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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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If we're talking about the past, the real big issue that hasn't actually been addressed is: what happened to our dad? Did he get killed, get chased off, or just run off on his own?
 
Cant we just lay a trap for that Liu guy that forced Qingge into prostitution, lure him out some way, and then murderblender him? Do we need to make things so complicated?
 
I mean. I think it'll be interesting to see how any potential situation with Liu develops once we get there. We're not really one for personal grudges, yeah? There's a lot in the world you just have to let go in terms of claiming justice (punitive). Actually assisting in the recovery of Tonghou which appears to have some symptoms that may indicate Hui-era malignant civic design would be justice (restorative) and probably more in our wheelhouse in terms of motivations. That involves stopping ongoing harms, and sometimes will involve punitive justice in order to stop ongoing harm, but is a different motivation I think.

Jiao as Cruel Virtue and An as Inexorable Justice were unable to accomplish the reforms they set out for. We shouldn't put Punishment or Destruction at the forefront of our thoughts around reform/revolution/progress. Will it be a portion? Certainly. Thankfully the worst of the rot was cleaned out by the Shao/An/Shenhua generations and we're optimizing for a much cleaner environment than they had to fight against
 
Indeed. Especially a significant factor lies in punitive justice putting you as fundamentally opposed to them, a Qi focused on vengeance could simply not be allowed to thrive by the Liu as a matter of basic survival.
See basically all the Bai ex-vassals for how that works out in the long run, their focus on punitive/retributive justice ensures that the only way out is ruining them.

Better to build a close knit community who wouldn't just toss out and sacrifice one of their own if pressure comes from outside. One strong enough that it cannot be casually pressured. One kind enough that it would not abuse its power.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
This is a guy who had a reputation for being rough on women, and responded to one refusing him by forcing her into prostitution. He's a sexual predator and needs to be permanently dealt with.
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Was that him? I remember that it was Qiggne's own clan who forced her into being a prostitute to assuage possible anger of the fiance's clan. I don't remember reading anything about the guy's reaction. Am I misremembering?
 
Varder said:
Was that him? I remember that it was Qiggne's own clan who forced her into being a prostitute to assuage possible anger of the fiance's clan. I don't remember reading anything about the guy's reaction. Am I misremembering?
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I think her clan just disowned her, and it was the young master who ensured she couldn't make a living as anything else
 
As far as it goes the argument against Shenhua isn't about the past but about the future. She's done work that's more positive than negative in the past, and even now she's doing things worthy of respect... but while it's been overshadowed by the cool designer baby thing, the part where she centralized power even more in the hands of the Duchess through a growing 'central' army is not ethical.

Nor is it necessarily unethical either, to be clear. It's just a power grab, no doubt for what she sees as good reasons. She's going to gather about her the reins of more and more power to do more and more things... and some of those are valuable and good, but can we say so endlessly and infinitely as she wears upon the world like a rider running a horse to exhaustion chasing the sunset?

I am far less sure of that.
 
The Laurent said:
As far as it goes the argument against Shenhua isn't about the past but about the future. She's done work that's more positive than negative in the past, and even now she's doing things worthy of respect... but while it's been overshadowed by the cool designer baby thing, the part where she centralized power even more in the hands of the Duchess through a growing 'central' army is not ethical.

Nor is it necessarily unethical either, to be clear. It's just a power grab, no doubt for what she sees as good reasons. She's going to gather about her the reins of more and more power to do more and more things... and some of those are valuable and good, but can we say so endlessly and infinitely as she wears upon the world like a rider running a horse to exhaustion chasing the sunset?

I am far less sure of that.
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Shenhua is a White level Cultivator. She is more of a force of nature than a person in many ways, and that force is Revolution. She will continue to overthrow existing social orders in favor of new ones until she is stopped. This includes overthrowing bad social order in favor of good ones, and what remains of the person she was (and the influence of her wife who she cheated to still care about even now) are pointing her towards those bad social orders first, but it is not restricted to overthrowing bad things for good ones. If Shenhua ever achieved Utopia, she would then immediately overthrow and destroy it, she would, by her very nature have to do so. To say nothing of fighting unwinnable battles...revolting against the Empire is a much closer worry than destroying Utopia, and unlikely to end well at the moment.

Stopping her is a long term necessity. Specifically, we need to do so before her wife dies and she can no longer restrain her rebellions to the less damaging sort.
 
The Laurent said:
As far as it goes the argument against Shenhua isn't about the past but about the future
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while I broadly agree with that, we are collecting significant parts of our Way from the past. If we cannot leverage the Past for an argument in the Present, just how effective will our build be in an argument against Shenhua?

I believe a strong component of Shenhua against the Hui was her grounding herself heavily in the Present. She can envision a future, or know facts about a past, but defensively she can ground herself in the Perpetual Revolution that is The Present. This would give her a huge conceptual advantage against Hui dreams of the Past or Future, while still leaving her relatively-susceptible to the webbing attack we saw the big spider use against her in the sidestory. That was something happening explicitly in the Present, rather than the more subversive/indirect attacks that propaganda invoking the Future or Past represent.

So our portion of the argument against Shenhua is that we're able to steal Power from Past context and drag it into the Present again. She shouldn't be capable of regret for her actions, but a clinical observance that we could handle it better in the new Post-Hui context should be helpful to any argument.
 
JowKeen said:
we have to make an argument to deposing Shenhua
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JowKeen said:
while I broadly agree with that, we are collecting significant parts of our Way from the past. If we cannot leverage the Past for an argument in the Present, just how effective will our build be in an argument against Shenhua?
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Shenhua is the winter.

From Ling Qi's musing about cold, isolation, community, renewal, and power, we can see that the role Ling Qi envisions for herself is the same as the role shenhua plays. Things being ended and made pure, in readiness for the new growth after.

But the winter cannot last too long, or be too harsh, lest it cease to be endings and becomes Ending instead. We know this; our cultivation is a restatement of revolution's purge and rebuild philosophy, not a contradiction.

So yeah- our argument against Shenhua is that winter must give way to spring.

Not because winter is bad, but because it is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
 
Also to be clear, CRX is the one that's going to succeed her. We ourselves, alone, do not need to be the argument about why Shenhua has to go.

Nor does it have to just be us and CRX.

Hell, it doesn't even have to just be us, CRX, and Guan.
 
Adhoc vote count started by DeadmanwalkingXI on Jun 12, 2023 at 2:05 PM, finished with 191 posts and 106 votes.
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DeadmanwalkingXI said:
I doubt they've done so with sufficient finality. They may have purged the servants but they're not gonna execute actual family members on spec. Now, if we went and confronted them, they might hand him over nicely gift-wrapped, but they aren't gonna execute an actual family member unless they have to.



The guy is almost certainly a serial rapist, and all the Magistrate did was keep them off Qingge and maybe look into the fake debts thing, not the long term problem. The guy responsible needs to be dealt with permanently. We don't need a major vendetta with the whole family, but that particular scion needs to not be a problem for anyone by the time we're done with him.
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I think we do need a major vendetta, actually. Morally speaking. Without revenge, how will they suffer consequences for their actions? And without consequences, why would they bother to stop?

Yes, I know Ling Qi's morals aren't my own. I'm stating my personal preference.
 
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Glau said:
Shenhua is the winter.

From Ling Qi's musing about cold, isolation, community, renewal, and power, we can see that the role Ling Qi envisions for herself is the same as the role shenhua plays. Things being ended and made pure, in readiness for the new growth after.

But the winter cannot last too long, or be too harsh, lest it cease to be endings and becomes Ending instead. We know this; our cultivation is a restatement of revolution's purge and rebuild philosophy, not a contradiction.

So yeah- our argument against Shenhua is that winter must give way to spring.

Not because winter is bad, but because it is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
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I think Shenhua herself knows this to. She is not good for the Emerald seas, not in the long term. Which is why she herself hopes CRX can in time depose her. It was implied, several times. Though I don't think Ling Qi herself knows it
 
Winged One said:
I think we do need a major vendetta, actually. Morally speaking. Without revenge, how will they suffer consequences for their actions? And without consequences, why would they bother to stop?

Yes, I know Ling Qi's morals aren't my own. I'm stating my personal preference.
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I mean, we need to see them punished, but that doesn't necessarily require anything beyond siccing the proper authorities on them at the Duchy level. Like, abusing mortals as a cultivator under Shenhua's regime is not legal or acceptable for a Viscount clan, and we can do this the Renxiang way where we simply prosecute them in accordance with the law and they'll still suffer sufficient consequences.

So it depends on your definition of vendetta, I guess. Does siccing the authorities on them and seeing them punished in accordance with the law count?
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
I mean, we need to see them punished, but that doesn't necessarily require anything beyond siccing the proper authorities on them at the Duchy level. Like, abusing mortals as a cultivator under Shenhua's regime is not legal or acceptable for a Viscount clan, and we can do this the Renxiang way where we simply prosecute them in accordance with the law and they'll still suffer sufficient consequences.

So it depends on your definition of vendetta, I guess. Does siccing the authorities on them and seeing them punished in accordance with the law count?
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Eh... depends how harsh the punishment is. CRX is CRX, so she'll punish them exactly as hard as she intends to punish every criminal who does this kind of shit. I'm not sure how harsh that is, though.
 
Winged One said:
Eh... depends how harsh the punishment is. CRX is CRX, so she'll punish them exactly as hard as she intends to punish every criminal who does this kind of shit. I'm not sure how harsh that is, though.
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I'm pretty sure Cai Renxiang's penalty for serial rape is gonna be death. Her punishments for government corruption won't be quite as bad, but they will not be gentle in the least. Remember, there are few sins worse in Renxiang's book than governmental corruption to protect family members from the consequences of their actions.
 
DeadmanwalkingXI said:
I'm pretty sure Cai Renxiang's penalty for serial rape is gonna be death.
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Pretty sure we aren't going to see this on screen or engage with it much. There's a vicariously viscous satisfaction to be found in making up and applying punishments to fictional characters, but....

The degree to which sexual assault was normalized in the past is something that leaves everyone feeling dirty when grappling with. So rather than dealing with arguments about what percentage of the population killing serial rapists would remove (0.1%? 1%? 10%?) I think we can just let this whole subject drop.
 
Glau said:
Pretty sure we aren't going to see this on screen or engage with it much. There's a vicariously viscous satisfaction to be found in making up and applying punishments to fictional characters, but....

The degree to which sexual assault was normalized in the past is something that leaves everyone feeling dirty when grappling with. So rather than dealing with arguments about what percentage of the population killing serial rapists would remove (0.1%? 1%? 10%?) I think we can just let this whole subject drop.
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I mean, we already know that cultivators are punished more harshly than mortals are for hurting mortals, we don't really need to engage with the inter-mortal justice systems to know that the punishment for ongoing and egregious abuse of mortals by a Green Realm cultivator is a death sentence.
 
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