The promise is a CAUSE of the heart demon, not the cure. Keeping it perfectly violates the SCS insight.
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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.
What do you think the Domain and insights are? They're mindsets, philosophies, beliefs, and motivations that she's permanently engraved into the core of her being while inspired by the lessons of Arts and life. They are her. She is them. Neither is done growing yet.
It's both, really. Following it blindly or inconsistently are both failure states to the heart demon's impositions. The solution is finding a coherent path for keeping it. Or possibly a coherent way to abandon it completely, but that doesn't seem likely for us so it's irrelevant.
I'm also using the heart demon as short-hand for the older issues pertaining to Zhengui cooperation in general since, well, the two are married at the moment. One can't really be examined without the other. The heart demon is the latest, greatest manifestation of long-standing troubles that extend well beyond just Zhengui's hurt.
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Yeah, and heart demons aren't so easily overcome by just "adapting the mindset to keeping it consistently." They're a fundamental divide between different beliefs, there's no consistency there.
I didn't say it was easy. Nor did I prescribe a simple method to accomplishing it. It's still the solution, some way or another. A stop to the conflict is literally the goal. It doesn't make sense that a person can reliably keep to a commitment they're of two minds about, they don't really work like that. It's not realistic to expect Ling Qi to not mess up sometimes, maybe obviously maybe subtly, while still in the state of having a heart demon.
Its not the solution at all though. The crux is that two absolutes were stated as insights, and there is a case where only one can be true.
-There is no peace in emptiness, no content in stillness. Stagnation is death; act, change, move, think, and grow until the very end.
-One person's desires cannot alone make a home nor a family.
We chose to damage the former and assauge the latter by making the promise, by setting a restraint upon our growth, the existence of the promise itself is now the heart demon, because we've now dragged more insights onto the table:
-Sincerity is the measure by which the worthiness of the self and ones guests should be measured.
The heart demon is no longer about the desires of our family. That problem is behind us when we made the promise, though Zhengui's own self confidence issues are not gone.
We're now facing a heart demon consisting of a catch-22 - by following the promise, we are sincere and worthy but we imposed stagnation upon ourselves, we can no longer grow in ways which require self sacrifice or leaving family behind. By breaking the promise, we diminish our worth and we'd also have harmed our family, which our base domain, TRF and FVM agree are very important.
Fundamentally the heart demon comes from picking 4 different determinator insights and then being pincered between them when they diverge. The promise sparked it, but keeping the promise brings us no closer to a solution, nor does breaking the promise.
This can only be resolved by having the promise either retracted, adapting such that the promise no longer hinders growth, or expanding definitions such that a loss in one area can be made up in another.
-There is no peace in emptiness, no content in stillness. Stagnation is death; act, change, move, think, and grow until the very end.
-One person's desires cannot alone make a home nor a family.
We chose to damage the former and assauge the latter by making the promise, by setting a restraint upon our growth, the existence of the promise itself is now the heart demon, because we've now dragged more insights onto the table:
-Sincerity is the measure by which the worthiness of the self and ones guests should be measured.
The heart demon is no longer about the desires of our family. That problem is behind us when we made the promise, though Zhengui's own self confidence issues are not gone.
We're now facing a heart demon consisting of a catch-22 - by following the promise, we are sincere and worthy but we imposed stagnation upon ourselves, we can no longer grow in ways which require self sacrifice or leaving family behind. By breaking the promise, we diminish our worth and we'd also have harmed our family, which our base domain, TRF and FVM agree are very important.
Fundamentally the heart demon comes from picking 4 different determinator insights and then being pincered between them when they diverge. The promise sparked it, but keeping the promise brings us no closer to a solution, nor does breaking the promise.
This can only be resolved by having the promise either retracted, adapting such that the promise no longer hinders growth, or expanding definitions such that a loss in one area can be made up in another.
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
The heart demon was not confirmed to be about only those specific insights. In fact, the second insight was already a response to heart demons, and is almost certainly the reason the heart demon wasn't worse than it was.
A good part of solving the heart demon is knowing exactly what caused it, and we still don't. We know some of it, we have theories on some more, but it's not a conflict between two insights, it's a conflict on how Ling Qi herself decided to act about her insights.
The insights themselves don't naturally conflict, it's Ling Qi who acted in specific ways that made a conflict.
The vote we just had was a referendum on how Ling Qi should act on her promise that was made in order to put peace between her insight, and Ling Qi's response is apparently 'Well, bring in more conflict'.
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- Location
- Greece
Ok, this is the second time I have seen someone claiming that people were accused of abandoning Zhengui in very strong language. Either I missed a post, or there is discord toxicity going on that I am unaware of because I do not discord. Would that make my previous post foolish, if either is true.
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Refer this
And consider the low low probability of civil discourse after that
- Location
- Greece
Eh, I guess that is fair, somewhat. Still, accusing the main character of doing something, even if it was by questers orders, is quite different, at least in my opinion, than accusing the questers themselves. The first is trying to put in universe actions into perspective, providing an argument, the second is downright toxic. But that may just be me trying to see the best in things, and this was posted after the vote, so you are probably right in that.
- Location
- Finland
When it is LQ doing a thing we voted to do, they are the same damn thing.
DangerKitty
shoddy writter
- Location
- lala land
Normally i'd agree, but the vote is locked in and the debate has turned toxic. Therrs no point to argueing it anymore. We are all part of the same quest and as such we need to treat each other with civility because were gonna have to keep seeing each other amd because its the right thing to do. Implying that we have failed zhengui after the vote is already locked in isnt helpful. Its just bitter.
Debate is fine, especially for a quest, but imo the debate needs to stop if it turns toxic. Especially after the vote is closed
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I'm not seeing toxicity, though. People aren't calling each other names or wishing nasty consequences upon others. The worst that can be said is "some subset of the quest feels that this vote involved us letting Zhengui down and is worried about us keeping on doing that." And I refuse to accept that asserting we are damaging our relationship with a beloved NPC is inherently toxic when that issue has been foregrounded as part of the narrative. People aren't inventing spurious accusations to score points off their fellow questers, they're worried about Ling Qi going down an unhealthy direction that has been highlighted as a failure mode she's vulnerable to. Let's not mistake "giving a shit about the stakes of the story" for toxicity.
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- Location
- Florida
We've all heard increasingly multiple times its like an air horn that won't turn off, some people are more annoyed by a vote thats dead and were poking its corpse and by a point that we've been aware of but want to get beaten over the head again and again and again .
- Location
- Finland
We have been accused of abandoning Zhengui, that's fairly high there imo.
It might not gotten to a point where mods need to get involved, but when i read that, i had no response that would not have brought a mod in, so i did not respond at all.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
But my point is that that's not an out-of-nowhere accusation, that's something that Ling Qi legitimately has had an issue with that Zhengui called her out on. We had a vote on it and everything.
I know that some people believe that the fact that we committed to being better means that we will never even get the option to do something that constitutes breaking that promise to him. I don't think so; I think that wouldn't be good quest design, and it's also not how people work. It is totally reasonable for people to be worried about breaking that promise. It's not inherently toxic for people to say "I think this course of action makes our known problem worse" (though obviously people can present that argument in more or less constructive ways).
"I am tired of this discussion" is a valid sentiment to float. Saying "this discussion is toxic" when what you mean is that you're tired of it is less so, I feel.
Anyway, we have gone from object-level discussion to meta-discussion to meta-meta-discussion, and that's too many layers of abstraction to be particularly useful. Back to the object level: I do very much hope that the next update makes it clear what issues were in fact at stake here so that the quester base can calibrate their expectations appropriately. If it turns out that our relationship with Zhengui was part of what the vote was about, that's important to know; if it turns out that it wasn't, that's also important. Ambiguity just leaves us chasing our tail endlessly.
But what if that's what Ling Qi did? Like, not even arguing, here, that she did, your complaint asks to moderate what people are allowed to share of their experience of reality. Or unreality, considering it's a work of fiction. I don't think you can legitimately bar someone from sharing their understanding of the events in the story, unless they're beyond the pale disruptive. And that doesn't mean just being controversial. I don't see how we can or should moderate what you're asking the community to moderate- that is, a shared and mandatory consensus on the implications of game events.
And getting back to the "what if?" part, Ling Qi has failed to live up to her principles in the past. In the bloody moon dream, that's what happened, it wasn't even explicitly spelled out when we chose to do it, but it happened nonetheless. Would you want discussion of the event to not happen? That doesn't seem reasonable. Somebody did get banned at the time, but that was from screaming at everyone and accusing them of willful and gleeful genocide, not suggesting we'd screwed the pooch.
Not engaging was the right decision on your part, but it's also probably the only tool you're strictly owed given the circumstances. Same way that no matter how much effort I put into making a post, I'm not owed the engagement of others.
- Location
- Finland
And what if you <insert terrible and baseless accusation here>.
This is starting to remind me of alt right argumentation, just make ballsy accusations in a calm tone, until the other side who actually cares finally snaps and then gets infracted.
I'm not saying you are intentionally doing it, but just because your side can make the claims in a calm tone does not make the argument not heated.
If there is one thing the thread can agree on, is that Zhengui is the best precious boy who must be treasured forever.
So accusing those on the other side of the debate of abandoning him with such flimsy cause as not taking part in a peaceful duel, is insulting as hell.
How is allusion to the alt-right not the same thing under your own logic? I'm not saying I care, but it seems inconsistent.
If someone thinks that an action taken by Ling Qi, at our direction, is an abandonment of Zhengui, then they should be able to express those thoughts. Full stop. The should not be able to be a huge dick about it. Full stop. Bringing it up at all isn't being a huge dick about it, just because people find the subject upsetting. Even drawing a causal relationship between a certain vote and a bad-for-Zhengui outcome is not being a dick about it, really. That's how cause and effect works. If you think a choice has a consequence, it's impossible to avoid linking the two. People should especially be able to share their thoughts on it because it has literally been a plot point that Ling Qi has neglected Zhengui's needs.
I guess I just don't get the issue.
- Location
- Florida
We've heard everyones opinion and everything there was to glean down to the smallest grain of consequences about this vote, the thing is we've not stopped going over a mine picked clean and are reviewing it all over again hashing out who's side is where its not constructive its listless with no direction when its already been hammered home for days now.
If you don't think there's value in discussing it, then stop. Literally nothing is forcing you to keep doing this. There's a strong chance if people would just stop arguing that discussion is bad and invalid, there wouldn't be any anyway. Like you said, most of it has been gone over multiple times. The only reason I'm continuing to reply is out of principle because these requests to shut up are totally groundless.
- Location
- Finland
I'm pointing out a tactic used a known group of bad actors that is very similar to what is going on here, possibly unintentionally.
Just because people seemingly keep stating things in a calm manner does not make things same as calm.
Obviously accusations of doing terrible things in flimsy pretects are just regular part of thread discourse, my mistake.
There's a very clear difference between "you are abandoning Zhengui" and "this is not the best choice for Zhengui".
I mean, sure, i could entertain the argument that trying for a quick combat and strategy advice on how to work better with our precious might be best for him, i don't agree, but i'm willing to argue over it.
But accusing Ling Qi, and by extension the people who voted for the action taken, of abandoning our boy, is an inflammatory emmotional accusation that can just fuck the right off.
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Okay, this is definitely a you problem at this point. You're outright saying that people with (certain) different opinions than you ought not be in the thread. Nobody on the "other" side said anything similar, to my knowledge. And I really don't think anybody is baiting you or anyone else. They really do just disagree.
But for however inflammatory other people are being, you aren't being the most respectful yourself here. By repeatedly describing other people's positions as "flimsy" and inherently inflammatory, and otherwise just not treating it with respect, beyond just disagreeing with it. That also does not seem cool by the standards you're laying out.
I'm also a bit worried, honestly. You're basically arguing that something can't be true, can't even be talked about, because it would be very emotionally unpleasant. When you, or I, get to that point, and I have gotten to that point at points, you're probably right that it's time for a break.
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Edit: Nevermind. Sorry
I sincerely apologize if I have caused offense. I'm definitely not accusing anyone of abandoning Zhengui. As I tried to say before, I don't think the stakes are that high and I'm pretty sure Yrsillar has promised with our last insight that we aren't going to be making matters worse for a while.
I sincerely apologize if I have caused offense. I'm definitely not accusing anyone of abandoning Zhengui. As I tried to say before, I don't think the stakes are that high and I'm pretty sure Yrsillar has promised with our last insight that we aren't going to be making matters worse for a while.
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