Remove ads

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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
Reader mode
Ohnonono said:
By the way, have we ever picked options that were truly bad in hindsight?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The Bloody Moon Dream. Ling Qi stepped up for a test of character and then flunked it so hard it gave her a minor Heart Demon (not explicitly called that, but it was a negative multiplier to spiritual and physical cultivation) in exchange for a very minor Way bonus, half of which has since been rendered useless. It gave some cool narrative, but IMO the most valuable thing we got was a harsh reminder for the thread to consider character implications of votes.

That vote was 100% a trap option of the kind Anderein is describing, and it beat the highest-ranking non-trap option 86-20.

EDIT: I'm sure CRX and possibly Ling QI and the rest being traumatized by Liming going berserk - regardless of who Ling QI picks to dream-dive - could make for some interesting narrative. That doesn't mean it's a good outcome.

BungieONI said:
But we have no reason to assume this?

The discussion with the Yukionna had that comment be made in a "She was tougher than the others to lead astray", i.e having less desires made it trickier for the spirit. Yes there is less to work with and so efforts must be concentrated on those small things, but there is also less to work with. CRX has consistently been a character that it is hard to decieve, tempt, or otherwise suborn and that resistance should carry forward.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We do have a reason to assume this, and that reason is Ling Qi's own experience with temptation dreams:

yrsillar said:
Ling Qi felt her vision blur. Of course, Meizhen was her first and best friend, the hand that had given her the first and most important boost into the world of Immortals. What sort of terrible world would it be where Ling Qi couldn't return her feelings? Yet…. it felt wrong. Meizhen, who idolized her aunt and who was working hard to be useful to her clan, would just drop everything for her? Meizhen who had herself firmly rejected the idea of being closer than friends, that last night in the inner sect?

Would Cai Renxiang really so easily abandon the things she talked about? Would Suyin abandon her place in the Sect, her mentor, her projects, or Su Ling her revenge? Xiulan and Han Jian were both dutiful children to their clans, why would they...

No this was wrong. This fantastical scenario, this...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The first step to getting out is realizing that the presentation of your desires conflicts with reality. CRX has few desires, so it's easier to meet all of them without creating an obvious conflict with reality. Yes, the spirit had less to work with in order to deceive her, but it succeeded and now we have less to work with in order to bring her back.

EDIT2: To give specific details, that dream was fulfilling Ling Qi's desires to keep her friends and family close and to be safe and to keep all of them safe and for them to be happy and to not have to deal with politics and... several things had to give in order to serve all that complexity, including her friends' motives and ability to escape their previous situations. That created enough flaws in the dream to cumulatively tip Ling Qi off.

CRX's dream needs to meet far fewer ands, and the big two (Mommy's love and an ideal society) have zero incongruities between them.
 
Last edited:
Well what's done is done. Instead of raging on thread for choosing red button I will just make myself tea, eat a cake and enjoy fireworks. Happy New Year everyone!
 
[X] Xia Lin
Given their similarity and how that overlaps with Ling Qi's Heart Demon, this is just a surprisingly interesting option. Ling Qi feeling like she has a grasp of what makes Xia Lin tick, and that it's like her, also provides justification for Ling Qi thinking she can navigate the other girl out of her Dream.

[] Gan Guangli
I would really like to vote for Gan Guangli, because I think they have some similar life experiences, viewed through a wide lens, and the juxtaposition of their very different characters in light of that is fodder for good narrative and character development. But Ling Qi doesn't know that to even the vague degree we know. It simply doesn't make a lot of sense for Ling Qi to make the choice to pick him, unless maybe under the simplistic assumption that his core dream is serving Cai Renxiang, so shocking him out of a delusion to do it in reality would be easy. Ultimately, I just can't justify it.

However, because this is such a ripe opportunity for injecting some of his issues and history into the narrative, I think @yrsillar should have him feature in the denouement to the spirit encounter. Ling Qi recognizing something in his demeanor, a line or two of dialogue, or even a short chat. Something to hint that there's more to him than meets the eye. Her eye so far, at least. There's not much point bringing him back for this mission if it's not used as an opportunity to expand on his character. It'd be a swing and a miss similar to Xuan Shi getting reintroduced at a party/for a mission, then not actually featuring in the mission. Gan Guangli is more than a foible of Cai Renxiang's; he needs to be treated like it.
 
tryingtobewitty said:
The Bloody Moon Dream. Ling Qi stepped up for a test of character and then flunked it so hard it gave her a minor Heart Demon (not explicitly called that, but it was a negative multiplier to spiritual and physical cultivation) in exchange for a very minor Way bonus, half of which has since been rendered useless. It gave some cool narrative, but IMO the most valuable thing we got was a harsh reminder for the thread to consider character implications of votes.

That vote was 100% a trap option of the kind Anderein is describing, and it beat the highest-ranking non-trap option 86-20.

EDIT: I'm sure CRX and possibly Ling QI and the rest being traumatized by Liming going berserk - regardless of who Ling QI picks to dream-dive - could make for some interesting narrative. That doesn't mean it's a good outcome.


We do have a reason to assume this, and that reason is Ling Qi's own experience with temptation dreams:


The first step to getting out is realizing that the presentation of your desires conflicts with reality. CRX has few desires, so it's easier to meet all of them without creating an obvious conflict with reality. Yes, the spirit had less to work with in order to deceive her, but it succeeded and now we have less to work with in order to bring her back.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Cool, sounds like a fun challenge.

Like. Yes.

CRX is probably the dangerous option to pick here. That is kind of obvious. This is not persuasive when it comes to arguments to not pick her.

Such a challenge is something I think fits this arc and like, the entirety of this thread so far. Even with all of these potential challenges, she's still the person Ling Qi knows best and have the most advantages when it comes to convincing her to come out.
 
tryingtobewitty said:
The hard part in every case will be convincing them that their dream is a dream. CRX's small number of closely related desires means her dream will be more coherent and resilient than anyone else's, and it will be harder to give her that "this doesn't make sense" moment that will snap her out of it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well... she is super OCD... you know what will ruffle her feathers?
Push anything that look's complicated looking and painstakingly orderly just a smidgen to the right :V
Pretty sure that'd do the trick
 
[X] Xia Lin
CRX seems the obvious choice but I feel this would be an appropriate enough runner up with the attention paid so far into her motivation that I'll throw some support Xia Lin's way.
 
[X] Cai Renxiang
I am reading this as mostly a narrative vote. Writing wise I see this is something of a climax or deeper development moment, something to really cement the bond between two characters and mark them as True Companions, so using it for the people we really just got introduced to (Xia and Meng) would be narratively unsatisfying for me. And personally, I really just don't know enough about Gan's deal to really feel satisfied at seeing his dream.

Yrsillar is good, I'm sure he could make all of them work, but really from my point of view this arc has been mostly about CRX and the rule of the Cai in general.

With this choice we could see what CRX's ultimate world looks like in a much more visceral way versus just hearing her describe it and we could reflect on how we fit into that perfect society. Maybe we would become a true believer and help her bring it about. Or not. We could fail. Either way it makes the resulting bond between Cai and Ling Qi much more interesting.
 
[X] Cai Renxiang

Why wouldn't we vote for the best character here? Also, Liming's just losing their shit over this, and I want to see the reaction up close.
 
[X]Cai Renxiang

We do have a duty to CRX. And she is the vip in this Mission. Helping the bodyguards instead of the vip seams not right.
 
My motivation for picking CRX is fairly straightforward. If there's a failure that results in Liming going apeshit and wrecking her, let it be her failure, not someone else's. And it is she that Ling Qi knows best and has the greatest influence over. Gan would never forgive himself if he failed again and CRX paid for it, and no, I have no faith that Gan has changed his motivations sufficiently to place duty above his personal dreams over the past year, or that Ling Qi will be able to help him see the fake Dream world for what it is. We don't know him well enough to make that determination, or to have much influence on him, and on top of that he's highly stubborn but not particularly perceptive.
 
Last edited:
[X] Gan Guangli

As I've said before, CRX strikes me as the sort to falter when it's most important, when caught between a perfect dream and returning to an imperfect reality, she feels the most likely to turn her back on reality. Because look at how she advances her arc-by facing her imperfections, her failures. It takes strength to do that. Strength she might not have under the facade she so desperately maintains.

Meng I can see having a flaw in his dream, as could Xia Lin, in the sense that their 'perfect dreams' could have contradictory logics.

Gan seems like someone who probably like CRX would have a perfect dream...But, in contrast to CRX where so much of her is about trying to live up to the facade, to the point where she might embrace a chance for the mask to become real, Gan seems like he'd be the most able to see the Perfect Dream as ultimately a lie and reject it.

And I do think going forward, our choice, and if we succeed or fail will indeed matter.

I can see Sixang being able to bust the dream via dream-spirit power. I could see Liming forcing a breakout. IDK about the other three's spirits, but that's to say success isn't necessarily on us.
BUT, I also think going for the most dramatic option of CRX isn't necessarily a good thing. Even assuming we don't fail and force a Liming breakout, I also could see CRX reacting badly to knowing Ling Qi tried to put her faith in her master and CRX let that faith down, even if briefly.
 
So, classic Lotus Eater Machine dream leveraging their heart's desire.

The classic way to overcome this is:
-Appealing to a higher motive than what they have as base desires.
-What they desire is contradictory in a way that cannot be ignored by them.
-Leveraging a connection from beyond the means of the illusion.


[] Cai Renxiang
-We understand her higher motives to some extent and they aren't the sort that you could actually fulfill while meeting her heart's desires.
-We know that her aspirations contradict her emotional drives.
-We have a substantial personal connection with her.

[] Gan Guangli
-We had some concept of who he was and how he had grown since
-We don't know him well enough to say much about his wants to determine contradictions
-We have a moderate personal connection with him.

[] Meng Dan
-We don't know what he wants other than Hidden Moon
-We don't know him well enough to find faults between his desires
-We have a weak personal connection with him.

[] Xia Lin
-We understand bits of her Insights, though we lack the broader context of her personality
-We have bits of her insights to leverage on...might be a bit closer to triggering a Heart Demon to break out if it goes wrong though.
-We have a weak personal connection with her.


[X] Cai Renxiang

If Renxiang seems too easy an answer, thats simply because we've had an actual story arc revolving around her identity, desires and ideals. Of course we can actually understand how to trigger those!
 
Anderein said:
People talk about "no trap votes," but that just means that all of the options have pros and cons behind the GM screen. There are, however, options intended to lull us into a false sense of security before the obvious consequences happen.

If CRX isn't deliberately intended as a trap option of that second sort, then I'll eat my hat. If no one lays out all the myriad ways that it's the most unwise choice, I'll make a crack at it later, but I think everyone should at least have the basic intuition that it's a dangerous choice. Can we at least agree on that much?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Okay, fuck it, I'm writing an argument over this after all. By the definition I outlined above, I'm pretty damn sure picking CRX here is a trap option. My basic argument for calling it a trap is this: 1) CRX is the most obvious surface option, 2) there are thread tendencies that make it easy to predict it would probably be chosen, and 3) it's less likely to turn out well than you'd initially expect.

1) CRX is the obvious option to pick

* She's the one we know best, to an almost conspicuous degree. Two of the four were introduced in the larger arc of the expedition, we haven't seen Gan Guangli in months (and even before then, we didn't interact with him that much), and all three of our Spirits--the ones most likely to actually compete with CRX in the vote--were excluded.
* It's what Ling Qi would instinctively tend toward, because CRX is much closer to her innermost circle of care than anyone else here.
* If there's a reward in bond or character development for choosing a character here, then as the most important figure going forward (and the one we have the strongest Bond with), she's the most desirable choice. Even if you like any of the other three, they're very unlikely to simply leave or to change loyalties.
* CRX is, on the surface, the strongest and the most disciplined of the group. She could reasonably be expected to resist temptation of the sort they're apparently experiencing.

2) It's obvious that this thread's audience in particular would pick this

* Again, she's the one we know best, and also therefore the one we (on average) like best. People are going to be most interested in the outcome.
* This is the sequel to a quest where character relationships had to be constantly maintained or else there'd be consequences. Even if that's no longer the case here in Threads, I'd be surprised if this had no lingering effect pushing people toward consolidating around favored/important characters.
* Again, the point about rewards. This has even been repeatedly noted in the thread iteself.
* More than that, this thread's voting tends toward high risk-high reward. The Bloody Moon trial, taking the knife to the throat, the last vote to seek out the one of the three Spirits most interested in killing people--it's easy to predict that the thread would risk it, even if people were to say, "hey, this seems like a risk." Because the voters consistently take risks!

3) The problems with picking CRX aren't immediately obvious

* @tryingtobewitty had a good point on this, related to Ling Qi's specific experience with this sort of attack:

tryingtobewitty said:
We do have a reason to assume this, and that reason is Ling Qi's own experience with temptation dreams:


The first step to getting out is realizing that the presentation of your desires conflicts with reality. CRX has few desires, so it's easier to meet all of them without creating an obvious conflict with reality. Yes, the spirit had less to work with in order to deceive her, but it succeeded and now we have less to work with in order to bring her back.

EDIT2: To give specific details, that dream was fulfilling Ling Qi's desires to keep her friends and family close and to be safe and to keep all of them safe and for them to be happy and to not have to deal with politics and... several things had to give in order to serve all that complexity, including her friends' motives and ability to escape their previous situations. That created enough flaws in the dream to cumulatively tip Ling Qi off.

CRX's dream needs to meet far fewer ands, and the big two (Mommy's love and an ideal society) have zero incongruities between them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

* I pointed out previously that CRX's last interlude (Clockwork Blades) suggests CRX is closer to believing her mother is a long-term problem than she is willing to admit. If she's repressing that realization, then a dream that removes the conflict becomes much more appealing, because if it's wrong then everything changes. This is a specific, predictable weak point in her mental armor!
* I'd bet money that CRX has the least experience with overcoming dreams and illusions of anyone in the party, because she's a ducal and a dispel-specialist and her mother has historical conflicts with Moon spirits and IIRC she's never really described as having undergone any notable sect trials (of the sort Ling Qi did to get her Argent Arts, or the Bloody Moon trial) and Ling Qi, the Moon specialist she knows best, doesn't attack in the way they're experiencing here. This is an out-of-context problem for her to a much larger degree than anyone else.
* CRX's self-perception is that she's inhuman to a larger degree than is actually true, in large part because she has lingering and incompletely addressed emotional trauma related to her mother. I would expect she's also the least well-equipped of the party to get past any emotional attack that slips past her armor, especially when it's delivered in a medium with which she has (again) the least experience dealing with.

I called this a "big red button" before, and that's because I'm pretty sure it's designed to get our attention, get voted in without great consideration, and then result in obvious, predictable consequences. There's a point where escalating risks does not correspond with escalation of related rewards, and I think we're well past that point.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top