Like you said, that just depends on the timelines. Pandora could have created Bacchus a thousand years before she met Serenity. And, sure, he might be different than all of the other gods we've met. Your quote is good evidence that he might be different. He could also be a Genus Loci child of the All-Father instead. It is very hard to know for certain without getting a lot more information on him. So, using him as an example of a someone who is clearly not a Genus Loci when we don't know that is... bizarre?
For Pandora to have created beings that Selene would trust and respect around the court, and who would have close proximity to Serenity to be able to tell her stories growing up, Pandora would need to be quite old and well established on Earth, and her children would need fairly easy access to the Moon Kingdom.
By contrast, Pandora's own story, as she herself told it, suggests that she was relatively ignorant of affairs on the Moon, and that she had to make exceptional efforts to create a yokai who would be trusted and able to gain Serenity's confidence.
It would be hard to reconcile the story Pandora told, of Cloch Ghlas embittering her against Serenity, of her going to considerable lengths to infiltrate the Moon Palace with a single servant, and of her trying to lure Serenity into a trap, with the idea of Bacchus having been created by Pandora and having had Queen Selene's trust around the lunar court for so long that he told Serenity stories when she was a little girl.
As someone who has admitted they were wrong multiple times in the last week, do you somehow think I have a driving desire to be the person who corrects everyone until no one is wrong? That I see myself as some sort of final arbiter?
No, but I think we all do it now and then. We get overzealous about correcting
specific perceived factual errors; it's the cumulative effect of a lot of us doing it all the time that's problematic, not some kind of unique thing that
only you ever do.
I've done it too, yes. I invite you to call me on it when you actually do it, because I'm increasingly realizing that it's a bad thing.
If we want a good thread culture, I think we need to start being more collectively aware about these sorts of things. Even if that means imperfect people informing other imperfect people that they think they're making a mistake.
I wasn't saying no to poetry and that everything must be concrete and factual. But the post I responded to wasn't trying to be poetic. Or if it was, I certainly didn't get any sense of poetry from it. It sounded like they were asking a factual question. And I wanted to point out that, as a factual question, it was conflating two things that I want to make sure we don't accidentally conflate. Not to kill poetry, but to make sure people aren't operating under the wrong information.
But you know what is really raising my hackles? You of all people stepping in to tell me that I'm under no obligation to police word usage. How many times have you stepped in to clarify something for someone? How many times have you stepped in when someone has stated something that you don't think is completely correct, to try and guide them? Somehow it is perfectly fine for you to police everyone's words, but when I do it I'm trying to kill the poetry of fantasy? I was doing nothing more than what you have done dozens of times in this thread, multiple times this past week, yet somehow when I do it, it is a problem. I'm killing poetry by reminding someone that Naru is the fount of all life that is not of the den of beasts or the tribes of men, not a mere genus loci.
The original statement was:
Naru just had a big thing happen because she kept a promise. What kind of effects might that have on her deific maturation process?
I look at that and I
definitely don't see that and think "this person is asking a factual question based on a false premise."
I see that and think "Naru is developing into something transcendentally more than human, something that we have a shortage of nice, simple, compact words for, because the entire concept is one made up for this homebrew setting. This person is using the word 'deific' to describe what Naru is changing into, simply because it is the kind of word that conveys how...
exceptional... a being Naru is developing into."
...
I'm not telling you you
never should correct people about matters of fact. But in this case, you zoomed in on something that I don't think was a problem. And when I said "eh, I don't think it's a problem" in a relatively short, concise statement, you responded with "I don't want to have "closest template" leaving us blindsided by unexpected developments."
Which, in this case, I don't think is a realistic concern.
So yes, I think that
in this specific instance, without prejudice to anything you may or may not do at some other future time... I think you are being overzealous about 'correcting' a perceived 'factual error.' An error committed by someone who was, as far as I can tell, just trying to use appropriate figurative language to describe something English isn't exactly overburdened with normal words for.
The next time you see me being similarly overzealous in a similar way, I encourage you to say so!
...
But... Well, quite frankly, if you wanted "a simple "yeah, we know she isn't literally a Goddess, but the words are vague and this was more poetic..." "
You had that hours ago.
I feel that here, now,
in this instance in particular, you went a little overboard about whether something was an appropriate use of the word 'deific.'
And when I disagreed with you about the appropriateness, you started fortifying on that hill, and your own stated motive is to make sure that people don't make mistakes due to believing factually correct things. And your actions suggest that you feel strongly about that, so... I don't know what I'm supposed to think, Chaosmancer.