summercomfort (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summercomfort) wrote2009-12-20 03:58 pm
summercomfort) wrote2009-12-20 03:58 pm
Martial Arts Novels
Jono and I are talking of making a role-playing game based on martial arts stories! I'm quite excited!
武侠 Martial arts stories are the fantasy stories of my youth. So instead of Tolkien, I read Jinyong (and some Gulong and Liang Yusheng). Just as fantasy novels evolved from a European tradition of fairy tales and mythology, martial arts novels evolved from a Chinese tradition of swordsmen and outlaw tales. (We can blame 史记, 三侠五义, etc). Unfortunately, I didn't watch many films, partly due to the cost and scarcity, and partly because the ones that I did come in contact with seemed very silly and shallow compared to what I was reading and imagining. To try to generalize wuxia is like trying to generalize fantasy -- is there a way to generalize a genre that includes Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the Golden Compass? (Not to mention the movie adaptations and spinoffs that develop their own tropes). Can we speak of magic? of medieval settings? Of knighthood and chivalry? Of kingdoms and intrigue? What of the Magical Object or the Rule of Three?
What are the equivalents for Wuxia?
Dynastic Setting. Some are more historically grounded than others, but there is a general allusion to dynastic China. It might be as historically specific as "the Taiping are actually awesome wuxia," or as vague and handwavy as "Tang/Song times." This means that there's taverns and tea shops, and look sort of like this:
There's a government', there's peasants and common folk, there's thieves and robbers and police, there's 镖局-- the independent-contractor armored-vehicle system of transferring money and valuables across China
And then there's the 江湖 (jiang hu)-- the rivers and the lakes. Another name for the nitty gritty martial arts world, where people are held by honor -- where debts must be repaid, vengeance sought, and honor/face maintained. Sort of like a "Wild West".
Out of this 江湖 comes the more "civilized" 武林 (wu lin)-- ostensibly composed of the "top schools", where you are measured by how chivalrous or 侠 (xia) you appear. The 武林 is set up as something distinct but parallel to the "civilian" government, with various schools competing and maneuvering to create and lead alliances, whereas 江湖 also includes all those in-between.
Your place in the 江湖/武林 is partially based on your allegiances -- are you part of a martial arts school 派 (pai) with a Confucian hierarchy (where your master is considered your "father", and your classmates are your "siblings"), and where you dedicate your life to learning martial arts? (Smaller variants being the 门 and the 家) Are you part of a gang 帮 (bang) with a mafia- or union- like hierarchy, arranged out of the mutual protection/benefit aspects of your job? (beggers, dock workers, salt shippers, etc). Are you part of a religious sect 教(jiao), a marginalized group that follows esoteric rules? Or are you just yourself, and independent agent? But that's impossible -- SOMEONE must have taught you martial arts. You must have an opinion about what is right and honorable, and be for one group or another.
Inside/Outside: For me, one of the most compelling aspect of martial arts novels is the conflict and/or contrast between the inside and the outside -- who you are perceived to be vs. who you really are. 江湖 武林 have very specific ways of measuring a person and act as a very powerful social force -- how chivalrous are you? How honorable? Your master/father was just killed, they say your best friend did it. What are you going to do? Everyone expects you to fight/kill your best friend to avenge your master/father. But do you want to do it? And what if it's all a setup?
江湖, as they say, is also a place of crouching tigers and hidden dragons -- people are not who they seem. The old doddling drunk might actually be a wise leader of a gang. The man might actually be a crossdressing woman. The dishonorable man might have a stronger moral compass than the righteous man. It is said that the most cultivated in martial arts also become philosophically cultivated -- and so retreat from the turbulence and sink into the depths and become unremarkable. (Very Daoist, eh?)
Chivalry(侠) and Honor (名，信): The social expectations that drive your inside person or that you use to justify your outside persona. I know that honor/名 is an awkward translation, partially because I cheated on the word honor, but it is conceptually rather more straightforward -- you need to keep (honor) your word and defend your reputation (honor). 侠 (xia) is the xia of wuxia. (The wu is "martial", so whereas wu is the how, xia is the why). It's the sense of righteousness -- doing the right thing. Saving the damsel in distress, ridding the world of evil, not delivering the final blow (a code of honor, if you will). But righteousness is also about appearing righteous. I love this and how it connects to the Inside/Outside you. You might be internally chivalrous but is perceived as a social deviant and unrighteous. Or maybe the chivalrous thing to do is to back down, but the honorable thing to do is to fight and defend your reputation or your school. You might be killing people left and right due to some chivalrous desire to rid the world of evil (or at least justifying it as such.)
So far there has been the dynastic setting, the political and social maneuverings of the 江湖 武林, ideological underpinnings of chivalry and honor. What about the wu (martial) part of Wuxia?
Martial: What I consider the wuxia equivalent of fantasy's "magic" -- the thing that differentiates the genre from historical fiction, the thing that is a part of the basic premise, but also the most "gimmicky". The most basic premise here, of course, is that fighting is a valid course of action. In fact, the trump to any problem -- the master of the school died without passing on the mantle to a specific person? Let's fight it out! A corrupting religious sect is terrorizing the region? Let's fight them! It is also what everyone wants -- not more knowledge or more power, but more knowledge of fighting skills and fighting chi.
Unlike magic in many stories, martial abilities can be learned by anyone, and isn't genetic. But there's different schools, different abilities, often with themed attacks that Jono thinks the author chose by throwing darts on a dart board -- Let's name the moves after Tang poetry! Or stories of beautiful women! Or phrases from the I Ching! Got a dog-beating stick? Each move should have the word dog in it!
And Chi! If you channel it right, you can do everything better! And you have defensive chi and offense chi! And you can block people's chi with pressure points!
And secret instruction books 秘籍 can help you advance your chi and martial arts by leaps and bounds! All the masters just leave them all over the place! You can't fall down a cliff without running into them!
And old dying masters can give you all their chi!
.... As I said, pretty gimmicky. Instead of magical objects and the rule of three, there's secret books and the rule of "No one who falls off a cliff ever dies". But it also might make a pretty interesting conflict system.
But yes, this all started because I bought a couple volumes of Heaven Sword, Dragon Sabre comics on Thursday and then Jinghua was asking about western fantasy on Saturday. :D
武侠 Martial arts stories are the fantasy stories of my youth. So instead of Tolkien, I read Jinyong (and some Gulong and Liang Yusheng). Just as fantasy novels evolved from a European tradition of fairy tales and mythology, martial arts novels evolved from a Chinese tradition of swordsmen and outlaw tales. (We can blame 史记, 三侠五义, etc). Unfortunately, I didn't watch many films, partly due to the cost and scarcity, and partly because the ones that I did come in contact with seemed very silly and shallow compared to what I was reading and imagining. To try to generalize wuxia is like trying to generalize fantasy -- is there a way to generalize a genre that includes Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the Golden Compass? (Not to mention the movie adaptations and spinoffs that develop their own tropes). Can we speak of magic? of medieval settings? Of knighthood and chivalry? Of kingdoms and intrigue? What of the Magical Object or the Rule of Three?
What are the equivalents for Wuxia?
Dynastic Setting. Some are more historically grounded than others, but there is a general allusion to dynastic China. It might be as historically specific as "the Taiping are actually awesome wuxia," or as vague and handwavy as "Tang/Song times." This means that there's taverns and tea shops, and look sort of like this:
There's a government', there's peasants and common folk, there's thieves and robbers and police, there's 镖局-- the independent-contractor armored-vehicle system of transferring money and valuables across China
And then there's the 江湖 (jiang hu)-- the rivers and the lakes. Another name for the nitty gritty martial arts world, where people are held by honor -- where debts must be repaid, vengeance sought, and honor/face maintained. Sort of like a "Wild West".
Out of this 江湖 comes the more "civilized" 武林 (wu lin)-- ostensibly composed of the "top schools", where you are measured by how chivalrous or 侠 (xia) you appear. The 武林 is set up as something distinct but parallel to the "civilian" government, with various schools competing and maneuvering to create and lead alliances, whereas 江湖 also includes all those in-between.
Your place in the 江湖/武林 is partially based on your allegiances -- are you part of a martial arts school 派 (pai) with a Confucian hierarchy (where your master is considered your "father", and your classmates are your "siblings"), and where you dedicate your life to learning martial arts? (Smaller variants being the 门 and the 家) Are you part of a gang 帮 (bang) with a mafia- or union- like hierarchy, arranged out of the mutual protection/benefit aspects of your job? (beggers, dock workers, salt shippers, etc). Are you part of a religious sect 教(jiao), a marginalized group that follows esoteric rules? Or are you just yourself, and independent agent? But that's impossible -- SOMEONE must have taught you martial arts. You must have an opinion about what is right and honorable, and be for one group or another.
Inside/Outside: For me, one of the most compelling aspect of martial arts novels is the conflict and/or contrast between the inside and the outside -- who you are perceived to be vs. who you really are. 江湖 武林 have very specific ways of measuring a person and act as a very powerful social force -- how chivalrous are you? How honorable? Your master/father was just killed, they say your best friend did it. What are you going to do? Everyone expects you to fight/kill your best friend to avenge your master/father. But do you want to do it? And what if it's all a setup?
江湖, as they say, is also a place of crouching tigers and hidden dragons -- people are not who they seem. The old doddling drunk might actually be a wise leader of a gang. The man might actually be a crossdressing woman. The dishonorable man might have a stronger moral compass than the righteous man. It is said that the most cultivated in martial arts also become philosophically cultivated -- and so retreat from the turbulence and sink into the depths and become unremarkable. (Very Daoist, eh?)
Chivalry(侠) and Honor (名，信): The social expectations that drive your inside person or that you use to justify your outside persona. I know that honor/名 is an awkward translation, partially because I cheated on the word honor, but it is conceptually rather more straightforward -- you need to keep (honor) your word and defend your reputation (honor). 侠 (xia) is the xia of wuxia. (The wu is "martial", so whereas wu is the how, xia is the why). It's the sense of righteousness -- doing the right thing. Saving the damsel in distress, ridding the world of evil, not delivering the final blow (a code of honor, if you will). But righteousness is also about appearing righteous. I love this and how it connects to the Inside/Outside you. You might be internally chivalrous but is perceived as a social deviant and unrighteous. Or maybe the chivalrous thing to do is to back down, but the honorable thing to do is to fight and defend your reputation or your school. You might be killing people left and right due to some chivalrous desire to rid the world of evil (or at least justifying it as such.)
So far there has been the dynastic setting, the political and social maneuverings of the 江湖 武林, ideological underpinnings of chivalry and honor. What about the wu (martial) part of Wuxia?
Martial: What I consider the wuxia equivalent of fantasy's "magic" -- the thing that differentiates the genre from historical fiction, the thing that is a part of the basic premise, but also the most "gimmicky". The most basic premise here, of course, is that fighting is a valid course of action. In fact, the trump to any problem -- the master of the school died without passing on the mantle to a specific person? Let's fight it out! A corrupting religious sect is terrorizing the region? Let's fight them! It is also what everyone wants -- not more knowledge or more power, but more knowledge of fighting skills and fighting chi.
Unlike magic in many stories, martial abilities can be learned by anyone, and isn't genetic. But there's different schools, different abilities, often with themed attacks that Jono thinks the author chose by throwing darts on a dart board -- Let's name the moves after Tang poetry! Or stories of beautiful women! Or phrases from the I Ching! Got a dog-beating stick? Each move should have the word dog in it!
And Chi! If you channel it right, you can do everything better! And you have defensive chi and offense chi! And you can block people's chi with pressure points!
And secret instruction books 秘籍 can help you advance your chi and martial arts by leaps and bounds! All the masters just leave them all over the place! You can't fall down a cliff without running into them!
And old dying masters can give you all their chi!
.... As I said, pretty gimmicky. Instead of magical objects and the rule of three, there's secret books and the rule of "No one who falls off a cliff ever dies". But it also might make a pretty interesting conflict system.
But yes, this all started because I bought a couple volumes of Heaven Sword, Dragon Sabre comics on Thursday and then Jinghua was asking about western fantasy on Saturday. :D
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Also, I will totally playtest/play/buy any wuxia game you and Jono write.
I can't wait until my Chinese gets good enough to read wuxia novels. But that's probably going to take a while...
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PS: Got your xmas presents today!! You know the things that please me so well.=^_^=