#wuxia inspired

[koglasain]

[mlundart]

Yet another silly alternate ending to Mysterious Lotus Casebook cuz . . . I'm not over it, ha ha!

Enjoy!

[romanceyourdemons]

most fucked up thing in my life is the fact that the burning of the red lotus temple (1928) is lost and i can’t watch it. like i feel like everything cool that could possibly be in london after midnight (1927) already exists in the promo stills, but i absolutely need to see what could have happened in the burning of the red lotus temple (1928) to justify this image

[ID: a lobby card for the burning of the red lotus temple (1928); two men in hanfu shoot lightning at each other with their hands, while a young man and woman stand back and watch /end ID]

[you-are-my-neverland]

GODHOOD >> A COMIC SANS INTRODUCTION

welcome to the wip that's been eating my brain for more than six months. i recently started draft one, and having the time to explore writeblr more inspired me to do one of these! image description can be found in the alt text (hopefully it looks ok).

i have no official taglist yet, but if anyone is interested, please just let me know. all interaction is appreciated.

[shuuenka]

[OC] Li Yi Ling

[enmi-land]

i have so many ideas for enha aus, but lowkey know that i probably won’t be able to work on all of them at once and that’s disheartening 😔

[wuxiaphoenix]

Short Worldbuilding Bit: Inspiration in Odd Places

In previous posts I’ve mentioned the movies Mr. Vampire and The Ultimate Vampire 1991. The actor who played the Taoist priest in both movies was Lam Ching-ying, who played in many, many other Hong Kong fantasy films I haven’t seen yet. But I hope to track them down, because he portrayed a great Only Sane Man when dealing with monsters!

...Which is part of the inspiration bit. I have a definite liking for characters who take aggravating situations in stride and improvise their way out of it. And if they’ve actually prepared things in advance as well, and are just improvising because they didn’t expect things to get that supernaturally bad that quickly? Even better! Competence, how I adore thee!

But also, and in specific. There’s a neat trick that Lam Ching Ying’s characters use. He’ll do something like touch a candle or lantern flame, and then he has the flame on his fingertips to apply to magic or monsters.

Which is part of the idea I had for Colors - that whatever force/substance you’re using exists already, you’re pulling it from somewhere else.

If you want to check out some 80’s wuxia magic, here’s a few clips!

[potnialabyrinthoio95]

I add that this idea would be perfect for a xianxia too.

I wouldn’t mind to read or watch a series based on this idea: we need more badass heroic female protagonists who don’t fit the traditional chinese ideal femininity in both appearance and personality in these genres.

[eszter-hazy]

whatever the genre, a GL in it will always hit different

[playingplayer2]

Reminding myself daily (gently) that long hair does equate femininity and that the longer I grow my hair out, the more layers I can have while still being able to use all of my pretty, fancy, sparkly, ornate, hair sticks and pins.

[mlundart]

Loved loved loved Mysterious Lotus Casebook, and that epilogue still haunts me. I feel very torn about it.

So here's a stupid fix-it that came to mind during one of my re-watches :P

[sunriseverse]

the au has consumed me: a cautionary tale

[pretend-i-don-t-exist]

anyway photographer!shen yuan bc i got to take pretty pics of gorgeous landscapes earlier and now im considering to shift to an art major

sy likes taking pictures of his siblings and parents. it isn't for any deep reason like recording their most cherished memories to look back on in the future; he just likes taking pictures. his parents got him an expensive camera meant for professional photography with accompanying lessons, and sy absolutely loved it.

he didn't do much outside of photographing his family and friends and whatever caught his eye— he wasn't planning on using it as a side hustle or starting a business or anything. he did, however, create a social media account to share his best works. it did not have a large following or anything; it was just a space for sy to share the things he's passionate about.

sy did make sure that it was very, very far away from his peerless cucumber account, bc he's not going to bring his literary criticisms and analyses of objectively trashy novels to his carefully curated, beautiful artwork.

he is content with that, until his meimei begs him to help her friend with a photoshoot. an up and coming model, apparently, whose photographers dipped from the face of the earth and back-up photographers unavailable due to sickness. his meimei suggested him, bc sy is a professional photographer, just unemployed.

sy has spoiled his sister as much as he could. naturally, he accepts.

the model— going by the name of liu su mian hua— thanks him when he arrived at the set. it's a photoshoot with historical and wuxia elements, so miss liu is wearing a hanfu from her sponsor with a sword and a fan as props. sy's nerdiness and inspiration kicks in and he takes the pictures with gusto, focused on taking the most perfect picture he can.

he and miss liu are both happy by the end of the shoot. sy doesn't think that it would happen again, but it does. apparently, miss liu appreciated how he focused on the shoot itself rather than making passes at her. since sy is... well, an unemployed twenty-something year old with pretty much nothing to do, he accepts whenever miss liu requests him as the photographer.

he meets her brother three photoshoots later, who is as beautiful as she is. he seems mistrusting of sy at first, before slowly warming up. sy offers to take pictures of them both (they look so beautiful! so gorgeous! flawless!) and smiles so much at the results. the siblings are photogenic, and easily understands his instructions. truly the best subjects sy can hope for!

(lmy teases lqg when he gay panics bc he wants to ask out the pretty photographer. she's also taking down notes for her latest fanfiction.)

[cerusee]

I've never watched any Chinese dramas but I really enjoy your posts/gifs about them and it's got me interested in trying some! Do you have any recommendations for somebody who's totally new to them? Any tropes/background context I should be aware of? The historical/fantastical ones seem the most appealing to me.

Oooooh! My first thought on reading this ask was, “oh, I’m hardly qualified”; I’m only on my *stops to count on fingers* eighth cdrama, not counting the one episode I watched of the Wang Zhuocheng xianxia where he falls in love with a rock. (Long story.) There’s a lot of cdramas out there, and I myself have not even scratched the surface of what’s out there! That said, if you’re interested in historical/fantastical dramas, those ARE the ones I’ve been watching, so I still have some opinions despite being a total noob myself.

Do not start with The Untamed/Chen Qing Ling. Twas my first cdrama, like a lot of western fans, who were drawn to it in part because of the big censored-but-still-very-evident gay love story between the male leads, but honestly, as much fun as it is for the slash fans, it’s not a great jumping off point for either Chinese television in general, or even for its own wuxia-inspired genre setting. I say this as some who is still deep in the fandom four years later, and has immense love for the show: the first two episodes are flat-out bad, the overall pacing is bad (episodes frequently stop MIDSCENE), the worldbuilding is thin (a carryover from the novel it was based on), and without a larger context for why it’s made the way it’s made (stylistic choices, industry conventions, government censorship, genre conventions) a lot about it is confusing as hell to cdrama newbies, which is…so evident…a lot…in fandom wank I mean in the discourse about what story this story is trying to tell. Like, if you came to me and asked specifically, “I’m thinking of watching CQL. Should I watch CQL?” I would say yes, absolutely! It’s so much fun! I’m obsessed with the characters! I’ve written a lot of fanfic about the purple guy! But it’s not a good first cdrama, nor it is the best example of what the Chinese TV industry has to offer.

A MUCH better first cdrama especially if you like the historical/fantastical: The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2017), which not coincidentally was my second cdrama. It’s one of about a dozen television adaptations of the classic 1957 Chinese novel of the same name by Jin Yong, generally considered to be the inventor of the genre known as wuxia, which is a blend of history, fantasy, and martial arts. (One of the most well-known examples of wuxia in the west is Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning 2000 film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which you have probably at least heard of.)

Legend of the Condor Heroes (hereafter known as LOCH) has it all: romance, revenge, evil plots and daring deeds, people jumping off a burning mountain and being rescued by the worst CGIed eagles known to television or cinema, boat adventures, mountain adventures, grasslands adventures, a weird cult leader who lives on a spooky flower island (there will be math), murder, baby kidnapping, more murder, one guy inadvertently racking up a ridiculous number of martial arts teachers, sworn brotherhoods which invariably end with one guy stabbing the other, lots of VERY good martial arts fights, and, of course, Genghis Khan. Technically there are no magic/supernatural elements in this show—no ghosts, ghouls, magic, angels, devils, gods, etc—although the martial artists do have l33t skillz that might qualify as superhuman depending on how you slice your genre conventions, and are awfully fun to watch.

I’ve actually seen two LOCH adaptations (there was one in 2024 I liked a lot, with my favorite Guo Jing so far), but 2017 is a much better adaptation for newcomers as it tells a fuller version of the story and doesn’t skimp on or rush through or rewrite as many elements of the plot as other versions do; it’s meant to be a LOCH for people who haven’t seen half a dozen versions of LOCH already. It has a WONDERFUL cast, including my one of my favorite cdrama leading men, Chen Xingxu,* as the lead antagonist, Yang Kang, who is a trash fire of a person you just can’t root for, but he also can’t help it because he was raised by Wanyin Honglie. You can catch it on YouTube (I recall that there are couple of missing episodes from that playlist, but you can search on YT for those when you get there, to find them subtitled from other channels.)

*If you, like me, come away from LOCH 2017 with your mouth slightly ajar at how great CXX is, I have wonderful news for you! He’s been a lead in at least two other very good cdramas: the 2023 xianxia** The Starry Love, where he gets to play, like, five different characters (huge acting flex, and he’s great, although I would rush to stress I loved a ton of things about this show besides CXX himself), and the 2019 semi-historical drama Goodbye My Princess, which might actually be my favorite cdrama I have seen to date, and arguably THEE best well-made on a technical level, with phenomenal acting, a great script, and editing and directing I am constantly swooning over, but I am not entirely sure I can recommend to you unless you are a Tragedy Enjoyer.

(If you are a Tragedy Enjoyer, please stop whatever you’re doing and just start watching Goodbye My Princess right now, it is phenomenal. It is also available on YouTube. Watch the Director’s Cut, not the regular one! This is important. In its haste to get the main leads on screen together ASAP, the regular version does a Reader’s Digest version of stuff the Director’s Cut spends like five episodes carefully setting up, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense, nor does it flow well.)

**Speaking of xianxia! Xianxia is the high fantasy genre, full of magic and gods and demons and people dying and living multiple lives and whatnot. Important to note: xianxias are soap operas (complimentary). They tend to feature female protagonists, sweeping, epic romances, and put enormous emphasis on exploring the nuances of relationships and emotions. I have watched three that I loved (Love Between Fairy and Devil, The Starry Love, and Eternal Love: Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms), and while technically I could recommend all three, if you were going to watch just one, especially as a cdrama intro, I have to recommend Eternal Love, which really is the quintessential xianxia, the one all other xianxias are kind of shaping themselves around. I have watched it 1.5 times and I can say that it does not properly take off until like, episode 10, or whenever it is that the main couple finally, properly meet. IT IS WORTH THE INVESTMENT. This show made me want to spit blood. I cried multiple times watching it. It made me feel things. It has a wonderful immersive quality that’s hard to describe except to say that the entire show sort of vibrates on its own frequency. The casting is just kind of…perfect? Props to Maggie Huang for portraying the most perfectly hatable xianxia villainess of all time. Absolutely no one is doing it like Su Jin. No one should try. I believe this is available on YouTube, but after an abortive start, I realized it was on US Netflix, and watched it there.

As for tropes and background context: ehhhhhh. I mean, it’s an entire industry? I know substantially less about how it functions than I do about, like, American TV and film. I know government censorship is a not-inconsiderable factor, but I don’t know much of the nuance of how that plays out in terms of filming and airing. Tropes will vary according to subject. Idol dramas (shows built to showcase media personalities regardless of their ability to act) are a thing. Most cdrama audio is still dubbed (this one surprised me!), usually by professional voice actors and not by the original cast, for a confluence of reasons, some of which historically make sense (noisy filming lots rendering original audio useless), and some of which are really stupid (fans throwing hissy fits if lead actors don’t have the “right” kinds of voices for their characters).

Anyway! My recommendations are this: try The Legend of the Condor Heroes (2017) to start with, UNLESS you would prefer having your heart ripped out of your chest, in which case watch Goodbye My Princess (Director’s Cut, 2019), or UNLESS you love soap operas as much as I do, in which case watch Eternal Love: Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (2017). All three are great shows, but they all hit differently/scratch a different itch.

Oh! Lastly! @dangermousie is a great source of cdrama recs. I should note she prefers dramas and tragedies and mostly does not vibe with xianxias. But she watches like eight million hours of dramas a week and reports her findings to us because she is a river to her people.

[wuxiaphoenix]

Such a pretty costume...

DAQIANG🥹