/lit/ - Literature

>>23332974
why not wuxia???????

Are there any well written Cultivation novels?Doesn't matter if it's Wuxia/Xianxia or Eastern/Western, just want something well done that isn't just either talking heads screaming at each other or poorly translated rambling.

>>23358645
>none of their use of magic made for better storytelling
You either didn't read LOTR or these other civilizational canonical epics, likely both.

Just take Sauron's ring for example. Magic artifact, made of part of his soul, made to dominate all servant rings that Sauron made. This is all we are told; nothing about how soul splicing or imbueing works.

Now take the arrows used by Ravana and Indrajit in Ramayana: Shiva's arrows, super destructive, that RavanaCo has because of Ravana's ascetic and yogic practice. One arrow destroys worlds, one destroys kings, one destroys armies. Nothing is explaining about how they work, just how ThisGuy got them and has them for.

Now take again Wukong's Gold-Clasped At-Will Cudgel. Found in the dragon king's palace, weighs a billion jin, can shrink to the size of a heavenly pillar or a needle. How the GCAWC is made is never explained, only how Monkey got it and how he uses it.

Same thing everywhere: the Grail, the herbs ("pharma," synonymous with magic) of Hermes against Circe, and the ritual of Odysseus in Hades, Monkey's 72 Taoist Form-Changes. Nothing explained, it all just works, carrying the plot forward. Same thing with the One Ring, same thing with "the elves used their magic".

Even in works where a form of "magic" has mechanics, like Louis Cha's wuxia novels, they take on a literary/philosophic bent. It's closer to poetry, with nothing meaningfully qualified or quantified. Would you prefer this? It's higher effort than "Illuvatar Sang and It Was So", but it is still the same bs.

Even if everything is q&q'd like an AI generated Clancy novel, all of it is still just props carrying the plot. All that is required of a conceit is that it does not self-contradictory; not explaining magic as a DnD ruleset circumvents the possibility of self-contradiction 100%>

>...I just want a coherent system to larp with
Perhaps a picrel battlefeed is more your speed.

>>23340482
Those old works contain many foundational ideas of modern wuxia however as a whole they aren't great.

>he pronounces wuxia as wucksa

>>23286311
only read the free web version of half of those but I couldnt get into the unedited version of the top three on the left but they were all very popular, defiance was pretty good though
>>23286290
I shall seal the heavens is considered like top top wuxia and revered insanity is with it theyre one of the first recommendations people get when they want to start reading wuxia.

I'm learning Chinese and I just finished my Anki deck. Now on to reading compelling content and I'm thinking that Wuxia would be great for practice. Anyone here know what the most famous and well liked Wuxia works are? Saw someone mentioning "Jin Yong" in the archive but I guess there's more? Classics welcome but also ok with darker/gory/horror/erotic content as long as it's good.

>>23279640
That's wuxia. I only know of the Jin Yong novels.

>>23278896
LOTR is Christian wuxia. Doesn't belong in this thread.

>>23277167
If you read old classical Wuxia like Jin Yong you instead end up getting a treatise on nationalism, what it means to be a hero, and the complexity of interpersonal relationships against circumstance, all veiled within a plot that involves three dudes settling a blood feud through superhuman technique and a fourth dude comes in with a brass cauldron and joins in, leading to generations of bloodshed between their kin.

Read Wuxia/Xianxia its pretty dang good. Well that's an exaggeration. Some, like Reverend Insanity and Lord of the Mysteries and ze tian ji is pretty good, not all of it though. Some of it is heavily reusing tropes of others because you need to understand the cultural context. These webnovels are required by qidian to update five times per week, so you are essentially getting a third draft of quality with no editor, and its much easier to do so if you just crib a lot from other writers instead of being original yourself. To further compound this, most writers are amateurs and not really super skilled at the craft with exceptions.

They are like the junk food of books, wish fulfillment, power fantasy, mega huge power levels, that stuff is pretty common in that genre of webnovels. If that sounds like it's up your alley give it a shot. If not, well you can look at the minority of books in the genre that are not like that.

Wuxia edition

>Recommended reading charts (Look here before asking for vague recs)
https://mega.nz/folder/kj5hWI6J#0cyw0-ZdvZKOJW3fPI6RfQ/folder/guIyhAzS
>Archive
>>/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=sffg
>Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1029811-sffg

Previous: >>23267465

>>23274191
>>23274624
>blue sparks edged in all the colors of the rainbow burst from his fist
Kinda hard to understand the sentence.

>Sei Zan continued. He pressed a huge hand against the boy’s lower back.
Be careful with pronouns. "He" here refers to the general if I'm correct, but the sentence could be also interpreted as "Sei Zan pressed a huge hand against Sei Zan's lower back" which sounds a bit funny.

>Bau Fai indicated he could rest a moment
Here again I'd rather write something like "Bau Fai indicated the boy could rest.."

>larger than the ones he made with his hands
I'd go with "larger than the ones he had made with his hands".

>At the mention of that, Sei Zan smiled.
Here I'd go for "At the mention of swords", or something specific over the word "that".

>weave the radiance as well as his brothers
"as skillfully" perhaps?

Pretty nice, gives me wuxia vibes and I have a soft spot for those. I'd pay a bit more attention at your sentences' flow but contentwise I've got no criticisms.

>>23270978
>Does capeshit work in a premodern society or does it need the spectacle of mass communication

I think without 'modernity' capeshit falls back into an almost bronze-age style 'Age of Demigods & Heroes' or something resembling the Chinese Wuxia and Martial artists. Crack open a book about old myths and legends from Ancient Greece, Japan, or in Hindu Scripture, and you'll get stories that read like cape comics - power leveling, larger-than-life characters punching mountains, constant sexual dramas, people dying and being brought back to life because they're too popular to die. A lot of what we view as capeshit is capeshit because it's rooted in modern sensibilities and tropes: brandable outfits, secret identities, antagonism or cooperation with the government, industrial/nuclear mutation, and aliens.

>>23272368
>>23268592

Different Anon with the same problem: I went with the classics, "Bugs, Plants, Slimes, and Rats" for several very good reason.
-All of them start out small, mature quickly, and reproduce frequently. All traits that allow them to easily slip into normally developed or defended areas and have them reasonably colonize places other more immediately threatening monsters/enemies would never have access to. It's kind of the idea that a carnivorous plant spore or seed could waft in, grow undisturbed, and by the time its' 'recognizable' it's already ready to reproduce AND kill.
-They all have the potential to be mindlessly aggressive/antagonistic; dangerous to small livestock, children, and pets, but it'd be within reasonable expectations for a normal healthy adult to be capable of killing several with a garden tool. An ant the size of a beagle is quite intimidating, and certainly dangerous, but if you're brave you could easily bash it with a shovel.
-Grounded ecology. None of these creatures need anything fancy or elaborate to proliferate: Rats will eat the straw in people's houses and their dried goods until they're the size of a dog and aren't afraid to kill your chickens or a sheep. Slimes live off the most rudimentary organic matter: algae, scum, feces, even leather, and turn it into gallons of acidic slime.

They're also all unintelligent and difficult to sympathize or generate stupid moral/ethical dilemmas about (the Rats are a possible exception).

>>23271585
i only did ri because most of the other wuxia/xianxia that use human race a lot are MTL. yes, i have been poisoned by MTL. i always detox after MTL binging by reading either a chapter of Moby Dick, a literary short story, or Vance.

>>23271254
>if ever you read a wuxia/xianxia story
I won't but I am a racism fan

here’s an exercise in hilarity. if ever you read a wuxia/xianxia story replace the word human with white, and demon(or a specific nonhuman race) with black, indian, slav, etc., and you will receive in turn a great lark.

>>23240599
I'm gonna do some real dumb shit. I'm gonna ask a girl out by framing it as a short & silly clip of myself dubbing a wuxia scene with the dialogue revolving around whether it's a good idea or not to approach a girl on social media. It's either going to be the kind of embarrassing thing that will haunt me forever, or it's going to work. I don't want to bother with regularly & directly asking girls out anymore. At least this would involve a modicum of creativity and get a couple of laughs out of it.

>>23238537
red chamber is from the 1700s
youre right about modern shit being bad though, their YA isn't even worth talking about or lambasting and everything else is a poor imitation of Jin Yong wuxia shit and aping off of classics

>>23214213
That's what Light Novels and Wuxia/Xianxia novels are for.

>>23214231
Isn't YA mostly woke stuff? Doesn't really sound fun.

>they stole all op's cool wuxia moves with a potion again
Why's it always pig potions? Even in the west it's always pig potions.

>>23162698
Jin Yong’s work, Legend of the Twin Dragons of the Tang, Gu Long, wuxia stuff, etc.,

>>23152520
BASED wuxia and xianxia enjoyer 你好吗,你要不要吃饭我的屌絲?

>>23150650
Well there's the whole wuxia genre, plus what >>23150677, plus Water Margin which seems like it might be the best of all in terms of violence.