Tag: Martial arts
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Martialism, Movement, Meditation, Metaphysics
A punch is a punch. A stance is a stance. A pill is a pill. None of them meet. This is the mindset that gives rise to ordinary cultivation fiction. Each idea is discrete, compartmentatlised, separate from each other. This is how the modern person views the world. This is how Westerners see the world.…
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Why Pursue the Way of the Fist?
Everybody knows why cultivators in fiction cultivate: to become more powerful, so they can defeat more powerful cultivators. That’s lame. There’s only so much of such cultivation you can read before you get sick of the repetition. You already know how every conflict will end. The only question is how the characters get there—and the…
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The Difference Between Gongfu and Cultivation
Your average wuxia\xianxia\cultivation\progression fantasy author makes a simple distinction between gongfu and cultivation: gongfu is for fighting, cultivation is for gaining power. To become more powerful, characters meditate and consume exotic substances. To express that power, they employ fancy-sounding martial techniques. There is a disconnect between cultivation methods and fighting methods. How a character gains…
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What You Do, You Become
Saga of the Swordbreaker is a story of martial cultivation. Naturally, martial arts is the heart of the series. But what is a martial art? From the layman’s perspective, it is simply a collection of techniques, principles and body mechanics. It shows you how to generate power and transmit it into your opponent, ideally without…
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Babylon Black: The Doctrine of the Sword
Katanas are cool. Small wonder, then, that katanas show up often in cyberpunk media. The genre came of age in an era of Japanese ascendency. In Western cyberpunk works, the katana served as a symbol of Japanese cultural and martial power, and a marker of globalization and Niponnisation. With Babylon, I wanted to do something…
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The Way of Wuxia
The romance of the jianghu crosses borders and cultures. It is freedom from cultural strictures, skill with martial arts, an iron code of honor. In China, its greatest appeal comes from its sharp contrast with Confucian norms, with its emphasis on rigid social hierarchies and complex etiquettes. The West sees parallels with the knights-errant of…