A Niche Among the Niches
Soon, it was early November, and the temperature plummeted dangerously. It would be the perfect season for pantyhoses. However, this would be wasted on Zhao Youyue’s beautiful legs. She was not in the mood to make herself look attractive. She wore the school uniform every day and spent her recess time searching for potential stories to mess around with. Even without makeup, her beauty stood out in the cold.
Finally, the “Two Dimensional Gate” stirred to life again. As Zhao Youyue had yet to find a suitable literary world to manufacture a new iconic character, she decided to bet on the randomness of the gate instead. The popular character card could stay with her for now.
Who knows, it may randomly bring her into a literary world as famous as “The 4WD G.o.d?”
If so, it would be a walk in the park for her to create another popular female character. Another easy victory. If she does gain another popular character card by going with the flow, that habit will become second nature, and she would gain more confidence in the “randomness” of the Gate.
Highly popular characters were second-rate to her. They only served to be sacrificed as a stepping stone for her to obtain the iconic character card. Only when she is truly aiming for an iconic character card, would she set her mind in planning out the settings and development of the plot.
Otherwise, Zhao Youyue would leave the plot to the original author. The only thing that would stand out would be the character she possesses. Having a real soul would give it the power to stand out via unconceivable, unexplainable methods.
No matter whose literary world Zhao Youyue transmigrates to, its creator would benefit in a sudden downpour of good fortune.
This was what Zhao Youyue strongly believed, thinking that it would help stimulate the imagination of the creator, even if she messes things up.
After showering, she murmured to herself before sleeping, hoping that the “Two Dimensional Gate” would randomly bring her to a world that would grant her a free victory. It would be great if the previous world’s situation repeated itself
With br.i.m.m.i.n.g excitement, she entered the “Two Dimensional Gate” once again. The name of the literary world this time was — “White Clover[1]”.
She was momentarily confused. The t.i.tle did not speak much for itself; it sounded like typical cla.s.sical literature. As this had to be a recent, ongoing piece of work, what was it trying to do, giving itself such a t.i.tle in this day and age? Was it trying to be a trendsetter, or was it simply trying to be cool, or was it really written in antiquated, niche prose?
Do not forget that Lady Zhao’s mother, w.a.n.g Yan, is an author of such literature. She has won several literature-related prizes that were relatively unknown to people. Even so, her publications were all failures; none of them were ever sold.
How many would have the time to read such old-fas.h.i.+oned literature in this impetuous and entertainment-centric era?
Even if such a crowd still existed, they would read famous works by famous author such as Yu Qiuyu and Lin Qingxuan. Not only were they famous, but their works had a mysterious charm which w.a.n.g Yan never came close to producing.
Of course, a lazy missy like Zhao Youyue would shy away from such writing, not even her own mother’s, as they were full of pretense and a source of embarra.s.sment. Her mother had never experienced any hards.h.i.+p before, yet, she constantly wrote about such matters like superficial, quack-philosophy
In fact, w.a.n.g Yan did not want her daughter to read her works either, as she thought that the lazy girl would never understand the depths of her heart.
Web novelists would have similar experiences, where their parents and the relatives would be their most enthusiastic fans, despite not knowing anything, and they would scream and cheer, and make a fuss out of it, leaving the authors deeply embarra.s.sed.
This was because parents would think that their children were doing amazingly, even if they did not understand a word they wrote. Well, it was not a cool job at all as it was uneasy to earn that tiny bit of money because the Daddy-readers were hard to please
Moreover, w.a.n.g Yan knew that her daughter would never appreciate the 3Ls of Literature Luxury, Large and Level up. For that lazy girl, such literature would be dull and draggy.
w.a.n.g Yan had never once thought of letting her vulgar daughter read her works.
That’s right! Compared to pure and genuine literature, Zhao Youyue was fond of ReadNovelFulls which greatly tickled her mind. She found them entertaining and fulfilling. Of course, shallow, insincere, commercialized essays would never get her attention.
Zhao Youyue was a veteran ReadNovelFull reader with high spending power. Compared to her, others were far more reasonable spenders, thinking that subscribing to those t.i.tles was enough patronage, and there was no need for tips. Unlike them, Zhao Youyue would tip generously whenever she finds something good on Qidian.
As such, she still remained as popular as ever, affectionately called Tyc.o.o.n [Youyue] on that website. She would tip authors with Silver Sect Masters out of sudden, scaring the daylights out of other readers.
Soon after, another tyc.o.o.n appeared this time, bearing the moniker “Soul-clad Ocean.” This person was rumored to also be a fair, wealthy beauty who was still in her teens. She too had been tipping Silver Sect Masters to the left and right. Her latest action would be to tip the work of a Supreme G.o.d-to-be author with a Golden Sect Master, which was worth one hundred thousand RMB.
With the appearance of missies like “Youyue” and “Soul-clad Ocean”, many readers started wondering, where did these underaged, wealthy ladies pop up from? Why are there two of them now? Would more follow? This would be an insult to those who earned average salaries of a few thousands of RMB
This taught the others to choose their next reincarnations wisely.
Zhao Youyue leaned back and allowed the necessary information to flow in and tell her all she needed to know about “White Clover.” To her surprise, everything she had presumed about it did not even come close to the mark! It was nothing like cla.s.sical literature.
It was a Doujin novel about social gaming, and s.h.i.+rotsumekusa[1] was one of the female characters, in it.
The pen name of its author was “Setsuna”.
This was the first time Zhao Youyue had ever transmigrated into a Doujin novel. It’s all over. She lost all hope there and then. While Doujin novels were prevalent nowadays, they were only popular because of the original work. It would be impossible to create an iconic character out of this.
Apparently, “White Clover” was a Doujin novel, based on a social game that was targeted for a niche market. If that was not the case, Zhao Youyue would have recognized the name
When the original source is a niche game, its Doujin novel would be a niche among the niches. Where could one go from there?
There goes her hopes for an “Easy Victory.”
After reading through the character roster, she noticed that the only named female character was the heroine, s.h.i.+rotsumekusa[2],.
This had to be a joke, right?
If she chooses to possess the heroine, she could no longer utilize the Two Dimensional Gate’s ability to customize the settings of the character
Translation note
[1]&[2]: In the premise of the anime RE:Creators, the main villainess Altair is an (in-universe) fan-made derivation of a character named s.h.i.+rotsumekusa (;literal meaning “White Clover”), from the social game Eternal Wars Megalosphere. As the author has used for both the t.i.tle and the character, we’ve decided to name the book t.i.tle White Clover, and the character inside, s.h.i.+rotsumekusa