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.
Even beside what The Laurent said. You have to remember that the beings that LQ wants to work against and, to use your words "over-rule", is the likes of Unity of Blades and the Forever King.
For all intents, what we know is needed to be a sovreign and reach the peak is to take a stand and tell the world that something is Wrong and needs to be put Right. For LQ right now that is just taking shape, but we can see hints of it forming.
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Mmmm. I don't think Ling Qi is willing to be a monster; every sovereign we've seen is a monster in some sense.
It feels like an expanded version of the choice we faced way back in threads: roots and community vs wings and freedom. We refused to cut out either, and took both. But cutting away things is how you ascend, so refusing to discard means a refusal to become more powerful in favor of staying more human. Heck- the duchess is shocking not just because of how fast she grew but because she has way more humanity than she 'should' as a white.
Right now, I do not think Qi is willing to discard any of her humanity, this is what I mean when I say she doesn't want power enough to be a sovereign.
We'll see how that resolves.
It feels like an expanded version of the choice we faced way back in threads: roots and community vs wings and freedom. We refused to cut out either, and took both. But cutting away things is how you ascend, so refusing to discard means a refusal to become more powerful in favor of staying more human. Heck- the duchess is shocking not just because of how fast she grew but because she has way more humanity than she 'should' as a white.
Right now, I do not think Qi is willing to discard any of her humanity, this is what I mean when I say she doesn't want power enough to be a sovereign.
We'll see how that resolves.
Eh, she's already cutting. That's what gathering insights (especially advanced insights) do. They narrow you. We've had options before that yrs has specifically crossed out because our nascent domain wouldn't let Qi choose that option. For instance back when we visited the white sky we could have let them take Hanyi temporarily which would have been quite good politically but our family insights and concepts wouldn't allow it. The cutting is already occuring.
Last edited:
I expect Ling Qi will seek to cheat. A method of growth while also retaining her connections and mostly human perspective.
It's not like cultivation is a fully understood science when you have people like Shenhua recently breaking preconceptions or people outside the empire ascending in a different manner.
It's not like cultivation is a fully understood science when you have people like Shenhua recently breaking preconceptions or people outside the empire ascending in a different manner.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
What is a Sovereign but one who looks at the Laws of the World and tells it to fuck off because you're wrong?
I don't think she'll entirely retain her human perspective, but I don't see her abandoning her connections. Isolation is her Sword, making it her life is anathema to her.
I don't think she'll entirely retain her human perspective, but I don't see her abandoning her connections. Isolation is her Sword, making it her life is anathema to her.
I imagine the problem is that when you get high enough on the power scale, your relationships with people at the bottom inevitably trend closer to "patron deity and their congregation" than anything else.
- Location
- Washington
It's true that many of the Sovereigns we've seen are monsters but in truth a significant fraction of them have been monsters in pretty human ways. The most inhuman of them have specifically been those who have cultivated extremely inhuman ways. You cut away the human parts of yourself you were least inclined to in the first place and MOSTLY keep the ones you actually did value in the first place up until white when you do actually seemingly finally become a person-shaped missile of Way pointed at ascension or bust.
Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
We only have one project left for SNR and MoSS respectively, and good scenes for them (Kohatu meet-up and building Snowblossom Lake Communication Shrine respectively) too. I wouldn't worry.
I don't think LQ has cut away any part of herself. She's becoming more of herself and her worldview, but she's not cut away parts of herself yet. If the Nightmare tribulation went badly and Ling Qi cut away her ability to feel love, that would be cutting parts of herself away. But rn, it's just prioritising parts of herself through the concepts associated with them. Since they're prioritised, they're followed more. We'll lose the ability to do certain things, but that'll be more sticky religiously to one worldview, compared to cutting parts of yourself away.
Imo, that'll be more like cutting away unwanted concepts and the parts associated with them, and we already have wog that we can avoid that if we take our time.
We'll still have them, but they'll be so minor compared to the prioritised parts.
Last edited:
I mean she narrowed herself with her way that specifically prevented her from choosing that. Her way literally prevented her from doing that, yrs said that himself. That's still cutting by most definitions, she cut the ability to make that decision, likely because it went against her first advanced insight pretty severely. She couldn't decide to give Hanyi away for an advantage but she was able to let Hanyi choose herself.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
But that is, at this point, still fundamentally within... pretty regular human limits?
Plenty of people are dedicated enough to their religion or belief system (political, moral, or otherwise) that there are things they CANNOT do, or would never think to do, as it were.
We see a crossed off option, but to her it's just something that never occurs to her... but it might never occur to a kind, giving person to leave someone to die IRL, and we don't go, "Their Way prevented them from doing it."
In this case though it's literally a supernatural block, it was asked about on the discord and in the story Qi does think of that option, realizes how good it is but is prevented from considering it as plausible. Even Jaromilla later notes that they start cutting and carving themselves early in the empire.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mean...we actually kind of do if their reason for not doing that is part of a coherent philosophical creed. People who stick to their guns philosophically and are known to do so are notable and will be discussed as 'He'd never do that, he's an honorable man.' or 'She'd never do that, it's against her religion.'
We don't use the term Way, but that's just vocabulary. We do talk about this as a thing.
Also while the quest may never get that far, we know that there are methods to still ascend to that level without being totally subsumed the cultivator's way as Imperial wisdom says should happen. Shenhua is a living example, since by conventional imperial wisdom she shouldn't still be capable of loving her wife.
Shenhua's method probably wouldn't work for Ling Qi, but if it's possible one way it may be possible in others ways.
Oliver_Twister
Idea-Man, He Who Shits Ideas
- Location
- West Africa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Exactly. There's a difference between following a philosophy and actively cutting away a part of yourself. The former is not doing something because it's against your ethics/worldview, and the latter is removing a part of who you are as a person because you can't find a way to connect it to your worldview.
Imagine you have a heart demon. If you excise one part of yourself to resolve the heart demon, then you're cutting away parts of yourself. If you spend time resolving it and finding ways for it to integrate into your existing Way, then you're not cutting away part of yourself.
Both can lead to an inability to do things, but one is because, well, you've expanded or fixed a loophole in your worldview, and are religiously following the new thing you've created. The other is because, well, you literally discarded the fundamental piece of "you" who could do or think that and thrown it into the void.
Cultivation in FoD is, at the end of the day, defining your moral code/worldview and following it. Except, you know, magnified 1000 times and with superpowers. We look at scenes here and think, "These people are horrific/inhuman", but that's pretty true for a lot of people irl based on their worldviews.
The only inhuman part about people like Whites is that they follow their creeds to the letter in every situation.
- Location
- Washington
Oh for sure white seems to be Special, see Meizhan's aunt going "yeah it sucks thta i'm not going to be able to love Meizhan anymore at white." But it seems that unless you're actively choosing to become inhuman, you can stay pretty damn human all the way up to prism.
We've been inside Yuan He's head, he's definitionally cut away a LOT of himself, but the end result of what he's cut away is something that is basically still inside the scope of human variance.
We've been inside Yuan He's head, he's definitionally cut away a LOT of himself, but the end result of what he's cut away is something that is basically still inside the scope of human variance.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Though to be fair here, how objective is she? The Bai are so fucked up that many of them are not able to love (or acknowledge it) at Green and Cyan, let alone at Prism. She's an outlier in that she's not a heinous asshole, which makes her one of the best Bai out there, but she's still a Bai.
...I'm not saying she's necessarily wrong, she knows her own Way better than the audience does. But whether it is some inherent fact, is hard to tell.
We can tell that it seems pretty normal for Whites, but we've also only seen two Whites in any great detail. So I don't know if we know enough to be sure of anything except one sort of norm.
- Location
- Washington
Even if it's not an inherent feature at white, i'd say a situation where you jump from, basically, people who don't go out of their way to cut out their humanity being able to say fairly human at prism, to people needing to go out of the way to stay human at white, would still make white Special (tm)
I thought it was fairly clear that when BM'S aunt mentioned her incapability to love at white it was specifically about her own way. Even for Shenhua what she said was Shenhua's way couldn't love at white not that she couldn't love at white. we never had any WOG or in-text info saying nobody can love at white. revolution and absolute truth focused way and a way focused on cutting out inefficient and corrupted part of their family way is probably incapable of love but some ways must work.
- Location
- Space between realms
- Pronouns
- He
What I find interesting is that he is one of those people who lived long enough to see himself become the villain. He went from defending against the destruction of his home and people to leading (or at least being a leader of) an effort that will finally destroy utterly the Cloud Nomads.
Perhaps his more "Heroic" traits or self-perception of such is what he sacrificed.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
The only part of herself Ling Qi truly cut away so far, as I see it, is her erosphobia. And that was as much about getting past it for her own sake as about cultivation.
- Location
- Washington
I don't think there was necessarily any cutting away at all, for that specifically. It is... a much more human reaction to ethnic strife than many of us would like.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Yeah, narratively at least up to so far it serves as a kind of thematic exaggeration of the exact kinds of things that fanatics, determined idealists, and so on can do.
The positions that a person can have.
Obviously there's differences. Turbo-racist ethno-nationalist leaders of fascist parties can (hypothetically) change their mind, discover racism is wrong, and stop being such a shithead.
A hypothetical modern day "Way of Nazism" Cultivator or whatever would be someone supernaturally unable to not be a racist without breaking their way.
But this is very human. Most people who dedicate themselves and devote themselves so fully to something, whether it's terrible or beautiful or something of both don't just go, "Oh, I guess I'm wrong." If it happens, it's very rare that it happens... as rare as someone's Way breaking.
If you make it to Pope, you're not going to have some revelation and become a Muslim or whatever.
If you walk down a Way, at a certain point you're not going to turn back unless you just break in general. This is slightly incoherent, I'll admit, but I do think I'm actually onto something.
The positions that a person can have.
Obviously there's differences. Turbo-racist ethno-nationalist leaders of fascist parties can (hypothetically) change their mind, discover racism is wrong, and stop being such a shithead.
A hypothetical modern day "Way of Nazism" Cultivator or whatever would be someone supernaturally unable to not be a racist without breaking their way.
But this is very human. Most people who dedicate themselves and devote themselves so fully to something, whether it's terrible or beautiful or something of both don't just go, "Oh, I guess I'm wrong." If it happens, it's very rare that it happens... as rare as someone's Way breaking.
If you make it to Pope, you're not going to have some revelation and become a Muslim or whatever.
If you walk down a Way, at a certain point you're not going to turn back unless you just break in general. This is slightly incoherent, I'll admit, but I do think I'm actually onto something.