due to answering the ask I just got, I was reminded again of Gu Long's "On Wuxia" essay, translated here on Wuxia Wanderings which is a really fantastic resource by the way!
More specifically, the passage where Gu Long writes about Jin Yong (both of them tremendous greats in the wuxia genre btw) is just so...kind. There's something so wonderful about the way he talks about how he feels about the genre as well as Jin Yong himself.
I was initially reluctant to talk about contemporary wuxia authors, but I can make an exception for Jin Yong. Because his influence on this generation of wuxia fiction is unmatched, and for the past eighteen years or so, no matter what author you take, all of them have been influenced by him to some degree. He merged together the strengths of each major author and school, and not just from wuxia fiction, but also from classical Chinese literature and modern Western literature. in order to create his own unique style that is succinct, tidy, and lively! His novels are tightly plotted, large in scope, yet the endings match up with the openings, and the characters within are lifelike and vividly portrayed.
[....]
Most importantly, he created the current style of wuxia fiction that almost no one has been able to surmount.
[...]
When I myself first began writing wuxia novels, I was basically just imitating Mr. Jin Yong. Ten years of writing later, when I was writing The Sword and Exquisteness and Legendary Siblings, I was still imitating Mr. Jin Yong. I believe there are many wuxia authors in the same situation as me. On this point, Mr. Jin Yong certainly deserves to feel proud.
I'm not entirely sure I have a meta essay about this, just thinking about the way that like, even someone like Gu Long who was also truly one of the wuxia greats of all time, had such admiration for Jin Yong and his work, and how so much of the time in fandom when I've talked about it people don't know his work really well! They might love MDZS or erha or works that have come after, but we all stand on the shoulders of giants in many ways.
I also remember something a friend commented when we were on the thread on spcnet.tv forums mourning Mr. Jin Yong's passing in 2018, that's really stuck with me and that's the line of "I feel like, in [his] stories, the women are always braver." and maybe that's what I was thinking of when looking up this essay due to the ask I just answered.
