- #1
This quick transmigration novel both reminds me of why QT novels are so well liked but also why QT novels are so disliked too. There's some really great worlds in this, but also some really terrible ones too, and of course the big deal-breaker (for some) : an overbearing, as*hole male lead.Let's front-load the good first: some of the worlds are really, truly good, and the author is incredibly skilled at generating pathos, even when the audience knows that the protagonist is acting. Some of the revenge, while a tad excessive, also feels really, really good. So good, in fact, that the moment I finished, I went back and reread it just to revel in how good it was. (My personal favorite is the third arc. Punishment is excessive as heck but so, so satisfying for some reason. This arc made me realize why some folks like revenge fantasies so much.) Now as for the bad: some worlds are B A D. Like, frustratingly bad, since there are so much good to compare to. For instance, the gamer arc was extremely, extremely sexist to the point that I wanted to forward articles written by actual women who are gamers to the author just to go, "The reason there are less well-known girl gamers is not because of some intrinsic difference between men and women but because the gaming environment is so hostile to girl gamers that even when girls do game, they usually try to do so offline or with a male pseudonym to escape harassment. Also, f*ck off."Spoiler
That's not even mentioning the dog arc, where, OK the protagonist is a yao, but he's still a freaking dog!! I can take a lot of really weird fetishes, but the bestiality vibes in this arc squicked me out s o m u c h. Like, why couldn't the narrative make the protag a yao who had already gained human form?? Why all that time spent as a dog?? Why, even after gaining human form, does he still spend the majority of time as a dog?? Why all the creepy moments when protag still had no human form when the male lead was still into him as a dog?? WHY?? If I ever turn into a dog and my significant other shows interest in me, I would dump that girl the second I turn human again o m g.
[collapse]TLDR; Kind of the epitome of QT novels? Not in the sense that it's a really good QT novel, but that it kind of exemplifies what QT novels are like -- some really good, engaging worlds, along with some worlds that are absolute shit. Honestly, I just came here to ??? About that dog arc because why.EDIT: OK, as I read more of this, it's just become increasingly clear that the author has some truly ridiculous hang-ups about women, not even just in the usual sense where "women in BL manga are all evil" but also in the sense that she makes some truly wild essentialist statements about women as if they were Actual Indisputable Facts. Such as: girls are less physically strong so they're not good at gaming (?? Wtf??), girls are easily bored with a subject like archaeology (again wtf??), and so on and so forth. Honestly, it's gotten to the point where I preemptively brace myself whenever a female rival is in an arc because I just know the author will make some truly ridiculous statements about not just the woman as a person but women as apparently a category of beings who all share Exactly the Same Indisputable Traits. I was originally going to rate this a 3 out of pity, but honestly the sexism is way too egregious for that. (It doesn't appear that often simply because women don't appear that often in this author's world, but whenever there's a woman, you bet there's going to be some sexism. Jeez.)