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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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1986ctcel said:
EDIT: If the argument is that it's not the right time to explore at the moment then it follows that it's also not the right time to mod an Art and that we should instead be voting for the plan that has us do Sect duties related to the war.
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Because art modding is at least directly related to future breakpoints in Green we need to accomplish i.e. creating a (successor) art.

Exploration right now feels a tad frivolous, and while I'd prefer doing a Sect Job instead that plan's not going to win.
 
AbeoLogos said:
Exploring using the moon map for a place to build a garden is silly. Nothing about the project of the garden requires any special location. This is missing the point of the project, and Zhengui's goals, completely. An entirely mundane garden achieves what Zhengui wants just fine. In fact, considering he wants a place that the entire family can hang out in and enjoy, some location off in the depths of the wilderness is actively counterproductive because of the difficulty it adds for Qingge and Biyu getting to visit.

Ling Qi's cultivation of Wind Thief was concretely available to her as something she could approach and dedicate time towards. Flouncing about in the woods was a means to the end of cultivating the art that ended up having value on its own thematically. The same relationship does not exist here for exploration, and nothing about the Wind Thief scene opened up any narrative doors or laid hooks for further moon intrigue.

As it stands, there's just no real objective in exploring. It's not clear what Ling Qi would search for, she does not have established habits as exploring for exploration's sake, and nothing in recent narrative presents any motivation towards starting at this moment. Flatly, you're wrong, SSC does not motivate Ling Qi, because it never has. There isn't a single instance of that being true, anywhere in the story. You're fixated on an ought, one I happen to agree with you on, rather than what is.

Yes, Ling Qi's behaviour should match the themes of SSC more, but it doesn't. And because it doesn't, it hasn't, I don't find SSC's existence as a convincing argument for a certain course of action. Yes, we learned MSS in part because it matches the aspirations inherent to SSC. But this hasn't come to anything, and the specific way it didn't was Ling Qi being close-minded and incurious when there was an opportunity for spiritual exploration. Given that, it doesn't make sense to me that she'd suddenly attain an urgent sympathy to repeat the exercise.

The whole thing can sit on a shelf until there's a proper opportunity to start living up to basic character concepts, in my opinion. I'm not in a big rush to disappoint ourselves again.
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So this entire argument seems to boil down to an argument that Ling Qi can only start living up to basic character concepts when there is a proper opportunity, but until then we shouldn't seek out those proper opportunities. The conclusion then, that I come away from regarding this argument, if it was true in the slightest, is that questers don't have the agency to change a character outside of GM fiat and given opportunities, even when the players have the general possibility through regularly given options.

That seems ridiculous. If we can't make choices regarding Ling Qi's personality, what drives her, and what she wants, then why should we even have monthly plans to begin with? Just have the whole thing planned out by the GM for what arts Ling Qi will be training and then during the course of the month give the players opportunities to affect changes in the character. The logic chain displayed here is disturbingly deterministic given that Ling Qi has choices about what she is interested in and what she wants to do.

Furthermore, SSC does motivate Ling Qi, because it has motivated and influenced the players' choices in what arts we want Ling Qi to learn all the way to how we decided Ling Qi was to approach the Corrupted Cavern. To say that it doesn't motivate Ling Qi's choices is to deny the very real impact and effect it has on the players, who are the ones making various choices for Ling Qi. In addition, given that we have had it for literally two months, it seems quite a bit early to simply dismiss SSC's impact on Ling Qi's story. Although, if we keep dismissing its impact then it most certainly won't have one, so I guess there is a bit of self-fulling prophecy going on here.

Also, there is simply no way one can read the LFotWT and not see the narrative hooks and moon intrigue that was started with such an art. Remember the Cyan Moon Deer who delivered the Moon Map to us and how he saw us cavorting about? Or possibly the whole thing with the Weilu shifting it's head upon us dancing with LFotWT? It is really hard to argue that at least one of those isn't a plot hook or possible moon intrigue.

Ultimately, though, this argument deviates from justifications about taking the explore action and delves into a meta argument that we need to wait for the right opportunity to effect the change we want on Ling Qi. And that argument doesn't deny any IC justifications that might arise from engaging in exploration, or, really, the justifications already discussed. The argument simply states that the justifications don't matter because it has to be by the QM's gifts that any character development occurs. I disagree with that.
 
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Thor's Twin said:
Also, there is simply no way one can read the LFotWT and not see the narrative hooks and moon intrigue that was started with such an art. Remember the Cyan Moon Deer who delivered the Moon Map to us and how he saw us cavorting about? Or possibly the whole thing with the Weilu shifting it's head upon us dancing with LFotWT? It is really hard to argue that at least one of those isn't a plot hook or possible moon intrigue.
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We're cultivating Songseeker's Ceremony this coming turn no matter what; if yrsillar was dropping a plot hook for moon hijinks, SSC is the best way to pick it up, just as earlier moon missions directly came about as a result of cultivating Eight Phase Ceremony. I wouldn't want to rely on a gacha to trigger these, either as writer or as quester.

I like exploration fine, but we've done it several times already in this thread and I'd like to do something completely new, especially since yrsillar has been on such a roll lately of engaging with the philosophies and metaphysics that underlie arts themselves. It would be neat to see how that ties into art modification, both for its own sake and as preparation for creating our own arts later.
 
GlassMask said:
With Art Modding we are doing something that has the potential to be really useful to the sect (with Ling Qi potentially creating a communication art), which matters in a time of war. Meanwhile exploration is just a selfish option. We could have done that while recovering, but now is the time for action, not diddling our thumbs. The war is already going on, the sect is on war footing, we cant be playing around anymore.
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Lol no, Ling Qi is not some special snowflake or heaven-sent once-in-a-generation genius and certainly not when it comes to Art modding for the very first time. There is zero chance she's going to figure out some new and never before seen way to create a communication art that will somehow be useful to the sect as a whole especially when she doesn't even know the first thing about it.

HDW isn't even a particularly hard to find or cultivate Art, dozens of Inner Sect students before her must have had similar ideas and nothing has come of it that we know of. So either it's impossible or it's already been done.

"We want to mod HDW because we want info on what modding Arts is like and we don't care if we break HDW cause we barely use it so let's experiment" is at least an understandable and honest reason compared to trying to make the Art modding option into some grand meaningful thing (and certainly not "playing around") and contrasting it with "the exploration option is selfish or inappropriate when there's a war on".
 
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picklepikkl said:
We're cultivating Songseeker's Ceremony this coming turn no matter what; if yrsillar was dropping a plot hook for moon hijinks, SSC is the best way to pick it up, just as earlier moon missions directly came about as a result of cultivating Eight Phase Ceremony. I wouldn't want to rely on a gacha to trigger these, either as writer or as quester.

I like exploration fine, but we've done it several times already in this thread and I'd like to do something completely new, especially since yrsillar has been on such a roll lately of engaging with the philosophies and metaphysics that underlie arts themselves. It would be neat to see how that ties into art modification, both for its own sake and as preparation for creating our own arts later.
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For the first part, that actually has very little to do with what I was commenting about. I was commenting about the assertion that no plot hooks or moon intrigue was given through LFotWT cultivation, which is not true. I agree, that any such hooks will likely be triggered by SSC cultivation Moon Quests. However, the last time we had a Moon Quest, the same quest that gave us SSC, it was amplified by us exploring that same turn. To say that exploring with the Moon Map can not have synergy with cultivating our moon given cultivation arts denies the very real past that we have already experienced.

As for the second point, I think that is a perfectly valid reason to vote for Art Modification. You'll notice, that I'm not arguing against any such arguments regarding modifying HDW. What I am arguing against is the impression that it is a bad time to explore or that we don't have a justification to explore. Both of which I disagree with vehemently.
 
[X] Plan: Rainbows and Glitter

There's some real existential horror coming from the Sun , so looking for the Moon seems like the best plan to me, after all, the Sun is eclipsed by the Moon. :D
 
1986ctcel said:
Lol no, Ling Qi is not some special snowflake or heaven-sent once-in-a-generation genius and certainly not when it comes to Art modding for the very first time. There is zero chance she's going to figure out some new and never before seen way to create a communication art that will somehow be useful to the sect as a whole especially when she doesn't even know the first thing about it.

HDW isn't even a particularly hard to find or cultivate Art, dozens of Inner Sect students before her must have had similar ideas and nothing has come of it that we know of. So either it's impossible or it's already been done.

"We want to mod HDW because we want info on what modding Arts is like and we don't care if we break HDW cause we barely use it so let's experiment" is at least an understandable and honest reason compared to trying to make the Art modding option into some grand meaningful thing (and certainly not "playing around") and contrasting it with "the exploration option is selfish or inappropriate when there's a war on".
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...I think at the very least, you're misunderstanding the intent here. It wasn't dishonest reasoning, like you're implying. Like, you can say its incorrect but um, no need to throw accusations around if you know what I mean.
 
1986ctcel said:
Lol no, Ling Qi is not some special snowflake or heaven-sent once-in-a-generation genius and certainly not when it comes to Art modding for the very first time. There is zero chance she's going to figure out some new and never before seen way to create a communication art that will somehow be useful to the sect as a whole especially when she doesn't even know the first thing about it.

HDW isn't even a particularly hard to find or cultivate Art, dozens of Inner Sect students before her must have had similar ideas and nothing has come of it that we know of. So either it's impossible or it's already been done.

"We want to mod HDW because we want info on what modding Arts is like and we don't care if we break HDW cause we barely use it so let's experiment" is at least an understandable and honest reason compared to trying to make the Art modding option into some grand meaningful thing (and certainly not "playing around") and contrasting it with "the exploration option is selfish or inappropriate when there's a war on".
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...Ling Qi isn't going to be working alone, though. She knows people who do communication arts. And I think "expanding our capabilities" is certainly something that we could do to benefit the Sect!

It's also assisting her, and us in understanding how future art development is going to work.

And for all the people saying "Ling Qi can communicate just fine by doing qi stuff"...no? no, I really don't think that's how this works.
 
Inserted Tally
Adhoc vote count started by Thor's Twin on Jul 13, 2020 at 3:35 PM, finished with 693 posts and 158 votes.
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Lena27 said:
...I think at the very least, you're misunderstanding the intent here. It wasn't dishonest reasoning, like you're implying. Like, you can say its incorrect but um, no need to throw accusations around if you know what I mean.
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Then maybe people should quit talking up how "useful" the Art modding will be to the war and talking down to all the Exploration voters by directly stating or indirectly implying that the vote for Exploration is "frivolous"/"selfish"/"inappropriate" and that it's "not the right time for it" and all but outright implying people are "wrong voting" just because they think exploration might be fun instead of "serious and necessary".

You can only go on so much about how this single free AP (that we got from just rolling better than expected on our cultivation) devoted to "insert your chosen option here" matters SO MUCH to the narrative or to Ling Qi's advancement in cultivation/contribution to the war and the sect that it looks dishonest to people opposed to it.

The math cabal plans already squeeze out nearly all the fun by making us go the maximum AP efficient cultivation monster route (goodbye Coldstar Blade and the interesting potential of the Contrast keyword and any insights we might have gotten from it), we don't need to entirely crush the fun out of the month votes on our own.

TheBiggerFish said:
...Ling Qi isn't going to be working alone, though. She knows people who do communication arts. And I think "expanding our capabilities" is certainly something that we could do to benefit the Sect!

It's also assisting her, and us in understanding how future art development is going to work.

And for all the people saying "Ling Qi can communicate just fine by doing qi stuff"...no? no, I really don't think that's how this works.
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Then why even bother having someone like Bian Ya along as the communications specialist

And no citation needed that "modding an Art by switching a keyword out for another" is something related to building an entire Art by ourselves (the latter is far more involved than the relatively simple operation of the former).
 
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Respecting the scary murder flower goddess is just good sense to not become a flowerbed, remember though she had no clue what the hell they were planning when grandpa sun tricked her and called her home.
 
Varder said:
She did exactly that thing.
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Yes, because bowing your head to someone is widely understood to mean "I'm okay with you painfully remaking my entire being despite the bodily harm that entails". You can't consent to something without knowing what it is. That's...the entire basis of how consent works.
 
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1986ctcel said:
Then maybe people should quit talking up how "useful" the Art modding will be to the war and talking down to all the Exploration voters by directly stating or indirectly implying that the vote for Exploration is "frivolous"/"selfish"/"inappropriate" and that it's "not the right time for it" and all but outright implying people are "wrong voting" just because they think exploration might be fun instead of "serious and necessary".

You can only go on so much about how this single free AP (that we got from just rolling better than expected on our cultivation) devoted to "insert your chosen option here" matters SO MUCH to the narrative or to Ling Qi's advancement in cultivation/contribution to the war and the sect that it looks dishonest to people opposed to it.

The math cabal plans already squeeze out nearly all the fun by making us go the maximum AP efficient cultivation monster route (goodbye Coldstar Blade and the interesting potential of the Contrast keyword and any insights we might have gotten from it), we don't need to entirely crush the fun out of the month votes on our own.
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Just because you don't think it's fun doesn't mean we all agree. I love the philosophical weirdness arts and Ways tap into, and this seems like a great way to see more of that. In addition, practicing art modding on a mostly disposable art before we start doing it with arts we care about or trying to make them whole-cloth just seems like the reasonable thing to do?
 
Candesce said:
It's as much consent as Renxiang gave when summoned to Shenhua's presence.

I wouldn't count it, but there are probably cultivation powers that disagree with me.
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I thought Renxiang kept asking to be let into Shenhua's presence.

In that case everyone meant well and it still went horribly wrong with CRX still dealing with the trauma from it to the point where she disassociates when around her mother.
 
If that counted anyway as her accepting the flower goddess's adoption then I'm thinking it's in the same league as eating food from the underworld when nobody warned you because no shit that's a terrible idea you shouldn't eat underworld food
 
1986ctcel said:
Then why even bother having someone like Bian Ya along as the communications specialist
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Bian Ya has been run ragged by the Sect's reliance on her in the war efforts. She has been exhausted every time we've seen her but her skills are too valuable and necessary in the war effort for her to be given a break. A successfully modded HDW art wouldn't be up to her arts levels but it would still be very useful and valued by the sect. When soldiers or officers of any rank are suffering from combat fatigue or are just so exhausted that they can't fulfill their objectives properly, the army will give them some time off. However if they are essential for army operations then the time off would be very short and only provided if absolutely necessary. So basically they're gonna continue to work Bian Ya to the bone. The only other communications-specced cultivator we know of is Fu Xiang who I believe has gone home. He's no longer at the Sect to help out. If there were a sufficient number of communications specialists then poor Bian Ya wouldn't be this exhausted. Sure, we wouldn't be a specialist but it would still likely be very helpful to the war effort.
That's if its a success. If it isn't and we ruin the art, well not much is lost b/c its HDW.
 
Varder said:
She did exactly that thing.
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Hey, can we not excuse the literal and metaphorical rape of a teenager's body and soul by saying the explicitly coerced consent extracted from her by two vastly more powerful authority figures who threatened to kill her if she refused means that it was totally ok for them to splice her soul together with a monstrously bloodthirsty all-consuming "goddess" that wants to murder and consume the souls of everyone in the Empire that Liling is nominally loyal to and is at worst "disdainful" of?
 
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