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sohois's avatar

interesting article, glad I saw this.

If I could offer some critique, this feels very much like a summary written by a typical ratfic reader, i.e. someone who started out with HPMOR, or maybe Scott Alexander's fiction or perhaps Worm, and then spread out from there. You've correctly identified the major Western, male canon, but I'd argue this is going to be the smallest part of any overall webfiction canon.

First I think leaving fanfic as a mere mention cuts out a huge quantity of female-focused romance fiction. While it's fair to put fanfiction as a separate thing, a ton of original fiction has arisen from fanfic routes. Harry Potter fanfics produced a bunch of authors, Cassandra Clare being an early example with her original work published in the 2000s. 50 shades of grey was notably a Twilight fanfiction. And more recently, "Romantasy" as an independent genre has emerged, with Sarah J. Mass beginning her series on fanfiction.net.

I'd also argue that not mentioning webcomics leaves out a vast array of fiction, both female- and male-oriented. I personally know little about the webcomic world, but from what I've seen the amount of content is just as large as that available on sites like RR or Fanfiction.net.

Second, and far larger, is webfiction originating from East Asia: China, Japan, and Korea. You touch on Xianxia, but I'm surprised you don't mention that even in English webfic sites, a huge chunk of popular stories are just translations of East Asian web fiction. In Japan it's really quite a mature market, with a number of popular IPs going through the Webnovel -> Light Novel -> Manga/Anime route to mainstream success.

Just for reference, numbers 2 and 4 in the highest grossing "book" apps on Google Play are Goodnovel - which appears to be a Singapore based team - and Webnovel - which is Chinese.

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megazver's avatar

Heads up: you didn't finish the thought in the sentence starting with "However, the modern style takes advantage of"

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