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Apr. 7th, 2025 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI liked this is ridiculous so much that shortly thereafter I dove into Are You Okay, Qi Ying Jun's other extant/fan-translated work of meta-transmigration nonsense.
Are You Okay is sort of a mosaic novel -- it starts out looking like a collection of short stories about transmigrators, most of them quite silly and focused on Implicitly But Not Explicitly Romantical Relationships Between Men. The starting premise is that so many people from the future have been transmigrating into historical China that the Emperor has had to put policies in place to deal with the problem. For example, the first story focuses on an Imperial transmigration bureaucrat assessing a young man for possible transmigration fraud, because now that transmigration is happening all the time, people claiming 'I just woke up in this body and I'm not responsible for any of its crimes!' is also happening all the time.
Qi Ying Jun is a very funny writer who has a hundred jokes that she wants to make about transmigration and by god she is going to make them, but she is not just here to make jokes. After a few setup stories, the characters start colliding into each other and also into the broader plot about a cabal of frustrated transmigrators trying to push historical China to modernize as quickly as possible, and the silly meta-transmigration nonsense gradually transforms into a darker satire on war, technology, propaganda and progress. By the end I think the book sort of collapses under its own increasing weight -- this is ridiculous is overall a better and more coherent work -- but I had such a good time on the journey with Are You Okay that I'm not too mad about it. The jokes are simply so good! The chapter in which a hero from the jianghu has to undertake an investigative mission with the help of the world's worst historical Chinese Uber driver was worth the price of admission all on its own.
Are You Okay is sort of a mosaic novel -- it starts out looking like a collection of short stories about transmigrators, most of them quite silly and focused on Implicitly But Not Explicitly Romantical Relationships Between Men. The starting premise is that so many people from the future have been transmigrating into historical China that the Emperor has had to put policies in place to deal with the problem. For example, the first story focuses on an Imperial transmigration bureaucrat assessing a young man for possible transmigration fraud, because now that transmigration is happening all the time, people claiming 'I just woke up in this body and I'm not responsible for any of its crimes!' is also happening all the time.
Qi Ying Jun is a very funny writer who has a hundred jokes that she wants to make about transmigration and by god she is going to make them, but she is not just here to make jokes. After a few setup stories, the characters start colliding into each other and also into the broader plot about a cabal of frustrated transmigrators trying to push historical China to modernize as quickly as possible, and the silly meta-transmigration nonsense gradually transforms into a darker satire on war, technology, propaganda and progress. By the end I think the book sort of collapses under its own increasing weight -- this is ridiculous is overall a better and more coherent work -- but I had such a good time on the journey with Are You Okay that I'm not too mad about it. The jokes are simply so good! The chapter in which a hero from the jianghu has to undertake an investigative mission with the help of the world's worst historical Chinese Uber driver was worth the price of admission all on its own.
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Date: 2025-04-10 12:40 pm (UTC)One of the things that blows my mind about reading/watching, say, The Untamed is that there are so many subtle details that make me lose my mind with how great they are...and I know there are so so so many I'm missing. I can't imagine how rich the text is if you actually pick up on all of those!