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

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Sirrocco said:
I am perhaps still failing to express myself properly. Yes, of course she has strong opinions as to whether mortals should be harmed by the whims of the powerful, but that's not enough. There's also a matter of who and what she sees herself as, and how she defines her place in that relationship. Even if her primary identity is that of a protector, it matters which kind. Is she the bright blade that gloriously smites the wicked for their transgressions? Is she the midnight knife that excises the corruption from this world? Is she the shield of the helpless, that guards them and keeps them safe? Is she a hunter of monsters? Is she the bitter warrior who does what must be done to protect the people of the empire from terrible foes in spite of the cost, because to stand by and leave it unprotected is even worse? All of these are ways that cultivators might reasonably self-identify as protectors of the weak, but some would be much more likely to sprout domain effects that reduce collateral damage to nearby peasants than others. I'm not saying that all of those are equally likely for the Su Ling we happen to know, but it's not like we necessarily know which one she's dialed into.
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Fair enough, I cannot disagree with those points, you are correct and I have to agree.

Asael said:
You are projecting on her.
Su would be happy being left alone. Demonstrably so. Her heart is not made of stone though.

As an example. We met her recently during a patrol. She admits that she was doing the patrol because she was prodded into doing so by friends.
Even with prodding, she might have refused if she wasn't compassionate.

The point I am trying to make is, she's not a crusader, or an activist. It's pretty clear that hunting her mother is as much about conquering her own demons as anything.

But she's also too compassionate to ignore suffering happening right in front of her.

The other su was the kamen rider wannabe.
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Asael said:
Anyway. I think the crux of the matter is su's stated plans for the future. She's outright said she plans to hole up until she can hunt down and kill her mother. She explicitly has nothing planned for afterwards, and i suspect that she doesn't expect to survive.

Su is very much defined by "opposition to the monster that made me". It's what she's about. It's her core motivation, although it's not the whole of her character.
It makes sense, if you think about it. She's probably dealt with comparisons to the old monster her whole life.

She practices and trains to kill a monster. It's her reason to for gaining strength. Her greatest fear is becoming the same as that monster. She even tried maiming herself because she grew a second tail.

Helping people is what she does because she is a compassionate. But helping others is not the goal she trains for, it's what she does because she cares.

Motivations are important for defining a way. Probably, if nothing changes, her domain and way will lean more towards monster slayer rather than shield of of the weak. Thing is, she still has time to think about it before committing anything to stone.

Typing all this shit out on a phone is a bitch. Neck is cramping, think I'll go do something else for a few hours.
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I do, however, feel the need to disagree with those sentiments on account of misunderstanding Domains. A Domain is not one's motivation, it is what one IS. Not all people build their Domain around their long term goal (in fact, elder Jiao advices against it), most build it around the kind of person they want to be even if the goal they may have informs that person. Unless Su Ling sees compassion as something she desires to purify herself from, it will remain a part of her Domain, and honestly, I see her excising her desire for loneliness before she became a "cold, unfeeling monster like her mother" or "a powerful person that does not even notice people's plight". A cultivator often strives to achieve their ideal, not their base desires, and I cannot see an ideal for Su Ling that lacks compassion unless something goes very wrong.
 
me.me.here said:
Su Ling's bond with Cibei (Justice Bat the Moon-spirit) kinda implies a shift towards something between the midnight knife and hunter of monster options.
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storryeater said:
I cannot see an ideal for Su Ling that lacks compassion unless something goes very wrong.
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I can't see Su Ling abandoning her compassion without something going really wrong, but, uh, these two archetypes protect innocent bystanders by not having the fight happen near them, not by reducing collateral damage.
 
...and now I'm imagining a world plagued by rolling blackouts, because there keep being giant robot fights in the streets, and it wipes out all the power in the nearby area every time a transformer explodes.

...okay, plagued by rolling blackouts and giant robot fights in the streets.
 
I retrospect, I am surprise I have not heard of massive blackouts with everyone stuck at home.

What would be a blackout translate to be inside a cultivator city?
 
fictionfan said:
I wonder if the empire has good neighbor laws about that sort of thing.
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I would think almost certainly in some form. At the very least if you're a visiting Lord or Lady in the Cyan realm and beyond there are certain courtesies that are probably social requirements, like not letting your Domain bleed out all over the metaphorical or possibly literal carpet.
 
BungieONI said:
I would think almost certainly in some form. At the very least if you're a visiting Lord or Lady in the Cyan realm and beyond there are certain courtesies that are probably social requirements, like not letting your Domain bleed out all over the metaphorical or possibly literal carpet.
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Might depend on the domain.
 
angelofwhim said:
I retrospect, I am surprise I have not heard of massive blackouts with everyone stuck at home.

What would be a blackout translate to be inside a cultivator city?
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In a more literal sense, the arrival of a shadow/wind spirit that causes issues with light sources persisting beyond a certain length.

The setting appropriate version would be the passage of a spirit or otherwise natural phenonmenon causing a failure of the local qi through likely some kind of blockage or overload that they cause in the leylines around them. Likely in the same sense of a Thunderstorm causing problems purely from overloading the local grid in our world, a spirit whose raw presence causes issues in sensitive and low level items such as the Wards around settlements and the more common household formations in places that simply cannot be built to handle the kind of tolerances to compensate for the passage of a Cyan+ spirit of "Light" or "Protection" or "Wind" that causes the qi trapped by formations to suddenly be WAY more than the formation was intended to contain and channel. Likely this kind of thing only happens in places that lack sufficient Cultivator presence to handle the problem immediately.
 
fictionfan said:
Might be cased by the cultivator presence.
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My comment of, "...sufficient Cultivator presence to handle the problem immediately." was intended to cover Cultivators who would respond to the problem. One can assume that such events that are possible for Spirits to cause can be equally caused by Cultivators.
 
TimEd said:
Clearly reality is conspiring against Darkness Month and delaying it as much as it reasonably can.

I assume yrs will be experiencing either hardware or internet problems next.
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Unless the transformer shutdown heralds darkness month. Since electricity, the thing that drives away the dark in these modern times, has failed. Darkness Cometh!
 
Just realized something from the perspective of Ling Qingge.

"So... as cultivators take steps along the path, they become more themselves. My child is becoming an elemental creature of hunger and loneliness and darkness and frost that leeches away life. Well. Not like that's a profound indictment of my failures as a mother or anything."
 
Sirrocco said:
Just realized something from the perspective of Ling Qingge.

"So... as cultivators take steps along the path, they become more themselves. My child is becoming an elemental creature of hunger and loneliness and darkness and frost that leeches away life. Well. Not like that's a profound indictment of my failures as a mother or anything."
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I would argue that Ling Qi is actually a creature of hugs and warmth. The hunger and loneliness and darkness and frost that leeches the life away is merely the reality of the world as she sees it, and an immortal's worldview becomes reality because of how Domain's work.
 
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