Discussion Friday

[geraineon]

It's time for discussion Friday again!

This time, let's talk about genre boundaries and how we interpret them! I had some interesting conversations elsewhere and found it kinda interesting how people defined low/high fantasy, and how that applies to media from different culture.

And semi-related to this, I've just learnt that there is Indonesian wuxia! See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kho_Ping_Hoo

It's pretty fascinating that it has silat, mixes with Indonesian history and locations.

So some questions:

How do you define fantasy genre for works in English (or other languages)? Are they the same (e.g., if you think of the same story in the context of another language, would you call that as under the umbrella of "Fantasy"?)? What do you think is the use of having genre definitions?

How do you envision wuxia when mixed with your local history and culture?

(I'm traveling this week so replies will be slow!)

Edited to add: questions are just prompts! Feel free to talk about any of your thoughts regarding genres/the use of genres/how to define genres/genre mashups you want to see/etc.!

Comments

[geraineon]

Quick thoughts before I need to pack and vacate my hotel room: I'd love to see wuxia + colonial or pre colonial Malaya! Maybe a mix with local myths and legends too! Idk maybe Puteri Gunung Ledang is one of the wuxia grandmasters living in the mountain of Ledang xD to learn from her, you gotta pass 7 trials. The Mousedeer Sect will be all about brains and trickery!

Maybe there is Malaysian wuxia, and I just don't know. Super interested in finding copies of any of that Indonesian wuxia (in Indonesian if none of them has been translated to Bahasa Melayu).

[full_metal_ox]

The Mousedeer Sect will be all about brains and trickery!

Don’t forget playing off disarming cuteness.

[geraineon]

The disarming cuteness is part of the arsenal of skills and weapons, yes!

[full_metal_ox]

And today I was one of the lucky 10,000 to learn about Sang Kancil, and thank you for occasioning that.

[geraineon]

Haha, I hope you enjoyed the stories of the smart and cunning Sang Kancil~

[aurumcalendula]

re: Malaysian wuxia, have you read The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho?

[geraineon]

Yeah and I liked it! It'd be great if there are more~

I was wondering more about older works, like the Indonesian wuxia (those were written in the 1950s-1994)

[douqi]

I feel like Hikayat Hang Tuah is already at least 75% wuxia, down to the ill-advised bromance!

[geraineon]

This is true... Hikayat Hang Tuah is basically like wuxia already (but they are very involved with the court though [as I always said, should have just ditched the sultan!!])

[geraineon]

I need to share this! I was reading up about cerita silat (which is the Indonesian story genre inspired by wuxia, and what they called wuxia stories back then), there's a Hikayat Hang Tuah mention in page 12: https://journal.uny.ac.id/index.php/diksi/article/viewFile/6563/5623

[douqi]

Ooh that's cool! Also pleased to see mention of The Three Musketeers, which I've always thought a decent comp for some elements of wuxia.

(also, I can read Indonesian?? shocked pikachu face)

[geraineon]

Indonesian is close enough to Malay that it does work! but then there are some words that are completely different (my confusion at "kakak" when I was trying to translate for a friend long time ago... it's older bro in Indonesian XD)

I also found this article about Chinese women novelists in colonial Indonesia which might be an interesting read: https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/seas/4/3/4_KJ00010059079/_pdf

(it's pretty long so I just briefly skimmed it for now)

[douqi]

Thanks! That looks super interesting.

Re: kakak, yeah that would trip me up to! Though it makes sense given 'kekanda'.

[geraineon]

I didn't even make the connection to kekanda till you mention XD yeah, that makes sense!

[forestofglory]

As an anglophone SFF reader I've found that a lot of conversations about defining genre boundaries get really gatekeepy really fast -- mostly to the tune of "that's not my genre, it has girl cooties!" so I mostly don't like defining genres. This is why I like "a genre is works in conversation" -- it lets us talk about the connections between works without drawing hard lines around the edges of things.

I think wuxia set in Califorina could be fun! (I think some might even exist -- I vaugly remember seeing something like that) There's fairly long history of Chinese immigration, there's pretty mountains, distant empires, exploitation and injustice.

Also I'd love to see some wuxia or wuxia inspired stuff set in space if anyone has any recs?

[geraineon]

Mm, I think genre labels are a way to find stories we want to read too. Like, some stuff "hangs together in a package" and then someone slaps a name on it, and now it's a genre! I do think that creater and finer and finer categories don't really help (probably promotes a lot of "it's not This but That" type of discussions). Hm, not sure if there's a similar degree of gendered association to genre definitions in Cmedia (will have to defer to other people about that!).

I'd love to read a wuxia set in California! How do you see such a story? (When does it take place? How does it work within the switch of that time?) No pressure to answer though! Just fun to speculate. If you do remember the title of the story lmk!

Wuxia in space will be fun. I can only think of Aliette de Bodard (iirc, takes inspiration from wuxia, though I could be wrong!)

[forestofglory]

I guess genre labels are useful sometimes. But I personally don't find the distinction between high and low fantasy very clear or very useful for picking stories.

I'm not sure what ca wuxia would be like. Maybe someone would find a secrete marital arts manual written on the walls at Angel Island, or a group of railroad workers could wander off and found a sect in the mountains, there's plenty of rustic inns with shady clientele in gold rush times. (I guess this where we get into the cross pollination between wuxia and westerns)

The last Xuya book I read felt very thematically wuxia, and she's referenced NiF as the inspiration for another book (I know that's not technically wuxia ) I know a bunch of SFF writers got into CQL at the start of the pandemic so I'm hoping to see more SFF that's more clearly influenced by cmedia. But also wuxia space opera would be fun!

[aurumcalendula]

Have you read Navigational Entanglements? (I don't think it's set in her Xuya universe)

[forestofglory]

Navigational Entanglements is the book I was thinking of when I said something about a book being very thematically wuxia. Is it not Xuya? So easy to get confused. I should have probably bothered to look titles I couldn't remember, sorry!

[aurumcalendula]

No worries! (I think In the Shadow of the Ship is most recent Xuya book)

[forestofglory]

Oh I haven't read that one yet, lucky me!

[geraineon]

For works in English, the distinction between primarily SF or Fantasy does help me. I'm usually in the mood for one or the other.

Group of railroad workers wandering off to found a sect seems like a fun story idea!

mm, crossing fingers for more wuxia in space, or wuxia themed stories in space (yes to wuxia space opera!!).

[douqi]

Re: wuxia in space — Star Wars?

[forestofglory]

I think one could make a strong case!

[geraineon]

searching "Star Wars" and "wuxia" resulted in quite a number of results so others have definitely thought this!

[aurumcalendula]

I think it sometimes comes down to how a story feels - like I think of Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner as fantasy even though there's no magic, etc. in it.

I think having rough genre definitions is helpful for finding something I want to read.

It would be cool to read wuxia set in Ohio! (tbh I feel like Ohio has more SFF authors than SFF set here)

[duckprintspress]

I'd consider Swordspoint "low" fantasy, a world with little or no magic, in contrast to high fantasy with lots of spells and stuff. For whatever that's worth. :D

[geraineon]

I'd consider Swordspoint to be fantasy too even though there isn't any magic. I think it's marketed as a fantasy of manners? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_of_manners)

How would a wuxia set in Ohio look like? (No pressure but can be fun to speculate!)

[aurumcalendula]

I don't really know, tbh. I think it could look very different depending on where in the state (and when) it's set.

It might be neat to have something set around the Cleveland area because Lake Eric and the Cuyahoga River (and Ohio and Eric Canal) are right there. And considering caves and tunnels seem to turn up a decent amount in wuxia stories, there's a bunch of old pedestrian tunnels under downtown (plus a couple salt mines deep under the lake).

[geraineon]

Oh yes, we need those caves and tunnels for all the secret manuals and weapons! Lakes for aesthetics!

[douqi]

Re: genre mashups — the WIP I may one day actually finish is wuxia + murder mystery (also + romance I guess, which inevitably weakens the murder mystery dimension because of its generic requirements, but you can't have everything). I steal a lot from both Agatha Christie and Jin Yong for this one. I also stole an important main character name from Gu Long; I hope his estate isn't litigious.

(The alternate pitch, which will probably mean nothing to most people, is: 'You've heard of Shakespeare's sister. Now get ready for Linghu Chong's ershimei'.

[llonkrebboj]

I have actually not heard of Shakespeare's sister, but would read the hell out of Linghu Chong's ershimei!!!!! 👀

[douqi]

She's a lesbian who's interested in the jianghu's foremost female rake, Li Xunhuan (Gu Long's estate pls don't sue me), he's a gay guy who's in a relationship with a scholar-martial artist called Shen Yu (Shen because Shens are probably mandatory in these stories; Yu for the express purpose of being able to nickname him Xiao Yu'er, once again Gu Long's estate pls don't sue me).

[geraineon]

I went and looked up Shakespeare's sister instead XD;; (and found a play, and an alt rock band).

Wuxia and murder mystery is a great mashup! Case files wuxia! Probably a better investigator than CLX, given than I am in chapter 15 now and every chapter seems to result in someone dying and him not getting very much closer to solving the case of the deaths.

[douqi]

I swear, Chu Liuxiang talks a big game, but honestly the cases would be solved much quicker if he left everything to the three girls.

[geraineon]

He's so bad at it! I was yelling at him for following very suspicious info, and not suspecting this clearly very suspicious guy right outside to take him to the clearly wrong location!

[duckprintspress]

I'm too sleepy for to be particularly intelligent about this, but I generally consider cultivation works, xianxia, and wuxia, to be a separate genre from the English/Western "fantasy" genre. Transmigration and isekai I consider a genre qualifier, like, it's science fiction with transmigration, or it's isekai from a modern world into a historical one, etc.

I dislike lumping cultivation works into fantasy because, well, doing so prompts too many Western-centric fandom folks to just call it ~magic~ or call cultivators ~wizards~ and idk all that bugs the heck out of me.

[geraineon]

Mm, when I think about wuxia, xianxia, etc., I think about "what is allowed within that world" (though it gets fuzzier and fuzzier, and then we get into genre mashups, which *shrug emoji*) and not "what's fantastical/magical" but idk if it's because the history/culture/"magic" are not what I grew up marinated in (maybe urban fantasy involving witches, wiccan stuff might feel to people who practice/immersed in that the same way I do these CN media?)

[llonkrebboj]

Indonesian Wuxia... galaxy brained!!!! Omg I love the historical crossover plots mentioned on the wiki page.

More than thirty of Kho's stories were set in the Indonesian Archipelago.[10] In accordance with genre conventions, his martial arts stories were primarily set in historical times, prior to the arrival of European colonialism. Where stories were set during the colonial era, they were mostly in its early years.[19] The author Eka Kurniawan, exploring Kho's use of history in Kompas, notes that the novelist drew from diverse areas and eras in Indonesian history, including the Mataram and Singhasari Kingdoms.[19][20] Settings varied, including the building of Borobudur Temple or the arrival of Admiral Zheng He,[9] with these well-known events providing a context for fictional deeds.[19]
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Please come report back on those novels when you're done!


Genre... hmmmm maybe I'll use another example that I grew up with?

It's like how Dracula feels different from Twillight, which feels different from The Saga of Darren Shan & The Demonata, which is again different from Blue Bloods and yet! These are all vampire stories. If someone is willing to extend their definition of vampire a little further, even the jiangshi movies so popular in the 80s through to 2000s can be in this category.

So labels can be helpful to narrow down reading preferences or current interests from a huge pool (fantasy/supernatural) to something a little more specific (vampire). But the finer details of what actually suits a seeker's taste is something they would have to try out themselves.

Focusing too hard on the exact boundaries of a genre feels a bit like going off the rails.

(I say that, but then when I see yet another romance qihuan - YES i finally remembered this word LOL - recced as xianxia in public spaces, all my fur bristles under my human skin xD)

Also fantasy and wuxia are separate genres in my head, the same way anime and donghua are different things! One could mayyyyyyybe lump wuxia, xianxia, qihuan and whatnot under 'Chinese fantasy' maybe? I'll take that over fantasy any day!

[geraineon]

I will report back definitely! I've so much upcoming travels, I'm sure my reading productivity will go up a lot.

Mm, I think trope tags can be very helpful (thank you everyone who use "sickly protag" tag!).

Haha I might be murdered for this but anime and donghua are different in maybe the way stories are told but I don't see them as incredibly different because they are mediums, not genres.

I don't really like the label "Chinese fantasy" either tbh but I guess that might have to be what we can settle on! ("Fantasy" implying that these are not actually living things currently still being practiced in some way or another)