Re: baihe, it feels like the article doesn't consider its existence period. It discusses the expansion of webnovel female protag characterization from kind/good to cruel/ruthless and Strong Female Character and how this ties to feminism in what comes off as a very heteronormative framing (what kind of behavior the protag does to get love [from a man] or refuse expectations to receive love [from a man, the negation thereof], hello "vicious female supporting role" and its subversion, mixing love narratives and moral narratives, ad nauseam). When the author gets to 穿进赛博游戏后干掉BOSS成功上位 and 3K Workers, they talk about how the protags don't conform to or negatively react to moral norms formed for women vs. men in a patriarchal environment, but bypass that (heteronormatively framed) matter altogether by nature of the problem/conflict they focus on. And it's no coincidence that both stories are marked yanqing but have very background romance.
Though I haven't read much baihe, I've osmosed that some stories assume different societal norms (e.g. gender equality in a historical setting), so that's another approach—ignored by the article—where the writer changes the norms of the setting upfront. But even in non-historical settings, I don't know if the article writer could easily map the dynamics they discuss onto baihe stories. (I mention historical vs. non-historical only b/c my current cmedia consumption falls almost entirely under the former category.)
Specific disagreement—the author talks about how Lu Xuanyu in 3K Workers is the physical incarnation of a self-created DnD character and is thus a posthumanist metaphor through which readers can project themselves. I felt a very vehement NO! in my soul when I read that. XD While I love that LXY is very "normal" (in her initial attitude) compared to the typical historical transmigration story protagonist imo, I never once felt that she's the kind of character who can serve as a pseudo-self-insert. Just, no?!?!?
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Though I haven't read much baihe, I've osmosed that some stories assume different societal norms (e.g. gender equality in a historical setting), so that's another approach—ignored by the article—where the writer changes the norms of the setting upfront. But even in non-historical settings, I don't know if the article writer could easily map the dynamics they discuss onto baihe stories. (I mention historical vs. non-historical only b/c my current cmedia consumption falls almost entirely under the former category.)
Specific disagreement—the author talks about how Lu Xuanyu in 3K Workers is the physical incarnation of a self-created DnD character and is thus a posthumanist metaphor through which readers can project themselves. I felt a very vehement NO! in my soul when I read that. XD While I love that LXY is very "normal" (in her initial attitude) compared to the typical historical transmigration story protagonist imo, I never once felt that she's the kind of character who can serve as a pseudo-self-insert. Just, no?!?!?