#michi writes

[michis-peaches]

It’s 3 am and I’m feeling nostalgic for the time in which I used to write so here, have something I started but never finished for Larissa Weems.

[twstchaos]

🚪

11. covered in confetti

Knuckles tapped the wooden door.

Tonk. Tonk.

Silence.

Tonk. Tonk.

More silence.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Peri opened the door to be met with a very pouty Missy Chievous. Her face and hair was covered in sparkly shreds of paper, glitter, sequins, and everything else shiny under the sun.

"Wha-"

"Ester shot a confetti cannon at me, and now I need help plotting my revenge.

[melissaschemmentisglasses]

I love this “forever stuck with this Meredith Blake x Melissa Schemmenti one-shot” state I’m in currently

[lady-loveluck]

Werewolf AU-

Prank doesn't work on Max, someone else falls, and after drunk driving and running over a mysterious creature, Max now has much more to think than the nerd who saved his life.

[howtofightwrite]

Is it possible for a character who is 18cm shorter and not as muscled as their opponent to pin said opponent to the ground in a few calculated moves? Both characters are fit and exercise regularly, but the shorter character has trained in various martial arts (with and without weapons) and the taller one is more proficient in sword duelling. My intent is to write a sparring scene where the shorter character humbles the (overconfident) taller one. Any specific martial arts I should look at?

So... being shorter doesn't matter. In fact, in this situation, it is an advantage.

I'm going to point out here that if you're not careful, your character that you want to have a badass moment is going to look like an complete asshole because they are humiliating another character who they actually are better than. If they haven't been trading off humiliations to build tension (safely so no one gets hurt) then you're going to have a lopsided “sparring” session. Or, you will, if you haven't been building up your narrative to support the humbling. (And there is a lot that goes into these scenes to make them work, which, if you're not familiar with how martial arts training works then you'll approach it from the wrong mindset and hit Starke's pet peeve.)

Let's hit the ground running with the high points:

Sparring is not dueling.

Sparring is not play fighting.

Sparring is not so you can humiliate your opponent.

Sparring is not about fighting anyone or anything.

Sparring is a training exercise so that both of you can work on improving specific techniques.

Do people in real life get carried away sparring? Yes, they do. Are they complete competitive idiots about it? Yes, they are. Do they get punished for it? Absolutely, they do. This is especially true where they'll be expected to put their lives on the line. Treating violence like a game is detrimental, and leaves the trainee ill-prepared for dealing with real danger when in the field. Make no mistake, that is exactly the mindset you are describing in this question. Your characters (at least your minor ones, the trainers in this situation if your leads are too young or too dumb to comprehend their reality) should care about stomping this attitude out. And you as the author should to. Why? Because if you don't take the violence in your narrative seriously neither will your audience.

There are rules, as a writer it's imperative you establish the rules (and there no rules means you haven't established them for violence in your setting and therefore won't be able to establish the baseline that can be built upon later) and one of the rules is that you're not going to spar someone with a weapon (wood or otherwise) unless you both have weapons. There's not a lot of value in having one character spar with a weapon and one spar without one unless it's a knife, and the point is learning the dangers of knife fighting. And knives make sense because they are in the same distance range as fists. Swords are in a completely separate distance category. They are mid-range weapons.

You don't practice disarms by sparring, you practice disarms by practicing disarms in a controlled setting where you're repeating the motion over and over. Can you humiliate a person by being good at practice disarms? Yes. You do it by being a complete dick. It also requires the character in question to be better at the moves in question than the other character performing them because they need to be able to confidently, or at least believe they can, counter the other person's growing anger while taking the move a step further or two than they're supposed to. It also means they can get away with it without arousing the suspicions of their instructor (or act with their instructors approval) and no one gets hurt. (We hope.) For a character to do this is a sign of overconfidence, FYI. As is trying to humiliate someone in a sparring session. The characters that are good enough? They don't do it.

In fiction, good sparring scenes serve one real purpose. They establish a baseline of skill in safe setting so the audience becomes comfortable only for that to be disrupted and thrown into chaos when the characters encounter real violence. There's two paths for this. Either the character is a big winner only to be brutally beaten later, or they get dumped on their ass to find that they're actually much better prepared than they thought later when it matters. That's why so many stories with these scenes dump their MC on their ass, especially in any Wuxia or Shounen manga. This is because the authors of these stories understand that sparring has no reflection on how well a person will do when they're allowed out of the training safe space. If your baseline is: my character is awesome. Then it's all downhill from that point on.

Say it with me, Losses Create Tension. If your character is winning all the time, you have no tension and your fight scenes will be boring. The goal when it comes to creating a character who is good at fighting is to make other characters look better. Or, from an antagonistic/mentor point they exist to establish the height our MCs must eventually reach/how much further they have to go in their journey. Kakashi's fight with Zabuza or the first fight between Itachi and Sasuke in Naruto are both great examples of how to do this well.

I'm not saying you can't write a sparring scene like the one you intend. I can't tell you to do anything, what I want to you to start doing is considering the implications of the scene, what it may say about your world and characters that you didn't intend, and it's overall impact on the whole of your narrative. Narrative gratification here is work you'll need to do to build back your tension later. Is it a win your MC can afford?

Now, you can look at any martial art that has a ground fighting component for what you want to do unless you're planning on having the duelist spar with their sword. If you want that, you're going to have to do a lot more work with a smaller pool. This will be doubly true if your characters are of European descent and you want to avoid the East Asian martial art styles.

Type: “how do you knock your opponent off balance?” into Google and you'll find a lot of variations.

The basic concept behind putting someone on the ground isn't strength, it's balance. The key is disrupting your opponent's balance. If you're skilled enough or your opponent's footwork is bad enough, it can be done in a single move. In fact, it can be done a variety of different ways from a variety of different moves from countless different martial arts. The question isn't can it be done, the question is how does your character want to do it? The fact they are short only helps them because their center of gravity will be lower than their opponent's, they don't have to work as hard to maintain their balance, their stance doesn't have to be as deep, and they will have an easier time knocking a taller person over. Most people who've never practiced martial arts have no idea how foundational the footwork is or how important the feet are to staying upright.

I personally like reviewing Silat for studying balance, not necessarily for techniques, but because I find their instruction on the concept easy to grasp/digest. They do the string on the top of the head and the balance triangle, which if you can wrap your mind around that you'll be able to conceptualize fight scenes where the character focuses on knocking an opponent off balance better. 

The above is a more advanced video, but if you have no martial arts background or even a sports background whatsoever then you want to aim for instructional videos that focus on concepts over techniques. The advice is always write what you know and if you don't know learn. Copying techniques onto the page won't create a great fight scene. Understanding the concept, philosophy, and basic body mechanics behind the techniques will get you much further. None of them are stand ins for real experience or doing it yourself. If you really want to be good at it, find a martial art you like, find a school nearby, and invest the time.

All of your characters' martial arts moves (whether they are dueling with a sword or fighting hand to hand) function around the body's center of gravity. Your center of gravity is slightly above your hips and in your core muscles i.e your abdominal muscles. They will be trained so maintaining their balance is second nature. When martial artists talk about overextending, they're talking about putting your weight past your balance point which puts you in danger of losing your balance/falling over or being grabbed, kicked, etc and getting thrown, tripped, or forced into a fall. This can happen when you're throwing a punch, doing a kick, lunging with your sword, or doing any other sort of movement. You end up in a position where your balance between your front and back leg is destabilized, which creates the opening for your opponent to throw you. Or when you fall over on the ice, because that happens too.

Some other martial arts to turn to:

Judo

Jiu Jutsu

Aikido

Baguazhang (Seen in Avatar the Last Airbender as the basis for Air Bending)

Tai Chi Chuan

Northern Shaolin

Taekwondo (if you want to do it via kicks, all kicking martial arts innately focus on balance)

Krav Maga

Ninjutsu

The list goes on.

I also recommend dipping your toes into live action martial arts flicks to start getting yourself accustomed to more complex choreography. This is getting yourself out of the animated space (like in anime) and into the space where you have to watch a live person perform the techniques. Asian cinema has a different choreography style than the US does, because there are different cultural expectations. Overall, the choreography is more intricate and they break the action down a lot more (as opposed to American media where they zoom out to cover for the stunt double.) It's easier to see how the bodies are working and they put a lot more focus on destabilizing balance as part of the fight sequences. Hollywood doesn't get into the weird martial arts shit unless it's an actual martial arts action film. You can also do an Avatar the Last Airbender/Legend of Korra deep dive because the action there is also usually on point, but I'm a proponent of going to the source when you want to learn something. So, you know watch Alchemy of Souls instead.

-Michi

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[god-of-fandoms]

working on some art for a NPMD michie au where richie is a vampire and max is a werewolf

should i post more about this? because ive been rotating it in my mind for WEEKS now and its making me a little insane actually

(@lady-loveluck i based my max design off of yours a bit because the way you draw my boy makes me foam at the mouth hope you enjoy)

anyway, have a lovely day!

-lee :)

[overdue07]

In Michie fanfics with supernatural stuff, Max is always the monster. He is either dead, a werewolf, or something else.

But, hear me out, we wrote fics were Richie as the monster. No a ghost, but an actual monster.

Like after or before the prank on Max's happens, Richie gets attacked or injured by a big monster with Max being the first person to find out.

Bonus if Richie getting stronger/scary then Max, freaking everyone else out, while Max finds it hot as hell.

[randomsufff]

Ok, to the like 5 Michie girlies (I see y’all, I appreciate y’all 🫡) I’ve cooked a bit hear me out:

In Literal Monster one of the nerds says “I once was his tutor, then I regarded my future”- so that implies he needs a tutor/ is academically failing, right? But it seems he actually needed and valued it because the tutor seemingly worked for, at the very least, a day before quitting on her own terms… (DO YOU GUYS SEE THE VISION)

So- everyone lives/nobody dies AU where Richie is the one who saves Max, Max- who thinks the gang threw him this party+Richie saving his football season (cause he would totally value that more then his life come on)- is like, on neutral/ friendlier terms with the gang, bla bla bla something happens and Max asks (basically forces lmao) Richie into tutoring him. (Reasons why Max can’t just cheat off of Richie can range from him sitting next to Grace to Richie gaining a bit of confidence seeing Max ask him for help and saying no (but plz don’t kill me I’ll still help you)).

Bing Bang Boom, redemption arc for Max as he falls for the cringe ass failure of a anime weeb. Very slowly! but surely.

(Plus you get so many funny scenarios- The gang finding out Richies helping their bully-turned-maybe friend????(at least he thinks so), RUTH FINDING OUT (I KNOW that girl reads/writes hardcore smut fanfic), Max slowly getting into anime via osmosis (would he like Attack on Titian? I feel like yes.) etc. Endless possibilities here.)

[mmmichyyy]

#78 and #57 from the new prompt list?

#57. "we could get struck by lightning, but you want to kiss in the rain." #78. "can you be romantic for once?"

(continuation of this secret spies/assassins' ficlet)

"fuck," ian pants, clutching his chest, "that was close."

"well whose fault was that?" mickey snarls, pushing ian against the damp brick wall of the dark alley. "if you didn't take your sweet fuckin' time cutting me loose, we could've avoided the storm and gotten to the safehouse by now."

"well," ian takes a step towards mickey, reaching out to push wet strands of hair out of mickey's face, to which he annoyingly swats away. droplets of rain and blood from their clothes mix together, painting the cement crimson red. "you know i like to take my time with you."

mickey shakes his head, ignoring the swoop in his chest. "you're impossible."

"thought that's what you liked about me," ian smirks, lips ticked upwards knowingly in a way that simultaneously annoys and endears mickey to no end.

instead, he spits out, "who said i liked you?"

ian hums. "maybe you don't like me. but," he presses his thumb right on mickey's pulse point on his wrist. whispers, "you know you need me."

"i don't." mickey isn't convincing anyone, not even himself. "i don't need anyone."

"is that right." ian leans in, warm breath curling around mickey's neck. they're standing close, too close. mickey shivers. "then what was that earlier? hm?"

"i said what i needed to escape." ian's tongue licks along the shell of mickey's ear, and he has to physically bite back from letting out a moan. "it's... it's your fault for believing me."

"maybe you meant it, maybe you didn't," ian murmurs. "but do you know what i need?"

mickey shakes his head, a lump caught in his throat.

ian cradles his palm against mickey's cheek.

"i need to kiss you."

the heavy thrum of mickey's pulse beats against his chest, threatening to escape, to burst, to combust, matching the beat of heavy raindrops against the rusted metal awning above their heads. "we could get struck by lightning at any second now, but you want to kiss in the fuckin' rain?"

"i want to kiss you all the time, actually," ian admits. "but watching you slice open all of the guards' necks with my knife and smash that giant asshole's head in? has me all worked up."

mickey lets out a snort. "knew you had a blood kink, gallagher."

"maybe." ian shrugs, dropping his hand. "or maybe i just want to make out with my partner because we eliminated the target, killed off pretty much the entire criminal organization we've been chasing for the past few months, and i've never been more hard in my entire life."

"jesus christ, you're the most infuriating person i've ever met."

"i could say the same for you."

"i hate you."

"i know you do."

"you almost got us killed."

"but we're still alive, aren't we?"

"you don't listen to instructions, you keep thinking everything's going to be okay, that you're fuckin' invincible, that you'll survive anything. but what if you don't, huh? what if one day your luck runs out?"

"mickey."

"I should've never agreed to take on this assignment with you. you're too reckless, you dive in head first without taking account of the risks, you're going to slip up one day and–"

"mickey."

"if the agency finds out we've been fucking they're never going to pair us together again, let alone see each other–"

"mickey."

"what, gallagher?" mickey says, exasperated. "what? am i wrong? tell me i'm wrong."

ian looks at him square in the eye, unblinking. "do you trust me?"

the question hits mickey's chest in full force, throwing off his equilibrium and almost knocking him over. "what?"

"i said," ian curls his finger around a belt loop on mickey's pants and pulls him close. too close. "do you trust me?"

"what kind of question is that?" mickey sighs, exasperated. "'course i do. you know i do."

"then," ian gently presses his lips against mickey's cheek, "trust me when i say–" nose "–i won't let anything–" the other cheek "–happen to you–" temple "–okay? i would take a fucking bullet for you before i let you die on me." bumps their foreheads together and sighs. "it's just you and me against the whole fucking world."

it's moments like this, when ian says shit like this that punches the air out of mickey's lungs and fills him with a fire that incinerates his blood. moments that confirm ian goddamn gallagher will be under his skin until his last dying breath.

"i got your back, mickey," ian says quietly. "do you have mine?"

of course i do you idiot, mickey wants to scream. how can you not know that? you're everything to me. how could you doubt me? how?

but then he sees it. the tiniest hint of vulnerability in ian's eyes, blink and he might've missed it. a tiny crack in the porcelain façade of ian's confidence, a startling contrast to his usual cocky demeanor.

and mickey knows. knew it from the very beginning, actually.

as much as he needs ian, ian needs him too.

they need each other.

"i do," mickey nods. "i always got your back."

"so," ian's eyes meet mickey's own, a faint hint of a smile on his face, "can you be romantic for once and let me kiss you in the rain?

the lines between hate and love, truth and lies, rationality and emotions, pain and pleasure - they have always been a thin boundary for mickey. in his way of thinking, his actions, in the way he breathes - a dangerous contradiction constantly teetering between life and death.

and well. how often will he come across a person who will not only accept his flaws and detriments, but also willing to walk the line with him?

"fuckin' do it then," mickey breathes and ian doesn't hesitate to close the distance between them, gently slotting their lips together at first, then eagerly intertwining their tongues and drinking each other in as the rain pours around them.

kissing ian gallagher is careening off a cliff, an adrenaline rush, a rollercoaster ride. it's also soft waves crashing on the shore, a warm cup of coffee in the morning, a cigarette after a long day.

kissing ian gallagher feels like coming home.

and mickey will chase that feeling for the rest of his life.

[ameriewadiasbangs]

found a new ship i'm obsessed with. it's not canon. the media it's from only came out free to the public about two weeks ago. there are 17 fics in the tag on ao3. i've read them all. i know what i have to do but i don't know if i have the strength to do it.

[lastwiltedflower]

Grace: We're nerdy prudes. We're going to have unsolicited sexual fantasies about the star quarterback Richie: I was gonna use that one! Grace: What Richie: Just kidding *to Steph* I'm not kidding Steph: Dear God

[twstchaos]

Missy Chievous: Birthday Bloom / Bloom Broom Birthday SSR - Happy Birthday

Do not mind me, just casually a day late for the birthday post.

The Magical Pendulum has decided Missy’s birthday fate. 

Sonne Clemens belongs to @twstwhisper. 

“Happy Birthday” vignette and the random urge to write dialogue solely in the Harveston accent under the cut. 

Happy Birthday (Part One)

INT. DIASOMNIA DORM - BIRTHDAY PARTY VENUE

MISSY: It’s gettin’ late. Ah sure hope the Magical Pendulum didn’t forget about me this year... 

???: Sorry that it took me a while, the dorm leader wanted to make sure my appearance was in order. 

SONNE: Joyeux anniversaire, Missy!

MISSY: SONNE BESTIE, HI!

MISSY: Ah really lucked out wit havin’ ya as mah presenter this year!

SONNE: ...could you be any louder?

MISSY: Hmm? Didya say somethin’?

SONNE: Nope, nothing at all. Let’s just get this interview underway. 

MISSY: ALRIGHT! Fire away, Sonne!

SONNE: Okay, your first question is “if you could use flight magic to go anywhere, where would you like to go?”

MISSY: Hmm, that’s a good question. Lemme think... 

MISSY: There’s this country off the coast of the Queendom of Roses. Ah’ve always wanted ta go there ever since Ah was little.

SONNE: Country off of the coast... 

SONNE: That’s Albion, right?

MISSY: Yeah! That’s actually where mah mum’s from, well, her ancestors that is. 

MISSY: Ah mean, Ah don’t need flight magic ta get there, so Ah guess it’s just somewhere Ah would like ta go. 

SONNE: Though, since your mum’s family is from Albion, why hasn’t she taken you there herself?

MISSY: Uhm, Ah’ve never really tried ta ask her ‘bout goin’. It’s just somethin’ Ah’ve always thought ‘bout. 

MISSY: Honestly, Ah dunno much about Albion ta begin wit.

MISSY: Ah just know that the family has a HUGE estate there. 

—

Happy Birthday (Part Two)

INT. DIASOMNIA DORM - BIRTHDAY PARTY VENUE

SONNE: Alright, time for the second question. 

SONNE: “What is your best class?”

MISSY: Ha! The all-powerful me has got two answers for that!

MISSY: Ahm pretty good, if Ah say so mahself, with the more “do it” classes like flight in PE and Practical Magic. 

MISSY: Ahm more of a hands-on learner than a “read about it in a book” learner. 

MISSY: When Ah do somethin’, Ah do it flawlessly. 

MISSY: Magic just comes naturally to me!

SONNE: Okay, I get what you mean.

SONNE: How about from those two, which is your favorite?

MISSY: Ah bet yer thinkin’ it’s flight, but ya’ll be surprised to know it’s Practical Magic. 

MISSY: Ah don’t really know why Ah like it more, but Ah just do.

MISSY: Ah just feel such a rush whenever Ah complete a spell perfectly. 

MISSY: Also, competing and beating both Epel and Roche at seeing who can do the spell first is always the highlight of the class for me.

MISSY: So yeah, Ah love Practical Magic. 

—

Happy Birthday (Part Three)

INT. DIASOMNIA DORM - BIRTHDAY PARTY VENUE

SONNE: Okay, time for the final question. 

SONNE: “What would you like to do in the coming year?”

MISSY: Honestly, Ah’ve never really thought ‘bout this much.

MISSY: Ah guess like any first-going-ta-second year on the Magift team, Ah’d like ta be first string but not much else. 

MISSY: Actually, there is another thing Ah’m hopin’ ta get better at. 

SONNE: Oh? What’s that?

MISSY: Ah’ve been workin’ on mah Unique Magic to transform inta a lot more. 

SONNE: Ah, yes, your Unique Magic.

MISSY: Once we say what Ah could potentially do, Ah put in the effort ta get there. 

MISSY: And with the help of Néné, Malleus, and everyone else in Diasomnia, Ah have finally mastered “kitty form!”

SONNE: ...oh, good grief. I’m sensing more pranks in the future.

MISSY: Ehehe, ya know it!

MISSY: But since it is a very drastic transformation, Ah can only sustain it for a few minutes right now. 

MISSY: BUT AH WILL OBTAIN MAXIMUM KITTY POWER! 

MISSY: NOW THAT IS MAH PLAN FOR THE COMING YEAR!

—

SONNE: As much as I would love to hear more about how you plan on terrorizing unsuspecting members of the student body with your “maximum kitty power,” our time together for your birthday interview has come to an end. Please accept this broom. 

MISSY: Aww, Ah wanted to chat more with mah bestie!

MISSY: But Ah guess we can continue this later! 

MISSY: Now it's time for me ta show off mah flying prowess!

SONNE: You got this, Missy, and happy birthday!

—

MISSY: Shoulders back, chest high, head up, and FLY!

[im-not-a-l0ser]

I want to read a fic where Max starts flirting with Richie as a joke after the near death experience and becoming friends, and eventually it turns serious but he never tells Richie that. Meanwhile Richie is slowly falling in love with him and is very upset about it, and eventually they get together. Pretty please.

[royall-ass]

Maybe i ship michie cuz one of my favorite tropes is forbidden love

(richie forbidden because his entire friend group hates max and fears him, max because he’s supposed to be a popular jock that gets all the girls and his dad pressures him to act that way. to be a real man)

(anyway the song jason by bonnie parker is so michie coded to me go listen to it)

[writtenbyme-c]

It's heeeerrrrrreeee

25k of Michie for you lovely lot <3 I hope you enjoy!!!!!

[howtofightwrite]

I'm writing a scene where a cultivater (chinese martial artists who fights ghosts) falls in a forest and I'm trying to figure out how someone who fights on rough terrain would train to fall. I tried looking at martial art/parkour/stunt man tutorials, but I feel like a lot of the basic techniques (rolling, and slapping the ground to distribute weight) wouldn't work well on uneven ground. I also tried looking at hiking advice but they just say to fall on your pack. Any insight?

Chinese cultivators don’t fall, they choose to reacquaint themselves with the ground.

That sounds like a joke, but the best way to understand Chinese cultivators and Chinese fantasy media is to realize that martial arts are the gateway drug to magic. And that will get you into a lot of trouble if you follow that all the way into Martial Arts Give You Superpowers, which is both the outgrowth of the western understanding of Chinese culture and a trope rife with orientalism. Cultivation seems simple on the surface when you’re watching Chinese media, but it’s more than martial arts, it’s more than religion, it’s more than mythology, (though it is all of those too) it’s a genuine transition into metaphysics that reorients how we understand and interact with the world around us. The concepts we see in cultivation come from real martial arts philosophy that you find in Tai Chi, Shaolin, and most other Chinese martial arts. They come from real religions including Daoism, Buddhism, a healthy dose of Confucianism, general mythology and mysticism from a wide range of subcultures, and, to an extent, Animism. If you aren’t doing your reading with the Eight Immortals, Journey to the West, The Legend of the White Snake, and others then you should dig in. I also really suggest watching the live action C-Dramas whether they’re true Wuxia or more Xianxia idol dramas (and in this case the idol dramas are better because the action is slower) so you can acquaint yourself with the stylized martial arts portrayals, a wide variety of choreography, character archetypes essential to motif based storytelling, and the most important aspect of all—wire work.

Understanding and conceptualizing stunt action done on wires is essential when you’re trying to visualize and create action scenes in any East Asian genre. Your first instinct might be to dismiss the stylized movement as unrealistic (it is) but remember that it’s also genre essential. Hong Kong action cinema has a very specific feel to it that’s very different from the way Western cinema structures and films their fight scenes. Even when you’re writing, you’ll want to find ways to imitate it through your visual imagery on the page.

Probably the best way to contextualize cultivators is that they’re wizards who do martial arts. They’ve learned to transcend the limitations in our understanding of reality through knowledge and study to perform superhuman feats. How superhuman? Well, it gets wild. They can be anywhere from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon/Who Rules the World fly through the trees levels to Shang Tsung’s “I’m going to slam my hell reality into your normal reality because commuting to work is too much of an inconvenience.”

Which is to say, they don’t always fight ghosts. Sometimes they fight other martial artists, sometimes they fight other cultivators, sometimes they fight demons, sometimes they fight gods, and sometimes they fight incredibly overpowered monkeys. They’re often monks living in seclusion on a mountaintop, but not always. Cultivation is more of a state of mind. Anyone can do it if they learn how to absorb spiritual energy from the world around them through meditation and breathing exercises. Gods cultivate. Humans cultivate. Animals cultivate. Remember, the demons and the ghosts cultivate too. Sometimes, your master gets reincarnated as a demon. Sometimes, you do. The amount of wacky spellcasting you can do is dependent on how much energy you’ve cultivated, which is dependent on how old you are and how good at cultivation you are. Using the power means you need to cultivate more energy, the greater the spell or difficult the battle then the more energy is lost.

This is important to the question of: how does a cultivator fall?

Metaphorically? Existentially? Physically?

When we’re talking physically, wire work becomes very important. Think of your cultivator as being on wires. If they have the knowledge and understanding to do it, they can slow their own fall through the air to land harmlessly on the ground or twist over like a cat and launch themselves back off the ground to fly at their opponent in a counter attack. If they have the knowledge and understanding, they can teleport. If they lack the knowledge and understanding or want to trick their opponent, they can hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. If they’re relying on basics, they can also smack the ground to counter and spread out the impact then use the momentum from that fall to roll back onto their feet. They’ll do it no matter what terrain they’re on because it’s a basic technique that’s trained into their foundation to the point it’s a reflexive action. Any force distributed away from, and reducing impact on, important body parts like your spine is better than nothing. It’s better to sacrifice your arm than be paralyzed. At its heart, that’s the point of the technique. If you’re able to walk away with a functioning spine, it’s done its job. Your shoulder hurts? That’s normal. Your arm is sprained or broken? Sucks, but that’s better than the alternative that is paralysis and death. For reference, learning to fall was the first lesson my Wushu instructor ever taught me. It is that basic.

A lot of the time when portraying cultivators in media, the goal is to show them as being beyond the limitations of standard martial artists. How vast the gap is between the cultivator and the average human is dependent on both the setting and the cultivator. So, the average martial artist who possesses superhuman talents but hasn’t dedicated themselves to a life of cultivation and cultivators who are new to the path are going to be on the rung below and more likely to be knocked on their ass. Cultivators in the mid-range are more likely to have crafted or trained in solutions to being knocked on their ass which put them in a less vulnerable position while recovering and empowered/enhanced their martial arts. Cultivators in the top tier are usually straight up masters at spellcasting, if they deign to fight at all. Gravity need not apply. Rember, the time it takes you to hit the ground and roll to your feet is time your opponent has to launch a counter attack or move to a better position. Also, it means you’ve taken your eyes off your opponent. This is bad enough against a normal human opponent. Against another mostly immortal or ancient magic user this risks a terrible outcome.

Cunning and strategy are both as important as skill. Wisdom, knowledge, and hard work outweigh talent and raw potential. You’ll have to decide how esoteric you want to be and what limits you want to set. I really urge you to do this because the danger of power creep is real and especially prominent here. A character’s growth in power is often linked to their growth in character or their arc, as they gain a greater understanding of themselves and the world around them their skill increases. The self-discovery/self-reflection/self-interrogation/intense suffering to reach enlightenment portion is just as important and intrinsic to the martial arts portion of Martial Arts Give You Superpowers. It’s easy to focus on the Superpowers or the Martial Arts parts of the equation and miss the genre necessity of character growth. This growth often happens through heaps of steadily increasing trauma. Or, failing to undergo that by being too powerful and thus unable to progress is the joke like it is in Qi Refining for 3000 Years. (Go to hell, Bai Qiuran, you hilariously overpowered monstrosity.)

The irony is that the trajectory in character growth is the same trajectory the average student experiences when practicing martial arts. The only difference is that the power arc is inflated. This includes overcoming ingrained truths that you believe about yourself, about your own abilities, what you believe yourself to be capable of (both good and bad,) about your biases toward yourself and other people, your biases about reality in general, your understanding of good and evil, the potential upending of right and wrong, and facing the greater complexity found in the world at large. The stripping away of these illusions, coming to terms with uncomfortable realizations in a more complicated world, and the gaining of new understanding and confidence are vital to that growth.

Skill isn’t just represented in the power creep, it’s also found in a character’s sophistication and complexity in their approach to combat and life in general. Their awareness both of themselves and of other people, their ability to read intentions, their predictive abilities, their complexity in initiating their own strategy and tactics while also recognizing and countering the plans of others. It’s their insight into human nature and their cunning. It’s not enough to be powerful. The world is full of powerful people and not so powerful people who have the capacity to be just as dangerous. This isn’t Goku and Freeza slamming into each other while the planet explodes in nine minutes. You also need to be smart. It’s also not about being a better person. It’s about being a self-aware person. A person who is self-actualized. Monkey’s growth is in his awareness of the world around him through his experiences and in approaching problems differently rather than becoming less of a little shit. If you grow up in the West, one of the issues you’re going to face is thinking of these hurdles as materialistic rather than emotional or intellectual.

A lot of Western media misinterprets the concepts of “giving up” as physical sacrifice. One of the popular examples is physically sacrificing the person we love. In order to have enlightenment, we must be separated from them. We can’t physically be with them anymore. Whereas under a Buddhist structure, what we are actually sacrificing is our own ignorance, our own preconceptions, and beliefs that keep the world comfortable. Under this structure, we’re sacrificing our preconceived notions of who our loved one is. The person that we invented when we first met and we must force ourselves to come to terms with who they really are. The outcome of this isn’t necessarily going to be bad, but it’s still painful. The person we think we love could be perfectly wonderful. However, they’re not who we imagined. If we choose to hold onto the illusion we created, to ignore the realization that the illusion is the person that we love, we’ll only end up causing ourselves and our loved one more pain. We must fall in love with them all over again. Coming to terms with that is painful. All pain comes from ignorance. In sacrificing, letting go of, or overcoming our ignorance, we grow.

These are the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual challenges necessary for a cultivator because they allow the cultivator to level up. Yes, level up. Whether this is coming from the influx of gaming culture into media at large or because the concept synergizes with the Buddhist goal of progressing through the Six Realms toward nirvana, leveling up is how a cultivator’s increasing power is often depicted. Of course, once we reach the next level we can’t go back except by falling or failing and are no longer the person we once were. This then gets mixed in with Daoist principles of finding divine understanding by living in harmony with the universe. The more understanding we gain of the world, the more energy we can absorb as a result, but our original goals may be lost or changed in the process. If a character begins their journey on the path of revenge, their newfound contextualization of the situation that caused them immense pain may force them to give that revenge up or find they don’t want revenge anymore.

Failure is also an option and often a common part of the story. These stories usually follow characters through multiple lives and rebirths over hundreds and even thousands of years, especially if they’re also gods. This is the existential fall. The fall to the Dark Side. All our heroes are going to go through it at least once. This is also why a lot of Chinese media ends in tragedy with hope for the next round.

-Michi

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