A long time ago, a reader asked me a question: if you write fanfiction without changing the plot, why shouldn't we just reread the original?
That's a complicated question to answer, and I said back then that I would find time to explain.
And so, here was this standalone post.
As someone who has read webnovels for years, my personal view was that fanfiction and historical fiction-which, in a sense, also counts as fanfiction-broadly had two approaches.
The first changed the plot, which was the more common kind.
I'm sure plenty of works came to mind without me having to give examples.
For instance, someone traveled to the Shang dynasty and changed the ending of Investiture of the Gods, or traveled to the Three Kingdoms era to gather Diao Chan and all sorts of other beauties, recruit Second Master, Zhang Fei, Lü Bu, and Zhuge Liang, and toy with big shots like Cao, Liu, and Sun.
Or perhaps readers didn't think very highly of a particular protagonist, so fanfiction authors wrote all sorts of plots about snatching that protagonist's opportunities and women.
There was plenty of fanfiction like that, and it was certainly satisfying to read.
But this book belonged to the other kind.
The kind that didn't radically alter the plot.
To use historical fiction as an example again, I'm sure many of you have read Yue Guan's A New Voyage. Few works in the historical category could rival it.
When I first read it in school, I was blown away. Part of that was because Yue Guan wrote so well, and part of it was because of the many events in the story.
For example, the Prince of Yan feigned madness, and the three heirs escaped Nanjing.
Given the situation at the time, accomplishing something like that was