Why did Ji Xiaofu not regret being raped by Yang Xiao?

[sniffles]

All those perfect romances we see, the girl happens to be in love with the most powerful or at the very least in the top 99% of the people in the world in terms of power/prestige. Of course she's gonna stay with him! It's incredibly hard to fall for a poor man when you're accustomed to the company of a billionaire or millionaire.

It's interesting that you refer to the romances in wuxia novels as perfect. I seldom think of any of them as perfect romances. Most of the people involved in those relationships are very flawed people. Their relationships frequently end in the deaths of one or both characters, or are interrupted by terrible events that threaten to keep them apart forever. That's not perfect romance in my book (not that any such thing as a perfect romance actually exists).

Anyway, in SPW Yue Lingshan/Lin Pingzhi/Linghu Chong shows a really realistic love/romance triangle thing. It's very real to real life. In fact, there isn't really any unrealistic romances in wuxia story, except Xiao Feng not having the sex drive of fifty tigers and not doing women left and right.

I agree, at least with your statement about SPW. I guess that's why it's my favorite JY novel. And as you say, there aren't any really unrealistic romances in wuxia fiction; as strange as some of those relationships are, such things do happen in real life, too. Well, except for getting poisoned six times and surviving, or living comfortably at the bottom of a chasm for 16 years, or things like that.

[tape]

I guess I mean enviable more than perfect. But I forget the premise of the argument now, except that wuxia romance is not so different from real life once you make the necessary equivalence changes such as martial arts = money/power/status etc.

[Trien Chieu]

wuxia is for people who can't be a hero in real life to escape into a wuxia world where they can be a hero through the protagonist.

Are you implying that wuxia fans fantasize about being a wuxia hero ? I don't think they want to be a wuxia hero as they do not want to be growth up as an orphan. In real life, most orphans are no heroes.

How is that different to real life? In our world, the vast majority of girls, with or without good qualities, fall for the "heroes". Look at our movie stars, sport stars, wealthy entrepreneurs etc. and the women that fall at their feet. Going down to levels below the celebrities, it's always the guys who have the highest social status (i.e hero-like) that get the best girls. The losers never get the girls. If they're lucky, the girls may "settle" for them later on, but that's not "getting".

Wuxia may be a fantasy, somewhat simplified world but it does reflect our world more than people think.

The guys and girls who think that wuxia romances don't reflect real life often forget that in the world they're living, if they're guys, they aren't heroes and if they're girls, they aren't rare beauties who are also super witty or amazing cooks. It's not wuxia authors' fault. It's just that you're not exactly the ideal they wrote about. And too bad, such ideal men / women do exist in our world; you're just not them!

Wong Yung falls for Kwok Jing when he was a nobody. He wasn't a wuxia hero at the beginning.

[Trien Chieu]

I agree, at least with your statement about SPW. I guess that's why it's my favorite JY novel. And as you say, there aren't any really unrealistic romances in wuxia fiction; as strange as some of those relationships are, such things do happen in real life, too. Well, except for getting poisoned six times and surviving, or living comfortably at the bottom of a chasm for 16 years, or things like that.

The martial arts of SPW suck if you compare them to LOCH. In LOCH, you have 9ying, martial arts of the greats, etc. In SPW, you have Sunflower/Bixie where you have to chop off your dong in order to learn it.