Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
[X] Tell her to help if she's so interested in you, you can talk later.
[X] I am the Student of [Winter's Muse][Songstress of Endings], Feel free to join the performance how you see fit
- Location
- Florida
Takin a moment to speculate what's fighting Chubby Elder in the sky. My candidates were a rogue Bai, someone of White Skies, and if they were of the cloud tribe I was imagining them take inspiration from Chernabog or Perun one of whom is a thunder god.
I also had a crazy thought it was Santa but dismissed it almost immediately, he's much farther north I'd imagine
Edit- wait no that's south
I also had a crazy thought it was Santa but dismissed it almost immediately, he's much farther north I'd imagine
Edit- wait no that's south
Last edited:
- Location
- the internet
Rogue Bai?...
In a meta sense, I don't like the write-in because it kind of... blows the load early?
Like, realistically my concerns about the ice lady not recognizing our relationship with Zeqing as legitimate are wrong, because the context of the moment demands that she goes along with it. And then we're in a place where she recognizes us and Zeqing as cool, and she's fighting on our side, and. Uh. Where do we go from here? What's the stakes in that later conversation we're having?
It frontloads all of the questions of identity and alien cultures at a time and space where we can't actually explore the issues, compacting them into tread ground for later discussions, without us really having had traveled them. I think about the post-battle debrief with her and it seems pretty boring. We've expended the entire primary topic of the exercise. There's no mystery, no conflict. She's accepted the potential wrinkles of actuality instantly, to the point she joins arms.
It's bleh. Sloooooow down a second, god dammit.
Like, realistically my concerns about the ice lady not recognizing our relationship with Zeqing as legitimate are wrong, because the context of the moment demands that she goes along with it. And then we're in a place where she recognizes us and Zeqing as cool, and she's fighting on our side, and. Uh. Where do we go from here? What's the stakes in that later conversation we're having?
It frontloads all of the questions of identity and alien cultures at a time and space where we can't actually explore the issues, compacting them into tread ground for later discussions, without us really having had traveled them. I think about the post-battle debrief with her and it seems pretty boring. We've expended the entire primary topic of the exercise. There's no mystery, no conflict. She's accepted the potential wrinkles of actuality instantly, to the point she joins arms.
It's bleh. Sloooooow down a second, god dammit.
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
- Pronouns
- They/Them
The write-in only answers two questions from Elsa, and even then not with any complex detail given the method. Of possibilities for the future? Actually communicating with her, instead of sending feelings and ideas through music. Or negotiating for her safety and legitimacy with the Sect, possibly involving the Elder or higher rank members that are in the battle group. Maybe even getting some discussions on what their Sky Palace is, and who/what the White Sky are all about.
I honestly don't understand what your concern is, especially wrapped up in vague metaphors. There's plenty of topics and moments in the future, if things go well with Elsa and she and her husband join up with Ling Qi.
My issue is the content of the vote basically demands that she accepts Ling Qi as a legitimate ice lady early on, pushing through/past one of the big potential barriers to her doing so, to a significant enough degree she (probably) joins arms with us. That's make any future question of our ice lady legitimacy basically moot. It would be ridiculous for her to seriously question it later.
Instead, when she's not sure of exactly what our deal is, there's grounds for friction on the subject. Which leads really nicely into her own cultural self-identity by way of comparison. It would be a pity to lose the subject as something to spar, debate, and mutually interrogate each other over, because doing so ties into Zeqing and Hanyi's identity and junk so nicely.
Edit: to be a bit more clear with what I mean, it's this. If the ice lady joins us on the basis of her curiosity/hunch alone, there's narrative room for her to contest our status as a proper ice lady. If she joins us knowing our relationship with Zeqing, then there's significantly less room for that to happen. And the difference isn't in-universe logic, it's meta-logic in how things in-universe have to be difference to accommodate different approaches.
Telling her we're Zeqing's student now leaves yrsillar with less flexibility later, because she basically has to take it well immediately or the ice lady plot takes a serious, serious blow right as it's getting started.
Last edited:
- Location
- Florida
Admittedly with that one I was thinking of the danger and dread Qi felt could also be taken as fear aura from a Bai, also just thought it might have been another Elder that killed killed Guan Zhis uncle like old mountain lady and there is a secret schism in the Sect.
I'm makin crack pot theories wearing a tinfoil hat
Last edited:
What about the fact that our domain becomes increasingly warm and welcoming to those whom we are closer to? Or the fact that Zeqing represents safety, happiness, and family for us rather than the unforgiving Cold? This is all unlikely to come up in Zeqing's names because it was opposed to her spiritual nature but it isn't something we are going to be able to hide.
The ice ladies do live in a society of some kind. Presumably they have family units some some type. Maybe not! But I suspect they do. Mentors representing safety, happiness, and family rather than just unforgiving Cold doesn't seem like it would be particularly alien.
Insofar as their spirits share Zeqing's path they can't represent them to her degree and remain alive. Zeqing's warmth towards us killed her.
Zeqing's a spirit. One rooted in isolation and so on and so forth.
This ice lady is a spirit-blooded human. She also doesn't appear particularly musical. Zeqing isn't the only model of ice lady around, chances are.
Which was addressed by this post, in case you missed it:
I'm saying that we might superficially resemble Elsa but Elsa's experience of Zeqing's cousins will be dramatically different than ours of Zeqing. Insofar as her own cultivation hews to the example presented by said spirits, she will find our increasingly warm domain strange.
Or maybe not! But it would certainly be something that comes up as she gets to know us better.
I think glyph's hangup on the latter was as silly as you think it is, but it's not true people criticizing the former were always doing the latter. As far as i can tell, it was only glyph going on about the latter.
Me and Katreus, for example, both had issues with how the vote "tells her to go do whatever" and expressed them in a variety of ways. None of them were based on the idea that the ice lady could "technically correct" read our statement and join the enemy, like she'd be incapable of doing so unless we give her an out or something. That would be silly.
Sure, cultural differences. But the bare fact of accepting us as legit won't be, can't be, up for debate, which is an avenue of friction I'd rather stay open. Or rather, I'd rather close it through in-character engagement instead of having tweaked in the background to sanity check our initial interactions because this one vote is pushing forwards the issue prematurely and yrsillar really needs this to no go tits up right off the bat.
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I think there's a presumption that just because Ling Qi reveals that she was Zeqing's student, Elsa has to accept her supposed association with the Old Winter. We don't know what the culture of White Sky is like, or what they consider proper lineage or status. There might be even more confusion from Elsa about how this imperial kid managed to get into the good graces of a spirit shard of Old Winter, to the point that the spirit entrusted her antithetical child to her, and one of her (IIRC) fundamental arts.
I honestly think you're worrying about concerns with very little basis to stand on about the write-in.
Well, I'll join you with fingers crossed that she doesn't accept it and blows us off. I just think yrsillar's too "nice" to do it.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Write-in takes it in a squeaker.
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
- Pronouns
- They/Them
...What? I never mentioned anything about her blowing us off. I'm saying that there's nothing indicated in the text that she automatically has to accept Ling Qi as a bona fide official Ice Lady. Maybe all the Old Winter spirits that the White Sky knows about don't have students, but rather 'induct' people they choose into their family—like Zeqing almost did—and then show them the ropes.
There's still potential futures where Elsa sticks around to figure out Ling Qi and what she's about. It just doesn't have to be strictly tied with her accepting Ling Qi's answer as her actually being connected with the Old Winter through lineage or whatever.
- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
Time to put on a concert.
Alright, I'm not a big fan of this outcome. It seems likely to be mostly similar to the default option, but taking a chunk out of the tension of our mutual mystery and the frantic tone of the default, without bringing anything new to the table to make up for it.
It just seems impatient and premature to me. We'll have to see, I guess.
And basically? This was a gamble we never needed to take at this moment. She seemed happy to approach us on the merits of her suspicion. This is potentially an unforced error on our part. And if she later showed dissatisfaction with our "lineage", in the now impossible case we don't go spilling the beans, I think that would be an interesting opportunity to engage with her and mull through various cultural differences.
My concern is with us pushing the question/exploration forwards to our first significant interaction, when we don't have the freedom to engage her on the subject at length, to smooth out friction. There's no real second chance here. And because @yrsillar is a) nice and b) already suffered through an aborted ice lady plot point once, I don't think there's a real possibility that the question of Zeqing or Ling Qi's legitimacy as her student can have any other answer than "nah, it's fine" if we're bringing it up now. Not when so much of the future rides on the high stakes present.
I obviously don't know what yrsillar had planned as far as that aspect of ice lady culture goes, but that's not relevant to my discomfort with trimming down his options/flexibility through awkward meta-narrative restraints forced by a write-in, whether purposeful or otherwise. Like, it's similar to the issues I had with Liao Zhu's ice lady interlude severely restricting how yrsillar could introduce the ice ladies to the actual narrative. It's better to not engage with issues or subjects that we're not actually going to be engaging with right now; the winning vote brings up our relationship with Zeqing at a time/place we can't engage with the implications. It just creates narrative baggage and headaches down the line.
It just seems impatient and premature to me. We'll have to see, I guess.
Here's my point: the lady talked about "lineage". If Ling Qi says "actually, I'm a student of this spirit" then that either has to meet whatever this woman's standards are for "lineage", or it doesn't. If she decides to help us, then it almost certainly means that it does meet meet those standards. If it doesn't meet her standards then... things get extremely uncertain.
And basically? This was a gamble we never needed to take at this moment. She seemed happy to approach us on the merits of her suspicion. This is potentially an unforced error on our part. And if she later showed dissatisfaction with our "lineage", in the now impossible case we don't go spilling the beans, I think that would be an interesting opportunity to engage with her and mull through various cultural differences.
My concern is with us pushing the question/exploration forwards to our first significant interaction, when we don't have the freedom to engage her on the subject at length, to smooth out friction. There's no real second chance here. And because @yrsillar is a) nice and b) already suffered through an aborted ice lady plot point once, I don't think there's a real possibility that the question of Zeqing or Ling Qi's legitimacy as her student can have any other answer than "nah, it's fine" if we're bringing it up now. Not when so much of the future rides on the high stakes present.
I obviously don't know what yrsillar had planned as far as that aspect of ice lady culture goes, but that's not relevant to my discomfort with trimming down his options/flexibility through awkward meta-narrative restraints forced by a write-in, whether purposeful or otherwise. Like, it's similar to the issues I had with Liao Zhu's ice lady interlude severely restricting how yrsillar could introduce the ice ladies to the actual narrative. It's better to not engage with issues or subjects that we're not actually going to be engaging with right now; the winning vote brings up our relationship with Zeqing at a time/place we can't engage with the implications. It just creates narrative baggage and headaches down the line.