Discussion Why CN novels suffers from Horrible Antagonists?

Its a trend, I reckon. Their target audience prefers simplicity & objectivity. i.e. Focus on good, how good overcome trials & evil. Evil is not worth mentioning & anything evil is evil regardless of their roots/ circumstances...

 

why - it's Chinese being Chinese, though I doubt Korean and Japanese web novels has interesting memorable antagonist

 

You know AYMs are based on Princelings right?

 

Lack of exposure to other culture
Lack of competition from authors from other culture
Cultural Globalization

 

I've come across a lot more lame villains in Japanese web novels than I have in Chinese ones.

Do Chinese writers really need competition from other cultures though? I've read quite a few Chinese novels, and there are plenty of good ones out there. Some of the most memorable villains I've ever come across are found in Chinese novels - who's going to forget characters like Ouyang Feng or Li Mochou or Dongfang Bubai? And these are from books that every Chinese web novel writer has read.

It sounds like the books that people are having trouble with are just not particularly well written. And that has more to do with what they're reading more than it has to do with culture.

 

ikr and most cn novels don't have enough good and kind characters, only mostly scheming characters and troupes or repeats of common cn arcs

 

Sure , second generation rich kids and trust fund babies are the very embodiment of this trope, but you can't ignore the fact it's relative. For someone from a poorer strata, it's the guy who got in through an average education and some connections. For the average guy it's the upper middle class who's got it made. For the upper middle class it's the rich kid who got in thru no effort. Sure, arrogant brash personalities with no talent who live comfortably due to no virtue of their own are almost universally hated, but you've to accept it's all relative.

 

that's why I've only mentioned web novels

I doubt that the professionally written novels suffers the problem like "Nirvana in Fire", "Legend of the Galactic Heroes", "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "The Tale of Genji".

A lot of Light Novels has a lot of interesting Villains like "The Faraway Paladin", "I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse", "Spice and Wolf", "How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom" and "The Ending Chronicle"... though the only access to read them is to buy them.

 

I was referring to Chinese web novels as well. I just find that they tend to be vastly better written than Japanese ones. And that better writing is going to lead to better villains.

I suppose that part of that comes from me not bothering with the weaker Chinese web novels whereas I'll happily read entertaining trash like Tilea's Worries. Still, I can't imagine a Japanese web novel ambitious enough to have a figure like the historical Wu Zetian as its main villain, and but that kind of stuff can be found in Qidian.com. A lot of it comes down to Narou being effectively exclusive to amateur writers whereas you can find professional and semi-professional writers on the Chinese sites.

 

I see, so they're mixed in China, while Japan has separated and categorized their novelist.

 

Japanese web novel writers who manage to get a publisher might continue their web novel, but they're going to want any new material to be properly published. Successful Chinese web novel writers tend to keep releasing new books online. That's why if you check click on the names of Chinese writers, you'll find that a lot of them have other books to their name. One example is the "Nirvana in Fire" that you listed - it actually started life as a web novel. In fact, the only writer who started with web novels and fully switched over to published books is Tong Hua.

The big difference is that a writer can't make any money on Narou, but they can on the Chinese equivalents.

 

Relative yes, but most of the time the point of these characters is that the the power they hold over others tends not to be their own (unlike MC who has to get by from hard work and plot armor), so the AYMs tend to represent the lazy and entitled more than the MC.

 

Any time a setting has levels (game setting, cultivation setting, or cultivation-like setting), and the protagonist is described as the greatest genius... If you let people keep up with him, it's harder to think of him as a genius, right? It's hard enough to believe all those lucky chances will fall into the protagonist's lap, now you're telling me someone else also has nearly as much plot armor? No, it can happen, but it becomes even less believable. Especially with most protagonists in these novels being the type to solve their problems with swords and using moves that can destroy mountains and vaporize oceans.

For a recurring villain to work, you need something like TTNH, where protagonist and antagonist don't directly fight, but clash wits with espionage and armies.

 

It is a classic example of Disney antagonists. They existed for a long time and in many cultures.

To make good antagonist, you need to create a character that can be protagonist without much edit. Liu Bei and Cao Cao are the good examples of protagonist-antagonist pair.

 

There are a ton of ways of creating good antagonists. Making them alternate protagonists is only one of them, and it isn't even necessarily the best technique. A book I recently read had Wu Zetian as the primary antagonist and it worked great. The key point about antagonists is that they have to pose as significant obstacles while simultaneously bringing out the protagonist's key attributes. The issue with a lot of the weaker antagonists is that the writer doesn't understand this, so their antagonists fail to satisfy either purpose.

 

If you are reading a novel with bad antagonists, you're reading a poorly written novel, I suggest dropping it and getting a new one to read.

 

I recommend "Condor Trilogy" and " 笑傲江湖" (Unknown translate name)

This is the Best Chinese Novel and you can see the Best Antagonists.

 

Because it works.. obviously..
If the audience accept these antagonist, and the author needs to get a quick fix to maintain chapter updates and on a deadline, then theres nothing wrong with using these tropes..
Since quantity is more sought after rather than quality...

 

It goes the same way with JP novels and their beta MC.

Very few CN have a good antagonist, most CNs have the antagonist only to get humiliated for the sake of annoying faceslapping. That's why many CN use arrogant young bastard tropes. There are CN out there whose antagonist is not a brainless idiot, but unfortunately those novels lost in popularity against the generic CN because most CN readers prefer generic CN over anti-generic CN, then complain how repetitive, or stupid, or Psycho CNs are

 

It is to make the Main character look as awesome as possible. The authors think that for such reasons you shouldn't make smart thinking or memorable antagonist. Antagonist have everything handed from birth and would be nothing withouth his family background/sect or whatever. And here you have some character from a backwater province beating the crap out of these young masters.

Only thing is that at some point in the novels you realise how hipocritical these mc's are. Complaining about a young master having everything they want and getting treasures from their families, while the mc stumbled upon the most op and heavenly treasures just mostly out of sheer damn stupid luck. Complaining about a young master wanting a woman and forcing themselves on them, while a lot of the mc are doing even worse and just outright raping them. Complaining about how some young masters steal whatever they want while they are doing the damn same thing to their enemies. Complaining about how these young masters kill innocents, while they are slaughtering entire clans and sects because one young master offended them, eventhough they themselves come from certain clans and at that point they should damn know that not every clan or sect is totally unified, and that there are scheming and plotting going on. At some point I am even wondering who the actual antagonist here is.