I read a lot of asian novels. I think the last time I read a western fantasy was probably in high school. Most of my time spent is reading novels/comics from China, Japan, and Korea. I don’t know if there’s a term for this but most of the stuff I’ve read is the popular fiction (pop-fiction maybe?) from these countries that get translated. I haven’t read any “serious” works that have been translated. I wanted to talk about some of the similarities and differences I’ve noticed in them.
To start off with Chinese novels came in various tiers you could say. Wuxia, xuanhuan, and xianxia. From my experience xianxia and xuanhuan are similar enough. The main difference is between wuxia and xianxia. Wuxia can vary its power-scaling but the most you’ll ever get is something like your punch can destroy a building. Xianxia is what I’m most familiar with and it is just ridiculous power fantasies. By the end of many stories you are throwing around universes more-or-less. And that’s one of the first differences I’ve noticed. While there are some Japanese and Korean novels that go into crazy power scaling I think most of them stay pretty tame in the scaling of their powers in comparison to Chinese novels. Besides the power scaling, I also wanted to talk about some cultural issues I noticed in these novels.
There are a lot of Korean novels with tropes related to elites and stuff. One of the most common ones is with towers. A tower shows up in your world and is releasing monsters and havoc on your world. You have to destroy it to survive, only for it to come out that the whole thing was just a show for powerful people/entities. Korean novels tend to have stuff related to how elites treat people like shit and see them as playthings and what not. On the other hand Japanese novels tend to be more escapist in nature (though, tbh, all three novels create some pretty escapist media). They focus on having a cool life in another world that isn’t theirs. I think a lot of Japanese fantasy novels try to distance themselves from the realities of Japanese life (which I don’t think Korean or Chinese novels do). Finally, Chinese novels tend to have a lot of deceit, backstabbing, and dog-eat-dog worlds. Most characters seem, to western readers (though I don’t know what the Chinese’s impression of their own novels are), stupidly shallow. Willing to backstab over the smallest thing. You can’t trust anyone in these worlds. Profit is the only thing that matters. I think that’s relevant to how China is. From all the stories of apparently China using fake meats and poor building quality (which I’m now unsure on the validity of that media) I can see a culture that cares a lot about coming out on top no matter what.
I prefer cats over dogs as pets in my current state of life. I can see a future where I have dogs in my life (and in fact my brother is interested in getting one), but not now. Most house cats are low maintenance pets. I have to feed them a few times a day, give them some fresh water, and play with them a little. Now depending on some other factors the workload can increase a bit, but overall its relatively chill. Dogs require a bit more effort. You need to talk your dog out for walks. They also use the bathrooms outdoors (and then you need to clean up after them, then again you do have to clean litter boxes) leading to more times you need to take it out. Along with walks, dogs may require more play and seem to be quite interactive with their humans (all of this is written with my thoughts on what having a dog is like). Cats enjoy being left to themselves and do their own thing. Both are cool, but cats are just chill.
Also, a big reason I came to like cats is because of a scene in The Fountainhead where Wynand talks about a cat.
I’ve doing a few things to try and not be so perfectionist and to try and have a more learning mindset.
I will say approaching games with a mindset of I’m still figuring things out/I’m still learning has made them much more enjoyable. While I still feel like it occasionally I went from getting annoyed at a mistake I felt like I shouldn’t have made to being like “eh, I still need to learn”.
I’ve stopped playing Hollow Knight for now. The main game I’ve been practicing this with is Osu! I chose Osu! in part because of how I can quickly play a game or session. One issue I had with trying to de-rust Hollow Knight is that gaming sessions felt like they needed more commitment (sometimes like for pantheons, granted just doing boss fights in the hall of champions is chill).
Osu!’s been going well. I haven’t played in a while and even then I haven’t played consistently in a long-time (I’ve been playing around 30 minutes everyday since last Tuesday). So I’ve just been de-rusting this whole time. Even though I know I wouldn’t that good I caught myself from the get go restarting maps over the smallest mistake. Over the past week I’ve been catching myself doing that (and it slowly happened less and less) and telling myself to just play the map through. It’s made the game a lot more fun. I even beat some old scores I had in the past by just playing a map through.
Also I did change the size of my tablet area for Osu! (I play it with a drawing tablet with absolute positioning) since it now felt uncomfortably too big. Honestly muscle memory wasn’t too big of an issue. I felt like I played roughly the same if I just came back and started de-rusting on my old area.
Started playing Celeste. Saw it on sale for $4.99 and decided to play it. Very fun game. I like how the game tells you that dying a lot is a good thing it means you’re learning.
Died quite a bit but it’s whatever. 500 are from chapter 1 B-Side and I’d say 100 are from my cat getting on my keyboard. So around ~1600 to beat the main game. Idk if that’s good or not but I felt good about the game.
Started Ch.8 but I have to backtrack some stuff to unlock it (I guess I have to beat more B-Sides?). I really like the game so far. I think Imma keep playing it.
I did play that! I forgot about it. I’ll try it out again at some point. I got it at a really bad time. Got a crappy manager at work when I got the game and that took a lot of energy and then I forgot about the game. I think I beat the first boss? and that was it? I liked it though.
I’ve noticed that the blue crystals are more puzzle like in how I get them and I’m finding it a bit confusing. Even for the first blue crystal I got in Forsaken City was accidental. I thought there had to be more to the bird/satellite thing going on so I just googled it to see if it was just meant to be some flashy color show or something or if there’s actually something to do up there. Then I saw a reddit post giving a guy a hint on how to approach it.
Was a bit busy last week with a new session of classes starting up and a bunch of annoying events (last week was the end of Ramadan for Muslims). Still could have wrote though. Idk. I’ve noticed that writing is relatively the easy part, but getting started is much harder. I wonder why I procrastinate starting it?
Some writing I did today:
“Our crisis is no longer material; it’s existential, it’s spiritual. We have so much fucking stuff and so many opportunities that we don’t even know what to give a fuck about anymore.” - [The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck]
It’s material too, but less so, but at the same time more so(?). Idk. On one hand we have many comforts and abilities that people back then didn’t. On the other hand a part of my brain is like how much more difficult was getting a house back than compared to the shit show the current housing market + economy currently is. Different kinds of labor, but I don’t think it’s necessarily much easier today. Or it’s easier and harder in different ways. Houses come built, before you’d build it yourself (I’m assuming and also the time periods I’m comparing here in my head aren’t too clear).
Is the claim that we knew what to give a fuck about before? I can see that. The claim goes that in the past most of your time and energy was taken up just trying to survive. Your goal was made simple. You woke up and spent the rest of the days doing activities to survive. Whether that be gathering plants to eat, hunting meat to eat, creating tools for hunting and gathering (or shelter), gathering water, etc. Most of your goals were already kind of set in stone. You were just focused on doing the daily tasks required to survive everyday. Nowadays for a good amount of people basic survival is taken care of. So they now have to find something they want to do with all that free time and that’s what they struggle with.
I wanted to write a synopsis about one of my favorite novels I’ve read so far (this and LoTM are two of my favorite fantasy novels I’ve read). Most of this from my memory though I do reference the Wiki and Wikipedia article a bit. Would this still be a mini-essay?
Return of the The Blossoming Blade
Return of The Blossoming Blade (aka Return of The Mount Hua Sect, which is what I know it as, and Hwasangwihwan in Korean) is a Korean web novel (and one of the first Korean novels I’ve read). The story takes place in old China (I don’t know if it’s exactly “ancient”/how far back is considered ancient) and starts off with a scene of our main character Chung Myung killing off somebody who seems important. The person says that he recognized Chung Myung as the greatest swordsman. Unfortunately, Chung Myung dies here too. After that we are fast forwarded roughly a century out from that event to a scene where our main character is reincarnated in the body of a homeless child (which I forgot the name of but it doesn’t matter, he immediately uses his name again). From there, he tries to go back to his old sect: Mount Hua. When he returns he sees the sect is doing terrible compared to its former glory. He rejoins the sect as a third-class disciple and starts reforming it from there. The story goes from there.
So far the story seems to have three sections(?). The first roughly 1000 chapters covers Mount Hua trying to re-establish itself back into the world. After more or less re-establishing themselves they then go into secluded training for a number of years to better prepare for future events so that no disciple of Mount Hua will die. After a time skip the second section, which is where I currently am, focuses on the conflict between Mount Hua/Chung Myung and one of the main villains of the story: Jang Ilso. Presumably after this conflict is resolved the next, and final, conflict will be between Mount Hua/Chung Myung and the Heavenly Demon. The Heavenly Demon is the overarching villain of the series and is the one who is killed at the start, but after understanding his own reincarnation the main character assumes that the Heavenly Demon will reincarnate (this information is revealed throughout part 1 and 2). The Heavenly Demon and the Demonic Sect is the primary reason why the Mount Hua/Chung Myung train so hard. He is dangerous. I assume part 3 will end with him dying or something.
I was thinking of the kind of stuff I liked doing in the past and one was just writing my thoughts on things. I think I’m going to try that for the next few of my writings. Stuff like why do I like pokemon, why do i think gun control is ok, etc.
I was thinking about why I like Return of the Mount Hua Sect (I think I’ll just refer to as Return for now), specifically why I like it more than the other novels/webnovels I’ve read.
At first glance the story doesn’t seem to unique. The main character reincarnates, comes back to his ruined sect, and now tries to bring it back to glory. This story has been told before. I think what I like specifically about Return is that its the same story but told really really well. Its not necessarily doing something ground breaking, but what its doing is really good. For example, in the first major arc they train to fight with one of the other sects. Now Chung Myung is only a third class disciple and the second class disciples are away training (first class disciples have taken up official roles due to the decline of the sect). This kind of thing can vary across authors, but I really liked how the author handled their whole training. Chung Myung focuses on training them in the fundamentals they lacked and making sure they train the right away, that they practice the correct things. This becomes a big theme in the arc. The second class disciples come back from their training arc and all the disciples face off against the other sect, Southern Edge. All the second class disciples get stomped by the second class disciples of Southern Edge, while the third class disciples of Mount Hua destroy the third class disciples of Southern Edge, because, as Chung Myung explains in the arc, it doesn’t matter how much blood, sweat, and tears the second class disciples of Mount Hua put in their away training. It doesn’t matter how much they wanted to win. Debatedly, the second class disciples cared more for their reputation and wanted to win more than the third class disciples, yet it didn’t matter. Because they didn’t practice the right things, they didn’t train in the right things, they didn’t have the basics down. They went away for a while and just practiced meaningless things. What you practice matters.
I guess I have an intuitive sense for it but when exactly should I break a paragraph?
I’m on the very final chapter of Celeste. It’s very very difficult but I’ve been enjoying it. A few things I’ve noticed:
I accidentally restarted a section and had to re-do it. I noticed that some parts that I was struggling with for a very long time on my first go were now under 10 minutes or so. To get to where I am now, first took me around ~4 hours? Redoing it all I got there in 30 minutes or so.
I started a new play through, so I don’t mess up my location on my main play through for the final chapter and I noticed my improvements from doing that. I remember my first time beating the first chapter was 100-200 deaths. This time I was able to do it under 5 deaths and probably could do it deathless with a bit more practice on some parts. I thought that was pretty neat.
I’ve still been playing a lot of Celeste. I started around March 15th or so and now it’s April 1st, so I’ve been playing for a little over two weeks now. Here’s my current progress:
My current goal is to 100% the game. I’ve been enjoying improving at it so far. The B-sides have been especially good for getting good at the game especially because a lot of them have longer platforming sections which force me to actually think about a way to approach a level consistently. Before I’d kinda just keep brute forcing a level more or less to build muscle memory to complete a section but now I try and think about approaching a level more consistently (otherwise its just too hard to try and brute force a longer level).
Oh yeah I mentioned before trying to do the last chapter. Turns out to finish it you need to get all/most(?) crystal hearts (it just stops you from continuing after a certain point). So I started working on that. Getting the blue crystals has been fun/interesting. I used this reddit post to get some hints for some of them: https://www.reddit.com/r/celestegame/comments/evw2u0/crystal_hearts_hint_guide/.
I didn’t use hints for Celestial Resort and Golden Ridge. The rest I used a varying amount of hints to figure out.
While I haven’t been all that great at keeping up with philosophy stuff I have been working on myself in other ways and have been making decent progress.
Due to some events last year I gained a lot of weight (due to those events I was just kinda eating a lot of fast food, like more than I ever have) and was at the heaviest I’ve ever been at ~245lbs. I want to get back down to the weight I was at before, ~200lbs, and to just be generally healthier so I started working on that (I would like to be leaner but I don’t know if I care enough to put in the effort to be significantly lean, I just know I felt way too heavy/off at ~245). I’ve dropped ~25lbs from around later January to now.
I’ve just done some simple calorie counting (though I think there’s been some discussion here(?) about some issues with that) and exercise. It hasn’t been too too hard/bad.
I’ve enjoyed the exercise a lot. I workout six times a week but its not that much. I alternative between a simple weightlifting routine and some lightweight cardio (just walking on the treadmill, I tried running but I get shin splints I could work on my form but idc too much rn). I’ve kept up my exercise pretty consistently, maybe missing one day here and there, since late January. Iny my habit tracking app I’ve completed 52 workouts so far. Calorie counting hasn’t been as consistent but I’ve lost plenty of weight so far and I’m in no rush so I’m fine with that.
Sleep and doing chores around my house are things that I still find pretty hard to do consistently.
That’s good. Processed foods can be designed to trick your hunger cues so you overeat. They can also have unhealthy additives (including ones that aren’t on the label, like microplastics) and missing nutrients. So they’re an issue to potentially consider besides just calories.
For sleep there’s tons of advice and it really depends on what kind of issues you have.
For chores, it also depends on the kinds of issues like forgetting or avoiding are different.
If you do full level or full game speedruns it’ll help a lot with consistency.
Learning any tricks or routes is optional. You don’t have to do anything special before you get started. You can just run it your own way and try to improve your own time if you want. That can be better anyway to start with so you understand more instead of just copying other runners.
Mainly just sticking to a sleep schedule/schedule in general. I think the main issue is wanting more time to do stuff and staying up late to do it. Sometimes I do that because I used my time poorly throughout the day (like playing games when I had homework due so I end up staying late to finish that homework) and other times I just genuinely may not have time to do some stuff I wanted, while keeping to a schedule and all that, so I stay up late to do it. Depending I may either get up early and be tired or sleep in and have a weird sleep schedule.
Mmm. Closer to avoiding? Its mainly making time for them thats the issue. On days I have off or short shifts at work I keep up with all my chores, but days I have longer shifts its harder. Longer shift days kinda go like this: I usually close, so in the morning I’m focused on other things. Gaming, studying, whatever. I then go to work, then I come back and usually I’m a bit tired to do the chores. I also may have stuff left from the morning, like not finishing my homework, that I end up trying to finish at night leading to me not doing chores again.
I think this is something I’ve talked about before/thought about working on, but I think the main issue is just time management.
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