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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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I'm leaning more toward
[X] Truth lies at the intersection between reality and perception. Communication is the method by which the Truth is changed, inch by inch, and year by year.
 
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I'm feeling the second:

[ ] Truth and lies are but warp and weft, from them is born perception, from perception descends reality, an orator must wield words as carefully as a master wields their blade.

I just feel like we have played around with this insight so much because Qi felt she needed to have objective truth fit in there somehow, would rather go with the one where we just discard it wholesale than the one that says we can alter it. Also its definitely more inline with Huisheng and the Hui which is just fun to me personally
 
weeblypanda said:
@yrsillar Question are we in Framing or Fortification cause the cultivation exp meter says we need 74K which is the Fortification requirement but the tab says we're in Framing.
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yrsillar said:
Then I need to go through and update the front page thoroughly, which is definitely true at this point
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It is correct as is, we are in Framing and to reach Fortification we need 7.4k xp

7.4k is listed as a requirement

Edit: to reach Formation, not Fortification;
Framing -> Formation -> Fortification
 
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[ ] Truth and lies are but warp and weft, from them is born perception, from perception descends reality, an orator must wield words as carefully as a master wields their blade.
 
[x] Truth lies at the intersection between reality and perception. Communication is the method by which the Truth is changed, inch by inch, and year by year.
 
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I'm definitely leaning #1. As Senior Brother dearest just said, there are some things which are simply true regardless of your perception of them until they are changed, even if that's as simple as a post in the road.

The second one has a real tinge of "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears" to me which I kinda don't want Ling Qi to install in her understanding of the world as the upcoming propaganda communication chief of the Ducal heir
 
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Tasoli said:
I can kinda tell they are different but I can't really explain how. So If somebody were to break them down IT would be much appricieted.
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My take is that the question is about whether you build the truth from the bottom up or the top down.

The first option is building it from the bottom up, finding a hundred little truths that everyone can agree on, which eventually moves to one big principle truth built on all the little ones. The second option is about building truth from the top down, finding one big organizing principle that everyone can agree is the truth, a starting axiom, and then working out the details down from that.

EDIT:

"Here are a thousand ways the Hui have failed this province and it's people, leading to the inexorable conclusion that they have to go."

vs.

"Fuck the Hui. And fuck all the ways they've tried to justify themselves, we are not going to let them try to explain every failure away one by one."
 
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yrsillar said:
Ling Qi frowned, looking past Jia Hong up at the pillar behind him, the vast curve of the carved spinal column of a Beast King. It still seemed wrong to her that the inchoate feelings represented by the Primal Nightmares were an antithesis of Truth. How did that relate to what Jia Hong said about the many small players in their revolt? She understood that in the play, there was some effect of Cai Shenhua drawing on her army for power, but every cultivating general could do that. This was half the point of armies when high realms were present, which was why marching orders and division formations that formed empowering blocs existed.
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Cultivator generals and armies being centered around powering up the general isn't to surprising. Though I'm curious if other cultures do it differently.

yrsillar said:
"Not going to help here, Sixiang?"

"I don't think helping would be helping ya here," their muse whispered back. "If it's not your answer, I doubt he'll be happy either way."

"Qiyi, not one thread. Qiyi real, true? Scary Mother many threads. Very real."

She blinked, startled, she was not expecting her dress to interject, with how silent the young spirit had been, but…
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Qiyi offered some good adivece.

yrsillar said:
"One truth is not enough to overcome the most foundational nightmares. To burn them away, truth must become ideal," Ling Qi said, almost surprising herself. "The Prime Minister's unbounded Empathy…"

"It harmonizes. It was intended to bring men's minds together, make them one, form transcendence through forcible alignment with the will of a Sovereign," Jia Hong said pleasantly. "Instead, we are all still us, but whole. Only in alignment can the lie of primal nightmare be burned away. A revolution cannot exist in only one heart; else it is mere base tyranny.

So there is your answer. Nightmarish delusion drowns truth, an ideal sincerely held devastates nightmare, so long as it remains whole. That is what happened that day. More than that… well, prying into private matters goes beyond showing some grace to a junior."
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Basically it's a unified pseudo hivemind that they all believed in.

yrsillar said:
"I understand, senior brother, though… what is Truth then, if it is still so…"

"Lie to a man, tell him there is no post in front of him, shroud him in a hundred sweet illusions of qi or oratory… and he will still walk into the post unless you move the thing while he is ensorcelled," Jia Hong chuckled. "For things less simple than that, for what is moral, what is right, what is cruelty, what is kindness. It is your responsibility, no you're generation's responsibility, to create the paradigm under which you want to live. We live in a cruel and broken world; most do not have the power to set their realities so they only have it dictated to them. That is true even now, although…"

Jia Hong looked away toward the incandescent brightness that still roved the floor, arm in arm with her quiet bride. "Her Truth is the Truth we all fought for."
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This is the reason I really like the previous generation. They want the next generation to find their own path not marred by the cruelty they went through or what it forced them to become.

yrsillar said:
"...The ith I spoke too have said something which your words remind me of. That their gods, their high realms are creations of… 'consensus.'"

It had seemed bizarre, almost incomprehensible to her at the time, but…

"Have they now? How fascinating. I will have to tour the underworld with her grace's new subjects one of these days. I suspect I won't have much time to observe in the south," Jia Hong said, stroking his beard.
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Other cultures having different ideas on things is interesting but where cultivation is so linked to culture it becomes even more interesting.

yrsillar said:
His voice dropped an octave or two, dull with unhappy emotion. It vanished like a cloud only a moment later. "But do give my regard to our teacher. Oh, and be wary of him of course, he will destroy you if you let him."

Ling Qi raised an eyebrow. "Will he? I don't judge him to be the sort of possessing ancestor ghost of a morality tale."

"Your elders do not need to steal your skin or curl up in your skull to possess you, Junior Sister, we have a thousand ways to do that," Jia Hong joked. "But no, he will not possess you, erase you… but to align yourself too closely, learn too much from the Master of Multitude… the world will destroy you, as it did the man who formed his spiritual core."

His playful laughing tone faded into a somber one. "Sudy his path, his words, and find the step you think you may embody. His way is too long for any one pair of feet to travel. Just as no revolution can be carried forward with only one set of hands."

She frowned deeply. The world would destroy her? There were many ways to take that. But she could understand the notion of a way that could not be accomplished with one ascension. It went against Imperial orthodoxy, but Cai Renxiang often spoke of things beyond the lifetime of even a cultivator.

"I thank you for your advice, Senior Brother, and will give our teacher your regards…"
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Skeleton Grandpa is dangerous and it's good to have a reminder of that.

yrsillar said:
The very first art she had mastered was the Argent Mirror, an art for defending against illusions and a tool for introspection. Cultivation was about discovering truths in her own self she had thought, and so she had taken that lesson, that no lies for acceptable, that sincerity came before all else.

But then, day by day, as she lived, she kept finding herself brushing against it, sidestepping it, brushing away the momentary discomfort, giving excuses. It was fine for her to tell Zhengui to call her big sister. It was fine to step lightly with her words and deceive in tone and implication with enemies, potential or otherwise. She didn't need to burden her family with the full weight of bald truth.

It was not permanently damning, that Sixiang had deceived them through omission. They had hurt her, but… they weren't unworthy, that wasn't unforgivable.
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Looks like the concept is changing.

yrsillar said:
"I'm…"

No more sorries. We're past that step. We're into the practice that comes after.

"...Yeah, yeah, we are. It hurts me when you act like you're terrible for being a little selfish, so I'll quit with the flagellation too."

She had spun these concepts around and around in her head for so long, trying to twist them into something she could fit herself into, trying to avoid losing anything to them. But… it had never really worked properly, had it?

Because it wasn't truth, or sincerity, or clarity she really valued, or rather, it was not these things in and of themselves, only their part in the greater whole that was…

[Communication]
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Coummnication becoming it's own concept is fitting.

yrsillar said:
Spoiler: mechanical Clarity and Sincerity merge into Expression, which changes to…

Communication V (9/13)

+2 additional Communication XP

(11/13)
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This is going to be a very interesting Concept that fits LQ.
 
yrsillar said:
[ ] Truth lies at the intersection between reality and perception. Communication is the method by which the Truth is changed, inch by inch, and year by year.
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Hmm, this looks like a total separation of the understanding and the world around it, communication acts as the bridge. There is reality out there that cannot be denied, what changes is how we understand it and how we come to see it. Very much Materialism.


yrsillar said:
[ ] Truth and lies are but warp and weft, from them is born perception, from perception descends reality, an orator must wield words as carefully as a master wields their blade.
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This, on the other hand, speaks of a clear sequence of events, first comes our beliefs, then the lens towards we see the world. Alter one and you alter the following ones. Mind over matter, idealism.


Both are valid philosophical approaches, how this approaches interact with the rest of our thematics and narratives needs to be discussed tho
 
I like the first option. Truth is both objective and subjective. You can change a subjective truth through communication and hard work, and a hard truth can become subjective over time as more is learned and perceptions change.

Truth changes with time as objective and subjective truths change.

I don't like the second option because I can see it being twisted over successive Ling generations, as what happened with the Hui and the Pure Way. And I generally disagree with the idea that reality is fully malleable and based on perception. It's too rife for abuse without systems in place for accountability.

Also, COMMUNICATION! Our second advanced concept after Choice, IIRC. Gotta go fast and get it to rank VI immediately.

Edit: I'm interested in how both of these interact with some key concepts. Mainly Choice and Endings. Both mesh well with Choice. It's choices and their consequences that shift Truth over time, for option 1. And it's choices that define reality, for option 2.

However, I feel like Endings better fits option 1, mainly because you can still believe something works and is right and true and thus reality, when it is actually rotten and dead and long past it's End. So I prefer option 1.
 
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[ ] Truth lies at the intersection between reality and perception. Communication is the method by which the Truth is changed, inch by inch, and year by year.

Every ascension is someone's perception being stamped onto reality.
 
[x] Truth lies at the intersection between reality and perception. Communication is the method by which the Truth is changed, inch by inch, and year by year.

Second option feels almost heretical with the shadow cast by the previous ducal house. Alternatively, it's the option that best respects the power and fear that they wielded and the previous generations suffered through. Still prefer the first though.
 
[x] Truth lies at the intersection between reality and perception. Communication is the method by which the Truth is changed, inch by inch, and year by year.

Second one, to go straight to local version of Godwin's Law, is a bit too Hui for my taste

(Godwin's Law kinda sounds like Godwin is a Sovereign and that is his Law lol)
(Inch by inch, inch by inch, the Communication tower crawls across the discourse field)
 
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[x] Truth and lies are but warp and weft, from them is born perception, from perception descends reality, an orator must wield words as carefully as a master wields their blade.
 
[X] Truth and lies are but warp and weft, from them is born perception, from perception descends reality, an orator must wield words as carefully as a master wields their blade.
 
[X] Truth and lies are but warp and weft, from them is born perception, from perception descends reality, an orator must wield words as carefully as a master wields their blade.
 
[X] Truth and lies are but warp and weft, from them is born perception, from perception descends reality, an orator must wield words as carefully as a master wields their blade.
 
[X] Truth lies at the intersection between reality and perception. Communication is the method by which the Truth is changed, inch by inch, and year by year.
[X] Truth and lies are but warp and weft, from them is born perception, from perception descends reality, an orator must wield words as carefully as a master wields their blade.
 
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