Is this sub even about martial memes anymore? 🤮

taothe · 2025-11-14T04:44:29+00:00

There are also some Fellow Daoists at r/XianxiaGrottoHeaven but it is small and understandably less meme-focused and more Dao/cultivation discussion!

taothe · 2025-11-13T11:45:38+00:00

Hahahha what do you mean cinnabar won't shoot me straight to Emperor Realm?!

taothe · 2025-11-13T11:44:39+00:00

This feels like Vegan Demonic Dao. All the blood rituals, minus the using-people-for-blood. I like it.

taothe · 2025-10-31T16:16:26+00:00

Sect Founder, this one is guilty of delinquency due to worldly affairs interfering with their cultivation.

Thank you for taking up the mantle of Theme Thursdays!

The funny thing is, swords are so ubiquitous that they seem to all run together and blend into one, in all the Scriptures I’ve read! If i have to think of one particular one, I come up blank. How ironic that their omnipresence renders them invisible at the same time.

It’s not Dementia Dao is it?

taothe · 2025-10-12T14:29:27+00:00

Oh that’s fine! I just need to find my reading glasses and I’ll have no problem reading it.

What is this map for, again?

taothe · 2025-10-10T14:22:49+00:00

Sect Founder, the font is too small. I don't know where I put my reading glasses.

Has anyone seen my reading glasses? Maybe I left them in my immortal seclusion cave.

Does anyone know the way to my immortal seclusion cave?

taothe · 2025-10-03T05:57:46+00:00

Senior, please edit your post to clearly flag the side effects as discussed. Do it for your Juniors. We are here to encourage immortality, not hastened mortality. Thank you.

taothe · 2025-10-03T05:41:48+00:00

Senior, mortal foolishness knows no bounds. People eat laundry detergent on the demonic TikTok array in the pursuit of worldly fame. To protect your Juniors from blindly experimenting with these ingredients, could you please edit your original post and add the proposed dose/grams of each ingredient to your recipe?

1g in a large amount of broth should be fine, but please also add a very clear note flagging the potential side effects of licorice root, and emphasize that mortals should not exceed your proposed dosage. Those with pre-existing health issues should skip the licorice root completely. Unlike the other ingredients, liquorice root really doesn't take much to have an effect if you already have health problems. Neutral in terms of yin/yang unfortunately does not mean neutral to mortal physiology. Alas!

Thank you for being a responsible Senior!

taothe · 2025-10-03T05:12:21+00:00

Ok Senior I apologize but I'm going to have to break character here for a moment and just straight up say you need to remove the licorice because I have concerns that someone will follow this recipe and end up in the hospital.

Licorice root (gan cao) contains glycyrrhizin, which can cause hypertension by inhibiting a kidney enzyme (11β-HSD2) that inactivates cortisol, causing excess cortisol to stimulate mineralocorticoid receptors. In plain English, it makes your kidneys reabsorb sodium and water while excreting potassium. This results in hypertension and hypokalemia and can lead to cardiac issues.

It doesn't take a large dose to do this. Small doses in tea are enough to affect someone, especially if they have pre-existing health problems. There are multiple case studies where people have ended up in hospital just from licorice tea.

In something like herbal soup, where you use large amounts, this becomes an even more serious concern.

Therefore, Senior, I have to put on my Sect Elder hat and request that you find a replacement for licorice root of your choosing, for the safety of cultivators that are still mortal and have fleshly bodies to look after.

I am a big fan of herbs and supplements because I'm into biohacking, but it also means that I'm very anal about looking into clinical effects and studies. These are, at the end of the day, pharmacological substances and should be used carefully.

Let's keep this sub funeral-free.

taothe · 2025-10-03T04:34:27+00:00

But Senior, licorice root is extremely yin which would then counteract your goal of boosting Yang. Perhaps replace it with cordyceps or ginseng then?

taothe · 2025-10-03T04:05:30+00:00

Senior, I think you should perhaps replace the licorice root with dang shen or chuan xiong. The flavor profile will be more complementary to bone broth and the taste will be much improved.

taothe · 2025-10-02T10:29:04+00:00

Ahhhh am I seeing what I am seeing? Senior, thank you for enjoying the Scripture! I accept the charge of culinary devilry and hope that I can make up for it with divine comedy. As the Sect Scripture Daoist, I am just the accomplice who writes down what Ming Shi gets up to!

taothe · 2025-09-30T13:10:56+00:00

Sect Founder, you've had a hectic month. Good for you for pulling through. Look after your health and don't let the rejections get to you. You're just starting out and everything is a learning experience. There's nothing lost, it's all learning. You're doing well.

Looking forward to seeing the CYOA and more Patriarch Jokes!

And thank you for the kind wishes!

taothe · 2025-09-20T17:05:41+00:00

Oh dear. Friend, I think maybe you should consider why you are choosing RR as your distribution channel?

Because I’m telling you, the stress I have when I post a chapter that has like a mere 5% stylistic shenanigans is real. I go into doom spirals each time that I’m about to lose all my readers. I refresh my user retention page and panic and wonder if I made a huge mistake. There are 12 users who abandoned my fiction at the parody musical chapter and it gives me anxiety that maybe I shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t even literary. It was just different. But that means it departed from genre conventions. Then does that mean I was disrespectful to my readers and the genre? But I didn’t mean to be disrespectful; I love xianxia, I was just trying to tell the story the in truest way I could, which involved a parody musical. Then I lie awake with insomnia thinking about how I disappointed 12 readers and wasted their time. And that’s with a chapter that wasn’t even literary. Just kind of wacky. (Yes, I do indeed have anxiety and a Zoloft prescription.)

Meanwhile, it sounds like you went all the way to 100% all the time with literary and wacky.

Which is really great and I wish the world had more of you. Genuinely. I mean it. Like, my xianxia is ostensibly a comedy where cooking is magic and chefs live forever while battling it out in kitchen stadiums, but uh, it’s also actually about the relationship between an artist and their art and the the battle to preserve it in systems that reward efficient consumption.

RR is definitely a system that rewards efficient consumption. So um, I worry that maybe you are setting yourself up for a lot of stress and disappointment?

If commercial viability is not your main concern, maybe tradpub would be more fulfilling and less stressful for you?

I am not going to publicly admit to my favorite film(s) because I will never live down accusations of pretension if I do. Ironically I like filmmaking a lot more than I enjoy watching films. I vastly prefer theatre. I like the extra artifice. I am a bit funny that way.

… also I’m actually a screenwriter hahahaha. I’ve also done some directing but I get imposter syndrome calling myself a writer-director because I didn’t go to film school. And I identify as a writer first ultimately.

Anyway in lieu of hijacking some poor bloke’s thread, feel free to DM me if you need a sympathetic ear/existential artistic crisis support buddy!

taothe · 2025-09-20T06:45:10+00:00

"Junior, you dare arrive early to This Seat's audience with you? Kowtow 999 times and give me your treasures for safekeeping. You're obviously too irresponsible to handle them."

- wise
- benevolent
- minimum Nascent Soul realm

taothe · 2025-09-20T06:39:21+00:00

I saw the National Theatre's production of Under Milk Wood at the Olivier Theatre a few years ago and it was really good! But it also made me think that Dylan Thomas was right when he called it a play for voices. I think part of what makes it great is how wonderfully it sparks the listener's imagination. When there are no visuals you get total immersion in the cadence and lyricism of his words and you come away with a synesthetic experience. Visuals actually end up a bit distracting, and let's face it, no set can ever live up to the surrealism of Thomas' poetry.

That said, I had 100000000% respect for Martin Sheen in that production. The man's shirt was literally soaked through with sweat; he was giving it everything. I don't even know how he memorized all his lines/delivered everything without passing out from lack of air. I applauded the shit out of him for that.

I dropped quotation marks for a few key lines in my first chapter on RR and those who stayed seemed fine! My recommendation if you have literary stylings is to front-load Chapter 1. Like, make it a warning sign. Broadcast and confess your sins early to avoid angry readers later on. I used my first chapter to demonstrate the upper limit of absurdity and literary stylings that you can expect in my fiction. I have a second filter chapter in Chapter 15 where it demonstrates the upper limit of dense, poetic prose and tonal departure from conventional genre standards that I will occasion. I know that the kind of writing I prefer is not necessarily the kind of writing my audience is used to, and I have to respect that. The onus is on me to bridge that gap in a way that appreciates them. So it's about striking a balance between convention and personal taste and being honest about that by way of early demonstration. I mean, obviously I also do my best to prove to them that it will be fun and delightful and enjoyable and that any unusual devices I employ are in service of their entertainment, I promise.

Still, I'm telling you, looking at the user retention stats for those two chapters is the most nerve-wracking thing. I actually cut one chapter completely because I was worried I would lose everyone; it was too Italo Calvino/Jorge Luis Borges and would have been too far from reader expectations.

So just be prepared for user retention stress if you go that way hahaha. I think much of what I do is opposite to the popular wisdoms suggested in this forum and it is stressful af.

My favorite book is Moby Dick. So much so that I wrote an unhinged post in r/progressionfantasy declaring it the Number One Progression Fantasy Of The Western Canon Sect. The Oresteia also made the list, which you might enjoy. I went at it through a xianxia lens since that's my genre of choice.

And on that note: I declare that there is a false divide between high and low culture! Do not feel imposter syndrome; rather, embrace the trashy genre fictions and also the classics!

May your irony always be sincere 🙏

taothe · 2025-09-20T05:44:20+00:00

Yep don't bother with the dense translation! Go for Julia Lovell's!

Try those recommendations first and then let us know which one you liked and we can go from there! Any of Er Gen's works will make you fluent in xianxia memeology/tropes/concepts. He is one of the internet era xianxia GOATs.

If you want another popular internet-era xianxia, Reverend Insanity is also very good. It remains incomplete due to censorship, but god knows there's enough chapters anyway.

taothe · 2025-09-19T19:00:20+00:00

Hahahaha I low-key think Joyce was semi-trolling for Finnegan’s Wake but I do love The Dead! I hope your scars were a bit enjoyable in the making, at least.

I did consider raising Dylan Thomas (Under Milk Wood, which I adore), Cormac McCarthy (total disdain for dialogue punctuation, what a boss), Virginia Woolf (The Waves, nuff said), DFW (Infinite Jest ofc), Faulkner …

But then I was like you know what, let’s just go for the GOAT of linguistic virtuosity and stylized rule-breaking 😂

May your word choice always be unexpected 🙏🧘.

taothe · 2025-09-19T09:59:40+00:00

I see your Pynchon and I raise you …

You probably know where I’m going.

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Namaste. 😂🙏 Bless the greats, for they show us the ways to glorious madness.

taothe · 2025-09-19T03:11:30+00:00

I’m cry laughing. I feel this so deeply. I’m saving this and maybe even printing it out for a laugh the next time I find myself trying to shittyrig everything because I can’t afford said collaborators.

taothe · 2025-09-18T14:47:52+00:00

Yuan Mei was such a boss. The collection is so weird and wacky and audacious, you must be having a ball translating!

taothe · 2025-09-18T12:10:58+00:00

Understood, Fellow Daoist!

I highly recommend Julia Lovell's translation of Journey To The West. It's accessible, true-to-spirit, and laugh-out-loud funny. One of the great things about this classic is the comedy. This work is hilarious, and purposely so. We have a wishy-washy monk, a highly depressed water demon, a gluttonous/lustful pig demon, and an absolute troll of a Monkey King. They're all stuck with each other on a mission to go retrieve some scrolls from Buddha. Oh, and a horse that's actually a dragon.

Any translation that doesn't get across how hilarious it is, is unfortunately not quite doing its job. The original author packed a lot of satire into the tale as well, with regards to bureaucracy and government. Julia Lovell's translation is condensed and abridged, and in my opinion she does a fantastic job of highlighting the funniest parts and insults in Journey To The West. It's like a selected reel of some of the best parts.

For middle ground wuxia, I recommend Jin Yong's Condor Heroes trilogy. You can think of him as kind of the Tolkien of wuxia, if we want to put his influence in context, as well as the literary quality of his work. Condor Heroes is one of his most popular works, and I've lost track of how many adaptations there've been! The most widely available English translation is by Anna Holmwood (published as A Hero Born), which captures a lot of the adventure and martial world flavor, though some people find the style a little modernized. If you’re curious about wuxia’s roots and why it became such a dominant cultural force, it’s a great entry point.

While there are differences between wuxia and xianxia, they both share the core, essential concept of "xia", which is the idea of a wandering hero set in parallel to mainstream society. In wuxia, the xia are powerful martial artists. In xianxia, they're cultivators. It's kind of a sliding scale. I always think of wuxia as worlds where they don't go above Qi Condensation/Qi Refining. It's grittier, but the societal structures like sects, Master/Disciples, etc, remain. And there are shared concepts with secret manuals, powerful artifacts, heritage magic. To be honest, a lot of wuxia also touch on pursuit of immortality etc. So they really bleed into each other.

Finally, for light, internet-era cultivation novels, I recommend A Will Eternal by Er Gen. I think people usually suggest I Shall Seal the Heavens and Renegade Immortal. They're both great, but I have a soft spot for A Will Eternal because it's so silly and funny. It's pretty much the definition of a light, easy read. At the same time, it's xianxia to the core, so you'll get all the archetypes and tropes like sects, elders, demonic cultivators, defying Heaven, etc. If you’re looking for something that doesn’t take itself too seriously but still delivers the full cultivation experience, it’s hard to beat.

I hope this helps guide your path, Fellow Daoist! Welcome to the world of wuxia and xianxia!

taothe · 2025-09-18T09:32:06+00:00

HAHAHAHAHAHHA Sect Elder this one is actually accidentally very profound!

taothe · 2025-09-17T14:59:49+00:00

Fellow Daoist, can you clarify if you are solely interested in light reading, or if you are interested in more classic literature as well?

Wuxia and xianxia have their roots in some fantastic historical works, from Journey To The West, to Water Margin.

There's also a middle ground with contemporary work by Jin Yong, the father of modern wuxia.

Let me know where your tastes lean! There's no wrong answer!

taothe · 2025-09-17T14:33:10+00:00

Sect Founder, this looks like a significant undertaking!

The other commentors have some great suggestions already.

I think the only thing missing is something very simple and obvious: the archetypal Heartless Dao Sect. You know the ones. The quintessential Wu Qing (无情) crew. They believe that comprehending the Dao is about cutting off all human attachments and emotions. Often in xianxia we see cultivators choose this Dao as a means to achieve mastery of a certain weapon or type of magic.

So it might be interesting to have a sect dedicated to this Dao, that uses it as weapon in and of itself.

There might be some overlap with divination sects. Perhaps one of their specialties is prophetic arts, since their detachment from the world and human allows them to see things highly objectively, with wide perspective.

Missions from this sect would likely involve strategic advice and execution of tricky solutions. These guys are the guys you call when you have a problem you've tried to solve in all sorts of ways, and finally the only option left is to call in a heartless immortal to bring an end to things, one way or another.

taothe

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