this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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You're somehow implying that being an anti-ccp "fanatic" is basically crazy, and that people should reconsider their position... because... ? hate boner for china? what does disliking the CCP have to do with "hating china"?
You can dislike the CCP without hating China, or being fanatical about it. There are people that have trouble with it, though. As an example you could say that the CCP sponsors campaigns of corporate espionage on a large scale to steal technology from other countries. That one is pretty uncontroversial. But some people have trouble preventing themselves from taking it further and making generalizations about how creative the country's citizens are, as an example.
I haven't seen that. First time I see a suggestion such as that you're mentioning, that the Chinese could be uncreative. I read lots of Chinese books all the time and if anything I'd say they're more creative than western authors in many respects.
Glad to hear, I've been meaning to pick up some Chinese sci-fi myself now that more of that stuff is getting translated.
novelupdates.com has a lot of translations of asian novels in general, most terrible quality bc they're done by amateurs but some are great, and sometimes it doesn't matter cuz the stories themselves make up for the shitty translation.
What are your 5 favorite xianxia novels.
Yo what if c/ChineseBooks or something
OwO /c/chinesebooks
ahahha now ban any insults about your favorite authors and ai covers and you will have replicated reddit exactly 😂
The pfp and banner are with AI. I'd have to ban myself first! But hypocrisy is a spook, I can ban for any reason 😎😎 not that I will. Unless someone starts posting communist propaganda like "Books written by Mao on communism".
Actuall xianxia novels
More like a parody: My Disciple Died Yet Again
Western imitation: Cradle by Will Wright
A couple funny amateur western satires I enjoyed:
My first xianxia was very shitty but I enjoyed it, it's called Martial God Asura. "Very shitty" is not an understatement, it sucks, but I enjoyed "watching" the story's landscapes in my mind's eye.
Coiling dragon is a classic. I forgot about Douluo Dalu that was a very interesting novel with the powers and assassination traps or whatever they were, pretty creative. I've always like Renegade Immortal more than ISSTH.
Mine are.
I read the first book or part of cradle and did not like it, I even got banned from novel translation because I said I found it mid because apparently Will was a "friend of the sub" 🙄. Guess the cringe mods aren't as bad as r/progressivefantasy which is run by a bunch of authors that just banned people from posting books with AI generated covers.
I remember when we were getting like 20 chapters a day+ of Martial God Asura on r/lightnovels. Those were the days. Good novels good discussion good sub, too bad all that fell apart with pateron chapters and wuxiaword turning to shit.
I hadn't read this. Hilarious and ridiculous.
On the 1st one maaaaybe depending on how you phrased it, some people sound very aggressive like "author X is a dumbfuck and this is so mediocre, no effort went into this, my dog could write better by shitting onto a pigeon (he did this btw) so I'm not gonna buy the 2nd one and if you do you're a cuck", but then again some people are very sensitive.
The 2nd one is......... what? 👀 I can't. Been like 3 minutes looking at the screen thinking about it lmao. No words.
The thing is I wasn't planning on getting banned at worst I wrote that it was shit which really isn't too weird of a comment and I've seen people call other novels and readers worse on that sub. The mods just really bootlick the author. Since you would not get banned for saying similar things about other novels, I don't even think I went even that far with my language.
The progressionfantasy mods are just preying on authors with less money and told people to just pay for artists. People in comments were VERY unhappy with that announcement. But ye good drama I couldn't believe it either.
Ooh it's progression fantasy and not progressive fantasy. Lmao when I read your first comment I was like "alright, to each their own" hahah
Ah fook my bad I was thinking like character progression OPS still bad mods are bad.
Yup bad mods bad. U wanna mod Chinese thing btw? I was thinking of adding some Xianxia memes and recommendations idk. Later tho cuz I have a lot of work till June 30ish due to some deadlines and contract dates
Yeah if you want I can also post some general guides, though I think that a community like that will never be as big and active as it was in the old days. At least it won't require much moderation.
Yeah I was thinking that. That's why I decided to not make it like r/MartialMemes or r/Xianxia. Too overly specific and we'll get like one post every 2 months and that's gonna be me any time I open a new book. But at least there were like 5 people in this thread interested in Chinese literature so I was like, that's cool, time for the community I'd been yearning since I joined (first thing in my bio lol).
Yeah I think I read (mostly halfway to quarter way through) all the xianxia novels that I found interesting and wouldn't mind finding something new. Going to read the 3 body problem soon before it gets made into the netflix series.
My dad was reading that and I started seeing it everywhere. I'll download it then and see if it's interesting when I have free time.
Currently also rereading your much hated Cradle
💥😎👈
Lol I don't hate it well maybe that mod made me hate it but I did read the first book. Can't say I didn't try.
x) jk
And yeah. You did more than I would. I think I don't finish 9out of 10 shows I start. Triple that for books. Not sure I've finished a book I didn't like yet.
Think I finished 6 translated Chinese novels, 2 of those were under 1k chapters. Just took me a decade :). I think it's impossible to finish one of these novels without liking it, 2k chapters is a grind that's like 200+ hours per novel.
Super true. I was reading a novel when I lived in Venezuela, and I was astounded that months into my life in Spain, I was still reading it, and I'd get this feeling that it had been such a big part of my life at that point. Ironically I can't remember which novel that was. But yeah I usually spend weeks if not months to finish a normal one of these, sometimes even reading all day.
In contrast, a normal novel can be read in like 8 hours. Makes me think I've read the Xianxia equivalent of hundreds of normal novels. And it certainly has taken its toll in my fiction mind. I've been writing stories since I was a kid and my stories now tend to have these vast worlds filled with amoral god-like beings that tend to have a bit of a tendency to kill people like ants, and characters that just go around in some kind of cross-world chase for something infinitely far away. I should really learn to balance that a bit cuz it has stifled my will to write a bit.
Yeah something like foundation is 6+ hours to read, you kinda forget the people and details but with these long novels you can't help but basically memorize the characters and their motivations since you've read it so much. Doesn't help some novels like Martial God Asura with it's 5k chapters just repeat arc after arc. These novels are best when shorter the vast majority of the time, most of these authors just can't write an engaging story that isn't just on the fly asspulls and repeating sequences of events.
Hah I'm the opposite I just think of stuff as huge systems, you define the world and characters and run the simulation with some creativity. Thing is most of these novels are very easy to read and not that cerebral taxing it would be much much harder to read the equivalent in good literature.
MGA was such a bad offender of this lmao, same story like 15 times. I LOVED the scenery but I got super triggered and had to stop when the author seemed to degrade mentally during his writing and shit just became worse and worse quality.
i'd die from this, I can't lol. I once read this booklet (dl) and it pretty much reflects the way I write. I don't think before writing, only during, and anything else will make me feel terrible about the whole thing. Writing a story where I already know many things to the point where it's just a sort of "simulation" is painful for me.
i read this entire series of books (dl) (when they were 5) in one day. To be fair I did sleep at like 7-8 am. They are also pretty casual. I didn't feel like I gained anything from them lol. Except enjoyment and the idea of two robots being cute friends and sharing pirated music libraries.
Then there's this book (dl) which despite being pretty average in length still took me like a month to finish while being extremely enjoyable, and I keep squeezing its ideas and memories.
Douluo Dalu's protagonist's weapons were some throwable things, pretty much a Mary Sue who never failed a shot and never failed to surprise an opponent. Basically his reincarnation cheat. He also focused on poison a lot. I don't know why I liked it so much. I honestly have so much criticism for it hahah but at the same time the story was pretty cool.
One of my favorite things in Xianxia is not even the whole killing and fighting, although that's not bad either, but chiefly the literary tourism I can do. I love doing tourism as well and meeting different cultures and perspectives, different landscapes, it feels very rewarding.
I haven't been able to start with Japanese literature, though. Their train of thought style prose is impossible for me.
I tried Reverend Insanity (is that the Gu guy who's notoriously evil?). I've tried a few times. I think I get the same problem as with Japanese novels, trying to stick my head into the character's drive and not really "clicking".
Lord of the Mysteries, was that the guy that was kind of integrated with a tree and was like a mind beside a city and was farming Bleach-style minions to do his bidding and govern his ever-expanding domain? I don't know if that's the one or if it was a other one that I recall had more of a punkish urban fantasy vibe.
And yeah, I used to read everything on wuxiaworld. Their shenanigans turned me toward doing a bit more piracy. I was very poor when I started and literally had no money to pay anything. Nowadays I do but I'm not as obsessive about it. I did pay like $70 for a yearly Viki subscription to watch more kdrama though. Nowadays my wallet seems to have a hole lmao. My software dev money is financing shitty startups around the world.
Edit: I also "disingenuously" implied that I don't like the violence in Xianxia but chiefly the tourism. Tbh I do like their contrasting and super exaggerated and ultra-violent perspective of the world. That feeling they evoke of eternal growth and violence is, while obviously not emulatable, mesmerizing. There's something very human about conquest war and they readily accept it.
Yeah they were like these spring traps didn't make much sense but it was an original idea I never saw. I think that book was just very easy to read/well written along with having somewhat decent power system. But characters and world building weren't that amazing I agree.
For me I read them for the world building, I used to read them for the power fantasy but after your 3rd immortal god slayer infinite power overlord you get tired of it. I like when the world is very complex and the characters and their motives are interesting and smart. Then it just feels like a puzzle the author has to solve while making sure everything makes sense and isn't contrived. I like when the MC in RI was stuck, none of his plans could progress so he was like I'm just going to shake the table and hope some new paths open up. I also don't mind build armies / countries and go to war like in WOC reminds me of the expanse.
Lord of Mysteries was more guy in pre industrial/steam punk? world with esoteric monsters trying to figure out his environment. It basically is a detective novel for the first third or more.
I remember when they were asking for donations for translation of coiling dragon while I was a broke highschool/uni student. After I graduated I was like well I was willing to donate to help translation because it felt like a team effort but now it just feels like a commercial product with people running pateron pages where they don't disclose how much they make. Now I have absolutely no interest, maybe I would if they sold non kindle versions.
The only Korean shows I've watched was All of Us Are Dead and Hellbound
I don't remember spring traps in douluo dalu, mmm. I remember fighting, poison, building weapons and smithing, some spiritual hammer, and tons of superpowers. Maybe I just forgot them.
Agreed 100% on the worldbuilding. My most enjoyable books have enormous very complex worlds. The books I've been trading most recently try to have characters who are distinguishable among themselves. Some of the things I enjoy the most are when the character travels and suddenly everything is new again lmao, but with some stability because, well, they and their plot are still there.
The most recent book I read was like the most complex puzzle like you mention, and the author just kept piling on things and I was like, how are you even gonna untangle this mess lmao, sometimes he just goes and inserts a mood like "well no one even knows what happened but that's okay".
Aahhh so LoTM was that one. I tried to read it but it was so strange at first that I didn't get immersed quick enough for my ADHD to lock in. That's most things tbh. By the time I remember I was doing X, I already forgot what I was doing and I'm doing Y with great passion and I'm like, whelp, this is my life now. But it gets recommended so much that I will probably give it another try later on in life.
I hadn't watched a Korean show in like all my life. And suddenly this year I decided "why not watch one of these?" and I just watched the soapiest romance ever and I actually liked it, so I've now watched over 15 kdramas this year and more to come. It was a surprising development, to say the least. From almost hating it because of prejudice against romance, Korean stuff and things teenage women like, to obsessively binging them with zero period of transition.
I think he's talking about the people who don't do anything but look for hateable things about the CCP
why should we look for likeable things about the ccp when they're committing genocide? lmao. and why should we spend effort looking for likeable things about the ccp when they have millions of genzedongers around the world (example: lemmygrad.ml) to do it for them?
I think instead we should balance it with posts appreciating Chinese culture. They have a long artistic and cultural history that goes way beyond the current gov.
Thing is, I'm not talking about China or the Chinese people. If I say "CCP is committing genocide" am I talking in any way about "The Chinese People"?? I'm not. Talking shit about basically Hitler2.0 has absolutely nothing to do with The Chinese People. Why should I go around randomly yelling good stories about the Chinese culture any time I wanna talk shit about Xi Jinping or his posse of evil? Makes no sense right?
You don't have to, and I probably won't either. It's just a nice idea. Too many crazies take it too far into racism. (not you)
No I'm not saying we should look for positives But aside from the big flashy stuff, you don't need to spend hours search for CCP raised taxes in Tibet at one point 5 years ago to know that the CCP is an awful government.
That sort of hatred I suppose leads to the sentiment that Washington is a perfect government etc, its a political view that's just as worthy of criticism as GZD, and also just as silly.
Now the CCP has done some horrible things and we SHOULD recognise them I think I've got my point across, there's a difference between hating the CCP and HATING the CCP I guess.
I don't HATE the ccp. I just hate reading support for it and for other communist tyrants. "oh but Marxism equality socialism ooh" sure commit genocide in the name of equality, get a Peace Nobel Price for eradicating an entire civilization, see if I'm gonna start thinking "oh but maybe I should be more lenient and think of the other side, I bet they also have good traits teehee".
I do hate the CCP, I don't need to spend every waking moment finding more evdience I already know they are awful. Between the on going genocide and the several of things they have done to retain power. Absolute power corrupts absolutely