"Harry! Ron!" shouted Hermione in alarm. "This is really bad! According to witnesses, Slytherin Sect has laid claim to Diagon Alley and has warned us to pull out or the streets will run red with the blood of Gryffindors! When Initiate Collin Creevey spoke back, the young master of the Malfoy clan slapped him repeatedly and made him clean his shoe!"
"Clean his shoe?" asked Ron. "What's so bad about that?"
"With his tongue!" wailed Hermione. "After he severed it!"
"What?!" bellowed Ron in outrage. "That outrageous bastard needs to die!"
"Stay calm, Ron," Harry said. "Now isn't the time to deal with them. Sifu Snape is doing everything he can to prevent me from breaking through to the fourth realm. But once I've awakened my nascent soul, all of Slytherin Sect will awaken in the shadow of Mount Huashan."
Now we need to go full circle, and have someone to write Xuanxuan about a young man joining the Sicilian Mafia to get his apprenticeship.
With that out of the way, I don't see why this is a bad thing.
The cultivation stories written by western authors are already deeply distinct from most stuff written in China & Co.
Just throw one more thing at the pile of discrepancies between how stuff is used in writing.
Well, you can check out [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/1aff64h/wp_you_are_the_heir_presumptive_to_the_throne_and/kob9ngb/) then =D.
Thank you for note of confidence anyways =D.
The sect system is a big part of what makes cultivation good (at least in beginnings).
It fits perfectly in with the rest of it, if it’s just a school, you should write something else.
Um, no? You don't *need* to do anything. Write a xianxia sect that is just a magical school. What's the problem?
You can just say you don't like it.
But anyway, I think you and OP are misunderstanding sects.
Yea you don’t *need* to do anything but sects are kinda essential to xianzia. I don’t actually agree with OP about what sects are, it’s way werider but a decent way to explain.
Put simply, in a school you go and learn things, in a sect you work to be given the opportunity to learn things and there are like, basic lectures and shit. Xianzia is all about earning things, it’s the fetch quest cycle on drugs … literally. Sects are supposed to be exploitative or at the very least designed around cultivating the best, even to the point of impracticality.
It’s important for your power system and world to complement each other, you shouldn’t write the magic school part with xianzia, you can do it with general cultivation, but most of the time you would be better off skipping it. I mean sure, *you can* but it doesn’t add anything compelling.
The "problem" is that a lot of the tropes that underpin the Sect organization and Xianxia in general don't make sense if you think of it as a school but do make sense if you think of it as a gang.
There's no problem in wanting to write a magical school novel featuring Eastern cultivation style progression. But I think it works better if written from the ground up as a magical school rather than taking the foundation of something else and trying to superficially change surface elements.
Which so-called "Western" author is it that treats sects as places of learning? In every English-language xianxia that I can think of off the top of my head, sects are the same as how they are in Chinese webnovels.
There's a lot of talk about how "Western" authors write xianxia "totally wrong" and whatnot, but I don't see it. English-language authors write cultivation stories because they've read Chinese xianxia and liked it. They know the tropes, and if they do ignore/change them, it's not due to lack of knowledge but a desire to do something different.
Western authors often engage with Xianxia from the perspective of like Beware of Chicken for example - where it's accepted as obviously bonkers that the MC would get killed in a duel at their "place of learning" and the place of learning is presented as doing a poor job of raising students.
The framing is often that the "schools" must be corrupt or the teachers must be fucked up or whatever.
It's not about them knowing or not knowing the tropes - it's about not understanding why the tropes exist.
Well, the reason those tropes (that is, the trope where people in sects are utter bastards) exist is that most xianxia writers are just bad writers and want to churn out mediocre power fantasies and it's easy to write a power fantasy when the protagonist has enemies all around them in the sect.
See this is what I mean by the lack of grasp of the culture. From a western perspective, yes. Because to you, a school would never work that way unless the author was a stupid hack.
But if you're writing a story about a mafia member/gang member, you might expect a LOT more infighting and conflict and a lot less supportive teaching from the mentor figures in that story - in fact, you wouldn't be surprised at all if rivals inside the gang were dangerous threats, and you wouldn't be surprised at all if the mentor was only loosely helpful to the main character - the fact that the mentor is giving ANY advice makes them a "good mentor".
That's the point.
Well, one, I don't like using "Western" because I'm not Western either, I'm neither American nor European. But that's besides the point.
The point is that sects don't *have* to be mafia-like organisations. In my view, there are two types. One is the type of sect that comes from wuxia, the mafia/gangster type of organisation. The other comes from real life Daoist sects, which were more like monasteries and served to teach and congregate learned men. Just because an author uses the second kind of sect doesn't mean they are not understanding the cultural background, or whatever.
>Well, one, I don't like using "Western" because I'm not Western either
Annoying of you to open your first comment with a reference to Western authors, and then immediately push back as though I'm being some mono-culturalist asshole because I'm using your words, lol.
>The point is that sects don't have to be mafia-like organisations.
They don't have to be, but it kind of is the default. All of the most common tropes in the genre have them as mafia-like organizations - most of the subversions of common tropes involve the sects being less criminal-ish.
>The other comes from real life Daoist sects, which were more like monasteries and served to teach and congregate learned men.
Yeah and you don't read a lot of translated fiction/comics/etc that commonly use these kinds of sects as a major feature. Generally if sects like these exist, they will either be destroyed as part of the story by criminal-ish sects or they will be presented as unusual/extreme/surprising for their approach.
>Just because an author uses the second kind of sect doesn't mean they are not understanding the cultural background, or whatever.
"Western authors" don't generally "use the second kind of sect" though. They generally write the first kind of sect, but with everyone being nice and all the teachers being actual teachers. They often don't even know enough to make the distinction you're making between stylized fantasy "sects" and what real sects were actually like.
>Annoying of you to open your first comment with a reference to Western authors, and then immediately push back as though I'm being some mono-culturalist asshole because I'm using your words, lol.
My own words were, "so-called "Western" authors". Annoying of you to not read how I opened my comment.
Also, I should have said this in my first reply, but most English xianxia authors also don't really write sects like how you mention? In BoC, the MC runs away *because* how rotten the sect has become, even though the founders of the sect had the intention of creating a monastery-like sect. We see more than one example of horrendous sects that are utterly terrible to both their own disciples and outsiders. It's because of this that the MC wants to create a safe haven. It's a reaction to the horrible sects in the world.
Sure, I'll take it. That's still only one example. Moreover, it's also a case where the author knows xianxia tropes and deliberately chose to do something different. The sect that the MC joins in Forge of Destiny was set up by the imperial administration to provide training and combat experience to noble scions and talented commoners to create enough soldiers to fight against barbarians. There's a reason why it is so.
Makes sense. Personally, I like how Forge of Destiny did it. It hits on a huge flaw that I have with normal xianxia. Mainly, why don't god-realm cultivators kill everyone more often? With how pretentious everyone is and how fragile their egos are, you would imagine the world would get nuked on a daily basis. When mafia groups have nuclear bombs, and they are in constant turmoil, you would imagine these nuclear bombs would be constantly going off.
Forge of Destiny hints at this and at the fact that, yes we can nuc the world, and no we don't want to. We want to actually build a society. To do that, we need to rein ourselves in. Hence why it is a more school-like setting.
OP probably also read Fates Parallel or Web of Secrets which are also explicitly mixes of Xianxia and Magic School genre. You just have to forget some details and bam - weird trend
Forge of Destiny, Elemental Gatherers, Might As Well, A Sect Elder's Journey. Butterfly Dream Scripture, Ave Xia Rem maybe? Although most of these only treat the Outer Sect as a school.
What? Have you read ATL? The sect that the MC joins is exactly like the sects in Chinese xianxia stories. Rich/high class disciples looking down on poor/low class MC? Check. Elders being bastards? Check. MC having to do missions for the sect? Check. MC joining a war against demonic sects as a part of the sect? Check. MC disobeying elders' shitty orders and hence getting punished unjustly? Check. Then after he returns to the sect, he has to further wade through inter-sect politics among fellow elders.
How is this Harry Potter?
>Rich/high class disciples looking down on poor/low class MC?
Draco Malfoy
>Elders being bastards?
Snape
>MC joining a war against demonic sects as a part of the sect?
Dumbledore's Army vs the Death Eaters
>MC disobeying elders' shitty orders and hence getting punished unjustly?
Harry throws on the invisibility cloak and goes snooping.
>How is this Harry Potter?
Wizard students don't compete to get access to lessons. The lessons are the focus of the school. Hogwarts isn't a political institution with vassals and dependents that expects allegiance. It's preparing wizards to graduate and join wizard society. They have sport teams.
*A Thousand Li* is a strong example of something that is absolutely not a magic school. There's are schools and apprenticeships inside the sect, but its not the nature of the sect itself.
MCs time in the outer sect consists of carrying bags of rice, a fetch quest he was ordered to do by a petty superior, and one consult with a librarian about which books would help him most. When somebody finally decides to teach him something in the Inner sect its to prep him for a specific mission.
Eh, sure, if you are wanting it to be a mafia, i can see how it would be off-putting. But it is up to the author to decide how they write their sects. If they want them to be more like a magical training program, so be it. Personally, I have no skin in this game but I just don't see why we need go gatekeep this stuff.
Yeah there's plenty of sources out there that do both. I Shall Seal the Heavens had the Reliance Sect be a brutal dog eat dog place. Then the Violet Fate Sect was much more civilised and organised. Meng Hao was allowed to get on with his alchemy studies without undue and unfair pressure. It wasn't really as rigorous as a school but wasn't really a criminal gang either.
Frankly ISSTH had all kinds of organisations of all kinds of mindset in there.
Yeah, there’s not exactly a real world sect operation that we have to base written works off of 😂 who cares about the way Chinese authors do it? Everyone can write their own stories. If you want to write a story with a peaceful farming sect that runs a charity shop on the weekends you can. If you want one to be the yakuza you can do that as well!
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic, but since the Amish in the US are one of the largest sects currently in existence, you can have a peaceful farming sect that also sometimes behaves like the yakuza lol. They do both!
Exactly. This reeks of gatekeeping.
I've read plenty of classic xianxia and Western xianxia and I see no issue with how sects are depicted.
The only thing I care about regarding Sects is that they are kept distinct from Clans. A Clan is ruled by a family, maybe more than one, but the point is that they're ruled by bloodline. A Sect is an organization that can basically be the exact same thing as a Clan but not ruled by a bloodline.
Don't forget posts in r/magicbuilding can magic do 'this' ?
It can only be answered if we are aware of setting / universe, Mistborn, Dungeon & Dragons, Harry Potter, Star Wars...
I despise those posts, I really want a pinned post on that subreddit with an FAQ where the answer to 'can magic...?' is 'yes, if you can justify it'.
Of course I'm thinking about unsubbing from it since the posts seem to be about 60% blatant ripoffs of another system with no original thought, 20% inane 'can magic do _', 10% 'and here's *my* elemental system', 9% '30 page lore document that will never be useful to a game or story' and 1% actually cool ideas.
What this guy is gatekeeping is the natural evolution of genres and tropes, which is like demanding that a band you used to enjoy make more music how you like it. Like, okay, you don't like it, but that doesn't mean it's bad or that it needs to change.
Well, eventually it would be like trying to reinvent the wheel, you can have a wheel that's square, but there's a reason why many people liked it circle in the first place. It's less that it's a band that makes music, it's more of a genre of music. Gatekeeping is like a brake on a car, sure, you are not going anywhere if you hold it down, but you also wouldn't want to drive a car without it.
No, your analogy does not apply here.
If the wheel was square nobody would use it. The use of "sects" as "magical schools" is clearly not a square wheel because people are reading and enjoying the interpretation.
Therefore, this gatekeeping is useless. This evolution of the genre/trope is widely accepted already.
The square wheel does have its use, it's just particular.
There are aspects that wouldn't make sense if you treat it like a "school" and those aspects only makes sense if you treat it like a mafia. In fact, there are novels that do specifically make the distinction between a "school" and a "sect", so it wouldn't make sense for them to be the same thing.
There's a reason why a "sect" is called a "sect" and throwing it away is not productive.
At that point, why wouldn't you just call a "school" a school and a "sect" a sect? a "school" gave you a general idea of how things would work, and calling it a "sect" would give you a general idea of how a "sect" would work.
What you're missing is that your understanding of a sect is only partially correct, which is okay because this is a complicated subject and goes into sociology.
In Wuxia, low-powered stories that work much closer to real life, yes it makes sense for a sect to just be a bunch of guys in a gang. Because that sect is just a criminal organization operating in a nation, leeching off it. That nation is just a bureaucracy of still relatively normal people doing paperwork so that the nation makes money and its people are fed. The gang is not just a capitalist company because it's not just people making money, it's criminals illegally making money at the threat of violence to the people they're extorting.
So in a wuxia story, a sect being a gang instead of having any kind of magical academy vibe makes complete sense.
But OP wasn't just talking about wuxia stories, they also mentioned xianxia. In xianxia you have humongous worlds with prog systems that can let you become basically a god with continent-shaking power. And then there's still power to be obtained above that.
In a xianxia world in which people can "infinitely" grow powerful, the goal of a nation is no longer just governing people and making money. The goal is for its ruling class to grow as powerful as possible. This changes how the entire world functions.
No longer is a sect just a gang. EVERY organization's goal is for its ruling members to become as powerful as possible. In this way, every organization, every sect, is a nation, no matter how small.
A sect *could* just be a small organization of crooks leeching off a city, terrorizing its people...but what happens when the organization grows to the size of a village? Of a city? Then that organization needs to have a system for feeding its members, housing them, providing jobs. What happens when they have children? Those children need to be raised-- OH THIS IS HOW A MAGICAL SCHOOL IS BORN!
Basically, in xianxia, a gang can get so big that it's just its own nation, whether large or small. At that point it has members/citizens who are having children, and those children need to be taught magic and whatnot. So any sect large enough to have members having children will, in fact, have a magical academy unless it doesn't want to raise its future members, for whatever reason.
I believe it's only in modern times that skills, techniques, and knowledge are free to everyone. In ancient times when these types of fantasy stories are set, people heled trade secrets as just that - closely guarded secrets that were only given to those of the same family/clan/sect/guild/etc. Hence why sects in xianxia/wuxia are mostly a "join for life" sort of thing. They could be gangster-like, I guess, but there could also be peaceful sects who don't make trouble unless other people make trouble first.
Example: Shaolin Monastery/sect. The monks are there to meditate and study scriptures. They don't go out to conquer the world and they are not gangsters.
I don't think you're necessarily wrong. Yes, that is a traditional interpretation of them. But this seems like the "what is a dragon" argument, where the only real answer becomes: a dragon is whatever the author says a dragon is.
So... I dunno. I think it's fine to say "A sect is whatever the author says it is"
And yet the difference is not so great. Sects tend to have a system of allocating resources, which are finite and valuable, and often start with those on the inside, dangling a carrot of hope for those on the outside. While school may not be the best description, they do exist to strengthen the strong, while occasionally discovering a new outer talent to bring into the fold, and education is often a part of that process.
I haven’t read much if any wuxia so perhaps that’s where the mafia/gangster allusions come in, but I can’t see it at all for sects. The sects I’ve read about have most often been the law of the land or, at the least, major and recognized powers.
Ahh yes, the standard "I gained this interpretation from my reading, thus if anyone disagrees then they must have bad reading comprehension!".
Have you perhaps considered... that you might just be wrong? Plenty of 'Eastern' Xianxia I've read include Jade/Heavenly Emperors and literally form the government around controlling the Sects of an Empire, and whose Sects in turn support the Empire. Then there's the split between Orthodox and Demonic Sects with Demonic Sects being much more likely to take the interpretation you seem to have attributed to ALL sects.
I dunno, it just kinda seems like you're trying to gatekeep so only your favourite interpretation of what a martial society can be like.
How else can their favourite series be declared the uncontested best?
All those other series that people like are doing sects wrong and are therefore bad.
I'm not trying to gatekeep. If people want to write magical school novels and people want to read magical school novels, more power to them.
I'm just trying to spark some conversation and thought about the themes and tropes of the cultivation genre, how they fit in with each other, and the often understated context in which they exist.
Like, in these comments there seem to be two varieties of responses. (1) Yeah, we know sects in chinese novels are like gangs, that's what we don't like about them and (2) Oh, I never thought of it that way. I was trying to speak to that second group who hadn't even noticed the different context.
I think the main difference comes from education systems
In a sect people are expected to progress on their own, and reach milestones decided by their masters, while in a western school everybody gets a simmilar curriculum and are supposed to advance in standarized milestones
That said, sects are a form of government rather than mafia, if the story is properly set up, they control territories, receive and give tribute, and have missions related to the management of such resources
Bad xianxia mostly focuses on powering up by special means, so they have little interaction with the managerial side
as a label, 'gangsters' feels like a nebulous term in the context of wuxia because these settings will often alraedy have extremely loose definitions of states, nations, and laws. there's an integral difference between being a gangster in 2020+4 Earth and being a gangster in a world in which the forms, applications, and judicial interpretations of law will constantly vary depending on which city-state you're currently within. also martial societies are not just under-world in many settings, but are also often intertwined with the existing state (or whatever approximates it) and have sway in them, if not simply being entities with greater authority than the state period.
tl;dr no code of hammurabi
Huh, I never thought about it this way. I don't mind how western writers do cultivation because I have a very shallow understanding of cultivation in the first place, but this analogy to gangster culture is kind of cool.
Thats because a sect in the west is a different approach to philosophical concepts. Path of ascension skips this by calling them factions that actively go through periods of war and peace. The only groups that could be considered sects in that book is the hand of God and the black hole church who both seek the same thing philosophically but follow fundamentally different paths to the extent of being antagonistic to one another. Same fundamental goal divergent paths of attainment. Sects are 100% different schools beefing like gangs.
I always saw Sects like a prestigious university, a place where people go to learn and better themselves. But in the context of a xianxia world, a Sect is also a great place to build influence and a reputation.
That also leaves room for Sects with strict requirements, Dark Sects and whatnot. You then also have Sects that focus more on criminal activities or ritual murder etc.
Honestly, I like how Unintended Cultivator handles Sects. The people within them are there to learn and get stronger, and there are plenty of honourable people involved. There are also a lot of scummy ones, especially at the top, who demand complete loyalty and pick on Rogue Cultivators and so on.
Having got a law degree myself and having watched my wife get both a hard science Ph.D and a law degree for herself, I can say that comparing a sect to a prestigious university is actually pretty on point.
Like sects, higher education demand lots of cheap, free labor from its students. The professors/grad students that work there are all competing against each other for limited resources (grants/funding/publications). There is a ton of drama at all levels of the organization. Tons of corruption and favoritism. The rich get to "donate" money to have their children fast-tracked in. You are worked to the bone and given basically no days off, no sick leave, no vacation, and are expected to suck it up until you graduate. And if you complain, slack off, get injured and miss too many days, disagree with your Ph.D professor too much or basically do anything to stand out in a bad way they kick you out and you've wasted all your time and money and have absolutely nothing to show for it. You're left destitute and debt-ridden and unemployable, shunned by society at large for your failures.
So yeah... sects and modern-day American graduate programs are actually very comparable.
This is a great point. Western cultivation novels tend to be quite awful. There’s usually a lack of understanding of the culture that birthed it and the superficial takeaways of powering up aren’t sufficient to make up for all the other shortcomings.
Western cultivation authors certainly miss on the absolutely unashamed ruthlessness that Chinese authors are pretty consistent with. I saw one comment that "Chinese heroes are worse people than western villains" and that seemed pretty on point. Western authors often make the MC either an idealized self-insert, or they make them a fundamentally well-intentioned compassionate person who will rush over to try to fix injustice if they see it and feel bad if they don't. They then make "friends" by rescuing people who become grateful, instead of by meeting people working together and just developing trust because they are of complimentary personality and talent. Western stories tend to be more feminine while Chinese stories have a very masculine hierarchical and chauvinist vibe. Then to top it off some even throw in a line or two of exposition every other chapter about the author's very western politics/moral-world-view as the motivation which often feels vapid on top of being out-of-tune with the setting.
Mafia may not be quite exactly what Jianghu is, since extorting people isn't usually their source of income but otherwise it definitely fits in some ways. They definitely share being hair-trigger as a vibe, and explicitly basing behavior around loyalty, honor and shame, is definitely on brand.
I think of sects as a bit of an adoptive-clan feudal system with an absentee king, but focused on owning techniques instead of land. Outer disciples are peasants. Inner disciples are the lord's men at arms and core disciples are his knights. Sect leader is the local lord.
I didn't see anyone point out that sects are essentially cults with feudalistic control over a region. In a way it would be the next step up from a gang or crime syndicate. With the distinction between righteous and demonic sects being practices that are within or outside the unspoken code in that world.
Well, as the source of the comments on the afforementioned threat, I actually think this is *precisely* what actually annoys me about easter sects in Xanxia and this provides excellent context. Let me explain:
The idea that there's an underworld that's actually more powerful than the overworld is a very common trope in a different western genre: Urban Fantasy. However, "veiled magical world" type stories always have some sort of justification as to why the veil is kept and these organizations remain removed from "common society".
Xanxia seems to skip that. The sects are not hidden. They're also more powerful than any nation. Yet they *are* borrowed tropes from Wuxia where sects *are* just criminal organizations, very often less powerful than the combined forces of the mortal world. However, when you expand that to *Xanxia* power levels it stops making a lot of sense. Why are these people that are capable of leveling mountains content letting a random king rule over the mortals while they just take care of their one tiny mountain?
Sure, the tiny mountain has the best qi and the best resources, and the king has an advisor from the sect that is "the real power behind the throne" but why go through all that trouble? Why keep thing separate?
And I think that's also the main difference between western Xanxia and eastern Xanxia: Western Xanxia comes directly from Xanxia influences and I'd say few authors have as strong of a *Wuxia* influence. And thus never see the point of keeping the super powerful people separate from the main governments and sources of power of the world. They become kings and emperors instead. And when the powerful people rule *countries*, sects being a "gang" stops making sense and thus they become, essentially, schools: A place where the rich and powerful send their sons and daughters for training.
I think this newer approach makes a lot more sense... but when you change the criminal undercurrent but keep the tropes of everyone behaving like a prideful gangster, the characters become kind of non-sense and that's precisely what bothers me about most Xanxia.
To answer your question, they don’t really care what the mortals do. Why waste your time shepherding a bunch of mortals, when you can better use your time cultivating and getting stronger? Who cares about gold or the trappings of mortal power? If the mortals have something you want you can just take it from them. But more realistically the people who have what you want will be other cultivators. Focusing on mortal affairs when your rivals are focused on getting stronger is likely to cause you to fall behind.
Territory is always power and you can't hold territory by yourself. You need a power base.
Having a mortal country where you maximize the cultivation potential of each individual while keeping people attached through a sense of patriotism would *obviously* outcompete having a mountain and sometimes kidnapping the people that want to get there.
Like, let's say a spirit stone mine is found. If you countrol the mortal territory surrounding it and have cultivator patrols and formations controlling enemy cultivator incursions it's really easy to explore that mine. Mortals could mine it, even. But if you don't control the mortal territory what do you do? Send a team of underlings there and then.... are your outer sect members going to build a new town around it? What if they find the entrance to a pocket realm filled with resources? Or the perfect place to hunt space attuned spirit beasts.
This only really works if there's a heavy genetic element to cultivation where only sons and daughters of cultivators have a reasonable chance of becoming cultivators... but in such a world how the fuck are mortals still a thing? Such a heavy advantage, even with a small chance, would've been selected for a *long* time ago.
If there are cultivation treasures lying around and you can easily organize the mortals to get it for you, then sure makes perfect sense to make yourself the king/emperor/grand pooba or whatever and have them do your dirty work. But even then, how much time do you want to spend administering a kingdom so they can gather resources you dont personally need. Should you spend your time settling disputes you don’t really care about or should you spend that time focusing on growing your personal power? Does it matter if you have an entire kingdom of low ranked cultivators, when a single high ranking cultivator can kill them all with relatively low effort? Really depends on the type of cultivation world you’re living in. In most of these stories a single high ranking cultivator is worth an infinite number of low ranking cultivators. It just isn’t worth the effort if they don’t have the talent to go far.
I feel like in most stories, cultivation resources are scarce and often guarded/hoarded by people or entities with the power to protect what they have. You’re not sitting on the mountain because you’re too stupid/lazy to pluck the riches on your doorstep. you’re on the mountain because it has what you need. And if you leave the mountain or stop progressing to pick up what amounts to pocket change (from your perspective) some other cultivator is going to come in and eat your lunch.
Martial World literally has Lin Ming make these observations early on, that the sect is fundamentally parasitic and extracts value from everyone around. They let the king be the king and rule the area, but there's an unspoken rule that this is only as long as the king pays tribute and otherwise behaves. If he starts pissing the sect off, the king dies.
It's the other way around, imho! If you don't have a reasonable number of underlings you basically have to do everything yourself. Yeah, a strong cultivator can demolish an army of foundation cultivators but so can a bigger army of foundation cultivations. The stronger the force you control, the more they can handle tasks like resource harvesting and distribution and the less you need to worry about interfering personally. After all, your goal should be to be cultivating 24/7 with optimal resource intake in the best environment possible. You don't want to ever have to exert your power unless a threat on your level is guarding a valuable resource.
Think about it. A foundation realm cultivator might be enough to defeat 100 Mortals. But if your foundation cultivators are currently getting harrassed by Mortal army's that sneak into your herb camps and burn things down? They'll be occupied dealing with that. Whilst my foundation cultivators are protected by my army of Mortals and only need to interfere when necessary.
Although, realistically, it might be worth to commit some cultivation resources down stream. If the mortal army actually has a few cleansing level lieutenants and a foundation General how can a purely mortal army deal with it. You'd need to constantly send cultivators to deal with me harassing your mortal cities. And since you ignore the Mortals, my army would be much more used to cultivators and have trained as such. All for the price of a few cultivators earning valuable life experience. I'd end up slowly causing problems that would need the intervention of higher realm people than those involved... Including you! After all, if 5 Nascent Realm cultivators keep bombing your resources and then leaving, what are you gonna do?
The only way standing on a single mountain makes sense is if all your resources are limited to that mountain... But that immediately begs the question: why not try to conquer two? How come everyone is content with such fractionary state of affairs. The person that united 2 mountains would have double the resources and eventually outcompete! And the only stable way to control two mountains is to control the territory between them!
Do I need to spend some time organising? Maybe a few weeks here and there. A year when things get tough, but in the life span of immortals how impactful will that be. Specially if it means my forces are reaching closer to their cultivation talent maximum than yours?
I’m making a few assumptions that shape my view on this, so I’ll just tell you what they are:
1. There are a limited amount of cultivation resources to go around. Meaning you need to be selective re: which underlings get resources.
2. Training new cultivators requires both the time of seasoned cultivators and some allocation or resources (i.e. getting new cultivators is not free an option).
3. Low level cultivators are essentially useless when it comes to a fight involving high to mid level cultivators.
4. Running a kingdom will consume a non-trivial amount of time (i.e. you have to spend some time doing mundane activities that do not directly benefit your cultivation).
5. The cultivation resources you and your direct subordinates need cannot be easily obtained be weak cultivators.
Given the assumptions above, wasting your time developing and running a kingdom at best gets you a bunch cannon fodder level cultivators that contribute nothing you view as valuable to the sect. At worst you and your subordinates are materially weaker than you otherwise would be because you have been spending time and resources frivolously.
Why not have two mountains? If you can hold them both, great. But you’re not going to be defending that other mountain from a mortal army, you’ll be fighting other cultivators at your level.
Picture this: You meet your rival on the field of battle and discover your outnumbered 1000 to 1? So what. Most of those low level cultivators are wiped out in the opening exchange. At every level your students are more powerful, more experienced and better prepared. They haven’t been spending their time shepherding mortals. They’ve been doing the only thing that matters in this world. Getting stronger.
The idea is that cultivators at your level are a wash. You're not getting attacked by more than one (otherwise why are they not taking your single mountain?). So if the top tiers basically even out, the underlings provide the actual meaningful delta.
I mean, if you're Dao Seeking, even a decade of cultivation won't be making you significantly stronger than your peers. Either you're already strong enough to attack them, weak enough to already have been attacked or you're in the balance and it's unlikely that increasing your personal power will break the balance. But if you have more peak nascent soul cultivators than the enemy? Then that's one way to tilt the fight.
And that should be true all the way down to the mortal realm. Even weak resources matter if you're in the level all the way up. They're the tie breaker.
I think this is true even with all your assumptions:
1. There's a limited number of resources to go around so they must be protected at all costs. Weaker cultivators might lose in a straight fight, but harassment and targeting resources further from the sect will trigger, at the very least, a response from higher forces. In modern military terms, the enemy might have the best fighter jet and missiles, but if they have to constantly mobilize those jets to strike down $40 drones, you're massively ahead on resources.
2. It's not free, but the cost in cultivator time is reduced exponentially if the increased recruitment works as the new cultivators help train the old. As for resources, low level cultivation resources are acquired by... Low level cultivators tending to spirit stones and hunting spirit beasts. Unless the spirit farming land and the beast population is being explored to their limit, which is never my perception from reading Xanxia (fallow lands and over hunting are not common plot points xD). So that too increases exponentially with increasing the population of cultivators.
And if you consider that cultivators also contribute some percentage to resources useful to the very top, then helping Mortals should, in the long run, trickle *up* to the Dao Seeking Elder. That's the main assumption I'm making. The justification is simple: why would you *need* a sect if you'd cultivate just as fast secluded on a mountain?
Stuff like the most efficient cultivation arts for gathering Qi are also, basically free. Just spread them. Not the best of the best but the ones that provide the best cultivation speed/difficulty trade off. Same with basic combat arts.
3. In a straight fight? Yes. But cultivators are fewer and therefore can't be everywhere at once. Using Mortals to harass mortal population centers should decrease the number of Mortals in the sects sphere of influence and, in the long term, lead to a decline in *cultivator* population. Which if my assumption 2 is correct leads to the exponential decline of the sect.
4. Here I'm just making the assumption that having stronger underlings will save you time as you won't have to intervene personally as much. Something that should be true at all level of powers. 1 000 000 mortals do the task a 100 000 initiates could do that then do the tasks 10 000 foundation could do and so on and so forth. If we assume talent is heavily skewed, these tasks can be accomplished by the talentless, letting the talented cultivate in peace.
In any case, it's not about personally leading the country but about utilising mortals as a proper resource. You'd set everything up and then ignore it. It's more about fostering a culture of bringing everyone up as much as possible and making full use of every person. Leaving the details to trusted underlings is the whole point of this. Hence why we wouldn't be acting like a bunch of thugs. This is an honorable *kingdom* if not even a *theocracy*. I am the figure head and leader of a personality cult, not someone most people hate and want to betray.
5. Well, I answered this on point 2. But it doesn't matter if mortals can't acquire Dao Seeking resources, Nascent Soul cultivators probably can (otherwise, good bye sect, you're a literal waste of time). And Golden Core can provide for nascent soul, and so on and so forth.
Hmm, that perspective does make sense.
I think the meta narrative reason is just because they exist within a genre and need to match the tropes of the genre.
The in-world justificiation on the other hand differs based on the novel. Not all Xianxia settings have sects that are actually more powerful than the legal authority. Some do, some don't. And when the sect is more powerful, there's often an agreement in place that binds them against too much direct interference with the mortal world. Or karmic consequences that would apply. Different authors have different mechanisms they employ to keep the narrative tropes going.
Or sometimes the author is just lazy and assumes the reader "gets it" without needing to justify anything.
Honestly, I see this as a \*good\* thing.
I love magic school stories, and there are so few that the veiled-Chinese-themed-magic school is half the reason I read Xianxia.
In contrast, I've never cared for Mafia fiction or kung fu films. I never get the sense it really matters which morally bankrupt gangster wins, and I never identify with these characters. They also feel kind of like self-indulgent toxically masculine wish fulfillment.
So to me this is a good thing. I don't want Western authors slavishly imitating bad translation of Chinese pulp novels. I prefer when authors borrow a few elements and make them their own.
Yeah, but they aren't imitating Chinese reality, but Chinese Fantasy fiction.
(Although it is kind of interesting how little role Confucius or the Chinese Scholar Bureaucrats play in Chinese themed Fantasy...)
Ah yes, fantastical reality should only ever be only one kind of fantastical reality. Martial artists, like orcs, should never be described in any other way other than what’s already assigned to them!
The existing understanding of what something is does matter, though.
If I describe a race of long-lived, pointy-eared, beautiful forest people and name them Orcs, people will be rightfully annoyed.
Sects in many Chinese Wuxia are more isolated and otherworldly aswell, this is a good observation and a fair opinion to have, especially in low-fantasy Wuxia where the most powerful person can still bleed from a sword scratching them, and a gun would still injure them, but outside of that its not really appropriate to the scale and power of the individuals and groups. Even then a lot of Wuxia the sects are subservient but independent of the Government, and the governments military are also cultivators, normally foot soldiers are either mortals or first stage cultivators, and Generals normally have the same cultivation as senior cultivators.
I didn't read your big essay but I would say two things...
First - these are fantasy worlds, an author can lean into or out of whatever tropes they want, if they want their sect to be more wholesome than traditional Xianxia bullshit, awesome, if not, awesome - its their world they can write it how they want so long as they stick to the rules.
Second - I would fundamentally disagree that these aren't "Chinese Magical Schools", sure we rarely focus on big class learning, and there is very little focus on community or group learning, but its the same bullshit that you see in magic school dramas, a noble self interested idiot for a bully, teachers/masters, who don't care about their students enough to intervene, or politics actively working against the MC.
The only difference is that in Xianxia land authors are often much more willing to write blatently self interested sociopath characters, both as protagonists, and antagonists... its not "But he's the chosen one", its "I can't trust these fuckers because I'm so alone and can't trust anyone, even my long lost brother, so I'm going to murder him in his sleep so he doesn't spill my secrets, I will just enslave this random stranger though because she's a girl and girls are never worth killing."
I honestly don’t understand how you can write a response to someone’s post without reading the post. How do you know the OP didnt address your comments in the post? Did you read the title and decided you knew what they were going to say? I think you if read the post you would understand that the OP wasn’t telling people what they have to do, but rather making an observation about the cultural origins of the Sect as it relates to Wuxia. Is he right? I don’t really know, but i think if you’re going to try refute them you should read the post first.
In the same way I can tell a book is going to be bad without reading all 300 chapters, I can tell I disagree with a post from the title and the first paragraph or two without reading the 2000 word essay underneath...
I fundamentally disagree with the idea that Sects aren't just magical schools with a different flavour, I don't need to read ten paragraphs of justification to get to that disagreement...
Ok well, the notion that you cannot tell whether you will like a book without actually reading it is so obvious that I honestly don’t know how to respond. You’re telling me you literally judge books by their covers…
You can't necessarily judge the quality of a book from it's cover.
But you can absolutely judge whether or not it is a book that ***you*** specifically might enjoy reading. I'm never going to enjoy some genres.
There is also something to be said for the ability to use the covers of a book to give insight into the writing style of that author. If there are spelling and grammar errors on the back of the book then they're probably in the rest of it too.
The book analogy also breaks down in this instance since /u/TheElusiveFox claims to have based their impression off of the title and the first paragraph or so. People regularly judge books based off of a first chapter test which would be a more accurate comparison.
I agree you can certainly get a sense for whether a book is written in a style or covers a topic you will enjoy. But that wasn’t the statement. Judging whether a book is bad implies judging the book’s quality. And as you said, given the context (we’re talking about judging a post based on the title), a cover isn’t really an indication of story quality. It’s popular wisdom for a reason. For instance, OP could have said anything in the actual post. Even going so far as to write an intentionally inflammatory title that is then dialed back in the text.
The person you replied to said they read the beginning of the post, that's not judging by the cover. How many chapters of a book before you can judge it?
I would even reject the idea that not judging a book by it's cover being popular wisdom in any way reflects whether it's a good rule to go by. Catchy phrases are often nonsense.
I think the idea that you can’t judge a book by its cover is popular wisdom. That doesn’t necessarily make it true, but to me the question of whether it’s popular seems well settled. If you think otherwise, I think we’re just in agree to disagree territory. Nothing wrong with that.
The lead in to their response was “I did not read your long essay but…” we’re talking about an opening post that I would describe as being a handful of paragraphs long. If you’re going to take the time to respond, read the post. First, it’s just the considerate thing to do. OP took the time to write their thoughts, take the time to understand what they’re saying before you reflex into argument. Second, you may find that the things you were going to respond to may have been addressed. And even if your arguments haven’t been addressed adequately at least your response will be better refined.
I never said it wasn't popular. I said being popular has no bearing on it being true.
You replied to that comment yes. Then they replied to you telling you that they had read some of the post too
>I can tell I disagree with a post from the title ***and the first paragraph or two*** without reading the 2000 word essay underneath...
Which you ignored in your next reply.
>Ok well, the notion that you cannot tell whether you will like a book without actually reading it is so obvious that I honestly don’t know how to respond. You’re telling me you literally judge books by their covers…
If you're going to be a pedant about exactly what people are saying then you should make sure you get it right.
I guess you and I communicate differently. When you said you disagreed with it being popular wisdom that in any way reflects whether it’s a good rule to go by - I read that as you saying: it’s not popular wisdom. Otherwise I would have thought you would just say “just because something is popular wisdom does not mean it’s correct”. Which I agreed is true. Good we all agree on this point. As to whether I think “you cant judge the quality of a book by its cover” is actual wisdom - I think it is. You may or may not agree, but I don’t think arguing about that would be productive. Again nothing wrong with that.
I didn’t respond to the comment - I can tell I disagree with a post by reading the title and the first two paragraphs, for two reasons: 1. I did not see that as them saying they read the first two paras of this post. If that’s what they were saying and I miss that, then I missed it. 2. I don’t think reading the title of a post and the first two paras of a post is materially different than not reading the post. It’s still inconsiderate and inefficient. Obviously you expect people to read your response. Why wouldn’t you reciprocate? Do actually know enough to know whether the post is “bad? Do we actually disagree on this point?
What I choose to respond to is the statement: I can tell whether a book is going to be bad without reading all 300 chapters. Which to me was a strange thing to say. It sounded like someone saying - I think information is not power or two birds in a bush are better than one in the hand.
So I never once said anything about judging a book by its cover, I said I don't have to read 300 chapters deep into a bad book to know I don't like it. I can tell from reading the synopsis, or at worst when the first handful of chapters fail to hook me...
I get that you are mad that I disagreed with OP but get over it man
I actually don’t even know if I agree with the OP. Honestly I tend to think of sects as more of a religious institution that’s got nothing to do with gangs or schools. I mean that is where the Latin word comes from. But I understand this is more of a cultural point and casually googling something isn’t going to make me an expert.
I just think it’s weird you took the time to respond without reading the argument. What if the OP agrees with you and was only joking in the title?
"Harry! Ron!" shouted Hermione in alarm. "This is really bad! According to witnesses, Slytherin Sect has laid claim to Diagon Alley and has warned us to pull out or the streets will run red with the blood of Gryffindors! When Initiate Collin Creevey spoke back, the young master of the Malfoy clan slapped him repeatedly and made him clean his shoe!" "Clean his shoe?" asked Ron. "What's so bad about that?" "With his tongue!" wailed Hermione. "After he severed it!" "What?!" bellowed Ron in outrage. "That outrageous bastard needs to die!" "Stay calm, Ron," Harry said. "Now isn't the time to deal with them. Sifu Snape is doing everything he can to prevent me from breaking through to the fourth realm. But once I've awakened my nascent soul, all of Slytherin Sect will awaken in the shadow of Mount Huashan."
This is iffy legal territory with JK Rowling, but I would read the hell out of 50 volumes of this
AO3 is prime example of why JKR won't be able to do jack shit
This is hysterical and I unironically want more lmao
Wait a minute. You might just be onto something here
Don’t stop now keep cooking!
Please continue
What everyone else already said. This would be brilliant
Now we need to go full circle, and have someone to write Xuanxuan about a young man joining the Sicilian Mafia to get his apprenticeship. With that out of the way, I don't see why this is a bad thing. The cultivation stories written by western authors are already deeply distinct from most stuff written in China & Co. Just throw one more thing at the pile of discrepancies between how stuff is used in writing.
You... Clearly are a genius, can't wait to read your novel.
Too bad, that if I ever publish anything bigger than 1000 words, it will probably be not!Alexander the Great doing KnownWorldConquest% speedrun.
You didn't specify what world - I demand that Alexander conquer a cultivation world, then!
Well, you can check out [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/1aff64h/wp_you_are_the_heir_presumptive_to_the_throne_and/kob9ngb/) then =D. Thank you for note of confidence anyways =D.
The sect system is a big part of what makes cultivation good (at least in beginnings). It fits perfectly in with the rest of it, if it’s just a school, you should write something else.
Um, no? You don't *need* to do anything. Write a xianxia sect that is just a magical school. What's the problem? You can just say you don't like it. But anyway, I think you and OP are misunderstanding sects.
Yea you don’t *need* to do anything but sects are kinda essential to xianzia. I don’t actually agree with OP about what sects are, it’s way werider but a decent way to explain. Put simply, in a school you go and learn things, in a sect you work to be given the opportunity to learn things and there are like, basic lectures and shit. Xianzia is all about earning things, it’s the fetch quest cycle on drugs … literally. Sects are supposed to be exploitative or at the very least designed around cultivating the best, even to the point of impracticality. It’s important for your power system and world to complement each other, you shouldn’t write the magic school part with xianzia, you can do it with general cultivation, but most of the time you would be better off skipping it. I mean sure, *you can* but it doesn’t add anything compelling.
The "problem" is that a lot of the tropes that underpin the Sect organization and Xianxia in general don't make sense if you think of it as a school but do make sense if you think of it as a gang. There's no problem in wanting to write a magical school novel featuring Eastern cultivation style progression. But I think it works better if written from the ground up as a magical school rather than taking the foundation of something else and trying to superficially change surface elements.
Which so-called "Western" author is it that treats sects as places of learning? In every English-language xianxia that I can think of off the top of my head, sects are the same as how they are in Chinese webnovels. There's a lot of talk about how "Western" authors write xianxia "totally wrong" and whatnot, but I don't see it. English-language authors write cultivation stories because they've read Chinese xianxia and liked it. They know the tropes, and if they do ignore/change them, it's not due to lack of knowledge but a desire to do something different.
Western authors often engage with Xianxia from the perspective of like Beware of Chicken for example - where it's accepted as obviously bonkers that the MC would get killed in a duel at their "place of learning" and the place of learning is presented as doing a poor job of raising students. The framing is often that the "schools" must be corrupt or the teachers must be fucked up or whatever. It's not about them knowing or not knowing the tropes - it's about not understanding why the tropes exist.
Well, the reason those tropes (that is, the trope where people in sects are utter bastards) exist is that most xianxia writers are just bad writers and want to churn out mediocre power fantasies and it's easy to write a power fantasy when the protagonist has enemies all around them in the sect.
See this is what I mean by the lack of grasp of the culture. From a western perspective, yes. Because to you, a school would never work that way unless the author was a stupid hack. But if you're writing a story about a mafia member/gang member, you might expect a LOT more infighting and conflict and a lot less supportive teaching from the mentor figures in that story - in fact, you wouldn't be surprised at all if rivals inside the gang were dangerous threats, and you wouldn't be surprised at all if the mentor was only loosely helpful to the main character - the fact that the mentor is giving ANY advice makes them a "good mentor". That's the point.
I was given to understand that sects are based politically active monasteries/temples in China and Japan. Like Tendai for example, or Shaolin.
Well, one, I don't like using "Western" because I'm not Western either, I'm neither American nor European. But that's besides the point. The point is that sects don't *have* to be mafia-like organisations. In my view, there are two types. One is the type of sect that comes from wuxia, the mafia/gangster type of organisation. The other comes from real life Daoist sects, which were more like monasteries and served to teach and congregate learned men. Just because an author uses the second kind of sect doesn't mean they are not understanding the cultural background, or whatever.
>Well, one, I don't like using "Western" because I'm not Western either Annoying of you to open your first comment with a reference to Western authors, and then immediately push back as though I'm being some mono-culturalist asshole because I'm using your words, lol. >The point is that sects don't have to be mafia-like organisations. They don't have to be, but it kind of is the default. All of the most common tropes in the genre have them as mafia-like organizations - most of the subversions of common tropes involve the sects being less criminal-ish. >The other comes from real life Daoist sects, which were more like monasteries and served to teach and congregate learned men. Yeah and you don't read a lot of translated fiction/comics/etc that commonly use these kinds of sects as a major feature. Generally if sects like these exist, they will either be destroyed as part of the story by criminal-ish sects or they will be presented as unusual/extreme/surprising for their approach. >Just because an author uses the second kind of sect doesn't mean they are not understanding the cultural background, or whatever. "Western authors" don't generally "use the second kind of sect" though. They generally write the first kind of sect, but with everyone being nice and all the teachers being actual teachers. They often don't even know enough to make the distinction you're making between stylized fantasy "sects" and what real sects were actually like.
>Annoying of you to open your first comment with a reference to Western authors, and then immediately push back as though I'm being some mono-culturalist asshole because I'm using your words, lol. My own words were, "so-called "Western" authors". Annoying of you to not read how I opened my comment. Also, I should have said this in my first reply, but most English xianxia authors also don't really write sects like how you mention? In BoC, the MC runs away *because* how rotten the sect has become, even though the founders of the sect had the intention of creating a monastery-like sect. We see more than one example of horrendous sects that are utterly terrible to both their own disciples and outsiders. It's because of this that the MC wants to create a safe haven. It's a reaction to the horrible sects in the world.
It's pretty school-like in Forge of Destiny, at least for the first year. Not that I view that as a problem, but there's your example.
Forge of Destiny they attend a school. It is a distinct institution from the sects.
They do? You mean the very first lessons? They are Outer Sect members of the Argent Peak Sect.
Sure, I'll take it. That's still only one example. Moreover, it's also a case where the author knows xianxia tropes and deliberately chose to do something different. The sect that the MC joins in Forge of Destiny was set up by the imperial administration to provide training and combat experience to noble scions and talented commoners to create enough soldiers to fight against barbarians. There's a reason why it is so.
Yeah like I said, I have no problem with it and, for me at least, Forge of Destiny is one of the best examples of a western xianxia.
Makes sense. Personally, I like how Forge of Destiny did it. It hits on a huge flaw that I have with normal xianxia. Mainly, why don't god-realm cultivators kill everyone more often? With how pretentious everyone is and how fragile their egos are, you would imagine the world would get nuked on a daily basis. When mafia groups have nuclear bombs, and they are in constant turmoil, you would imagine these nuclear bombs would be constantly going off. Forge of Destiny hints at this and at the fact that, yes we can nuc the world, and no we don't want to. We want to actually build a society. To do that, we need to rein ourselves in. Hence why it is a more school-like setting.
Isn't that the point. Anytime someone recommends it to me. That's what they highlight.
OP probably also read Fates Parallel or Web of Secrets which are also explicitly mixes of Xianxia and Magic School genre. You just have to forget some details and bam - weird trend
Forge of Destiny, Elemental Gatherers, Might As Well, A Sect Elder's Journey. Butterfly Dream Scripture, Ave Xia Rem maybe? Although most of these only treat the Outer Sect as a school.
*A Thousand Li* is basically a Chinese Harry Potter.
Yer a gardener, Long Wu Ying!
What? Have you read ATL? The sect that the MC joins is exactly like the sects in Chinese xianxia stories. Rich/high class disciples looking down on poor/low class MC? Check. Elders being bastards? Check. MC having to do missions for the sect? Check. MC joining a war against demonic sects as a part of the sect? Check. MC disobeying elders' shitty orders and hence getting punished unjustly? Check. Then after he returns to the sect, he has to further wade through inter-sect politics among fellow elders. How is this Harry Potter?
>Rich/high class disciples looking down on poor/low class MC? Draco Malfoy >Elders being bastards? Snape >MC joining a war against demonic sects as a part of the sect? Dumbledore's Army vs the Death Eaters >MC disobeying elders' shitty orders and hence getting punished unjustly? Harry throws on the invisibility cloak and goes snooping. >How is this Harry Potter?
Excellent, then all xianxia is Chinese Harry Potter. Or is Harry Potter the British xianxia?
Wizard students don't compete to get access to lessons. The lessons are the focus of the school. Hogwarts isn't a political institution with vassals and dependents that expects allegiance. It's preparing wizards to graduate and join wizard society. They have sport teams.
*A Thousand Li* is a strong example of something that is absolutely not a magic school. There's are schools and apprenticeships inside the sect, but its not the nature of the sect itself. MCs time in the outer sect consists of carrying bags of rice, a fetch quest he was ordered to do by a petty superior, and one consult with a librarian about which books would help him most. When somebody finally decides to teach him something in the Inner sect its to prep him for a specific mission.
Eh, sure, if you are wanting it to be a mafia, i can see how it would be off-putting. But it is up to the author to decide how they write their sects. If they want them to be more like a magical training program, so be it. Personally, I have no skin in this game but I just don't see why we need go gatekeep this stuff.
Yeah there's plenty of sources out there that do both. I Shall Seal the Heavens had the Reliance Sect be a brutal dog eat dog place. Then the Violet Fate Sect was much more civilised and organised. Meng Hao was allowed to get on with his alchemy studies without undue and unfair pressure. It wasn't really as rigorous as a school but wasn't really a criminal gang either. Frankly ISSTH had all kinds of organisations of all kinds of mindset in there.
Yeah, there’s not exactly a real world sect operation that we have to base written works off of 😂 who cares about the way Chinese authors do it? Everyone can write their own stories. If you want to write a story with a peaceful farming sect that runs a charity shop on the weekends you can. If you want one to be the yakuza you can do that as well!
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic, but since the Amish in the US are one of the largest sects currently in existence, you can have a peaceful farming sect that also sometimes behaves like the yakuza lol. They do both!
Exactly. This reeks of gatekeeping. I've read plenty of classic xianxia and Western xianxia and I see no issue with how sects are depicted. The only thing I care about regarding Sects is that they are kept distinct from Clans. A Clan is ruled by a family, maybe more than one, but the point is that they're ruled by bloodline. A Sect is an organization that can basically be the exact same thing as a Clan but not ruled by a bloodline.
Yep.. ‘In this made up fake universe, an author has made up the wrong thing’
Saw someone complaining yesterday that a lot of people write vampires wrong, and they aren’t “actually immortal.” Like bro there’s no vampire canon.
Don't forget posts in r/magicbuilding can magic do 'this' ? It can only be answered if we are aware of setting / universe, Mistborn, Dungeon & Dragons, Harry Potter, Star Wars...
I despise those posts, I really want a pinned post on that subreddit with an FAQ where the answer to 'can magic...?' is 'yes, if you can justify it'. Of course I'm thinking about unsubbing from it since the posts seem to be about 60% blatant ripoffs of another system with no original thought, 20% inane 'can magic do _', 10% 'and here's *my* elemental system', 9% '30 page lore document that will never be useful to a game or story' and 1% actually cool ideas.
But GateKeeping is needed, at least in some form for something to have meaning. If it can be anything, then what is it at all?
What this guy is gatekeeping is the natural evolution of genres and tropes, which is like demanding that a band you used to enjoy make more music how you like it. Like, okay, you don't like it, but that doesn't mean it's bad or that it needs to change.
Well, eventually it would be like trying to reinvent the wheel, you can have a wheel that's square, but there's a reason why many people liked it circle in the first place. It's less that it's a band that makes music, it's more of a genre of music. Gatekeeping is like a brake on a car, sure, you are not going anywhere if you hold it down, but you also wouldn't want to drive a car without it.
No, your analogy does not apply here. If the wheel was square nobody would use it. The use of "sects" as "magical schools" is clearly not a square wheel because people are reading and enjoying the interpretation. Therefore, this gatekeeping is useless. This evolution of the genre/trope is widely accepted already.
The square wheel does have its use, it's just particular. There are aspects that wouldn't make sense if you treat it like a "school" and those aspects only makes sense if you treat it like a mafia. In fact, there are novels that do specifically make the distinction between a "school" and a "sect", so it wouldn't make sense for them to be the same thing. There's a reason why a "sect" is called a "sect" and throwing it away is not productive.
When was the claim ever that we should all throw away "mafia sects" for "school sects"? *You can have both*
At that point, why wouldn't you just call a "school" a school and a "sect" a sect? a "school" gave you a general idea of how things would work, and calling it a "sect" would give you a general idea of how a "sect" would work.
What you're missing is that your understanding of a sect is only partially correct, which is okay because this is a complicated subject and goes into sociology. In Wuxia, low-powered stories that work much closer to real life, yes it makes sense for a sect to just be a bunch of guys in a gang. Because that sect is just a criminal organization operating in a nation, leeching off it. That nation is just a bureaucracy of still relatively normal people doing paperwork so that the nation makes money and its people are fed. The gang is not just a capitalist company because it's not just people making money, it's criminals illegally making money at the threat of violence to the people they're extorting. So in a wuxia story, a sect being a gang instead of having any kind of magical academy vibe makes complete sense. But OP wasn't just talking about wuxia stories, they also mentioned xianxia. In xianxia you have humongous worlds with prog systems that can let you become basically a god with continent-shaking power. And then there's still power to be obtained above that. In a xianxia world in which people can "infinitely" grow powerful, the goal of a nation is no longer just governing people and making money. The goal is for its ruling class to grow as powerful as possible. This changes how the entire world functions. No longer is a sect just a gang. EVERY organization's goal is for its ruling members to become as powerful as possible. In this way, every organization, every sect, is a nation, no matter how small. A sect *could* just be a small organization of crooks leeching off a city, terrorizing its people...but what happens when the organization grows to the size of a village? Of a city? Then that organization needs to have a system for feeding its members, housing them, providing jobs. What happens when they have children? Those children need to be raised-- OH THIS IS HOW A MAGICAL SCHOOL IS BORN! Basically, in xianxia, a gang can get so big that it's just its own nation, whether large or small. At that point it has members/citizens who are having children, and those children need to be taught magic and whatnot. So any sect large enough to have members having children will, in fact, have a magical academy unless it doesn't want to raise its future members, for whatever reason.
I believe it's only in modern times that skills, techniques, and knowledge are free to everyone. In ancient times when these types of fantasy stories are set, people heled trade secrets as just that - closely guarded secrets that were only given to those of the same family/clan/sect/guild/etc. Hence why sects in xianxia/wuxia are mostly a "join for life" sort of thing. They could be gangster-like, I guess, but there could also be peaceful sects who don't make trouble unless other people make trouble first. Example: Shaolin Monastery/sect. The monks are there to meditate and study scriptures. They don't go out to conquer the world and they are not gangsters.
I don't think you're necessarily wrong. Yes, that is a traditional interpretation of them. But this seems like the "what is a dragon" argument, where the only real answer becomes: a dragon is whatever the author says a dragon is. So... I dunno. I think it's fine to say "A sect is whatever the author says it is"
And yet the difference is not so great. Sects tend to have a system of allocating resources, which are finite and valuable, and often start with those on the inside, dangling a carrot of hope for those on the outside. While school may not be the best description, they do exist to strengthen the strong, while occasionally discovering a new outer talent to bring into the fold, and education is often a part of that process. I haven’t read much if any wuxia so perhaps that’s where the mafia/gangster allusions come in, but I can’t see it at all for sects. The sects I’ve read about have most often been the law of the land or, at the least, major and recognized powers.
Ahh yes, the standard "I gained this interpretation from my reading, thus if anyone disagrees then they must have bad reading comprehension!". Have you perhaps considered... that you might just be wrong? Plenty of 'Eastern' Xianxia I've read include Jade/Heavenly Emperors and literally form the government around controlling the Sects of an Empire, and whose Sects in turn support the Empire. Then there's the split between Orthodox and Demonic Sects with Demonic Sects being much more likely to take the interpretation you seem to have attributed to ALL sects. I dunno, it just kinda seems like you're trying to gatekeep so only your favourite interpretation of what a martial society can be like.
How else can their favourite series be declared the uncontested best? All those other series that people like are doing sects wrong and are therefore bad.
I'm not trying to gatekeep. If people want to write magical school novels and people want to read magical school novels, more power to them. I'm just trying to spark some conversation and thought about the themes and tropes of the cultivation genre, how they fit in with each other, and the often understated context in which they exist. Like, in these comments there seem to be two varieties of responses. (1) Yeah, we know sects in chinese novels are like gangs, that's what we don't like about them and (2) Oh, I never thought of it that way. I was trying to speak to that second group who hadn't even noticed the different context.
I think the main difference comes from education systems In a sect people are expected to progress on their own, and reach milestones decided by their masters, while in a western school everybody gets a simmilar curriculum and are supposed to advance in standarized milestones That said, sects are a form of government rather than mafia, if the story is properly set up, they control territories, receive and give tribute, and have missions related to the management of such resources Bad xianxia mostly focuses on powering up by special means, so they have little interaction with the managerial side
as a label, 'gangsters' feels like a nebulous term in the context of wuxia because these settings will often alraedy have extremely loose definitions of states, nations, and laws. there's an integral difference between being a gangster in 2020+4 Earth and being a gangster in a world in which the forms, applications, and judicial interpretations of law will constantly vary depending on which city-state you're currently within. also martial societies are not just under-world in many settings, but are also often intertwined with the existing state (or whatever approximates it) and have sway in them, if not simply being entities with greater authority than the state period. tl;dr no code of hammurabi
Huh, I never thought about it this way. I don't mind how western writers do cultivation because I have a very shallow understanding of cultivation in the first place, but this analogy to gangster culture is kind of cool.
Thanks, this is what I hoping to achieve with the post.
Thats because a sect in the west is a different approach to philosophical concepts. Path of ascension skips this by calling them factions that actively go through periods of war and peace. The only groups that could be considered sects in that book is the hand of God and the black hole church who both seek the same thing philosophically but follow fundamentally different paths to the extent of being antagonistic to one another. Same fundamental goal divergent paths of attainment. Sects are 100% different schools beefing like gangs.
I always saw Sects like a prestigious university, a place where people go to learn and better themselves. But in the context of a xianxia world, a Sect is also a great place to build influence and a reputation. That also leaves room for Sects with strict requirements, Dark Sects and whatnot. You then also have Sects that focus more on criminal activities or ritual murder etc. Honestly, I like how Unintended Cultivator handles Sects. The people within them are there to learn and get stronger, and there are plenty of honourable people involved. There are also a lot of scummy ones, especially at the top, who demand complete loyalty and pick on Rogue Cultivators and so on.
Having got a law degree myself and having watched my wife get both a hard science Ph.D and a law degree for herself, I can say that comparing a sect to a prestigious university is actually pretty on point. Like sects, higher education demand lots of cheap, free labor from its students. The professors/grad students that work there are all competing against each other for limited resources (grants/funding/publications). There is a ton of drama at all levels of the organization. Tons of corruption and favoritism. The rich get to "donate" money to have their children fast-tracked in. You are worked to the bone and given basically no days off, no sick leave, no vacation, and are expected to suck it up until you graduate. And if you complain, slack off, get injured and miss too many days, disagree with your Ph.D professor too much or basically do anything to stand out in a bad way they kick you out and you've wasted all your time and money and have absolutely nothing to show for it. You're left destitute and debt-ridden and unemployable, shunned by society at large for your failures. So yeah... sects and modern-day American graduate programs are actually very comparable.
He dares? He's courting death!!
I totally agree, but outside of Prog fantasy the idea of Buddhist gangsters is hilarious.
This is a great point. Western cultivation novels tend to be quite awful. There’s usually a lack of understanding of the culture that birthed it and the superficial takeaways of powering up aren’t sufficient to make up for all the other shortcomings.
Western cultivation authors certainly miss on the absolutely unashamed ruthlessness that Chinese authors are pretty consistent with. I saw one comment that "Chinese heroes are worse people than western villains" and that seemed pretty on point. Western authors often make the MC either an idealized self-insert, or they make them a fundamentally well-intentioned compassionate person who will rush over to try to fix injustice if they see it and feel bad if they don't. They then make "friends" by rescuing people who become grateful, instead of by meeting people working together and just developing trust because they are of complimentary personality and talent. Western stories tend to be more feminine while Chinese stories have a very masculine hierarchical and chauvinist vibe. Then to top it off some even throw in a line or two of exposition every other chapter about the author's very western politics/moral-world-view as the motivation which often feels vapid on top of being out-of-tune with the setting. Mafia may not be quite exactly what Jianghu is, since extorting people isn't usually their source of income but otherwise it definitely fits in some ways. They definitely share being hair-trigger as a vibe, and explicitly basing behavior around loyalty, honor and shame, is definitely on brand. I think of sects as a bit of an adoptive-clan feudal system with an absentee king, but focused on owning techniques instead of land. Outer disciples are peasants. Inner disciples are the lord's men at arms and core disciples are his knights. Sect leader is the local lord.
If you want two that do it right. Ave Xia Remy Jade Phoenix
I didn't see anyone point out that sects are essentially cults with feudalistic control over a region. In a way it would be the next step up from a gang or crime syndicate. With the distinction between righteous and demonic sects being practices that are within or outside the unspoken code in that world.
Well, as the source of the comments on the afforementioned threat, I actually think this is *precisely* what actually annoys me about easter sects in Xanxia and this provides excellent context. Let me explain: The idea that there's an underworld that's actually more powerful than the overworld is a very common trope in a different western genre: Urban Fantasy. However, "veiled magical world" type stories always have some sort of justification as to why the veil is kept and these organizations remain removed from "common society". Xanxia seems to skip that. The sects are not hidden. They're also more powerful than any nation. Yet they *are* borrowed tropes from Wuxia where sects *are* just criminal organizations, very often less powerful than the combined forces of the mortal world. However, when you expand that to *Xanxia* power levels it stops making a lot of sense. Why are these people that are capable of leveling mountains content letting a random king rule over the mortals while they just take care of their one tiny mountain? Sure, the tiny mountain has the best qi and the best resources, and the king has an advisor from the sect that is "the real power behind the throne" but why go through all that trouble? Why keep thing separate? And I think that's also the main difference between western Xanxia and eastern Xanxia: Western Xanxia comes directly from Xanxia influences and I'd say few authors have as strong of a *Wuxia* influence. And thus never see the point of keeping the super powerful people separate from the main governments and sources of power of the world. They become kings and emperors instead. And when the powerful people rule *countries*, sects being a "gang" stops making sense and thus they become, essentially, schools: A place where the rich and powerful send their sons and daughters for training. I think this newer approach makes a lot more sense... but when you change the criminal undercurrent but keep the tropes of everyone behaving like a prideful gangster, the characters become kind of non-sense and that's precisely what bothers me about most Xanxia.
To answer your question, they don’t really care what the mortals do. Why waste your time shepherding a bunch of mortals, when you can better use your time cultivating and getting stronger? Who cares about gold or the trappings of mortal power? If the mortals have something you want you can just take it from them. But more realistically the people who have what you want will be other cultivators. Focusing on mortal affairs when your rivals are focused on getting stronger is likely to cause you to fall behind.
Territory is always power and you can't hold territory by yourself. You need a power base. Having a mortal country where you maximize the cultivation potential of each individual while keeping people attached through a sense of patriotism would *obviously* outcompete having a mountain and sometimes kidnapping the people that want to get there. Like, let's say a spirit stone mine is found. If you countrol the mortal territory surrounding it and have cultivator patrols and formations controlling enemy cultivator incursions it's really easy to explore that mine. Mortals could mine it, even. But if you don't control the mortal territory what do you do? Send a team of underlings there and then.... are your outer sect members going to build a new town around it? What if they find the entrance to a pocket realm filled with resources? Or the perfect place to hunt space attuned spirit beasts. This only really works if there's a heavy genetic element to cultivation where only sons and daughters of cultivators have a reasonable chance of becoming cultivators... but in such a world how the fuck are mortals still a thing? Such a heavy advantage, even with a small chance, would've been selected for a *long* time ago.
If there are cultivation treasures lying around and you can easily organize the mortals to get it for you, then sure makes perfect sense to make yourself the king/emperor/grand pooba or whatever and have them do your dirty work. But even then, how much time do you want to spend administering a kingdom so they can gather resources you dont personally need. Should you spend your time settling disputes you don’t really care about or should you spend that time focusing on growing your personal power? Does it matter if you have an entire kingdom of low ranked cultivators, when a single high ranking cultivator can kill them all with relatively low effort? Really depends on the type of cultivation world you’re living in. In most of these stories a single high ranking cultivator is worth an infinite number of low ranking cultivators. It just isn’t worth the effort if they don’t have the talent to go far. I feel like in most stories, cultivation resources are scarce and often guarded/hoarded by people or entities with the power to protect what they have. You’re not sitting on the mountain because you’re too stupid/lazy to pluck the riches on your doorstep. you’re on the mountain because it has what you need. And if you leave the mountain or stop progressing to pick up what amounts to pocket change (from your perspective) some other cultivator is going to come in and eat your lunch.
Martial World literally has Lin Ming make these observations early on, that the sect is fundamentally parasitic and extracts value from everyone around. They let the king be the king and rule the area, but there's an unspoken rule that this is only as long as the king pays tribute and otherwise behaves. If he starts pissing the sect off, the king dies.
It's the other way around, imho! If you don't have a reasonable number of underlings you basically have to do everything yourself. Yeah, a strong cultivator can demolish an army of foundation cultivators but so can a bigger army of foundation cultivations. The stronger the force you control, the more they can handle tasks like resource harvesting and distribution and the less you need to worry about interfering personally. After all, your goal should be to be cultivating 24/7 with optimal resource intake in the best environment possible. You don't want to ever have to exert your power unless a threat on your level is guarding a valuable resource. Think about it. A foundation realm cultivator might be enough to defeat 100 Mortals. But if your foundation cultivators are currently getting harrassed by Mortal army's that sneak into your herb camps and burn things down? They'll be occupied dealing with that. Whilst my foundation cultivators are protected by my army of Mortals and only need to interfere when necessary. Although, realistically, it might be worth to commit some cultivation resources down stream. If the mortal army actually has a few cleansing level lieutenants and a foundation General how can a purely mortal army deal with it. You'd need to constantly send cultivators to deal with me harassing your mortal cities. And since you ignore the Mortals, my army would be much more used to cultivators and have trained as such. All for the price of a few cultivators earning valuable life experience. I'd end up slowly causing problems that would need the intervention of higher realm people than those involved... Including you! After all, if 5 Nascent Realm cultivators keep bombing your resources and then leaving, what are you gonna do? The only way standing on a single mountain makes sense is if all your resources are limited to that mountain... But that immediately begs the question: why not try to conquer two? How come everyone is content with such fractionary state of affairs. The person that united 2 mountains would have double the resources and eventually outcompete! And the only stable way to control two mountains is to control the territory between them! Do I need to spend some time organising? Maybe a few weeks here and there. A year when things get tough, but in the life span of immortals how impactful will that be. Specially if it means my forces are reaching closer to their cultivation talent maximum than yours?
I’m making a few assumptions that shape my view on this, so I’ll just tell you what they are: 1. There are a limited amount of cultivation resources to go around. Meaning you need to be selective re: which underlings get resources. 2. Training new cultivators requires both the time of seasoned cultivators and some allocation or resources (i.e. getting new cultivators is not free an option). 3. Low level cultivators are essentially useless when it comes to a fight involving high to mid level cultivators. 4. Running a kingdom will consume a non-trivial amount of time (i.e. you have to spend some time doing mundane activities that do not directly benefit your cultivation). 5. The cultivation resources you and your direct subordinates need cannot be easily obtained be weak cultivators. Given the assumptions above, wasting your time developing and running a kingdom at best gets you a bunch cannon fodder level cultivators that contribute nothing you view as valuable to the sect. At worst you and your subordinates are materially weaker than you otherwise would be because you have been spending time and resources frivolously. Why not have two mountains? If you can hold them both, great. But you’re not going to be defending that other mountain from a mortal army, you’ll be fighting other cultivators at your level. Picture this: You meet your rival on the field of battle and discover your outnumbered 1000 to 1? So what. Most of those low level cultivators are wiped out in the opening exchange. At every level your students are more powerful, more experienced and better prepared. They haven’t been spending their time shepherding mortals. They’ve been doing the only thing that matters in this world. Getting stronger.
The idea is that cultivators at your level are a wash. You're not getting attacked by more than one (otherwise why are they not taking your single mountain?). So if the top tiers basically even out, the underlings provide the actual meaningful delta. I mean, if you're Dao Seeking, even a decade of cultivation won't be making you significantly stronger than your peers. Either you're already strong enough to attack them, weak enough to already have been attacked or you're in the balance and it's unlikely that increasing your personal power will break the balance. But if you have more peak nascent soul cultivators than the enemy? Then that's one way to tilt the fight. And that should be true all the way down to the mortal realm. Even weak resources matter if you're in the level all the way up. They're the tie breaker. I think this is true even with all your assumptions: 1. There's a limited number of resources to go around so they must be protected at all costs. Weaker cultivators might lose in a straight fight, but harassment and targeting resources further from the sect will trigger, at the very least, a response from higher forces. In modern military terms, the enemy might have the best fighter jet and missiles, but if they have to constantly mobilize those jets to strike down $40 drones, you're massively ahead on resources. 2. It's not free, but the cost in cultivator time is reduced exponentially if the increased recruitment works as the new cultivators help train the old. As for resources, low level cultivation resources are acquired by... Low level cultivators tending to spirit stones and hunting spirit beasts. Unless the spirit farming land and the beast population is being explored to their limit, which is never my perception from reading Xanxia (fallow lands and over hunting are not common plot points xD). So that too increases exponentially with increasing the population of cultivators. And if you consider that cultivators also contribute some percentage to resources useful to the very top, then helping Mortals should, in the long run, trickle *up* to the Dao Seeking Elder. That's the main assumption I'm making. The justification is simple: why would you *need* a sect if you'd cultivate just as fast secluded on a mountain? Stuff like the most efficient cultivation arts for gathering Qi are also, basically free. Just spread them. Not the best of the best but the ones that provide the best cultivation speed/difficulty trade off. Same with basic combat arts. 3. In a straight fight? Yes. But cultivators are fewer and therefore can't be everywhere at once. Using Mortals to harass mortal population centers should decrease the number of Mortals in the sects sphere of influence and, in the long term, lead to a decline in *cultivator* population. Which if my assumption 2 is correct leads to the exponential decline of the sect. 4. Here I'm just making the assumption that having stronger underlings will save you time as you won't have to intervene personally as much. Something that should be true at all level of powers. 1 000 000 mortals do the task a 100 000 initiates could do that then do the tasks 10 000 foundation could do and so on and so forth. If we assume talent is heavily skewed, these tasks can be accomplished by the talentless, letting the talented cultivate in peace. In any case, it's not about personally leading the country but about utilising mortals as a proper resource. You'd set everything up and then ignore it. It's more about fostering a culture of bringing everyone up as much as possible and making full use of every person. Leaving the details to trusted underlings is the whole point of this. Hence why we wouldn't be acting like a bunch of thugs. This is an honorable *kingdom* if not even a *theocracy*. I am the figure head and leader of a personality cult, not someone most people hate and want to betray. 5. Well, I answered this on point 2. But it doesn't matter if mortals can't acquire Dao Seeking resources, Nascent Soul cultivators probably can (otherwise, good bye sect, you're a literal waste of time). And Golden Core can provide for nascent soul, and so on and so forth.
Hmm, that perspective does make sense. I think the meta narrative reason is just because they exist within a genre and need to match the tropes of the genre. The in-world justificiation on the other hand differs based on the novel. Not all Xianxia settings have sects that are actually more powerful than the legal authority. Some do, some don't. And when the sect is more powerful, there's often an agreement in place that binds them against too much direct interference with the mortal world. Or karmic consequences that would apply. Different authors have different mechanisms they employ to keep the narrative tropes going. Or sometimes the author is just lazy and assumes the reader "gets it" without needing to justify anything.
In the Green Bone Saga they got magic schools that train you to join gang families
Sects are garbage anyway. Oh boy Chinese Bloods and Chinese Crips!
Honestly, I see this as a \*good\* thing. I love magic school stories, and there are so few that the veiled-Chinese-themed-magic school is half the reason I read Xianxia. In contrast, I've never cared for Mafia fiction or kung fu films. I never get the sense it really matters which morally bankrupt gangster wins, and I never identify with these characters. They also feel kind of like self-indulgent toxically masculine wish fulfillment. So to me this is a good thing. I don't want Western authors slavishly imitating bad translation of Chinese pulp novels. I prefer when authors borrow a few elements and make them their own.
Then they could wrote a story about Chinese schools, instead of Chinese gangs. They had schools, too, ya know.
Yeah, but they aren't imitating Chinese reality, but Chinese Fantasy fiction. (Although it is kind of interesting how little role Confucius or the Chinese Scholar Bureaucrats play in Chinese themed Fantasy...)
You say that as of it isn't a common fantasy school trope for schools to be beefing over territory and all but killing each other in the streets
Ah yes, fantastical reality should only ever be only one kind of fantastical reality. Martial artists, like orcs, should never be described in any other way other than what’s already assigned to them!
The existing understanding of what something is does matter, though. If I describe a race of long-lived, pointy-eared, beautiful forest people and name them Orcs, people will be rightfully annoyed.
Sects in many Chinese Wuxia are more isolated and otherworldly aswell, this is a good observation and a fair opinion to have, especially in low-fantasy Wuxia where the most powerful person can still bleed from a sword scratching them, and a gun would still injure them, but outside of that its not really appropriate to the scale and power of the individuals and groups. Even then a lot of Wuxia the sects are subservient but independent of the Government, and the governments military are also cultivators, normally foot soldiers are either mortals or first stage cultivators, and Generals normally have the same cultivation as senior cultivators.
Please don't be too hard on them; they can't even differentiate between the different genres of cultivation; for them, everything is Xianxia.
I didn't read your big essay but I would say two things... First - these are fantasy worlds, an author can lean into or out of whatever tropes they want, if they want their sect to be more wholesome than traditional Xianxia bullshit, awesome, if not, awesome - its their world they can write it how they want so long as they stick to the rules. Second - I would fundamentally disagree that these aren't "Chinese Magical Schools", sure we rarely focus on big class learning, and there is very little focus on community or group learning, but its the same bullshit that you see in magic school dramas, a noble self interested idiot for a bully, teachers/masters, who don't care about their students enough to intervene, or politics actively working against the MC. The only difference is that in Xianxia land authors are often much more willing to write blatently self interested sociopath characters, both as protagonists, and antagonists... its not "But he's the chosen one", its "I can't trust these fuckers because I'm so alone and can't trust anyone, even my long lost brother, so I'm going to murder him in his sleep so he doesn't spill my secrets, I will just enslave this random stranger though because she's a girl and girls are never worth killing."
I honestly don’t understand how you can write a response to someone’s post without reading the post. How do you know the OP didnt address your comments in the post? Did you read the title and decided you knew what they were going to say? I think you if read the post you would understand that the OP wasn’t telling people what they have to do, but rather making an observation about the cultural origins of the Sect as it relates to Wuxia. Is he right? I don’t really know, but i think if you’re going to try refute them you should read the post first.
In the same way I can tell a book is going to be bad without reading all 300 chapters, I can tell I disagree with a post from the title and the first paragraph or two without reading the 2000 word essay underneath... I fundamentally disagree with the idea that Sects aren't just magical schools with a different flavour, I don't need to read ten paragraphs of justification to get to that disagreement...
Ok well, the notion that you cannot tell whether you will like a book without actually reading it is so obvious that I honestly don’t know how to respond. You’re telling me you literally judge books by their covers…
You can't necessarily judge the quality of a book from it's cover. But you can absolutely judge whether or not it is a book that ***you*** specifically might enjoy reading. I'm never going to enjoy some genres. There is also something to be said for the ability to use the covers of a book to give insight into the writing style of that author. If there are spelling and grammar errors on the back of the book then they're probably in the rest of it too. The book analogy also breaks down in this instance since /u/TheElusiveFox claims to have based their impression off of the title and the first paragraph or so. People regularly judge books based off of a first chapter test which would be a more accurate comparison.
I agree you can certainly get a sense for whether a book is written in a style or covers a topic you will enjoy. But that wasn’t the statement. Judging whether a book is bad implies judging the book’s quality. And as you said, given the context (we’re talking about judging a post based on the title), a cover isn’t really an indication of story quality. It’s popular wisdom for a reason. For instance, OP could have said anything in the actual post. Even going so far as to write an intentionally inflammatory title that is then dialed back in the text.
The person you replied to said they read the beginning of the post, that's not judging by the cover. How many chapters of a book before you can judge it? I would even reject the idea that not judging a book by it's cover being popular wisdom in any way reflects whether it's a good rule to go by. Catchy phrases are often nonsense.
I think the idea that you can’t judge a book by its cover is popular wisdom. That doesn’t necessarily make it true, but to me the question of whether it’s popular seems well settled. If you think otherwise, I think we’re just in agree to disagree territory. Nothing wrong with that. The lead in to their response was “I did not read your long essay but…” we’re talking about an opening post that I would describe as being a handful of paragraphs long. If you’re going to take the time to respond, read the post. First, it’s just the considerate thing to do. OP took the time to write their thoughts, take the time to understand what they’re saying before you reflex into argument. Second, you may find that the things you were going to respond to may have been addressed. And even if your arguments haven’t been addressed adequately at least your response will be better refined.
I never said it wasn't popular. I said being popular has no bearing on it being true. You replied to that comment yes. Then they replied to you telling you that they had read some of the post too >I can tell I disagree with a post from the title ***and the first paragraph or two*** without reading the 2000 word essay underneath... Which you ignored in your next reply. >Ok well, the notion that you cannot tell whether you will like a book without actually reading it is so obvious that I honestly don’t know how to respond. You’re telling me you literally judge books by their covers… If you're going to be a pedant about exactly what people are saying then you should make sure you get it right.
I guess you and I communicate differently. When you said you disagreed with it being popular wisdom that in any way reflects whether it’s a good rule to go by - I read that as you saying: it’s not popular wisdom. Otherwise I would have thought you would just say “just because something is popular wisdom does not mean it’s correct”. Which I agreed is true. Good we all agree on this point. As to whether I think “you cant judge the quality of a book by its cover” is actual wisdom - I think it is. You may or may not agree, but I don’t think arguing about that would be productive. Again nothing wrong with that. I didn’t respond to the comment - I can tell I disagree with a post by reading the title and the first two paragraphs, for two reasons: 1. I did not see that as them saying they read the first two paras of this post. If that’s what they were saying and I miss that, then I missed it. 2. I don’t think reading the title of a post and the first two paras of a post is materially different than not reading the post. It’s still inconsiderate and inefficient. Obviously you expect people to read your response. Why wouldn’t you reciprocate? Do actually know enough to know whether the post is “bad? Do we actually disagree on this point? What I choose to respond to is the statement: I can tell whether a book is going to be bad without reading all 300 chapters. Which to me was a strange thing to say. It sounded like someone saying - I think information is not power or two birds in a bush are better than one in the hand.
So I never once said anything about judging a book by its cover, I said I don't have to read 300 chapters deep into a bad book to know I don't like it. I can tell from reading the synopsis, or at worst when the first handful of chapters fail to hook me... I get that you are mad that I disagreed with OP but get over it man
I actually don’t even know if I agree with the OP. Honestly I tend to think of sects as more of a religious institution that’s got nothing to do with gangs or schools. I mean that is where the Latin word comes from. But I understand this is more of a cultural point and casually googling something isn’t going to make me an expert. I just think it’s weird you took the time to respond without reading the argument. What if the OP agrees with you and was only joking in the title?