After snapping back to her senses, Su Li couldn't help but say, "I admit you do have a point. This passerby character really is different from the other female characters. But she is still a passerby character in the end. I'm not going to confuse what is primary and what is secondary. Also, I almost got led around by you just now. My Pure Love was meant to be a campus harem manga from the start. What readers want to see is interaction between the male and female leads, plus fanservice scenes for the girls, not studying or anything like that. And honestly, men these days prefer those proactive, seductive types anyway, don't they?"
Hearing that response, Zhang Ziqiang felt a trace of disappointment. It was purely because he thought interactions between the male and female leads plus fanservice scenes were painfully boring. He had hoped that Xu Jing could rise to prominence and bring about more interesting developments. Unfortunately, Teacher Su Li still insisted on her own view.
Even while disappointed, he also felt admiration for her resolve. This was exactly the attitude a professional manga artist should have. Right now, the most popular female lead in Pure Love was still the younger sister, Yang Qianqian. Everyone had already gotten used to the established style of this work. Changing it rashly would just be reckless.
It was like those web novels where an author keeps writing by formula and gets decent results. Then one day, the author suddenly decides to abandon the formula and try something novel, writing unpredictable plotlines. The result is almost always that everything goes off the rails.
This was the logic behind the saying, "True feelings never last, only formulas win hearts." Sometimes authors think they have written something sincere, yet readers simply don't buy it. There's no helping that.
"Then should we reduce Xu Jing's appearances and gradually let her fade into obscurity?" Zhang Ziqiang asked, his voice low as he turned back to his drawing board.
To his surprise, Su Li smiled faintly and said, "No need. On the contrary, I'm going to slowly increase her screen time, first letting her move from a passerby to a supporting character."
"Why?" Zhang Ziqiang asked, visibly surprised by the sudden shift.
"Because you convinced me," Su Li replied, leaning back in her chair with a confident look. "I also think this character is kind of interesting. I will make her a bit more noticeable and see how readers react. Just because we find her interesting doesn't mean readers will. My focus will always stay on the female character who is most popular with readers."
"As expected of Teacher Su Li. This time, I really learned something as your assistant. There's a reason your first long-running serialization achieved this kind of success," Zhang Ziqiang said with a sigh.
Su Li didn't bother to be modest. She smiled and went back to her work, the stylus scratching softly against the tablet. She wasn't sure if it was just her imagination, but when she drew the character Xu Jing, she felt as though her pen was guided by some unseen force. It was as if the character had gained her own soul and will. Su Li found she couldn't control this character's actions at all.
She didn't feel surprised. Instead, she recalled how many creators, when talking about the fate of certain characters in their works—especially tragic ones—would face readers who desperately demanded a change to the ending, begging that it not be so miserable. Those creators would then put on an affected air and tell readers that it couldn't be changed because the character was no longer under their control. The character had her own will and soul and was destined for tragedy.
Su Li had always felt that this was just certain creators who liked depressing stories shifting the blame. In a sense, the creator was the god of that world. Every character was a puppet on strings. How could there be an ending that couldn't be changed?
But now, in the middle of creating, she suddenly understood the feeling. She didn't want to twist a character's inherent will. She only wanted to let the character move on her own. Those works that excelled at ensemble casts were probably classic examples of using characters to drive the plot.
What disappointed Su Li was that she only felt this way when portraying Xu Jing. When drawing other characters, everything still felt dry and lifeless. Comparing the two, she even felt that pouring more effort into Xu Jing was the true path forward. In the end, she restrained that urge, because she didn't know whether readers would like it.
…
Zhao Youyue, the one secretly stirring things up, naturally had no idea that she had already gained the creator's favor. That wasn't necessarily a good thing. she felt that studying peacefully inside the Dimension Gate was quite nice. It made up for her laziness in real life. If she gained the creator's favor, she would inevitably have more encounters and interactions with the main characters inside. That would just waste her precious study time.
At the same time, she was sorting through more information about the Dimension Gate. Only then did she realize that having her phone confiscated and being called on in class that day hadn't been coincidences. They were the negative consequences of her reckless actions last time. To put it in more mystical terms, she had consumed her own luck. That lesson made her far more cautious in using the Dimension Gate. She would never casually ruin a creator's hard work again.
She also figured out the methods for leaving an anime, game, or novel world.
First, just like she had done before, she could recklessly define a passerby character, transform into a terrifying demon king, wipe out the protagonist, and completely destroy the balance of the entire work, causing it to collapse. The consequence was that her luck in the real world would decrease and misfortune would follow one after another. The more popular the work she destroyed, the heavier the price she paid.
Second, the character she possessed could die. If it was a nameless passerby who died quietly, that was actually fine. It wouldn't negatively affect the work, and she wouldn't suffer misfortune in reality. She would simply waste a precious chance to enter the Dimension Gate.
However, if she possessed a major female character and then died in some inexplicable way, the result would follow the first rule. So if you were the female lead, even death had to come from a "plot-driven death," not some absurd accident like slipping into water and drowning or choking to death while drinking. If that plot-driven death didn't trigger readers' sighs and a deep reluctance to part, that was even a bonus.
Third, if the character she possessed gained extremely high popularity, then on some unseen level she would gain the right to choose to leave that work. This was an ability born from the collective will of the readers.
In other words, as long as she became a classic character in the eyes of readers, she could exit. The only issue was that the author might ruin that classic character in later portrayals. For example, the female lead Wu Di from Transformation: Female Top Student had very high popularity and was considered classic early on, but she was completely ruined later by the author. As a result, the ability Zhao Youyue inherited from her was gone.
So the most perfect approach was actually to let the character die at her most glorious and most watched moment, while also ensuring that the real-world creator didn't suddenly get inspired to revive the character and ruin her image.
Fourth, if the work ended normally—with abnormal endings falling under the first rule—then she could naturally exit as well. This condition avoided a character's tragedy. Ending the story at the height of her popularity saved her from having to scheme endlessly about how to die.
===
Transformation: Female Top Student = 变身女学霸