Remove ads

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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
Whether Liling gave consent would likely differ depending on the ethical framework one judges the world.

In this case though, most ethical frameworks would recognize that there was coercion involved. Now, in some cases, these ethical frameworks would say that the coercion is no excuse for the action consented to conduct (such as the murder of another). Here though, I can't think of a reason why the coercion shouldn't be taken into account.

As such, I would say that Liling did consent to the adoption by the Goddess, when she greeted said Goddess as Grandmother she accepted her adoption into the Goddess' family and Liling is intelligent enough on matters of spirits to know what that would mean, but given the, frankly, massive amount of coercion involved from an incredibly powerful spirit and her White Great-Grandfather, I don't think that any consent given by Liling should be held against her.
 
Inserted tally
Adhoc vote count started by Thor's Twin on Jul 13, 2020 at 4:15 PM, finished with 709 posts and 158 votes.
Click to expand...
 
Inserted tally
Adhoc vote count started by Thor's Twin on Jul 13, 2020 at 4:15 PM, finished with 709 posts and 158 votes.
Click to expand...
 
Thor's Twin said:
Whether Liling gave consent would likely differ depending on the ethical framework one judges the world.

In this case though, most ethical frameworks would recognize that there was coercion involved. Now, in some cases, these ethical frameworks would say that the coercion is no excuse for the action consented to conduct (such as the murder of another). Here though, I can't think of a reason why the coercion shouldn't be taken into account.

As such, I would say that Liling did consent to the adoption by the Goddess, when she greeted said Goddess as Grandmother she accepted her adoption into the Goddess' family and Liling is intelligent enough on matters of spirits to know what that would mean, but given the, frankly, massive amount of coercion involved from an incredibly powerful spirit and her White Great-Grandfather, I don't think that any consent given by Liling should be held against her.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Even if she did agree to become a great-granddaughter, Liling was never informed and never consented to having her body and spirit violated and permanently changed in an extraordinarily painful process in which the Goddess is basically consuming her and will eventually spit her out as something else entirely. Also there really was no way she could've said no anyway.
 
To be clear, I view the fact that Shenhua does not actively avoid her daughter knowing the pain her own presence causes to be an indictment of her as a mother. She has a moral obligation to at least not continue to aggravate the harm she did.

Though, as a White, that level of sympathy might be beyond her due to her Way. Its really just an awful situation all around, which is probably why she has the medical saint around this time.
 
Last edited:
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.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Technically, Sun Liling has more legal rights than Cai Renxiang had, because mini-Ren was a mortal, and those don't have rights. So in theory it'd be a greater trespass, from the specific view of imperial law.

Practically, of course, it didn't matter what either of them thought due to extreme disparities in power and authority.

I think it's important to note that the cogs that turn as noble clans progress routinely crush members of those clans, for all sorts of reasons. Clans aren't just families, they're also governments. Military obligations, political marriages, matters of honour or face, ceding to greater powers, internal succession disputes, compelled sacrificial or servant Ways, etc. It's common for clans to view their members' lives as currency to spend, one way or another. Mostly just not polite to say it that way.
 
Last edited:
What Sun Shao did was objectively horrifying but it's kind of on par with what we've seen so far isn't it. Everyone saw the clan who cultivates sacrificing their own blood for vengeance and family, and then does a Pikachu face when they sacrifice their own 'blood' for vengeance and family. What did you think was going to happen? Just take a moment and think of the horrors Bai Meizhen have already experienced and would have experienced more of should Yrs not be murdered if he dared hurt best snek. Selling out to a goddess who kinda wants you dead is admittedly pretty bad even by Empire standards but Imperial cultivation is all about cutting out parts of yourself and they've not been shy of forcing people to cultivate harmful things before. Like, I like Liling. Always have, even when she's been antagonistic, and I still feel like she'd make a great friend except it'd hurt Meizhen. But the Sun's entire thing was always that they were willing to go beyond extreme lengths to avenge their family. With the Arts she's been cultivating Sun Liling probably already have Insights about sacrificing parts of ones blood/body/self, doing anything to defeat ones opponents, and how life is pain and war. The betrayal is monstrous but if there's anyone who's equipped to have parts of herself sacrificed for power it's Sun Liling, horrible as it sounds.
 
dycouza said:
What Sun Shao did was objectively horrifying but it's kind of on par with what we've seen so far isn't it. Everyone saw the clan who cultivates sacrificing their own blood for vengeance and family, and then does a Pikachu face when they sacrifice their own 'blood' for vengeance and family. What did you think was going to happen? Just take a moment and think of the horrors Bai Meizhen have already experienced and would have experienced more of should Yrs not be murdered if he dared hurt best snek. Selling out to a goddess who kinda wants you dead is admittedly pretty bad even by Empire standards but Imperial cultivation is all about cutting out parts of yourself and they've not been shy of forcing people to cultivate harmful things before. Like, I like Liling. Always have, even when she's been antagonistic, and I still feel like she'd make a great friend except it'd hurt Meizhen. But the Sun's entire thing was always that they were willing to go beyond extreme lengths to avenge their family. With the Arts she's been cultivating Sun Liling probably already have Insights about sacrificing parts of ones blood/body/self, doing anything to defeat ones opponents, and how life is pain and war. The betrayal is monstrous but if there's anyone who's equipped to have parts of herself sacrificed for power it's Sun Liling, horrible as it sounds.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
No, no it is not.

Nothing the Bai or Shenhua have done is on the order of this.....this-ness with the Sunflower Goddess since this is Twilight King level of Soul-fuckery and Soul-Eating shit.

Sun Shao's Domain literally consumes the souls of his enemies and his allies and probably anyone who died for him in order to gain more power and the Sunflower Goddess is a jungle-sized version of that.
 
Last edited:
JohnnieBoy123 said:
How on earth would you interpret that as consent? The Sunflower Goddess literally just tried to murder her and then her grandfather gave her over and made her disregard her own sense of autonomy. Her internal narrative even says that "she could only obey".

She agreed to this upon pain of death, much like someone being robbed at gunpoint.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

What I meant was that if a willing agreement is a factor to a bargain like this (like it is in some irl folklore where one has to let a vampire in, for example), then she gave that agreement. Yes, her only other option was death, but in some myths death is the correct choice.

I didn't mean that she chose that on her own free will as people understand it today, I meant that the amount of agreement she expressed would be enough for a bargain to be considered "willing" by whatever spirits preside over such things.

1986ctcel said:
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?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Well, I never excused it. Good thing we're on the same page here.
 
1986ctcel said:
No, no it is not.

Nothing the Bai or Shenhua have done is on the order of this.....this-ness with the Sunflower Goddess since this is Twilight King level of Soul-fuckery and Soul-Eating shit.

Sun Shao's Domain literally consumes the souls of his enemies and his allies and probably anyone who died for him in order to gain more power and the Sunflower Goddess is a jungle-sized version of that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'm with @dycouza here. Sun Shao claim to fame is that after he found out is home has been ransacked and his family killed he organized a large scale expedition to kill all the Red Jungle natives and went behind the Bai in order to launch his ill thought offensive. There was a lot of speculation in the thread, and confirmed in the interlude, that he made a deal with the xianxia devil/Sunflower Goddess to win. Him doubling down on the deal when he feels that his family is threatened is expected, if he wouldn't have done this he wouldn't have invaded the jungle in the first place.
 
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".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Disclaimer: I was neutral to the vote (didn't even vote), but I still wanted to answer to this argument because I felt it wasn't an accurate depiction of the world.

That is not how cultivation in the Empire works. Maye it is how it should work, but so much of it is based on heroic programming (arts only one person can use or which were never shared) and/or family secrets (also do not forget: the Great Sects are a relatively young institution), that you do not have to be a special snowflake to fill a valuable niche nobody has currently filled, just inventive and lucky. The fact most people try to be duelists exacerbates the problem. So I think there is a chance of carving a niche randomly because other people nearby happen to not be filling it right now. Su Ling got a spot on the inner Sect, after all, happening to fill a useful niche no one was happening to fill at a time, even though, fox blood or no fox blood, the Sectshould have the resources to fill it by your logic.

1986ctcel said:
No, no it is not.

Nothing the Bai or Shenhua have done is on the order of this.....this-ness with the Sunflower Goddess since this is Twilight King level of Soul-fuckery and Soul-Eating shit.

Sun Shao's Domain literally consumes the souls of his enemies and his allies and probably anyone who died for him in order to gain more power and the Sunflower Goddess is a jungle-sized version of that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

We do not know how bad what the Sunflower Goddess did is , unless there is discord WOG I do not know about. yes, it is certainly capital B Bad, but we do not actually have proof it is "Twilight King level of Soul-fuckery and Soul-Eating shit" or actually worse than what the Bai or Shenhua did on the abuse scale. It could be "just" a very painful and violative powerup that is still very not ok without consent, or a forceful conversion into spirit bloodded not worse for the psychology than being born a Bai (ie not too personality altering) other than the fact the process is much worse than being born. Of course, it could be much worse but I do not understand while people keep taking it from granted that this is beyond Shenhua's side effects or Bai's training bad (both of which were done on younger ages and with no consent, although I guess Shenhua at least may have done it by accident judging from the RR chapter describing the event).
 
Last edited:
Sun Liling trusted her grandfather to do what best for her, but he did what´s best for the "family".

I have only a vague idea what happened here and even less what going to happen, but nothing I read sounded like: "Please hold me firm with you thorny vines and pierce my flesh inside out."

Not that it matters much, but the next time a vote comes up about Sun Liling, I know what my choice will be. (Betrayals and hurtful choice to friends are of course excepted.)
 
storryeater said:
We do not know how bad what the Sunflower Goddess did is , unless there is discord WOG I do not know about. yes, it is certainly capital B Bad, but we do not actually have proof it is "Twilight King level of Soul-fuckery and Soul-Eating shit" or actually worse than what the Bai or Shenhua did on the abuse scale. It could be "just" a very painful and violative powerup that is still very not ok without consent, or a forceful conversion into spirit bloodded not worse for the psychology than being born a Bai (ie not too personality altering) other than the fact the process is much worse than being born. Of course, it could be much worse but I do not understand while people keep taking it from granted that this is beyond Shenhua's side effects or Bai's training bad (both of which were done on younger ages and with no consent, although I guess Shenhua at least may have done it by accident judging from the RR chapter describing the event).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I mean, it seems fair to assume that one of the concepts undergirding the Sunflower Goddess is "Sacrifice," considering that she's basically patterned after the kind of ancient goddess that gets hearts offered to her on temple-top altars. Given that fact, I'd expect a reward much more in the line of paying a high cost for a strong reward... And given that what the "reward" is will depend on her perspective of what is good and valuable, it's safe to assume that even a benign act of the Sunflower Goddess will result in something Liling wouldn't want. And the Sunflower Goddess doesn't like her!

So yeah, assuming it's bad is pretty fair.
 
Anderein said:
I mean, it seems fair to assume that one of the concepts undergirding the Sunflower Goddess is "Sacrifice," considering that she's basically patterned after the kind of ancient goddess that gets hearts offered to her on temple-top altars. Given that fact, I'd expect a reward much more in the line of paying a high cost for a strong reward... And given that what the "reward" is will depend on her perspective of what is good and valuable, it's safe to assume that even a benign act of the Sunflower Goddess will result in something Liling wouldn't want. And the Sunflower Goddess doesn't like her!

So yeah, assuming it's bad is pretty fair.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Again, same could be said for Bai upbringing or Shenhua remodelling.

I am not saying this isn't Bad, I am saying that several people and institutions seem to suck so much that we have no clue if it is worse than what the other guys do.
 
storryeater said:
Again, same could be said for Bai upbringing or Shenhua remodelling.

I am not saying this isn't Bad, I am saying that several people and institutions seem to suck so much that we have no clue if it is worse than what the other guys do.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The difference is that both Bai and Cai exist within a human context, with a still-basically-human perspective. (I'd still say even the most remote White is more essentially human than any spirit, by virtue of starting off as something that a human wanted to be.) They share a common culture with the Empire, and the people affected by their choices can understand what they want and where they're coming from. Even when they suck, they suck in a human way. Whatever the after-effects, they will be such that the unwilling recipient can still exist within human society.

Imagine you're given a gift you can't refuse or dispose of by a person you don't know. Which would you rather have give that gift to you, a human being or, I don't know, some sort of giant spider alien? Because the Sunflower Goddess very definitely seems more in the spider-alien classification, and I don't think Sun Liling wants to spend all day weaving webs and eating flies. That's great for a spider, but it's not something she values!
 
storryeater said:
Disclaimer: I was neutral to the vote (didn't even vote), but I still wanted to answer to this argument because I felt it wasn't an accurate depiction of the world.

That is not how cultivation in the Empire works. Maye it is how it should work, but so much of it is based on heroic programming (arts only one person can use or which were never shared) and/or family secrets (also do not forget: the Great Sects are a relatively young institution), that you do not have to be a special snowflake to fill a valuable niche nobody has currently filled, just inventive and lucky. The fact most people try to be duelists exacerbates the problem. So I think there is a chance of carving a niche randomly because other people nearby happen to not be filling it right now. Su Ling got a spot on the inner Sect, after all, happening to fill a useful niche no one was happening to fill at a time, even though, fox blood or no fox blood, the Sectshould have the resources to fill it by your logic.



We do not know how bad what the Sunflower Goddess did is , unless there is discord WOG I do not know about. yes, it is certainly capital B Bad, but we do not actually have proof it is "Twilight King level of Soul-fuckery and Soul-Eating shit" or actually worse than what the Bai or Shenhua did on the abuse scale. It could be "just" a very painful and violative powerup that is still very not ok without consent, or a forceful conversion into spirit bloodded not worse for the psychology than being born a Bai (ie not too personality altering) other than the fact the process is much worse than being born. Of course, it could be much worse but I do not understand while people keep taking it from granted that this is beyond Shenhua's side effects or Bai's training bad (both of which were done on younger ages and with no consent, although I guess Shenhua at least may have done it by accident judging from the RR chapter describing the event).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
No Shenhua did not do it by accident. CRX said herself in the RR chapter that Shenhua does nothing by mistake, all her moves are calculated and there is nothing that happens outside of her knowledge. CRX was a little girl and she wanted to meet her mom, she had no idea what was gonna happen. Lin Hai or whoever was assigned to take care of her at that moment was more than capable of stopping a little kid in the Red realm from a rebellious act. I don't know where the exact chapter is and I'm not gonna hunt it down now but I'm pretty sure I remember CRX saying in the RR chap that when Shenhua heard that CRX had defied her caretakers orders and was coming to see her, CaiMom said okay and let it happen. And you better believe that Shenhua knew how her presence would affect a child, how it would traumatize her for life. Maybe she doesn't have the ability to care anymore but Shenhua is a White cultivator who is ~300 years old, she knew how her presence and/or Domain affects the minds of mortals by that point.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top