In fairness to Yu Nuan, she is talking about violent loss to external forces, and she's also not like hoping it happens or anything she just sees it as inevitable
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.
In fairness to Yu Nuan, she is talking about violent loss to external forces, and she's also not like hoping it happens or anything she just sees it as inevitable
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
Well, Ling Qi has to learn to lose in the sense that losing can cripple someone so if she doesn't take losing well she is in deep shit.
I have no clue why you think that Chu Song was 'guarenteed to be a cultivator' or "never had to starve".
Yes, pre-sect Ling Qi knew suffering. It was a suffering she purposefully thought because she considered the consequences of not going through that suffering were worse. Ling Qi's suffering is dismissed because it wasn't a loss, it was a show of determination.
Ling Qi never knew her father because he either abandoned them or more likely was murdered which sent her family into crippling poverty in the sex industry but no Ling Qi's life is sunshine and unicorn farts.
I wanted a musical showdown since way back in the last thread when yrsillar revealed that not all challenges have to be fighting.
I always wanted a throw down where Ling Qi has to communicate and state her ideals using her music (not fists, like a pleb). With Nuan Yu and Ling Qi reading each other by their BGM and Ling Qi working to define her beliefs in a song ('the purest way of communication') and finally not only stating her belief but putting it on the line against Nuan Yu is everything I wanted; so thanks for this arc @yrsillar.
I always wanted a throw down where Ling Qi has to communicate and state her ideals using her music (not fists, like a pleb). With Nuan Yu and Ling Qi reading each other by their BGM and Ling Qi working to define her beliefs in a song ('the purest way of communication') and finally not only stating her belief but putting it on the line against Nuan Yu is everything I wanted; so thanks for this arc @yrsillar.
Because as a noble, even if most of her family and their stuff got wrecked she's still filthy rich, cultivators can just turn over their pockets and fish out hundreds of coins worth of goods (for reference, a red spirit stone is worth 100 silver coins, enough to buy a house).
Fact is whatever was left of the Chu family was never going to starve, and the worst they would ever get in terms of jobs would be being city guards or soldiers, standard low level cultivator jobs.
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- Location
- Finland
Everyone dies, everything crumbles, there is no meaning and nothing matters.
So what? Make friends, because being alone is boring, build, because things are nice to have, create meaning, because your opinion matters to you.
I'm not sure Ling Qi even believes that CRX can succeed in her goal, but even the attempt is worth making, and if/when it all comes crashing down, we got a frontrow seat.
So what? Make friends, because being alone is boring, build, because things are nice to have, create meaning, because your opinion matters to you.
I'm not sure Ling Qi even believes that CRX can succeed in her goal, but even the attempt is worth making, and if/when it all comes crashing down, we got a frontrow seat.
Apparently a family falling from rich to middle class is worse then a child running away to live on the streets and almost die time and again? Because the child has not known "true loss".
... Ok.
... Ok.
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Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
Yes, clearly, her father being absent is the biggest trauma of Ling Qi's life. Which is why she never ever thought about it. Please try to have a little bit of honesty.
You... are aware the Chus were not nobles, right? All their cultivators were killed or crippled, and the rests were turned into commoners.
Yes, "Kill everyone in the family except the youngest, whom you cripple, then confiscate all their belonging" is "fall into middle class".
- Location
- USA
Fair. But I'm not sure violent loss to external forces is all that different psychologically. As stated though, Yu Nuan doesn't know Ling Qi's life the way we do. I'm mostly speaking about people in thread.
Ling Qi MUST have learned how to lose, otherwise how could she have survived on the streets?
Yes, Ling Qi clearly thought that almost dying in the streets was worse than staying with her mother. Think about what that implies. She lost her sense of comfort and safety in her home and her mother. Can you even imagine, at 8, with starvation and the cold competing over which can kill you, deciding to not go back home? Can you imagine what she lost for that to be the best choice for her? Because honestly, I can't.
In other words, it's not the suffering that's the loss, it's what drove her to the suffering.
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
- Pronouns
- They/Them
And LQ wasn't even the equivalent of a commoner for most of her late childhood, so what's your point about the Chu?
- Location
- United States of America
I find it instructive the number of words needed to qualify what you consider Ling Qi winning.
I also find it instructive the claim made that Yu Nuan and Chu Song have suffered actual horrifying and permanent loss. I can't remember anywhere in the three chapters that we know of Yu Nuan where she suffered actual horrifying and permanent loss, and I can't remember a time where Chu Song suffered actual horrifying and permanent loss.
It seems that you have a high bar set for what qualifies as a loss, but a pretty low bar for what qualifies as a win.
So... if you purposefully sacrifice something precious and meaningful to you in order to avoid a situation you don't want to be in, that's not a loss? You have some strange definitions of loss.
Turned into common soldiery, still leagues above most. So yeah middle class.
Li Suyin's maternal grandfather (or great-grandfather, not sure) was also crippled, his family destroyed. And not only did he land at the upper edge of mortal society (Li Suyin's father can actually pay for her to be at the sect) he also got to keep some fraction of the family techniques alive.
There are commoners and there are commoners. Street rat tier is way below regular tier, and regular tier is way below former noble.
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Theunderbolt
"Prepare for trouble..."
- Location
- USoA
There should be an "Oh no." rating.
- Location
- Finland
Thing is, when all the young nobles in the sect call Ling Qi a commoner, it is because they consider it the lowest class someone can be.
And technically they might be right, atleast in the legal sense.
But in a more informal social class sense, calling Ling Qi a commoner was, if anything, overstating her former station.
And technically they might be right, atleast in the legal sense.
But in a more informal social class sense, calling Ling Qi a commoner was, if anything, overstating her former station.
- Location
- PA
...I think the big thing is...Well, think about it.
We gave in to fear instead of talking to our liege. That's SCARY when said person is the guy the Liege is counting on to tell him/her about unpleasant things. A yesman only interested in trying to seek moments of happiness who you're calling a spymaster?
Yeah that's an attitude that needs changing quickly. And given Ling Qi's past...Hrum.
It's the kind of thing I could see ending with Cai giving us a 'suggestion' to ah...'Seek arts that complement the Dreaming Moon', shall we say. Because there's a reason that 'the way of the rat' is not a popular cultivation route, no?
We gave in to fear instead of talking to our liege. That's SCARY when said person is the guy the Liege is counting on to tell him/her about unpleasant things. A yesman only interested in trying to seek moments of happiness who you're calling a spymaster?
Yeah that's an attitude that needs changing quickly. And given Ling Qi's past...Hrum.
It's the kind of thing I could see ending with Cai giving us a 'suggestion' to ah...'Seek arts that complement the Dreaming Moon', shall we say. Because there's a reason that 'the way of the rat' is not a popular cultivation route, no?
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
Indeed, it's not a loss. It's a decision to take a risk because you don't want to take another risk. At that time she had sacrificed safety of food and had decided her mother betrayed her, and had won freedom. It's not a loss.
If you can't see the difference between a clan being slaughtered and having to run away from home, your protagonist-centred morality is deep.
Now, the big thing about Chu Song is that it was 150~ years ago, so she probably only have her parents/grandparents personally living this. However, do not under-estimate growing up with your parents telling you about how they got their hands and feet cut off by the duchess, and how they destroyed everything that was rightfully yours.
Yeah, I am sorry. When half the thread regularly make the argument barronial clans are lower class in this setting, being cannon fodder is not 'middle class'.
You yourself said it was Li Suyin's father who was rich enough to pay for the sect, and it was her maternal grandfather who got his dantian crippled. Is your argument now that Chu Song's family married into a powerful mortal family and thus got better?
The ridiculousness of how much bending over to give special status to the protagonist is ridiculous here. Getting your family slaughtered is not in the same magnitude of loss as "running away from home". The latter arguably means you have more material suffering, but even then that's a huge assumption.
- Location
- Europe
Wow... this is a special kind of revisionist nonsense.
So, by your logic, when we die does that invalidate every loss we ever experienced because now that we're dead we can't continue to suffer because of it? Is eternal suffering in the lowest depth of hell the only loss you can conceive of? Does me making a hundred dollars retroactively invalidate having a hundred dollars stolen from me yesterday? If someone stole some of Ling Qi's green stones does her going on an adventure and gaining some new greenstones mean she didn't lose those original green stones?
This sentence is incoherent.
What do you mean? Do you mean that Ling Qi needs to learn that a loss can be crippling? She certainly fucking knows that by now.
The players know how to lose, specifically, they either redefine success, redefine failure or find a silver lining and move on.
We have, hell, we fucked up our second major choice at the very beginning of this quest and it has fucked with us ever since. Remember, we originally tried to get in with Sun Liling.
How, exactly, do you think they managed to marry a powerful mortal family? Do you think it was a coincidence?
Fact is they still had money, valuable knowledge and even genetic potential that put them way above the average commoner. Which in turn leads to what I said to begin with: they were in no danger of starving, and guaranteed to climb their way back to being cultivators in some capacity.
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- Location
- Europe
What is, for you, a loss?
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Well Suyin's dad was a commoner scholar who became nobleish via his own merits so we don't know he's from a powerful family or that he was successful before the marriage.
so Cai...what to talk about?
If you gonna be my spymistress, you gotta be more wraith like?
If you gonna be my spymistress, you gotta be more wraith like?
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
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Being a commoner who gets an education in a kinda medieval setting like this makes you upper crust all on it's own.
- Location
- CA
The fundamental disconnect that Arkeus (and I, to some extent) have to the concept of Ling Qi losing is that the things she's 'lost' are not portrayed as such. Yes, Ling Qi spent many days starving on the streets. But the important parts of those times to her and to the narrative are that she stole a blanket from a kind man, or tripped up a friend to get away. That's not an indication of loss, not really.
This isn't about forcing bad things to happen to Ling Qi because the story should be more grimdark or whatever. It's more about giving a more solid sense of tension to the narrative itself. The quest format gives a lot of meta-tension, but ultimately most quests are endless win-fests because so much of the tension is on a meta-level.
This update works on a narrative sense because it adds the dramatic tension of Ling Qi not being prepared for a future loss, which makes sense from a narrative perspective but less so from a quester's perspective, which is why the whole 'Ling Qi has dealt with loss' thing has come up again. Comparatively to other quests, maybe she has. Comparatively to more privileged people, maybe she has. But on that narrative sense, on our pure perception of how her life has been, she hasn't really.
This isn't about forcing bad things to happen to Ling Qi because the story should be more grimdark or whatever. It's more about giving a more solid sense of tension to the narrative itself. The quest format gives a lot of meta-tension, but ultimately most quests are endless win-fests because so much of the tension is on a meta-level.
This update works on a narrative sense because it adds the dramatic tension of Ling Qi not being prepared for a future loss, which makes sense from a narrative perspective but less so from a quester's perspective, which is why the whole 'Ling Qi has dealt with loss' thing has come up again. Comparatively to other quests, maybe she has. Comparatively to more privileged people, maybe she has. But on that narrative sense, on our pure perception of how her life has been, she hasn't really.