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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
[ ] An open air gala with songs and poetry and a great deal of food, open to spirits in the old style, taking some elements from older traditions. (Best suited to Wang Chao, a little scandalous, leans the group toward Weilu Reformists factions. Moderate chance of changing Wang Chao's reputation for better or worse. May offend conservatives of all stripes)

i think you made a type somewhere here, Yrs. Usually when you do a "safe, but low reward" option and a "high risk high reward option" there is some actually downside :V

Scandal? Offending Conservatives? and we get benefits?? what do we have to lose
 
It's cute seeing Sixiang so protective.

[ ] An open air gala with songs and poetry and a great deal of food, open to spirits in the old style, taking some elements from older traditions. (Best suited to Wang Chao, a little scandalous, leans the group toward Weilu Reformists factions. Moderate chance of changing Wang Chao's reputation for better or worse. May offend conservatives of all stripes)

This gives him a niche. Having a visible alignment that comes at a social cost makes you seem more dedicated to it, and that gives you reputation and visibility. That in turn makes you more desirable to seek out for anyone in that group or that's seeking to reach out to that group. Socially, I would expect Wang Chao is more inherently likely to become irrelevant than to have too many enemies, so adding a few more enemies doesn't seem likely to tip that balance in a harmful direction.
 
[X] An open air gala with songs and poetry and a great deal of food, open to spirits in the old style, taking some elements from older traditions. (Best suited to Wang Chao, a little scandalous, leans the group toward Weilu Reformists factions. Moderate chance of changing Wang Chao's reputation for better or worse. May offend conservatives of all stripes)

After seeing Renxiang's struggles I am strongly in favor of giving Wang Chao a chance to be himself, the haters are always gonna hate.
 
"That will be the lesson, humans are petty creatures, that we are. We are dolls constructed from pride and grudges and fears. Understand those, and you will be one step closer to peering into the cipher behind another being's eyes.
This is what I was hoping for when I picked this. If Community if going to be a central pillar of Ling Qi's ideals, then understanding the ways people can clash and conflict is going to be vital to upholding that.
 
Shu Yue agreed. "But, you do not peer behind the face. Most you meet are still the phantoms in your mist, insubstantial and fleeting. Even those who truly exist in your mind, you do not quite understand their drives, do you? Hence your misstep with the Young Miss, or further back the escalation of the conflict with the disciple Yan Renshu. Their thinking is opaque to you who has not the luxury of grudges."

Ohhh neat, I kinda get where it's going. I think it'll pair well with our sincerity insight.
When we know someone isn't being sincere, instead of just getting aggravated, we might get to peer beyond their face and see what they're reeeeeally up to or acting on.
 
"Luo Zhong though…"

Ling Qi frowned. Well she had her ideas for that. Shu Yue was right that she could do with being more proactive on some things.
[ ] An open air gala with songs and poetry and a great deal of food, open to spirits in the old style, taking some elements from older traditions. (Best suited to Wang Chao, a little scandalous, leans the group toward Weilu Reformists factions. Moderate chance of changing Wang Chao's reputation for better or worse. May offend conservatives of all stripes)
Wait, this is perfect.

First, we go maximum Weilu Reformer to pump up support among our base, at the cost of offending some conservative factions.

Then we offer Luo Zhong a job (as Peakaboo Armor and Conservative Wrangler), to reassure the people feeling snippy at us that we are retaining a voice of reason, and to give them someone they can relay their complaints through that they feel more comfortable with (so we never need to personally interact with the conservatives ourselves).

We can't actually afford to always piss off and ignore conservative and imperial factions, because having that many people actively working against us isn't viable, but trying to play the moderate's game will make it nigh-impossible to push through our reforms or actually galvanize our support base. Picking up a self-interested middleman to appease our detractors and allow them to speak with someone they won't disdain on sight can save us a lot of problems, while also saving us the personal pain of talking to these people ourselves.

Ling Qi shows a little social initiative, the people we like get a bunch of social support, Wang Chao plays to his strengths, we armor ourselves against our detractors at minimal cost to ourselves... Everyone wins, especially us.
 
party means we get to see a bunch of cool spirits and cui gets to come too . hanyi and zhengui can go around and play more openly too
 
"There's more to people than that," Sixiang said, breaking their silence. "I'm not gonna let you make her go back to thinking like that."

She glanced her muses way in concern, but Shu Yue merely gave another one of those rasping wheezes, laughter from a throat not built for any such thing.

"If she comes to see the world as I do, the lesson has failed," they replied. "I may only teach how to look, not how to see."
And I think thats the clincher on getting the other lessons - if Qi manages to put a new spin on the lessons to make them her own, then she's safe to learn more of them.

And if instead the lessons warp her too much, she cannot.
 
[X] An open air gala with songs and poetry and a great deal of food, open to spirits in the old style, taking some elements from older traditions. (Best suited to Wang Chao, a little scandalous, leans the group toward Weilu Reformists factions. Moderate chance of changing Wang Chao's reputation for better or worse. May offend conservatives of all stripes)
 
A few other thoughts.

Re: Eye of Grudges, historically, Ling Qi defaulted to viewing people as self-interested and apathetic, based on her many experiences with people fucking each other over when it benefitted them and ignoring the suffering of others whenever caring about that suffering would produce the mildest inconvenience. Ling Qi knew of people with kindness and compassion in their hearts, but they were a minority that was preyed on by everyone else - including her. (RIP blanket man.)

During her time in the Sect, she eventually began to see the good in people as she made friends herself and talked to people who seemed to sincerely believe in odd concepts like "justice," and Six has further expanded on that by teaching us to see the dreams and bonds of all of those masses we used to dismiss. This has all been great, both in terms of LQ's mental health and her ability to accurately judge others, but LQ's education does have something of a blind spot; LQ still doesn't really understand the things that drive people to be dickish against their self-interest.

As Shu Yue said, LQ hasn't had the luxury of grudges, so while she does know that spite can drive people she's bad at actually seeing that sort of irrational resentment in others. So she understands if someone feels envious of her and tries to take her stuff for themselves or to break her stuff to weaken her as competition, but she doesn't get that someone might burn through their remaining powerbase to pursue a one-sided vendetta against her because fuck you.

Eye of Grudges seems like a great way to patch this blind spot in LQ's comprehension, and given her own lack of spite, I don't think we're in terrible danger of learning Shu Yue's lesson too well.


Re: Wang being suited to the Gala:

Honestly, it makes a lot of sense. Having a bunch of non-martial competitions means having a lot of venues for conflicts and subtle power games, and Wang Chao is, ah, not adept at managing those. So long as everyone involved is just having good clean fun he'll be fine, but he's ill-suited to stamp down on or smooth over any subtle fuckery that crops up.

On the other hand, a Weilu Gala is antithetical to Imperial Powergame Bullshit of any sort, so he can pretty much just kick back and be the ineloquent life of the party he was born to be. Plus, he refers to Zhengui as Sir Ling, treating him as just as much of a member of the Ling noble line as any human. That's as Weilu as it gets.


[X] An open air gala with songs and poetry and a great deal of food, open to spirits in the old style, taking some elements from older traditions. (Best suited to Wang Chao, a little scandalous, leans the group toward Weilu Reformists factions. Moderate chance of changing Wang Chao's reputation for better or worse. May offend conservatives of all stripes)
There's a 2 hour moratorium after every update; it's going to be another ~35 minutes till the vote opens.
 
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Yeah. It's looking like it'll be a landslide vote.

On another related thought, this open air gala can be seen as us "finally showing our hand", where we 'reveal' to the other factions what our goal was in letting Hanyi be a spirit idol. A modified revival of the old ways.

This will give those who are normally against us a reason (even if contrived) to make ties with us because they will want to steer this new movement from the ground up. And it'd mostly be to our benefit to allow them these ties as long as their influence doesn't weigh us down too much.
 
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Vote's open!

[X] An open air gala with songs and poetry and a great deal of food, open to spirits in the old style, taking some elements from older traditions. (Best suited to Wang Chao, a little scandalous, leans the group toward Weilu Reformists factions. Moderate chance of changing Wang Chao's reputation for better or worse. May offend conservatives of all stripes)
 
[X] An open air gala with songs and poetry and a great deal of food, open to spirits in the old style, taking some elements from older traditions. (Best suited to Wang Chao, a little scandalous, leans the group toward Weilu Reformists factions. Moderate chance of changing Wang Chao's reputation for better or worse. May offend conservatives of all stripes)
 
[X] An open air gala with songs and poetry and a great deal of food, open to spirits in the old style, taking some elements from older traditions. (Best suited to Wang Chao, a little scandalous, leans the group toward Weilu Reformists factions. Moderate chance of changing Wang Chao's reputation for better or worse. May offend conservatives of all stripes)

The so called """downside""" to this option is the best part.
 
At first I was a little surprised that this fit Wang Chao better but after thinking it over this is the type of gathering that best lends itself to his blunt self and getting his own social niche that doesn't involve veiled barbs and cutting words.

[X] An open air gala with songs and poetry and a great deal of food, open to spirits in the old style, taking some elements from older traditions. (Best suited to Wang Chao, a little scandalous, leans the group toward Weilu Reformists factions. Moderate chance of changing Wang Chao's reputation for better or worse. May offend conservatives of all stripes)
 
[X] An open air gala with songs and poetry and a great deal of food, open to spirits in the old style, taking some elements from older traditions. (Best suited to Wang Chao, a little scandalous, leans the group toward Weilu Reformists factions. Moderate chance of changing Wang Chao's reputation for better or worse. May offend conservatives of all stripes)
 
[X] An open air gala with songs and poetry and a great deal of food, open to spirits in the old style, taking some elements from older traditions. (Best suited to Wang Chao, a little scandalous, leans the group toward Weilu Reformists factions. Moderate chance of changing Wang Chao's reputation for better or worse. May offend conservatives of all stripes)
 
[X] An open air gala with songs and poetry and a great deal of food, open to spirits in the old style, taking some elements from older traditions. (Best suited to Wang Chao, a little scandalous, leans the group toward Weilu Reformists factions. Moderate chance of changing Wang Chao's reputation for better or worse. May offend conservatives of all stripes)
 
[X] An open air gala with songs and poetry and a great deal of food, open to spirits in the old style, taking some elements from older traditions. (Best suited to Wang Chao, a little scandalous, leans the group toward Weilu Reformists factions. Moderate chance of changing Wang Chao's reputation for better or worse. May offend conservatives of all stripes)

Respectfully, fuck the conservatives.



That is all.
 
[X] An open air gala with songs and poetry and a great deal of food, open to spirits in the old style, taking some elements from older traditions. (Best suited to Wang Chao, a little scandalous, leans the group toward Weilu Reformists factions. Moderate chance of changing Wang Chao's reputation for better or worse. May offend conservatives of all stripes)
I am integrating the TREE vote into the gathering arc yes, hence the little foreshadow there
Hmm...
She knew the cultivator wasn't referring to her letters, Ling Qi wasn't surprised. "Do you know of the play, Last March of the Beast Kings?"
"Ah, that Art, you still find it suitable?"

"It is good practice, even if I will need to make it my own. I have begun to contemplate the second half, the ode of the Great Tree. It's…"

"Where the dirge begins with the march to war, the ode begins in their deaths," Shu Yue said. "Alone, for Kings and Gods cannot have equals, nor friends…"

"And so they are broken one by one," Ling Qi said. "Upon the roots of Xiangmen."

Shu Yue's eyes drifted shut and they seemed contemplative. "Aesthetic, faces, shapes, these things are easy to change. It seems you understand."
Beast Kings: "We are Mighty and Unrivaled. We stand alone under the Heavens!"
Tree: "We stand united, Man, Spirit, Beast and Plant. "
*Horrible slaughter of Beast Kings, bones used as decorations*
 
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