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

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Ling Qi hidden precognition talent confirmed.

Also, I wonder if this is why they brought Tienli, thinking she wasn't safe. Because you know there's gonna be some assassination attempts against the 'unnatural abomination' child.
 
qazcdewsx said:
Cai Tienli being Diao Linqin's daughter makes things more difficult. Long term it makes the Shenua's succession and Rexiangs development harder. The Diao already didnt like her any now its going to be practically impossible to convince them to support her over Cai Tienli. Shorter term it makes Renxiang and Tienli's relationship more difficult. Renxiang didnt know how to react to having a sister and Tienli being her half sister could complicate her feelings on the relationship. Also concerned that some of the Diao might deliberately try to drive a wedge between them to make it more likely that they compete. Tienli is probably less likely to try to take Renxiangs position as heir if they're close.
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Renxiang is a Diao by blood too and Lingqin being a part of Shenhua's radical gender politics is gonna make dislike of Ice Diplomacy seem like small potatoes. There's already factions in the Diao who grumble against Lingqin
 
It is really interesting what is happening here. Besides the political and social upheaval, which are a big deal, this calls into question fundamental workings of the world. The nameless Father and nameless Mother were the ones that made the world. A lot of the assumed systems of the world derive from that. This act shows that those systems are either not true, or can be subverted. Which one is worse for the imperial conservative; that their founding myths may not be right, or that the systems they base their hierarchies on are able to be subverted?
 
Didn't we already know Mother and Father's laws could be subverted by Whites ascending? This seems like an extension, if very new, of that.
 
qazcdewsx said:
Cai Tienli being Diao Linqin's daughter makes things more difficult. Long term it makes the Shenua's succession and Rexiangs development harder. The Diao already didnt like her any now its going to be practically impossible to convince them to support her over Cai Tienli. Shorter term it makes Renxiang and Tienli's relationship more difficult. Renxiang didnt know how to react to having a sister and Tienli being her half sister could complicate her feelings on the relationship. Also concerned that some of the Diao might deliberately try to drive a wedge between them to make it more likely that they compete. Tienli is probably less likely to try to take Renxiangs position as heir if they're close.
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Shenua's previous consort was also a Diao, so it shouldn't make a significant difference. Especially if the matriarch of the Diao supports Rexiang.
 
Not to be a downer, but shouldn't the obvious first response to Shenhua's announcement be "Tienli isn't human at all" as opposed to "Shenhua cracked fatherless reproduction and Tienli is the test subject" ?

Here's what we know:
  • There's already been significant "is CRX even human at all, or is she an artificial creation that's good at faking it?" discussion back in Forge. I remember Six being especially convinced CRX was a doll and not a person.
  • Shenhua has been working on creating artificial spirits designed to her specifications.
  • Mother + Father = life is apparently an incredibly fundamental building block of the universe here.
  • Shenhua used very vague phrasing here - leaving herself wriggle room to mislead by telling the Truth?
My first guess here is that Tienli is indeed the daughter of the world's most powerful girlboss couple, but that Tienli isn't spiritually human as most other humans would understand it.
 
Gender/sex/reproduction is already weird at high cultivation levels. Grandmother Bai has never left her snake form, but had 7 human(?) children with Yao the Fisher.
Bai Cui's father is a dagger. Zhengui was born from fragments of one spirit beast, and the essence of another.

Medically irl, it's also somewhat feasible.

We can create babies without men, claim scientists

Fertility specialists have found a way for women to have babies without men. It involves chemicals acting as an 'artificial sperm'
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk

Then add in Shenhua's ability to manipulate flesh like a seamstress, and anything is possible.
 
FallenPears said:
Ling Qi hidden precognition talent confirmed.

Also, I wonder if this is why they brought Tienli, thinking she wasn't safe. Because you know there's gonna be some assassination attempts against the 'unnatural abomination' child.
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No, she brought up her actual reason in the speech. It was a chance for many people to see the baby before they were aware of its origin, so they would do so uninfluenced by ideas about how it "must be unnatural" or whatever. Now the public word about the baby is going to include a ton of people talking about how normal it seemed instead of speculation based on some preconception. There could also be assassination attempts, but we don't know that.
 
Shenhua Says Gay Rights.

Just wow. On the more boring front, she will now have a very hefty central Military to play with, that's going to give her a lot of flexibility to swat down problems. The incoming Cloud Barbarians are going to have a tough time.

On the cooler side, this is awesome. I was expecting Shenhua's controversial announcement to be something I approve of, but this is just fantastic. Shenhua has cracked the gender restriction on cultivator reproduction and established the loudest precedent imaginable for gay marriage between nobles, and she did it by officially marrying her actual wife.

Meizhen's brain right now must resemble a thousand fireworks going off at once.
 
Eastern Calculus said:
Maybe like declaring war on someone. .
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This was a declaration of war. It was a two prolonged assault on her enemies, hidden behind a glove of kindness, because her words are weapons.

She's just stripped power from her vassals and centralised it under her direct command, raising another unit of troops directly loyal to her and establishing her direct power at another location.

She's also very distinctively flipped the bird towards conservative factions throughout the empire in a very open manner, from opening challenging them to dispute her appointment of a consort to forcing them to accept a child many won't even consider human.

You don't need soldiers or an army to declare war, just a will to enforce on the world.
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
Not to be a downer, but shouldn't the obvious first response to Shenhua's announcement be "Tienli isn't human at all" as opposed to "Shenhua cracked fatherless reproduction and Tienli is the test subject" ?


My first guess here is that Tienli is indeed the daughter of the world's most powerful girlboss couple, but that Tienli isn't spiritually human as most other humans would understand it.
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That isn't what I got from the lore. My understanding is it isn't like Wheel of Time's One Power where sex determines what aspect of creation you draw from.

Ie Mother and Father are genderless concepts that correspond to Divinity and Corruption/Mortality.

Nothing says Mortality has to come from an actual male. I think the biggest hurdle for Shenhua would be producing a viable zygote.
 
Eastern Calculus said:
That isn't what I got from the lore. My understanding is it isn't like Wheel of Time's One Power where sex determines what aspect of creation you draw from.

Ie Mother and Father are genderless concepts that correspond to Divinity and Corruption/Mortality.

Nothing says Mortality has to come from an actual male. I think the biggest hurdle for Shenhua would be producing a viable zygote.
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We've had multiple Lore drops saying that while biology is meaningless, "male" and "female" is a spiritual binary that's hard-coded into everything and that's necessary for reproduction.
It's part of the creation myths, of how spirits reproduce even when their bodies are completely incompatible, etc.

EDIT: I also asked on Discord about deliberately changing your gender a few months back, after reading the first Radiant Serpent story post. Apparently trans people can make their body match their soul, but it doesn't work the other way around. The "soul gender" is AFAIK immutable - it's the body that's meaningless.
 
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TalonofAnathrax said:
We've had multiple Lore drops saying that while biology is meaningless, "male" and "female" is a spiritual binary that's hard-coded into everything and that's necessary for reproduction.
It's part of the creation myths, of how spirits reproduce even when their bodies are completely incompatible, etc.

EDIT: I also asked on Discord about deliberately changing your gender a few months back, after reading the first Radiant Serpent story post. Apparently trans people can make their body match their soul, but it doesn't work the other way around. The "soul gender" is AFAIK immutable - it's the body that's meaningless.
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Well it's not a complete binary since we have people like Shu Yue or spirits like Sixiang. They are neither male or female even in their souls.
 
Heh, on a unhappy note for some people. This will probably just lead to the clans starting to arrange marriages from another angle. Say there is no female of marriageable age in clan x, but there is a male. Use that one instead. Power dynamics and hierarchy is not really gonna change much long term. Sure some like Meizhen and Qingling will have more of a choice, but that is not really the whole picture.
 
So if I've got this right, she invented a method that allows Fourth Realm and up cultivators to reproduce either with any partner or even completely independently?

And now she's distributing it?

I mean, that's a bit of an odd choice on her part, but I don't really see any problem with it since if it was possible at all, that means the discovery was inevitable in the fullness of time anyway.
 
Enthusiast#117 said:
So if I've got this right, she invented a method that allows Fourth Realm and up cultivators to reproduce either with any partner or even completely independently?

And now she's distributing it?

I mean, that's a bit of an odd choice on her part, but I don't really see any problem with it since if it was possible at all, that means the discovery was inevitable in the fullness of time anyway.
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Just because something is possible doesn't mean it will discovered. Social and political pressure will force research towards certain things and way from other things.

This is quite frankly a bomb Shenhua has set off. There will be a great deal of political and social unrest from this announcement. A great deal of agendas are going to be challenged by this.
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
We've had multiple Lore drops saying that while biology is meaningless, "male" and "female" is a spiritual binary that's hard-coded into everything and that's necessary for reproduction.
It's part of the creation myths, of how spirits reproduce even when their bodies are completely incompatible, etc.

EDIT: I also asked on Discord about deliberately changing your gender a few months back, after reading the first Radiant Serpent story post. Apparently trans people can make their body match their soul, but it doesn't work the other way around. The "soul gender" is AFAIK immutable - it's the body that's meaningless.
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That's interesting - the part where only spiritually male and spiritually female couples can procreate. Do you know where I can find that in the lore? I just want to understand the context in which it was written. I find it kinda dubious, since we just saw two female souls create viable offspring, a procedure that can be repeated by anyone according to Shenhua. So I doubt Male-Female Procreation is some sort of actual Law superceded by high realm cultivators, rather than imperial doctrine.

I know about 'soul genders'. I believe it was clarified around the time Lin Hai was introduced.

Sucal said:
This was a declaration of war. It was a two prolonged assault on her enemies, hidden behind a glove of kindness, because her words are weapons.
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I get your point, but that's not what I was trying to communicate. What meant is I thought Shenhua would announce something that would send our plans/the plot into a tailspin. Like we'd have to rework long-term plans for LQ or something. T

his announcement may set more things in motion in the background (such as encouraging thoughts of treason), but overall friends remain friends and enemies remain enemies.
 
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