- Location
- Third planet from the star named Sol
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- He/They
So you want Ling Qi to be the nosey grandma whose constantly peeping over fences for information to gossip about her neighbors with?
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.
- Location
- The Maple Syrup Mountains
Or whatever other bent the metaphor takes. I just figured it was a mental image that could, phrased right, help consolidate the theming of her build for a stronger Domain/Way.
That's why we take up a Hidden Moon divination art instead.
Full of cryptic clues and directions which would generate puzzle pieces to be fit together or leads on where to investigate for further information.
I know everything that goes on in my home. EVERYTHING
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
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I don't see any reason to pigeonhole LQ into categories like this. Especially ones that aren't even mentioned as a necessary function of society, like her being a noble.
There is no real 'meta-story' or historical accuracy which says that bards can't do divination, and there are no rules like that for them, or witches, or ambiguously-classed support Cultivators.
I'll respond with an example that you gave; TRF. Been with us for quite a while, and I guess it's pretty useful for mitigating some counters to our 'blink tank' strats and assumed squishiness (the latter's probably known, by now). The issue is the story it tells doesn't really fit with who LQ is, and is somewhat opposed to what something like SCS tries to do, as you said.
I'm not sure that's an issue anymore, since the post-battle epiphany and subsequent shifting of TRF's narrative.
I don't think every art which we find must fit like a thematically consistent glove from the very first paragraph, because "Home" is a pretty vague concept to try and definitively nail down, and I feel that there's no real right answer to what that idea might be.
We also can't afford to be exceptionally picky about something in the future because it doesn't immediately match our ~aesthetic~.
- Location
- The Core
I like the idea of cursing people, in the sense of a long-term affliction that enemies will have to deal or be burdened with after an encounter. It'd add a layer of strategy to our interactions, and would fit our theme quite well (non-physical, exotic, subtle, creepy). And as you said, there certainly is a thematic connection, I know of multiple curse-like effects related to music or musicians from (admittedly western) mythology and legend.
I don't know if this is in the cards mechanically, but I'd love it.
Like this idea too, but I would argue for a hidden moon art instead of dreaming moon, LQ does not seem like that kind of party person. I'd also favour short-term/range divination over more strategic stuff, like being able to see through walls, or magic tracing, or "who did [target] speak to in the last 24h", that sort of thing. Ultimately, I dont think Ling Qi is the sort of mastermind who hides in a bunker and schemes through magic mirrors, she is the terror that comes in the night, the hidden blade that people are afraid of, not the unknown figure in grey. Some intersecting art of divination and perception would be awesome.
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
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In setting no. But the story interacts with our world, and so we use words and ideas from there to describe it. I can understand the desire to not pigeonhole Ling Qi, which is not what I want to do either. I do want to describe her such that everybody can finally freaking agree on something regarding descriptive terms, for once. And support is at least one part of that, because it is demonstrable as a feature.
We don't know how much TRF's narrative has changed, not the extent or depth of it. Generally speaking Deepwood fits with a flitting shadow, shrugging off the first hit so we can run away and doing the same for allies. The allies bit for all of its techniques except Ten Ring Defense, shows that it fits into the support idea and allows Ling Qi to act as an anchor on the battlefield(gadfly, center of attention thing again). But it does still have friction because SCS is completely personal, and built for a thief.
I could go onto a tangent about SCS's suitability in the common form of battle Ling Qi does, but I won't because it is a tangent.
Moving on, a large part of the point of the Domain and Way progression is to make a right answer. An art fitting from the first paragraph is an exaggeration of what I want. It'd be nice if it happened, though I would argue we'd lose something if that happened, because what I really want is the next arts we pick up to continue with the themes Ling Qi has going and add nuance to them by going along with the support and bard themes. Arts that make thematic sense with what we have now, even if they are not technical successors. An excellent example is the art idea Arkeus came up with a few days ago that manipulated the wind and darkness to tell secrets to Ling Qi and hide herself from observers. You're listening to the story the world tells you and then using that to help you achieve your goals. Make it music and its even better.
For your final point, my position is not one of extreme pickiness, because I agree we can't be. I figure you're probably a holder of choice criteria which have a similar scale of restriction to mine, we just have different details and methodologies to that criteria.
- Location
- United States of America
I'm going to disagree here. If I look carefully at SCS and FVM it seems to me that the connection is that we are a shadow in the Forgotten Vale. We are one of the phantoms or spirits that live in the vale, never really there and always out of reach. If a person enters the Forgotten Vale with a goal (finding us) then the Forgotten Vale will hinder them at every turn with false perceptions, hungry denizens, and incredible lethargy. SCS complements this by allowing us to easily manipulate the distance between the intruder and the goal making it so that the goal is always just out of reach for the intruder. Furthermore, tracking the goal becomes almost impossible because of SCS. There seems to be very little friction between FVM and SCS if one looks at the arts and how they work together.
Additionally, SCS and TRF work well together in that SCS makes it harder for an attack to reach the fortress, and should any attack reach that fortress it endures and rebuilds, protecting those that we want it to protect. While there is some friction between constant movement and impenetrable defenses, it isn't massive.
Thematically, there is even less friction between SCS and FVM. FVM is about loss, and being forgotten about by the world at large. SCS is about motion and shadows, having as much presence upon the world as a shadow moving to accomplish your goals. Whereas the world has forgotten about the denizens of the vale, SCS allows movement through the world without the world knowing or acknowledging us. SCS and FVM means that the person has been forgotten by the world and is able to move through the world unnoticed so there is no way for the world to find and remember the person.
Thank you for clarifying what's been unsettling me about this discussion.
Remember this?
Ling Qi is not currently that kind of party person. That doesn't mean she couldn't have been, and it doesn't mean she couldn't still be - just like the fact that Ling Qi was once a street rat with no concern for others and no thought of the future beyond a short-sighted desire for "freedom" doesn't mean she couldn't have become who she is now. Ling Qi has stayed the same in some ways - she's still musical, a greedy girl and a bit of an airhead, and she can still be sneaky when she wants to be - but she's changed dramatically in others, and will continue to do so. Saying we should reject an Art because it doesn't fit Ling Qi's personality as it is right now is basically saying "all that character development we had in the first thread is nice, but we should stop it here." Ling Qi still has plenty of time to grow and change as a person before her Way is set, and trying to constrain Art choice to Ling Qi as she currently is means preventing that growth.
I'd also like to respond to this:
With this:
Ling Qi's idea of Home means she has a place to call Home, but it doesn't mean she has to stay there.
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
- Pronouns
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I'm just not sure that trying to narratively tie together arts and whatnot is as stringent of a concern or requirement, since we've already seen that we can start to change them to better suit us and our Way. Freeform and all that jazz.
Maybe I'm just kinda lazy when it comes to preparation stuff like that.
I don't think our current job negatively impacts anything too much, since our definition of "Home" already has a bit of sneakiness to it. Game play wise, I don't see anything sort of contradiction there. How would you even quantify it in that way?
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
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I'll say you have an acceptable set of points aside from two things. SCS has only once been effectively used that way, which dings my "use in story is a major factor" criteria. This is largely on Yrs, but it is there and does essentially weaken how effectively we can evaluate SCS in regards to your idea. In the sense that it is actually pretty darn difficult to evaluate whether it really does allow for that. It should, sensibly, but we don't know.
When I put together impenetrable defenses and constant movement I think heavily armored road train or land battleship, i.e juggernaughts. which is not something I personally associate with Ling Qi and how she approaches problems when she has an actual choice. Her endurance is monolithic, or structural, instead of juggernaught I would argue. When I think juggernaught my first thought is Gan, but he's actually a worse example than Shen Hu.
Thank you for this rather insightful post. To be honest I would actually like to constrain art choice, partially to Ling Qi herself, and more specifically to the arts she has on hand right now. Before I get into explaining my reasoning for that though I am going to bring up the idea that Ling Qi's character development is basically decoupled from her arts except for in one place, the lessons she gets from them.
See her growing relationship with Renxiang, the tumultuous friendships with Xiulan and Meizhen which had more to do with her personality changes than her arts, and interaction with the sect as a place to uplift her, which had absurd effects starting from day one which are plainly visible in the first two week posts of the first thread. Those persist from then onwards.
And such events and character interactions are going to continue to occur all the way through the rest of her life. Likely they will have less and less effect on her personality's core points post Cyan, much like adults don't really change personality barring repeated extreme experiences or a long and slow slog through consistent events.
So, with that point made my reasons for wanting to restrict art choice to the arts we have now and somewhat to Ling Qi as she is now are like this;
I firmly think based on what we know of Way and Domains, that what we are doing right now forms the foundation of the Way we begin in Cyan and said Way being something we can't fall off of if we want to progress. Furthermore that foundation should become firmer and firmer as we continue through Green. By itself that creates impetus to be selective, because what you build into your foundation you carry with you for the rest of your life. I am following that impetus to be selective.
Further, this impetus is intensified when the high stakes of the tournament in 18 months, and our approaching art crunch are taken into account. In the sense that we must be selective so we can have the coherency which gives power, see our peers and associates, and will have a position where we must be selective about a lot because we have to find the continuations for a lot of our arts.
The next point is that I like the arts we have on hand and what they do for us, after the struggle to get here through the first thread. I am, simply, attached to the idea of our arts and wish to continue with what we have, proceeding from a acquisition stage to a refinement stage in how we approach arts.
I also like Ling Qi as a character. It's a pretty constant wonder to me that I actually care about the MC of a quest on this site, cause I very often do not. For a whole host of reasons which orbit around ideas of "Poor attempts" and "Porridge-like" and "Bland similarity". I am thus faced with some reluctance to change the archetypes she is starting to fill in to. It is very very rare that I see a well done and matured/grown up bard/entertainer character and I don't want to change that bard/entertainer archetype by messing about too much with how she solves problems, which usually has arts involved somewhere along the line. The details of her can change though and I look forward to it, particularly her re-connection with her mortal family.
Following after that is the practical reason of time management. Arts which are closer to Ling Qi's core, need to have less time spent on modifying them. Given that we don't have too much time free, it is entirely worth it to try to find places to free up time where we can.
I had to blink at this for a minute, but it has two issues; we have no idea how or if it is possible, and doing so again would basically entail starting from scratch.
I totally understand. It is not an uncommon thing in questing, and while I am sometimes frustrated by it, I to do it all the time.
Basically yes. But cultivation rather changes things, since between bronze age explosion and the rather significant advantages of bronze equipment on powerful spiritblooded meant that they tended to be able to defer the lethal shocks...
...until Sun Shao happened to them and the suppressed problems start coming home to roost.
This basically.
We're not talking about scrying upon people when it comes to divination. Look to Xin's handling of Ling Qi's birthday for an example. Ambiguity is integral even at her level of play.
What I think a Hidden Moon divination type effect is seeking the overlooked, the forgotten and the incomprehensible. Instead of a viewport into something, it gives you either clues leading to more solid evidence(e.g. similar to how the Grinning Moon quest happened, Ling Qi gets a vision of something Significant, she goes to poke it and wow thats a nice scandal in there) or helps you pick your way through a puzzle where you have to use fragmentary clues, intuition and mood to find the truth(similar to the puzzle box map).
Hard to use, but hard to defend against because it plays by literal moon logic.
Jensaarai
Sing Victory Everlasting
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Thinking on it more, I really feel like I got confused at some point.
I'm working on the impression that somewhere in Green or... whatever comes after that?... we would be tailoring everything to specifically suit LQ's goal of a "Home" Way. Was I wrong?
I also feel like I've talked about this sometime recently.
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
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What comes after Green is Cyan, the fourth realm which is where according to Xin we step onto our Way using the basis of everything that came before.Thinking on it more, I really feel like I got confused at some point.
I'm working on the impression that somewhere in Green or... whatever comes after that?... we would be tailoring everything to specifically suit LQ's goal of a "Home" Way. Was I wrong?
I also feel like I've talked about this sometime recently.
She said this while Ling Qi was still a Yellow in week 28. She broke through to Green in week 37 and got to Yellow week 13, for reference.
There is no particular single moment, that we know of, where we sit down and tailor everything at once or in a series of closely related steps. We refine them by using them and living them and actively tinkering with them throughout the entirety of Green. A continuous process. We essentially decided the foundation for our Domain in Red and Yellow, thus Home and its details, a major decision then being choosing to re-connect with Ling Qi's mother. Now we are deciding our foundation for the next stage by building the structure of our Domain, which will act as the grounding for our Way. This is a common concept in Xianxia cultivation, where each previous step is really a foundation for the next step on the path of seeking the Dao and the divinity related to that concept. In this setting's case though, there is technically an eventual end to the Path in Ascension.
Our Domain is related to the concept of Home, and because it acts as the foundation of our Way our Way will share that association in some respect. Though, we do not know much at all about the Way, beyond that it is basically self built entirely. We don't know if it will be a 'Home' Way like you might be thinking.
We might have talked about this before, but I don't remember it.
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Kai Merah
Hound Hearted Hedonist
- Location
- Somewhere in the corners of my imagination
Ling Qi will grow how Ling Qi will grow. Having Home as our domain will already influence our future choices, I think it's rather missing the point to try to cultivate "home" in all of Ling Qi's arts from now on. I do not like all this talk of trying to groom Ling Qi into a singular Way. She will develop that Way on her own, and I trust yrsillar to make her a congruent, interesting character no matter what we choose. Rather, the only choices we get are going to be choices which would be in character for Ling Qi. We don't need to worry about her Home domain, it will naturally grow to accommodate whatever else we pick, until it becomes the kind of home Ling Qi is most comfortable in, rather than a more generic everyday home.
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
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So are you saying that we shouldn't worry or think about how the choices we make will affect how her Domain and Way develops? This is me asking for clarification.
E: I am also somewhat confused as to what you want to do with arts if we don't cultivate them with intent towards something.
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- Location
- United States of America
To be fair to both of our positions, before I start defending mine stance would you be willing to clarify which way of SCS you are saying has been used only once? I think you are discussing the TRF and SCS interaction, given the context of the second paragraph, but I'm not sure.
Kai Merah
Hound Hearted Hedonist
- Location
- Somewhere in the corners of my imagination
It's more like... I get how we should consider arts to make a coherent combat suite. But I don't think we need to worry too much about how arts we learn will really impact Ling Qi's character? I feel like Ling Qi will remain in character regardless. It feels like... Because Ling Qi's domain is home, people are feeling constrained to make sure that every art she learns somehow has something to do with home. And I don't think that much worry is warranted. Ling Qi will learn what is fitting and interesting for her to learn, and it will all be in character, without struggling to fit everything in a 'home' narrative. I feel like 'home' can accommodate anything Ling Qi is interested in, so we shouldn't worry so much if this or that art is suitable for 'home' or not.
Rather, we should pick arts not based on how they will affect Ling Qi's character as a person, but based on how useful they are to her and how they fit in with our other arts.
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
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The context is in SCS keeping an intruder away from the goal, and the only time that comes to mind is escaping Liling.
Okay, so you've mistaken my meaning and conflated some things I was talking about.
Let me clarify a term here: "Character" is Ling Qi as a person, the personality and little minutiae of day to day that makes her a living breathing human as changed by her interaction with other people in the story. That ego which makes all the decisions we see.
This is distinctly separate from me describing how she does things with her arts via support bard. I don't think arts have much impact on Ling Qi's character or her development, aside from lessons. I talk about this in the post above veekie's.
I very carefully separate the character of Ling Qi from the tools and archetypes she uses, while acknowledging there is some back and forth based on what she experiences while using said tools. The conflation is that you are under the mistaken impression that I think her Domain has direct equal impact on her character, when I do not. I think she makes the decisions about it and that it descends from who she is. I want a coherent art suite for combat, and so that we can actually progress when it comes time for our Domain to start solidifying.
I basically want arts that fit to the Domain so that we actually have a solid foundation to stand on. That classic Xianxia worry, which is still in play if you look at our breakthroughs and how we could well have just missed out on some benefits if we rushed up the realm ladder without actually thinking about what we we're doing. (Also the aforementioned, don't want to waste time on arts that have bits too far outside of what Ling Qi uses to actually achieve goals.)
As to the idea of "I feel like 'home' can accommodate anything Ling Qi is interested in", I vehemently disagree. Look at Abyssal Exhalation, Argent Storm, Argent Current, possibly Argent Pulse(we know little about it), Frozen Soul Serenade. All of these have themes and ideas which people have gone "Ah, yeah no, that's not very welcoming or home like". I haven't quibbled on Frozen Soul, but I have quibbled on Abyssal with the pointing out that hunger and greed aren't that far apart and stating that I actually do want to encourage the greed in her Domain because I like the associations with Greed from FMA:B.
Your last point is basically exactly what I've been saying, if you consider "person" to be her actual personality and day to day minutiae of thought and not the archetypes forged by our path so far. When I'm talking about support bard, I am talking about this archetype created by what she does with her arts. And, I think how useful something is to, is directly related to how well it fits with her other arts and the basics of how much oomph the art actually has in its techniques.
- Location
- United States of America
I mean... every single time we use SCS we avoid the opponent's attack rather than simply tanking it. The defensive side of SCS is all about not being where the attack is. Here are some examples.
Here we see SCS being used to manipulate distance and keep our opponent away from the goal of reaching us.
Here specifically is an example of us fleeing a mob with SCS.
This is an explicit example of when we used SCS to manipulate distance when an opponent had caught us and achieved his goal so that we were able to escape and gain distance.
A bit longer of a quote, unfortunately, but I feel the whole thing is needed to demonstrate that we did actually have SCS activated when we ran out of Yan Renshu's place. The ability to move through the smallest gaps and the speed granted by SCS allowed us to escape Renshu's lair and prevent him from achieving his goal.
While there is more in the fight where we keep moving away from Heizui, this pretty much sums up us using SCS to keep moving away from him and attempting to be always out of reach.
While not explicitly using SCS right here, the phrase "flitted through the mist like a shadow" heavily implies it. This demonstrates exactly what SCS is capable of doing in keeping the goal always out of reach of the intruder.
Given the plethora of examples that I quoted, and still more that I felt were too weak to quote, I will have to strongly disagree that the Sun Liling chase was the only example of SCS being used to maintain distance between the enemy and us, or in other words, keeping the goal (us) out of reach of our opponent. While I feel that SCS is very good at allowing us to dodge attacks, it seems that a great deal of the time that we used SCS, it was actually for keeping us just out of reach of our opponent.
BungieONI
Seven gremlins in a trench coat
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Okay then, it works for what you're talking about.
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- Texas
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I think it would be really one dimensional and boring if we needed to conflate every single art with working precisely with fairly limited concepts. FSS might not work entirely as something based around a 'Home' concept (what does this even mean?) but it does work for other aspects of LQ's character. Stop stressing so much about having every art be based around just one concept. No Way is going to be so simple as being just 'Home' or just 'Lonely Music' or whatever. It's going to be multifaceted and much more complicated than that. I get that we all want to grind out the largest advantages we can get, but Cyan is a long way down the road and we have way more important things to worry about right now. We know next to nothing about how Ways actually work. Let's just try to get through Shenhua's challenge and then worry about this stuff.