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[smjjames]

I saw an interesting fan theory in the comments that the purple woman and strongest of the would be killers could be the missing part of Cio/Yabalchoath given that Cio is missing important memories and only has two arms now and that the woman has purple skin and yellow eyes.

Theres no evidence that she split into two and we've seen that memory loss is a normal, if temporary, part of re-masking. Seems more likely that she is just repressing some memories given how much she does remember.

[TD1]

Hmmm, I simply thought there was some connection to Oscar, given her clothes. But if it were a split-off of Cio, that would also make the Oscar-swag-connection.

[EnigmaticHat]

Maybe Eightfold from Paranatural? She wasn't birdy, but she was an origami spidery thing.

... that'd do it, actually. Half thought of paranatural a while after the post, but now that you mention the name I actually recall the thing.

That's like the fourth time I've seen "punch magic" show up and have never heard it before like a week ago.

For what it's worth, there's actual terms for the stuff -- wuxia, xianxia, etc. -- and the style and themes are well known enough even in western media you've pretty certainly ran into elements of it before. Crouching tiger, hidden dragon is probably one of the more well known-ish films in the western sphere of things, if very restrained compared to the stuff that has dead people faffing around. Also maybe too old these days but most of what I'd point to on the non-animated front that I can recall is older. Kung-fu panda, jackie chan adventures, sorta' the bendy avatars, etc.

It's probably more accurate to call it martial arts fantasy or something, but I calls it like I sees it and I sees it as people casting magic spells with their fists. Punch magic it is.

I’ve always heard of “kung fu movies”, is that what we’re talking about here?  You know, “you killed my mentor, I won’t let you use the forbidden Dragon Anus technique for evil”, that kind of thing?

[Frumple]

More or less. The written form seems to trend a good bit more fantastical, though. Probably has to do with the whole special effects budget thing. Wire frame only goes so far, and cgi et al has only recently-ish started mystical thumbing its way into non-cartoon type stuff.

There's a pretty iconic scene (or several, probably, I just remember the one) in kung-fu hustle where a guy palm thrusts a hand imprint through an apartment building or three and then the ground if you're looking for a decent movie scene involving the stuff that goes beyond jumping off buildings or trees or whatever.

[EnigmaticHat]

So six billion demons would count as that genre then.

[Frumple]

Basically? It doesn't seem to bulletpoint hammer all the normal themes and contrivances of the genre but it definitely draws on them plenty hard. Considering it also seems to draw decently on hindu/buddhist iconography/metaphysics, which also is heavily involved in most punch magic stuff and regularly shapes themes and plot, there's basically zero surprise about that, heh.

It's not a 100% guarantee thing but generally if you got kung-fu critters with bunches of arms or stabby guys in bathrobes you're probably dealing with punch magic fantasy to some extent. If someone throws a river or something equivalent at someone else it's pretty damn certain that's the genre you're dealing with.

[Cruxador]

Wuxia is the "kung fu movies" genre. Xianxia is a different but related genre; it's way more fantasy. K6BD shares a lot of traits with xianxia, but I don't know that it really stems from that tradition originally. I think it's more that both of them draw a lot of influence from Indian mythology.

[Frumple]

Dunno if I'd go so far as call it stemming, but even just as far as I gone so far the chances of ksbd not pretty intentionally drawing from fooxia is what I'd call hella' slim. Even beyond the myth influence aspect, certain junk like the guild fun and whatnot are about as close to an explicit shout out as you can get without actually spelling it out in body parts or somethin'.

I wouldn't call it impossible it's more convergent evolution, so to speak, than direct inspiration, but if it turned out wozzname hadn't been decently exposed to the fooxia stuff either prior to starting the story or shortly after beginning to release it to the public, I'd be incredibly surprised.

That said, definitely the mythology side of things would lead to any number of similarities, heh. I wouldn't try to slap down even a general percentage or somethin' for how genre ties are apportioned, much less something specific.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

genres are stupid anyways.

[Frumple]

maybe but they're also how you find the stuff where people are throwing geographical features at platonic ideals without having to trawl through a thousand variations of "shades of grey, but with worse writing"

They may be blunt tools, but until we have expert systems that will read everything for us and then filter everything you don't want to read, they're an important one. Doing that ad-hoc with meatbots only gets you so far, sadly

[Cruxador]

I wouldn't call it impossible it's more convergent evolution, so to speak, than direct inspiration, but if it turned out wozzname hadn't been decently exposed to the fooxia stuff either prior to starting the story or shortly after beginning to release it to the public, I'd be incredibly surprised.

I assume you're trying to make a new word because there's nothing particularly culinary about the comic... I wouldn't be surprised if ABBADON had no particular interest in that kind of thing though. Neither would I be if that turned out to be the case, and there are references to China specifically (particularly the 中 associated with the Middle Army), but it's definitely way more Indian in inspiration than Chinese anyway. The fact that there's Chinese stuff which also takes inspiration from India doesn't mean everything Indian must be Chinese. And ABBADON has specifically said that his inspiration is mostly from vedic and abrahamic cultural sources, aside from the surface-level pop-culture stuff that Al-Ys-Un brings with her.

[Frumple]

Kludge together parts of words, actually. Probably abusing a foreign language in the process, but I'm speaking english here so that's more hobby than anything.

Foo's used as a stand in for a wildcard in some circles. Killed by foo on dungeon level bar is the classic composition, which I want to say is yet another reference to the acronym FUBAR. You could replace what I was using with *xia or something as well, if you felt like it. I've never really got around to learning the proper nomenclature or specific formulation differences between wu- or xian- or whatever so it's pretty much all a nebulous punch magic thing to me. Fooxia is shorter than punch magic, so sometimes it gets used instead

That said, fooxia's general shtick extends beyond china, if my memory's not going complete haywire again. It's pretty certainly very strong (well, to the extent it's a particularly thriving field to begin with) in china but you got it coming from other joints, too. Most of what I've personally encountered were korean, but from what I understand there's a vaguely farcically huge body of literature that's not been translated even partially into english yet so gods only know what I don't know of.

... that said, it does occur to me I don't think I've seen much of whatever it is that is coming out of india. Kinda' weird in retrospect.

[EnigmaticHat]

This is a shot in the dark, but might that be too violent to resonate with Indian audiences?  I don't honestly know enough to argue in favor of that but the relatively little I know of Indian culture gives me a gut feeling that they wouldn't be down for fiction where the main promise of the story is magic punch action.

Alternate theory, its possible that in India Bhuddist and Hindu monks are too mundane for wuxia-esque stories to work.  Like how there's no way an American could have made Evangelion.

[Rose]

Nah.

Indian mythology is plenty violent.

[Cruxador]

That said, fooxia's general shtick extends beyond china, if my memory's not going complete haywire again. It's pretty certainly very strong (well, to the extent it's a particularly thriving field to begin with) in china but you got it coming from other joints, too. Most of what I've personally encountered were korean, but from what I understand there's a vaguely farcically huge body of literature that's not been translated even partially into english yet so gods only know what I don't know of.

Koreans are basically off-brand Chinese in some respects, though. I mean, they do have a distinct culture, but they're still traditionally very much a part of the Chinese cultural hegemony, even if a peripheral part distinct from the yellow and yangtze cultures.

This is a shot in the dark, but might that be too violent to resonate with Indian audiences?  I don't honestly know enough to argue in favor of that but the relatively little I know of Indian culture gives me a gut feeling that they wouldn't be down for fiction where the main promise of the story is magic punch action.

You've never seen a Bollywood action scene, then?