ussri.substack.com
Well, this is just about exactly what it says on the tin. I've finally mustered up the energy to write a full-length review of what's a plausible contender for my Favourite Novel Ever, Reverend Insanity. I'd reproduce it here too, but it's a better reading experience on Substack (let's ignore the shameless self-promotion, and the fact that I can't be arsed to re-do the markdown tags)
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Notes -
Despite liking some Wuxia novels (some having over 2000 chapters, making them a little wordy and repetitive), I didn't like RI very much. I only read about 50 chapters, but it just felt lukewarm (does it get better?). The progression system was too simple (in the beginning we're told that there's 5 tiers of Gu, which is like buying a new RPG game to find out that the maximum character level is 10) My second reason will probably surprise some people - it's too tame. I didn't expect it to be described as brutal on the Motte (it's described as such on Reddit, but Reddit is filled with people who are afraid of disagreement, criticism, light discrimination, and displays of confidence).
Don't get me wrong, it's not bad, but what the characters in the story describe as boldness and arrogance just seems like regular self-respect to me. In a world where you can give people mental breakdowns by suggesting that men are stronger than women, yeah, the story can be considered based (and fictional characters which aren't pathetic is a nice break from modern slop), but this is still a relative judgement rather than an absolute one. Go back 10-20 years and I don't think there's anything special about RI. I've spent most of my life being called things like soft, sensitive, kind and innocent, but Fang Yang cannot even compare to myself in the personality traits that I see him praised for having.
Seeing romance as a weakness seems like the surface-assessment of a 14-year-old. You should rather let yourself fall in love with somebody far out of your league - this would help you improve faster. Motivation comes from emotions, so killing all your emotions doesn't make you a perfect rational agent, it merely drains your life of meaning and reasons to go on. I'm quite confident that crazy people generally outperform rational people unless the latter is highly conscientious - "you must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star". The "Dao" that these cultivators build is literally a worldview/a personal path. Manga like "The world after the fall" show this concept well. People who are too rational cannot do this, they barely have their own opinions and values, they believe that things are either universally true or universally false, they do not have faith in subjective and personal things.
As ludicrous as it sounds, this is nowhere enough to judge the quality of most Xianxia, including the good ones.
I didn't mind the start, but I can promise you the novel gets better. I'm calling it a contender for my favorite novel despite the flaws and teething pains.
Jesse what the fuck are you talking about
More seriously, Fang Yuan is a maximally motivated character. There is nothing that a romance could do to make him aspire to be better, any faster.
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