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Jul. 12th, 2020 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pengwernSomething that 。。。。does relieve me at times in the cultivation genre (the daoism myth/legend fantasy genre) is how it's mostly consistent that the actual villain is the tian dao (the order of heaven/the universe, or the great chain of being), or the true xian who have ascended and become gods. striving against heaven is a common theme, plus the unavoidable corruption of everyone at the top, and it's especially noticeable in myth fandoms/ships like the erlang shen/monkey king or the hilarious out of thin air (appeared on screen one time) dragon dad of ao bing/heavenly emperor (not visible, mentioned like twice (a canonical mythological figure ofc) in the most recent Nezha movie fandom.
(the ships that english fandom reverts to when presented with minimal canon: two white guys, one snippy, one long suffering
the ships that cn fandom reverts to: dark fic with IMPRISONMENT of an entire tribe and GRINDING you LOYAL SOLDIERLY SUPPORTER down out of PARANOIA (卸磨杀驴 finishing the milling process and killing the donkey who provided the labor, 鸟尽弓藏 hiding the bow once the birds have all been hunted, I can think of 4-5 proverbs off the top my head about this situation) I did laugh.
when it comes to non-magical situations with emperors they don't ....actually that's somewhat separate from the trope I mean to talk about)
But while the emperors are malignant it's often the noncon sexy type of evil (see common tropes of ten-twenty years ago), whereas in cultivation novels the tian dao is nearly always vile and nonredeemable, impersonally evil, hypocrisy overflowing in every move they make, yet cringing in the face of the wild will of humans/the protagonist.
Transferring the things you can't get away with with humans at the top of the pyramid to fantasy >_<
Of course, I'm mostly reading in the '女频/by women for women' genre and fics from the more recent part of last decade, and not the stuff by guys for guys 男频, but I think the "my fate is mine and not heaven's" is pretty consistent (especially in the thousand chaptered stuff over there）。
(the ships that english fandom reverts to when presented with minimal canon: two white guys, one snippy, one long suffering
the ships that cn fandom reverts to: dark fic with IMPRISONMENT of an entire tribe and GRINDING you LOYAL SOLDIERLY SUPPORTER down out of PARANOIA (卸磨杀驴 finishing the milling process and killing the donkey who provided the labor, 鸟尽弓藏 hiding the bow once the birds have all been hunted, I can think of 4-5 proverbs off the top my head about this situation) I did laugh.
when it comes to non-magical situations with emperors they don't ....actually that's somewhat separate from the trope I mean to talk about)
But while the emperors are malignant it's often the noncon sexy type of evil (see common tropes of ten-twenty years ago), whereas in cultivation novels the tian dao is nearly always vile and nonredeemable, impersonally evil, hypocrisy overflowing in every move they make, yet cringing in the face of the wild will of humans/the protagonist.
Transferring the things you can't get away with with humans at the top of the pyramid to fantasy >_<
Of course, I'm mostly reading in the '女频/by women for women' genre and fics from the more recent part of last decade, and not the stuff by guys for guys 男频, but I think the "my fate is mine and not heaven's" is pretty consistent (especially in the thousand chaptered stuff over there）。
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Date: 2020-07-13 07:25 am (UTC)also on one reading platform all new works have started to require this..."intent/motto" and it's all positive stuff, if you know what I mean. there's still room for authors to maneuver right now but in another few years down the road?
there's lots of other terrible stuff going on ofc but
a few new things
ugh
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Date: 2020-07-14 12:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-07-15 03:26 am (UTC)...but in the mean time there remains wackiness and delightful fun stuff and meta! some things of beauty survive! even if they're named things like [every day the protagonist throws up three liters of blood] which I really need to write up in hopes that a translation group picks it up, because it was seriously fun and meta and (in mean snide voice XD) rather better than quite a number of webnovels with translations
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Date: 2020-07-16 04:53 pm (UTC)Mostly it's nice to see you posting and I wanted to note that!
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Date: 2020-07-17 08:48 am (UTC)Xianxia is a malleable genre - it doesn't completely overlap with 'fantasy with historical aesthetics', but it's the biggest category you see there.
I haven't watched the untamed (but would rec MXTX's last novel, heavenly official's blessing, and even then skipped most of the gigantic flashback sections XD), and last read the legend of the condor heroes many years ago, having promptly forgot nearly everything that happened except the protagonist's name (and that he was supposed to be the dad of a character in one of my favorite parodies of the entire wuxia genre, the show My Own Swordsman) but my impression was that it's...some plot happenings are standard fantasy dumb? But it definitely was the foundation of a ton of tropes still merrily running in more than one genre, both xianxia and wuxia!
(I'm just getting over my initial rush of enthusiasm for the setting \o/ it wouldn't be unfair to compare it to the generic D&D medieval europe. I do wish sometimes that the kinds of stories being told (leveling up, getting back at everyone who ever wronged you) varied more, but the majority of writers online are chasing markets and experimentation is correspondingly more difficult to find. They call it ”generating electricity with love“!)
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Date: 2020-07-17 12:38 pm (UTC)