The lesson here seems to be that Justice doesn't exist in the wild, everything is unfair, brutal, and all about blood for blood. If you want it, that's on you, because that's not our job. Also, I'm a bit annoyed that you fuckers made me into something that had to care about it.
More importantly, holy shit Cai Shenhua what the fuck did you create. Just a thread from one of her masterworks was enough to make our outfit literally fucking eat a piece of a White's shade.
That's... Definitely going to have an impact on its development.
Speaking of which ... there was one more participant to the dreamplay than we initially thought. And the living thread sure as fuck visited bloody vengeance upon that White shade for rousing it. So while Ling Qi may not have gotten the Bloody Moon's blessing, her dress might have.
Which seems like the kind of nasty callback surprise that could pop up way later in the quest
Also those bemoaning the results are forgetting our biggest reward: finding out about the dress spirit being a badass
Despite not liking the update, it is a solid narrative choice that helps raise the stakes of the inner sect, and it's realistic. There is no such thing as a clean break from the past.
The words tasted like rot on her tongue, like spoiled food dug out of the trash in hungry desperation. Surely she thought, if this was one of her real friends, the ones who had helped her get through the whole of last year, she wouldn't have hesitated at all. Sure she would, some bitter part of her whispered. Had she really changed at all? Or had she merely been lucky not to have her resolve truly tested.
I have been toxic quite a bit on the discord, understood that at this point it doesn't matter wether people admit they were wrong and this was a failure because they are never going to.
Or people just fundamentally disagree with you on certain things and thus evaluate decisions and choices in different ways. So while the decision was wrong for you, based on your compass and scales, it wasn't that way for others. Hell, I voted for Fang with the full understanding that it could go tits up. I consider that a win. Because I've taken the computer programmer in my brain, the part that tries to maximize the results towards my desired outcome, and put it in the backseat so that my authorial part, the part that likes reading and writing, can take the drivers seat. Here's what I said during the talk to the King/go with Shen Hu vote.
Kinda why I'm taking this vote here. Not only do I want the potential payoff, but I also want to see Ling Qi fail and be forced to look at things and recuperate. Either outcome makes for an interesting narrative to me, so it's a win-win.
I have been toxic quite a bit on the discord, understood that at this point it doesn't matter wether people admit they were wrong and this was a failure because they are never going to.
So let's cut the chase.
Can we at least agree to never vote to abandon a friend/someone we are befriending ever again ? Just this. Don't ever abandon a friend just because we are scared of the white/cyan/whatever.
I mean let's be clear here. Shen Hu is the one who split the party and said I'm doing this, either come or don't.
Also hell no I'm not letting the bloody moon being a spiteful bitch permenently convince Ling Qi that commiting pointless suicide on the one in a billion chance of effecting the fate of some long dead ghosts and one guy she barely knows and who can usually look after themselves anyway is the correct or sane thing to do.
The thing that bothers me most about the update is how everybody in thread completely misunderstood Ling Qi's basis for the option (I was assuming it was going to be a mixture of Ling Qi not caring about people she doesn't know mixed with her being a greedy girl, and instead got what felt like COWARD being shouted at me). I can't remember seeing a single instance of someone predicting that this was even a potential outcome, and so it feels like there was some serious miscommunication between Yrsillar and the readers.
Or people just fundamentally disagree with you on certain things and thus evaluate decisions and choices in different ways. So while the decision was wrong for you, based on your compass and scales, it wasn't that way for others? Hell, I voted for Fang with the full understanding that it could go tits up. I consider that a win. Because I've taken the computer programmer in my brain, the part that tries to maximize the results towards my desired outcome, and put it in the backseat so that my authorial part, the part that likes reading and writing, in the drivers seat. Here's what I said during the talk to the King/go with Shen Hu vote.
I wanted Ling Qi to slip up, in such a way that she would have to take good, long look at herself. And now she has.
This approach *really* bugs me. I'm not saying you aren't allowed to vote that way, because you are, but it still bugs me.
It may sound strange coming from me - after all, just last update I was saying that I was hoping LQ would fail. But there is a difference between hoping for something as a reader and voting for it as a player - and the idea of voting for something with the intent of it harming our protag feels like ash in my mouth, even if the outcome would be interesting or entertaining.
So Shen Hu suffered a scar from his dream death.
Does Ling Qi have a scar from King of the Forest shattering her shoulder or did the temporary transformation let us get away with any physical blemishes?
I wonder how the standard stuffy Xianxia noble runs through this challenge...
Or people just fundamentally disagree with you on certain things and thus evaluate decisions and choices in different ways. So while the decision was wrong for you, based on your compass and scales, it wasn't that way for others? Hell, I voted for Fang with the full understanding that it could go tits up. I consider that a win. Because I've taken the computer programmer in my brain, the part that tries to maximize the results towards my desired outcome, and put it in the backseat so that my authorial part, the part that likes reading and writing, in the drivers seat. Here's what I said during the talk to the King/go with Shen Hu vote.
I mean let's be clear here. Shen Hu is the one who split the party and said I'm doing this, either come or don't.
Also hell no I'm not letting the bloody moon being a spiteful bitch permenently convince Ling Qi that commiting pointless suicide on the one in a billion chance of effecting the fate of some long dead ghosts and one guy she barely knows and who can usually look after themselves anyway is the correct or sane thing to do.
It's not a matter of sanity or correct thing. It's about keeping to ling qi character.
I don't care about how you personally feels about it being scuicide or whatever to defend our friends (or people we are befriending). I care about how LQ herself feels about it. I care about at least trying to keep what is for me the most important part of LQ character (her loyalty to her friends) alive.
I mean let's be clear here. Shen Hu is the one who split the party and said I'm doing this, either come or don't.
Also hell no I'm not letting the bloody moon being a spiteful bitch permenently convince Ling Qi that commiting pointless suicide on the one in a billion chance of effecting the fate of some long dead ghosts and one guy she barely knows and who can usually look after themselves anyway is the correct thing to do.
Ling Qi thought it mattered. As long as Ling Qi thought it mattered, then it affects her. You can says that they're ghosts and you can claim that Shen Hu could take care of himself (ultimately he was overrun and we're all quite glad it was a dream that could end). The actual text makes it clear that the ghosts affected Ling Qi, both at the time of decision and after when they had all been slaughtered. It also is clear that she believed Shen Hu would be hunted.
Ultimately, choosing a boon rather than speaking out hurt Ling Qi, in a spiritual sense. She can learn from this, thankfully, but the actual decision made hurt Ling Qi and affected her ability to develop herself. It's okay to make choices and have them not work out as hoped, but we shouldn't fool ourselves about what they actually were in hindsight.
While I'm not totally dissatisfied at this update (it is important for Ling Qi to reconcile her total focus on monkeysphere with her decision to involve herself in high politics and ideals like Justice, and the thread making meaning out of being rebuked like this is also a lesson for the thread itself) I'm vaguely peeved at the outcome, probably for a reason somewhat counter to the rest of the thread. I voted for Fang because I like the Bloody Moon, and I actually won a vote with character consequences for once (minor pet peeve with no connection to reality btw), and the Bloody Moon says 'bye bye' in response.
It just feels like a big build-up to Ling Qi/the thread being told by yrsillar that it's bad to be selfish and have some degree of self-care. Yes, standing up for yourself and your values is important, but it's also important to be able to shrink away from pain and know yourself. Why can't Ling Qi ever make a decision out of self-concern ever again, just because she said she wouldn't one time when she was a kid not even Green yet? No, now she must forever more become self-sacrificing and unfearful, never making decisions for her own sake and only ever deciding on moral bases disconnected from reality...
Well, one answer is that she's a cultivator and cultivators cut away parts of their humanity in order to display one-sided caricatures with limited facets. And also because she's a fictional character and there are only so many facets that can be displayed in a character because they're mere representations and not actual people. But these are both incredibly unsatisfying. People cut away parts of themselves all the time but rooted habits never die. Ling Qi comes from a place where selfishness is a survival mechanism—what's wrong with that? There are billions of people in the world, both ours and hers, that make decisions on that basis and they're not less valuable as people or less morally correct than the WASPs with the opportunities/educations/safety nets that allow those same WASPs to take moral stances.
Ling Qi, the Darkness cultivator, has just been told that it's wrong to be selfish, or it's wrong to change her mind, or it's wrong to acknowledge the difference between intellectually wanting something and viscerally experiencing the actual totality of something far beyond her, or it's wrong to enter a realm where language fails even though language is the entirety of her world...There are too many lessons I can draw and they're all wrong. What meaning can I make from that? It's a human's job in-universe, a reader's job out-of-universe, but every meaning that can be made from this update is wrong. You can make the meaning that the Bloody Moon is an evil no-good dangnabbit varmint of a piece of pond scum and doing so...has very little impact on the story, or on Ling Qi's future impact on the world. It hardly matters what meaning you make if it's not palatable to a broad base's visceral reactions, as evidenced by how this update's been received. It boils down to weight of numbers, not meaning. "A horde of rats ate a man." Is that meaning? Is it metaphor? Mere plot? Does it acquire meaning through juxtaposition with the statement immediately prior? It's a sentence, and that's all it is.
Ling Qi's BEEN tested on her selflessness and strength of friendship. We've DONE that story already. Why can't Ling Qi the Moon cultivator show different faces in different places?
Ling Qi certainly didn't have the luxury of being allowed selfishness. No, that impulse must be smacked down as hard as possible, yrsillar must rebuke any identity or person or idea of self outside selflessness and nonself. Obviously readers too must always consider the eternity outside of themselves when voting on FoD, even though that rolling plain extends outward forever. Yrsillar does not allow selfishness in decisionmaking, whether for Ling Qi or for me. What's wrong with selfishness? Persons are more than a set of conscious personal traits. Cultivators cut away personhood to hone the self. So in FoD, under the Bloody Moon's aegis of all places, why can't they make decisions for their self's own sake?
The thing that bothers me most about the update is how everybody in thread completely misunderstood Ling Qi's basis for the option (I was assuming it was going to be a mixture of Ling Qi not caring about people she doesn't know mixed with her being a greedy girl, and instead got what felt like COWARD being shouted at me). I can't remember seeing a single instance of someone predicting that this was even a potential outcome, and so it feels like there was some serious miscommunication between Yrsillar and the readers.
Uh, "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa panic" was like literally one of the first reactions people had.
The fact that people later came up with excuses as to why voting against the other options was totally fine and we don't have to care about Shen Hu or the village at all guys didn't really make them not excuses.
Also hell no I'm not letting the bloody moon being a spiteful bitch permenently convince Ling Qi that commiting pointless suicide on the one in a billion chance of effecting the fate of some long dead ghosts and one guy she barely knows and who can usually look after themselves anyway is the correct or sane thing to do.
The vote wasn't "defy the King". It wasn't "challenge him" or "insult him". It was "try to convince him". Given that he had shown himself to be fairly affable towards us so far didn't really suggest that he was going to flip out and kill us or something. Heck, given that his whole thing was about punishing the traitors standing by our friend at least would likely have won respect.
So Shen Hu suffered a scar from his dream death.
Does Ling Qi have a scar from King of the Forest shattering her shoulder or did the temporary transformation let us get away with any physical blemishes?
I wonder how the standard stuffy Xianxia noble runs through this challenge...
Ling Qi thought it mattered. As long as Ling Qi thought it mattered, then it affects her. You can says that they're ghosts and you can claim that Shen Hu could take care of himself (ultimately he was overrun and we're all quite glad it was a dream that could end). The actual text makes it clear that the ghosts affected Ling Qi, both at the time of decision and after when they had all been slaughtered. It also is clear that she believed Shen Hu would be hunted.
Ultimately, choosing a boon rather than speaking out hurt Ling Qi, in a spiritual sense. She can learn from this, thankfully, but the actual decision made hurt Ling Qi and affected her ability to develop herself. It's okay to make choices and have them not work out as hoped, but we shouldn't fool ourselves about what they actually were in hindsight.
Choosing to not risk her life wasn't necessarily the wrong decision though. Just because Ling Qi feels bad doesn't mean she actually did anything wrong. Anyone would feel bad after being forced into a sadistic choice like this. It's like Green Goblin making Spiderman choose between saving Mary Jane or that bus full of kids. Bloody Moon was the villain in this story, not Ling Qi.
Ling Qi certainly didn't have the luxury of being allowed selfishness. No, that impulse must be smacked down as hard as possible, yrsillar must rebuke any identity or person or idea of self outside selflessness and nonself. Obviously readers too must always consider the eternity outside of themselves when voting on FoD, even though that rolling plain extends outward forever. Yrsillar does not allow selfishness in decisionmaking, whether for Ling Qi or for me. What's wrong with selfishness? Persons are more than a set of conscious personal traits. Cultivators cut away personhood to hone the self. So in FoD, under the Bloody Moon's aegis of all places, why can't they make decisions for their self's own sake?
This is a good post and thank you for summarizing such thoughts, I agree with a number of them but have difficulty articulating my feelings in ways that other people can sympathize with.
This is a good post and thank you for summarizing such thoughts, I agree with a number of them but have difficulty articulating my feelings in ways that other people can sympathize with.
TBH it's not very good writing. Through the experiential process of writing that, I became quite stilted and invested in ways that I wasn't before. There are a number of caveats I've purposefully left out despite my thinking of them for the sake of increasing the force of the post.
The fact that people came up with excuses as to why voting against the other options was totally fine and we don't have to care about Shen Hu or the village at all guys didn't really make them not excuses.
I'm going to say this plainly. Could you stop trying to tell people what their reasons for voting for shit was? You're not a mindreader and you repeatedly saying people were actually voting for some other reason is self rightous shit-stirring of the most infuriating kind. I didn't think Ling Qi's social skills were up to the task of convincing a higher grade spriti high on vengaence to spare anyone. The way this update goes makes me think I misjudged that, but that was the reason I immediately discounted either of the convince options and went straight to weighing Fang vs Hide. If you claim otherwise you are straight out wrong, and this "Oh you're just making excuses" is being an insufferable condescending prick.
So I think the idea that Ling Qi should've asked to spare at least Shen Hu as part of her attempt to steer the greater being like she said learning to was her reasoning for meeting the King is correct in terms of getting the most out of this dream or trial or whatever. That said I think it's pretty clear that the reasons the thread didn't vote to do that was a combination of not thinking Ling Qi is socially skilled enough that she could succeed and thinking Shen Hu wouldn't be too fucked up by the end of this, so a matter of capability and risk assessment on the part of the thread. Ling Qi and thread divergence in terms of reasoning is pretty normal so seeing that not being her reasoning is pretty normal though I think most didn't expect this degree of split. The people telling the rest of the thread that they voted based on cowardice are basically just stirring shit and should stop telling other people why they made the decisions they did.
No, there were plenty of "cowardly" posts about how asking for Shen Hu or him and the Mortals was "suicide" and plenty more were "greedy" and only thinking about rewards we could get (all the arguments about if Fang and Hide corresponded to Attack or Defense Arts among others).
Plenty of justifications too (Shen Hu will be fine, the King is way too powerful he'll kill mortals nearby just by standing near him so asking to spare them will be impossible).
Even now there are people in the thread utterly refusing to learn anything from this choice and just crying foul at the Bloody Moon being "mean"
No, there were plenty of "cowardly" posts about how asking for Shen Hu or him and the Mortals was "suicide" and plenty more were "greedy" and only thinking about rewards we could get (all the arguments about if Fang and Hide corresponded to Attack or Defense Arts among others).
Plenty of justifications too (Shen Hu will be fine, the King is way too powerful he'll kill mortals nearby just by standing near him so asking to spare them will be impossible).
Even now there are people in the thread utterly refusing to learn anything from this choice and just crying foul at the Bloody Moon being "mean"
Nobody said Shen Hu was a bad choice, pretty much everyone agreed it would work. It was Shen Hu and the mortals that people were skeptical about
For goodness sake, people are picking this thing apart to an exhaustive length trying to learn a lesson here. Complaining that they haven't learned anything because their rationalization doesn't agree with yours isn't helping.
Because this is all subjective nonsense, and everyone reads differently and his different value statements. We're trying to learn something out of this, but I seriously doubt this was a referendum on the thread as opposed to Ling Qi herself. Yrsillar would have straight up told us "You done goofed" if that was the case.
Ling Qi, the Darkness cultivator, has just been told that it's wrong to be selfish, or it's wrong to change her mind, or it's wrong to acknowledge the difference between intellectually wanting something and viscerally experiencing the actual totality of something far beyond her, or it's wrong to enter a realm where language fails even though language is the entirety of her world...There are too many lessons I can draw and they're all wrong. What meaning can I make from that? It's a human's job in-universe, a reader's job out-of-universe, but every meaning that can be made from this update is wrong. You can make the meaning that the Bloody Moon is an evil no-good dangnabbit varmint of a piece of pond scum and doing so...has very little impact on the story, or on Ling Qi's future impact on the world. It hardly matters what meaning you make if it's not palatable to a broad base's visceral reactions, as evidenced by how this update's been received. It boils down to weight of numbers, not meaning. "A horde of rats ate a man." Is that meaning? Is it metaphor? Mere plot? Does it acquire meaning through juxtaposition with the statement immediately prior? It's a sentence, and that's all it is.
Ling Qi's BEEN tested on her selflessness and strength of friendship. We've DONE that story already. Why can't Ling Qi show different faces in different places?
Rather, the issue here is that Ling Qi didn't do what she desired.
That's what's making her unhappy.
She wasn't actually being tested on friendship and selflessness here either. Rather what got tested in the end was whether or not she actually knew what her desires were and had the conviction to pursue them. Instead she immediately folded at the fear of potential danger.
...Because this was the situation she had chosen to put herself into was it not? A small piece moving around the field between titans, expected to not only affect, but even contribute to their plans. Plans that she had no understanding of and barely any context for, even with her more recent efforts to educate herself. "Because I need to understand, if I am to survive," the words came to her lips unbidden. "Even if I am small, my actions can affect the paths of the mighty and draw their attention."
Choosing to not risk her life wasn't necessarily the wrong decision though. Just because Ling Qi feels bad doesn't mean she actually did anything wrong. Anyone would feel bad after being forced into a sadistic choice like this. It's like Green Goblin making Spiderman choose between saving Mary Jane or that bus full of kids. Bloody Moon was the villain in this story, not Ling Qi.
I think that's something Ling Qi is going to have to work through, yes. The line at which Ling Qi is willing to risk her life should shift, but maybe not enough to be willing to risk her life in the dream situation, or maybe she talks to someone about how to give herself more options in such a situation. I'm not saying Ling Qi is badwrong for choosing a less risky option, just that she chose in a way that she herself wasn't happy with, that she herself condemned as being the same as something she wanted to move away from. The BM didn't put those thoughts in Qi's head.
If you filter out Ling Qi and Sixiang and look at just what the BM herself says, she presents her case neutrally and without judgment. She doesn't say that humans produce meaning as if the meaning humans attribute is fake, she says that it's human duty to produce meaning which is an entirely different reading. She doesn't revel in the slaughter like Ling Qi all but accuses her of, she just neutrally claims that vengeance alone is life for life and can be no greater than that. I really don't see any case for the bloody moon to have wronged Ling Qi in some way. If anything, the Bloody Moon just passed judgment on the slaughter itself. Separating that from Qi's visceral reaction is necessary to understand what the BM is saying.
The real villain is the old king of the forest and the old traditions of the land that encourage wanton slaughter disguised as appropriate retribution.
So... After reading the update and thread responses, the lesson I personally am taking away from this is "treat all dreams/simulations as real". If only because the dream manager will be pissy with you if you don't.
Shen Hu's closing statement seems to suggest that we should have tried standing by our convictions and trying to persuade the King. But I think it goes deeper than that. Would we even have been in a position of potential suicide if we had treated the dream more seriously? I think that if this encounter had occurred in the waking world, we would have not been so hasty to pick sides first of all, and secondly, we would have been much less likely to risk meeting with an enraged White. And of course, in the event we did choose both those risky options, we would have tried to persuade the King if we thought real harm was happening.
Basically, I think the real lesson isn't "always try to protect friends" but "behave as you would if the situation was real".
And that's not even necessarily wrong. Heck, that's basically what Ling Qi said here. She felt she couldn't do anything to get what she wanted and so gave up.
And that's not even necessarily wrong. It could be right!
But it's hardly surprising that it wouldn't make her happy, or that it wouldn't impress the Bloody Moon.
