Are readers getting desensitized by cultivation novels?

[BenJepheneT]

You are telling me that if you died and woke up somewhere completely foreign and magical you wouldn’t give the being, god or not, a high amount of respect?

 

[greatATTACKshark]

View attachment 6098

I honestly don’t know how to feel about that

 

[gaylolis]

Technically you guys are proving my point. You are telling me that if you died and woke up somewhere completely foreign and magical you wouldn’t give the being, god or not, a high amount of respect? People kneeled for nobles for less, which are just people with a high amount of political power. Plus they just brought you back to life.

knowing the other novels, they will probably ask the God if they received any Cheat Skills.

not really into reverence for gods, but they can be my mc homie or sex partner. having kinky time with goddesses is right up my alley.

 

[BenJepheneT]

I honestly don’t know how to feel about that

Think of it as a dog that bites the hand that feeds it, but in a sassy way.

You can say that man's ungrateful, but unless you have a different definition of "power", there's nothing you could do towards apathy, even if it's the man you just reincarnated with all your energy and ability. If he never asked for it, what's stopping him from being disrespectful?

That's unless you cheat and mindbreak the mf. Then that's very not kosher.

 

[TheWritingBirb]

I wholeheartedly agree. Xianxia is in some sense a (male) power fantasy. Getting stronger by luck only to become a bully themselves. It has the notion of revenge of the nerds. And the farther they go the more ruthless they become. You could say they just adapt to the merciless world they live in but this explanation seems a bit lazy.

This was bugging me for years as well so I try, in my own novel, to humanize cultivation. What does it mean to become unimaginably powerful and do you lose your humanity in the process?

I would recommend the Chinese novel Ze Tian Ji. It discusses power imbalance a lot and what it means to cultivate (the philosophical aspect). It's one of the few xianxia novels that really emphasizes Confucian values. In that sense, it's more in the style of traditional wuxia novels.

 

[Z__SKULL]

I would not kneel to a "god" because I see no point. It knows it has power over me.
kneeling is subjugation. just because something has power over me does not mean I should submit. being polite and respectful in that sense is not the same as submitting