I'm guessing she's going to kill Wei Jun's wife in front of him while he's helpless. Possibly with some torture thrown in.
Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
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PowerLeca
Rapidly aging
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"If I can't be happy, then he can't either" + "whatever it takes" with a likely expansion to "and neither can anyone else"
Big oof
Maybe there'll be a twist, but right now I suspect it's Ming Xia whom Shu Yue will strangle at the end of this.
Let's hope she doesn't kill too many people before that.
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I'm saying Ling Qi's conception of community is more emotional than this, mostly. That a community is built based on personal connections in the sense of emotional connections more than business ones. And that it thus operates, in an ideal world, based more on interpersonal dynamics than cold-blooded advantage-seeking.
LQ's community and communication insights are valuable in this situation. All the arguments against its ineffectiveness are that it will fail to prevent Ming Xia's trauma which I agree with. But that doesn't mean it would be ineffective in handling the aftermath of trauma and recovery. Even within the update, we see a part of Ming Xia's community even though they may be a minority attempting to help her. However, miscommunication and the inability to connect to Ming Xia make this ineffective. If they could have communicated clearly with Ming Xia and Ming Xia was able to accept the support her community was offering she might have work her way through grief and depression she felt.
Tasoli
Life is for Living
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- Behind the Keyboard.
Are you even reading my posts? I didn't call it nontraditional, I called it bad tradition.
I said that family is traditional answer to problems with prostition, bad or not existent family structures leads to more prostition.
There is also concept of slavery which is another bad tradition that weakens comminity bonds that adds to it.
All of these logically follow eachother. Provided you don't cherry pick.
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And I don't think this is quite true. You haven't really explained how family "solves" prostitution, even setting aside the larger problems have a lot to do with exploitation as much as anything else.
Like, the reason all of this is happening, the reason people felt comfortable, or at least justified, in selling off their daughters IRL is:
1) The idea of the family as the most important unit: if a family is a unit, then making sacrifices to preserve the whole unit is not just justified, but required.
2) Patriarchy. Just straight up, if girls (and women) are less valuable/real/etc than boys than if you're ditching anything it's going to be the girl.
It feels like an actual solution would involve actually fighting the problems one is facing rather than gesturing vaguely at the idea of "family."
E: And note, #2 still applies in this setting for a lot of people, despite the Duchess, and the Cultivation world being less (openly, egregiously) sexist.
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Exactly. See the "Family is everything. Everything for family." moment from Sun Shao when he sold his granddaughter Liling.
Semi regular reminder that the Red Goddess didn't want Liling. Adopting her was Shao's condition for giving himself over.
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And I'm finally caught up, and isn't this a joyous time to get caught up.
And now she's stuck with a brat whom she's obligated to care about and protect. How do you like 'em marriage contracts, ya Sunflower weed?
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She finally married her boyfriend, she is very happy for sure.
Sunflower Goddess isnt a step-mom, she is the mom that stepped up
Ming Xia's trauma could absolutely have been prevented by the right kind of community. There's a sharp turn here: She loved him, she turned a blind eye to her own pregnancy - and here's the turn - her community and the people she should have been able to trust turned on her and inflicted a miscarriage on her, he distanced himself and blinded himself to her suffering, she was abandoned by her community for the consequences of the trauma they inflicted on her...
Here are the ways a different and stronger community could have altered the outcome here:
1) A stronger network of community care for parents could have shifted the dial on Wei Jun's disdain for having a child. Kinda unlikely here - there will always be people who disdain the emotional and personal reality of raising a child
2) more of a Cai Renxiang thing but: A stronger set of protections for women in Ming Xia's position could have disincentivized her treatment by making reporting via court an option
3) A more emotionally healthy community within the brothel would have held and supported Ming Xia through the rejection she faced rather than othering and demeaning her
4) On a broad level better community supports and pathways to change your circumstances would have given her options to leave the environment that had traumatized her and rebuild herself elsewhere; instead she was essentially bound to the place and people that hurt her, and in a position where she would almost inevitably come back into contact with Wei Jun
So yeah. Insights into Community are absolutely applicable here.
Here are the ways a different and stronger community could have altered the outcome here:
1) A stronger network of community care for parents could have shifted the dial on Wei Jun's disdain for having a child. Kinda unlikely here - there will always be people who disdain the emotional and personal reality of raising a child
2) more of a Cai Renxiang thing but: A stronger set of protections for women in Ming Xia's position could have disincentivized her treatment by making reporting via court an option
3) A more emotionally healthy community within the brothel would have held and supported Ming Xia through the rejection she faced rather than othering and demeaning her
4) On a broad level better community supports and pathways to change your circumstances would have given her options to leave the environment that had traumatized her and rebuild herself elsewhere; instead she was essentially bound to the place and people that hurt her, and in a position where she would almost inevitably come back into contact with Wei Jun
So yeah. Insights into Community are absolutely applicable here.
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adding to this. i mentioned before that the culture of the setting is family-oriented and individual-oriented. the former because that's what the inspiration culture is like, and for latter is due to the effect of cultivation on the culture. as mentioned by others before, a good and proper community would not have lead to Ming Xia's father having to sell her off. for one the shame of having to be reliant on others outside of the family would be unacceptable to her father, or at least that's how he would expect their family-oriented culture to view it. the kind of community-oriented society Ling Qi is trying to build is one that would naturally support people in her father's situation without question - i.e. its not a question of weather you gain to benefit or how much it would cost you to help them, its a question of weather you would abide by the unwritten rules of your society to help those in your community - there is definitely a negative side to Ling Qi's vision, these things are never perfect afterall, but what Ling Qi wants is a change on priority. to build the kind of place where the question isn't "how would this effect my family" or "how would our family look to others when we do X" but rather "how could i help this friend of mine" or the very least "helping this person is what the court of public opinion would view as a good thing, so how can i help them"
As I mentioned in my previous point, this is where better communication might have also made a difference. LQ sees that some of the brothel workers attempted to reach out and support Ming Xia in the ways they could, but they didn't know how to communicate this and ming xia didn;t see that due to miscommunication.
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- Chicago
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It seems like "good" is being conflated with "community", and I think the two are separate concepts. You can have really awful communities that are very good at surviving and reproducing themselves- and they are communities even though they cause suffering in their members. Not sure if this is the ith exactly, bit looks possible.
So if we want communities to be good things for their members, we need to separate "good" enough that it remains a goal communities strive towards, not one that is assumed to be an inherent part of them.
Likewise communication. "No one likes or respects you" is very clear and effective communication, but it does not make anyone's life better.
So if we want communities to be good things for their members, we need to separate "good" enough that it remains a goal communities strive towards, not one that is assumed to be an inherent part of them.
Likewise communication. "No one likes or respects you" is very clear and effective communication, but it does not make anyone's life better.
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While true, Ling Qi isn't interested in textbook definitions of 'is this the thing.' She's interested in the versions of those things that she wishes to build her Way around.
Seeing how Ming Xia's community failed her is a useful thing for Ling Qi to reflect upon. Doesn't mean that there was no community.
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Well, for one thing, Ling Qi's conception of community is tied heavily to love and care, so I don't think she'd view those as proper communities, but you're sort of missing Ling Qi's other major relevant Concept, that being Choice. Choice is a very highly rated and fundamental part of her Way that is pretty relevant to keep in mind here, in terms of preserving good things separate from Community and Expression.
Want, Isolation, and Power are also pretty high, but those tend to be more acknowledgements of how reality does work than aspirational, while Motion and Persistence are aspirational, but in a more personal sense.
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Choice is complicated here, because it is also implicated. It was the dudes choice to break up with her and get with the now wife, and he made it knowing and writing off the consequences that would fall on her. Even after learning she was pregnant leaving was still, unfortunately, a choice he got to make.
Restraining that choice in some way probably would have improved outcomes.
It's not like I don't want to see communities be good. Or that I don't think Ling Qi does- she absolutely sees them as good because their absence was what caused her pain: she idealized them from the outside. So seeing that being able to choose is good, but that means you have to reckon with people affirmatively choosing to cause harm. Or how community is something everyone needs as a human, but it can mean not being able to escape the role you are in.
So I'm really liking the way the arc is forcing these examinations, but I feel like discussion conflating good with choice and community is conflating the tools with a successful end product. And that blurs the nuance of the lessons she is learning.
Restraining that choice in some way probably would have improved outcomes.
It's not like I don't want to see communities be good. Or that I don't think Ling Qi does- she absolutely sees them as good because their absence was what caused her pain: she idealized them from the outside. So seeing that being able to choose is good, but that means you have to reckon with people affirmatively choosing to cause harm. Or how community is something everyone needs as a human, but it can mean not being able to escape the role you are in.
So I'm really liking the way the arc is forcing these examinations, but I feel like discussion conflating good with choice and community is conflating the tools with a successful end product. And that blurs the nuance of the lessons she is learning.
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None of that was the primary source of the grudge, though. The source of the grudge, as portrayed, was the removal of her choice of what to do about her pregnancy. That was the actual crime here, the thing that should not under any circumstances have happened. The violation of her bodily autonomy and choices.
Breakups are inevitable and stopping them isn't even desirable. Stopping forced abortions on the unwilling is absolutely desirable and entirely within the scope of Choice as a valued concept.
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But that was the consequence of his choice. He made a choice, that meant she did not get to make one, and while this example of the phenomenon is pretty far on the body horror end of things it is not a rare thing.
Is how I'm reading it. I'm not sure your interpretation is wrong but I think we have very different views on what she views the situation as.
Edit: found the bit that made me think that:
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Taking away the choices of others is not a valid choice to make if one values Choice as a concept, which Ling Qi does. Him leaving her was acceptable, his choice to make, him trying to force her to do things in response to that, or having them done to her, was not acceptable.
That's not inherent in believing choice exists, but it's inherent in holding it up as a virtue to be preserved. Valuing choice means thinking that actions that violate the choices of others are unacceptable and inappropriate.