FVM's Dissonance summons monsters in the mist, so PLR's cast took a more monstrous form. If Beast King's Savage Dirge would combo with PLR I expect the revelers to take forms evoking the beast king themselves.
If you mean that you don't want PLR to be locked into echoing FVM forever I agree, but PLR combining with whatever music arts (possibly dance arts too?) makes sense within the idea of PLR resonating to whatever art is used under broad umbrella of beings that partake of the Dreaming Moon's revels; it's also cool as hell which is just as important.
It is cool as hell, I agree. The thing where we agree with not wanting PLR to be locked into echoing FVM forever is kind of the issue. Putting FVM in the domain weapon means that in every fight ever we're always FVMing all the time. Like, by definition that's the effect and narrative purpose of putting an art in the thing, here. Among other things, it's telling yrsillar what thing we want thrown at every fight. Any fight where we use our domain weapon, which is every fight of seriousness, it will blanket the scene in FVM.
I
like FVM, I'm just not enthusiastic about the aesthetic effect if it's going to be affecting other arts to that degree, and limit the kind experimentation and narrative presence we're capable of effectively pursuing, especially in the context of just recently feeling like we were opening up to examine our options a bit more broadly.
I just don't understand what you mean by FVM being 'awkward'. You haven't actually explained what's wrong with the shadows, beyond saying that they make PLR emo—which is subjective—or that the field-stacking gets boring, but I'm pretty sure Yrsillar has already said that they were cutting back on detailing all the start-ups of LQ's arts in fights for that exact reason.
I never said anything about limiting PLR to a single tone. Arts at this point are supposed to be changeable to suit the cultivator, and that's already been partly shown with how we changed TRF's theme from an ancient oak to a green sapling in the storm.
I know you didn't say anything about limiting PLR to a single tone, that's my argument. PLR is a big, broad thing. Limiting its expression to
FVM's tones doesn't appeal to me
at this point in time, and I don't really see how it's possible to do otherwise, in context of PLR's demonstrated tonal flexibility. Does that clear it up?
And dang, I really wish we'd changed TRF's theme from an ancient oak to a green sapling in the storm, because that would have been perfect for us, but we never actually did that.
Unyielding Vitality. That was the core of the Thousand Ring Fortress, a defense that would grow back more quickly than it could be damaged, that could weather any storm or assault. Even if it broke under siege, so long as a single drop remained, the fortress could return to full strength in time, just as a forest could regrow from a single seed. She had not fully mastered it yet, and so some portions of that power were missing.
Yet its defense was rigid and unbending, it belonged to the sort of stout arboreal guardians which would shatter before bending… and that was not her. She had played at such, today and in previous training, but in the end, that mindset, of holding ones ground no matter what and refusing to fall back… it was just too alien. Ground could be surrendered, and people could retreat. It was better to let an enemy push you back and in doing overextend themselves, than to repulse them with sheer force.
Or so she thought anyway.
To truly change an masterful art such as the Thousand Rings Fortress was beyond her but… perhaps applying its lessons elsewhere was not. In the opening rounds of a battle, she had to choose whether to put her effort into becoming one with shadow and slipping away, risking great damage, or channeling her effort into armor, trading on the certainty of a weakened attack… if that could be solved...
With a new focus, Ling Qi concentrated her thoughts on that idea.
By the time Ling Qi opened her eyes night had fallen, but she had succeeded. The ability to defend from more potent arts had been etched into the very core of her spirit. It was sloppy, lacking the structure granted by a full art, less efficient than her Ten Ring Defense art, but, with this, she could improve her early defense, without having to sacrifice her opening offense to as great a degree.
Here's the point where Ling Qi meditated on TRF's incompatibility with her instincts, but she concluded that she couldn't change the art, so she settle for scraping a bootleg -permanent effect from it.
The other thing you might be thinking of is the separate art, Storm Enduring Seedling. It's a bit of a weird one in that it sounds like it should fit the bill, but then it has tech names like Intractable Roots, Heaven Scarred Trunk, and Bark Worn Rough. It doesn't clearly leverage the flexibility of a sapling in its survival, and the art description culminates in "growing tall and strong until its roots could burrow into the very mountain rock itself." One of the reasons we stopped cultivating it was that the art wasn't a good answer to the TRF problem.
TRF's plot threads got lost in the shuffle and never went anywhere. It's part of what makes choosing TRF now, in this vote, a silly idea. Which I'm doing anyway because, eh it's never going to happen if it never happens. With SNR on the horizon to erase TRF's relevance entirely, I'd rather take an awkward transition than simply leave the question in the dust.
). The actual event was remarked by Ling Qi herself that it would have led her to being put inside a coma if she missteped. The art always had that edge of inhumanity there, which is why even Joyous Toast has the dancers jeering the opposition rather than just praising the user and her allies.
