I mean, it does makes sense storywise.
@yrsillar has clearly been building up the Job vs Family conflict and with our next advance insight building it only makes sense that it is about making it a "Your work is more important then your family" insight or not.
I agree and disagree. And sorry, I'm using your post as a jumping point for a big dumb post.
I agree that there has been a building narrative in the story concerning Job vs Family as a conflict, and there's been a number of things feeding into that, even as far as Jiao's broken Way. Where I disagree is that it makes sense storywise.
There have been a number of narrative cues that build towards a "family is a source of strength/success too" realization. There's been enough that I think that's the established narrative arc to follow. However, pretty much every time Zhengui comes up in the narrative, the vote options are formatted as "Do you want to do something with/for Zhengui OR do you want
more success?" This is directly incompatible with that lesson that's been hinted at. There's no opportunity to actually explore or even get a taste of the realization, because the deck is always stacked against Zhengui.
It's not always a matter of Ling Qi's biases either, pretty often the factual circumstances just sideline Zhengui. Back in the Cold Snap arc, we tried to include him in our considerations for the first vote. For pretty much every vote after that in the event, the martial outcomes(Our Job) were objectively better when we chose to leave him behind or operate where he wasn't. When we initially set things up with Wang, the vote we faced was a greater focus on getting in with Wang through shoring up his political standing(doing Our Job better) versus a greater focus on our tactics with Zhengui(not doing Our Job better). When we were interacting with the fungus entity, letting Zhengui take the hit for us meant preserving our cultivation ability for ~Darkness month~ and our trajectory of power building to meet our terrifying Cai-mandate(Our Job). Here, again, we can focus on Wang, our job, or Zhengui and Alingge, not our job.
We have been getting a few additional scenes with Zhengui lately which is nice, but he's miserable, unapproachable, and the only answers we were able to pry out of him primarily served the long-neglected Xuan Shi narrative, not really his own. Even when we chose Zhengui in the free-form social vote underground, it didn't do much to advance things or give hints. This sends the message that the only way to make progress is within the binary job vs Zhengui votes that we keep getting, if progress is even possible at all.
But again, that framework doesn't lead to a resolution where family is seen as a source of strength or progress. It probably can't, because it forces trade-offs/comparative failure in her career responsibilities. So you're only reinforcing the bad mental habits plagueing Ling Qi, without any opportunity for counter-examples. It doesn't look like there's an organic path forwards to where we want to get to. The ultimate issue is that the players do not have choices that can constructively achieve their goals, or even clearly lead to them. Blind choices aren't really choices, and they lead to 5th dimensional chess arguments that make everyone miserable.
And the frustrating thing is Zhengui being so upset right now is probably masking more fundamental in-character issues in their relationship. It's a very obvious symptom which calls out to be addressed, but it's a distraction from some of the very long-term structural deficits in their interaction which have lingered while being difficult to address. One of the big issues is Ling Qi doesn't really do things with Zhengui. Not substantial things, and even leisure activities, like music, are things he can't really contribute to. But the big one is cultivation.
They don't really cultivate together. Sure, they practice and spar together, but that's more like supervising independent study than training. Ling Qi doesn't have the tools to provide insight to Zhengui's cultivation, and for the most part the reverse is true as well.
There are times Zhengui has benefited from deeper conceptual tutelage. There was the time Xuan Shi shared some principles and exercises from his Earth qi expertise that helped Zhengui mingle his Wood qi with the environment. Gu Tai's spirit bird companion shared insights on the function of opposing qi natures, which lead to Zhengui's self-destruct tech; Gu Tai also generally helped Zhen with projecting his Fire qi in attacks.
The only time I can think of that Ling Qi and Zhengui collaborated like anything close to that is when she taught him to stealth. Where either of them taught the other anything. That was month 5 of last year. 16-ish months ago.
And he's not even good at stealth/it stalled out advancing completely. That's unacceptable in a spirit bond's narrative. We need to get our hands on something we can actually do together convincingly. An Art would be ideal, but even a freaking hobby or something would be welcome at this point.
