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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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Everyone's an untouchable divine tyrant until they get punched in the face.
But we need someone to do the corrective punching.

This world needs ascended spirit of child protective services…
 
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query said:
Everyone's an untouchable divine tyrant until they get punched in the face.
But we need someone to do the corrective punching.
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That's the thing, Shenhua wants to be punched in the face.

And damn, Liming really hates Shenhua. We know that higher realm cultivators cut off pieces of their humanity, sometimes literally. I wonder if there is not some part of Liming that holds some of Shenhua's ability to be a loving mother.

yrsillar said:
The world is broken, and any who truly see the tears must rip themselves into the thread that will stitch them shut.
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"The philosopherscultivators have only interpretedruled the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." - Karl MarxCai Shenhua
 
Revenge is an obligation. But letting it become everything, even for a single viewing, isn't Ling Qi.

[X] A step back. See, feel, experience the driving force of a life ending grudge. You are not Shu Yue, and should not try to be.

DeadmanwalkingXI said:
It depends on what you mean by police, really. Having a social structure set up to actually punish people for abuses of power like this is absolutely the solution here.
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And punishing abuse of power is the antithesis of hierarchy, which police exist to serve.
 
"I know and feel that you hate it when I do this, so I'm going to do it to cause you pain and teach you a lesson that could have been learned through some other way."

Imperial Parent of the year. The Radiant Tyrant will get what's coming to her one day.
 
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yrsillar said:
"You are, in the way all who seek the higher realms are," Mother said. "I am broken, my darling Linqin is broken, my kings are broken, your precious followers are each of them broken, and so are you. Renxiang. The world is broken, and any who truly see the tears must rip themselves into the thread that will stitch them shut."
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This...I think is an Insight the Beast from Split would agree with. Those who face the world are inevitably broken by it, but that Crucible can and should be faced if one wishes to force change.

Edit: The more I read, the more I'm convinced of that joining CRX was the right choice.
 
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[ ] Endure. Remain as far immersed as you can while remaining whole. Until the end.
[ ] A step back. See, feel, experience the driving force of a life ending grudge. You are not Shu Yue, and should not try to be.
The worries some people have make sense, but I think both options are totally viable. Probably some kind of trade-off between fidelity and safety, or maybe ease of disengagement. Plenty of different approaches to evaluating and weighing the pros and cons.

And I'm not going to do any of them. The first option's framing reminds me quite a bit of the Persistence stuff we have going on with our Kohatu/Zhengui art. Which we haven't actually explored on a philosophical level much yet, so I'd rather leave the themes untouched until we actually do.

[X] A step back. See, feel, experience the driving force of a life ending grudge. You are not Shu Yue, and should not try to be.

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Looking at the options again before I hit enter, another way of looking at them occurs to me. It's basically about follow through. First option says endure "Until the end." Second option says "experience the driving force of a life ending grudge." There's a distinction there; one includes the end, the ruin, itself while the other is more limited, experiencing just the impetus that drives a person to that conclusion.

Big difference between the two options could be whether Ling Qi rides it all the way to the very end at the hands of Shu Yue's, well, hands. Doesn't change my vote, but it's interesting to think about. I'm honestly not sure what the implications of that difference would be here. There's potential interaction with Ling Qi's views of predetermination, with the two approaches feeding into it differently, but I don't think the setup for the scenario sustains any revelations there being Ling Qi's main takeaway. It'd be a minor side-thought, if anything.
 
Winged One said:
And punishing abuse of power is the antithesis of hierarchy, which police exist to serve.
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Arguably, punishing abuse of power is in fact reinforcement of hierarchy. If a lord kills all the farmers until there's no harvest for the king to eat, that lord has exceeded his authority and needs to be disciplined.

The real trick is creating a system in which such abuse is, in fact, against the law, and ensuring punishment will be enforced regardless of the rank of the guilty party.
 
yrsillar said:
The scourging radiance approached. It did not hide itself. It never had and never would. It was reduced, and a beam of light refracted off into the distance from the blinding core. She had felt it clearly for two nights before this, but it was close now—close enough that she could no longer tell herself she was not afraid, though its punishing burn was not focused on her yet.
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She's used to her mom being horrible.

yrsillar said:
Hands like pincers of unbreakable adamant fell on her shoulders, and Cai Renxiang fixed her eyes ahead. Steeled herself for pain.
It didn't come yet.

"There will be no punishment for a man whom I bypassed Renxiang. What has gotten into that head of yours."

Her voice was warm and amused, curious. It almost sounded human.

"Every ruler will not be virtuous. So all must be bound. That is why our strings especially must be unbreakable cord."

"Such an answer," Cai Shenhua mused. "A disappointing one."

The pain arrived, masked by painted fingernails running through her hair, the shadow of affection, wreathed in searing radiance. Cifeng's scabbard cracked and shattered stone, driven inches deep into the mountain rock as Cai Renxiang grit her teeth at the familiar feeling of fingernails sinking into her skull.

She resisted.

Radiance seared her from the inside out, it ripped away the comforting lies with which she had constructed to tell herself she was strong. Lies told so well that she had never doubted them before this moment

The screaming child was her. The weeping girl who had only wanted mother to love her was not some separate thing. She had not carved that weakness from her heart. She had only wrapped her in gossamer silk and plated steel, hiding her away, to be let out when she japed with her retainers. Her resolution was not unbreaking adamant, but warped and ill-forged steel.

She did not have a plan for everything. The world laughed at any such notion. She was not brave. She was not wise. She did not see her victory, in the end. Only a futile struggle that would drag down all those who trusted in her.
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Really hate seeing this happening to her.

yrsillar said:
She tasted blood. Cifeng sank half a foot more into the rock. Her knees shook like a terrified child.

It hurt so much more to resist.

Silk contracted across her body, and the bitter scent of fear sweat, and copper filled her nose.

Liming screamed.

Hate, blackest hate and mindless rage, the most unworthy of emotions. Hurled not at her, but at mother. The ragged channels of qi between them opened to their fullest extent, as Liming poured their power fully into support of Renxiang's will, for the very first time.

It was still utterly futile. That she could feel, those shears could still punch through with only a small exertion, the Radiance was far beyond what she could muster, what Liming could muster.

Mother's hands withdrew from her head.

Cai Renxiang almost fell to her knees, clutching onto Cifeng like a lifeline.
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Liming really hates Tyrant Revolutionary Mom.

yrsillar said:
"Interesting. You give an answer worthy of a doll, but you resist as only a woman can. How you have broken is fascinating."

She raised a trembling hand to her lips and wiped away the blood. Watched the splotches of red fade away into Liming's white fabric. Truth seared, it ripped away pretension. She could still speak. "I am not broken."

"You are, in the way all who seek the higher realms are," Mother said. "I am broken, my darling Linqin is broken, my kings are broken, your precious followers are each of them broken, and so are you. Renxiang. The world is broken, and any who truly see the tears must rip themselves into the thread that will stitch them shut."

It was not the stark, language-bypassing not-voice, nor the casual, drawling mockery she knew from mother, but rather distant and almost thoughtful.

"Though I did not intend it, you have done well daughter, and learned well the lesson that the Emerald Seas took millenia and my coming to absorb.

Resistance against the tyrant is agony. It is a human's duty to choose it regardless.
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The horrible thing is that she's not wrong.

tricholysis said:
It sounds like an insight of Shenhua's, that she did not entirely mean to pass on, but did regardless, and now they share it. She knows and speaks to the content, but it is in Renxiang's narration.
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Seems the mostly likely thing.
 
I'm not going to take anything Shenhua says as gospel. She speeded through Violet and Prism so fast that there's no way she could refine her Way (ohohoho) to anywhere near the same extent as normal-speed cultivators. If she'd come up the normal way her Law might have been a touch more nuanced.
Ironing out the kinks in your Way is very important. Yrs said that one reason Yuan He wasn't able to reach White was because he blew through Violet in just a few years (war-tribulations are one hell of a drug).
And the heir to the Bai prior to Suzhen discovered a nasty faultline in their way while trying to break through to White that they couldn't reconcile, and they got blasted back to early Violet.
 
Yeah but she is also White, which makes her more correct than all the losers who can't get to White.

And also most of what people like Elder Ying have said kind of aligns with that anyway so
 
Karthak Urzak said:
I'm not going to take anything Shenhua says as gospel. She speeded through Violet and Prism so fast that there's no way she could refine her Way (ohohoho) to anywhere near the same extent as normal-speed cultivators. If she'd come up the normal way her Law might have been a touch more nuanced.
Ironing out the kinks in your Way is very important. Yrs said that one reason Yuan He wasn't able to reach White was because he blew through Violet in just a few years (war-tribulations are one hell of a drug).
And the heir to the Bai prior to Suzhen discovered a nasty faultline in their way while trying to break through to White that they couldn't reconcile, and they got blasted back to early Violet.
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Sounds like Yuan He and the Bai heir suffered from Skill Issue. Cai Shenhua speedran Violet and Prism because she was right!
 
CommunismWillWin said:
And damn, Liming really hates Shenhua. We know that higher realm cultivators cut off pieces of their humanity, sometimes literally. I wonder if there is not some part of Liming that holds some of Shenhua's ability to be a loving mother.
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I thought Liming is made from pieces of CRX? Not from pieces from Shenhua. That's part of why it hates CRX so much, because she's taking Liming's 'rightful' place, and it might not be wrong on that.

I also think that Liming has not at all acted in any way reminiscent of a loving parent. So I don't think any of that is mixed in anyway.
 
This side story made me realize I would kill to see Caí Shenhua and Charles Abrams, the Carmine Exile have a conversation. The two most toxic 'revolutionary' higher powers.
 
[X] A step back. See, feel, experience the driving force of a life ending grudge. You are not Shu Yue, and should not try to be.
BurnNote said:
I thought Liming is made from pieces of CRX? Not from pieces from Shenhua. That's part of why it hates CRX so much, because she's taking Liming's 'rightful' place, and it might not be wrong on that.

I also think that Liming has not at all acted in any way reminiscent of a loving parent. So I don't think any of that is mixed in anyway.
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Shenhua used a thread of herself for the work.

Kai Merah said:
Arguably, punishing abuse of power is in fact reinforcement of hierarchy. If a lord kills all the farmers until there's no harvest for the king to eat, that lord has exceeded his authority and needs to be disciplined.

The real trick is creating a system in which such abuse is, in fact, against the law, and ensuring punishment will be enforced regardless of the rank of the guilty party.
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It depends on the layer you're working at. Can't change all of society at once without creating a whole new array of victims and problems.

For this one, we know that while Qingge was in a relatively worse position, she had peers and friends amongst the other prostitutes. They helped each other with retirement plans, raising their kids and other troubles, though they were keenly aware of the risks of dealing with social superiors, and wouldn't commit past that.
While here she's better off in every material term, but her self image was a mask of pride and superiority. The forced abortion was extremely violating, but the worse part of it was it shattered the illusion that she was living in, and the combined shock literally unthinkable.

In that case I think she wouldn't have fallen so badly for the guy if she had other positive social connections at all. And would have been aware of the risks that pushing the matter could involve. She may still have been besotted enough to try, but it'd be going into it knowing the risks.

Inequality is a big, nigh impossible problem to address, but if she wasn't isolated like she was, she could have avoided the terrible end of her fall.
 
Karthak Urzak said:
I'm not going to take anything Shenhua says as gospel. She speeded through Violet and Prism so fast that there's no way she could refine her Way (ohohoho) to anywhere near the same extent as normal-speed cultivators. If she'd come up the normal way her Law might have been a touch more nuanced.
Ironing out the kinks in your Way is very important. Yrs said that one reason Yuan He wasn't able to reach White was because he blew through Violet in just a few years (war-tribulations are one hell of a drug).
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I think her connection to her wife and the other 3 Kings mitigates some of these issues, but I would agree with your statement overall. On the other hand, she actually made it to White and kept the presence of mind to know she shouldn't ascend since its not a sustainable thing.
 
I don't think she ever refused ascension proper. Its just that she doesn't believe her earthly matters(Revolution where she is better as a local White than a regional Great Spirit) could be concluded to her satisfaction
 
weeblypanda said:
I think her connection to her wife and the other 3 Kings mitigates some of these issues, but I would agree with your statement overall. On the other hand, she actually made it to White and kept the presence of mind to know she shouldn't ascend since its not a sustainable thing.
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Honestly her ascending would be safer and more sustainable. Literally everyone in an entrenched position of power would disagree, since she'd go from being a problem over there to a problem all over, but that breadth comes with dilution. Not being the duchess does a lot to curb her influence into something that can be taken or left by people.
 
Can her earthly matters ever be satisfied? She is revolution and the earlier conversation gave the impression that she can't ever stop. She will continue to keep upturning society until she has burned through all her good will from deposing the last regime.

Which gives me some impending French reign of terror vibes.

But knowing this she intends for Renxiang to oppose her in the future.

Which shows that Shenhua is already a few screws loose.
 
Honestly, my read is that her wife is actively keeping her from enacting revolution on a larger scale. Cai Shenhua may be the authority in the province. She is, however, still part of a larger society.

Cai Shenhua leading a revolution against the Dragon Throne would, at best, lead to a lot of pointless shedding of blood, but I can't see that as anything other than inevitable should no-one step in to stop her when her wife no longer can.
 
Adhoc vote count started by Vanguard_D on Nov 25, 2024 at 10:20 AM, finished with 115 posts and 74 votes.
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