Shitty Western Light Novels - OELs: Electric Boogaloo

[DungeonMaster]

You may have noticed an impressive of original English light novels being self published on Amazon. They are surprisingly popular and successful perhaps due to following what tends to be popular with weeaboos, while presenting their eastern subject matter in a decidedly western frame of reference.

There are a lot of them out there, and they are prone to slamming story elements, like gamelit, isekai, and cultivation together in hopes of finding the combination that sticks together the best. Seven years ago, it was a bloody nightmare looking for monstergirl media that wasn't related to MGQ or MGE. Now it's oversaturated the amazon market.

The writing of most of these ebooks are incredibly shitty, and the plot is aimless, instead focussing on endless sexual tension. They're so alike, that I wonder if you could create one using a neural network, like Harry Potter and the Portrait of what looked be a Large Pile of Ash.

WIEDERGEBURT: Legend of the Reincarnated Warrior
This combines isekai with monstergirls and cultivation.

Swordsman of the Rift
Written by Brandon Varnell, who appears to be extremely prolific in this field.

Building Harem Town
By Eric Vall. I swear to god, these concepts are so surreal it's as if they really did use a neural network to write these

So if you have any that are particularly cringeworthy or strange, i'd like to hear about them.

 

[OfficerBagget]

If you can write and draw this might be an easy market to bank on....

 

[pitawilson]

They're so alike, that I wonder if you could create one using a neural network, like Harry Potter and the Portrait of what looked be a Large Pile of Ash.

They probably are. There's endless amounts of AI generated bullshit on not only amazon, but if you make the write word soup on a subject of your choice, predominantly Roblox related, you will fiind endless "blogs" which are clearly just AI trainers smashing random sentences taken from the internet together. Soon enough it will get very realistic, if it wasn't for so many holes in our knowledge of linguistics to base the neural nets on it would have happened already.

 

[Tism the Return]

Isn't there a dedicated website for this shit? I remember it being full of amateur authors trying to build each other up and critique their novels (and a bunch of mindless drones praising them) and it was the funniest shit because it was all, inevitably, fucking awful as light novels tend to be. Can't remember the name of it for the life of me but I know it was a thing.

 

[pitawilson]

Isn't there a dedicated website for this shit? I remember it being full of amateur authors trying to build each other up and critique their novels (and a bunch of mindless drones praising them) and it was the funniest shit because it was all, inevitably, fucking awful as light novels tend to be. Can't remember the name of it for the life of me but I know it was a thing.

probably talking about archive of our own, wattpad or quotev.

 

[Marissa Moira]

All that a light novel is, is a regular novel split into 5 books because the authors have a worse work ethic than George RR martin.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Mentioned it in the weeaboo thread, but my brother actually wants to write light novels with hundreds of chapters that get popular enough for anime adaptations. The big one he wants to do has a magical academy setting, too, complete with a jackass OP main character. He's even trying to write harems involving fantasy monster/furry girls (because he's open about his love for Monster Musume) and even incest. They're as bad as you can expect, terrible writing style aside.

I'll post the rough drafts as proof, too, since OP's links had some samples of the kind writing that goes into these light novels. The harem ones are NSFW.

 

[I Love Beef]

Mentioned it in the weeaboo thread, but my brother actually wants to write light novels with hundreds of chapters that get popular enough for anime adaptations. The big one he wants to do has a magical academy setting, too, complete with a jackass OP main character. He's even trying to write harems involving fantasy monster/furry girls (because he's open about his love for Monster Musume) and even incest. They're as bad as you can expect, terrible writing style aside.

I'll post the rough drafts as proof, too, since OP's links had some samples of the kind writing that goes into these light novels. The harem ones are NSFW.

Your brother has great world building skills. Tell him to watch more anime that isn't today's stuff. Also tell him to not make his characters all Japanese.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

Your brother has great world building skills.

I think there's potential if he'd just flesh out his ideas more. Magic from atoms sounds like it could be intriguing, but he'd have to do extensive research on the atomic level. I think if he just stuck to more fantasy settings (since he's very much into D&D), he'd fare better.

Problem is his writing is awful. He's in need of a proofreader/editor badly.

Tell him to watch more anime that isn't today's stuff.

He's too busy rewatching One Piece for the umpteenth time when he's not reading random manga and playing Nutaku games and regular video games after work and school.

And there was a time where we watched older anime together, but he was never big into them. Since a few years ago, he's actively refused to watch anime with me whenever I offer the chance, even the movies/short OVAs, so I stopped asking him. Besides shounen, his favorite genres are harems, yuri, and ecchi, he's doomed.

Also tell him to not make his characters all Japanese.

He's told me he has big hopes his light novel(s) will become actual anime in the future, that's why he made them all Japanese. Fucking weeaboo, he's doomed.

 

[I Love Beef]

I think there's potential if he'd just flesh out his ideas more. Magic from atoms sounds like it could be intriguing, but he'd have to do extensive research on the atomic level. I think if he just stuck to more fantasy settings (since he's very much into D&D), he'd fare better.

Problem is his writing is awful. He's in need of a proofreader/editor badly.


He's too busy rewatching One Piece for the umpteenth time when he's not reading random manga and playing Nutaku games and regular video games after work and school.

And there was a time where we watched older anime together, but he was never big into them. Since a few years ago, he's actively refused to watch anime with me whenever I offer the chance, even the movies/short OVAs, so I stopped asking him. Besides shounen, his favorite genres are harems, yuri, and ecchi, he's doomed.


He's told me he has big hopes his light novel(s) will become actual anime in the future, that's why he made them all Japanese. Fucking weeaboo, he's doomed.

He's not of adult age yet, is he?

If he is, just send him to Japan after the coof subsides and let reality take course. He'll learn that it's not the wonderland it's all cracked up to be.

Honestly, I don't get what the fuck is so hard about writing anime styled stories. I suppose it's other factors like thinking how Anime shit is from Japan, that it's put on the exoticism pedestal of exceptionalism, but yeah, if he's doing shit like this, he's not going to make it far as a writer of anime stuff at any rate.

 

[Kari Kamiya]

He's not of adult age yet, is he?

If he is, just send him to Japan after the coof subsides and let reality take course. He'll learn that it's not the wonderland it's all cracked up to be.

Oh, he's of age, he's just poor as fuck. He wants to go to Japan one day, though, tried to date a girl (who's quarter-Japanese) who went to Japan for her mission and even was attending her Japanese lessons. 'Course she ended up going to BYU in Utah, so that fell through. Lol.

Honestly, I don't get what the fuck is so hard about writing anime styled stories. I suppose it's other factors like thinking how Anime shit is from Japan, that it's put on the exoticism pedestal of exceptionalism, but yeah, if he's doing shit like this, he's not going to make it far as a writer of anime stuff at any rate.

I think it's an issue of only looking at them at a surface-level and not bothering (or unable) to look deeper into the creator's thought-process and laying the story out as such. Clichés are quite universal, but a difference in culture means a different viewpoint, making it easy to overlook or misinterpret by putting in Western elements in a Japanese story that, while it may have taken inspiration from Western takes, is still from a Japanese point-of-view.

Might just be me, but I think it's also an attempt to translate visuals into text gone awry. Anime is the way it is due to visuals, but there's still a backbone of a story that can be put to words, it's just it takes some skill to be able to balance it out that makes sense to the reader. Unfortunately, some writers think making references to their favorite series makes for a good shortcut but end up taking those very same references out of context doing so. You see this happen in fan fiction quite often, no doubt it can crop up in original works, too.

Nothing wrong in being inspired by anime, but trying to copy it never works out well.

 

[Tism the Return]

probably talking about archive of our own, wattpad or quotev.

It wasn't either one of them. Looking at it now it was probably something like https://www.honeyfeed.fm/ but I wouldn't know. From what I remember the site was more of a forum than a AO3 or wattpad clone.

 

[DungeonMaster]

Mentioned it in the weeaboo thread, but my brother actually wants to write light novels with hundreds of chapters that get popular enough for anime adaptations. The big one he wants to do has a magical academy setting, too, complete with a jackass OP main character. He's even trying to write harems involving fantasy monster/furry girls (because he's open about his love for Monster Musume) and even incest. They're as bad as you can expect, terrible writing style aside.

I'll post the rough drafts as proof, too, since OP's links had some samples of the kind writing that goes into these light novels. The harem ones are NSFW.

It's fuckawful, filled with grammatical errors, worse than the stuff I've seen twelve year olds write. I had to wonder if English was his first language. It reads as if he's never read anything since high school, causing his grasp on the English language to degenerate. I do see potential, though. So long as it remains readable, which it is, then perhaps I can invest myself in the plot and characters.

I like Monster Musume and monstergirl genre. It's a pity that most people who write about monstergirls are creatively bankrupt and or terrible writers who spend most of the time dawdling around about persecution or sex without moving the plot one inch at a time.

It seems like the perfect niceguy's genre: many proponents of the genre create a setting that provides a lot of pretty nonhuman girls everyone who's part of the "familiar" group hates for an incredibly arbitrary reason, thus granting the protagonist the status of being The Only Guy Who's Nice To Girls. This appeals perfectly to niceguys who wish that they could get pooned by a wog who falls madly in love with them thanks to being the only man who hasn't tried to lynch her yet.

Like... why don't you try anything new with the infinite potential you've been given, aside from doing the Xmen electric boogaloo! Hell, even create variants on the monstergirls you have, even the deviantartists do it often.

> Slime girl made entirely from oil. She runs an oil drilling company in the desert so she can make more of herself, and also cooperates with a religion that venerates fire. Turns out her species is the only one that can host a fire elemental conjured by them.
> Lamia who can extend her tail infinitely, but only if nobody is looking a segement of her tail she can't see herself. When somebody sees it, she can either withdraw back to normal length or get paralyzed.

Oh, he's of age, he's just poor as fuck. He wants to go to Japan one day, though, tried to date a girl (who's quarter-Japanese) who went to Japan for her mission and even was attending her Japanese lessons. 'Course she ended up going to BYU in Utah, so that fell through. Lol.

I think it's an issue of only looking at them at a surface-level and not bothering (or unable) to look deeper into the creator's thought-process and laying the story out as such. Clichés are quite universal, but a difference in culture means a different viewpoint, making it easy to overlook or misinterpret by putting in Western elements in a Japanese story that, while it may have taken inspiration from Western takes, is still from a Japanese point-of-view.

See: RWBY.

Might just be me, but I think it's also an attempt to translate visuals into text gone awry. Anime is the way it is due to visuals, but there's still a backbone of a story that can be put to words, it's just it takes some skill to be able to balance it out that makes sense to the reader. Unfortunately, some writers think making references to their favorite series makes for a good shortcut but end up taking those very same references out of context doing so. You see this happen in fan fiction quite often, no doubt it can crop up in original works, too.

Nothing wrong in being inspired by anime, but trying to copy it never works out well.

This is what happens when people who don't read try to write. It really isn't easy to translate manga or anime into a text format, considering all the idiosyncrasies involved in the way anime is framed and paced. Your brother's story is more like a screenplay than anything else.

The best art comes unconsciously: intentionally trying to ape something else will always end up with it looking like a watered down, deracinated knockoff of what you're trying to flatter, especially when you have an extremely narrow pool of inspirations. This is what happens when you don't try to understand the source of what make the aesthetics appealing from a cultural perspective. I find that many overt weeaboos don't like to stray very far from their comfort zones.

 

[Llama king]

Light novels in general are shit

 

[Jubileus]

I know this says "light novels", but if you're looking for the pipeline of raw sewage that spouts the web novel versions of this stuff (one of which regularly has stuff turn into LNs), there are two sites not yet mentioned to watch:

RoyalRoad - Started out as a forum for bootleg translations and fanfics of the Korean series Legendary Moonlight Sculptor. Expanded into original and fanfic VRMMO/GameLit/LitRPG stuff and then further with generic fantasy and cultivation stuff. Now it's getting a bunch of Wattpad refugees because that site nixed its forums. A lot of LitRPG stuff that ends up on Amazon starts here.

webnovel.com - Operated by Qidian, the Tencent-owned megaplatform for webnovels in China. Started out as a hub for shitty (but licensed) translations of various Qidian properties, then they opened up the platform for anybody to publish new stuff there. You get multiple flavors here, because the reader base is split between male power fantasy and female "my husbando is a billionaire CEO" types. Extra fun to read because a huge part of the demographic here is actually from Southeast Asia, with authors writing in English despite it being a second or third language to them, and the site's editors are mainland Chinese who generally have a mere passing acquaintance with English.

 

[Yukari Yakumo]

For a second I thought this was a thread for shitty western visual novels.

 

[Mnutu]

For a second I thought this was a thread for shitty western visual novels.

It’d be titled “Christine Love: A Shit Story” if it were.

 

[Fentanyl Floyd]

Isn't there a dedicated website for this shit? I remember it being full of amateur authors trying to build each other up and critique their novels (and a bunch of mindless drones praising them) and it was the funniest shit because it was all, inevitably, fucking awful as light novels tend to be. Can't remember the name of it for the life of me but I know it was a thing.

Royal Road?

 

[Fentanyl Floyd]

I know this says "light novels", but if you're looking for the pipeline of raw sewage that spouts the web novel versions of this stuff (one of which regularly has stuff turn into LNs), there are two sites not yet mentioned to watch:

RoyalRoad - Started out as a forum for bootleg translations and fanfics of the Korean series Legendary Moonlight Sculptor. Expanded into original and fanfic VRMMO/GameLit/LitRPG stuff and then further with generic fantasy and cultivation stuff. Now it's getting a bunch of Wattpad refugees because that site nixed its forums. A lot of LitRPG stuff that ends up on Amazon starts here.

webnovel.com - Operated by Qidian, the Tencent-owned megaplatform for webnovels in China. Started out as a hub for shitty (but licensed) translations of various Qidian properties, then they opened up the platform for anybody to publish new stuff there. You get multiple flavors here, because the reader base is split between male power fantasy and female "my husbando is a billionaire CEO" types. Extra fun to read because a huge part of the demographic here is actually from Southeast Asia, with authors writing in English despite it being a second or third language to them, and the site's editors are mainland Chinese who generally have a mere passing acquaintance with English.

Are there any decent novel on either of these places? I've been through the original works section on webnovel.com and it just looks like generic litrpg/isekai crap.

 

[DungeonMaster]

Mentioned it in the weeaboo thread, but my brother actually wants to write light novels with hundreds of chapters that get popular enough for anime adaptations. The big one he wants to do has a magical academy setting, too, complete with a jackass OP main character. He's even trying to write harems involving fantasy monster/furry girls (because he's open about his love for Monster Musume) and even incest. They're as bad as you can expect, terrible writing style aside.

I'll post the rough drafts as proof, too, since OP's links had some samples of the kind writing that goes into these light novels. The harem ones are NSFW.

Hold on... Does he have any internet presence anywhere at all where he hosts his work, like Wattpad or RoyalRoad?