ReignTorrential
Save Your Crown for a Rainy Day
[X] The teachers meditations on Exclusion and Isolation and their interaction with Community
Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
ClawClawBite
Mad Engineering!
- Location
- Seattle, WA
[X] The teachers meditations on Choice and Sincerity, and their interactions with Truth
This is an interesting vote, because in terms of relevance to Ling Qi, her goals, and her circumstances, the two options seem pretty lopsided.
[ ] The teachers meditations on Exclusion and Isolation and their interaction with Community
This one's highly relevant to too many things to even count, really. It touches on Ling Qi's oldest meditations on family, all the way up to the newer navigation of what it means to be the Emerald Seas. It resonates with her recent convictions on Good Neighbours. It's material to both the currently less immediate White Sky relationship, and what it means for both sides to be their sides and not the other and what and where she is in relation to those sides, and the more looming issue of the Ith.
Not the one's we're warring with, but the ones we're set to interact with not too long from now, when we head north. There is a community of ith who are tributaries to the throne of the Emerald Seas. But nobody quite knows what that means yet. There is not yet a larger Community which encompasses this new state of affairs; even the bureaucracies aren't sure how to bridge the gulf Isolating the two sides from one another, which is what Diao Hualing has asked for our assistance in smoothing the process of. Questions of who is and isn't part of the communal, well, Community are going to loom large both in those stuffy interactions and in Ling Qi's mind.
When and why people are Excluded from the whole, and when and why we should endorse or resist it, is of core relevance to Ling Qi's work. It's subject matter we see come up again and again because it's closely linked to where Ling Qi came from, and the directions she seeks to steer the world as a whole.
Speaking of origins, this option is also basically how Huisheng came to be Huisheng. He was cast out, his subculture sundered, and him (or that which would produce him) locked away in the closest to absolute Isolation we've ever seen or heard of in the setting.
[ ] The teachers meditations on Choice and Sincerity, and their interactions with Truth
This one doesn't seem relevant to much, honestly. Sure, Choice has a lot of relevance, but this choice isn't Choice. It's Choice in relation to Sincerity and Truth. And that has no real foundation in the story. Ling Qi isn't struggling with those questions. I can't think of a single time they've come up in the context of Choice. The areas where they could have are things we decisively solved ages ago with our first advanced insight and long-resolved followup character development.
And maybe most decisively, there are zero plot hooks or hinted future arcs where "Choice and Sincerity, and their interactions with Truth" have any role of substance. It's just objectively not a source of narrative tension or progression, internally to Ling Qi or externally to her circumstances/efforts. It's a peripheral affect at best. There's no sense of continuity to diving into it here, because it's not coming from anywhere, and it's not going anywhere. The subject is, oddly literally, neither here nor there.
It could be an interesting relationship to explore if there was an actual context for it, but near as I can tell there isn't. It just doesn't have legs as things are.
[X] The teachers meditations on Exclusion and Isolation and their interaction with Community
This one's just better integrated with where the story and characters involved have come from and are going, and it's not even remotely a close contest.
[ ] The teachers meditations on Exclusion and Isolation and their interaction with Community
This one's highly relevant to too many things to even count, really. It touches on Ling Qi's oldest meditations on family, all the way up to the newer navigation of what it means to be the Emerald Seas. It resonates with her recent convictions on Good Neighbours. It's material to both the currently less immediate White Sky relationship, and what it means for both sides to be their sides and not the other and what and where she is in relation to those sides, and the more looming issue of the Ith.
Not the one's we're warring with, but the ones we're set to interact with not too long from now, when we head north. There is a community of ith who are tributaries to the throne of the Emerald Seas. But nobody quite knows what that means yet. There is not yet a larger Community which encompasses this new state of affairs; even the bureaucracies aren't sure how to bridge the gulf Isolating the two sides from one another, which is what Diao Hualing has asked for our assistance in smoothing the process of. Questions of who is and isn't part of the communal, well, Community are going to loom large both in those stuffy interactions and in Ling Qi's mind.
When and why people are Excluded from the whole, and when and why we should endorse or resist it, is of core relevance to Ling Qi's work. It's subject matter we see come up again and again because it's closely linked to where Ling Qi came from, and the directions she seeks to steer the world as a whole.
Speaking of origins, this option is also basically how Huisheng came to be Huisheng. He was cast out, his subculture sundered, and him (or that which would produce him) locked away in the closest to absolute Isolation we've ever seen or heard of in the setting.
[ ] The teachers meditations on Choice and Sincerity, and their interactions with Truth
This one doesn't seem relevant to much, honestly. Sure, Choice has a lot of relevance, but this choice isn't Choice. It's Choice in relation to Sincerity and Truth. And that has no real foundation in the story. Ling Qi isn't struggling with those questions. I can't think of a single time they've come up in the context of Choice. The areas where they could have are things we decisively solved ages ago with our first advanced insight and long-resolved followup character development.
And maybe most decisively, there are zero plot hooks or hinted future arcs where "Choice and Sincerity, and their interactions with Truth" have any role of substance. It's just objectively not a source of narrative tension or progression, internally to Ling Qi or externally to her circumstances/efforts. It's a peripheral affect at best. There's no sense of continuity to diving into it here, because it's not coming from anywhere, and it's not going anywhere. The subject is, oddly literally, neither here nor there.
It could be an interesting relationship to explore if there was an actual context for it, but near as I can tell there isn't. It just doesn't have legs as things are.
[X] The teachers meditations on Exclusion and Isolation and their interaction with Community
This one's just better integrated with where the story and characters involved have come from and are going, and it's not even remotely a close contest.
[X] The teachers meditations on Choice and Sincerity, and their interactions with Truth
On one hand, the Community option is the closest one to LQ core cultivation and it's the most related to the Border lessons we just booked.
But for that very reason it's the option that both had already been the most developed amd the one we'll have the most opportunities to further explore.
On the other hand, the distinction of between Truth, Sincerity and Clarity (even if that last one doesn't appear in the text) is one of the most recent changes on LQ's Concepts.
So I think this is a great opportunity to delve into that and see how it interacts with another core Concept like Choice.
On one hand, the Community option is the closest one to LQ core cultivation and it's the most related to the Border lessons we just booked.
But for that very reason it's the option that both had already been the most developed amd the one we'll have the most opportunities to further explore.
On the other hand, the distinction of between Truth, Sincerity and Clarity (even if that last one doesn't appear in the text) is one of the most recent changes on LQ's Concepts.
So I think this is a great opportunity to delve into that and see how it interacts with another core Concept like Choice.
- Location
- Europe
This is untrue. The set of all sets excludes nothing and is defined solely by inclusion. I can see why Ling Qi might have come to believe this, but it shouldn't go un-interrogated.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] The teachers meditations on Exclusion and Isolation and their interaction with Community
That works great for mathematics (assuming you have a definition for what a set is that works like this), not so much for people. When working with sets that may not wish to be part of your set of all sets, you can either force the issue or accept division. And currently, Ling Qi rejects forcing the issue as part of her focus on choice.
And even then, you still have divisions between your sets inside the larger set (provinces of the empire for example).
[X] The teachers meditations on Exclusion and Isolation and their interaction with Community
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I know the vote's unlikely to turn around at this point, but I genuinely think option 2 would be a mistake in terms of narrative continuity and pacing. It raises subjects that don't have strong roots, what roots they do have are muddled and unclear, and which continue this trajectory by having no predictable role or relevance in any of the upcoming storylines we have.
That means we have a weak basis of reference to work with to start with. Why is Ling Qi concerned about the subject now? In relation to what? Touching on which principles? For what purpose? This is all writing work that, currently, largely does not exist. There's very little in the audience's memory to weave the subject into, which means it needs to be crafted on the spot. But this isn't a scene that's conducive to that- it doesn't make sense from the perspective of Ling Qi making the inquiry. The predictable result is Huisheng serving up a whole bunch of questions and few answers or opportunities for Ling Qi to iterate her thoughts, because she's starting from such a relatively blank slate. But... why? What's that do for us, and how does Yrsillar make it make sense?
So almost all of that character development homework will end up getting shoved into our schoolbag without the opportunity to work on it much at all during this class time. That, in and of itself, would only be a small headache, but the trouble is that we... don't have any upcoming time or space to work on it moving forwards either. Option 2 is a philosophical meal which can only sit in our stomach, weighing us down, undigested and failing to provide narrative fuel.
The intersection of Choice, Sincerity, and Truth is not relevant to the war. Or the other war. Or foreign diplomacy. Or the other half-foreign, half-domestic diplomacy. Or our domestic diplomacy. Or the other, slightly further away, domestic diplomacy. Or mediating with and developing the physical and spiritual terrain of our fief. Or the wedding. Or a spirit-wrangling trip. Or... anything, really. It's barely relevant to Ling Qi herself, and she's essentially the only person on the planet who cares even a little about this distinction, which she entirely cooked up inside of her own head. Literally nobody else cares, at all.
It's... genuinely difficult to express how little traction option 2's components have with anything or anyone in the story, because there's just so little there to talk about. The Truth/Sincerity divide is truly nothing.
This is one of those votes where we have a choice between narrative cohesion/momentum and whipping our head around to look at a half-baked commitment in passing. In passing, because we're not in a position to take hold of it for any proper examination. It would be, most likely will be, an unfortunately squandered opportunity to go with the second instead of the first. This is a mistake we've made in the past, and I wish we could avoid it now. It's just not productive.
That means we have a weak basis of reference to work with to start with. Why is Ling Qi concerned about the subject now? In relation to what? Touching on which principles? For what purpose? This is all writing work that, currently, largely does not exist. There's very little in the audience's memory to weave the subject into, which means it needs to be crafted on the spot. But this isn't a scene that's conducive to that- it doesn't make sense from the perspective of Ling Qi making the inquiry. The predictable result is Huisheng serving up a whole bunch of questions and few answers or opportunities for Ling Qi to iterate her thoughts, because she's starting from such a relatively blank slate. But... why? What's that do for us, and how does Yrsillar make it make sense?
So almost all of that character development homework will end up getting shoved into our schoolbag without the opportunity to work on it much at all during this class time. That, in and of itself, would only be a small headache, but the trouble is that we... don't have any upcoming time or space to work on it moving forwards either. Option 2 is a philosophical meal which can only sit in our stomach, weighing us down, undigested and failing to provide narrative fuel.
The intersection of Choice, Sincerity, and Truth is not relevant to the war. Or the other war. Or foreign diplomacy. Or the other half-foreign, half-domestic diplomacy. Or our domestic diplomacy. Or the other, slightly further away, domestic diplomacy. Or mediating with and developing the physical and spiritual terrain of our fief. Or the wedding. Or a spirit-wrangling trip. Or... anything, really. It's barely relevant to Ling Qi herself, and she's essentially the only person on the planet who cares even a little about this distinction, which she entirely cooked up inside of her own head. Literally nobody else cares, at all.
It's... genuinely difficult to express how little traction option 2's components have with anything or anyone in the story, because there's just so little there to talk about. The Truth/Sincerity divide is truly nothing.
This is one of those votes where we have a choice between narrative cohesion/momentum and whipping our head around to look at a half-baked commitment in passing. In passing, because we're not in a position to take hold of it for any proper examination. It would be, most likely will be, an unfortunately squandered opportunity to go with the second instead of the first. This is a mistake we've made in the past, and I wish we could avoid it now. It's just not productive.
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OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
[X] The teachers meditations on Exclusion and Isolation and their interaction with Community
CedeTheBees
Probably high right now
- Location
- Somewhere
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Ok yeah I'm convinced
[X] The teachers meditations on Exclusion and Isolation and their interaction with Community
[X] The teachers meditations on Exclusion and Isolation and their interaction with Community
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
I don't believe Ling Qi has ever met a Sovereign who did not think in absolutes.
It is the observation of everyone who has ever paid attention to such things, more like.
- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
- Pronouns
- He/They
[X] The teachers meditations on Exclusion and Isolation and their interaction with Community
Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] The teachers meditations on Exclusion and Isolation and their interaction with Community
I could see an argument for the Choice/Sincerity/Truth pick if this visit had come earlier, but we basically addressed the major strain on that front like...5 months ago now? So it'd feel kinda like a retread at this point, compared to continuing the current throughline.
I could see an argument for the Choice/Sincerity/Truth pick if this visit had come earlier, but we basically addressed the major strain on that front like...5 months ago now? So it'd feel kinda like a retread at this point, compared to continuing the current throughline.