- #1
I have a whole system for reviewing. I got layout, the sections, and the criteria all planned out. But I can't bring myself to use it for this novel. Even though I like many things about it, I just feel an urge to complain about this author.I really don't know what is wrong with this author's brain. On the one hand, the author manages to avoid many of the pitfalls other authors fall into with webnovels. On the only hand, this author dives head first in others that most authors would have little trouble avoiding.Before going into that, let's get this out of the way. This is a Quick Transmigration story. Those of us familiar with this genre know how these go. The host goes to the a variety of worlds, face slaps everybody in them before moving on to the next world and repeating the process. In this case, our host is Ning Shu. Ning Shu is supposed to be a sensible character. She sees through bullsh*t and uses her wits to succeed. Let's disregard that she was originally a bedridden young girl in her early teens with little worldly experience and just accept that once she begins her journey she is suddenly extremely clever and savvy.Okay back to this pitfall thing. In female protagonist face slapping novels, young girls get wrecked. This is because the protagonist usually starts as a young woman so naturally her enemies are also young women. They go up against the protagonist and this means they are inevitably going to suffer a terrible fate, But most people are not all that enthusiastic about reading about girls and young women dying gruesome deaths. So what authors do is give the reader an excuse to enjoy reading such things by making these girls villainous. Usually, this just means making them extremely hateful and irrational for little discernible reason. It is a shitty way to make a villain but at least you have a villain.The author of this story also does this. But only sometimes. And that "only sometimes" is the biggest problem with this story. The protagonist Ning Shu is portrayed as a good person. Pragmatic but good. As the protagonist of a face slapping, she is going to drive women to death. That is just how the genre works. But sometimes the author just outright fails in making the girls the protagonist drives to death seem villainous. In face, sometimes rather than seeming villainous they appear downright pitiful. But the author gleefully kills them off anyway.Let me give you some examples.A girl from the countryside saves a general who was defeated in battle and badly wounded (the male lead for that world). The two fall in love. The general hides his identity from her and brings her back to the capital to be his wife. There she discovers that her future husband is actually an important figure. But she also discovers that he already has a fiancee. So now this girl is stuck far away from home. She doesn't know anything about the city. She doesn't know the proper way to speak to the nobles of the city who can take her life on a whim. She has tan skin from living in the country and since this is a chinese web novel this means that everyone is allowed to look down on and disparage her with impunity. The only person she can rely on is the general who told her nothing about the situation he was dragging her into or his marital status and does nothing to educate her.No matter how you look at it, this girl is not a villain. Never-the-less, it is our protagonist's duty to face slap her. So how does the our hero Ning Shu deal with this pitiful girl who cannot possibly bring any harm to her? By attempting to disfigure her and eventually driving her to a miserable end like she does all the actual villainous characters.But wait, there's more!Another example. A girl who aspires to be an actress. Her manager wants her to go to parties with important people in the entertainment industry so that she can make connections and in that way get prominent roles. The girl does not want to go these parties. The author portrays the girl as unreasonable for being unwilling to do this but the girl actually has two good reasons to dislike these parties. First, she wants to succeed as an actress through her own skill rather than backhanded means. And second, she gets groped and mol*sted at these parties. But her manager forces her to go to these party anyway. The author portrays this as the right thing to do because "that's how the world works". But as a result of going to one of these parties, the girl is r*ped. But, in true Chinese web novel logic fashion, this r*pe is okay because the rapist is the handsome, wealthy, and powerful male lead of that world, who happened to be drugged with an aphrodisiac. The male lead tosses money at his victim as an apology. At this point, the girl already pretty pitiful. But author is not done with this girl yet. The author has just gotten started! The male lead is SHOCKED that the woman he r*ped doesn't want to pursue him romantically. This arouses his interest and so he decides to pursue her himself. Forcefully. He forces her to be his lover through force and blackmail. The author is careful to say time and again that even though the girl is being forced, the rapist is doing a lot to treat her well aside from the whole r*pe and blackmail thing. And like a prisoner suffering from Stockholm syndrome, she eventually falls in love with him. With the influence of the "r*pe them until they love me" male lead, this girl is able to make inroads in the entertainment industry and become the queen of film.This girl who was r*ped, blackmailed, and forced into a relationship is the enemy that the protagonist, Ning Shu, must face slap into a miserable death. But never fear, the is supposed to be a villain so the author will definitely make her deserving of a face slap, right? So let's take a look at some of our r*pe victim's villainous actions.The girl accidentally spills wine on an influential figure (Mr. Rapist from the previous paragraph). As a result, her manager dragged her out into the rain to apologize him. The manager got drenched and became sick. Clearly, this is the girl's fault. Who told her to be so clumsy? Disregard that it was the manager who forced the girl to go the party against her will and disregard that it was the manager that thought apologizing in the rain was a good idea. The girl is to blame. That makes her a villain.The girl is given a role as an extra and does poorly. As a result, the director yells and screams at her. Naturally, the girl doesn't want this to happen again so she asks her manager to let her take acting lessons. The manager refuses this request. Rather than learning the fundamentals of acting in a class, the manager thinks the girl should just learn on the job. The author assures us this is perfectly reasonable. The girl vehemently disagrees. That makes her a villain.The girl has low EQ. This makes her bad at reading situations. That makes her a villain.The girl complains once, Just ONCE, that her manager forces her to go parties where she is groped by strangers. The male lead is angered by this and destroys the manager's career before having the manager gangr*ped to death. The girl did not ask for that to happen. It was not her intention for that to happen. The male lead did it all on his own. But the male lead did it for her, so that makes her a villain.That last paragraph is what the author uses to justify Ning Shu's mission to drag the girl into hell. Ning Shu transmigrates into the manager long before the gangr*pe and before the girl herself is r*ped by the protagonist. The arc is then about how Ning Shu torments this girl. It doesn't matter that the girl isn't responsible for what happened. It doesn't matter that the girl never wanted a relationship with the male lead in the first place. It doesn't even matter that everything that happened is a direct result of the manager's own actions. For the author, the manager is the righteous one and girl is the villain. And we all know what happens to villains in these stories.This kind of shitty logic and morality is all over the place in this story. In the author's defense, these are scenarios taken from other web novels. Ning Shu transmigrates into the female antagonists, so the author is put in the position of having to make the antagonist righteous and the heroine villainous. But the way this author does it is often so half-assed and nonsensical that it feels like the author is just finding excuses to kill off the the would be heroines and have the would be villain win.I should be clear that this does not happen every arc. There are plenty of arcs where the would-be heroine is clearly villainous and so this problem is averted.And finally, this is technically a review so I should say at least say that I find this story entertaining. If you like quick transmigration stories, here is one that focuses more on face slapping and adventuring than romance. In fact, many arcs (most the ones translated so far) don't have the protagonist engaging in any kind of romance at all. Instead she is raising children, or cultivating, or fighting a war, or surviving the apocalypse. These are familiar scenarios in quick transmigration stories but they are as entertaining her as they are in the other stories, and better written than most the translated qt stories on novelupdates. I would give it 3 stars if the rating buttons weren't mysteriously missing on novelupdates right now. It is just that for this story you can't think too hard about who is in the right and who is the wrong or you will often find that the people the Ning Shu is face slapping to the grave are actually the righteous ones. Oh, but this doesn't apply to each world's male lead. Those guys are pretty much always over-the-top ridiculous villains.And that is the end of my rant.
