Does it count as reading? - Fanfics & Novels

30 May, 2026

I have been thinking about something recently. I read a lot, but I don’t count everything as “reading.”

First: Fanfics

Very easy to tell I don’t count it as “reading”.

Some have, for a lack of a better term, a low quality, but that is what makes them so entertaining. Others were written by Shakespeare himself, so beautifully written I forgot the original media.

Do not be fooled. Fanfiction is much more than just smut written by horny teenage girls. In my opinion it is mostly mocked and scorned because of misogyny. I have a loose memory of someone saying something along the lines of “There is nothing a teenage girl likes she isn’t mocked for” and it's true. I think a similar thing happens with the romantasy genre, but I’ll not elaborate on it.

There is this idea that fanfic is just porn or an attempt at it. Pure mistake. There is so much more. There is smut, I’ll not deny it. But the possibilities are infinite! I myself am fond of the “&” tags (characters names connected by a & mean they are in a non-romantic relationship, like parent & child, brother & sister, or friend & friend) and the SocialMedia/Chat fanfics.

If you think of the definitions of a fanfic, it is actually an old genre. By “fic” definitions, Divine Comedy is a self-insert, crossover, multifandom, Bible fanfic. Dante should be the patron of fanfic authors, we should all take inspiration from him and care less about if something is “cringe” and just write.

However, the lack of “new” and “different” subjects (?) makes me not want to count it as a reading.

I read many fanfics, good ones, bad ones, funny ones, sad ones, but in the end I’m just reading the same set of characters again and again. I love it, but I don’t think it can be considered in my goal to read books.

Maybe I’ll write about the joys and sorrows I had reading fanfiction and the fandoms I was/am in (I’ll expose myself).

Second: Asian novels

Well, this one is a little trickier.

Asian novels tend to be really long and take a lot of time to be adapted to En/Pt. The problem is I mostly read them when they are still being translated by some random group. It takes so long for the 250 or 700 chapters to be translated that I just drop it because I lose interest.

I start to read a bunch and never finish. I do it with so much frequency I hesitate to count them as reading.

I literally dropped one after more than 200 chapters (kinda short ones) this week. I wanted to read one of those novels about farming, and the one I found started OK, but then the focus changed to cultivation¹, so I dropped it.

I think I should add here most are M/M. I’m an avid reader of LGBT+ in general, but I read a lot of M/M.

But back to the topic.

The novels I consider as read are mostly the ones publicized in the EUA/BR. What is a problem because most of the ones I read are not published and are being translated for the love for the game.

I mostly use Novels Update to search for new novels and places to read them. I find the archiving/filter very convenient. It’s way easier to find the translation groups with it too.

Many are published originally on sites similar to AO3, and end up being translated very poorly. I don’t blame the translators. Some are translating for their own enjoyment and sharing it, even if they don’t speak Chinese and use Google Translate.  My first novel, Mo Dao Zu Shi, was first translated to portuguese by fans and posted on Wattpad. Simpler time! I kinda miss it…

There was a pretty active community of people reading novels on Wattpad back in the day. I’m pretty sure they are gone now. Maybe because I’m almost sure they were stealing the translation and not giving appropriate credit.

But this badly done work obviously lowers the quality. The text is already “casual”, and a lot of things get lost in translation, especially in one so poorly done. So even if the book is good, the quality suffers from the travel, and I hesitate to consider it as a read book.

Right now I’m reading Am I the Only One Farming in the Apocalypse Game? but it’s still being translated, so I started Apocalypse Lord. Somehow, searching for farming novels, I end up in the apocalypse genre.

Also, I stumbled upon Fujoshi Chronicle’s blog, where she reviews M/M novels, and I thought of sharing it.

So this is my predicament. I read so much and feel like I read so little. I want to read more “real” books to expand my view and refine my taste. I want to read better because I want to write better. But it is difficult, “low quality” and, I dare say, “slop”, is so good!

#Books #Rant