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Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

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TotallyNotEvil said:
And she is a scion of the single oldest Clan in the Empire, possibly the world. She has been raised in a literal snake pit.

She is throughly versed in history, customs, lore and politics.

If she says this is the right thing to do, what is Ling Qi, who didn't know what a Dantian is a few months ago, to say?
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Honestly? That Ling Qi is probably a better person than her.

Like, the problem with Meizhen is that she has been raised in a literal snake pit. She has a very skewed perspective on how to behave.

The idea that there is "a line" is probably one of the biggest problems with this whole discussion. There is no single line. There is a spectrum of socially "acceptable" behaviour that ranges from "horrible lawful evil asshole who no-one likes but is nevertheless tolerated because they are powerful" to "either a saint or a fool". In the middle are things like "normal flawed behaviour", "occasionally edges on banditary and bullying", and "honorable person".

The Bai, from what we see, tend towards the "horrible lawful evil asshole who no-one likes but is nevertheless tolerated because they are powerful" end of the spectrum. I don't really want Ling Qi to go that way, and I feel that pulling Meizhen away from that a bit would probably be good for her.
 
For everyone saying that Bai would know what lines not to cross because she has been raised her whole life in this tradition. Please remember that she is a teenager. In this update we have a teenager who knows that she shouldn't be doing what she is doing yet has been doing it for months now. Please remember Lan Lan.
 
TotallyNotEvil said:
You clearly believe the answer to be yes, but let me ask you a question then: Do you expect for it to matter?
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YES.
Trusting with blind faith that Meizhen has a way of permanently negating him without ruffling feathers or exposing her to retaliation is foolish. And I do not think that Ling Qi would want her to risk that for her sake, even less given that she considers Yan Renshu a minor annoyance (I will remind you that I suggested after Sun's ambush that we had to track down YR and teach him a lesson, but there was never an option to do that, not even after he sabotaged our jobs. That means Ling Qi just does not see him as important.)

Besides that there is the issue with Ling Qi not objecting to something that in fact she finds objectionable just because somebody claims that she knows better how the world works. Are we going to throw her in the deep end of might-makes-right xianxia, or will we keep our own morals?
 
Erebeal said:
Or in other words, there's a difference between breaking someone's arm in a fight, and holding them down and slowly breaking each of their bones one by one.
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Fortunately the sect elders don't agree, at least not if someone has a halfway compelling explanation. Poor Suyin just wouldn't stay down, I had to gouge out her eye worked just fine as an excuse after all.
 
What I find interesting here is that many, not all, people voting for restraint are doing so due to projecting their own IRL values on a girl who is so uncomfortable with recalling the injustices done to her when they held a position over her that she constantly has to remind herself that her past tormentors are in no possible way a threat to her any more whenever she sees them nearby.
 
mc2rpg said:
Fortunately the sect elders don't agree, at least not if someone has a halfway compelling explanation. Poor Suyin just wouldn't stay down, I had to gouge out her eye worked just fine as an excuse after all.
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Which has no relevance to what was actually referred to in the post you quoted. Ling Qi thinks that out of combat brutality is over the line. this is a WoG. what the elders think is okay has no relevance to what she thinks is okay.
 
mc2rpg said:
Fortunately the sect elders don't agree, at least not if someone has a halfway compelling explanation. Poor Suyin just wouldn't stay down, I had to gouge out her eye worked just fine as an excuse after all.
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Breaking his arm slowly doesn't gain us anything that breaking it quickly would, and put some more trouble for Meizhen and Ling Qi, so it doesn't really matter if the Elders wouldn't mind.

One of Meizhen's recurrent issue is the cultural gap she has as a Bai in the emerald sea, and how she constantly see the current empire as a 'phase'. It might be a phase, and the great sect might not count soon and so on, but when 'soon' means in a couple thousand years it doesn't really matter for right now, and the Cai are hardcore about justice.

In practice, this means that she will tend to act like the traditional rules of the Thousand Lakes apply currently in the Emerald Sea, and will even do so when it hurt Ling Qi or herself emotionally. She has consistently been convincing herself of 'rules' in her interaction with Ling Qi only to later admit she was lying to herself because that's what a proper Bai would do, and she is blindsided that way.

So I don't believe that slowly torturing YR would actually help making him less than a threat compared to putting him on time out, especially when we have no reason to believe Xuan Shi couldn't have put Sun Liling on time out back on Redux if it weren't for political reasons, and that currently YR won't be rescued by anyone unless they want to lose face. That's also discounting things like 'ruining a production student that's bad at fighting actually negate most of his current threat level'.

What I do believe is that this will mess up Meizhen's relationship to Ling Qi even more. She already has Yandere tendencies, AS does Ling Qi, but Ling Qi knows better to indulge in them as it just hurt her and her friends emotinally. Meizhen will be hurt by indulging in them. She is not the traditional Bai when it comes to emotion, and she is trying to find herself. I prefer her knowing Ling Qi doesn't want her to go full torturer against any schoolyard scuffles she has, especially as it might reflect how she'll act later, if we do end up being CRX's vassal and Meizhen being assigned to Emerald Sea.
 
TehChron said:
What I find interesting here is that many, not all, people voting for restraint are doing so due to projecting their own IRL values on a girl who is so uncomfortable with recalling the injustices done to her when they held a position over her that she constantly has to remind herself that her past tormentors are in no possible way a threat to her any more whenever she sees them nearby.
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And who has repeatedly made it clear that she feels guilty about killing or hurting people unncessesarily - even sometimes if it's for her own clear gain, such as in the trial, which Meizhen's idea of revenge wouldn't be - and that she doesn't see Yan Renshu as a real threat or enemy.
 
Dessard said:
And who has repeatedly made it clear that she feels guilty about killing or hurting people unncessesarily - even sometimes if it's for her own clear gain, such as in the trial, which Meizhen's idea of revenge wouldn't be - and that she doesn't see Yan Renshu as a real threat or enemy.
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That has nothing to do with what I said, though.

It's a rationalization for why you would do so, sure, but ultimately projection is still projection.

Not that I'm saying its an invalid rationale for voting the way you do, unless you think that projecting yourself on to a fictional character has some kind of negative connotation or something.
 
TehChron said:
That has nothing to do with what I said, though.

It's a rationalization for why you would do so, sure, but ultimately projection is still projection.

Not that I'm saying its an invalid rationale for voting the way you do, unless you think that projecting yourself on to a fictional character has some kind of negative connotation or something.
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We have a WoG that Ling Qi IN CHARACTER thinks that permanent damage and out of combat brutality are over the line. At this point, if there is still projection going on then it isn't Dessard.
 
So, I noticed a trend of thoughts regarding Yan Renshu that it is ok to let Meizhen permanently remove him as a threat (i.e through crippling physically, spiritually, or through torture) because of his prior actions regarding the contracts that he had set up and how they were despicable. I would caution against dehumanizing any person we encounter whom we don't like (yes... even you Huang Da).

I don't think we should have an argument regarding whether enslavement or crippling is more ethically permissible in the Argent Sect, but I would like to point back to a discussion that occurred a long time ago regarding whether we should begin dedicated thieving or not. And that is that the FoD world operates on a sliding scale of morality where very few people (if any) are purely "good" or purely "evil."

The main point that I can see people point to for Yan Renshu's evil acts is the taking advantage of people in unfortunate circumstances and forcing them into contracts that are of a massive benefit to Yan Renshu and are extremely questionable morally and ethically. People have called it enslavement, but that's probably not entirely accurate, as by some indications the people who worked for him received benefits for doing so. These indications can be found where people still worked for Yan Renshu after the contract scandal as well as the apparent loyalty of people in his group (which, I'll admit, was also probably helped by the contracts). So I don't think the contracts were enslavements, given that the cultivators working for Yan Renshu probably gained benefits for doing so, but they were certainly abusive towards the people signing them.

The problem is that Ling Qi also abuses people. She does it in a dramatically different way, but she takes advantage of people's hard work and stellar success by taking the fruits of that hard work and success for herself. It's tough luck that those people didn't invest enough in anti-theft measures, but that is the way it is. In this way, Ling Qi and Yan Renshu are extremely similar. Both profit off of the hard work and success of other cultivators while investing minimal effort themselves. The difference is that Yan Renshu's system is much more systematized, organized, and efficient in its abuse of other's hard work and success.

So for people voting to not restrain Meizhen from dishing out potentially permanent damage to Yan Renshu because he "deserves" that permanent damage, I would ask that you reconsider. Because on the sliding scale of morality I don't think Ling Qi is that far off from what Yan Renshu was doing. We don't create a system that feeds itself on the abuse of lower level cultivators, but we certainly do abuse the hard work and successes of other cultivators.
 
TehChron said:
What I find interesting here is that many, not all, people voting for restraint are doing so due to projecting their own IRL values on a girl who is so uncomfortable with recalling the injustices done to her when they held a position over her that she constantly has to remind herself that her past tormentors are in no possible way a threat to her any more whenever she sees them nearby.
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What does her fear have to do with anything?

While Ling Qi takes a certain pleasure in getting revenge on people who have wronged her or her friends, she isn't as disposed to casual brutality as Meizhen is, and doesn't want to just be harming people out of expedience or efficiency. She wants to be more than just another opportunistic asshole scrabbling for any advantage they can get.

Brutalising Renshu because you think it's the easy or safe option is the kind of person that Ling Qi doesn't want to be. Revenge? Sure. But right now he hasn't done us any harm that would demand we declare blood feud on him and destroy him utterly, and we're largely moving on from him.

Here are some of the places where Ling Qi was thinking about these issues:
yrsillar said:
Ling Qi rolled her eyes. "Don't start with that. I came here for you. You're the only reason I'm here, and you've helped me out since day one. What sort of worthless friend would I be if I didn't help you out now that I can?" The kind of 'friend' she was when she lived in the gutter scrabbling for scraps. She didn't want to be that kind of person anymore. There was no real freedom in that, just mindless survival. "I am sorry for upsetting you earlier," she added in a quieter voice.
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yrsillar said:
"When I feel like it," the tortoise grumbled, stone cracking beneath it as it's weight shifted. "Ape, what reason did you really have for coming here? I have been chained in this pit for fifty years, since the day that bastard betrayed and slew my master and the others, I've seen plenty of you empire apes pass me by. You're not that serpent child's lacky."

Ling Qi blinked, surprised at the things questioning. She crossed her arms, frowning at it. "You heard me. She's my friend, I'm repaying her earlier kindness," she hunched her shoulders at the pressure of the things attention, it's clear dissatisfaction with her response forcing her next words past her lips. "...I'm not lying. I came here for her. I'm glad I benefited as well, but I want to be a little less selfish," she finished, hunching her shoulders and lowering her eyes. "What's wrong with that?"

"Hmph, naive. The empire will crush that if it doesn't crush you," the tortoise scoffed. "You'll die forgotten with that kind of attitude."

"Everyone dies, and I'm not sure if I care about being forgotten," Ling Qi responded quietly. "I'd rather not do it for a long time… but I won't let fear chain me down anymore either." She knew what it was like to be on the edge of death, even if she tried not to think about it. She had spent half of her admittedly short life making decisions solely based on survival. She didn't want to do that anymore.
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yrsillar said:
Ling Qi had a hard time not hunching her shoulders a bit at the sudden inflection of absolute command in the other girl's voice. She considered the resplendent girl silently for a moment, noting the faint corona of light shining around her head even now. She thought the heiress was speaking earnestly about her desire for plain words. "For the most part, a bunch of desperate opportunists," she found herself saying bluntly. "I can't really criticize, but I can't say it's very admirable either. It's not really what people think of when they imagine cultivators, that's for sure," she added, thinking of Li Suyin's shattered expectations.
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yrsillar said:
"What was the kid's name?" Su Ling asked, crossing her arms and giving Ling Qi a patient look. There was a beat of silence between them as Ling Qi narrowed her eyes, she was sure she had heard it mentioned… "How about his dad? You know the guy bowing and scraping to us?"

"...I get it," Ling Qi replied. She glanced to the side. "Well, no, I suppose I don't really get it," she admitted grudgingly. "It's not like people are better for being poor or powerless or whatever. I don't think I could handle worrying about everyone, not when I'm still trying to just worry about a few, you know?" She had spent years focused only on herself and her own survival, she wanted to be better than that, but she was still working out what that meant.
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yrsillar said:
She was given permission to use a few lower members, as well as anything else she could gather… but it was clear that Cai Renxiang herself considered it a minor matter. That was a little disenheartening, but she thought that between herself, Xuan Shi and Han Jian's group, who she was fairly sure she could convince of it, the task was possible. Particularly with a few more bodies on the front line.

She shook her head at that thought as she headed back up the mountain. Maybe Su Ling was right, that was an odd and callous thought, maybe she was getting a little disconnected from things.

She tried not to worry to much about it for now, she had a lot to do today, but the first thing was picking up her flute, which should be done today.
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@Thor's Twin what if instead of trying to make ling qi seem close to as bad as yan reshu we just acknowledge that cultivators are allowed to try to get revenge on us for robbing them. If someone we rob goes crying to their big brother or sister to get help and they come to bring the pain that is something we just have to live with. It is a natural consequence of robbing people and I thought everyone understood that.
 
Erebeal said:
What does her fear have to do with anything?

While Ling Qi takes a certain pleasure in getting revenge on people who have wronged her or her friends, she isn't as disposed to casual brutality as Meizhen is, and doesn't want to just be harming people out of expedience or efficiency. She wants to be more than just another opportunistic asshole scrabbling for any advantage they can get.

Brutalising Renshu because you think it's the easy or safe option is the kind of person that Ling Qi doesn't want to be. Revenge? Sure. But right now he hasn't done us any harm that would demand we declare blood feud on him and destroy him utterly, and we're largely moving on from him.

Here are some of the places where Ling Qi was thinking about these issues:
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My observation was the way how Ling Qi treats people that dont succeed in doing her harm, and those that do, tends to be very different.

Such as Ling Qi's attitude towards Sun Liling tapping into that same well of fear immediately after that ambush compared to her largely...ambivalent stance that she had prior to that. Similar to Ling Qi's stance on Yan Renshu right now. So I certainly see some interesting parallels going on here.

But do keep in mind that if Yan Renshu manages to get a blow in from spite, a serious one at that, you shouldn't be surprised at the attitude change on Ling Qi's part if such a thing does come to pass.
 
I wish we knew how conflicts like this are usually settled in the outer sect.

I kind of wish we had taken that option to read the books. Our biggest weakness is our lack of knowledge about the broader culture of the empire and reading those books might have actually told us more about how regular nobles behave.

Dessard said:
And who has repeatedly made it clear that she feels guilty about killing or hurting people unncessesarily
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Innocent people, people who were her friends, sure.

Thor's Twin said:
people still worked for Yan Renshu after the contract scandal as well as the apparent loyalty of people in his group (which, I'll admit, was also probably helped by the contracts).
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Most of them quit though. We gloated about it with CRX, since our team got most of them.
 
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[X] Go along with Meizhen, you don't much care what happens to Yan Renshu, but you would rather she have backup. He's tricky.
 
mc2rpg said:
@Thor's Twin what if instead of trying to make ling qi seem close to as bad as yan reshu we just acknowledge that cultivators are allowed to try to get revenge on us for robbing them. If someone we rob goes crying to their big brother or sister to get help and they come to bring the pain that is something we just have to live with. It is a natural consequence of robbing people and I thought everyone understood that.
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That is clearly not the case given the direction of this discussion. We robbed Yan Renshu, with no more motivation then it was a part of the Grinning Moon quest line. We got caught and now Yan Renshu is trying to have his revenge by stopping us and harming us in a multitude of ways. We are now going to reck his face even further, for trying to get revenge against us, for robbing him.

I mean, you can make the argument that we should not try and go after Yan Renshu for what he has done to us in his plotting of revenge, but I don't see a lot of people, if any, making that argument.
 
Thor's Twin said:
The problem is that Ling Qi also abuses people. She does it in a dramatically different way, but she takes advantage of people's hard work and stellar success by taking the fruits of that hard work and success for herself. It's tough luck that those people didn't invest enough in anti-theft measures, but that is the way it is. In this way, Ling Qi and Yan Renshu are extremely similar. Both profit off of the hard work and success of other cultivators while investing minimal effort themselves. The difference is that Yan Renshu's system is much more systematized, organized, and efficient in its abuse of other's hard work and success.

So for people voting to not restrain Meizhen from dishing out potentially permanent damage to Yan Renshu because he "deserves" that permanent damage, I would ask that you reconsider. Because on the sliding scale of morality I don't think Ling Qi is that far off from what Yan Renshu was doing. We don't create a system that feeds itself on the abuse of lower level cultivators, but we certainly do abuse the hard work and successes of other cultivators.
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In a way, our abuse of other cultivators is what got us into this position. We were pointed at Yan Renshu because he had goodies for us to steal. We chose that, and even reveled in it when we did it. Kicking things off by wiping out Yan Renshu's efforts started something we're now hard-pressed to stop so much that we can actually debate if torturing some teenager is worthwhile just to end this stupid grudge. Newsflash: it's not Yan Renshu's fault that his things got stolen.

It's ours.

I think I pretty much agree with you, Thor's Twin, that what we do is bad in a similar way to what he does. But I'll turn that around and ask you this: now that we're already perpetuating the abuse of other cultivators, and in fact are locked into taking more things from Yan Renshu for what really is not a great reason (whether it's Qi or Meizhen who does the deed)... how do we stop? How do we get things here to end?
 
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