Jun 23, 2017
To:chesarka
I probably put it the wrong way there, sorry. I said Yuusuke’s personality aspects would not seem like virtues to a 3rd wheel, but by 3rd wheel I meant a person watching/reading a conversation of his (which is the reader in this case)
Anyways, indeed, I agree that the introduction is probably the most important place to start off something. After all, people tend to pay attention to the beginning and the ending of something, but I always give a chance to everything (Sounds kinda masochistic but sometimes it’s worth it as hell!) and I’m trying to implement that in the novels as well. I even included in the ‘’Introduction’’ chapter that it will be worth the wait imo for the story to kick in and make the whole thing better, but it depends on the reader themselves if they’ll stick around or not!
I’m not really a huge fan of KonoSuba (Although I did mention it in ‘’Introduction’’ since it’s part of the Isekai genre), but Yuusuke is kind of like Kazuma, yes. There is a reason Yuusuke is not meant to be the good ol’ likable MC which is explored further in the story. While I am aiming for him to be not likeable (like Kirei from Fate Zero for instance, I swear everyone hates this guy at first lol), I think he’s more like those protagonists you either love or hate, like Yuki and Yuno from Mirai Nikki or Shinji from NGE. And as you mentioned, Yuusuke does show some minor development later in the story, which was my original goal!
The characters in general actually are just anime tropes incarnate so far, you’ve surely understood some of them by now: Yuusuke is the anti-social MC that everyone comes to count on (cause plot armor and stuff lmao), Kazuto is the happy-go-lucky kind of guy, Reiji is the calm and brave person who is also pretty hard to approach but is somehow friends with the MC and his weird friend, Enzu is as tsundere as they go, Anzu is the calm and composed pacifist kind of person and so on…
This is what actually seems crucial to my eyes. Tropes don’t necessarily mean that every character will be the same as others that share the trope. Eren from AoT, Yuu from Seraph of the End and Kaneki from Tokyo Ghoul all share the same trope. That would essentially make them the same character but with different names, but each one is actually unique (for better or worse), and that’s what I’m aiming for with this novel. In fact, some characters do a complete 180 in the story (like Anzu in chapter 9, although that was temporary) which is really unlike what some tropes suggest!
Of course if you can’t get yourself to like it, then it’s perfectly fine! In fact, it’s pretty interesting because I’ve been sending each chapter to a friend of mine for proof-reading and he’s loving it so far, but like you, he hasn’t said a good thing about Yuusuke yet as well! I agree that the whole thing is lacking something, and I knew that would be the case because as I mentioned the introductory chapters are the way they are on purpose, so there’s a love/hate relationship with them from what I’ve seen!
And about that searching thing, I do it all the time too for some reason too, glad to see I’m not the only one! It just seems so interesting to start searching this stuff!
TLDR: If you can’t get yourself to like this one, again, it’s perfectly fine! You did mention that it’s a differentiation from the style I use in my other novels, so it was quite the risk! I’m really glad you pointed out those flaws, now I can work on them as the story goes on so that they disappear little by little! Once more, thanks and good luck on your stories as well!
