Read-in-Progress Wednesday

[geraineon]

This is your weekly read-in-progress post for you to talk about what you're currently reading and reactions and feelings (if any)!

For spoilers:

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Comments

[dayadhvam_triad]

I came across this journal article, a comparative review of 3K Workers and 穿进赛博游戏后干掉BOSS成功上位 (After Transmigrating into the Cyber Game, I Defeated the Boss and Successfully Rose to the Top @ novelupdates), which discusses the evolution in depiction of female characters' moral norms within a yanqing context from Qiong Yao to Legend of Zhen Huan etc. and how these two novels, while nominally yanqing, have protags reconstructing moral norms within narratives that are essentially divorced from romance. It doesn't address baihe at all, and I can't say I agree with everything the author's saying (I haven't read that widely in the relevant genres), but it's interesting food for thought!

Read some stories that ranged from "meh ok forgettable" to "hilarious black comedy BUT with a glaring issue that totally ruined the 2nd half" /SIGH; I've also been reading bits and pieces of 世说新语/A New Account of Tales of the World in the original CN vs. EN tl... for ficcing purposes XD

[geraineon]

Oooh, /eyes emoji/

That is an interesting article. What would you say are your biggest disagreements with them, and is it quite different from your experience reading baihe?

[dayadhvam_triad]

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?!?!?

[geraineon]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about this paper! Reading your impressions, it does sound like the article is a little lacking in breadth. Lost opportunities!

... self created DND character seems like a super specific comment from the author! Huh. I'd expect self-insert characters to be bland or a bit more "blank-slate" but what I've heard of 3K Workers does not feel like that?

[dayadhvam_triad]

To be fair, "self-created DnD character" is accurate LOL. When LXY comes to the Three Kingdoms era, her body is that of her own DnD (Pathfinder) character which she created for a tabletop RPG group—the DM even comments caustically on its annoyingly long name and super-low charisma stat (novel author put up a character sheet for funsies). But yeah she's very much a distinctive character, not a blank-slate self-insert. Feels like an example of "why were the curtains blue?" where the meaning read into it by the article author doesn't hold up imo.