I don't really know of any others. I guess you could try rigging up something with GURPS, but GURPS has a problem with biggatons once you start getting away from the human scale, which cultivators inevitably do. Superhero systems often fix this issue, but it's usually at the expense of any real sense of progression.
We have Exalted general, for Exalted. What does that have to do with general xianxia discussion, though?
Aight, cough up your reading lists. I know you frickers have been reading the same Web Novels I have, so we might as well talk about the better part of the LitRPG and/or Xianxia series out there.
I haven't found a xianxia webnovel I could read without taking lengtht breaks yet, but I'm gradually making my way through Reverend Insanity and Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality. I like them enough to probably finish them eventually. I used to read Against the Gods, but that one I've dropped for good. It was a bit too blatant with its power and revenge fantasies for my taste. I also used to follow a xianxia quest called Forge of Destiny and its follow-up Threads of Destiny on Sufficient Velocity. I guess it's relevant to this thread, too, even if it isn't Chinese. It had some pretty good stuff in it, though as I read it as a story rather than partaking in the quest, the quest format felt like a bit of a hindrance to me. It's to be found edited and partially rewritten to a story format somewhere, too, but its origins as a quest still show in some things. It's been something like half a year since I've last checked up on that one, though.
Forge of Destiny's pretty good. Ling Qi just finished negotiating a borders agreement with the Polar Nation and then got burnt to a crisp by yeeting a high-level cultivator into the dream realm so they could get into a fight with another high-level cultivator that had been sabotaging the diplomatic summit. She's current just started a "recovery" arc.
I'll probably catch up with the story at some point. I prefer reading it in longer portions over regularly following the quest, so I've usually taken a lengthy break every time I've gotten up to date with it.
Aight, cough up your reading lists. I know you frickers have been reading the same Web Novels I have, so we might as well talk about the better part of the LitRPG and/or Xianxia series out there.
>NSHBA
I'm assuming this is Nine Star Hegemon Body Art. If you're actually talking abut the Nebraska State Home Builder's Association, pease tell me.
How does everyone here feel about The MechTouch.
Started out pretty Litrpg, divergered into straight soft sci fi , is now going into a mild cultivation series.
Tough to give this one a genre but love to read this shit.
NSHBA is good in a schlocky way up to when he ascends, then it's the exact same plot timelooped over 3 thousand chapters. You can legitimately drop it and start reading at arbitrary points after the first 1kish chapters and never feel lost because the same things always happen in the same order, with even most of the same recurring characters he's had around since the Jiuli secret realm (except Little Snow disappears for hundreds of chapters at a time, some extra wives and he gets a formation/talisman guy)
NSHBA is bad but it still manages to be the good version of Martial God Asura
Beware of Chicken
Defiance of the Fall
Ar'Kendrithrist if you can stand the MC being a literal gay and hundreds of chapters of farming around with the LitRPG system that turned out to be cultivation in disguise all along
I finished the trilogy of the Condor heroes, and started the smiling proud wanderer. I prefer Wuxia a lot more than xianxia too, a lot more adaptable for rpgs, it only lacks mysthical beasts hunting for the moment to be perfect for my taste.
Recently read Ave Xia Rem Y and it was good. I feel spoiled by having a novel written natively in english, I don't know if I can go back to mediocre broken TLs.
I'm looking for something new to read if anyone has recommendations
Didn't they get nasty when she couldn't calm her fire and Liu Jin quenched her?
I think the author keeps it deliberately vague to avoid anyone complaining about underage sex or some other thing since it's technically against the rules of various sites.
If you are trying to read something good, usually er gen novels are some of the best. Unlike some novels where the characters are moronic in his they usually are of average intelligence (and yes, for xianxia this is godlike and above) and can do things like asking for forgiveness, actually not attacking at sight and so on.
Outside of Er gen, ascending do not disturb is incredible fun. I usually prefer the ones like that where the setting is more casual and fun than the ones where they just fight for no reason.
Cradle series by Will Wight.
A Thousand Li by Tao Wong
Ave Xia Rem Y by Mat Haz
Street Cultivation by Sarah Lin
I've been on the asiatic grind for the past few years, but just recently got through 9 Volumes of Cradle before getting burnt out.
Honestly, Ze Tian Ji is prob the one I liked the most and it's not even Xianxia, but Xuanhuan. It also got fricking axed.
Cradle was AWESOME. First three books are sort of a slow burn but then the main character starts mainlining Hunger Madra and the rest is a coke infused rollercoaster.
How does everyone here feel about The MechTouch.
Started out pretty Litrpg, divergered into straight soft sci fi , is now going into a mild cultivation series.
Tough to give this one a genre but love to read this shit.
>NSHBA
I'm assuming this is Nine Star Hegemon Body Art. If you're actually talking abut the Nebraska State Home Builder's Association, pease tell me.
[...]
First time I've heard about it.
It's basically about a mad scientist and initially mecha garage shop owner from a lawfully evil human space empire that has been reformed around the two cultivation paths of realizing superhuman powers through the construction and use of giant robots.
He eventually gets chased, wooed and marries a Gynaesupremacists and they raise a happy little family together as they expand their giant robot company. It's pretty good and often hilarious, but you gotta deal with the fact that the characters aren't necessarily good people and are quite open about operating in a society that thinks nothing of skinning sentient aliens for handbags or running century-spanning schemes to legally turn the brain matter of hallowed war veterans into anti-aging treatments.
It's kinda-sorta like 10.000 Years of Cultivation, only that the strongest move isn't everybody cooperating in good faith in order to build a better future for all.
idk about the rest of the series, but I stopped at book 2 because that shit was genuinely the worst shit I've ever read, including trashy isekai light novels, I hated it's quippy marvel """humor""", I also hated the fact that every single time the mc was in any actual danger some random convoluted shit would happen to get him out of trouble, and I hated that the mc is a needy moron that's incapable of any critical thought.
>but it's popular though!!!!!!
Frick off, the average webnovel is written by a chinese teenager that can barely write in chinese, then translated by people who barely understand both english and chinese, it's no fricking wonder that a book that doesn't have that filter of shit rises to the top.
>idk about the rest of the series, but I stopped at book 2 because that shit was genuinely the worst shit I've ever read, including trashy isekai light novels, I hated it's quippy marvel """humor""",
Alright, I can't help shit taste. >Frick off, the average webnovel is written by a chinese teenager that can barely write in chinese, then translated by people who barely understand both english and chinese, it's no fricking wonder that a book that doesn't have that filter of shit rises to the top.
Will Wight is American and Cradle is written in English.
>Will Wight is American and Cradle is written in English.
And yet you clearly can't fricking read english, maybe that's why you like this garbage, let me explain it so that your moron baby brain can understand.
The average cultivation story (NOT Cradle) is written like shit and has to pass through several filters of shit to get to an english reader, Cradle does not, it's competently written by someone who is proficient enough in english, so it's not a surprise that it becomes popular, it just happens that this writter is also a talentless hack.
>Alright, I can't help shit taste.
Yeah sorry I hadn't noticed that reading about Lindon getting rescued by the strongest person around every time he acts like a moron then getting trained by them was top literature, my bad.
Web novels are trash and it's like if /tg/'s knowledge of western fantasy began and ended with sloppy harem isekai and stuff from the last 20 years.
I'm really curious about the century of wuxia novels that established these tropes but only a fraction of that is translated. But you're seen Hong Kong kung fu films you've absorbed some knowledge through osmosis, a lot of those were book adaptations
Return of the Mount Hua Sect
The Return of the Crazy Demon
Volcanic Age
Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon
Wild West Murim
Moon-Shadow Sword Emperor
Nine Heavens Sword Master
Heavenly Grand Archive’s Young Master
Chronicles of the Demon Faction
The Terminally Ill Young Master of the Baek Clan
Forge of Destiny and Cradle are westernised approaches to xianxia and have straightforward systems of progression that also have more than enough depth for the players and GM to play with.
World of Cultivation is decent if you want a more classical experience that gives a good look at a formation specialist who is also not your average xianxia MC even though he is a product of his environment.
If you are not against fanfics you can try Sect by Ryyugi - it also has a shitton of supplemental information where author goes about explaining different xianxia concepts and where they come from.
This
Is a good overview of the fantasy chinkland and basically the main thing if you want your world to feel as classical xianxia.
One of the things I love about the chinese novels is how divorced they are from western morality. Even the Good Guys tm tend to be some fricked up people than kill people to save face (of they sect, themselves or a family member).
Misther chin chong of the heavenly benevolence sword, kills some beggar kids and they puppies because they dared to talk to his daughter and stuff like this.
The breakaway provinces of China have been existing in a hole of utter lawlessness for decades now, yes. It's natural that the political reality would influence their fiction in some way.
Any other series than is like reverend insanity? Not about the psycho of the protagonist, but with a cool magic system integrated. That or with cool monster hunting/taming, its the part of RI than I enjoyed the most even when it wasn't the main part. NO harem or super powered if posible.
>That or with cool monster hunting/taming
The Charm of Soul Pets is pretty good. It used to be described as "Edgy Pokemon", but I guess these days, it'd be called a: "Soulslike Pokemon" instead.
>How high are the powerlevels here chief?
Qi works rather odd in this series. It's a sinus wave rather than a linear stamina bar and there are enviromental and temporal restrictions on recovery rates based on the elemental affinity induced by somebody's style of cultivation.
Besides a monkey-folk race descended from Sun Wukong, what are some good race choices for a fantasy China setting? Fantasy Japan is easy, with Yokai like Oni or Tengu, but China’s a bit harder. At the very least I’d like to put a more Oriental spin on Western fantasy races like Elves, so if you have any ideas for that please share them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoguai
basically most chinese creatures and a lot of the humanoid races are just x-animal gaining sentience through some process and their bloodline
What are some common misconceptions about how the Chinese view magic/spells, and how might we better incorporate these actual beliefs into fantasy settings/magic systems?
From my limited understanding of the whole daoist immortal subgenre, broadly fitting into wuxia/xianxia, "elemental" magic in the west is viewed as like "I use my mana/magic power/etc to summon fire then throw it at the enemy!" whereas a fireball in this style will be inherently linked to the wu xing (pic related) which is where you get stuff viewed in the west as weird, like 'fire' defeating 'earth' even though when you pour dirt on a fire it extinguishes, but 'earth' doesn't really mean 'dirt' exclusively but is more encompassing.
Part of the issue in translated works especially is culturally inherent understandings that only someone who has immersed themselves culturally for an equal time would be able to understand.
Consider when you read a series, like the Lord of the Rings for example, and you intuit subtexts, meanings and associations: >The man was red in the face!
For people who don't turn red in the face, what could this phrase express? What if red is an auspicious colour, why then he is joyful, or ecstatic, or passionate, and so on.
Cultural context is what is deterministic of reception
Is there any system that's good for emulating wuxia c-drama's like Joy of Life. Less autistic cultivation mechanics and more insanely intricate relationship webs and deep plots.
Plan to rip off one of the arcs for a short campaign but don't know what system would suit it mechanically
I know that mechanically, Legend of the 5 Rings has a reasonably deep social encounter system with asian flair.
It's hard to find a system to mechanically represent the Chinese concept of 'Face' though as it's so esoteric.
Blades of the Immortals ties part of your progression to your "relationship clocks" which each PC has to each other PC amd to particular NPCs and organisations important to them. At the end of the session, you can write down how your character's view of the other character has changed and tick the clock; when you do so 4 times, the clock get filled and you get a "moment of enlightenment" you can use to help improve your powers.
It depends on the setting/writter, but you could call a lot of things cultivation, you can generally refer to someones power level as their cultivation i.e. "Your cultivation has grown stronger cousin", sometimes its the act of practicing your martial arts, sometimes its the act of meditating and accumulating ki(chinese mana). In some stories it is literally cultivating the field, because their martial art/cultivation style is based around obtaining ki from working the earth.
Basically is just level ups.
You suck energy (from pills, the ambient, monsters or whatever) and condense in your body. Somehow this makes you better at everything.
Usually there's some levels like foundation establishment, nascent soul and things like that. In practical terms just thing like a DND player talking about his 5th level mage vs a 8th level monk and so on.
Reminder that cultivation is more magical than martial, and Taoist philosophy is first and foremost ritualistic, rather than lolkungfu. Taoist sorcery is a thing. Christ, even Buddhist sorcery is a thing.
The word ‘Xian’ actually has countless translations/meanings and more often than not denotes a sage or a wizard, not a fricking martial artist.
Taoism’s alchemical background has been called the eastern equivalent of Hermeticism (western alchemy), which is THE wizarding tradition in the west.
So, why do you homosexuals associate ki/chi/qi with martials and totally-not-magic like total morons? The concept of life/breath energy permeates the globe.
Both east and west wanted to perfect the self using internal alchemy, but the east took it too internally, while the west took (looked at it) it externally, and came out ahead. One wanted to connect with the Godhead, the other wanted to become some overly healthy superhuman.
Nonetheless l think you'll find the venn diagram of Western cultivation fans and Westerners who grew up with dragon ball to be quite nearly a circle. Or a circle within a circle.
>So, why do you homosexuals associate ki/chi/qi with martials and totally-not-magic like total morons
Because we're not talking about real life Chinese folk beliefs but about the specific, mostly webnovel-based genre of cultivation fantasy, in which immortals very much are martial artists. Settings where there's even lip service to the idea of cultivating without incredible violence are a rarity. It's a cliché in practically all these novels that if you just hole up in a cave and cultivate nonstop or pop pills without "tempering" yourself in combat you end up with a shaky foundation. This is not how cultivation works in actual Taoist belief, but it's like complaining about the theology of Narnia not being accurate to Christianity
Also >The word ‘Xian’ actually has countless translations/meanings and more often than not denotes a sage or a wizard
Anon people associate immortals with martial artists in real life. Internal alchemy is a real part of those belief systems.
The concept of internal alchemy is shared in both eastern and western alchemical traditions. You're being highly disingenuous. Immortality is associated with antiquated alchemy in-general.
>The concept of internal alchemy is shared in both eastern and western alchemical traditions
There's no historical connection or exchange between Western alchemy and Chinese alchemy. You can say that Western esotericism developed some similar concepts and modern occultists have compared the two, but they're separate traditions that never had significant historical exchange. Western alchemists didn't retain their semen in hopes of refining it into qi
And again, martial arts being associated with immortals isn't a modern thing. Journey to the West is half a millenium old - many of the tropes associated with "cultivators" in modern xianxia novels specifically originate from Sun Wukong
>There's no historical connection or exchange between Western alchemy and Chinese alchemy.
The concept of perfecting the inner spirit/self is very much a core value of Hermetic alchemy. Etc. Alchemy was seen as the key to Theurgy, or uniting with the divine. Henosis. Gnosis. Etc.
>but they're separate traditions that never had significant historical exchange.
Doubtful. Alchemical traditions will always have significant similarities, being physics, but also in thought, and there are philosopher stone equivalents in China and India.
There are eerie similarities in antiquity and the Hellenistic period, in alchemy, mathematics, the imagination, etc, all over the world.
As a very old example, the Pythagorean triples was not Pythagorean in-origin, and has been seen in India, China, and even earlier in Babylon. The meaning of Greek's 'pneuma', and China's 'qi', both mean 'breath' or 'spirit'. India's 'prana' is no different. Spiritual energy and breathing have always been seen as connected. Humans came to the same or similar conclusions using the imagination.
Taoism and Hermeticism are definitely similar in their alchemical pursuits.
5 months ago
Anonymous
There is also evidence that Pythagoras traveled as far east as India, and his teachings are even in-tune with Hinduism's.
(in Daoist philosophy and cosmology) spiritually immortal; transcendent human; celestial being.
(in Daoist religion and pantheon) physically immortal; immortal person; an immortal; saint, one who is aligned with Heaven's mandate and does not suffer earthly desires or attachments.
(in Chinese alchemy) alchemist; one who seeks the elixir of life; one who practices longevity techniques,
(by extension) alchemical, herbal, or qigong methods for attaining immortality.
(in Chinese mythology) wizard; magician; shaman; sorcerer.
(in popular Chinese literature) genie; elf, fairy; nymph, etc.
(based on the folk etymology for the character 仙, a compound of the characters for person and mountain) sage living high in the mountains; mountain-man; hermit; recluse.
(as a metaphorical modifier) an immortal; an accomplished person; celestial; marvelous; extraordinary and exceptional individual
(in new-age conception) seeker who takes refuge in immortality; transcended person; fully established being
(in early Tang dynasty folk religion conception) immortal being part of a small spiritual cabal who had immortal lifespans and supernatural powers.
(in Daoism and Chinese folk religion) a Daoist who was blessed to become immortal.
(in Chinese Buddhism and Buddhist-inspired Taoist sects) a kind of deity or spiritual person imported from Taoist beliefs.
(in Fujian Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, and folk religion) a boddhisatva, or a being of comparable holiness and power over nature to one.
(in Korean Taoist-inspired new religions) a being subservient to heaven that helps humans.
Can anyone give me a quick rundown on how gods and similarly powerful beings work in Chinese mythology so I don’t mess up depicting them? Also, after Journey to the West, what’s your favorite Chinese legend/myth?
I've heard it said that Chinese Religion is an even mix between buddhism, taoism, and 'Chinese Folk Religion'- which is to say the actual gods only play a third of the role in religious thought. Hence- I think, why people don't talk about them as much compared to say the Hindu or Egyptian Gods.
In addition, Chinese Mythology has several tiers that are very much the same sort of shit you see in Shonen Anime- there's in-mythology power-creep, so a lot of Gods get outclassed by even better-er Gods a lot.
>I've heard it said that Chinese Religion is an even mix between buddhism, taoism, and ‘Chinese Folk Religion’
It’s more or less the same in Japan. Shinto-Buddhism. Asia is full of highly creative/imaginative blends and hybridizations.
There's a maxim that everyone in Japan is born Shinto, marries Christian, and dies Buddhist. So you get the all the fun animist beliefs, the big fancy wedding, and then still get to reincarnate at the end of things.
There's a maxim that everyone in Japan is born Shinto, marries Christian, and dies Buddhist. So you get the all the fun animist beliefs, the big fancy wedding, and then still get to reincarnate at the end of things.
Why can’t the three Abrahamic religions get along? Why can Asians do this but Westoids cannot?
Asian religions are pagan. Western religions are not. Back when paganism was a thing in Western society, you saw this sort of syncretism a lot as well.
For instance, some scholars believe that the origin of Aphrodite was a cult of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar that got spread to a Greek island, and from there to the rest of Greece as a whole.
>Western religions are not
Oh frick off. God was highly likely derived from past pagan wind/sun gods.
Pagan religions are just less evolved religions :^)
5 months ago
Anonymous
Pagan religions are literally any religion that is not Judaistic/Abrahamic. Birthdays were still seen as a pagan custom for some centuries after the birth of Jesus.
See- when something is written down people argue about how to interpret what's written down and what's in the religion vs. what isn't. And what happens when people disagree is rather than live and let life, they start a whole new religion with blackjack and hookers.
Starting with Judaism (which if you read a lot of the old testament spends a lot of time shitting on their neighbors for not following the 'TRUE' religion) you get a schism that leads to Christianity, and from there Catholicism and Orthodoxy, you get another Schism that turns into Islam which then has another schism that splits off into Sunni, Shia, and Ibadi. Catholicism splits off into Protestantism, which then splits off again into the Evangelicals and the Mormons.
The east meanwhile doesn't see contradictions between say Shinto-ism and Buddhism in the way Christians see a contradiction between Christianity and Shintoism. Both can be true at the same time, so when someone disagrees it's not an existential fight for souls going to heaven or hell. Syncretism is the word for the phenomena too- and it does happen in Christianity. Christmas for example is the syncretization of pagan holidays like Saturnalia, many saints are pagan gods in funny hats. But importantly those syncretizations had to conform to the Orthodoxy of the Christian faith to be acceptable.
There was also a point in history where Christian esotericists (Hermetics) were convinced all gods were part of the same God. The Prisca Theologia.
Syncretism was more prevalent in the west (Greeks considering Egyptian gods the same as their own, etc) before the rise of a truly powerful, absolutist Christian faith that went hard(er) on dissent.
I miss the days when the Greeks considered the Egyptian gods the same as their own.
5 months ago
Anonymous
>I miss the days
homie TEACH ME THE SECRET TO IMMORTALITY RIGHT NOW IM TIRED OF THIS KNOWING IM GONNA DIE SHIT
I have never seen actual gods depicted in wuxia. At best you get mentions of Buddha from shaolin monks before the palm strike a guy to death, or a general "the heavens" mention which seems to just be a fate/destiny/general spiritualism thing
In general each path that cultivators, and gods, walk is a part of the Dao of All. The only one who actually managed to complete is Buddha. Gods and cultivators are like those blind people groping an elephant and trying to build a full picture of it. Some know more, some less.
And the further down the path you go the more you know and the less you are able to stop yourself from acting with accordance with it. Because the Dao is you. It's how you see the world and interact with it. Even if you don't use superpowers.
So gods are those who consider the authority they wield and duties which they fulfill to be a part of who they are. They can very well be buttholes about it though. But there is a reason they are not Buddha.
>t. Journey to the West
Love that one of the greatest Chinese epics is literally just about how much the authors' super special Buddhist OC Sun Wukong constantly btfoing Daoists. It's like how Dante's Inferno is really just a burn book/self insert fanfiction.
If you dig a bit, a lot of classic literature turns out to be fanfic, with some of them being completely transparent about their derivative nature even. And mind you, not even mild fanfics, we got literal forced transformation vore reworks of older materials among our classics.
Xianxia cultivation and magic have nothing to do with the Buddha. Any half-witted chump can do Buddhist cultivation and attain Nibbana — that’s literally the point, a nigh-fool proof method of liberation. Xianxia cultivation methods are mired in Maya and attachment, which explains why Xian are miserable sociopaths. Honestly there’s little that cleaves to foundational Daoist philosophy either, ‘defying the heavens’ is far from natural for instance…The genre is an excuse to brutalize Asian myth and religion, which can be amusing. Folk myth near-always tends towards bizarre misapprehension, so the genre is likely to have better matches there.
cultivationlet detected, and a dirty demonic cultivator at that, enjoy defying the heavens and holding on to worldly attachment while I erase my past self entirely to become one step closer to oneness with the world
foreign department of ghost busters just feels weird
5 months ago
Anonymous
Crazy time-storms are central to the plot, and that’s what you find weird?
5 months ago
Anonymous
The cast is even weirder. It honestly surprises me since China rarely likes nonhuman characters yet we have shit like a radio, an apple, a dog, and a scarecrow as characters you can get.
They're a classic ghost story, what with the pocket dimension and all, and they do cultivate a human population to keep themselves alive.
5 months ago
Anonymous
There's a few Taoist Immortals and things in it. It's not really a xianxia work though because there isn't really much focus on power progression and knife-fighting over resources to fuel that progression.
5 months ago
Anonymous
Yes.
5 months ago
Anonymous
It’s from a chink gachashit called Reverse: 1999.
5 months ago
Anonymous
foreign department of ghost busters just feels weird
More movie than vidya and she’s presumably still a nitwitted e-girl but…
An-an Lee, WT 2e. 200pts:
Coo 2d
Kno 1d
Per 2d
Phy 1d
Pre 3d
Ref 2d
Base Will (Per+Pre) 5
Will: 5
Motive: Honor Leo’s Memory 3
Motive: Bust Ghosts 2
Source: Driven
Permission: Power Theme (Neo-Scientific Exorcism)
Hyperskill: Stability. Trained in the Russian Method 4hd. (D:Self, +4 Permanent). Resist fear and distraction.
>Xianxia cultivation methods are mired in Maya and attachment, which explains why Xian are miserable sociopaths.
They managed to climb out of the Hunan Realm into the Asura Realm, and now they're stuck fighting each other and greedily eyeing the Heavens while occasionally getting the shit kicked out of then by its Deva Realm inhabitants.
Bro I literally had to stop reading in the second or third book? Whenever guo jing and huang rong were hiding in the old inn, and huang rongs father shows up thinking his daughter is dead because of guo jing, swearing to kill the remaining freaks and shit. Why the frick didn't they just go hey dad I'm alive and guo jing is fine! Our boat didn't sink :)! such moronation was too much for me to bear and I didn't wanna see any characters die from it lol
You know, I’m honestly surprised that there’s not much about dragons and similar beings in Chinese mythology here. So let’s start, how do you feel about Chinese dragons, in complete to Western dragons or otherwise?
They just fill the role of minor deities or guardian gods of sacred places which gives them an obvious hook to places with macguffins and loot they're defending, and you must either bargain or fight.
Aren't there? I know there's a lot of chinese medicine that's about being made from dragon parts. I think their tears are meant to be wonder medicine, they live forever, they're also much wiser and chill than western dragons and their associated with water and rain rather than fire. A number of them live under the ocean.
Does anyone know if there's any good resources or books of Chinese cryptids, monsters, mythological creatures and the like that include art depictions? I can only find some vague text ones or only a handful actually include pictures and the rest is text. Something similar to yokai.com or a bestiary of sorts maybe? It seems like there's endless amounts of this shit for Japanese folklore but I can find dick all for Chinese. I really want some monster inspo beyond the basic Phoenix, dragon, Kirin, etc, especially visually.
blame the communists for doing their best to stamp out anything cool or fun about chinas past when they took power
The commies couldn't kill all the sparrows and neither could they do away with the "Fantastic Creatures of the Mountains and Seas"/"A Chinese Bestiary Strange Creatures from the Guideways through Mountains and Seas", which is the premier source for monsters.
Not chinese, but I read a Hindu fable about a sage who turned a dog into a bigger animal so it could defend itself. Cultural context: Indians hate dogs for weird reasons.
Anyway the dog just keeps encountering more problems, so the Sage keeps transforming it into a bigger and bigger creature, including a Tiger, and then finally this monster that lives in the jungle that hunts Tigers (I can't tell you the name because I forgot and it was an indian name) that's like got a giant face and multiple arms and legs.
Then the dog/monster decides to try to eat the priest because that is the nature of the monster it is right now, but the sage punishes it by turning it back into a dog and lecturing it not to try to act above it's station.
It's meant to be a morality tale about why we can never be nice to lower castes and why the caste system is fixed and immutable. Honestly taking a Hinduism class massively tanked my opinion on the religion.
What's an actually good, affordable translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin? I was looking several years ago and all I could find was boxed sets of like $65+.
>watch OSP's journey to the west >sounds fun >pick a chinese film that looks good and was succesful >no dub but i watch animu so im used to subs >torrent and start film >fricking tonal ching chong language insults my ears >facial expressions like im watching some 200BC greek comedy >mannerisms so alien i feel like im watching ayylmaos piloting a meat suit >tones keep sounding off, like fricky emphasis on random places >stop film, delete file and swear to never deal with chinese media again
it sucks so much bros. the arms, armour and history are so dope. the "jade beauties" and anime-esque art so hot but the rests just pure shit
Does literally anyone make good miniatures that aren't super low quality historicals? Christ, finding ancient chinese fantasy stuff is goddamn impossible.
I mean yeah, but goddamn is that boring. Monkey is cool and all, but I'm trying to convert an army. Really, finding just a bunch of heads and weapons would be the best thing. I also want all sorts of different hats that officials wear.
opinion on Legends of the Wulin? the constant barrage of lore is frickin annoying in the book but im trying to struggle through it because i hear the combat is fun
Does Transcendence Academy count as cultivation since he is transcending and he does get a bag of holding early on?
too accurate
audibly kek'd reading this
have a (You) anon
I have never felt like I understood this genre better than while reading this.
>Meng Hao had the gentle air of a scholar, but it wouldn't stop him from killing several people in a McDonald's.
my sides are gone
Well, there's Blades of the Immortals, though it seems to be stuck in development he'll, partially completed but still playable:
https://jagganoth.itch.io/boti-ea
Don’t we have a shitxalted general? Anyway, what good systems can be used for Xianxia autism?
See
>blades in the fart
>good system
I don't really know of any others. I guess you could try rigging up something with GURPS, but GURPS has a problem with biggatons once you start getting away from the human scale, which cultivators inevitably do. Superhero systems often fix this issue, but it's usually at the expense of any real sense of progression.
We have Exalted general, for Exalted. What does that have to do with general xianxia discussion, though?
I haven't found a xianxia webnovel I could read without taking lengtht breaks yet, but I'm gradually making my way through Reverend Insanity and Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality. I like them enough to probably finish them eventually. I used to read Against the Gods, but that one I've dropped for good. It was a bit too blatant with its power and revenge fantasies for my taste. I also used to follow a xianxia quest called Forge of Destiny and its follow-up Threads of Destiny on Sufficient Velocity. I guess it's relevant to this thread, too, even if it isn't Chinese. It had some pretty good stuff in it, though as I read it as a story rather than partaking in the quest, the quest format felt like a bit of a hindrance to me. It's to be found edited and partially rewritten to a story format somewhere, too, but its origins as a quest still show in some things. It's been something like half a year since I've last checked up on that one, though.
Forge of Destiny's pretty good. Ling Qi just finished negotiating a borders agreement with the Polar Nation and then got burnt to a crisp by yeeting a high-level cultivator into the dream realm so they could get into a fight with another high-level cultivator that had been sabotaging the diplomatic summit. She's current just started a "recovery" arc.
I'll probably catch up with the story at some point. I prefer reading it in longer portions over regularly following the quest, so I've usually taken a lengthy break every time I've gotten up to date with it.
Aight, cough up your reading lists. I know you frickers have been reading the same Web Novels I have, so we might as well talk about the better part of the LitRPG and/or Xianxia series out there.
I've been reading NSHBA for a while now. It's terrible and I love it. The first 50 chapters are particularly bad but it kinda improves after that.
I aspire to be as cool as Long Chen, one of the best xianxia protagonist I have seen so far.
>NSHBA
I'm assuming this is Nine Star Hegemon Body Art. If you're actually talking abut the Nebraska State Home Builder's Association, pease tell me.
First time I've heard about it.
NSHBA is good in a schlocky way up to when he ascends, then it's the exact same plot timelooped over 3 thousand chapters. You can legitimately drop it and start reading at arbitrary points after the first 1kish chapters and never feel lost because the same things always happen in the same order, with even most of the same recurring characters he's had around since the Jiuli secret realm (except Little Snow disappears for hundreds of chapters at a time, some extra wives and he gets a formation/talisman guy)
NSHBA is bad but it still manages to be the good version of Martial God Asura
Beware of Chicken
Defiance of the Fall
Ar'Kendrithrist if you can stand the MC being a literal gay and hundreds of chapters of farming around with the LitRPG system that turned out to be cultivation in disguise all along
sorry but Ive fallen into the korean webnovel rabbithole
Not a web novel, but I'm a fan of Will Wight's Cradle series.
I finished the trilogy of the Condor heroes, and started the smiling proud wanderer. I prefer Wuxia a lot more than xianxia too, a lot more adaptable for rpgs, it only lacks mysthical beasts hunting for the moment to be perfect for my taste.
I've been on the asiatic grind for the past few years, but just recently got through 9 Volumes of Cradle before getting burnt out.
Honestly, Ze Tian Ji is prob the one I liked the most and it's not even Xianxia, but Xuanhuan. It also got fricking axed.
What sites does one find the chink/asiatic novels on anyway?
Royal Road
Novelupdates
Calm down with the anti-Asian slurs before I open my bbc folder up, white boi
Post it then, Black.
Recently read Ave Xia Rem Y and it was good. I feel spoiled by having a novel written natively in english, I don't know if I can go back to mediocre broken TLs.
I'm looking for something new to read if anyone has recommendations
Liu Jin needs to just shut up and dick down Lu Mei already. And Song Daily while he's at it.
Song Daiyu.
Pretty sure he's done Lu Mei already. I mean, you don't serve a man wine orally unless you're really, really close.
I don't think he's gotten past second base with Lu Mei. Bloke needs some sloppy gobby.
Didn't they get nasty when she couldn't calm her fire and Liu Jin quenched her?
I think the author keeps it deliberately vague to avoid anyone complaining about underage sex or some other thing since it's technically against the rules of various sites.
If you are trying to read something good, usually er gen novels are some of the best. Unlike some novels where the characters are moronic in his they usually are of average intelligence (and yes, for xianxia this is godlike and above) and can do things like asking for forgiveness, actually not attacking at sight and so on.
Outside of Er gen, ascending do not disturb is incredible fun. I usually prefer the ones like that where the setting is more casual and fun than the ones where they just fight for no reason.
I’ve read “quick transmigration” novels lately, most are forgettable. Any good ones out there?
Cradle series by Will Wight.
A Thousand Li by Tao Wong
Ave Xia Rem Y by Mat Haz
Street Cultivation by Sarah Lin
Cradle was AWESOME. First three books are sort of a slow burn but then the main character starts mainlining Hunger Madra and the rest is a coke infused rollercoaster.
How does everyone here feel about The MechTouch.
Started out pretty Litrpg, divergered into straight soft sci fi , is now going into a mild cultivation series.
Tough to give this one a genre but love to read this shit.
It's basically about a mad scientist and initially mecha garage shop owner from a lawfully evil human space empire that has been reformed around the two cultivation paths of realizing superhuman powers through the construction and use of giant robots.
He eventually gets chased, wooed and marries a Gynaesupremacists and they raise a happy little family together as they expand their giant robot company. It's pretty good and often hilarious, but you gotta deal with the fact that the characters aren't necessarily good people and are quite open about operating in a society that thinks nothing of skinning sentient aliens for handbags or running century-spanning schemes to legally turn the brain matter of hallowed war veterans into anti-aging treatments.
It's kinda-sorta like 10.000 Years of Cultivation, only that the strongest move isn't everybody cooperating in good faith in order to build a better future for all.
I tried reading cradle and it was absolute garbage, don't listen to the shills.
The weirkey chronicles is pretty good though, also street cultivation.
Cradle was on Amazon's best seller list so calling it garbage is a bit nonsensical. It also gets better book after book, peaking at Wintersteel.
I can second Street Cultivation even if it felt too short. Can't speek for Weirkey Chronicals since I'm only two books in.
>it is popular so it can't be bad
I now fully believe the anon who said its garbage
idk about the rest of the series, but I stopped at book 2 because that shit was genuinely the worst shit I've ever read, including trashy isekai light novels, I hated it's quippy marvel """humor""", I also hated the fact that every single time the mc was in any actual danger some random convoluted shit would happen to get him out of trouble, and I hated that the mc is a needy moron that's incapable of any critical thought.
>but it's popular though!!!!!!
Frick off, the average webnovel is written by a chinese teenager that can barely write in chinese, then translated by people who barely understand both english and chinese, it's no fricking wonder that a book that doesn't have that filter of shit rises to the top.
>idk about the rest of the series, but I stopped at book 2 because that shit was genuinely the worst shit I've ever read, including trashy isekai light novels, I hated it's quippy marvel """humor""",
Alright, I can't help shit taste.
>Frick off, the average webnovel is written by a chinese teenager that can barely write in chinese, then translated by people who barely understand both english and chinese, it's no fricking wonder that a book that doesn't have that filter of shit rises to the top.
Will Wight is American and Cradle is written in English.
>Will Wight is American and Cradle is written in English.
And yet you clearly can't fricking read english, maybe that's why you like this garbage, let me explain it so that your moron baby brain can understand.
The average cultivation story (NOT Cradle) is written like shit and has to pass through several filters of shit to get to an english reader, Cradle does not, it's competently written by someone who is proficient enough in english, so it's not a surprise that it becomes popular, it just happens that this writter is also a talentless hack.
>Alright, I can't help shit taste.
Yeah sorry I hadn't noticed that reading about Lindon getting rescued by the strongest person around every time he acts like a moron then getting trained by them was top literature, my bad.
Web novels are trash and it's like if /tg/'s knowledge of western fantasy began and ended with sloppy harem isekai and stuff from the last 20 years.
I'm really curious about the century of wuxia novels that established these tropes but only a fraction of that is translated. But you're seen Hong Kong kung fu films you've absorbed some knowledge through osmosis, a lot of those were book adaptations
I hate web novels read manhwas instead
Return of the Mount Hua Sect
The Return of the Crazy Demon
Volcanic Age
Chronicles of the Heavenly Demon
Wild West Murim
Moon-Shadow Sword Emperor
Nine Heavens Sword Master
Heavenly Grand Archive’s Young Master
Chronicles of the Demon Faction
The Terminally Ill Young Master of the Baek Clan
>OP starts by posting skelettons
We don't even need to repost the Peace Square Copypaste.
Which reminds me, are the Korans just collectively fricking with the Chinese by including Skellies in almost all of their webcomics?
Koreans Just Love Necromancers.
That's all I know.
They love their dead so much they throw them in the face of communists?
What are some good novels to use as campaign inspiration in this regard besides Journey to the West?
Forge of Destiny and Cradle are westernised approaches to xianxia and have straightforward systems of progression that also have more than enough depth for the players and GM to play with.
World of Cultivation is decent if you want a more classical experience that gives a good look at a formation specialist who is also not your average xianxia MC even though he is a product of his environment.
If you are not against fanfics you can try Sect by Ryyugi - it also has a shitton of supplemental information where author goes about explaining different xianxia concepts and where they come from.
This
Is a good overview of the fantasy chinkland and basically the main thing if you want your world to feel as classical xianxia.
Watch SK fantasy shows like Alchemy of the Soul, Uncanny Counter and A Korean Odyssey.
Even the School Nurse Files might work.
I have zero interest in this shit as game or literature but the memes make me wheeze
One of the things I love about the chinese novels is how divorced they are from western morality. Even the Good Guys tm tend to be some fricked up people than kill people to save face (of they sect, themselves or a family member).
Misther chin chong of the heavenly benevolence sword, kills some beggar kids and they puppies because they dared to talk to his daughter and stuff like this.
The breakaway provinces of China have been existing in a hole of utter lawlessness for decades now, yes. It's natural that the political reality would influence their fiction in some way.
>someone screencapped my shitpost
feels good man
Any other series than is like reverend insanity? Not about the psycho of the protagonist, but with a cool magic system integrated. That or with cool monster hunting/taming, its the part of RI than I enjoyed the most even when it wasn't the main part. NO harem or super powered if posible.
>That or with cool monster hunting/taming
The Charm of Soul Pets is pretty good. It used to be described as "Edgy Pokemon", but I guess these days, it'd be called a: "Soulslike Pokemon" instead.
I started this one, I stoped after the island, but if its good I could restart it, the pets were charming.
How high are the powerlevels here chief?
>How high are the powerlevels here chief?
Qi works rather odd in this series. It's a sinus wave rather than a linear stamina bar and there are enviromental and temporal restrictions on recovery rates based on the elemental affinity induced by somebody's style of cultivation.
You might like Martial Cultivator for its much more restrained use of Qi mechanics that seem to stick closer to the medical source texts.
Besides a monkey-folk race descended from Sun Wukong, what are some good race choices for a fantasy China setting? Fantasy Japan is easy, with Yokai like Oni or Tengu, but China’s a bit harder. At the very least I’d like to put a more Oriental spin on Western fantasy races like Elves, so if you have any ideas for that please share them.
Animal men of all sorts, think of it like Minks from one piece. Also literal animals.
>Also literal animals.
Like, just animals that can talk? Why?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaoguai
basically most chinese creatures and a lot of the humanoid races are just x-animal gaining sentience through some process and their bloodline
Chinese flavor kobolds
Jiangshi as an undead stand in
Pandaren
Terracotta soldier golems
Mongols
Sounds like you've never read a xianxia in your life.
NTA, but I definitely haven't. This is as exactly kung fu as I wanna get.
Dragon/Kirin/Deer people for elves? Tall, beautiful, legendary apothecaries and just really, really good at growing all the best magical plants.
Not him, but why bugs? There’s not exactly a spider or mantis in the Zodiac.
Also not him, but "bugmen" is a slur for the Chinese.
What are some common misconceptions about how the Chinese view magic/spells, and how might we better incorporate these actual beliefs into fantasy settings/magic systems?
From my limited understanding of the whole daoist immortal subgenre, broadly fitting into wuxia/xianxia, "elemental" magic in the west is viewed as like "I use my mana/magic power/etc to summon fire then throw it at the enemy!" whereas a fireball in this style will be inherently linked to the wu xing (pic related) which is where you get stuff viewed in the west as weird, like 'fire' defeating 'earth' even though when you pour dirt on a fire it extinguishes, but 'earth' doesn't really mean 'dirt' exclusively but is more encompassing.
Part of the issue in translated works especially is culturally inherent understandings that only someone who has immersed themselves culturally for an equal time would be able to understand.
Consider when you read a series, like the Lord of the Rings for example, and you intuit subtexts, meanings and associations:
>The man was red in the face!
For people who don't turn red in the face, what could this phrase express? What if red is an auspicious colour, why then he is joyful, or ecstatic, or passionate, and so on.
Cultural context is what is deterministic of reception
>exploding
>literally called "pow"
>crushing
>literally called "bang"
lmao
Fire does not defeat earth, the chart specifically says "create"
When you burn something down, what's left? Ashes, or dirt. Thus fire creates earth
Is there any system that's good for emulating wuxia c-drama's like Joy of Life. Less autistic cultivation mechanics and more insanely intricate relationship webs and deep plots.
Plan to rip off one of the arcs for a short campaign but don't know what system would suit it mechanically
I know that mechanically, Legend of the 5 Rings has a reasonably deep social encounter system with asian flair.
It's hard to find a system to mechanically represent the Chinese concept of 'Face' though as it's so esoteric.
Blades of the Immortals ties part of your progression to your "relationship clocks" which each PC has to each other PC amd to particular NPCs and organisations important to them. At the end of the session, you can write down how your character's view of the other character has changed and tick the clock; when you do so 4 times, the clock get filled and you get a "moment of enlightenment" you can use to help improve your powers.
What's a good translation of Journey To The West? I found a free one and it was crap
Where’s this free one, so we can see how bad it is? Also, seconding this please.
Dragonball
secret journey doujin
Thanks. I’ll check it out later.
My homie.
What does cultivation mean in relation to Wuxia/Xianxia novels? I just assumed it mean a farm sim like the slime anime.
Level-grinding, basically. Gaining new techniques/powers/life energy/means to inflict various forms of doom on the people who wronged you.
It depends on the setting/writter, but you could call a lot of things cultivation, you can generally refer to someones power level as their cultivation i.e. "Your cultivation has grown stronger cousin", sometimes its the act of practicing your martial arts, sometimes its the act of meditating and accumulating ki(chinese mana). In some stories it is literally cultivating the field, because their martial art/cultivation style is based around obtaining ki from working the earth.
Basically is just level ups.
You suck energy (from pills, the ambient, monsters or whatever) and condense in your body. Somehow this makes you better at everything.
Usually there's some levels like foundation establishment, nascent soul and things like that. In practical terms just thing like a DND player talking about his 5th level mage vs a 8th level monk and so on.
>Japanese series don't have convoluted abilities and attacks
What is Fate Alex?
Oh wait this is another Bumptroony thread.
Is there anything that we should remember about Chinese weapons (and armor) in these kinds of settings?
Jian look pretty
A soldier of Valor needs a strong weapon, strong armor, and a fast horse
Reminder that cultivation is more magical than martial, and Taoist philosophy is first and foremost ritualistic, rather than lolkungfu. Taoist sorcery is a thing. Christ, even Buddhist sorcery is a thing.
The word ‘Xian’ actually has countless translations/meanings and more often than not denotes a sage or a wizard, not a fricking martial artist.
Taoism’s alchemical background has been called the eastern equivalent of Hermeticism (western alchemy), which is THE wizarding tradition in the west.
So, why do you homosexuals associate ki/chi/qi with martials and totally-not-magic like total morons? The concept of life/breath energy permeates the globe.
Both east and west wanted to perfect the self using internal alchemy, but the east took it too internally, while the west took (looked at it) it externally, and came out ahead. One wanted to connect with the Godhead, the other wanted to become some overly healthy superhuman.
dbz
But every fight ends with a spell defeating the enemy.
Nonetheless l think you'll find the venn diagram of Western cultivation fans and Westerners who grew up with dragon ball to be quite nearly a circle. Or a circle within a circle.
Because when I read wuxia its about martial artists with swords more often than it is about taoists with spell talismans. homosexual.
Anons hated him because he told the truth
>So, why do you homosexuals associate ki/chi/qi with martials and totally-not-magic like total morons
Because we're not talking about real life Chinese folk beliefs but about the specific, mostly webnovel-based genre of cultivation fantasy, in which immortals very much are martial artists. Settings where there's even lip service to the idea of cultivating without incredible violence are a rarity. It's a cliché in practically all these novels that if you just hole up in a cave and cultivate nonstop or pop pills without "tempering" yourself in combat you end up with a shaky foundation. This is not how cultivation works in actual Taoist belief, but it's like complaining about the theology of Narnia not being accurate to Christianity
Also
>The word ‘Xian’ actually has countless translations/meanings and more often than not denotes a sage or a wizard
Anon people associate immortals with martial artists in real life. Internal alchemy is a real part of those belief systems.
The concept of internal alchemy is shared in both eastern and western alchemical traditions. You're being highly disingenuous. Immortality is associated with antiquated alchemy in-general.
>The concept of internal alchemy is shared in both eastern and western alchemical traditions
There's no historical connection or exchange between Western alchemy and Chinese alchemy. You can say that Western esotericism developed some similar concepts and modern occultists have compared the two, but they're separate traditions that never had significant historical exchange. Western alchemists didn't retain their semen in hopes of refining it into qi
And again, martial arts being associated with immortals isn't a modern thing. Journey to the West is half a millenium old - many of the tropes associated with "cultivators" in modern xianxia novels specifically originate from Sun Wukong
>There's no historical connection or exchange between Western alchemy and Chinese alchemy.
The concept of perfecting the inner spirit/self is very much a core value of Hermetic alchemy. Etc. Alchemy was seen as the key to Theurgy, or uniting with the divine. Henosis. Gnosis. Etc.
>but they're separate traditions that never had significant historical exchange.
Doubtful. Alchemical traditions will always have significant similarities, being physics, but also in thought, and there are philosopher stone equivalents in China and India.
There are eerie similarities in antiquity and the Hellenistic period, in alchemy, mathematics, the imagination, etc, all over the world.
As a very old example, the Pythagorean triples was not Pythagorean in-origin, and has been seen in India, China, and even earlier in Babylon. The meaning of Greek's 'pneuma', and China's 'qi', both mean 'breath' or 'spirit'. India's 'prana' is no different. Spiritual energy and breathing have always been seen as connected. Humans came to the same or similar conclusions using the imagination.
Taoism and Hermeticism are definitely similar in their alchemical pursuits.
There is also evidence that Pythagoras traveled as far east as India, and his teachings are even in-tune with Hinduism's.
The middle-east, the cradle of western esotericism, had a strong influence on China.
https://www.theglobalist.com/twenty-centuries-of-friendly-cooperation-the-sino-iranian-relationship/
Here are some translations
Xian:
(in Daoist philosophy and cosmology) spiritually immortal; transcendent human; celestial being.
(in Daoist religion and pantheon) physically immortal; immortal person; an immortal; saint, one who is aligned with Heaven's mandate and does not suffer earthly desires or attachments.
(in Chinese alchemy) alchemist; one who seeks the elixir of life; one who practices longevity techniques,
(by extension) alchemical, herbal, or qigong methods for attaining immortality.
(in Chinese mythology) wizard; magician; shaman; sorcerer.
(in popular Chinese literature) genie; elf, fairy; nymph, etc.
(based on the folk etymology for the character 仙, a compound of the characters for person and mountain) sage living high in the mountains; mountain-man; hermit; recluse.
(as a metaphorical modifier) an immortal; an accomplished person; celestial; marvelous; extraordinary and exceptional individual
(in new-age conception) seeker who takes refuge in immortality; transcended person; fully established being
(in early Tang dynasty folk religion conception) immortal being part of a small spiritual cabal who had immortal lifespans and supernatural powers.
(in Daoism and Chinese folk religion) a Daoist who was blessed to become immortal.
(in Chinese Buddhism and Buddhist-inspired Taoist sects) a kind of deity or spiritual person imported from Taoist beliefs.
(in Fujian Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, and folk religion) a boddhisatva, or a being of comparable holiness and power over nature to one.
(in Korean Taoist-inspired new religions) a being subservient to heaven that helps humans.
Can anyone give me a quick rundown on how gods and similarly powerful beings work in Chinese mythology so I don’t mess up depicting them? Also, after Journey to the West, what’s your favorite Chinese legend/myth?
I've heard it said that Chinese Religion is an even mix between buddhism, taoism, and 'Chinese Folk Religion'- which is to say the actual gods only play a third of the role in religious thought. Hence- I think, why people don't talk about them as much compared to say the Hindu or Egyptian Gods.
In addition, Chinese Mythology has several tiers that are very much the same sort of shit you see in Shonen Anime- there's in-mythology power-creep, so a lot of Gods get outclassed by even better-er Gods a lot.
Confuscius, Buddha, Lao Tzu.
Confuscianism, Buddhism, Taoism.
>I've heard it said that Chinese Religion is an even mix between buddhism, taoism, and ‘Chinese Folk Religion’
It’s more or less the same in Japan. Shinto-Buddhism. Asia is full of highly creative/imaginative blends and hybridizations.
There's a maxim that everyone in Japan is born Shinto, marries Christian, and dies Buddhist. So you get the all the fun animist beliefs, the big fancy wedding, and then still get to reincarnate at the end of things.
Why can’t the three Abrahamic religions get along? Why can Asians do this but Westoids cannot?
West seeks individual absolutism.
East seeks assimilated unification.
For some reason the former came out ahead.
Asian religions are pagan. Western religions are not. Back when paganism was a thing in Western society, you saw this sort of syncretism a lot as well.
For instance, some scholars believe that the origin of Aphrodite was a cult of the Babylonian goddess Ishtar that got spread to a Greek island, and from there to the rest of Greece as a whole.
>Western religions are not
Oh frick off. God was highly likely derived from past pagan wind/sun gods.
And christians often stop celebrating those holidays if you tell them about that.
Pagan religions are just less evolved religions :^)
Pagan religions are literally any religion that is not Judaistic/Abrahamic. Birthdays were still seen as a pagan custom for some centuries after the birth of Jesus.
The west made the mistake of writing a book.
See- when something is written down people argue about how to interpret what's written down and what's in the religion vs. what isn't. And what happens when people disagree is rather than live and let life, they start a whole new religion with blackjack and hookers.
Starting with Judaism (which if you read a lot of the old testament spends a lot of time shitting on their neighbors for not following the 'TRUE' religion) you get a schism that leads to Christianity, and from there Catholicism and Orthodoxy, you get another Schism that turns into Islam which then has another schism that splits off into Sunni, Shia, and Ibadi. Catholicism splits off into Protestantism, which then splits off again into the Evangelicals and the Mormons.
The east meanwhile doesn't see contradictions between say Shinto-ism and Buddhism in the way Christians see a contradiction between Christianity and Shintoism. Both can be true at the same time, so when someone disagrees it's not an existential fight for souls going to heaven or hell. Syncretism is the word for the phenomena too- and it does happen in Christianity. Christmas for example is the syncretization of pagan holidays like Saturnalia, many saints are pagan gods in funny hats. But importantly those syncretizations had to conform to the Orthodoxy of the Christian faith to be acceptable.
There was also a point in history where Christian esotericists (Hermetics) were convinced all gods were part of the same God. The Prisca Theologia.
Syncretism was more prevalent in the west (Greeks considering Egyptian gods the same as their own, etc) before the rise of a truly powerful, absolutist Christian faith that went hard(er) on dissent.
I miss the days when the Greeks considered the Egyptian gods the same as their own.
>I miss the days
homie TEACH ME THE SECRET TO IMMORTALITY RIGHT NOW IM TIRED OF THIS KNOWING IM GONNA DIE SHIT
No.
I have never seen actual gods depicted in wuxia. At best you get mentions of Buddha from shaolin monks before the palm strike a guy to death, or a general "the heavens" mention which seems to just be a fate/destiny/general spiritualism thing
One of the classics is most commonly known in the West as "Water Margin", but a perhaps more accurate translation would be "Swamp Bandits".
In general each path that cultivators, and gods, walk is a part of the Dao of All. The only one who actually managed to complete is Buddha. Gods and cultivators are like those blind people groping an elephant and trying to build a full picture of it. Some know more, some less.
And the further down the path you go the more you know and the less you are able to stop yourself from acting with accordance with it. Because the Dao is you. It's how you see the world and interact with it. Even if you don't use superpowers.
So gods are those who consider the authority they wield and duties which they fulfill to be a part of who they are. They can very well be buttholes about it though. But there is a reason they are not Buddha.
>t. Journey to the West
Love that one of the greatest Chinese epics is literally just about how much the authors' super special Buddhist OC Sun Wukong constantly btfoing Daoists. It's like how Dante's Inferno is really just a burn book/self insert fanfiction.
If you dig a bit, a lot of classic literature turns out to be fanfic, with some of them being completely transparent about their derivative nature even. And mind you, not even mild fanfics, we got literal forced transformation vore reworks of older materials among our classics.
Xianxia cultivation and magic have nothing to do with the Buddha. Any half-witted chump can do Buddhist cultivation and attain Nibbana — that’s literally the point, a nigh-fool proof method of liberation. Xianxia cultivation methods are mired in Maya and attachment, which explains why Xian are miserable sociopaths. Honestly there’s little that cleaves to foundational Daoist philosophy either, ‘defying the heavens’ is far from natural for instance…The genre is an excuse to brutalize Asian myth and religion, which can be amusing. Folk myth near-always tends towards bizarre misapprehension, so the genre is likely to have better matches there.
cultivationlet detected, and a dirty demonic cultivator at that, enjoy defying the heavens and holding on to worldly attachment while I erase my past self entirely to become one step closer to oneness with the world
>evil numbers
>massively ignorant post
Maya shows his true colors, yet again. Looks like a job for an exorcist.
foreign department of ghost busters just feels weird
Crazy time-storms are central to the plot, and that’s what you find weird?
The cast is even weirder. It honestly surprises me since China rarely likes nonhuman characters yet we have shit like a radio, an apple, a dog, and a scarecrow as characters you can get.
Is this a Touhou?
No. But would Touhou be considered xianxia?
no
They're a classic ghost story, what with the pocket dimension and all, and they do cultivate a human population to keep themselves alive.
There's a few Taoist Immortals and things in it. It's not really a xianxia work though because there isn't really much focus on power progression and knife-fighting over resources to fuel that progression.
Yes.
It’s from a chink gachashit called Reverse: 1999.
More movie than vidya and she’s presumably still a nitwitted e-girl but…
An-an Lee, WT 2e. 200pts:
Coo 2d
Kno 1d
Per 2d
Phy 1d
Pre 3d
Ref 2d
Base Will (Per+Pre) 5
Will: 5
Motive: Honor Leo’s Memory 3
Motive: Bust Ghosts 2
Source: Driven
Permission: Power Theme (Neo-Scientific Exorcism)
Hyperskill: Stability. Trained in the Russian Method 4hd. (D:Self, +4 Permanent). Resist fear and distraction.
Hyperskill: Performance (Dance). Leo’s Beat 5hd.(D:Self, -2 Mental Strain, -1 Obvious). Resist mental compulsions and possession.
Miracle: 3D Goggles/Cow Tear Makeup 6hd. (U: Ranged, +3 Endless, +1 On Sight, -1 Obvious, -1 Focus, -1 Delicate, -1 Accessible) See Ghosts and Paranormal Energy. HL: 10, Wounds: 3
Miracle: Leo’s Ghost Axe 6hd. (A:Touch, -1 Accessible, -1 Focus, -1 Irreplaceable, +1 Durable, -1 Controlled Effect, +2 Non-Physical). Only damages Ghosts, on contact. Can be dodged.
…98 remaining, but not sure how to cram the weird Reverse 1999 stuff into a nitwit e-girl. ‘Twas fun anyway.
>Xianxia cultivation methods are mired in Maya and attachment, which explains why Xian are miserable sociopaths.
They managed to climb out of the Hunan Realm into the Asura Realm, and now they're stuck fighting each other and greedily eyeing the Heavens while occasionally getting the shit kicked out of then by its Deva Realm inhabitants.
Chinese doesn't have skeletons
>Chinese doesn't have skeletons
What about exoskeletons?
Anyone have good IRL Taoism/Chinese mythology/magic sources?
yellow emperor's classic of medicine
>reading condor heroes
>the main heroine's dad gets accused of a crime
>he didn't do it
>doesn't deny it
>goes "so what if I did?"
Sounds like he trusts his land's legal system. Innocent until PROVEN guilty, right?
Bro I literally had to stop reading in the second or third book? Whenever guo jing and huang rong were hiding in the old inn, and huang rongs father shows up thinking his daughter is dead because of guo jing, swearing to kill the remaining freaks and shit. Why the frick didn't they just go hey dad I'm alive and guo jing is fine! Our boat didn't sink :)! such moronation was too much for me to bear and I didn't wanna see any characters die from it lol
You know, I’m honestly surprised that there’s not much about dragons and similar beings in Chinese mythology here. So let’s start, how do you feel about Chinese dragons, in complete to Western dragons or otherwise?
They just fill the role of minor deities or guardian gods of sacred places which gives them an obvious hook to places with macguffins and loot they're defending, and you must either bargain or fight.
They like chasing cool magic orbs
Aren't there? I know there's a lot of chinese medicine that's about being made from dragon parts. I think their tears are meant to be wonder medicine, they live forever, they're also much wiser and chill than western dragons and their associated with water and rain rather than fire. A number of them live under the ocean.
Does anyone know if there's any good resources or books of Chinese cryptids, monsters, mythological creatures and the like that include art depictions? I can only find some vague text ones or only a handful actually include pictures and the rest is text. Something similar to yokai.com or a bestiary of sorts maybe? It seems like there's endless amounts of this shit for Japanese folklore but I can find dick all for Chinese. I really want some monster inspo beyond the basic Phoenix, dragon, Kirin, etc, especially visually.
blame the communists for doing their best to stamp out anything cool or fun about chinas past when they took power
The commies couldn't kill all the sparrows and neither could they do away with the "Fantastic Creatures of the Mountains and Seas"/"A Chinese Bestiary Strange Creatures from the Guideways through Mountains and Seas", which is the premier source for monsters.
Thank you kindly for the titles anon, may you have many blessings in your ventures
Not chinese, but I read a Hindu fable about a sage who turned a dog into a bigger animal so it could defend itself. Cultural context: Indians hate dogs for weird reasons.
Anyway the dog just keeps encountering more problems, so the Sage keeps transforming it into a bigger and bigger creature, including a Tiger, and then finally this monster that lives in the jungle that hunts Tigers (I can't tell you the name because I forgot and it was an indian name) that's like got a giant face and multiple arms and legs.
Then the dog/monster decides to try to eat the priest because that is the nature of the monster it is right now, but the sage punishes it by turning it back into a dog and lecturing it not to try to act above it's station.
It's meant to be a morality tale about why we can never be nice to lower castes and why the caste system is fixed and immutable. Honestly taking a Hinduism class massively tanked my opinion on the religion.
Silence fools.
I love Yelling Bird Murderer. Not as much as BAN GUN HA, admittedly, but that’s a hell of a bar to clear.
what is that from?
Thunderbolt Fantasy.
thank you, fren
Urobutcher's puppet show
It was inspired by Taiwanese puppet shows that jap kids loved a lot. There was one for Three Kingdoms too. Weird rabbit hole
What's an actually good, affordable translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin? I was looking several years ago and all I could find was boxed sets of like $65+.
Recommend me some wuxia games, please & thank you.
>watch OSP's journey to the west
>sounds fun
>pick a chinese film that looks good and was succesful
>no dub but i watch animu so im used to subs
>torrent and start film
>fricking tonal ching chong language insults my ears
>facial expressions like im watching some 200BC greek comedy
>mannerisms so alien i feel like im watching ayylmaos piloting a meat suit
>tones keep sounding off, like fricky emphasis on random places
>stop film, delete file and swear to never deal with chinese media again
it sucks so much bros. the arms, armour and history are so dope. the "jade beauties" and anime-esque art so hot but the rests just pure shit
Your loss.
Does literally anyone make good miniatures that aren't super low quality historicals? Christ, finding ancient chinese fantasy stuff is goddamn impossible.
There should be at least a dozend monkey kings available.
I mean yeah, but goddamn is that boring. Monkey is cool and all, but I'm trying to convert an army. Really, finding just a bunch of heads and weapons would be the best thing. I also want all sorts of different hats that officials wear.
opinion on Legends of the Wulin? the constant barrage of lore is frickin annoying in the book but im trying to struggle through it because i hear the combat is fun
Here's some recommended viewing.
Dragon Tiger Gate
Legend of Eight Samurai
Sword Stained with Royal Blood
Swordsman II
Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist