Xianzhou were the party who declared war on the Abundance first.
I'm trying to match your description to the wiki. English wiki claims First Abundance War starts:
~Year 3400 Star Calendar ― The "Flaming Catastrophe," one of the Three Sufferings of the Era of Bloodshed. The Xianzhou fleet encounters a Dyson tree, also the mortal enemy of the Primeval Imperium — Muldrasil, homeland of the Wingweavers, feeding off nearby stars. A war breaks out as a result.
Same time corresponding to Chinese wiki says:
「火劫大战」中，造翼者第二次入侵仙舟舰队，垂下枝梢，几乎毁灭罗浮。
In neither description does it imply Xianzhou started the conflict, and in Chinese version Xianzhou was explicitly invaded.
Meanwhile, tracking the Xianzhou timeline, the earliest record of fighting Abundance is 1200:
仙舟岱舆于星历1200年在对抗丰饶民「视肉」的战役中殉爆。
This is way before Lan comes into the picture, so before Xianzhou have started hunting Abundance.
So I'm not sure how this portrays Xianzhou as "picking the fights". Like once the emnity starts, the military objective is to push the opponents back as much as possible. But again, that's no different from the multiple 北伐 campaigns many emperors ordered throughout Chinese history.
Ultimately, the Abundance Wars are inspired by and parallel the practically non-stop conflict across the borders China had with her neighbors, which resulted in a bunch of bloody wars. Xianzhou's civil wars are also a parallel to China's own history of multiple civil wars. These story elements are directly inspired by China's history.
I'm trying to understand why it's so important that the events have to exactly match in details before it can be considered equivalent enough to serve the same story purpose, especially when it's only meant to explain the need for militarized society.
the Vidyadhara, even putting aside the issue with The Permanence that may yet be addressed in the future, their culture and their internal social conflict all revolves around their rebirth cycle and what it means for lifespan and identity.
Well, again, 1) Dan Heng doesn't even identify with the culture seeing as he canonically grew up in prison, so that culture's influence on Dan Heng as a character is far less important. 2) The identity issues addressed by the rebirth cycle can also be explored via things like clones and cyborgs. On a literary level, clones, cyborgs, rebirth are all tackling the same thought experiment.
With the Foxians, we've only got a snapshot of it recently, but their culture(s) and societies are also defined by their history with the Borisin.
I mean Borisin stuff is really bad, so I don't understand why anyone would want to explore it as is and not write something to fix it. But even assuming someone actually likes that canon, the central idea that the only thing separating Foxian and Borisin is their attitude towards being bloodthirsty violent animals and enslavement is pulling directly from tribal conquests. As you've even noted, the Borisins are basically stand-ins for Mongols (although I would argue they're just more the "generic northern nomadic tribes" bc there were literal hundreds of those tribes enslaving people across thousands of years) and the fact that a lot of those tribes share a common ancestor while still enslaving each other.
So there's not much in terms of issue being death with that is unique to the Borisin/Foxian set up.
Plus, only Feixiao's character development has anything to do with the Borisin connection. Other Foxians, like Jiaoqiu, Yukong, Baiheng gain nothing character-wise from the Borisin stuff.
it's a little hard to separate his character with his backstory of his previous incarnation committing sins and his current incarnation having to deal with the aftermath
I guess I'm not really seeing that. Being made a scapegoat is a pretty common thing even without the reincarnation. Criminals who suffer brain damage and have completely altered their personality thus deemed not persecutable due to the existence of the new identity is the RL equivalent. Sci-fi commonly have clones/cyborgs that inherit previous person's brains but a new personality emerges in the process is also pretty common. The entire transhumanism subgenre specifically deals with the question of identity when it comes to body vs memory.
But Dan Heng is more than his (perceived) sins. That's kind of the point of the original canon. His reincarnation doesn't define who he is as a person. He literally says the past can't define his future. Like...the core of Dan Heng I see is a character who breaks free from the constraints of the past and cultural expectations. The breaking free aspect is far more important to Dan Heng's character than the specifics of the past that's holding him down.
So I guess I don't agree that Dan Heng's character is inseparable from Vidyadhara heritage is what I'm saying.
I don't deny they exist. I do avoid reading stuff that deviates past a certain point
I mean you're saying there's literally no way to separate Dan Heng from being a Vidyadhara. By that logic, everything we write currently potentially becomes OOC because the story isn't finished yet and later canon will completely redefine characters if more backstory twist is revealed. Might as well not read any fic at that point.
Yes, I know you're out of JY/DH ship, but the same logic applies to Aventurine/Ratio. Anything written now has the potential to become OOC with new backstory release, why bother with fic at all?
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2024-09-21 04:33 am (UTC)I'm trying to match your description to the wiki. English wiki claims First Abundance War starts:
Same time corresponding to Chinese wiki says:
In neither description does it imply Xianzhou started the conflict, and in Chinese version Xianzhou was explicitly invaded.
Meanwhile, tracking the Xianzhou timeline, the earliest record of fighting Abundance is 1200:
This is way before Lan comes into the picture, so before Xianzhou have started hunting Abundance.
So I'm not sure how this portrays Xianzhou as "picking the fights". Like once the emnity starts, the military objective is to push the opponents back as much as possible. But again, that's no different from the multiple 北伐 campaigns many emperors ordered throughout Chinese history.
Ultimately, the Abundance Wars are inspired by and parallel the practically non-stop conflict across the borders China had with her neighbors, which resulted in a bunch of bloody wars. Xianzhou's civil wars are also a parallel to China's own history of multiple civil wars. These story elements are directly inspired by China's history.
I'm trying to understand why it's so important that the events have to exactly match in details before it can be considered equivalent enough to serve the same story purpose, especially when it's only meant to explain the need for militarized society.
Well, again, 1) Dan Heng doesn't even identify with the culture seeing as he canonically grew up in prison, so that culture's influence on Dan Heng as a character is far less important. 2) The identity issues addressed by the rebirth cycle can also be explored via things like clones and cyborgs. On a literary level, clones, cyborgs, rebirth are all tackling the same thought experiment.
I mean Borisin stuff is really bad, so I don't understand why anyone would want to explore it as is and not write something to fix it. But even assuming someone actually likes that canon, the central idea that the only thing separating Foxian and Borisin is their attitude towards being bloodthirsty violent animals and enslavement is pulling directly from tribal conquests. As you've even noted, the Borisins are basically stand-ins for Mongols (although I would argue they're just more the "generic northern nomadic tribes" bc there were literal hundreds of those tribes enslaving people across thousands of years) and the fact that a lot of those tribes share a common ancestor while still enslaving each other.
So there's not much in terms of issue being death with that is unique to the Borisin/Foxian set up.
Plus, only Feixiao's character development has anything to do with the Borisin connection. Other Foxians, like Jiaoqiu, Yukong, Baiheng gain nothing character-wise from the Borisin stuff.
I guess I'm not really seeing that. Being made a scapegoat is a pretty common thing even without the reincarnation. Criminals who suffer brain damage and have completely altered their personality thus deemed not persecutable due to the existence of the new identity is the RL equivalent. Sci-fi commonly have clones/cyborgs that inherit previous person's brains but a new personality emerges in the process is also pretty common. The entire transhumanism subgenre specifically deals with the question of identity when it comes to body vs memory.
But Dan Heng is more than his (perceived) sins. That's kind of the point of the original canon. His reincarnation doesn't define who he is as a person. He literally says the past can't define his future. Like...the core of Dan Heng I see is a character who breaks free from the constraints of the past and cultural expectations. The breaking free aspect is far more important to Dan Heng's character than the specifics of the past that's holding him down.
So I guess I don't agree that Dan Heng's character is inseparable from Vidyadhara heritage is what I'm saying.
I mean you're saying there's literally no way to separate Dan Heng from being a Vidyadhara. By that logic, everything we write currently potentially becomes OOC because the story isn't finished yet and later canon will completely redefine characters if more backstory twist is revealed. Might as well not read any fic at that point.
Yes, I know you're out of JY/DH ship, but the same logic applies to Aventurine/Ratio. Anything written now has the potential to become OOC with new backstory release, why bother with fic at all?