A Rant. TL;DR author's self-talk therapy
To those who belong among the younger demographic,
As much as I don't subscribe to "think of the children" rhetoric, because trust me, when the internet has been around your age, I had my fair share of consuming trash.
But, while there are those of you that might stumble this around the Japanese internet and you're such a voracious yet stubborn reader you would really wish to keep reading, let me just put something in caution:
DEAR YOUNG READER, there are better stories meant for you than what the adults do during their most miserable time. The themes found in this story are meant to be treated as complex and as mature as it can get. There's a time to grow and enjoy things as it is, you DON'T NEED TO RUSH to figure things out only to witness fictional adults being pathetic themselves. So GO ON YOUR WAY and try to AVOID THIS as much as possible if you will. Thank you very much.
In short: kids, this story is mainly for adults. Either look elsewhere or deal things that will scar your life forever (joke, haha).
＊＊＊
There are many issues I'm frustrated with in life.
One of them is LATE STAGE CAPITALISM.
Another is that Jeff Bezos's empire Amazon and Kindle are so exploitative, he can go over and do some growth like his hair for example.
Second, this is not based in real life. This is not some biography far-fetched memoir bs, okay.
All characters are not real because I am an outsider and a foreigner through and through.
Except when I did put my research hat on, and did some arm-chair inquiry through Google as a terminally online Gen Z on the internet, what I usually find on the online spaces I lurked about are the overrated-sometimes-cliché-eye-roll stereotyped image of the Filipinas in Japan way back the 90's. I don't know if these stereotypes still persist post-2020, but if they're still around... okay. And I barely did the standard rigorous research anyway. My research resources are scant in themselves (for now).
To note: this is a stylized Tokyo. This is NOT me depicting the real day-to-day life of a local Tokyoite. Becoz... I'm NOT a Tokyoite myself and I've never been there. It's only for the ***aesthetic***.
To be clear, y'all (minasan). The only extent I know about Japanese is through second-hand resources a.k.a through reading, listening and watching on the internet. So if by chance I screwed up… I did my best, but I guess my best wasn't good enough by Quincy Jones.
Yeah, go figure.
And since I'm one among the many curious creatures in these two almost disparate worlds where I have read enough anecdotes, I have heard enough oral accounts, reaching the shores of where I live enough that this entered into our everyday Filipino consciousness, I might as well redirect my energy to my main endeavors. And that is: my writing practice.
Because third, as I said, I'm an ambitious wannabe with the want to traditionally publish my shit somewhere in the US. But why? Easy answer: money.
Ha-ha.
Not only about this brazenness, coz everybody wants to make their big bucks out of LATE STAGE CAPITALISM, but also that commercial/popular fiction/literature moves according to trends. I could almost throw my hands off from frustration when my very first original manuscript is now at the fringes of the-least-sought-after queries in American publishing.
This current trend grates the pettiness out of me and I'm grumbling on this post.
Not only that, but also because my own scene just really took after the American popular literature landscape. You can obviously see it in my style, form and structure. I can't help it. You can take the Gen Z out of the scene, but you cannot take the scene out of the Gen Z—kind of idiomatic expression. (If you know what I mean. In XG's song: iykyk).
What I mean when I say "scene" is that in this amateur novel—if it ever reached at least 80k word count by American publishing standards at all—has taken after, and has been in line to the broader discourse that I'm currently engaged with. By that, I mean to say it's in vein of Anglo-American literature under romantic fiction. Why? Because I have read ENOUGH—TOO MUCH, actually. And most of those romance driven novels I've wrote here are in conversation with them.
For example, the tropes found in this story are the following: fake dating, childhood sweethearts, marriage of convenience, class (i.e. socio-economic) romance, billionaire trope (why tf this is still pervasive, I dunno. I just want a dolla dolla bill y'all); unrequited love etc...
Ergo, I'm such a spoiler. (≧▽≦)
This might be a full-on practice when it comes to writing character work. You know… conflict, dynamics, chemistry, tension and all that. Coz I have this very first draft where the most repulsed theme of unapologetically ***cheating in a relationship*** was explored as a part of the story's conflict. And damn if I couldn't sense the vitriol among the American readers if this is ever put out. I can hear the harsh criticisms in my head now.
One star bomb and a Reddit discussion post about HOW THEY HATED THIS BOOK and did not finish reading it. For them, it's a hard NO.
Like I said, I'd be damned if I did write cheating as a part of the story's conflict and my potential debut novel is a flop.
Ugh.
That's why I made a resolution. Explore these repulsed elements and themes here, and once I get the gist of it, I'll remove it out of my original draft. As I also practice the very core of the dynamics I've been sketching about some time these past years.
If there's any American lurking around here: how's it going? Lol. Don't mind me rambling, haha. You can find me on Reddit too, really (e.g. r/RomanceBooks-Critique/Discussion/Rant).
And fourth, I am rather fervently fuming about this locally-published novel I've read back then. It was set in Tokyo but left me frustrated. Again… frustrated for the zenith. Once, I threw this novel across my room out of fury. The end result was that I want to simply trash this novel.
Edit 2026/06/04: If you ask me: why is this story written the way it is? I have no other truthful answer other than... every time I remember that locally-published novel, it makes my blood simmer with rage. That's why the energy is poured here.
If you further ask me: why is this story is such a toxic take? I'd answer: it's because I want to curse that novel. I want to tear that rom-com bluff apart, butchering its bland palate. Fluffy rom-com, my ass.
More like: pandering self-insert, "vibes only," unengaging, dismissive, dumbed-down, because-of-declining-reading-literacy-rate excuses, uncritical, superficial, generic, saccharine, sappy, proliferated cash cow, fast-food, calorie-driven, money-making slop piles (series) and cheapened literary output in the name of **escapism** and **emotional fantasy** (American romance novels' discourse and that locally-written novel in conversation to this context, if you please).
You, authors, NEED MORE PRACTICE BEFORE YOU START CLICKING THAT KINDLE MERCHANT BUTTON. Firehose method be damned you're plaguing the genre.
And for the effin life of me, you locally-published novel, you have all the resources of the beta-readers, the substantial feedback and professional editing...
Just why in the heck I've read one of the most MEDIOCRE, CLICHÉ-ADDLED EFFIN FRUSTRATING AIRLESS WRITING?!
I bought that novel! Just what shit did you peddled me in for? (read: entitled consumer)
Nothing?
I'll have you forgiven when hell freezes over.
I want an escapism. But for the bare minimum of what premise I was sold into, you flesh it out. You give it depth. You give it dimensions. You give it arc and development. Have at least something distinguishable like QUALITYYYY.
¯\_ಠ_ಠ_/¯
And as for the rest of my rambling, don't say I didn't warn you.
＊＊＊
Edit 2026/06/08: This story is written intended solely for my guilty pleasure where male protagonist, Masato Sakurai, is inspired from that locally-published novel. He is not based from a true-to-life Japanese person, okay. What he is as a fictional character is everything I could present as an antithesis against that mediocre Main Male Character (MMC).
This is a satire.
This is irreverent.
This is not an I-novel either.
This couldn't give a damn.
F— U mediocre novel.
A big f— you. →_→
＊＊＊
For the sake of my own integrity, even if I find the advantages of AI helpful to:
•polish my grammar
•give me structural feedback
&;
•"tighten the pace," - every AI-chatbot feedback who thinks they're literary connoisseur.
•"refine the prose," every AI-chatbot who thinks they're Shakespeare.
•"improve the structure," every AI-chatbot who thinks they're literary most superior.
•"improves efficiency," every AI-slop who thinks they're literary most elites.
Ahem, ahem. And in response...
Dear,
ChatGPT
Grok (misogynistic dumbass btw)
DeepSeek
Perplexity
Gemini
Claude
You blackbox LLMs.
Please... ತ_ತ
By what credentials do you stand your assessment on? By plagiarized source materials?
Yours truly, stfu.
Therefore, with such an attitude, I have to forbid myself from using these sloppy short-cuts. Lest I'll become a generic garbage myself.
This is to keep the organic progress of my learning curve visible. And for me not to succumb to laziness.
Edit 2026/06/08: This is a raw draft. This is also written by an ESL (English as a Second Language) speaker. It remains unedited and will likely to be so in the future.
I'm a Filipino. I'm born and raised in the Philippines with Philippine English at my disposal—a-not-so-native speaker purity litmus test nonsense any purist or monolithic no-brainers would wish to deduce and dismiss. Philippine English is what I have and it is what I will use, that's it.
If this long-form fiction written in English is clunky, yes, it is. If it's long-winded, if it's unnatural, if it's so dense or if it sprawl too much, it probably is.
The purpose of why it remained as a raw draft is to help me study these errors over time.
Let's say, I look up to literary icons like Salman Rushdie, Chinua Achebe or Vladimir Nabokov.
＊＊＊
DISCLAIMER:
In conversation with the predominantly Anglophones on Reddit, just in case readers from this background throw around that “AI-slop” label on me again. **Eye-roll**:
This story utilized AI-assistance for preliminary research only. Furthermore, few dialogue lines that are spoken in different languages other than English are also AI-assisted through AI generated response. (Edit 2026/06/08: I will remove them soon). However, the entire English text is written solely by the author herself.
No permission is given to repurpose this text for AI use, scraping and/or training.
Also, don't bother to plagiarize this work. Just don't. Please, don't be such a lazy ass and an unethical piece of shit. The story is as clunky as shit, if you plagiarize, you are embarrassing asf in the long run.
Edit as of August 08, 2026: I removed the rescheduling time and day since I no longer see it fit. Pardon for the inconvenience. Thank you for understanding.
(Dang, 2am thoughts make you want to play SZA's Saturn).
＊＊＊
P.S.
I had assumed that all characters speak in Japanese among themselves unless otherwise stated by the text. You just got to read them in English, because it's the language where I could pull off a long-form fiction with. And I eventually stopped using AI-translation.
＊＊＊
Thanks for stopping by. (╹▽╹)
