Can't sleep, too hot, brain over thinking

[cashew]

Need to be in bed, but too hot so brain is occupied with Jing Yuan and how it's hard to find a half-way decent fic.

So, there's a few fanon peeves that's really starting to get to me:

• Constant giving female genitalia to male characters to avoid writing gay sex. Like, geebus, this is a space faring civilization, lube is a thing they've invented.

• This insistence on JY being a child and being treated as one by the Quintet. It's really annoying because while it's not necessarily against canon, there's plenty of hints that JY was an adult by the time he joined up with the Quintet, not the least of which being his character story Part III clearly stating: "他的应变急智和实用主义手段屡屡让上级们难忘又头疼。最终，受到前任罗浮剑首的邀请，景元加入其所部为之效力，开启了「云上五骁」传奇之路。" — He has already established himself in the Cloud Knights and it was only after he made a name for himself that he then got invited to join the Quintet.

• Literally no one trying to write any hurt-comfort despite Dan Feng possessing healing abilities and JY being a front-line soldier. Seriously, where the fuck are my hurt-comfort fics?

• The majority seem to take the stance that Jing Liu would just let Dan Feng do whatever to her disciple. Given her rather hardass stance and fandom's insistence on making JY a child, I find this immensely unbelievable.

• No one seems to want to explore the politics. Despite the majority of the angst Dan Feng experienced being the result of said politics. FFS.

• Literally no one is able to write an actual military campaign fic. Like...zero people seem interested in trying to imagine how the military campaign might've been carried out by the Cloud Knights given that's like the majority of the Quintet's interaction. Logistics. Supply lines. Geography. Tactics. There's so much to work with here and no one is interested in how each of the Quintet contributed to a functioning military. I'm seriously confused, because there's so many examples to copy from yet everyone is stuck on love-triangle drama.

• But seriously, making JY a child during the Quintet days is crippling the fandom's ability to write remotely interesting fic. No wonder Adventurine/Dr. Ratio is getting more stuff written about them.

---

Based on the wiki browsing, my interpretation of the Quintet era is that the formation of Quintet might not be an official miliary unit. Also, it sounds like they met as adults. (Possibly JY was a young adult at the time.) Mental age wise, obviously Jing Liu was the oldest, followed probably by Bai Heng, who seems to be the closest to Jing Liu based on her character story. Then it's Ying Xing, who is mentally old while physically young. Finally, bring up the rear, it's Dan Feng and Jing Yuan, who sounded like they had a similar level of mental maturity, although obviously not the same physical maturity.

In my head, it seems reasonable to think of Jing Liu as the one leading the charge on the front line. Jing Yuan seemed to serve as a flank guard (English translates this as "wing") based on Imbibitor Lunae's memories. Meanwhile, Bai Heng, with her piloting skills, probably either served as scout or supply drop, more likely as supply drop given memories of her from other characters always involves her riding on a skiff and shooting arrows as she goes. Ying Xing obviously served as the weapons maker and seemingly researcher of random info given his enabling of Dan Feng's very bad ideas. Finally, Dan Feng himself sounded like a combat medic, where his main role is actually to heal the injured while bringing in the magic nukes when there's time and space.

Obviously, one major question is how battles went down when there's giant war mechas and guns mixed in with cold weapons such as swords and glaives. How I resolve that in my head is that fleet-on-fleet combat is actually kind of rare to avoid getting tossed into the vaccum of space and dying. So maybe a series of smaller skirmishes happened on the regular against invading forces and I doubt ships like Luofu had actual "battlegrounds", so there's probably a lot of urban warfare happening. Which means, despite the visuals of the game, the actual tactics are a lot more concerned with logistics and focused on how to keep the civilians from harm while trying to flush out the enemies.

As such, large scale fights probably involved coordination between multiple units across different areas on the fleet, and thus in the mess of things, probably relying on physical messsengers as well as their communication devices because...well, urban warfare. Using cold weapons to damage the enemy rather than relying on bombs and such probably kept the damage to infrastructure manageable.

In terms of logistical problems that needed to be solved, things like counter-intelligence, encryption, setting up communication infrastructure, shipping lanes, travel routes between multiple battle fronts are just a few of the daily headaches that need to be resolved on the fly as the battle state shifts. Keeping track of how many people have been assgined to which sector and if that's enough to deal with the incoming attack is probably enough to keep an entire division occupied. Personally, I think Jing Yuan got slapped on the flank guard role probably because he's also juggling the logistics on top of the actual fighting. Presumably he's mostly working on shuffling personnel and only breaking out into a fight when his unit's location is under attack.

Now what this means is that in reality, the Quintet were probably not fighting side by side all that often and most of the time were engaged with their own tasks during a military campaign and probably only got to hang out with each other after the campaign ended. And I'm going to imagine the cause of the tragedy began with Dan Feng being sent to help Jing Liu's unit, but rather than staying at the back and doing his medic duties, he decided fuck it, he's going into battle for...whatever, because a momentary lapse of judgement since his friend is in a dangerous situation or something. Anyway, now you've got a medic on the front lines, things are looking bad, so Bai Heng, the only one with the mobility, jumps in and sacrifices herself to get the other two out of trouble.

I'm also headcanonning that at this point, Jing Yuan has been promoted to general and whatever orders he was barking out was probably ignored by his Quintet friends. Thus...the only one who wasn't responsible for the tragedy (plus the victim, of course - per Blade's own words). Dan Feng, after the fact, tries to fix his mistake by taking the worst possible option with Ying Xing's help. Dan Feng's guilt is easy to explain, but as for why Ying Xing feels responsible, I'm guessing the "black sun" that Bai Heng used as a last resort might've had something to do with him.

...and that leads us to the final tragedy.

So fic wise, I'd like to see some of this pre-tragedy battle stuff. BUT NO ONE ELSE IS. *sigh*

Comments

[tanithryudo]

IIRC Blade/Yingxing actually made it to the head of the Artisanship Commission. In other words, he was one of the 6 Charioteers that governed the Luofu, and responsible for the ship's literal war machine. In other words, depending on how politics system works out, he actually had a higher political rank than the others while holding that position, up until Jing Yuan was promoted to General.

As for space combat... A lot of it is probably done by skiffs/fighters. If you look up Yukong's character quest storyline, it gives an showcase of how the fighter pilots of the Luofu worked in the last Abundance War.

But a lot of it was probably also on foot, either repelling boarders or boarding opposing vessels. For one thing, the Ambrosial Arbor on the Luofu is a major target for the Denizens of Abundance, so any invasion would definitely involve them trying to board the Luofu.

As well, I am pretty sure Pathstriders and above are able to operate in "space" (because in Star Rail cosmology, "space" isn't your normal vacuum of space). Our player character's first boss fight is literally a planet busting mecha dragon crashing through into a space station and us fighting it from the deck.

As for the Quintet, I think the deeds they were famous for are done as a hero team outside of war time. Some of it wasn't even on the Luofu, so they were probably either journeying together or got called in for help by other ships for help, likely as favors rather than in any official military capacity.

Dan Feng's breakdown started with him and Jingliu facing off against Shuhu (Emanator of Abundance) and getting their ass kicked. Then Baiheng flying in for a sacrifice play. Not sure if this was before the previous General died against Shuhu or not; if it was after, then it might be also a moment of desperation for the ship. As far as I know, Jing Yuan wasn't involved in that scene and hadn't become General yet. His promotion probably needed to come afterwards, since it probably requires The Hunt's attention, and we know that Lan wasn't called down in that battle either.

[cashew]

Blade/Yingxing actually made it to the head of the Artisanship Commission. In other words, he was one of the 6 Charioteers that governed the Luofu, and responsible for the ship's literal war machine.

So, based on this explainer, Ying Xing actually trained under 烛渊将军——怀炎. This makes it sound like the populations actually move around between ships. Does that mean the seven (six?) ships are all traveling within relatively short distance of each other? Should we think of the entire fleet as a single "country" of Xianzhou, with each ship serving as effectively a province?

he actually had a higher political rank than the others while holding that position, up until Jing Yuan was promoted to General.

Presumably his high rank is what kept him from capital punishment, unless that's like not a thing anymore. But given the explainer on specific specializations of each division, it sounds like four of the five "civil" divisions (太卜司, 天舶司, 丹鼎司, 工造司) would basically be at the beck and call of the Cloud Knights needs, with only 地衡司 doing the actual day-to-day civil services. The thing that makes the most sense to me is having an asynchronous chain of command to make the system work.

As for the Quintet, I think the deeds they were famous for are done as a hero team outside of war time.

I'm trying to wrap my brain around the idea that two majorly important officers of the Cloud Knights have time to run off to do heroic deeds elsewhere. Like, presumably the reason Luofu is so heavily militarized is they are in a somewhat constant state of battle (also whatever else is necessary for walking the path of the Hunt).

Plus, not sure how Dan Feng gets time away from the daily ins and outs of being the 龙尊, since it sounds like he's in a position similar to an emperor WRT to the 持明 people. (He is obviously inspired by 龙王.) I'm just not seeing how his people will allow him to take trips off of the ship to run around doing heroics.

The only one who seems to be reasonably capable of traveling around is Bai Heng, everyone else just seems to have too much on their plates to be off traversing the universe. (Even young Jing Yuan would probably be either busy training or carrying out his military service to actually travel the stars and stuff.) I can see them having a few day's military leave in-between missions, but those leave days are probably short and not enough for (magical) space travel.

Dan Feng's breakdown started with him and Jingliu facing off against Shuhu (Emanator of Abundance) and getting their ass kicked.

I thought he was already working on trying to figure out a way to propagate his people again? Like, wasn't he already researching that stuff? Or did he only start researching that after losing Bai Heng?

But even pre-breakdown, I think Dan Feng still had the entire burden of his predecessors' political decisions weighing on him, in addition to his own political struggles both to exercise his will amongst his people and keeping his people in good standing with the rest of Luofu.

[tanithryudo]

> populations actually move around between ships

Yes, that does seem to be the case. Sushang is also recently transferred from another ship, and Fu Suan also originally came from another ship.

My guess is there is a way to fast travel between ships within the Xianzhou fleet. Similar to how we of the Astral Express can freely transport back to places we've been before.

We haven't been given exact numbers of the Xianzhou population to really tell if the ships are considered province sized or world sized. But most consider them small world sized.

> his high rank is what kept him from capital punishment

What kept him from death was the fact that he couldn't die anymore. That was his biggest sin.

> civil departments

天舶司 keeps track of external traffic (so they don't run into other spacefarers, etc). And which routes are working/not working. Remember, Star Rail space isn't just an empty vacuum where you can just pick a direction and go. It's more like a train network, and parts of it might be broken/sealed/infested/etc. Don't recall if they're also in charge of all internal starskiff traffic as well (doubling as the DMV).

丹鼎司 runs all the hospitals and the entire health system of the ship, not just the Cloud Knights.

工造司 is in charge of all industry, maintaining the robotic population/workforce. Presumably if someone blows a hole in the Luofu in battle, they're the department in charge of fixing everything.

太卜司 gathers intel, not just related to war, but on other cosmic factions and stuff as well. I guess they'd be sorta like the CIA/NSA...ish? Though more using astrology and less shady ops.

> two majorly important officers of the Cloud Knights have time to run off to do heroic deeds elsewhere

I mean, outside of war time, it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

The Yaoqing is constantly running from battle to battle, but the Luofu is involved in far less. Maybe an average of one major war every 200-300 years. But that still leaves a lot of downtime, especially for short lived races members living in the peace times in between the wars. Like, in the 700+ years following the war vs Shuhu, the only major war the Luofu was known to be involved in was the Third Abundance War, which only occurred a few decades ago from "current day".

As for Dan Feng... well, it depends on if the other Vidyadhara can stop him. Presumably there's no hard law (at least Xianzhou-wise) that puts his passport in a restricted list.

> I thought he was already working on trying to figure out a way to propagate his people again? Like, wasn't he already researching that stuff? Or did he only start researching that after losing Bai Heng?

That's unclear. It's possible he was doing research into the matter before the war. But the trauma of the war and Baiheng's death was definitely the catalyst for him teaming up with Yingxing and going forward with actual experimentation.

[cashew]

Sushang is also recently transferred from another ship

Why does she get a family name?! Also, I notice in English wiki, 李素裳 is translated as Li Sushang, so the English translation puts a space between family name and given name. Meanwhile, of the Quintet, the ones with spaces are Jing Yuan & Dan Feng, but Jingliu, Yingxing, Baiheng don't have spaces, implying the latter three have hidden/unknown family names. But for the former two, the first character is the family name. Which actually makes no sense in Dan Feng's case because his previous incarnations don't consistently make use of the Dan character. So...whaaaaaa? I'm so confused...

Or the translation is inconsistent or the naming conventions changed. I don't know, point is this stuff bothers me.

What kept him from death was the fact that he couldn't die anymore.

I thought he didn't get immortality until Jingliu broke him out of jail and turned him into Blade? Also where did he even get immortality if that's the thing that landed him in jail? From Dan Feng's experimentation stuff or was he doing that on his own? (And as the head of the 工造司, how the hell did he have access to all that medical knowledge? I feel like the game should've put him into 丹鼎司 if they're gonna go the route of his sin is he invented artificial immortality.)

Re: civil departments - It honestly sounds like 丹鼎司, 工造司, 天舶司, 太卜司 were military departments that also can be repurposed for civilian governance. (For example, currently in China, there are military hospitals that serves the general public, but they're operated by the martial branch of government and not regulated via the civilian hospital system.) 地衡司 is the only division that's purely civilian in nature. This actually is very similar to Dynastic China's division of labor. For example, the roads, immigration, travel, smelting standards were all under direct military control. The only exception is the hospital thing, but that's because there's no hospital equivalent in Dynastic China.

The other thing I'm thinking about is that 六大司 is probably referring to 六局二十四司. But IRL, the 六局二十四司 is purely within the court and not concerned with the stuff outside the imperial palace. They're only civil officers in that they're managing the imperial palace's non-war based stuff, but they're not used by the peasants and are designed to serve the emperor. So, it's not explicitly that the "civil" offices are military in origin, but there's definitely the vibe due to the highest authority is the General (not the head of the other divisions). At least that seems the case on Luofu.

Anyway, tl;dr - the civil divisions might provide services to the civilians, but that doesn't mean they're not being managed by the military arm. Given the tightly linked responsibilities of the other divisions besides 地衡司, I'm not fully convinced the heads of each department are actually equal in political power. Especially when one remembers that in Dynastic China (the inspiration for Xianzhou designs), there were about equal numbers of martial and civil officers, so it's likely some of these divisions are far less "civilian" in terms of command structure.

The Yaoqing is constantly running from battle to battle, but the Luofu is involved in far less. Maybe an average of one major war every 200-300 years.

Is this speculation or canon?

But even with "peace times", that doesn't mean there isn't still military service necessary for the the Cloud Knights. I think civilians (aka gamers) highly under estimate the extent of military service during non-war times. There's going to be rotational military service instead of full mobilization during peace, sure, but that doesn't mean the service isn't still going to happen. Any active military service member is going to be expected to live on a military base to maintain discipline and regulation.

As for Dan Feng, it's less about the laws and more about his sense of personal responsibility, and he does seem like the type of person who, whilst headstrong and arrogant, has a strong sense of commitment to governance. It's his biggest difference from Dan Heng, who feels no such responsibility toward a group of people thanks to imprisonment followed by exile. So I find it really hard to imagine someone with Dan Feng's upbringing is going to be able to just run around playing at heroics and not spending his time being cooped up in the politics during peace time.

[tanithryudo]

> 李素裳

I think we mentioned this before? 李素裳 is a character from Impact 3rd. The Star Rail version is just 素裳 and doesn't have a Li surname. Her mom has a possible 素 surname.

> Blade's immortality

He was infected with bits of Shuhu (the Emanator of Abundance) as part of the Sedition with Dan Feng that blew up in their faces. Probably not something they intended, and Blade seems to blame Dan Heng (Dan Feng) for it. Even if he hadn't been Dan Feng's collaborator, this would've gotten him on the Xianzhou top shitlist.

He was locked up in prison for this crime, but most likely not the max security part, since immortality isn't an offensive power. Then he was broken out by Jingliu, who tried to kill him many times unsuccessfully, but did end up driving him insane in her efforts.

> command structure

I think we'll probably get a better picture of this in the next story arc when we get to see more higher ranked people from the other Xianzhou ships. From the descriptions of some of the other Arbiter Generals, it sounds like some of them might be heads of other departments rather than the Cloud Knights.

> Is this speculation or canon?

It's based on info from the Xianzhou timeline, as pieced together with the various bits of lore items in the game.

> Dan Feng

Dan Feng is also characterized as often being at odds with the Preceptors (the political echelon of his people), and often doing things they found to be unfitting of his status. So there's that dichotomy.

[cashew]

He was infected with bits of Shuhu (the Emanator of Abundance) as part of the Sedition with Dan Feng that blew up in their faces. Probably not something they intended, and Blade seems to blame Dan Heng (Dan Feng) for it. Even if he hadn't been Dan Feng's collaborator, this would've gotten him on the Xianzhou top shitlist.

OK, thanks, that clears a lot of stuff up.

李素裳 is a character from Impact 3rd. The Star Rail version is just 素裳 and doesn't have a Li surname. Her mom has a possible 素 surname.

Ooooh, yeah, we went through stuff too fast for me to retain all the names. Also jet lag. Ahem.

Dan Feng is also characterized as often being at odds with the Preceptors (the political echelon of his people), and often doing things they found to be unfitting of his status. So there's that dichotomy.

I mean, sure, but that gives him all the more reason to stick around because presumably if he left, the Preceptors might end up staging a political coup.

[bluapapilio]

I thought the first point was because trans people wanted to see their own bodies reflected on their favorite characters. Dan Heng with a vagina is popular for that reason. It's not my thing but I get it.

[cashew]

Given 1) the prevalence of the trope (something close to 99% of fic has it) and 2) the fact that the female genitalia is always appearing on the bottom regardless of who is on the bottom, I don't really think trans writers wanting their bodies reflected on the character is driving this particular phenomenon. What's more, given that this is Chinese-language fic and trans issues are not a hot issue spotlight, I highly doubt trans body representation is actually even crossing these writers' minds.

Then again, I'm suspicious of claims of [hot button progressive issue] to justify a fandom trend, mostly because most people are not activists and are simply using the issue as a shield for their far less progressive kinks. Back when gay marriage was the issue of the day, slash writers used that as a justification for writing their gay smut with self-lubricating asshole proliferating everywhere; and genderbending has existed for as long as people have been telling stories. But dig deeper and it turns out those "progressive" fics are just re-skinned agrressive "man"/passive "woman" het smut. I use scare quotes because the actual gender of the character doesn't matter, it's the characterizations that pidgeonhole them into the "man"/"woman" archetype. And it's always the "man" archetype topping the "woman" archetype.

While there might be some trans writers changing canon characters' bodies to reflect their own, I doubt it is driving the fic trend. In my experience, fic trends are often driven by much more conservative and repressive kinks of straight cis-women.