Does Not Obey the Laws of Physics

So this blathering brought on by thinking too much about Wuxia tropes and feeling a bit triggered by one guy yapping on Bilibili.

Context: I think there's not an insubstantial amount of people who think of the classic Water Margins (《水浒传》) as an Ur-Wuxia, or proto-Wuxia. And unsurprisingly, people who consider Water Margins part of the Wuxia genre tend to also admit that they just ignore the second half of the novel...for some reason.

And I have problems with this.

Any analysis of Water Margins that ignores half of the story and tries to focus only on the first half is erroneous. I mean, yes, you can argue that the author just gave up for the second half, but it doesn't change the fact that the second half is still canon and thus still need to be taken into account when critically examining the themes of the novel. Just as you can't really talk about Lord of the Ring themes by ignoring Return of the King, you can't talk about Water Margins by ignoring the second half where the outlaws reintegrate back to civil society.

In fact, I would argue that the reason Water Margins became a classic is actually because of the second half of the novel. For context, the first half of Water Margins depicts people from all walks of life being forced into becoming outlaws in Liangshan. Halfway through the book, after gathering all 108 characters to form a band of outlaw brotherhood, the group surrenders to the government and become re-incorporated into society. Yet, the government betrays the group by sending them off to die on absolutely hopeless military campaigns, and the ones who manage to survive are assassinated, with only a few who ran off to become outlaws again managing to survive the purge. This novel is not about celebrating the heroism of these fictional characters. Water Margins is ultimately a tragedy about the suffering of regular people under the imperial rule.

The contrast between the relative freedom and self-determination of outlaw life with the ruthless exploitation of government rule is what highlights the injustice of imperial politics. To claim that the 108 characters are "heroic" is deliberately ignoring that a lot of said characters are very regular people. They're a mix of thieves, bandits, bullies, delinquents, and a handful of upstanding members of society who nonetheless have their own flaws and problems. I mean, for fuck's sake, the tactician is named 吴用 (homophone for "useless"). This is not a coincidence! The fact that his miscalculations fucks over the resistance multiple times is also not an accident. The author is deliberately making these characters unheroic because they are just normal people shoved into a terrible situation. At its heart, Water Margins is about the tragedy of humans who want to make a difference but can't overcome their basic human foibles.

Unlike Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which pits practically god-like heroes against each other in a struggle to grab fate by the horns and re-direct the political structure toward their own vision of the future, Water Margins is very much about how helpless individuals are in the face of the all encompassing and organized government bureaucracy that is focused on maintaining the political control of the emperor over the country. Three Kingdoms tells the story from the perspective of the ruling class. Water Margins tells it from the perspective of the ruled. (I bring up Three Kingdoms because the author of Three Kingdoms was the student of the author of Water Margins and was involved somewhat in editing and re-publishing the later editions of Water Margins. And yes, there are multiple editions of Water Margins with changes made to some plot details and characterizations.)

So using a Three Kingdoms mentality, one that is concerned with heroes and rulers and statecraft, to understand Water Margins is fundamentally flawed. Water Margins is not celebrating heroes. It's sympathetic to the tragedy of the peasants. And by experiencing that tragedy, we might come to the conclusion that maybe no one, not even actual gods who descended from heaven and reincarnated into humans, can overcome the very human problems that causes social strife. Water Margins is deeply cynical and depressing, it doesn't really offer an answer to how to fix the problem, because the author probably doesn't have one. The influence of Buddhist thought is very obvious given the only solution the novel has to the vagaries of human society is...well, become a star in the sky. There might be brief flashes of momentary justice (as depicted in the first half of the the novel), but those flashes will ultimately be subsumed by the inherent unfairness of the social order. Humans are social creatures, but we will always prioritize ensuring our personal interest first and foremost.

As you can see, this theme is in direct contrast with the typical Wuxia ethos, where a hero is someone who uses their position of strength to protect those who are weak and by doing so are able to change the course of society's trajectory to one that is more beneficial and more just. If anything, Wuxia is a power fantasy, one in which the individual is able to overcome the inherent flaws of human nature. It's a very individualistic perspective of the world, one in which the individual can make meaningful changes. In addition, Wuxia is ultimately a pro-establishment genre. Because unlike Water Margins, where a rebellion is crushed by the uncaring state and all these flesh and blood characters are sent into a meat grinder to benefit the rule of an uncaring emperor, the Wuxia genre's hero actually makes a difference and is able to use their heroism to change how the people in government use their power, sometimes going so far as to being able to influence the emperor's ethics. Heroes, with their bravery and sacrifice, are able to inspire the ruling class to be better; and if they fail, they will simply get rid of the bad apples and put the good apples in charge.

Notice in Wuxia the hero never leads a rebellion, establish a new state system, and govern with egalitarian rule that protects the well-being of the most marginalized groups. The hero never seizes political power for themselves, because governance is not in their purview. They merely exist to be a good moral influence on the people with power. There is no smashing of the pre-existing power structure to establish more systemic equity. (This is also why I find Wuxia to be a very immature and escapist genre. Which is fine, we need brainless escapism to protect our mental health, but Wuxia as a genre is not equipped to deal with meaningful social commentary.)

In many ways, Wuxia and Superhero stories share a lot of similarities. They are all products of people who have extreme discontent with the powers that be, but aren't able to really see how the system itself is the source of the injustice and would rather blame the problem on bad people rather than a bad system.

So this is a thing that I've started to contemplate while discussing fanfic peeves and whatnot with tanithryudo. I am of the belief that fanfic's job is not to slavishly follow canon, but rather to transform canon into something new. But why is it that when certain elements get altered it feels completely fine while other elements feel like it violated fanfic expectations?

I'm not sure I have a real answer, but I think it might come down to what the reader perceives as flavor vs framework in a story.

Flavor is, vaguely, elements to the canon world building that don't fundamentally alter the plot. Framework, on the other hand, are elements that are so woven into the story's plot advancement/character development that altering it would require extensive re-writing for the story to keep its internal logic consistent.

I will try to demonstrate this via a fantasy comparison and a sci-fi comparison. Note this is not some kind of absolute categorization nor is it a universally agreed upon mechanism. This is merely my shallow attempt at explaining why certain fanfic succeed at transforming the canon while others fail from my perspective.

( Aka, not all AUs are bad, but most of them are. )

Now, as a reader of slash fic/BL fic, I've become quite comfortable with accepting a wide, wide amount of deviation from canon. I will defend deviation and transformation of canon to the end, but I do think it's important to identify what parts of canon is being changed and whether that change affects flavor or framework. Correctly identifying the nature of the change and addressing the effect of that change is what makes transformative works fun. Failing to correctly identify the nature of the change and simply slapping a plot into a setting results in fics that, at least for me, no longer feel like fanfic.

At that point, one really is better off just writing original fic.

Warning: This is going to involve a lot of Chinese composition because I'm trying to make a point about the terrible writing in Honkai: Star Rail. I'm going to switch back and forth between English and Chinese a lot, because that's what's easiest for me. I'm not going to bother translating. You can translate yourselves if you're curious what I'm blathering out.

I'm going to use Yanqing's monologue as an example of HSR's shitty writing and how it could be improved using middle school level language skills. Here's the monologue:

【【崩铁2.4剧情】开拓续闻「明霄竞武试锋芒•上」全剧情流程（完结撒花）】 【精准空降到 20:08】

The monologue uses the explanation of the martial battleground as a segue into Yanqing's character to deliver two points:

1. Yanqing trains very, very hard, but he never considered the training boring because for him swinging a sword is the most fun thing he can be doing.

2. Yanqing got his ass handed to him and lost his confidence, but in talking with Jiaoqiu, he's regained his confidence or at least is determined to do so.

Both of these points are better off given to us via dialogue rather than have Yanqin monologue at the audience. For the first point, this can be done through a conversation with someone not Yanqing, because bragging about how hard working you are basically looks terrible. My suggestion, have Jiaoqiu talk to Jing Yuan, squeezed into something of a "casual" conversation while Jiaoqiu is trying to get a feel of where Jing Yuan stands and what his character is like because, y'know, they're investigating the guy.

( An example of how that dialogue can go... )

Boom, we've established Yanqing is hard working despite being quite young, loves training from the depth of his heart, and the General trusts him enough to let him protect Luofu's reputation. It also helps explain why this annoying little shit is following the General around, because the General sees some kind of amazing martial talent (that we the audience aren't privy to). The dialogue is also casual enough to insert into a veiled interrogation.

Moving onto to point 2, establishing that Yanqing does have some qualms about being the Luofu representative, again, this ought to have been delivered via dialogue rather than monologue. I would have Jiaoqiu continue his trolling/bullying of Yanqing and through the back and forth show how Yanqing regains his confidence:

( More amateur writing )

Now this back and forth allows an outsider to establish what kind of concerns Yanqing ought to have, and having Yanqing confirm those worries but then come back with a response to each issue shows that Yanqing is a deeply thoughtful person who isn't just about chasing after vapid valor.

Yes, it's more stage-y than modern vernacular, but for fuck's sake, the game is literally having Yanqing monologue for two minutes straight! Break that shit up!

First, thanks to COVID, I missed out on my Whispers pull in Another Eden (missed a guaranteed 5-star unit). Oh well, it's not like I play that much with these units anyway, so...whatever. I still haven't finished leveling my newest 5-star Tales characters, so I gotta go do that first.

Second, Windows 11 update includes some horrible "copilot" AI module that is the worst and I don't want it and I'd like to see it go away please. Ugh.

Third, am diving deeper and deeper into the DnD mechanics as I feel better and start planning a very trite story idea involving nerds playing DnD and breaking the tension of their campaign for comedic effect. Will be bland, shitty tripe, I already know this, but the idea amuses me, so I'm sitting here making fake character sheets for fictional characters role-playing even more fictional characters. Because thinking about this is more fun than the GENOCIDE that's happening in Gaza.

Anyway, because of looking up DnD mechanics and stuff, I've become intrigued by the Plasmoid player race and feel like it's definitely ripe for a lot of fun (you get to play as a SLIME!), but I suspect people will be really fucking boring about building the character and it will be more about the "cool" and "awesome" (aka I-want-to-be-Tempest) and less about the "fun". For all that tabletop gamers claim they play pen-and-paper RPGs for the versatility and being able to build a character of whatever background they want, what they actually generate at the table is often bland, overdone fantasy tropes with zero creativity. If I want to see yet another Elf Rogue, I'll play one of the millions of phone games that will always include an elf rogue somewhere in their catalogue.

I guess what I'm saying is: Where are my cat people?! For fuck's sake, there are two cat races, pick one!

So, I'm watching FF16 cutscenes at the moment (because I'm curious what the director of FF14 would do with a single player RPG) and everything I was dreading is coming true. The sidequest system is terribly implemented, the storytelling is utterly incoherent, and thematically the story is just so utterly devoid of anything interesting to say it's kind of painful.

Of course, I haven't actually finished the story yet, so we'll see how things go, but at the moment, I'm kind of really annoyed at the handling of the world building and the extremely questionable themes at the foundation of the story. At first, I thought this was going to be a more character-centric Final Fantasy entry, a deviation from the more allegorical storytelling that FF series usually favors. But, as the story drags on (and boy does the plot drag thanks to a terrible sidequest system and incoherent timeskips), I'm starting to get more and more skeptical about where the story is going.

To get to the specifics: a core part of the FF16 story is about building a world that uses magically gifted people as slaves. Then the story goes on to show you how terribly cruel people are to these enslaved magic users and how there's an entrenched dehumanization of people with magical powers. The problem is that this is nonsense. Slavery, specifically chattel slavery, reached institutional stability through othering. The idea is that a certain group is the "other" based on an arbitrary tribal line: race, ethnicity, nation, whatever — and that allows the rest of society to think of the othered people as objects and deprive them of their personhood. However, in order for enslavement to work, the othering divide has to be unambiguous and difficult to overcome. If the "other" can randomly pop up in any tribe, then the denial of personhood would constantly be questioned. This in turn threatens the stability of slavery as an insitution, because once you start seeing a slave as a person rather than an object, it becomes ethically impossible to justify enslavement. Such questioning would risk the stability of the ruling class (the "master") because they can no longer justify the denial of personhood to the out-group.

Now, in FF16, the story clumsily tries to show how "mean" people are to the enslaved magic users, as though people being "mean" is the reason for slavery and not because of, y'know, political and economical convenience. Then, the story further muddles its political message by showing how the "masters" suddenly turn friendly once they learn the slave belongs to an influential person. This is hilariously bullshit, because while this is how people act to servants (who — while are considered of a lower caste — are still human), this is not how people treat slaves. Slaves are objects, devoid of personhood and humanity. Will you treat someone's car with more courtesy just because it belongs to a rich person? I mean, you'll definitely be more careful not to scratch or dent it, but you're not going to suddenly be polite to a car. The same is with slaves, because that's what enslavement entails: society has agreed that slaves are not people.

What's worse is that FF16 proceeds to show the enslaved liking the good masters and wanting to remain enslaved to their good masters; it's only the mean masters who makes them want to run away. This is...I have no words to describe how immensely stupid this is, because, just in case there's people who are still confused out there, slavery is bad due to owning people like objects, not due to having mean masters. How are we in the 21st century and this basic concept is still unclear? Owning people is immoral, regardless of how well you treat them.

So...yeah. I have very little faith in FF16 right now. At least I didn't splurge $500 on a PS5 and $70 on the game. I'm so very turned off by modern gaming right now.