- Pronouns
- He
Great now someone has to write Harry Potter AU where it's a cultivation school instead now.
Cultivating Magic
- Thread starter SpiraSpira
- Start date
- Original
It's called Hogwarts Sect of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It's dead I think, but it was awesome when it was till alive.
Makes sense! Wouldn't want people to get the wrong idea!
Wait, hang on.
She's gonna end up having to fight Mengyao for Xiao Li's hand, isn't she?
- Location
- London
Now, now. it wasn't THAT bad. It was only 30 seconds of torture, with no long term physiological effects. She even kept her from embarrassing herself by stopping her from screaming! Positively benevolent by the standards of the genre.
In fact in terms of total pain caused it's pretty believable that it's less bad than breaking an arm or some ribs or something. The fact that it's short with no direct side-effects makes it actually a very clean spell.
She's understanding that since she's become the head of a clique by accident she has to enforce the image of being such. So she's working on establishing her reputation.
Unfortunately, to anyone besides herself and Xiao Li her actions at the party probably makes them look intimately involved if not married, since she gave him a technique for free then took him home after.
Unfortunately, to anyone besides herself and Xiao Li her actions at the party probably makes them look intimately involved if not married, since she gave him a technique for free then took him home after.
So far as I can tell with xanxia in general is that intelligent, multi-step plans tend to be looked down upon in the cultivator world. If you can't do something through blunt force, then you might as well not even try. Anything else would be cowardly according to the culture.
My head canon for cultivation in general (not here) is that cultivation does something to the brain that damages long term planning, impulse control, and empathy.
Courting
Wouldn't it have been better (if leading to less shenanigans) to drop him off at his place?
Hmm...
"I challenge you for the right to court Xiao Li!"
Wait, what? I blinked in surprise. Where did that come from?
Hmm. The bro code says I shouldn't get in the way, and I can't just surrender without insulting Mengyao, but nothing says I can't have a little fun.
Grinning internally, I glared menacingly at my surprise challenger.
"I Junior Sister Mei Wen accept your challenge Senior Sister, but as the challenged I wish to set the terms of our battle."
Mengyao glared back, but eventually nodded in concession.
"I call upon Senior Brother Jiaozi Liu to act as referee."
Jiaozi Liu who had been training nearby comes over at his name being mentioned.
"Brother Jiaozi Liu is honorable, if he is willing, I will accept him as referee."
"Sure, that sounds like fun."
"As this is a matter of the heart, I request that we will battle with words, rather than with swords. I request a battle of stories."
"Slightly less fun."
"Specifically embarrassing stories about Xiao Li."
Our Senior Brother and I burst into laughter at the look on her face.
It's mostly the domain of villains to do such things. Good guys should righteously stride forward and sword everyone to death.
A good chunk of it could be due to how it works with cultivation stages providing major power ups and cultivators having all around increase in abilities. A cultivator is completely self sufficient as long as he doesn't need to compete with multiple other cultivators. That's the only reason they band together - to fight other cultivator groups.
This self sufficiency combined with major power ups on reaching the stages (Foundation, Core, Nascent Souls, Immortal) also always runs the risk of cultivator just deciding to murder all of his "friends" and loot their stuff. Just because he could and no longer needs them as they are way below him in power.
High level wizards go crazy for similar reasons as their worldview is severely skewed due to their abilities. When you can turn all of your artifacts into family members and marry your staff, which you turned into a perfect husband, why the hell are you going to care what some other, supposed, people think?
- Location
- Elsewhere
"Here is the Cultivation manual, describing profound secrets of the universe!"
"It's a pamphlet."
"I assure you, it holds much more information than you'd assume."
"Yeah, it's printed on both sides, and has no pictures."
"There are many secrets to the manual!"
"Ooh, triple folded. Nice."
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
There is also the classic element of heroic morality. An honest and benevolent man doesn't plot because he isn't seeking the destruction of others. When there is a problem he steps up and handles it straightforwardly in public so there are no misunderstandings. You might not like that guy, but you know where you stand and conflicts are limited by being explicit and only pursued at a risk to the one who wants to make an issue of it. By contrast a villain pretends to be your friend while engineering your destruction by some third party with minimal risk to the villain because it's convient to them. People who make a habit of deception are deceiving you too, they aren't good long term friends or allies. This is why Clark Kent and Lex Luthor are the way they are. Clark's not stupider than Lex, but he isn't a plotter.
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Yes. Why practice when the stakes are low because you can default to disintegration and instead only plot when the stakes are high and the price of failure is huge?
I'm going to go with: cultivators are generally written as power fantasies and are therefore quite stupid.
Another thing that doesn't help with a cultivators mentality is that they generally start young. Then they try to achieve the "ideal" mentality, their dao heart or whatever, while basically a teenager in super murder death highschool/something something sect. So basically they try to take some highschool's philosophy and try to fossilize their mind however they are trying to force themselves to act at that age. In some cultivation stories this is especially bad because after you do this necessary step you can't change.
Interestingly that might be way less bad for the more down-to-earth versions of the system where developing takes time and your cultivation won't need to crystalize before you're an experienced master philosopher/martial artist.
But in high-power Xianxia where if you're interesting you need to be at least halfway to immortality by age 20...
Well, in many stories you can in theory change. You just need to destroy your cultivation to the ground and start from zero. And that's the moment when both sunk cost and the fact that you may just die from old age after losing your cultivation kick in.
xbox432
Lover of Editing
Well, it's nice that Li seems to have made a new friend in his Senior Brother!
And it would seem that Mei Wen is having some fun as well. She's going to get a reputation for defeating her opponents in the most humiliating ways possible. On the other hand, all the girls following her around like lost ducklings must be so happy with their choice. I wonder how many of them were doing the Cultivator equivalent of eating popcorn while watching that match?
And it would seem that Mei Wen is having some fun as well. She's going to get a reputation for defeating her opponents in the most humiliating ways possible. On the other hand, all the girls following her around like lost ducklings must be so happy with their choice. I wonder how many of them were doing the Cultivator equivalent of eating popcorn while watching that match?
Get this guy an omake tag!
There's just something about D&D style wizards that syncs well with cultivation-lite stories. It's a shame that they're so thin on the ground. This, Essence of Cultivation on RR and the Hogwarts Sect are the only really fun ones I can think of.
Didn't even Lunar Phase into DT Rising Dragon, what a scrub.
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- Location
- Texas
Anyone else imagining her having a zombie beatbox while she raps out embarrassing stories.
Frankly, if I just spent 500 years in a cave meditating or whatever, I doubt I would even think about scheming when I could bust out my awesome new disintegration technique instead.
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
I mean when you spend 99% of your life successfully punching problems away because you really can punch hard enough to flatten mountains, it's not surprising that you'd end up trying to punch the problems away the last 1% of the time as well.
It's always worked before after all, and cultivators usually have 'auras of power' so you can easily tell when someone is out of your league and therefore unpunchable or not.
It's always worked before after all, and cultivators usually have 'auras of power' so you can easily tell when someone is out of your league and therefore unpunchable or not.