Chapter 22: By Any Other Name
DISCLAIMER: I am being particular with english translated online novels.
I must tell you something. I was reading a bunch of them novels a few days ago, and I came across this piece that piqued my curiosity and I coud not help myself but to read a snippet of it, and because I wanted to know if there was worth reading it. You might be thinking, oh I know you just read the summary of the story, and you are wrong as I did not. The summary made me curious, and then I actually opened the book and skimmed a little through its pages - for lack of a better metaphor. And as for what I found, that is what I wish to talk about today.
So here the thing about the story, the story is about a protagonist finding himself inhabiting the body of another person, whose previous person tragically passed away and allowed the protagonist to replace it. The protagonist then find out the with regards to capability of the person he is currently inhabiting, it is, to use novel terms, trash. His meridians are crippled, he is a almost at the time of his life where he should have been flying through the roof with his cultivation. His once proud family is in dire straits, many other people are eyeing the supposed wealth that his family has been blessed with, and ,oh yes, he has a beautiful sibling.
If you think that this premise all seem to familiar with you, you are not wrong. After this is premise that many an action-packed, mainly chinese, cultivation stories that see our hero take on his journey from nobody to emperor god-king of his realm. It can be a thrilling ride if written well, and a bummer if written lackadaisically.
So what is it about this particular novel that I wanted to share, well two things actually. One would be the good news about it, and number two the bad news about. But let me already put a disclaimer here, this is my perspective, and my take on the story, and I do not wish to impose anything on you, the reader.
So let us get to the good news, and I will not defer any longer, remember when I talked about the protagonist and the very familiar premise of the story that I talked about, well here is the thing, the aspect of this story that made this a novelty was, and drum roll please, that our hero was no hero at all, in fact our hero should be aptly called a heroine.
Yes, the protagonist is not a man but a woman. Why is this a novelty? Well it opens up avenues to talk about the dynamics that could happen between our heroine, in this case, and the many characters around her, and add on to that the foundation upon which the story is built, which as you might know, lends itself mostly to male protagonists. And for so long, female protagonists have been relegated to the task of making her male counterpart happy in a story where she is the supposed focus. This novel premise gives us an alternative through which to envision a character's journey, as that character navigates through the structures of power of the world that, in this case, she inhabits. Because we know what it takes for a man to become the strongest, but what about if it was a woman? This kind of premise gives us another point with which to consider.
Taking into account the good news, what about the bad news? Well, the thing about the story, that I read snippets of, that I am now talking about, is that a few chapters in into reading, I began to notice, what for me were tell-tale signs of the whole thing making the mistake of many a story with that same kind of premise.
What do I mean by that? If you remember the first few chapters, I talked about the thing I hate about the male protagonists of stories as if the world was turning around them. Like each and every enemy think he must die, that they would rather team up to make sure our hero dies than remember that they have their individual interests to consider as well, after it is a dog-eat-dog, patriarchy-laden, world. What is frustrating for me is that this story seems to be going down that some rabbit hole as well, and just that this time with a female protagonist rather than a male one, and that without even considering that dynamics now change, and rightly so, now that the focal point of the story is a woman and not a man.
So in conclusion, I will give the story probably five out of ten for the novelty of its premise but that is about where it ends. I was hoping a little bit more from the story but I guess I should not have expected much. Let me put a disclaimer once more that this is simply my take on the story and I do not wish to impose it on you, the reader.
If you wish to read the story I am talking was rambling on about, well I am sorry, I forgot the title as it was too long. But, you can check it out on the website for w*xiaw*rld, for those of who you who could, it should be somewhere there.
Well, until then. Peace.
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