Dear authors of xianxia novels,

please stop! Every time I try to read one of your stories, I put up with all the nonsense that comes with it. I'll ignore that your MCs are disgusting psychopaths who would kill an entire sect of mostly innocent and oblivious people, just because one guy offended them once. I'll also ignore that your MCs have to suffer through painful training and life-threatening situations for hundreds of chapters for some tiny boost in power, while their followers and rivals randomly eat a flower to achieve the same effect. I'll even look past the constant, droning boredom of your story loops, like the classic levelup-insult-faceslap-levelup-insult.

Yeah, for today I'll ignore all of those in favor of a simple message: If you can't write proper female characters, don't write them at all. The current state of affairs helps no one, neither your novel nor your readers. As it turns out, not every woman in the world is a supermodel. You might not be aware of this, but not all your female characters have to be a beauty, a fox, a seductress, a fairy or a demoness.

On that note: there's also more than three types of women in the world, which you'd know if you had met more than three women in your lives. Here's a challenge: Try describing the personality of the female characters in your novel without any of the following words: Gentle, Motherly, Calm, Cunning, Cold, Mischievous. Impossible you say? Might I interest you in the purchase of this thesaurus here?

[Deep Breath]

Here's another question for you: Why is it that when the son of the local ruler is slightly impolite with the nameless MC on their first meeting, his entire extended family deserves to be wiped out? But when the local ruler's daughter, who tortures and kills people for entertainment, tries multiple times to assassinate the MC, her punishment is to get added to the harem? And of course, all the murder isn't really her fault, because her daddy was mean to her once and she cried about it. Fuck off, will you? Maybe treat your female characters the same as every other character in your story? Like, just for a change? Try it, maybe you'll like it... rather than having those shallow Mary Sues constantly ruin my enjoyment of an otherwise solid novel.

That's another thing: Please stop with the overpowered little girls. Why would you establish that the MC is a once-in-a-million-years talent, but then three chapters later you introduce a girl who is one year younger and ten times more talented? What was the point of establishing the MC's talent then? Why would you lie to your readers and ruin the moment right away? Do you think any reader is gonna like the Mary Sue character who broke the established rules of the novel to become OP? You can't be that oblivious, can you?
At least don't string me along for dozens of chapters of the MC's hard work and then have some random Mary Sue show up out of nowhere to take away my payoff. I don't appreciate it no matter how much of a heavenly beauty she is.

[Glass breaking. More deep breaths.]

I get it, you're thirsty, you want a hot and cool girlfriendo who gives you scary looks and orders you to lick her feet, but you're harming your novel with your fantasies. Just write some smut on the side to let off steam, no reason to let it bleed into your main work.

Okay that's it. Just wanted to get that off my chest. I think my blood pressure is close to human levels again, and that throbbing vein on my temple didn't burst, so at least I won't have to clean up the blood. Please try to be good, dear xianxia authors, or I might have to write another one of these to keep my head from exploding.

Kindly Fuck Off,

SociableHermit

    I more or less agree with everything said here.
    Everything.
    Author's just don't understand the female species. Especially not author's who've never held a conversation with them in their lives.
    Sorry to ya'll, but it's actually obvious when reading many stories.

    Instead of telling people to stop writing, you can just not read their stories you know. Even if you hate their stories, that doesn't mean other people who wants to read their stories should be deprived of reading them.

    I'm not saying they are good stories, and I agree that a lot of them are awful, but forcing them to stop writing is too extreme. Who are you to decide what gets written and what should be stopped? The only right you have is to decide what YOU want to read and what you want to avoid. Nobody has the right to tell other people to stop writing. If you want to critique and offer suggestions for improvement, by all means, but don't stoop so low as to stop people from writing whatever they want totally. If they are truly awful, then people will naturally avoid them and their stories after a while. But if there are people who want to read such stuff, then let them. Why deprive them just because YOU don't like it?

    If you don't like chocolates (because they are unhealthy or taste bad or something), are you going to demand that Cadbury stop producing them, and deprive everyone else of eating them? If they want to indulge in chocolates, that's their perogative. Similarly, if people want to read or write xianxia, it's their right. Your only right is to choose not to read their stuff, not to tell people what not to read and write.

    Of course you can criticize them. That's fair. If you just point out everything that was wrong with how they handled female characters, that's acceptable. Telling them to stop writing, however, is not. People start somewhere. They will improve. Just point out the flaws and tell them where they went wrong. Not stop them from writing.

      Tomoyuki I... don't think I'm telling anyone to stop writing in my post? Ah, maybe the 'just stop'? That was in reference to overusing usual xianxia tropes, which should become apparent in the rest of the post. I even write that the novels beyond the usual problems can be quite good. That's why I wrote this: It's frustrating to read novels I enjoy, only to have them ruined by the same tired nonsense again and again.

      Also, it's a fucking rant, not a politician's speech. There's even a specific 'Diss' tag on this forum, which I've used. In that context, I don't think anything I've written is 'unacceptable'. And even if it was, it wouldn't be your place to tell others what I can and can't write. That's what mods are for.

          SociableHermit

          Ohhhh, so I thought this kind of nonsensical and farfetched stuff only exist in romance novels targeted at female audience, where most of the guys are studs, loaded with money, who are also geniuses whose only downside is having a low EQ (basically a more sophisticated way to describe a jerk). And most of the female characters, except the FL of course, are sluts and bitches that need to be put in their place. Oh and of course being sexually forced by a handsome guy is a one night stand, but heaven forbid it was an ugly dude, then it was a rape.

          I've never read any xianxia novels, but so it looks like they are also written, in a way, to satisfy most male readers' twisted fantasy just as the romance genre is, to most female readers'.

              Cantiara Yeah, it's kinda the same thing for both male and female target audiences. Only difference really is that the male-oriented ones are about revenge and dominating others through power, while the female ones seem to be about being loved by everyone and getting everything handed on a silver platter.

                Tomoyuki Nah, no worries. When I wrote it I was sorta trying to play a character of grumpy, disillusioned (and potentially drunk) reader for comedic effect. Guess that didn't land too well, huh?

                    SociableHermit Nah, I'm just bad at reading. That's the problem with online posts, without being able to actually listen to the other party's tone and see his/her expressions, it's hard to tell what's funny, sarcastic or serious. My bad on that.

                        TheCaffinated Because they will get web comic adaptations in future. Also adds to helping the readers (usually male) fantasize about beautiful heroines and whatnot. The whole point about novels and stories is to spark the reader's imagination - it's the same reason why they go through great lengths to describe a fantasy world, dragons and monsters, magic, etc. even if we can't actually see them. The readers visualize them based off the descriptions.

                            SociableHermit i was about to fight you when i read the title but i realized you're not referring to female lead xianxias.

                                Like somehow ex-assassins/thieves/marines/doctors start behaving like teenage girls and indulge in face-slapping rather than...you know, behaving like someone in their profession? And how almost every other character other than the obligatory servant/maid sidekick and male love interest are complete jerks who try to kill the heroine for no reason other than her being "trash"? I mean, if she really was so insignificant, weak and trash, why the hell are you wasting your time, energy and resources trying to kill her? And when she thwarts their assassination attempts, you would think they will revise their opinions, but no. It seems like every antagonist is evil for the sake of it. Makes for one-dimensional characters and a shallow plot.

                                But there is an audience for such stories, and they can be guilty pleasures, so I understand why they are popular.

                                Reinesse Female lead Xianxias are even worse...Take all the problems with Xianxian, then take all the problems with the CEO romance crappels...i mean novels... smash them together and you get something so frustrating i need an hour at the punching bag after reading just to vent my anger.

                                and yeah... i have stopped reading anything with a female lead on this site.

                                    SociableHermit As a xianxia writer myself, I totally agreed with everything you said. I'm not trying to throw them under the bus. I know it's not easy to write about the opposite sex accurately, but xianxia writers mostly take it to another level entirely. Thank you for pointing it out.

                                    A heart of Dao.
                                    Author: Pathway to Eternity

                                        SociableHermit are you mad cause you feel your gender is being miss represented? Well a lot of xianxia stories are just copies of another, I don't really read that genre for that reason.

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