[Chinese BG novel] 顶流她又强又沙雕 / Silly and strong top streamer

 

Synopsis: Xia Xi became a Sea king in the novel. Original Xia Xi aimed for a big fish and marrying a wealthy family. Current Xia Xi traveled to this world she chose. Silly head had no idea that the title of Sea king doesn't mean you'll become a seafood tycoon. But now she has to become one for real. Xia Xi disagrees. After all "Isn't the money earned yourself enough?". Thus when three big fishes were waiting for the Sea king to overturn, Xia Xi joined the draft for a female group and stepped on the path of becoming a top stream.

I relatively liked this novel, but it wasn't without some flaws.

Usually it's all about saying good stuff first, but I will start from few points that left me unsatisfied with this novel.

1) I don't like characters that sound a bit out of touch. You have to force through first few chapters before it picks up and Xia Xi doesn't sound like a complete silly goose. After all at one point you think she's okay and at another time she shows her silliness.

Tbh the background of Xia Xi stayed very blurry to me, it feels like I understand that ahe had a master who taught her martial arts, thus it was her main point rhoughout entire novel, but was it a modern times or not who knows.

2) The portrayal of her "fish". The three men most of the time act like most cliche and unbearably toxic men imaginable, just because they know that original Xia Xi was chasing them for a reason, but they were partially related, thus discovered that all three were chased by the same woman, so they disdained her and wanted to play and never cared about her feelings. Xia Xi never cared about these men when she arrived, so she never even recognized them, to her they were some strange dudes with a load of self-esteem, thinking Xia Xi will be honored/happy to see they paid attention. Next thing was like self-hallucination. After all they corrected their own ways due to self-reflecting and watching Xia Xi on the show. What I want to say it's all in their heads. And the chasing after new Xia Xi was futile.

3) The romance tag confused me for the longest of times, until few last chapters I was like - oh... we're doing one last step romance. Because otherwise it should have been no-CP or actually, it had such a strong lily scent.

Now the good parts:

Except for initial silliness Xia Xi is quite humorous, hard-working and has very good qualities about herself. She can do many things, even cutting people's hairs (because she did it for her master, thus I thought it was a modern setting, her previous life, and thus I was confused how she managed to not know slang like Sea king) and it attracted the crowd. Xia Xi went into draft as blank canvas, her only wish was to get money and open a martial arts studio, but through her hard work, good memory and never-ending energy, she made the greatest progress and even debuted in C position.

The story itself doesn't cover a very long period, mostly draft and the year when all 11 girls promoted as a group. There is like the main group of girls and more or less secondary characters that rarely appear/mentioned, the mains are Xia Xi's female harem. Because the feelings are so good and the female friendship is good, their relationship gives a very nice comfortable feeling. As well as a bit condemning the idol scene, because the girls are described to work very hard, dance and sing very well and are very charismatic, but many other groups are using visuals against the talent, so that's the trend our girls broke up.

During this year Xia Xi wasn't only with her girls, but started acting and felt it was fun, but she was self-aware and started from small roles. All her roles are not far from being connected to her martial arts. She also acts as instructor, helps others to learn self-defense etc. Her dream basically came true when it came to opening martial arts studio.

The entire novel has this "I'm independent woman I can do it all" feeling that modern times like. She does promote it well and she does promote hard work, although compared to others her martial arts are like a cheat... Anyway, it lasts the entire novel, although the strong lily scent I mentioned is about the main girls who really like Xia Xi and feel very protected and reliable. But the "romance" tag became clear when we get to know the screenwriter of Xia Xi's movie. It's a handsome and aloof young man, he is very talented, has a good background, in the end there is very washed out foreshadowing which is I guess only like one scene where he gets attracted by Xia Xi, and only at the very end it's like - let's come together and try it out kind of thing. At least thanks for that. I may like girls who are strong and reliable, but being single feels so lonely, why not get yourself one who respects you, it doesn't mea she will fall into unfavorable position, thus this man was written in the story and I wasn't mad at it.

RATEL 3.75/5. Solely because of how three men were portrayed, it was like the most brain-dead part of the novel, the rest of it was fine.