I am curious how the CN webnovel scene fares, it's been awhile since I have been active here Is it booming/stale or have the readers decreased after Qidian?!
That is an interesting question. I myself constantly visit but rarely read any of the novels listed here. It has been months since I give any novels here just even a skim. The few novels I read I directly check their website rather than looking for them here.
i noticed an uncomfortably large spike in BL novels, and tapread's sort of killed off another avenue for decent translators. otherwise, pretty much the same, i guess.
same same I'm also annoyed by the large amount of BL novels that popped out of nowhere the past year. Worse than the system or other tropes cause I can't enjoy reading them. Not to be a homophobe, but I am very adverse to the notion of reading gay novels, though some GL sometimes makes the cut.
CN webnovels are booming in fact perhaps a bit too much that they are actually overshadowing JP webnovels
Nothing change really. Some new JP novels. Some new KR novels. Many CN novels. Random and rarely a new novel from a different country. Even with Q, people realize that after Aggregator got an "Update", they just became a new source for aggregator to get new novels, so their businesses are practically a joke. And even if Q want to shut down Aggregators, but if they couldn't even do it in their country, then they have no hope in International, so again, they only serve as a new source of contents for Aggregators. Basically, nothing really change that much. The most noticeable change is probably While This is already a common thing since like the Beginning of NU. CN novels were already a Boom since Aho-updates, due to the Amount of novels they have.
Audience isn't just about size. I enjoy GL and BL the same, with perhaps a slight preference for GL(lol), but BL readers are a lot more voracious and they (generally) are much politer/supportive to translators. If the audience for GL wasn't mostly guys who never bothered to comment or acknowledge translations my team would translate F/F more. I've met some BL fans that are a piece of work and a half but overall they've treated the translators who work under me better than M/F or F/F fans, so my team just swapped over.
yen press and their take downs/slow ass releases certainly don't help the JP scene, and sifting through syosetu is a chore, at the best of times. they brought it on themselves.
You bring up a pretty interesting point. And I've noticed something similar as well. Basically every time I've checked out one of the BL novels, it's some roughly edited MTL that's barely intelligible, yet the readers seem overjoyed over any chapter they can get... As for the more standard novels, if you check on for instance Webnovel, I've seen plenty of trashy translations as well (many that are highly suspect of being machine translations), but so long as the chapter updates are frequent (ideally 2/day) they'll get lots of positive comments and bombarded by the power stones and whatnot. So I guess for regular (or at least the crappy fast-food face-smacking/slapping) novels, the most important thing is to have frequent releases.
@Astaroth "MTLed" Yep, all genre's readers seem to like quantity over quality, which is a bit sad. @ the people who say "Ah, I hate how popular BL is getting :////// I'm not homophobic I just hate how popular BL is" That's on you. I promise if more M/F fans left long comments and sent the translators kofis, which I have NEVER had M/F fans do but is considered standard in BL fandoms, you'd get more of your novels translated ;3
Well, there are always fads. Certain kind of stories are just popular for a moment then just slip off. There are trends that last longer but do eventually fade off. But there are certain kind of stories that is constantly in demand, one of them seems to be the repetitive face slapping CN. People can't seem to get enough of it.
That's a big misconception on your end, most GL fans are women, not men. The target audience audience of those novels have always been women too. It's true that BL audience is a lot more proactive and vocal than the audience of pretty much anything else though.
@AliceShiki hm? Most of my friends are wlw and the gay GL fans are all pretty nice to me. I guess my experiences are because I predominantly dabble w/ adult novels and because the more crappy fans of GL are a lot more vocal
I have no idea what wlw is, but I guess R-18 novels can have some particularly annoying people deciding to be vocal... Crappy fans of pretty much everything are always the most vocals ones though... >.>
@AliceShiki woman loving woman, lol. And fans of R-18 novels are, in general, a lot more intense >o<.
Oh~ Didn't know there was an acronym for that~ And yeah, I guess R-18 fans can be kinda intense... Which can be both good and bad depending on the person... *shivers*