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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   3188 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 18, 2023

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I have to say that complaining that Fang Yuan wasn't evil enough is new, never heard that before! He absolutely is evil, as you say, yet it's really more of a sigma male kind of complete shamelessness rather than edge. Ally with your enemies for situational reasons? Of course! Undermine and betray them? Yes! Kill enormous numbers of people? Absolutely! Do another backflip and claim to be the paragon of righteousness and benevolence? Yes!

I also like how it messes with the tropes of the xianxia/shonen. Later on, we're introduced to the power of love (which causes our ruthless MC some problems). The power of love is very great, but it's not enough to win decisively. There's an element of tragedy to its use. The power of friendship is not a get out of jail free card, it has its limits and can be overpowered.

The story also tries very hard to navigate between the need to have a main character be exceptional and advance quickly without unfair advantages, while retaining agency and a world full of intelligent, selfish actors. There's an inherent contradiction there. Why aren't the first-rate elites, nurtured by the richest sects, capable of beating some orphan from a hick town? Are they all holding the idiot ball? Later on, you can sense that the author's been wracked with pains over the plausibility of the whole thing, trying to make it more reasonable.

I was only complaining during the first 30 chapters or so, and only half-heartedly. I've been in this rodeo long enough to know most Cultivation novels only really start 50+ chapters in!

The story also tries very hard to navigate between the need to have a main character be exceptional and advance quickly without unfair advantages, while retaining agency and a world full of intelligent, selfish actors. There's an inherent contradiction there. Why aren't the first-rate elites, nurtured by the richest sexts, capable of beating some orphan from a hick town? Are they all holding the idiot ball? Later on, you can sense that the author's been wracked with pains over the plausibility of the whole thing, trying to make it more reasonable.

I found Fang Yuan to be quite believable, he was significantly less sociopathic for most of his previous life, it was only after ages of suffering and suppression that he really ended up an amoral motherfucker. In the very beginning of his new life, he had a massive headstart in terms of knowledge, experience, and where to find hidden loot crates with rare Poke drops. At the point I am now, he's certainly fighting fiercer opponents, and I think that as the story progressed, the difficulty and intelligence of his enemies rose too. He has to work for it, and few things he does seem like complete ass-pulls, at least to the extent those aren't mandatory in Xianxia.

I'd also expect having access to 500 years of technological advances to be a big help, as it is in the story, though obviously not as much as in a more grounded and realistic setting.

Yeah, he does make good use of his time-travel advantage, even later on when it depletes a lot.

I personally think the author does a great job of making it seem plausible, yet a few people were unhappy about the balance between character agency and plausibility. Of those who aren't filtered by the bear scene, that's the only thing I've ever heard complaints about.

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