In lockdown I've read some truly trash novels. I was wondering which novels you read were truly terrible, maybe because of translation, bad plot, or just the author writing some messed up stuff.
Return of The 8th Class Mage (the translation) And MGA (got boring after chapter 1000 and unbearable after Eggy got into closed door cultivation)
The most terrible would be the Chinese ones. There are quite a few that started ok, but then became extremely shitty by the 300-600th chapters. Extremely repetitive arcs, extreme plot armour, extremely one dimensional characters(including MC), extremely non-sensical cultivation systems, I have seen them all. Some of the recent trash novels I have read the first few chapters of, are those monkey king related ones on wuxiaworld. Can't bother to recall or search the proper name. As for the trashiest two of them all, it was that zombie apocalypse related CN novel which even has dinosaurs at the end whose name I have erased from memory, and Shura's wrath which is practically a guide on how "NOT" to write a novel.
Off the top of my head: BL The Palaces of the Twelve Sacred Beasts (This story is like 80% about the MC getting raped by multiple men in some messed up ways) Secret Nights in The Inner Palace (also rapey and the smut is translated very clunky) Sickly Tyrannical (some people like this one, but you know there's like no character development in the slightest besides the MC slowly fading in to a doll after been tortured and raped non-stop) BG: Broken-Winged Angel (pair of yandere twins keep a lady who treated them nicely as a sex slave for the rest her life in a sex dungeon. No character development besides the MC wanting to die and hating her life.) (And countless others that are so similar in plot and characters that its hard to distinguish them from each other nowadays) Ugh. These series made me feel like crap for even knowing they existed
The reason I can't name any bad novels is because I don't pick up novels unless im sure it's what I want to read.
I read this a while ago: An Otome Game’s Burikko Villainess Turned into a Magic Otaku The author established that the female MC was acknowledged as OP by everyone. At the age of 12 she was already part of a team of Royal mages tasked with exterminating high teir monsters. And she was standing out in this team of veteran mages. An anecdote of note was during a mission to subjugate a dragon, she got separated from her team and accidentally soloed killed the dragon. Yet when the ML finally got interested in her a few years later, suddenly she's chronically a damsel in distress. The most irritating thing is that this ML was insecure and thus very grabby, possessive, and clingy. He was always insisting on telling the MC what to do even though she has way more combat experience than he does. She can't seem to do anything without the ML's help. I couldn't take it anymore.
Alyson Noël the immortal series. I wanted the main character dead. I hated her. I couldn't finish reading it. Literally the first book I never finished. To this day it makes me angry.
The Sword And The Shadow Basically very similar with Indian's soap opera where the Villains win 11 out of 10 while the Protagonist always suffer, even when the protagonist ever win (very rarely almost extinct) it's not worth the effort Any harem novel with hetare/dense/self-proclaimed so "very ordinary" otaku MC that unknowingly become chick magnet And lastly wish-fulfilling isekai novel, it's just some copy-paste instant novel which purpose is not to pour creativity into a beautiful story but just as not wanting to lose to other authors (if author xxx or yyy can make this, i can make it better, better to worse for the reader)
anything with "dense MC" or "Idiot MC" in the tags almost all Japanese Isekei no matter if the MC is male or female. most Chinese romance/shoujo/harem; there might be 1 out 50 that's actually a three star but I usually end up dropping them because they're so badly written.
I feel you, it feels like they have a fill in the blank exercise of sorts, rinse and repeat, cause there'll always be someone who reads them.