to avoid accidentally building a Way that's even more constraining then normal.

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I think this is orthogonal to the vote. Neither option is about the breadth of an individual's/Ling Qi's skillset. They're both fundamentally collaborative efforts, which are impossible on an individual level.

The question we're faced with is, more or less, the flavor of how to apply the strengths and capabilities of others, which are not Ling Qi's and she does not have, as her Power.

The main difference is whether that collective Power should be used to elevate a unitary actor or arise from actors acting distinctly, but in both cases working in concert.

[X] Power is the ability to act on or resist the world, it manifests through many forces. No individual is great in all. Power united is greater than its parts.

[X] Power is the ability to act on or resist the world, it manifests through many forces. No individual is great in all. Power united is greater than its parts.

[X] Power is the ability to act on or resist the world, it manifests through many forces. The great and the small, the subtle and the strong, amplify in unity.

[X] Power is the ability to act on or resist the world, it manifests through many forces. The great and the small, the subtle and the strong, amplify in unity.

It is important to acknowledge the range of the spectrum, not just that many are better than one.

[X] Power is the ability to act on or resist the world, it manifests through many forces. The great and the small, the subtle and the strong, amplify in unity.

[X] Power is the ability to act on or resist the world, it manifests through many forces. The great and the small, the subtle and the strong, amplify in unity.

[X] Power is the ability to act on or resist the world, it manifests through many forces. The great and the small, the subtle and the strong, amplify in unity.

"No individual is great in all" is the dealbreaker in the other one, while I'm fine with every part of this.