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Aug. 10th, 2023 09:00 pmDeeply appreciative of ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
happydork for making sure to alert me that Cyan Wings, of Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know, had a new and also charming book out and translated right in time for me to zoom through it while hanging out with my family in the Poconos!
This one's called Something's Not Right, and the protagonist is a very dutiful and responsible* young emperor who gets conked on the head one day during some Plucky Young Girl Shenanigans and wakes up with a deep sense of existential unease related to the world around him. The most notable thing is that he has suddenly noticed that his respectable and virtuous empress is mysteriously tall and buff and square-jawed and prone to conducting sword dances and athletic routines early in the morning, but no one else seems to find this weird, so probably she was always tall and buff and square-jawed and prone to conducting sword dances and athletic routines early in the morning? Anyway as far as he's concerned this is actually quite hot, so no problems there.
More concerning is the fact that most of the other people he usually spends time with in the palace -- including not just his courtesans but also several scholars, eunuchs, etc. -- have all become obsessed with him to the exclusion of their other duties and hobbies and it's Very Irritating and Quite Concerning. It's all very well for the captain of his guard to offer to become his personal bodyguard, but that isn't his job, actually? His job is to be the captain of the guard? It's deeply irresponsible for him to start hyperfixating on the Emperor instead?
Also, the plucky young girl with the shenanigans appears to have supernatural good luck of the kind that means that when she decides to [for example] sneak out of the palace in disguise, everyone around her temporarily becomes completely incompetent. This is so troubling! What if an enemy decides to use her talents to undermine the nation?
The astute reader will obviously have guessed that there are some Metafictional Shenanigans going on here and indeed they would be right! The Emperor and the plucky young girl with the shenanigans are the original intended romantic protagonists; many of the other characters are from the modern day and competing to get the Emperor to fall in love with them instead; the Empress, in an extra layer of deception, is pretending to be a contestant, but is in fact pursuing another secret mission entirely, which means of course that the Empress is the one who is going to fall in love with the Emperor on accident.
( More details on this premise with full book spoilers )
The Empress is also of course a man* -- asterisking because the translation starts using he-pronouns as soon as the Emperor figures it out, because this is a danmei, but the Empress also never stops using 'your servant wife' in dialogue and has some internal monologue late in the book about preferring Empress to any other title, so IMO there's some room for ambiguity. (Also one of my favorite bonus notes from the epilogue is the fact that, because of the Empress' great renown, beauty standards eventually evolve to favor tall buff square-jawed women above all others.)
Anyway, I think Devil Venerable is more fun as a narrative but I very much appreciate this one's Thematic Emphasis on duty and trust and respecting your partner's commitment to their priorities, even if those priorities are not things that make any sense in your own personal context. Also it's still very funny!
[*nota bene the novel takes a firm stance that being a Responsible Emperor often means being harsh with individuals in favor of the greater good, which I mention so nobody is surprised to find some Responsible Torture in the middle of their light fantasy rom-com]
happydork for making sure to alert me that Cyan Wings, of Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know, had a new and also charming book out and translated right in time for me to zoom through it while hanging out with my family in the Poconos!This one's called Something's Not Right, and the protagonist is a very dutiful and responsible* young emperor who gets conked on the head one day during some Plucky Young Girl Shenanigans and wakes up with a deep sense of existential unease related to the world around him. The most notable thing is that he has suddenly noticed that his respectable and virtuous empress is mysteriously tall and buff and square-jawed and prone to conducting sword dances and athletic routines early in the morning, but no one else seems to find this weird, so probably she was always tall and buff and square-jawed and prone to conducting sword dances and athletic routines early in the morning? Anyway as far as he's concerned this is actually quite hot, so no problems there.
More concerning is the fact that most of the other people he usually spends time with in the palace -- including not just his courtesans but also several scholars, eunuchs, etc. -- have all become obsessed with him to the exclusion of their other duties and hobbies and it's Very Irritating and Quite Concerning. It's all very well for the captain of his guard to offer to become his personal bodyguard, but that isn't his job, actually? His job is to be the captain of the guard? It's deeply irresponsible for him to start hyperfixating on the Emperor instead?
Also, the plucky young girl with the shenanigans appears to have supernatural good luck of the kind that means that when she decides to [for example] sneak out of the palace in disguise, everyone around her temporarily becomes completely incompetent. This is so troubling! What if an enemy decides to use her talents to undermine the nation?
The astute reader will obviously have guessed that there are some Metafictional Shenanigans going on here and indeed they would be right! The Emperor and the plucky young girl with the shenanigans are the original intended romantic protagonists; many of the other characters are from the modern day and competing to get the Emperor to fall in love with them instead; the Empress, in an extra layer of deception, is pretending to be a contestant, but is in fact pursuing another secret mission entirely, which means of course that the Empress is the one who is going to fall in love with the Emperor on accident.
( More details on this premise with full book spoilers ) The Empress is also of course a man* -- asterisking because the translation starts using he-pronouns as soon as the Emperor figures it out, because this is a danmei, but the Empress also never stops using 'your servant wife' in dialogue and has some internal monologue late in the book about preferring Empress to any other title, so IMO there's some room for ambiguity. (Also one of my favorite bonus notes from the epilogue is the fact that, because of the Empress' great renown, beauty standards eventually evolve to favor tall buff square-jawed women above all others.)
Anyway, I think Devil Venerable is more fun as a narrative but I very much appreciate this one's Thematic Emphasis on duty and trust and respecting your partner's commitment to their priorities, even if those priorities are not things that make any sense in your own personal context. Also it's still very funny!
[*nota bene the novel takes a firm stance that being a Responsible Emperor often means being harsh with individuals in favor of the greater good, which I mention so nobody is surprised to find some Responsible Torture in the middle of their light fantasy rom-com]
