Seeing Ling Qi revise her Domain is fun. Even better is it's more like she's re-emphasizing her Domain. She's taking things that are there and recognizing the deeper truths held within. You love to see it.
It'll be especially neat to see its perspective ramp up as we keep moving forwards to larger and more prominent projects. Imperial politics, culture, Emerald Seas history, they're all different layers and you can see the relevance of Ling Qi's ideas on all of them. Today's Meng struggle to open themselves to others in the province. Imperial pride is a barrier to genuine connection to other peoples. Under the shadow of the Hui, even the mighty in Emerald Seas devolved to self-interest, unable to hold out their hands out in solidarity to one another for fear of what advantage might be taken, not too unlike that frightened girl in those lonely streets.
You can even see it in the mighty Weilu themselves. At their end they turned inwards, withdrawing from the Emerald Seas utterly before disappearing, so that no one could even know exactly when they'd gone. Though the ultimate fate of the Weilu is a mystery, it's true their presence in this world was unmade. And companion, perhaps not perpetrator but inarguably companion, to that unmaking was the Isolation they fashioned for themselves before their end.
Which puts my in mind of our recent insight.
The Weilu are undeniably a symbol of the Emerald Seas, its mythical founders and wardens in an older age, yadda yadda. It's even true(as far as we know). But it's also pretty absurd. For all that they symbolize the province, the Weilu are also a people who very literally abandoned the land, either rejecting the notion it had greater meaning than their own concerns or never having considered the question at all, to pursue their own ruin in private.
Which, of course, makes the Weilu the perfect symbol for Ling Qi's Domain. They represent both Community and its failure, Isolation, while bleeding into the more abstract shared ties of culture Ling Qi has begun to explore in her art and histography. There's also a more concrete, personal tie in play when it comes to Ling Qi's Domain.
Huisheng's 'blood' is what Ling Qi made her Domain weapon out of, a small piece of his influence threaded into her soul in ignorance, and according to Shu Yue the seed of an unclear transformation when combined with her cultivation under his guidance. Probably a risk, but definitely an opportunity, as these things tend to go. Huisheng himself is an echo, a remnant of the Weilu, and a being who is defined by the wielding of Isolation as a weapon and punishment against the man who he never was. A self-describe arch heretic locked away from the world to be forgotten, rotten and alone in a gaol for one.
There's a resonance there I feel, between the spirit born from a past that isn't truly his, the people of the past who maybe never truly were, and the girl born without a past starting to see things as they truly are. So, my humble suggestion is Ling Qi takes advantage of that transformation-to-be to seize from her thiefly tutor a form and symbol of the past to reshape her spiral-bladed Domain weapon into a pair of midnight horns resting atop her skull, in the style he shares with the Weilu. It would retain its current Isolating effects just fine and arguably better through a more thematically fitting profile.
Basically, the Weilu horns represent the duality of Isolation and Community we're building into our Domain, while also being a nod to Huisheng's connection to our Domain weapon and our broader Emerald Seas cultural projects, while also having particular play with our latest insight on the duty of the artist to history.
Cute horns are amazing and stand on their own merits regardless of all other considerations, but here they become a sort of in-joke/critique hybrid for Ling Qi. We're chastising the Weilu for their failures by wearing their horns as a symbol of the cause of provincial unity, even more broadly unity of dissimilar peoples. The cause of Tsu the Diviner. The cause the Weilu abandoned, or maybe the cause they never cared about in the first place. It's a devastating critique of the powerful of the past which just happens tosteal emulate their authority for ourselves and I don't know about you but that's the kind of energy I want crystalized in our Domain.
tl;dr: cute horns.
P.S.
Cute horns.
P.P.S.
You better fuckin' believe it: cute horns.
It'll be especially neat to see its perspective ramp up as we keep moving forwards to larger and more prominent projects. Imperial politics, culture, Emerald Seas history, they're all different layers and you can see the relevance of Ling Qi's ideas on all of them. Today's Meng struggle to open themselves to others in the province. Imperial pride is a barrier to genuine connection to other peoples. Under the shadow of the Hui, even the mighty in Emerald Seas devolved to self-interest, unable to hold out their hands out in solidarity to one another for fear of what advantage might be taken, not too unlike that frightened girl in those lonely streets.
You can even see it in the mighty Weilu themselves. At their end they turned inwards, withdrawing from the Emerald Seas utterly before disappearing, so that no one could even know exactly when they'd gone. Though the ultimate fate of the Weilu is a mystery, it's true their presence in this world was unmade. And companion, perhaps not perpetrator but inarguably companion, to that unmaking was the Isolation they fashioned for themselves before their end.
Which puts my in mind of our recent insight.
yrsillar said:
The Weilu are undeniably a symbol of the Emerald Seas, its mythical founders and wardens in an older age, yadda yadda. It's even true(as far as we know). But it's also pretty absurd. For all that they symbolize the province, the Weilu are also a people who very literally abandoned the land, either rejecting the notion it had greater meaning than their own concerns or never having considered the question at all, to pursue their own ruin in private.
Which, of course, makes the Weilu the perfect symbol for Ling Qi's Domain. They represent both Community and its failure, Isolation, while bleeding into the more abstract shared ties of culture Ling Qi has begun to explore in her art and histography. There's also a more concrete, personal tie in play when it comes to Ling Qi's Domain.
Huisheng's 'blood' is what Ling Qi made her Domain weapon out of, a small piece of his influence threaded into her soul in ignorance, and according to Shu Yue the seed of an unclear transformation when combined with her cultivation under his guidance. Probably a risk, but definitely an opportunity, as these things tend to go. Huisheng himself is an echo, a remnant of the Weilu, and a being who is defined by the wielding of Isolation as a weapon and punishment against the man who he never was. A self-describe arch heretic locked away from the world to be forgotten, rotten and alone in a gaol for one.
There's a resonance there I feel, between the spirit born from a past that isn't truly his, the people of the past who maybe never truly were, and the girl born without a past starting to see things as they truly are. So, my humble suggestion is Ling Qi takes advantage of that transformation-to-be to seize from her thiefly tutor a form and symbol of the past to reshape her spiral-bladed Domain weapon into a pair of midnight horns resting atop her skull, in the style he shares with the Weilu. It would retain its current Isolating effects just fine and arguably better through a more thematically fitting profile.
Basically, the Weilu horns represent the duality of Isolation and Community we're building into our Domain, while also being a nod to Huisheng's connection to our Domain weapon and our broader Emerald Seas cultural projects, while also having particular play with our latest insight on the duty of the artist to history.
Cute horns are amazing and stand on their own merits regardless of all other considerations, but here they become a sort of in-joke/critique hybrid for Ling Qi. We're chastising the Weilu for their failures by wearing their horns as a symbol of the cause of provincial unity, even more broadly unity of dissimilar peoples. The cause of Tsu the Diviner. The cause the Weilu abandoned, or maybe the cause they never cared about in the first place. It's a devastating critique of the powerful of the past which just happens to
tl;dr: cute horns.
P.S.
Cute horns.
P.P.S.
You better fuckin' believe it: cute horns.
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