Trash Novel

Reversal wasn't that bad. 

It really wasn't. It was just written by a serious amateur. An amateur who then went and amateurishly edited it. And the result? It was something that would get someone's expectations up but would only disappoint.

Imagine if you saw someone picking a pen for the first time drawing stick figures? One wouldn't bat an eye and let them continue.

But what if a seasoned artist who looked like he could draw really well ended up making a very mediocre, crooked picture? That would bring disappointment.

Or at least that was my theory for now. I mean, that is what I felt about Reversal too. It was a good unique story, but something about it just never let me be invested in it if I read it again.

It may just have been because I was the one who wrote it, and that was why I didn't want to read it, but the system thought differently.

In any case. 

"I am kinda hurt, I won't lie."

[You are definitely handling it much better than the rejection email.]

"I am not so butthurt to cry over some comments, on something I do not like either. At that time, I really thought Reversal stood a chance, but I can look at it objectively now… Still, these commenters are all assholes."

[Haah, such is the human mind. Never appreciating the ones that try to help you simply because it is shaped as criticism.]

Was this guy trying to sound like a smartass? Because it was definitely passing with flying colors.

"Anyway, what kind of books DO they like?"

A lot of stuff on the platform had great titles, but to be honest, they all seemed the same.

Maybe I had stumbled on the club meeting of highly strung-up novel connoisseurs and earned their ire for publishing my sacrilege on their sacred time? Something like that?

I checked their profiles and scrolled through their favorites. I was always thankful for these user profiles on these webnovel platforms.

Hail reading lists, hail lack of privacy.

"Let's see what you have here…"

I checked the first of the many rude commentors…

{My 18+ Adventure in the Isekai World}

{My 18+ Adventure in the Cultivation World}

{My 18+ Adventure in the Sci Fi World}

{My 18+ Adventure in the Rofan World}

{My 18+ Adventure in the Real World}

Hey! Did this guy just criticise me? This guy!? What's with all those novel titles anyway? And why are all of them written by a different person?

No matter how you slice it, this looks like a series of porno! Just how many people were jumping on it?

"Ahem. Next."

The next guy was slightly better.

{Scientific Cultivator!}

{I Entered the Romance Novel but I am a Giga Chad}

{Cultivation Of the Gods}

{MacDonalds Employee is the Cultivator?}

{I thought I was a Cultivator, but this is the Mental Hospital!?}

I crossed my arms.

Not bad. Definitely not bad. Not bad at all.

All of them were based around cultivation, but quite a lot of them seemed to be satiric in nature.

"Why is that? Is this what works well now?"

[Not exactly] My trusty friend came in to explain. [This is what happens when you hit a stagnation point in the tropes that dominates a platform.]

I tilted my head.

"What does that mean?"

[Basically, the status quo of the platform is cultivation novels. But there is little creativity you can sprinkle in to the same genre over and over. At a point, you are just making remakes with different names.]

That made some sense. I thought of the Isekai novels and anime that were all the rage a few years back. They slowly started getting more and more absurd with things like reincarnating as a sword or a vending machine or a edge lord. By satirizing the genre, they made it fresh again.

[The focus shifts from the Isekai itself to the gimmick that the author's concept pulls. I won't say its always the right choice, a lot of these are bound to die out in some time.]

I see. That was certainly insightful.

I decided to take a look at the other commenters. 

And the situation was much worse. The system's words quickly proved themselves true when I checked through the lists of all the other commentors.

Aside from the top novels, most of the books that these people read were cultivation.

[Cultivator of Black Heaven Skies]

[Reincarnating as the Best Cultivator right from the beginning!]

[Learning Cultivation from a Magician?]

[Yeast and Bacteria Cultivation for perfect bread]

One of those got the idea of cultivation completely wrong, but the situation was still the same.

A lot of these novels were doing pretty well in the fresh lists. And a lot of them were genuinely terrible.

It made me slightly annoyed.

Why were this trash books getting so popular simply because they had cultivation? Reversal's concept and characters were many times better.

What annoyed me more was that a lot of these authors were first timers. A lot of them wrote worse than when I was a first timer, and the comments still praised them saying it was great for a first.

I wasn't going to insult the authors out of jealousy… but it did hurt to see people with less skill doing better than me.

Then, when I was scrolling through the same trash book, my eyes fell on a particular comment.

{Comments

@KentBringMeDown111

This is pretty good! Keep up the good work author.}

I recognized that name.

This was the same guy that made a review on my novel. A fucking hate review.

Not only was he commenting on this trash book's every chapter, he also left it a five star. For the life of me, I couldn't tell anything good about this book, from the grammar to the concept, it was all the same abhorrent stuff that was a dime a dozen.

"Why… the hell?"

[...]

I wondered if all these people just had bad taste…

But that couldn't be.

The system would have said something.

Unfortunately, it seemed I was a little pent up from all the experiences these last few days.

From the frustration I got through my own shortcomings, how I handled the matter of backstories with my friends, to the rejection email and now these comments.

It all piled up and snapped inside my head.

Of course, there was no blow out. I wasn't someone to react that intensely.

It was quite the simple thing that snapped.

"You know what, system? Fuck this."

[Hoh… what do you have in mind?]

I pulled open word and stretched my hands and neck.

"If this is what works, then I will give them that."

There was no other solution.

"I'll just write the most trash novel that I possibly can."

There was no way this was going to work.

To be honest, I was just venting.

And if you have lived life like a real person, then you probably know.

Life never goes the way you expect it to.