TMA + wuxia ancient China
Dec. 22nd, 2019 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkI love crossovers, so of course one of the first things I did after finishing TMA was start thinking about crossovers with other fandoms I love, and then I came up with a NiF crossover with Lin Chen, avatar of the Beholding, because Langya Hall is totally the Magnus Institute equivalent. And Mei Changsu is probably a servant of the Web. Fei Liu, possibly Corruption… and so on.
And then I realized that I forgot to account for cultural differences, which must be huge, especially if you add different times. In ancient China spiders were symbols of luck and good fortune, for example. So what might things have looked like in wuxia ancient China?
j_quadrifrons linked me to their post about taxonomies of the Fears, which you should read because it makes excellent points, and since then I've been trying to come up with alternative taxonomies to Smirke's. Then I remembered all the Untamed and SVSSS fic I've been reading recently and started thinking that there might have been a different approach entirely.
Instead of as entities to be followed or worshipped, wuxia martial artists might have approached the powers as cultivation paths that one dedicates oneself to. One doesn't serve a Fear, one seeks to master it.
But "mastering" a fear doesn't have to mean being fearless. Mastering it can also mean knowing it so well, so intimately, that the fear no longer has a hold on you, and that your terror doesn't influence your actions. Cultivators don't need to feed other's fear to their patrons (how barbaric), they cultivate and harness and use their own. Causing fear in others may be a side-effect, and at times useful, but not the point.
I came up with a system of four cultivation paths:
- The Path of the Inside. Deals with fears of your own mind: being unable to trust your own mind, losing control, going mad…
- The Path of the Outside. Deals with fears of your surroundings, your environment, the physical world around you.
- The Path of the Other. Deals with fears of other people and creatures: they might hurt you, kill you, betray you, abandon you…
- The Path of What-Is. Deals with abstracts and fears of the fundamental make-up of the world: nothing is safe, everything will be destroyed, everything will end, there are no choices etc.
(I know where I would put Smirke's entities in this system – some of them split up etc. – but I didn't add that here on purpose because it narrows down the imagination.)
So for example, someone dedicating themselves to the Path of the Outside would cultivate both his fear of narrow and of wide open spaces. Sure, one can specialize, and most probably eventually do, but you can't really master a path without intimately knowing every one of its aspects.
As a side-effect, a master of a Path therefore likely has a much wider array of skills than an avatar of one of Smirke's entities. But their powers are also likely different, because their fear is turned inward, not outward. (Lin Chen is, of course, a master of the Path of What-Is. So is Wei Wuxian.)
Does this make sense outside of my own head? Feedback & ideas welcome.
And then I realized that I forgot to account for cultural differences, which must be huge, especially if you add different times. In ancient China spiders were symbols of luck and good fortune, for example. So what might things have looked like in wuxia ancient China?
j_quadrifrons linked me to their post about taxonomies of the Fears, which you should read because it makes excellent points, and since then I've been trying to come up with alternative taxonomies to Smirke's. Then I remembered all the Untamed and SVSSS fic I've been reading recently and started thinking that there might have been a different approach entirely.Instead of as entities to be followed or worshipped, wuxia martial artists might have approached the powers as cultivation paths that one dedicates oneself to. One doesn't serve a Fear, one seeks to master it.
But "mastering" a fear doesn't have to mean being fearless. Mastering it can also mean knowing it so well, so intimately, that the fear no longer has a hold on you, and that your terror doesn't influence your actions. Cultivators don't need to feed other's fear to their patrons (how barbaric), they cultivate and harness and use their own. Causing fear in others may be a side-effect, and at times useful, but not the point.
I came up with a system of four cultivation paths:
- The Path of the Inside. Deals with fears of your own mind: being unable to trust your own mind, losing control, going mad…
- The Path of the Outside. Deals with fears of your surroundings, your environment, the physical world around you.
- The Path of the Other. Deals with fears of other people and creatures: they might hurt you, kill you, betray you, abandon you…
- The Path of What-Is. Deals with abstracts and fears of the fundamental make-up of the world: nothing is safe, everything will be destroyed, everything will end, there are no choices etc.
(I know where I would put Smirke's entities in this system – some of them split up etc. – but I didn't add that here on purpose because it narrows down the imagination.)
So for example, someone dedicating themselves to the Path of the Outside would cultivate both his fear of narrow and of wide open spaces. Sure, one can specialize, and most probably eventually do, but you can't really master a path without intimately knowing every one of its aspects.
As a side-effect, a master of a Path therefore likely has a much wider array of skills than an avatar of one of Smirke's entities. But their powers are also likely different, because their fear is turned inward, not outward. (Lin Chen is, of course, a master of the Path of What-Is. So is Wei Wuxian.)
Does this make sense outside of my own head? Feedback & ideas welcome.
