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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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Now it's been stated by Yrsillar that cultivation requires drive and that poor work ethic can hinder you (Fan Yu).
But in the case of cultivation through meditation and inner reflection it seems easy for the cultivator to fall into a fugue.
Where time loses all meaning and the process seems almost mesmerizing.

Do people like Fan Yu just have trouble reaching that state in the first place or is the experience different for them?
Asael said:
I'd rather LQ takes her time, rather than hop in with the first set of abs attached to someone who isnt an immediate jackass.
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I'm not too concerned.
Given her personality, romance is the last thing on Ling Qi's mind.
 
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I am ninety percent sure that people talking about shipping are thinking of cutesy rom com type stuff, abs meme aside. I think I've done pretty good at keeping references to more mature stuff oblique in nature
 
yrsillar said:
I am ninety percent sure that people talking about shipping are thinking of cutesy rom com type stuff, abs meme aside. I think I've done pretty good at keeping references to more mature stuff oblique in nature
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Yeah the vast majority of the thread when talking of shipping , husbando wars , and the like is referring to cutest rom com and not just "sex" the majority of people here arent trying to sexualize a teenage girl. They're just dirty shippers that like seeing the cute romance scenes, and ling qi discovering boys.

More a cute Netflix romance movie then anything QQ.

Besides, I'm 99percent sure most of us know intellectually that the vast majority of these people will prob not be husband qualified whether due to low status or some other criteria we have, especially since IC lq isnt really concerned with romance right now due to so much other shit on her plate.

That being said, I think it's unfair to make shen Hus. Character just "abs" and write him off. We frankly havent even seen much of hin or had more then a few conversations. I think that's insulting to Yrs writing.

Secondly as I've said in discord already, and I know this may just be a SV culture thing, but it feels like male characters get demonized or made to match impossible criteria right away even if theyve had relatively low screen time whereas female characters get a pass, and head patts and it doesnt matter if they are lower cultivation or weaker they instantly get accepted (ma sisters, fefe, etc).

The double standard is there, and I think we should all do our best to try to avoid it and trust Yrs to write male characters we can enjoy, and become friends with, not just for the shipping aspect. It was already a problem in the previous quest (all the male characters basically getting little screen time or becoming mooks or far weaker then the females )
 
Mr.rodent said:
Yeah the vast majority of the thread when talking of shipping , husbando wars , and the like is referring to cutest rom com and not just "sex" the majority of people here arent trying to sexualize a teenage girl. They're just dirty shippers that like seeing the cute romance scenes, and ling qi discovering boys.

More a cute Netflix romance movie then anything QQ.

Besides, I'm 99percent sure most of us know intellectually that the vast majority of these people will prob not be husband qualified whether due to low status or some other criteria we have, especially since IC lq isnt really concerned with romance right now due to so much other shit on her plate.

That being said, I think it's unfair to make shen Hus. Character just "abs" and write him off. We frankly havent even seen much of hin or had more then a few conversations. I think that's insulting to Yrs writing.

Secondly as I've said in discord already, and I know this may just be a SV culture thing, but it feels like male characters get demonized or made to match impossible criteria right away even if theyve had relatively low screen time whereas female characters get a pass, and head patts and it doesnt matter if they are lower cultivation or weaker they instantly get accepted (ma sisters, fefe, etc).

The double standard is there, and I think we should all do our best to try to avoid it and trust Yrs to write male characters we can enjoy, and become friends with, not just for the shipping aspect. It was already a problem in the previous quest (all the male characters basically getting little screen time or becoming mooks or far weaker then the females )
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I'm a little confused, are you saying Yrs handles male characters well and we shouldn't ignore them, or that it's problematic that the males peers so far have been weaker than the female ones? Those seem kinda contradictory to me.

Moving past that, though, given that we're already kinda pressed keeping up with the few close friends we have, who do you think we should spend less time around to make time for people like Ruan Shen and Shen Hu?
 
George said:
Moving past that, though, given that we're already kinda pressed keeping up with the few close friends we have, who do you think we should spend less time around to make time for people like Ruan Shen and Shen Hu?
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I think this kind of zero-sum slice of life reasoning is a big problem.

Character votes should be about narratively meaningful opportunities and arcs, not "will Ling Qi talk to her friends at all this month".

Like, look at all the people going on this vote about how we haven't seen Xiulan at all this month and what if she's DYING!!!!?

We should be able to assume that Ling Qi does in fact talk to her friends and do stuff in the background, and that if there is anything narratively important going on there that we can be involved with yrsillar will tell us.
 
Erebeal said:
I think this kind of zero-sum slice of life reasoning is a big problem.

Character votes should be about narratively meaningful opportunities and arcs, not "will Ling Qi talk to her friends at all this month".

Like, look at all the people going on this vote about how we haven't seen Xiulan at all this month and what if she's DYING!!!!?

We should be able to assume that Ling Qi does in fact talk to her friends and do stuff in the background, and that if there is anything narratively important going on there that we can be involved with yrsillar will tell us.
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That would be great, but my experience has been that if we're offered a vote for a character and don't take it, yrs interprets that as us not being interested in them. Until we actually see non-zero sum character votes being the norm, I feel that I'm forced to look at things this way.

When was the last time we had a character vote that wasn't choosing between people?
 
George said:
That would be great, but my experience has been that if we're offered a vote for a character and don't take it, yrs interprets that as us not being interested in them. Until we actually see non-zero sum character votes being the norm, I feel that I'm forced to look at things this way.

When was the last time we had a character vote that wasn't choosing between people?
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I think there's a difference between votes about getting to know new people and friending them vs votes about hanging out with our existing friends.

That being said, I do think the narrative import of certain votes could be made clearer.
 
George said:
That would be great, but my experience has been that if we're offered a vote for a character and don't take it, yrs interprets that as us not being interested in them. Until we actually see non-zero sum character votes being the norm, I feel that I'm forced to look at things this way.

When was the last time we had a character vote that wasn't choosing between people?
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Never, but it isn't quite the salient question. Going by your reasoning we wouldn't have seen Xiulan after rejecting her but the option kept coming up. Same with Suyin and Su Ling in the old thread. The way these cropped up indicates yrs reads the thread and also uses that to gauge interest, which he has outright said before. So I don't think it is as straightforward as "If we don't pick them, he must conclude we aren't interested in them". Erebeal raises a good point as well.

When he is introducing a side character that isn't part of the core friend group then your position has more merit, though I would point out that discussion about them and how we discuss them should still be relevant in how he makes character judgements. And of course there's just asking him, "How do you gauge thread interest in a character?" or something to that effect. (@yrsillar because I do actually want your opinion on that question)
 
Mr.rodent said:
Besides, I'm 99percent sure most of us know intellectually that the vast majority of these people will prob not be husband qualified whether due to low status or some other criteria we have, especially since IC lq isnt really concerned with romance right now due to so much other shit on her plate.
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I mean, abs jokes aside the only guy so far who I've thought would actually have any potential in that arena would be Gan Guangli. He makes her smile, and his ridiculous bombast that's actually genuine and sincere forms a nice contrast to LQ.
 
deadcrystal said:
I mean, abs jokes aside the only guy so far who I've thought would actually have any potential in that arena would be Gan Guangli. He makes her smile, and his ridiculous bombast that's actually genuine and sincere forms a nice contrast to LQ.
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GAN FLEXINGTON had some interesting backstory and subtlety to him but people found him boring so we didn't help bully his troops in a detatched terrifying manner :(

Now all we can do is second hand assistance while we brain fuckle Meizhen's ninja maid during "tutoring" sessions
 
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Erebeal said:
We should be able to assume that Ling Qi does in fact talk to her friends and do stuff in the background, and that if there is anything narratively important going on there that we can be involved with yrsillar will tell us.
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We can't though, because there are mechanical and in story effects to not voting for them.
As far as I can tell Ling Qi has, in story, just about zero free time. This is where the whole flighty nature thing comes from, if we don't vote to spend time with people then we don't spend time with them. Take a look back when we were trying to balance the golden field group, Meizhen and Xiulan in particular. People just had to fall to the wayside. It's at least in part an artifact of this being a quest where our main resource is action points, there must be consequences to our resource allocation or it's meaningless.

TLDR: This is a zero sums game, we must prioritize.
 
Well, I'll be happy if this vote doesn't result in us snubbing Ruan Shen or getting fewer chances to socialize with him later.
 
yrsillar said:
I mean that is something I'm trying to get away from with the new format. Note how there are no mention of social links in the ap voting section.
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I think part of the problem is that it's often not very clear what the narrative import of certain votes is. Without that people have a tendancy to default to reading the character votes as just being about whether or not we interact with them.
 
yrsillar said:
I mean that is something I'm trying to get away from with the new format. Note how there are no mention of social links in the ap voting section.
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Should we take that to mean that voting for/against a scene with a character in adventure mode doesn't significantly impact how often we interact with that character in the future?

If that is the case, how DO we choose how often to interact with different people?
 
yrsillar said:
I mean that is something I'm trying to get away from with the new format. Note how there are no mention of social links in the ap voting section.
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The distinction between 'activating' a Social Link, 'maintaining' a Social Link, and advancing a Social Link is very important, and not something easy to properly find - or, more pertinently, implement.

Voting generally isn't required to maintain a Social Link where it's at. There's only so much screen time that can be handed out, and a few lines to indicate that people are catching up / hanging out is easy enough, provided the characters in question are close enough (spacio-temporally speaking) that it isn't an issue. Of course, there are times when someone is incapable of maintaining their Social Links - this should be something noted, by saying that 'character X is unavailable this month', or something along similar lines - and vice-versa as pertinent. Allowing a Social Link to properly degrade is also an option - the ability to just say 'no, I don't want to hang out with 'x' anymore'. But implementing this in a straightforward manner would lead to a damn clunky vote segment - better to find some other way.

Activating a Social Link should absolutely require voter input. Social Links change both the PC and the other character, and controlling who the PC becomes friends with is an excellent way to provide some control over character growth to the players.

Advancing a Social Link should also require voter input, for similar reasons to activating one. However, the PC should definitely not be the only one to initiate a move in this direction. Other characters have their own agency, after all, and just like the other character has the option to not reveal whatever's troubling them this time around, so does the player character.

One alternative path is to simply not leave Social Link options up to the players, instead placing it all in the hands of the character/QM. This works best when player - and the quest's - focus is on things other than people and politics, however, and that wouldn't work in this quest.

But sometimes, a fishing trip is just a fishing trip (aka SL maintenance), and not a prelude to a confession (SL 'flashpoint'). Delineating between the two in a believable manner is is also difficult.

....

The current vote appears to have two choices - activate Shen Hu's Social Link and potentially advance Gu Xiulan's, or activate two Social Links - Ruan Shen and Bao Quingling.
 
Raising Kittens said:
The distinction between 'activating' a Social Link, 'maintaining' a Social Link, and advancing a Social Link is very important, and not something easy to properly find - or, more pertinently, implement.

Voting generally isn't required to maintain a Social Link where it's at. There's only so much screen time that can be handed out, and a few lines to indicate that people are catching up / hanging out is easy enough, provided the characters in question are close enough (spacio-temporally speaking) that it isn't an issue. Of course, there are times when someone is incapable of maintaining their Social Links - this should be something noted, by saying that 'character X is unavailable this month', or something along similar lines - and vice-versa as pertinent. Allowing a Social Link to properly degrade is also an option - the ability to just say 'no, I don't want to hang out with 'x' anymore'. But implementing this in a straightforward manner would lead to a damn clunky vote segment - better to find some other way.

Activating a Social Link should absolutely require voter input. Social Links change both the PC and the other character, and controlling who the PC becomes friends with is an excellent way to provide some control over character growth to the players.

Advancing a Social Link should also require voter input, for similar reasons to activating one. However, the PC should definitely not be the only one to initiate a move in this direction. Other characters have their own agency, after all, and just like the other character has the option to not reveal whatever's troubling them this time around, so does the player character.

One alternative path is to simply not leave Social Link options up to the players, instead placing it all in the hands of the character/QM. This works best when player - and the quest's - focus is on things other than people and politics, however, and that wouldn't work in this quest.

But sometimes, a fishing trip is just a fishing trip (aka SL maintenance), and not a prelude to a confession (SL 'flashpoint'). Delineating between the two in a believable manner is is also difficult.

....

The current vote appears to have two choices - activate Shen Hu's Social Link and potentially advance Gu Xiulan's, or activate two Social Links - Ruan Shen and Bao Quingling.
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I'm not sure what you're talking about here? Are you suggesting a possible fix for this to Yrs?
 
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