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Xianxia Encompassing the World! (Xianxia Rec Discussion and Idea thread)

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I'm trying to come up with a title for a short xianxia story I've outlined to write someday.

The protagonist is one of the elders of her sect and after centuries of being left to manage the sect while other elders are either in seclusion or off on expeditions, she finally got a chance to do some extended closed cultivation, extended meditation on issues that have been disturbing her emotional centre, and just getting caught up on her reading and research.

On emerging, she finds out that her admittedly low expectations of the sect leader and other elders keeping the sect going in her absence may have been a touch optimistic.

Working title is 'dao of dump' but the only alternative I've come up with so far is 'I Can't Leave You Alone for Just Fifty Years?!'

Does anyone have any suggestions?
 
Herding Cats for Immortality
Babysitting Cultivators
Cultivating Common Sense
Absence Makes the Sect Grow Dumber
The Sect Only Has One Braincell, and It's Me
 
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BurnNote said:
That sounds fun, I'll check it out.
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Checked or out, but the English is too bad for me to bother reading further. War-axe missile is funny, but also a sign it's a barely edited machine translation.
Well, actually three stopping point for me came when the second plot thing was about a super pretty woman who is just so pretty. Fucking spare me. The supposedly powerful cultivator acting silly because of book advise on what men like was the final straw.
 
drakensis said:
I'm trying to come up with a title for a short xianxia story I've outlined to write someday.

The protagonist is one of the elders of her sect and after centuries of being left to manage the sect while other elders are either in seclusion or off on expeditions, she finally got a chance to do some extended closed cultivation, extended meditation on issues that have been disturbing her emotional centre, and just getting caught up on her reading and research.

On emerging, she finds out that her admittedly low expectations of the sect leader and other elders keeping the sect going in her absence may have been a touch optimistic.

Working title is 'dao of dump' but the only alternative I've come up with so far is 'I Can't Leave You Alone for Just Fifty Years?!'

Does anyone have any suggestions?
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The premise seems a bit weird to me. I feel like there's some explanation voids that I'd want to see filled in, and that that might help with finding a good title? Like, it sounds like she's not the sect founder. There had to be some reason that the sect wasn't falling apart before she was "elder in charge of all the things". So... what changed? Why was it working before and not now?
 
The sect was set up several (cultivator) generations ago by a group of elder cultivators who wanted comrades to look after their disciples, facilities and so forth if they went into closed cultivation or went away on expeditions. Each generation of leaders picks the next leader and elders based on them having close ties so that they should be able to trust each other to provide coverage.

In an unfortunate error of judgement, the immediately previous generation picked a harem protagonist and his admirers as the new leader and elders. This has the effect that if the sect leader goes off on an expedition, his admirers want to go with him. Or go into seclusion to get that done before he goes back. And when he goes into seclusion, they also find excuses to deal with private business so as to be available when he emerges. And he's a very active person, who rarely spends more than a year or two between adventures.

But this is totally alright, because he has a trustworthy and 100% reliable elder who is happy to make sure things keep running if he's absent. Unfortunately, 'happy' is an exaggeration. She's been lagging in her cultivation due to not having time to go into seclusion, not having the chance to go on expeditions to gain experience... And from the perspective of rather competitive admirers of the sect leader, this means one of their potential rivals is both not spending a lot of time with him and becoming one of the weakest of them. They didn't plan that, but it's how it seems to be turning out. So none of them was exactly incentivized to take on some of the burden...

Fifty years ago she finally decided, during one of the times the sect leader (and everyone else) was around that she was going into seclusion right now, dammit. She needed this and surely they could do their duty as fellow leaders of the sect and take care of her personal disciples, as well as her share of the sect business during her absence. After all, she'd done that for them many many times. It would be fine. Probably.

It was not, in fact, fine.


I'm leaning towards using The Sect Only Has One Braincell, and It's Me as the title. Thanks for the suggestions so far.
 
Could have it a whole 'everyone thinks she's part of the love dodecahedron but she's just a friend/coworker to the sect leader and no one believes the 'we're friends' reasoning due to mental gymnastics of face saving and seeing things that's not there by simple cultivator paranoia'
 
She is his legal fiancee and therefore primary target of all the others. While neither she nor the sect leader expect him to be monogamous, they otherwise both see their engagement in quite different lights.
 
Him: "She's my fiancee, so she is desperately in love with me."

Her: "Fuck, I'm going to be cleaning up after these idiots for life, won't I?"
 
drakensis said:
She is his legal fiancee and therefore primary target of all the others. While neither she nor the sect leader expect him to be monogamous, they otherwise both see their engagement in quite different lights.
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See, and that sort of thing rapidly hits the point where I'd want nothing to do with them. "Obnoxious overpowered freeloaders keep undermining me while also expecting me to do all the work while they get nothing but benefits and also exploit the fact that I'm busy all the time working for the common good to undermine me further" comboed with "I'm the legal fiancee/wife, but the man doesn't actually support me against the pit of vipers he keeps adding to" means that I have zero interest in supporting these people, especially at cost to myself.

Now, maybe you don't want to take it this direction, but I feel like if that's really the premise, and you don't want the protag to just wash her hands of the whole deal, then this is the point where you pull a softer, gentler, moderately passive-aggressive revenge fic. Basically, the sect is a wreck, because of the complete mismanagement. There is literally one person who can be trusted to manage it, in part because the guy is oblivious, and all of the other women are in a position where they know that any concessions made to supporting the sect will only hurt them in their harem struggles.

So protagonist starts instituting new sect rules. She's the only one who actually goes to the council meetings, and all of the underlings are desperate to have her back, so it's not that hard. The sect has suffered badly from decades of mismanagement, and it can no longer afford to give its elders blank checks. If they want the standard sect resources for their tier, they're going to have to cough up some sort of benefits of their own. Of course, the protag is doing this by... spending hours in sect management. She'd be happy to have the others join her? Alternately, they could just pass over some of those heavenly materials and earthly treasures and go back to what they were doing. Keeping a sect going is expensive, after all.

As time goes by, she repeatedly gives them just enough space to cheat the rules in ways that will get them temporary gain at the cost of the rest of the sect (sign up to head the Medicine Pavilion in return for contribution points, do the bare minimum while looting the place) and then uses those "regrettable and unfortunate events" as justification for tightening the screws (if you want to take on the role of head of one of the pavilions, you need to have the approval of the members of that pavilion).

"Husband? How many times have you graced our marital bed with your presence in the past thousand years? I understand that you are a paragon among men, and cannot be limited to only one woman, but if you wish to call upon your status as my husband when asking for special exceptions, then you at least need to act the part."
 
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Oh, it's very much the case that now that she has had some time away to consider things objectively... she's not happy and going to take some steps.

The wind rustled through the pine trees that dotted the flanks of the Xianghu Zhichi mountain peaks and dispersed the few trails of smoke that marked kitchens and alchemist's laboratories. The snow never fully melted from the heights, but on warm days like this trickles of snowmelt flowed down to join the rains that kept the herb garden terraces fertile.

One such stream of water found a crevice carved by eons of erosion. The droplets raced down the steeper angle formed by the crack in the mountainside, wearing imperceptibly deeper as each previous trickle had done.

Normally, it would have reached the base of the crack and flowed onwards. On almost any other day, it would have been an unremarkable event. But today, right as the water reached the middle of the crack, the mountain opened up. The crevice became a fissure in apparently solid stone, opening up a passage that led deep inside Xianghu Zhichi, down to the bones of the great mountain and the trackless caves beneath.

Water such as this had carved out those caves once. So long ago that not even the founders of the Xianghu Zhichi sect had been able to guess who first found them. Carved them deep enough to reach the great dragonlines that lay beneath the entire mountain ranges. Deep enough to be rid of all outside distractions.

If one was troubled by the need for water or clean air, for regular food or for light, those passageways were ill-advised. But for those who had set aside mortal concerns...

The water, now unconstrained by the crevice, sprang free and showered down upon the unsuspecting immortal departing the caverns.

Tang Zhi was tall, for a woman. She wore her long hair for the most part loose, save the lock before her right ear that she braided and had the habit of playing with when she was distracted. The water splashed her fringe and soaked her brow, which furrowed in irritation.

The cultivator stepped forward quickly, wiping at her forehead to dry it with her sleeve. Looking up, she searched for rain clouds and then recalled that if any were found they would be beneath the entrance to the caves. It took her only a moment to deduce what had happened and she flicked her damp sleeve one in irritation and then again in command. The side of the mountain rumbled and when it fell silent fissure was gone again, only a small sliver of a crack remaining to guide the water once more.

Still not feeling entirely dry, Tang Zhi used her other sleeve to rub her brow again, following the bare trace of a path to where she could look down the mountainside. The pines were taller than she remembered, but tiled roofs were visible through them - the pagoda towers, courtyards and workshops of the sect.

"At least they didn't burn the whole place down in my absence," she said to herself and then frowned again. She would have to get out of the habit of speaking to herself. Down in the caves it had been the only human sound but now there would be others around who might take offense at her speaking her mind.

No, she corrected herself - silently - who would take offense. Her meditations had been much focused upon the frustrations visited upon her before she entered seclusion, the problems that had bedeviled her and strangled her cultivation for mortal generations. Confronting those feelings had loosened those chains, but they had not addressed the source of the resentments.

For a moment, she considered simply departing. No one had seen her leave the caves. Who was to say how long it would take for the sect leader to conclude she was overdue and come looking for her, or for her bones? It was not unheard of for those so deep to find something other than what they sought down below the mountain.

For the first time in many years, Tang Zhi inhaled the clear, cold mountain air, then exhaled the stagnant vapors of the mountain. Embers of anger faded somewhat and she shook her head. The other elders had to live here, they would not have left matters to fall to ruin just because she was away. If she took a small satisfaction at the idea of Zhang Mei having to calculate accounts rather than write love poems; or Chen Xiuying setting aside her aristocratic airs to do business with merchants… well, that was a private matter.

If nothing else, the elders would not want to incur Chen Li's disappointment by letting things fall apart. Truly, the sect leader's sad expression would have been more motivations than all the threats in the world. The inspid twits... Tang Zhi coughed, ears slightly red. Her esteemed fellow elders would have likely competed to show Chen Li how able they were in administration.

The idea made her laugh quietly and she shook her head. Well, they must have managed somehow.

Tang Zhi wasn't sure how long it had been since she had laughed. She felt as if she had learned how to do so alone. Rediscovering her emotions in private, where she no longer had to worry about impropriety. Perhaps this explained something of the others' behavior, they had certainly spent enough time in seclusion.

Shaking away the amusement, she sprang off the edge of the mountain and fell casually towards the slopes below - the single step sending her far enough out to descend almost a mile before she intersected the mountain again. The wind whipped her hair like a black flag behind her, but otherwise Tang Zhi remained composed, only the hint of a smile remaining at the corner of her lips.
 
SCDarkSoul said:
Hm. Even the more reasonable and calm Chinese xianxia MCs often still exterminate a sect or two and the occasional family when pushed too far.
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To what degree this being done may also vary. Like Xiao Yan didn't commit massacre for his three years revenge but instead choose the disbandment of sect and clan.
If anything "kill the cripple and the young" is the boring solution. Cowardly, even. Any nuanced take is significantly better. It is definitely the point of BTTH that I love to highlight, showing Xiao Yan's maturity.
 
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drakensis said:
I'm trying to come up with a title for a short xianxia story I've outlined to write someday.

The protagonist is one of the elders of her sect and after centuries of being left to manage the sect while other elders are either in seclusion or off on expeditions, she finally got a chance to do some extended closed cultivation, extended meditation on issues that have been disturbing her emotional centre, and just getting caught up on her reading and research.

On emerging, she finds out that her admittedly low expectations of the sect leader and other elders keeping the sect going in her absence may have been a touch optimistic.

Working title is 'dao of dump' but the only alternative I've come up with so far is 'I Can't Leave You Alone for Just Fifty Years?!'

Does anyone have any suggestions?
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If you're still looking for names I can give you some proposals.

Optimism and Cultivators do not mix
You can't punch the stupid out of people
Please let me cultivate in peace, I can't solve all your problems.
What to do when you're surrounded by meatheads.
 
I swear to god r/Martial_Memes are goldmine for Xianxia ideas
 
ZeroXSEED said:
I swear to god r/Martial_Memes are goldmine for Xianxia ideas
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Hm, not quite the weakest, but reminds me of Bleach.

At first, having stronger spiritual power increases the size of your sword. But then also on top of that, anybody competent is capable of controlling their spiritual pressure to keep their sword at a reasonable size instead of "swinging around skyscrapers".

So under those rules, this guy would be decently strong, but have absolutely shit control over his power.
 
He's probably some 100 year old foundation establishment trash going through a midlife crisis and hoping that a using big sword will help him increase his Sword Dao Comprehension
 
Chao An or something from World of Cultivation?

That said, Missy face used a giant sword exclusively for transportation I think
 
These swords they use for transportation need guardrails! Guardrails, I tell you. Cultivator OSHA would be foaming at their mouth on the ways some sword cultivators use their flying swords!
 
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