That is massively Way-dependent. Edit: And even the likes of Shenhua can interact with people via simulacrums. She ran Xiangmen's bureaucracy for years.
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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.
Yeah, true. Although quality of life would depend from place to place. Most places in the empire are probably better off than places like Somalia, Haiti, or the DRC. I have to wonder how many people in the empire suffer from malnutrition and other diseases. Apparently in Xiangmen they do have a social safety net. But, yeah, I get your point.
Man, the empire really missed out with Shang Tsung, right? What a tragedy. Industrialization would have improved the lives of so many.
- Location
- Space between realms
- Pronouns
- He
*Looks at Soul Engines and horrors against heaven, nature, and man
*Looks at the little horrors of Industrial Revolution
Missed out on a nuke perhaps.
I'd argue that the cultivators actually win on public infrastructure and lose on proliferation of public infrastructure. Direct patronage of a White (or a post-White tree) is a hell of a thing from the looks of the Emerald Sea capitol.
And that's before you get into cities that some construction focused White decided were going to be the best cities to ever city
Note in how many situations the good infrastructure also comes with a "cultivators only" restriction, or even requirements to ahve cultivated to a particular Realm first.
Meaning that sure, for the "haves" then it could well be better than RL, but for the "have nots" then it can easily be worse then RL. (Note how our mother was reduced to working in a brothel, then considered herself lucky to be able to hold down a job as a garbage collector.)
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
There's a lot going on with incentives that aren't obvious, I think.
The ruling classes are a lot more able to think of themselves as separate and different than the ones they rule over, and that kills the empathy that public works usually derive from. But the ability to forecast and plan to superhuman degrees makes the stuff that does happen a lot more effective.
The idea of peasant revolt like the Yellow Turbans- that shaped a lot of Chinese imperial doctrine- is rather unthinkable. Peer opponents are needed to actually revolt and that means change happens on cultivator timescales, not mortal. Which means bad things can go on for MUCH longer.
And this is before we even get into the way that the most powerful are the most inhuman, and the least likely to be able to understand why things are problems for mortals.
So overall there's a lot pushing for the mortal condition to be worse, and for the historical channels of pushback to be absent. But the ceiling potential for good results is much, much higher.
The ruling classes are a lot more able to think of themselves as separate and different than the ones they rule over, and that kills the empathy that public works usually derive from. But the ability to forecast and plan to superhuman degrees makes the stuff that does happen a lot more effective.
The idea of peasant revolt like the Yellow Turbans- that shaped a lot of Chinese imperial doctrine- is rather unthinkable. Peer opponents are needed to actually revolt and that means change happens on cultivator timescales, not mortal. Which means bad things can go on for MUCH longer.
And this is before we even get into the way that the most powerful are the most inhuman, and the least likely to be able to understand why things are problems for mortals.
So overall there's a lot pushing for the mortal condition to be worse, and for the historical channels of pushback to be absent. But the ceiling potential for good results is much, much higher.
I mostly agree, including on this, I just want to point out that you can get no-names coming out of nowhere in very short time to kick your face in. Shenhua is a lesser example (she was nobility already, and had a bunch of support), but the founding myths have a bunch of them. The wind thief, the woman who counted the stars, Yao the Fisher might be one.
So you do have to keep an eye on this, especially if you're a right bastard, or your control is decaying because you get self absorbed and arrogant and people hate you more than they fear you. Come to think of it, the Sun are also an example, though way less. But he certainly wasn't a peer opponent when things started to go down, and his revolt was both successful and happened fairly fast.
And to be honest, peasant rebellions IRL have a pretty atrocious success rate too. It's just that if you have to kill your own dudes, that makes everyone else study you for a knife, and you're not getting anything useful out of them anyway.
Mind there are limits to how badly you can treat mortals and get away with it.
Mortals basically get treated like children, and just like with children if you go too far people will say What The Fuck.Yrsillar said:
Even a member of the Mu would be in deep shit if they killed a mortal and it came out.Yrsillar said:
Yrsillar said:
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Social disapproval can be an extremely potent force or one that just makes people keep their heads down for a few days. Too many of the rules are unspoken to judge how much that actually protects mortals.
Ling Qingge and the Dream Horse 7
New
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Ling Qingge and the Dream Horse, Parade 1/Gallop 7: Ten Thousand Regrets, A Hundred Thousand Ancestors
Cai Renxiang's face rested in her hand, her palms laid out before her just about perfectly. The outside observers who might view this could see with great obviousness the frustration and exasperation of the gesture. They might even be able to see the sheepishness in one Ling Qi, one of the most daring and terrifying young Cultivators of her generation… someone watched with both trepidation and distrust by plenty, but who had begun to build herself something solid.
Those who knew, if they were hypothetically watching, might even think of Cai Renxiang's engagement, or the war, and yet be agog that this was what broke her resolve and composure.
"It is not even a little bit my fault this time," Ling Qi said, with the full and powerful weight of the truth on her side, which in a moment like this weighed a fraction as much as the fact that things like this kept on happening around her.
"So. A version of your mother from an alternate past. Or some sort of very realistic illusion that comes off as a human cultivator to all of your senses. She is staying here, and we need to figure out how to send her back. Is that an accurate summation?"
"Yes. We should… probably check to see if this has happened before," Ling Qi said. "And try to track down the cause…"
What an observer could notice as well was that as soon as there was a solution, as soon as there was some practical thing that could be done that had nothing at all to do with talking to Ling Qingge or surveying emotional damage, that the Lady Cai at once leapt into action, at once had a half-dozen ideas on how to solve even such a strange crisis.
Once there was something concrete, something that could be done, then at once the gears began to turn and solutions came from her, cogent, real, and meaningful.
Ling Qingge could see the resemblance, with Ling Qi. It wasn't all the way there, her skin was considerably darker than any in the He family, but so many of the features spoke. No, it was more that they whispered, a little more subtle than they might have because she was still growing and a person who became a Cultivator often did not have a set pattern. Ling Qingge looked less like a He now than she had looked when she'd first became a Cultivator and had not even begun to imagine that she might look different.
Ling Qingge, in other words, could see the resemblance but it was faint enough that Ling Qi felt like a cousin rather than a erstwhile child in some other world. It was a resemblance enough to leave her uncomfortable, but not afraid or panicked. And even more than that, Ling Qi was clearly a nice person. This did not necessarily make her a good person, but Ling Qingge had good instincts and she was pretty sure she was exactly that.
So the resemblance was okay.
Ling Qingge was now standing in front of a young child who looked just like she'd looked when she was young. There were a few features slightly different, a nose slightly smaller, eyes just a little different… the differences existed. The little girl in front of her who was staring with squinting eyes looked.
Looked.
Ling Qingge smiled and said, "Hello."
"Hello? Who's you?" The girl tilted her head, as if, by the miracle and magic of staring at her from a different angle,
Her 'other self' was right behind Ling Biyu, standing up in what seemed to be a dining room of sorts, finely appointed but hardly lavish--if such a distinction mattered. The room smelled clean, and perhaps faintly of flowers. There was perhaps the tiniest bit of… not frost, but a slight chill on the air, that told her that perhaps Ling Qi had been around here not that long ago. No doubt she'd told her "other self" that she was coming.
Ling Qingge considered it. "A relative. Distant," she said, because she was trying to balance two things. She didn't intend to stay long, and she didn't intend to let herself be enmeshed in this, in all of it. The very thought of it left her colder than if she'd tried to fight Ling Qi, and that--she had gathered--would have been pretty cold indeed.
"Aunt-y?" the girl guessed, tugging at Ling Qingge's hands.
Okay, she didn't like that in a way, because that sounded way, way too old. But she smiled faintly, because you couldn't blame a child. Innocence always died, but that didn't mean you had to be the one to put it in the ground.
Those things that were wild, those things that were free and unreached by the hand of an overlord who'd only crush them as a matter of course, were always in the process of dying and being born. "You could say that," Ling Qinggee said. "Yes."
Ling Biyu looked with wide eyes and asked, "What you do?"
What do you do?
"I like riding horses, and dancing, and music," Ling Qingge said, deciding not to get into any of the little things that she could say. "Have you ever ridden a horse?"
"Horsie?" Ling Biyu asked, considering. "No. But Mom-y has a horse."
"She does?" Ling Qingge asked, and she considered it for a moment. "What's the horse's name?"
"Blossom," the other version of her said.
"Oh, after the horse?" LIng Qingge asked. A horse that had not quite been her own, but hadn't not been her own.
"Yes."
"When can I ride?" Biyu asked.
"I'd say probably a little bit, but you can meet horses right now," LIng Qingge said. "It is how I was taught."
Older Qingge--there, that was a good way to not get them mixed up with each other--nodded. "You could do that later. You have to make friends with them. They're very nice once you get to know them."
Ling Qingge didn't tell the child the truth, of course. Horses could be nice or mean. They were a lot like people in that way, or rather people were not as different from the beasts of the field as they pretended. This meant in good ways. This meant in bad ways. This meant in all imaginable ways. So there were sour or kind horses, horses that were even more skittish than the already rather easily-panicked baseline of equine equilibrium. "Your mother would probably make sure that whatever horse or pony she introduced you to was a nice one."
Biyu seemed to like the thought, just as Ling Qingge had, the idea that she was getting to meet a special friend that her Mommy had chosen to make sure they were especially nice. It was a feeling like being protected, and a feeling like being helped. Any drive not to make friends just because her mother wanted them to would come much later and about rather more disagreeable sorts than even the meanest horse could be.
"I would," the Older Qingge declared, firmly, looking over at her.
The next hour seemed to roll out as smooth as the sun might rise on a fine day of riding. Ling Biyu was a good child, and she was something even more than that. She looked at everything with wide eyes, and reached for things she wanted with unflinching, if undeniably sticky, hands. In the face of this, Ling Qingge found herself entirely helpless not to spoil such a child. She knew that everyone had to have a mix of triumph and setbacks if they did not want to become someone who expected the world to simply hand things to you… but Biyu was a child, and she understood at once her 'other self's' desires.
She could imagine, after all those years and after what those years entailed, that this peace, and the ability to give her children something better would be tempting. It wasn't as if Madame Ling Qingge seemed unbusy, either. Several times servants showed up with a quick question, leaving Ling Qinggee to do her best to answer questions that she couldn't always answer: especially about who she was, really. Biyu didn't question much, but she seemed confused, because an Aunt meant a sister, and she'd never met any of her relatives.
Of course she hadn't.
Ling Qingge would not inflict her relatives on anyone who wasn't forced to be around them.
"When," she asked, once it was clear that Ling Biyu was off to do other things, and the encounter was done, "Do you cultivate?" She knew what she was asking, and yet here she was, staring at the older version of her.
"I usually do so every day… a little bit from now."
"We should cultivate together, and I should introduce you to my companion," Ling Qingge said, and then at her older self's opened mouth she added, "It is only fair. You showed me something you treasure, and let me take part in it. But you need to meet Lightning… and I think I could help you with Cultivation. We're not the same person, but I think I can help you."
She wasn't going to be staying, she knew she wasn't, but a part of her… seeing the child. It wasn't a maternal feeling, but children were innocent. And some part of her thought of her other self and… well, wanted to help?
She knew it was a bit silly, but this was something she could do, though she knew that her other self would say no and--
"Okay. We can do that."
Huh?!
A/N: This fought me so, so much. And then I got busy, and then it kept on fighting me when I got back to doing it after being caught up in my own Quest stuff and work and so on. But, things are advancing a bit, hopefully! The next update, whenever it drops, should be more substantial.
Tagging @yrsillar for threadmarking/etc purposes.
Cai Renxiang's face rested in her hand, her palms laid out before her just about perfectly. The outside observers who might view this could see with great obviousness the frustration and exasperation of the gesture. They might even be able to see the sheepishness in one Ling Qi, one of the most daring and terrifying young Cultivators of her generation… someone watched with both trepidation and distrust by plenty, but who had begun to build herself something solid.
Those who knew, if they were hypothetically watching, might even think of Cai Renxiang's engagement, or the war, and yet be agog that this was what broke her resolve and composure.
"It is not even a little bit my fault this time," Ling Qi said, with the full and powerful weight of the truth on her side, which in a moment like this weighed a fraction as much as the fact that things like this kept on happening around her.
"So. A version of your mother from an alternate past. Or some sort of very realistic illusion that comes off as a human cultivator to all of your senses. She is staying here, and we need to figure out how to send her back. Is that an accurate summation?"
"Yes. We should… probably check to see if this has happened before," Ling Qi said. "And try to track down the cause…"
What an observer could notice as well was that as soon as there was a solution, as soon as there was some practical thing that could be done that had nothing at all to do with talking to Ling Qingge or surveying emotional damage, that the Lady Cai at once leapt into action, at once had a half-dozen ideas on how to solve even such a strange crisis.
Once there was something concrete, something that could be done, then at once the gears began to turn and solutions came from her, cogent, real, and meaningful.
Ling Qingge could see the resemblance, with Ling Qi. It wasn't all the way there, her skin was considerably darker than any in the He family, but so many of the features spoke. No, it was more that they whispered, a little more subtle than they might have because she was still growing and a person who became a Cultivator often did not have a set pattern. Ling Qingge looked less like a He now than she had looked when she'd first became a Cultivator and had not even begun to imagine that she might look different.
Ling Qingge, in other words, could see the resemblance but it was faint enough that Ling Qi felt like a cousin rather than a erstwhile child in some other world. It was a resemblance enough to leave her uncomfortable, but not afraid or panicked. And even more than that, Ling Qi was clearly a nice person. This did not necessarily make her a good person, but Ling Qingge had good instincts and she was pretty sure she was exactly that.
So the resemblance was okay.
Ling Qingge was now standing in front of a young child who looked just like she'd looked when she was young. There were a few features slightly different, a nose slightly smaller, eyes just a little different… the differences existed. The little girl in front of her who was staring with squinting eyes looked.
Looked.
Ling Qingge smiled and said, "Hello."
"Hello? Who's you?" The girl tilted her head, as if, by the miracle and magic of staring at her from a different angle,
Her 'other self' was right behind Ling Biyu, standing up in what seemed to be a dining room of sorts, finely appointed but hardly lavish--if such a distinction mattered. The room smelled clean, and perhaps faintly of flowers. There was perhaps the tiniest bit of… not frost, but a slight chill on the air, that told her that perhaps Ling Qi had been around here not that long ago. No doubt she'd told her "other self" that she was coming.
Ling Qingge considered it. "A relative. Distant," she said, because she was trying to balance two things. She didn't intend to stay long, and she didn't intend to let herself be enmeshed in this, in all of it. The very thought of it left her colder than if she'd tried to fight Ling Qi, and that--she had gathered--would have been pretty cold indeed.
"Aunt-y?" the girl guessed, tugging at Ling Qingge's hands.
Okay, she didn't like that in a way, because that sounded way, way too old. But she smiled faintly, because you couldn't blame a child. Innocence always died, but that didn't mean you had to be the one to put it in the ground.
Those things that were wild, those things that were free and unreached by the hand of an overlord who'd only crush them as a matter of course, were always in the process of dying and being born. "You could say that," Ling Qinggee said. "Yes."
Ling Biyu looked with wide eyes and asked, "What you do?"
What do you do?
"I like riding horses, and dancing, and music," Ling Qingge said, deciding not to get into any of the little things that she could say. "Have you ever ridden a horse?"
"Horsie?" Ling Biyu asked, considering. "No. But Mom-y has a horse."
"She does?" Ling Qingge asked, and she considered it for a moment. "What's the horse's name?"
"Blossom," the other version of her said.
"Oh, after the horse?" LIng Qingge asked. A horse that had not quite been her own, but hadn't not been her own.
"Yes."
"When can I ride?" Biyu asked.
"I'd say probably a little bit, but you can meet horses right now," LIng Qingge said. "It is how I was taught."
Older Qingge--there, that was a good way to not get them mixed up with each other--nodded. "You could do that later. You have to make friends with them. They're very nice once you get to know them."
Ling Qingge didn't tell the child the truth, of course. Horses could be nice or mean. They were a lot like people in that way, or rather people were not as different from the beasts of the field as they pretended. This meant in good ways. This meant in bad ways. This meant in all imaginable ways. So there were sour or kind horses, horses that were even more skittish than the already rather easily-panicked baseline of equine equilibrium. "Your mother would probably make sure that whatever horse or pony she introduced you to was a nice one."
Biyu seemed to like the thought, just as Ling Qingge had, the idea that she was getting to meet a special friend that her Mommy had chosen to make sure they were especially nice. It was a feeling like being protected, and a feeling like being helped. Any drive not to make friends just because her mother wanted them to would come much later and about rather more disagreeable sorts than even the meanest horse could be.
"I would," the Older Qingge declared, firmly, looking over at her.
The next hour seemed to roll out as smooth as the sun might rise on a fine day of riding. Ling Biyu was a good child, and she was something even more than that. She looked at everything with wide eyes, and reached for things she wanted with unflinching, if undeniably sticky, hands. In the face of this, Ling Qingge found herself entirely helpless not to spoil such a child. She knew that everyone had to have a mix of triumph and setbacks if they did not want to become someone who expected the world to simply hand things to you… but Biyu was a child, and she understood at once her 'other self's' desires.
She could imagine, after all those years and after what those years entailed, that this peace, and the ability to give her children something better would be tempting. It wasn't as if Madame Ling Qingge seemed unbusy, either. Several times servants showed up with a quick question, leaving Ling Qinggee to do her best to answer questions that she couldn't always answer: especially about who she was, really. Biyu didn't question much, but she seemed confused, because an Aunt meant a sister, and she'd never met any of her relatives.
Of course she hadn't.
Ling Qingge would not inflict her relatives on anyone who wasn't forced to be around them.
"When," she asked, once it was clear that Ling Biyu was off to do other things, and the encounter was done, "Do you cultivate?" She knew what she was asking, and yet here she was, staring at the older version of her.
"I usually do so every day… a little bit from now."
"We should cultivate together, and I should introduce you to my companion," Ling Qingge said, and then at her older self's opened mouth she added, "It is only fair. You showed me something you treasure, and let me take part in it. But you need to meet Lightning… and I think I could help you with Cultivation. We're not the same person, but I think I can help you."
She wasn't going to be staying, she knew she wasn't, but a part of her… seeing the child. It wasn't a maternal feeling, but children were innocent. And some part of her thought of her other self and… well, wanted to help?
She knew it was a bit silly, but this was something she could do, though she knew that her other self would say no and--
"Okay. We can do that."
Huh?!
A/N: This fought me so, so much. And then I got busy, and then it kept on fighting me when I got back to doing it after being caught up in my own Quest stuff and work and so on. But, things are advancing a bit, hopefully! The next update, whenever it drops, should be more substantial.
Tagging @yrsillar for threadmarking/etc purposes.
Because Young Qingge is on a radical independence path and hasnt internalised how different the older version of her is. Because the whole theing is character study about the differences between the version of her that saved herself and the version of her that suffered a lot longer but was rescued.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
It's kinda twofold. It's both that, and a part of her thinking that this older version of her doesn't have the ambition and drive? She's at once very, very independent but also--as anyone who is well into Green at such a young age--ambitious, and meanwhile there's this older version of her still in the very first stages of the First Realm.
Maybe she just--somehow, inexplicably--doesn't care about being able to defend herself and actualize herself??
Terrible mom confirmed to be awesome ruler with the love of the people.
Karthak said:
Isen107 said:
Yrsillar said:
Karthak said:
Yrsillar said:
Karthak said:
Imagine you're some entry-level paper pusher and the Tyrant of Radiance walks in while you're drinking tea and wants to check your work.Yrsillar said:
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Honestly that sounds terrifying and frankly like it could easily be disruptive? Like, human error is a thing and potentially being able to be directly punished by someone who can snuff you out like a light... honestly easier than that, since you'd have to get up, walk over, do things to snuff someone out like a light.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Shenhua can perfectly distinguish between honest error and either malfeasance or laziness, given her perfect ability to distinguish the truth. I think, once people became used to it, that would probably ameliorate the problem. Barring corruption, you'd need to be sincerely incompetent before Shenhua would sincerely punish you too much.
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Anyone with a shit boss would gladly, gladly take an admonishment from mega-boss to file LR-4-24b properly if it also meant shit boss got shitcanned.
And if it's something more serious? Well, the people you want to have working for you, in positions of authority (and even a clerk has power of the applicants), will gladly take a correction because they don't actually want to fuck up. As for those who just want to have a job (which is probably the majority), they won't enjoy her visits very much, but it's totally worth it if it means you don't have incompetent bosses or slacker coworkers. Makes work much less bothersome.
And if it's something more serious? Well, the people you want to have working for you, in positions of authority (and even a clerk has power of the applicants), will gladly take a correction because they don't actually want to fuck up. As for those who just want to have a job (which is probably the majority), they won't enjoy her visits very much, but it's totally worth it if it means you don't have incompetent bosses or slacker coworkers. Makes work much less bothersome.
Or an overeager daughter desiring to meet her mother.
That wasn't a punishment.
Well thank goodness it was only partial soul vaporization by mistake!
I'm sure that is of great relief to the mortals.
"You guys can come out of hiding now! Our luminescent tyrant just made a oopsie when she vaporized her child. It wasn't intentional!"
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mean, that's a known risk of mortals approaching Shenhua as I understand it. It's explicitly why she uses clones to deal with mortals.
It wasn't a mistake either, beyond it happening too early.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It was a mistake when it happened. She always intended to do...something, but details are actually unclear on what that would have looked like.