JGY. Fine. Sometimes I do feel a bit bad for you but sorry please return to your glorious state of death.
NHS. Ugh… I really feel sorry for him. I deleted so much of his part and I even got rid of a good partner for him… Let me see if I could fix things up in the edited version… Anyways, NHS, I’m sorry.
Those who caused the most debate were mostly round characters, and so there is of course flat characters to foil them, like Wen Chao, JiaoJiao, and the people who only follow the herd. Flat characters actually have an important responsibility. Their standpoint is clear. Everyone could curse at them to let off some steam unlike the former, whom some hated and some loved, creating endless dispute. And thus, this was the type of character that SQH* likes to write about. If all of the characters in a book are complex and round, I don’t know if the readers would feel tired. Anyways, with my current abilities, it’d definitely tire me out when writing them…
TN: Here the author refers to Shang QingHua, one of the characters in her previous novel The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System who is an author himself. His pen name has been translated differently by different translators and the pun’s kind of hard to deal with, but just generally it means “fapping towards the sky”. Yep. For more on Scum Villain check out BC Novels at http://bcnovels.com/the-scum-villains-self-saving-system/.
Third, on practice:
I’ve said in the ‘Author’s Notes’* of the first few chapters that this is a work of self-fulfilment written to improve my abilities.
*TN: Most of these haven’t been translated because they either only pertain to the drama of the Chinese fandom (false plagiarism accusations, problems with copyright, attempts to regulate the actions of toxic fans, etc.) or just simple comments that don’t matter all that much. You’re not missing out on anything, trust me.
When I was stuck at the outline, I’ve already anticipated many negative comments that I’d soon receive, preparing myself for what was to come. For example: the main character is too forgiving; too much holding back and not enough lashing out; the flashbacks are just too annoying; why do the side characters get so many scenes; too easy to forget about what happened before after reading what happened next… A lot of these did indeed happen.
What I was most worried about was that she might not be good.
Scum Villain had the advantage of including popular elements, such as parody, tsukkomi*, and transmigrating into a novel. But, after all, parody and tsukkomi aren’t intrinsic things. So this story was an attempt to see if without these things, what I write would still be readable.
*TN: The Japanese term for a comedian in a double-act who plays the ‘straight man’ who berates and comments on the acts of the boke, or the ‘funny man’. This has a Chinese alternative which is called tucao. The two are similar in many ways, and tucao humor is quite popular in net-novels.
During the practicing process, more and more questions were dug up.
Like Empathy. The goal of Empathy is simple—to insert the stories of side characters. I was using it like a variation of the point-of-view switch, but the technique is so simple that it’s almost a shortcut.
And also like the agonizingly long flashbacks that so many criticized. It’s not a favored writing method. Ever since the first section, readers have abandoned the story because of it. More and more happened as time went on, and the controversy got bigger and bigger as well, but I still followed the outline and insert three uber-long flashbacks.
When I was writing the outline, I’d also considered if I should disassemble the plot of WWX’s past life and the pieces bit by bit inside the story. My conclusion was that if it were disassembled, the structure and timeline would be even messier and it’d be even harder to read. The completeness of the plot would be destroyed, and the emotions wouldn’t flow smoothly either. Strictly speaking, this story consists of two parallel stories of the past and present lives, of two segments of life. A few minor memories could be fragmented, but the important phases and the transitional events couldn’t be summarized. And in the end, I still decided to use a method I thought could express things the best. When writing, on some things one should take suggestions, but on others it’s best to persist. No matter if others think it was ‘the best’ or ‘the worst’, it was still my attempt.
There were also a few plot elements that I blurred over because I wasn’t in the best state, and a few characters didn’t end up as strong as they could’ve been… I hope I could fix all these things during the editing process.
Fourth, on gratitude:
The perception of the author and the reader are often poles apart. It’s rather difficult for the author to predict what comments they’d receive after the story is published or whether or not it’d be liked and acknowledged by the reader. The author might feel great, but the reader might not get it at all; a plot element on which the author spent tons of effort might not be received well in the eyes of the reader. Situations where the author scribbled around and the reader enthusiastically chased after it were very common.
I wrote this story with the determination that it’d fail and that’d be alright. Inserting so many flashbacks into a net-novel was an absolute indicator that it was going to fail. On top of that, even though the hot element of rebirth was tagged, it unfortunately had none of the pleasure-points that most rebirth novels include. This was why ever since the first few chapters I’d been emphasizing over and over again that this would be different from the last book, worried that readers who liked Scum Villain might not find this one palatable. I wouldn’t want you to be disappointed after you come all the way here to support me.
But I never expected that even though the last book was completed more than a year ago, the readers on JJWXC are still as passionate as ever. It’s just like what I said. You really give me an utmost surprise every single time.
Thank you!