Forum: Lost Stories

Recently, there have been several stories here in a pattern (genre?) I haven't seen before. They're similar enough, and close enough in time, that I have to think they are all imitations of some other work that's gone big recently. Can anyone tell me what that work is?

The stories are:

My Mysterious Life Hidden Billionaire by laxu

Money Over Love by RomanticDoaist

Harem of the Dragon Lord Vol.1 by BillMax

In all three, the protagonist is a rich, powerful man who is thought by almost everyone to be a complete nobody. He is or was married to a woman who -- along with her fiends and family -- think he's totally worthless. They spend most of their time belittling him, and then after he does something remarkable, explaining it away so they can continue believing he's worthless. His remarkable actions are typically unarmed combat or magical or herbal healing. The social context is based on power, wealth, and name-dropping.

What's the original that these three are imitating?

"Release that Witch" by Er Mu?
It's an Alternate Universe story, a mechanical engineer called Chen Yang suddenly awakens as Prince Roland Wimbledon (really!) in another world - one with magic.
He's the fourth of five princes/princesses (3 Princes, 2 Princesses) and the one everyone knows to be a cowardly idiot.

Translated from the original Chinese, there are around 1500 chapters written 2016 to 2019 with three extra chapters bolted on in 2023. An illustrated version is now being posted (Manga?) but I can't see why the author bothered.

It sounds like the "son in law" trope of web novels/light novels, originally (and probably still) popular with Chinese readers. I have not read any of the three you mention, but based on their descriptions they do seem to follow that model. As with many other genres, Stugeon's Law applies.

I've watched something similar on YouTube to the first story, didn't like it there either

This phenomenon is just coincidence based on a style of fiction seen as very popular in Chinese, Korean and other Asian "drama" stories

The authors seem to revel in practically the whole cast of characters basically dumping on and bullying the mc

It's not based on any one source as far as I can tell but I'm aware of this style of fiction as my mom is recently obsessed with her "Chinese stories" which are just Spanish dubbed recaps done with AI on YouTube of Chinese and k drama tv shows, also my brother is big on similar content done on written works from, again, various Asian countries that skew more towards the Japanese style anime tropes of the isekai anime genre but as it's based on books the ai voice translation videos are massive ranging from as little as ,3 hours to 60+ hours each part with the stories using ai generated art for visuals lol.

There are much more of this crap showing up here recently that I get the feeling is slopped out by different authors that might just be the same person or persons behind them as they are all very similar to day time soap operas. You can easily spot them by the si generated tags and very easily if you actually read then and notice the very heavy Asian cultural references woven into the story like zodiac symbology, rigid social caste system and massive thirst for social power/standing/wealth and unique flavor of spiritualism indemic to Asian cultures 😆