Essentially Just Fanfiction

For people who started their reading or writing journey with fanfiction, most of you must be familiar with this formula.

Somehow, you find yourself in the world of your favorite fiction.
Somehow, you need to avert the disaster coming for you or your favorite characters.
Somehow, you change the plot of the original fiction.

That kind of story, while very common, is mostly found on… you guessed it, fanfiction sites. Because even most readers think it’s just cheap. I mean, using other people's stories as a foundation and just inserting your character into them sounds absolutely low-effort and cheap.

Yet nowadays, it is exactly the main theme of so many-many-many-many stories. It is especially prevalent in female-oriented novels and manga or manhwa after the decline of pure isekai and the rise of the "villainess" trope.

Though seinen categories aren't that much better either. You will find countless stories with the whole premise being reincarnated into xxxx game. The difference mostly lies in the main theme of the fictional game being used as the basis.

While I understand the hook. I mean, I also read a lot of them. So you bet I kinda like them too. I feel a lot of disconnect with them. After all, the main unique point of such stories is that you are familiar with the story being used as the base.

But with the current trends, the base stories are just stories inside stories. A fiction inside a fiction. A fictional fiction that we are neither familiar with nor emotionally invested in. When they start with ``I'm reincarnated in the world of this game/manga/novel,`` I just… yeah? So what?

For me, the reader, that info is kinda irrelevant.

In fact, most of the time, the whole game/novel/manga background becomes kinda irrelevant as the story goes on.

While some are successful at using such a theme, most are just meh. But then again, that’s the usual thing. When we have trends, the majority of them are not good. It’s the same for school battle harem, it’s the same for school club drama, it’s the same for generic isekai, it’s the same for the ``I got fired from the hero party`` trend.

But this one subgenre felt kinda worse.

The Japanese light novel industry has never been shy about taking inspiration from each other. But the current wave is so blatant that it honestly feels like people are just writing fanfiction of each other instead. And it gets even worse when you double-copy fictional fiction inside the fiction.

You can make something good out of it. BUT! It’s easier to mess the whole thing up.

Btw, this is good.