What’s your red flags that makes you stay away from certain novels, translators, publishers, etc? The biggest red flag for me are translation groups with 5+ ongoing series and 0 completed. Especially when they pick up series after series, without meeting the half way mark for current works. Kinda reminds me of the rofan manhwa craze where everybody was picking up loads of series but not many actually finished them.
I drop a novel when it has a chat. Like the novel puts a chat in the dialog itself like this: *MC does generic MC thing* Rice Tea Soup: MC is soooo cool and handsome!!! Sleeping Bana Dragon: Look at MC being oP!!111!!11 Yellow Button Calculator: 888888888 Okay author, I am not so retard where you must tell me what to think then and there. It's possible for the author to use the general population to demonstrate the world building and culture but I have never seen it done.
Since I'm not fond of harem... When I read stories (supposedly don't have harem tag) with male MC and female characters got introduced one after another (especially if we have some description on how stunning and drop dead gorgeous they are) AND no other male characters on sight, and even if they exist they will be nothing more than "passersby" to that story. I will stay away from such novels even if many say the story is good or if the MC is said to not have any romantic feeling toward those female chara and it doesn't end up in harem whatsoever
1) tag(s) on NU 2) sites that release, say 1-5 first chapters for free read, but then you need to apply membership for further chapters 3) those who need us to do some "daily quest(s)" (looking at you Qidian ) 'coz I'm here to read NOT gaming! 4) this one in particular is for Webtoon: regional lock
1. when translator split an already short chapter into multiple parts, most of the time that novel wont be finished. 2. when racism start to show up, it usually start small, then there will be alot of ultra nationalistic / racism involved. 3. when the author says that the MC / other character doing something then called as a genius/prodigy then praise them to no end, even though what they do is usually very normal/common that anyone with a brain can think/do. 4. when somehow alot of people suddenly fall in love with the MC left and right, as if the MC are collecting pokemons.
Bad localisation where they change the plot to suit a more western public Chapters being divided into shorter parts ( translation of 4 chapter per vol novels in smaller parts is fine but no Ch 3 p11 ) Needing to pay for chapters when translator them selves are translating it illegally ( Having a patreon or kofi is fine but not if it's when the total donations get to 10 dollars i'll post the next chapter ) Translators/ editors commenting There was this TL group that left the 'ma' and 'ba' from Cn novels in there something like Let's eat ba, It feels like they don't know what they are doing Hoarding series, having a lot but only posting a chapter after a long time and not letting other group picking it up, getting angry if snipped CN novels too much CCP propaganda CN/KR/JP novels bashing each and other countries because of politics and history Very stereotypical foreigner eg. Russian , big , angry , cold guy or Chinese wearing traditional clothing and only doing martial arts
there is this one translator that keeps splitting up chapters without putting number part (ex. 1.1, 1.2, etc) and they also drop the list of other novels they've translated but readers can pay through patreon to read the advanced chapters. and it's not like they update quite frequently either.
Chinese Culti novels - are good action-filled novels that makes you want to cheer the Mc up to 80~120 chapters then you see the patterns: 360 personality change, casual massacre, casual rape, casual evil actions with no repercussions, a vague sometimes blatantly rascism especially when the chinese novel is set on modern times, factory-like enemies, factory-like rare items or artifacts, no sense "Plot-armor (Heaven's will)", No sense backstory or story plot or sentences.... Almost all chinese culti novels endings are = Gone to other "Realm, world, dimension" or Mc so strong that the author goes to hiatus or Mc becomes a God or Supreme Ruler or
Top Tier Red Flags: 1) Mc looking for underage lovers and lusting over them 2) Brainless Out Of Character Mc is shocked that plot changes due to their insane actions 3) Romance begins with a single glance and author typing out their most horny description of the perfect lover 4) Mc develops abilities that solve everything… (Mc was secretly a genius everything!) 5) Mc has an all powerful system that they don’t use 6) Author begins to rant about things not in novel/not related 7) Sudden super awkward racism (usually towards Africa area or real world earth)! Bonus if there’s magical racist foreigners. 8) Mc does something normal that anyone should do (for example thanks someone for giving a gift) and everyone is shocked and thinks Mc is a literal God 9) Haha guess what! Mc isn’t the Mc! Their love isn’t their real love! Everything was a lie! It turns out Mc was just a shard of the true Mc and their love was just one of many hundreds of shards of their true love. They are actually the ultimate super mega amazing Mc who was there to experience life… oh oh and they’re amazing and (If you keep reading it’ll get even more wish fulfillment and ridiculous) 10) Mc spontaneously lets bad things happen (does not protect their family from enemies/doesn’t plan for the future out of nowhere/surrenders to a weaker enemy/gives up on life) 11) Author introduces someone cooler and better than the Mc who Mc fawns over and wants to be and… (Then why does the Mc even exist?!?!?) 12) Mc is happily married and happily in love. Author decides that Mc is stupid and should now begin to open a huge harem and start cheating like crazy! Harem increases with no end in sight (Author continues and will not be stopped!) 13) Author gives up. Story? Not anymore! Plot? Mc went from a scientist to a martial artist and now is also a dancer. The long term romance author was building? Gone! Mc is in love with a duplicate of themself! A climatic ending to a 3000 chapter novel? No. Mc ascends to infinity and abandons their family.
As a counterpoint, the big groups have multiple translators so they do those in parallel. ie. Wuxiaworld, Genesis, Reaper, etc. Others such as Reigokai pick up multiple series because they catch up to the raws on theirs and they translate faster than the author writes. There are even those like Wu Jizun who just have an incredibly high release rate so they split their releases amongst multiple series to attract more readers. I always look at the last release and release rate for a series. I only really avoid series that have not released in months or have sites that hurt my eyes (though I sometimes use an aggregator for the latter).
1) generic stereotypes. Haughty girl, fatty side kick, self obsessed fl. 2) everything is about sex...sex....sex... And jade like skin with melon tits. 3) mc becoming aware of his plot armour and acting arrogant because of it.... Usually something like destiny or prophecy is disclosed to mc and then he becomes certain that his mission is too holy and sacred to lose... 4) flat tone, every chapter is just chitter chatter with no advance, no adventure or a thrill of finding treasure. Ps: it's more like what's wrong with 99% of the novels here, but yeah... The main red flags are making everything about sex and romance.
1) MC reincarnated/Transmigrated and understands everything about this world within 3 chapters = instant drop 2) OP MC = instant drop (With a very few exceptions) 3) Cringe fest = instant drop 4) BL/GL = instant drop (no offence) 5) 0D characters = instant drop
Red flag tags Dense protagonist Smart protagonist (most likely the mc isn't smart, the side characters are just dumband the mc just act smarts and have a rude personality) Harem Long separation Younger male lead Rape For Korean novels, the red flag tag for me are runaway, reunion and misunderstanding. I drop when there are too many love interest, too many is more than one. If there are too many people who are interested in MC that's a red flag, the conflict will most likely be a relationship problem which I have no interest about. I like novels where there is a proper plot and the romance just progress smoothly as the plot does. I don't have problems aside from genre, troupes or tags because I read the original work.
Racism. Or inappropriate and wrong descriptions of other countries. I saw a few authors who think all western people only think of their countries in a stereotypical racist way but forget that they're also doing the same. Mostly chinese authors. I think most of them don't know much about countries other than China at all. Let alone western, they stereotype even other asian countries. Also the fact that these people think Africa is a huge jungle with backward tribal civilization and foreigners only go there for mining. I hate to see korean and japanese authors bashing each others countries too. Nationalism and propaganda. It's fine if a character is patriotic and loves their country. But it's annoying to see them mentioning it repeatedly unless they're in a war and needs to boost morale. It feels awkward and forced. Like that character was brainwashed by a cult or something. And it's uncomfortable to see them demeaning other countries too. When there is too much dialogue or monologue. It's fine if the writer has enough skill to make it flow naturally. Otherwise it's just shitty writing. Korean rofan authors like to do this sort of thing. Sometimes it makes me confused who tf is talking and wtf they're talking about. You know it's gonna be bad if author's skill is only that much. Random netizen comments. It's entertaining if the comments are witty and humorous. But it pisses me off when they talk about obvious stuffs like it's some groundbreaking thing. Translators picking up too many series but updating sporadically and not completing even one. Translators diving each normal sized chapters into 3/4 parts. Ruins the mood. When we suddenly know that MC has a hidden ability to deal with the specific problem in front and even short flashback of training arc with it. OP is fine but you can't just invent random powers and plot armors for lazy writing. Random rape/murder/genocide etc. I can understand if it was for plot purposes but why suddenly drop one out of nowhere just so mc can save someone or just be the damsel in distress themselves? Idiot and dense MCs. You know that the romance gonna suck real bad! Random chapters full of random bs that has no reason for existing. MENTAL ILLNESS. This one's super important! Authors acting like autism, PTSD, ADHD etc. can be easily cured with love. OH LOVE! THE ALL CURING PANACEA! Half of these problems can't even be cured with the best medical facilities in real life! If you're gonna fall in love with them, just fall in love with them. Stop those bs treatment and respect them for who they are. Also those psychologists that tells these people to get married or fall in love to cure shit — their medical licenses should be revoked and they should be thrown in prison. And there's also the trope of split personalities being jealous of one person. I heard it's cute. CUTE?! Are you fucking out of your mind?!! There's so many things wrong with it that I don't even know what to say!!! That's just a wish-fulfilment harem crammed into one single person! Just write a harem for duck's sake! Why make the plot more retarded...
People who use abbreviations without explaining them. Rofan = Romance + Fantasy I usually don't read stories because I'm not interested in them. For example Genre: Historical, Gender Bender (which leads to Gay and Lesbian, just make the MC that gender from the beginning!), Sports (not my thing to read about in novel), Slice Of Life (when it's basically cooking it's boring); Psychological, Horror, Mystery, lots of Drama or Tragedy - I don't need that, my life is bad enough. When the synopsis is "poetic" and gives no information about who, what, where. Garbled translation because there's no proofreader. I can ignore small mistakes but PLEASE keep the character names and their pronouns consistent. (When Yu Lan changes to Yu Luan and sometimes he travels and sometimes she fights and then Yue Lan finds the One Piece.) Picking up multiple stories and stop translating all of them after one month. It makes me sad. I don't care about Publisher. If they want to force me to buy online data (pay to read chapters online) I'll join the pirates. When I really like it (and have surplus of money) I'll buy it in print.
1. if they split chapters, have slow releases & push for advanced chapters then I dip! But i’m fine with split chapters, if they update frequently. 2. Ooooh Demon Wang’s Golden Favorite Fei, is that you??? Sorry about that! I included them in a different thread reply earlier, I don’t know why I didn’t do it this time around. I’ll be mindful of that in the future.
This is so absolutely relatable LMFAO!! Hahahahaha!!! I totally agree with the magical racist foreigners thing! They're always so arrogant and MC always wipes the floor with them later on. It's just unreal! Nobody never does that! And it's always Western=vampire/werewolf/elf, African=totem/sacrifice/black magic, south asian=snakes/insects/belly dancers etc. (I've never seen Australia anywhere though. I sometimes think if they don't exist in chinese world map.) Then they make jokes about how others always think all chinese know martial arts. Hypocritical much? No. 2 is also extremely accurate. I always feel like these MCs are retarded and needs serious medical attention.
> Cheating I couldn't tolerate that. When finding a novel, I wouldn't read the story if there's a character that cheated, like the ml cheated and mc glow-up so ml wants to go back with mc, its irritating. > Rape - kind of a turn off, especially if the author continuous on making the ml rape the mc as if it's the most sexy and normal thing in the world. Oh, please don't tolerate raping. > Mc is a pick-me - don't get me wrong, but it is fine if everything is subtle, but I couldn't help but to cringe when the mc is so pick-me, okay they are different from other people, okay, they don't do things normal people does, but it is irritable like you know, like eating pizza as if not everyone eats pizza. > Mc is so dense - I won't hesitate to drop the book if I find mc is too dense, ml is so obvious with his feelings but mc thinks ml like other people and not them. > Weak-delicate mc - maybe I already got tired from those type of mc, but I prefer mc that is strong and not over-powered and not relying on ml's power to be on top. > Too much smut - it turns me off when there's too much smut like, I'm not white-washing myself here because, I myself loves reading smut but when the book is dominated with smut with little progress in plot, I tend to drop it. > Ml jealous of his own child - like, what the fuck is that???? That's your child and you are jealous??? What irritates me even more is when they tend to favor their child that looks like the mc and not their other child for looking like him (like, I like her since she looks like her mother and not you, because you just look like me, maggot) it is not cute, it's childish and proves that he isn't deserving to be a father. > Large age-gap - it is fine to me if their age-gap isn't that large, but if the mc is let say, 40 and the ml is 21 and it is a big no-no to me! I'm not comfortable reading those things. > Author trying so hard to make ml as mysterious and cold - it's not cool, it's cringey. You will quickly notice if author tries so hard to make ml cold and it always failed and look so forced.