Discussion Logic In CN Novels

Yeah, what's up with only romance themes with female MC? It's like they don't have anything to do other than thinking about romance all day. What bullshit, this all contributes towards bias.

 

This actually reminds me...
https://www.novelupdates.com/series/cultivating-to-become-a-great-celestial/#comment-47948
is actually a novel about a female MC who is not obsessed with romancing "bad boys". It really stood out to me and I recommend it to everyone.

Also, I have seen a thing where a female author would write a male lead... then her self insert would be his waifu. And that one is found equally in western authors too.

Spoiler: examples off the top of my head

https://www.novelupdates.com/series/pursuing-immortality/
Main character is male, but his love interest is the author's self insert.

In harry potter, hermoine is rowling's self insert ("an idealized version of me"). Ron is based on her first love who dumped her. She stated she made hermoine end up with ron due to a bit of wish fulfilment, but that harry would actually be a better fit for her because he is actually based on her husband. That one actually breaks from the pattern in that hermoine doesn't end up with harry who is the main character.

Rance (don't google it, famous japanese hentai) has an elf slave that is the only consistent girl throughout the games, he abuses her all the time because she is a huge masochist and is the writer's self insert

 

Well most of the characters or plot lines are based off of real life experience or people.

 

Catherine the Great was the Empress of All Russia, Elizabeth I was the Queen Regnant of England, Isabella I was the Queen Regnant of Castille, and Wu Zetian was the Emperor of China but all of these were still male-dominated societies. So why is it that the real world works like that?

You're probably reading a Romance novel with some xianxia themes, so it's not a surprise that it's going to mostly be about romance. There are other kinds of books out there with female protagonists. I'm reading one right now about an immortal who weaves through the pages of history as she tries to figure out what to do with her condition. There's no real romance in the book, and while it's not translated, there are others out there with lesser amounts of romance in them.

 

Actually the trope is that most women are weaker then men for some reason.
Exceptional women exist, but they are just that, exceptional.
And typically exceptional men vastly outnumber the exceptional women in xianxia.
Which is why a single exceptional women is fought over by a hundred exceptional young masters

 

I don't actually read them cause as I mentioned there is a bias against them at least in my mind, there maybe a lot or a few which are not that centered on romance but when you continuously see titles with repeated terms like consort, spoil and what not it's hard not to shake your head at them.

 

He isn't going out specifically to the romance section though.
He is saying that when you look at the overall type of stories found on NU, female protag is almost synonymous with bad romance novels with some xianxia secondary theme

 

These all sound like Romance novels, so you're still effectively criticizing them for focusing on romance! There are other genres out there with female protagonists, even if most of the ones being translated are Romance novels. You're going to have to do some hunting, but hey, it's easier than trying to find translated Historical novels!

They're still Romance novels first and foremost though.

 

Some of those consort novels are not about love so much as survival in a male dominated, misogynistic society. I have a few novels that have interesting female leads....I can't stand novels where women are just simper and wait like a good girl for a guy to save her. In my novels, the female has to, in more ways than not, protect herself and her loved ones.

 

I'm not criticizing them. Every genre has its readers and what's wrong with reading romance novel anyway. I'm just saying the sheer volume of them where female MC just thinks about romance is annoying.

Yeah it's annoying as hell, especially the damsel in distress trope ugh. SAO was so good because Asuna was such strong character and then that plot with birdcage happened, I was like not this again, not in this too. I guess it's an easy way to advance story or like a safety net where you can't go wrong.

 

If you're saying that something is annoying, then you are criticizing them! Personally I wouldn't read this kind of book either, but it's easy to find Chinese novels that are about more than just romance. It's not super hard to find Japanese light novels that are about other things as well.

 

Well I think you are not getting my point. I'm annoyed by the number of novels having 1dimensional portrayal of female characters. I'm not saying there aren't any which have complex characters or that they are difficult to find. Just whenever you go on to NU homepage the recent updates have a lot of these kind of novels which contribute towards the bias. And for your point about criticizing, I definitely am criticizing them for the lack of depth and drive they have in their female characters even if those characters are MC.

 

L-l-l-llleech off our lord and saviour mc. Masters are going to take you in to curry favours.

 

Yes, which is exactly the problem.
Where are the non romance xianxia with a female protagonist?

I can name literally one
https://www.novelupdates.com/series/cultivating-to-become-a-great-celestial/#comment-47948

 

I'd count My Disciple Died Yet Again as a female protagonist xianxia novel where romance is very low priority, though it's not a traditional xianxia novel so much as it's a transmigration-into-a-cultivation-system novel.

Cultivating to Become a Great Celestial is an interesting one because its main character is a very atypical main character for any webnovel. It breaks a lot of stereotypes, not just being a non-romantically-focused story.

I don't think there's as much market for non-romantic xianxia novels with a female protagonist. That stuff is more likely to appeal to western audiences; values for Chinese audiences are totally different. Xianxia without romance probably won't attract Chinese female audiences as much for various reasons, and I don't see Chinese male audiences picking a female protagonist xianxia novel over a male protagonist xianxia novel. If you look at the misogynistic tones in most xianxia novels, they're built into the male MC getting everything he wants in life. Well, family and love tend to be more important to women's wish fulfillment than ultimate power is, so Chinese women would probably rather read about that. Chinese men would probably rather read about male wish fulfillment.

I don't think this is necessarily a wrong mindset but it can be very frustrating if you're looking for the ultimate badass woman in Chinese fiction. That ultimate badass woman usually has to bow down to at least one man if for no reason other than that she loves him. (There are exceptions, but xianxia generally isn't the genre where that's found.) If you're looking for the ultimate badass woman who bows to no one, read modern western fiction. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

That's BS. Even in Romance novels, the protagonist is often interested in things other than romance. You can go to the NU front page, and that's likely to be true of most of the Chinese Romance novels on it. It just seems like you've never read these books and are just attacking what you think they're like.

Here's a hint: if a book has the word "consort" in it, it probably is about intrigue, political machinations, murder, revenge, and other nefarious goings on in the Imperial Palace.

I don't read Xianxia so I'm not going to be able to come up with any counterpoints, but there are xuanhuan out there which heavily deemphasize the romance so I wouldn't be surprised if this is true for xianxia as well.

Hell, the same thing happens in Romance novels as well. The protagonists in these stories tend to be pretty kickass, often having to deal with all sorts of challenges. But as soon as the male love interest shows up, she tends to crumple up and end up subservient to him. It wouldn't be so bad if these characters are good characters, but they tend to be omnipotent stalkers, or bullies, or kill little children. I find that these love interests are a much bigger problem than poorly written female protagonists.

 

You are still not getting my point. They set up their characters as love blind adolescents in most of them. Obviously you have read some of the good ones and now passionately defending them. It's not a knock against them but in an overall sense of things the portrayal of female characters are bad and lack depth. Even in good novels female mc are in a symbiotic existence. Anyway, you see what you want to see, if you like the characters you like them not much anyone can do to change your perception.

 

This has nothing to do with whether I like these stories. I generally think that they start off well, but tend to lose their original appeal sometime late in the story.

My point is first, that Chinese Romance novels have female protagonists who are involved in things outside of romance all the time. And second, that a majority of the Romance novels on the front page of NU will demonstrate this. I honestly don't know why you constantly make assumptions about the genre when it's obvious you don't read it.

 

Obviously they have other things else how will they churn out 1~2k chapters. Difference between having something to do and drive, motivation and ambition to do them are things that matter and should rightly so.Else that is just another half assed portrayal of any modern woman and frankly it is disrespectful. They start out good but lose themselves about 100~150 chapters where in everything gets messed up and they essentially become 1 dimensional running gags of themselves. And certainly not many male characters can be praised either but the ratio is still lopsided.

I have nothing more to say. At the end to each his own.

 

There are Ancient Chinese quote " People think with their heart, and not use the brain "