Read on Twitter
I decided to write a wuxia, and I am feeling struggle constantly in regards to how I might navigate these complex feelings I’m possessed by.
There is, within me, a concern that I’m telling someone else’s story or appropriating a genre that’s not mine. I then think about what story I’m telling that could be someone else’s. None of this story is dealing with real places or people.
Nor am I appropriating any cultural facet that could be said to be closed (as far as I understand it). I’m not out here recreating any specific wuxia film, show, or novel that would be stealing attention. I’m just trying to earnestly tell a story.
So I guess now it’s a question of why wuxia. Could I not do any other fantasy setting. Why this one. Of which I think, we’ll this is the style that feels most natural to me. Knights and castles of the European sort is not what my imagination is built on.
My earliest fantasies was of soaring over treetops. Engaging in duels with rivals I love and respect, but still wish to test my steel against.
Plus, and this is serious to me, it’s not like any other immediate second world inspo appeals to me. Pulling from West African culture doesn’t work cause I don’t have any connection to it all beyond a tenuous blood relationship.
Telling me to do that doesn’t do anything. While what I want to do just doesn’t feel right in some pseudo European locale. That doesn’t fit either.
Wuxia tho means something to me. There’s something in this story of a community on the margins. Rich in bonds, hurt, and conflict stretching back generations. Of grudges inherited and passed down like prized heirlooms. I relate to that.
So maybe that’s all I got. This feeling of understanding, and this story, my story, of which if I don’t write it this unique manifestation of it won’t exist is all I have.
None of this thread is me seeking absolution. I don’t even really ask for understanding. I just needed to exorcise the demons in my mind that are doing more harm than good. As well as making peace with my discomfort and the place I stand in
