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PaperclipPerfector
2mo ago
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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As per @self_made_human's recommendation, I have started reading Reverend Insanity and got past the first 170-ish chapters, which is slightly less than 10% of the work.
tldr: It is a better way to fill subway rides than doomscrolling, but as the alleged gem of the xianxia, it disappointed me.
Smart protagonist cred: 2/5. It might be intended that Fang Yuan doesn't come off as particularly smart, but rather experienced, lucky to have achieved the heights he had once despite his disadvantage in natural talent and then lucky once more to get another chance. The protagonist begins the story with the massive advantage of 500 years of foreknowledge along with a prestige boon that boosts his progress massively on top of the information he has. He does not make glaring unforced mistakes, but that is not to the credit of the story when I have never seen him learn, but instead was told how "Fang Yuan was entirely clear on X" and "Fang Yuan was utterly calm like a still lake because of his 500 years of experience". On top of that, the "Fang Yuan transmigrated from Earth" part was criminally wasted. You isekai into medieval ages from modernity and don't even consider in your internal thoughts to invent gunpowder and kickstart the industrial evolution combined with the existing magical system? Some "Chinese scholar", he is!
General characterization: 4/5. Surprisingly decent. Although the author does not provide the protagonist with any sort of intellectual or ethical challenge or growth, this is compensated by surrounding him with a cast of people who are not so zero-dimensional, and the reader can observe them work towards their own interests and ambitions.
Narration quality: 3/5. Even if it's the fault of jank translation, the narration of Reverend Insanity is aiming for entirely different standards than those we've come to expect from Western novels. It is simplistic and repetitive to nauseation (I bet the massive length of the novel could be cut in half just by removing the redundant descriptions of Gu abilities the primary characters wield), mixes crude dialogue with profound stereotypically-Chinese epithets about the beauty of nature, jumps around from third-person omniscient narrator to some sort of weird "teaching moments" between the author and the reader, with the "morals? hehe, don't be so naive" excerpts (I couldn't tell if those were supposed to be Fang Yuan's thoughts or the author's) being especially grating. On the bright side, some of the flowery descriptions are really fitting, and the constant repetition and remindings does help the reader to remember the various characters' powers and goals.
Worldbuilding and magical system coolness: 5/5. I'd like to play a videogame based on this setting, perhaps something akin to Tale of Immortal. It is remarkably consistent and shows the author has given thought to how powers interact, the political interplay in the clans, how trade works etc.
This is clearly heresy, for there can only be one: Beware of Chicken (not least because it's a parody of the generally mindblowingly stupid genre)
Full version can be found with fairly trivial googling.
As a preface, I'm someone who has read a lot of Chinese xianxia, dozens of different stories, most for at least 500 chapters and have come to the conclusion that most English authors completely misunderstand xianxia.
Xianxia is a low brow genre, on the same level as litrpgs and light novels, but it is extremely fun to read. The issue is that most xianxia writers get paid by word, so the more they write, the more they make. In turn this has resulted in a number of common tropes that exist solely to pad the word count. Extremely easily offended young masters are the most common example. And these are also the novels most English authors read, and are inspired by.
But the issue is, those stories aren't well constructed, and if you try to create another story off of it, it will be also be built on shaky foundations. Like it's easy to poke holes in common tropes, but while you can write one book about it, it just doesn't work in the long form structure that webnovels are written in.
All in all, xianxia is a great genre, that offers something you will never find in the West, but also is hard to understand without reading enough of it/or just growing up in China.
Maybe I just heavily dislike comedies.
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