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Here's my elevator pitch for reading xianxia: If one is going to read fantasy why not read stories of the ubermensch fantasy?
self_made_human already touched on this with Reverend Insanity, that the protagonist of that story is not a good person by Western moral standards. But I want to convey the sense that the whole genre is touched with a hint of this everywhere. What this means is a very refreshing way of looking at humans and society and power-level. Chinese xianxia protagonists don't shy away from doing "bad" things to get ahead. They lie, they cheat, they steal. Chinese protags are refreshingly candid that they only care about the people around them and the people they can reach. But they won't go out of their way to solve other people's problems if it's too hard or too costly. There isn't much drama of self-guilt or shame. Chinese protags don't have time to wallow in regret cause they always are either in the next danger or are preparing for the next advancement. This is not to say the Chinese protags don't have a moral system, they do, they are just more utilitarian, more cleared-eye (imo) about the dog-eat-dog world they are in. When the time comes though, balls to the walls, desperation, loved ones in danger, the Chinese protag can be just as hot-blooded and idealistic as a Shonen protag. And they follow through. No bullshit talk-no-jutsu, no everyone becomes friends with the next arc. We've got family annihilation, torture in body and soul, punishment that follows reincarnation, etc.. In a world where characters are always being revisioned or subverted or re-thought or "live long enough to become the villain" and back again, the directness and forcefulness of Chinese protagonists is surprisingly Nietzschean when they say "I hate you, I will never let go of grudges, I will transcends the heavens to then come back and get what I think is due".
Of course, the genre isn't entirely like this. There are some really noblebright stories out there such as the 40 Millennium of Cultivation mentioned before. There are some quite feelgood power-fantasy slop out there as well. For me, when I just started out, I was only excited that there is an entire new "medium" of stories I can now consume, and only slowly came to realize the differences between Western works and Chinese works.
Perhaps I'm just not fed up on Western works enough, then. When I see an amoral protagonist, they bore me. There is no wondering what they'd choose to do, just pick the most effective option and author willing they'll do it, or fail and come back 100 chapters later. If everyone can only be evil or stupid (or stupidly evil), they all blend together and can only be indeed differentiated by cultivation ranks and sect hierarchy position.
On the other side in Pale which I shilled a few times, there are various evil characters - some more successful than protagonists, some less, some get their comeuppance and others don't, but the facets of evil make them interesting. Although I concur that the protagonists of Pale are probably way too saccharinely self-righteous by the standards of the average ruthless MC enjoyer. But then again, they're regular teens, not ones isekaied into by their 500 year old variants (another Reverend Insanity cheat that already begins to grate on me in the first chapters).
Right right, but that's the thing with the Chinese protagonists, they are moral and have their own moral system, they're just not Western morals.
Yes. Sometimes also there are Western works where protagonists have a moral system that's not the modern Western morals. I'm specifically dissing the explicitly amoral sociopath protagonists like the one Reverend Insanity is advertized for.
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