I know it’s hella problematic, but the web novel reverend insanity/master of gu introduced me to the genre a long time ago, and I’d love a tv show/movie with that style of magic system. Anything vaguely similar would be dope if you know what I’m talking about.
Grandmaster of demonic cultivation is the closest I’ve found.
Edit: Thank you everybody :mission-accomplished-1: :mission-accomplished-2: I now have enough content to make the void of capitalist realism feel less empty. I really appreciate all the recs.
Baldree is good folks. Gonna check out your recs.
Painting the Mists is also a solid xianxia that is further along than A Thousand Li and is a bit more fantastical (though still unfinished at least with audiobooks). Guy expresses some liberalism and makes some really bad campy references. The second book made me cringe from how the female characters were written about, but that smoothed out over time. I've been making my way through it for a while now, and it's been a pretty solid driving and work audiobook that I don't have to focus on too much.
Forge of Destiny and Fates Parallel are two different YA xianxia series about a girl (a thief) stumbling into a cultivation sect and learning to cultivate. Forge of Destiny is kind of the og, while Fates Parallel feels kind of like a response in that it's gayer and it'll get out of the sect setting much faster. FoD holds a soft spot in my heart as it was the first xianxia webnovel I started reading, western or Chinese.
He Who Fights with Monsters is progression fantasy about a wisecracking Australian guy who gets isekai-ed into a magic world, and the author makes it work. The wisecracks aren't really about "funny reference" but it feels more like "funny reference and also the protag coping with his ridiculous circumstances in probably unhealthy ways." The narrator is really good, which may contribute heavily, and the emotional state of the protag is pretty juicy drama. Author is a massive radlib who thinks authoritarian is an aesthetic and despite being critical of American foreign policy, still hates all of its enemies. When real world locations and politics aren't relevant, it's pretty good. Also unfinished, but that may be a bit of a theme with western written webnovels in the genre.
Everyone seems to describe HWFWM as litRPG, but you don't describe it as such. I generally avoid anything with that label because I prefer real stakes; would you say that's a mistake wrt HWFWM?
Forge of Destiny is among those on my to-read list that I keep forgetting about; I'll give that a shot soon. I plan to save (as in "Save page as...") this whole thread once it dies down, in fact, but I appreciate this comment especially, and not least because you didn't name a single thing I've already read :)
Ehh, tbh the label litRPG doesn't really mean anything to me, probably due to me not actually being into fantasy until I really got into cultivation fantasy. It just seems to be a tool to develop a framework for helping write and tell a story, and give structure to the power system. HWFWM literally has litrpg in its tagline, but other than it's propensity to read "System text" for 5 minutes straight I can't really tell. FoD likely has more of a litRPG feel with a large cast of characters who just kind of fade in and out and basically no stakes, though I am not versed enough in the genre and its tropes to say much there.