Episode 9: Fan Letters and the Seed of Revolution
I’ve emphasized this many times before, but let me make it absolutely clear once again.
Just because I’m trying to incite a cultural revolution doesn’t mean I’ve really been brainwashed by the Commie Heavenly Demon’s hypnosis app.
Of course, I’m not saying nonsense like, “Isn’t it common sense that a cultural revolution means smashing culture?” while hypnotized, either, and trying to recreate the original Cultural Revolution.
If that were the case, I wouldn’t have bothered writing novels so diligently and spreading them around.
In the first place, communism is something like a thousand-year kingdom that appears when the contradictions of capitalism reach their extreme.
Does it have something like a 0.0001% pickup rate?
At this point, it’s less than the actual lobster content in lobster chips.
Even the most loyal whales of any gacha game would never pull on these rates.
On top of that, in this world, capitalism isn’t even dying—it hasn’t even been born yet.
So even if I gain fanatical popularity as an author, there’s no way I’ll have the authority to drive birds to extinction with a single finger.
And above all.
Sparkle, sparkle—
“Kehehehe! Gold coin diving!”
Shaaaah—!
If I were a True Red, there’s no way I’d love gold coins this much.
I wouldn’t be diving into piles of gold coins delivered by the Publishing Guild as settlement fees, either.
While proving my purity like that, I was splish-splashing doing the golden breaststroke like the greedy old miser Scrooge.
“Phew. If only the people outside worshipping you as a great author could see this.
What are you doing, shattering everyone’s illusions? Is money really that great?”
Lena, who had been watching from the side, nagged at me to have some dignity.
Really, what an unromantic girl.
When there are this many gold coins piled up, surely I can swim in them at least once.
Well, getting hit and scraped by the gold coins hurts more than I thought, so I was just about to stop.
I got up obediently and replied.
“Of course it’s great. Why would I hate it?
Go anywhere and ask if there’s anyone who hates money.
Is there such a person?”
If there’s a bastard who says they do.
Inside, he either loves money more than anyone else, or he’s the real True Red himself.
Either way, you shouldn’t associate with him.
“Mm, that’s true.
I admit it. Money is great,”
Lena, who had been nagging, didn’t particularly argue with this and admitted it obediently.
As expected, there’s no one in the world who hates money.
And this isn’t just any money.
It’s a whopping 100,000 gold! 100,000 gold!
This is more than three years’ worth of tax revenue for our Byron territory.
As expected, selling it nationwide makes the dimension of money earned totally different.
‘Even though I kept the margin as low as possible and distributed it cheaply, it’s still this much.’
I laid the strategy out well and the timing worked perfectly, and we even gobbled up the marketing and promotional effects.
“The fact that it was such a hit means I was right—people wanted an entertaining romance work.”
The gold coins piled up before my eyes now
were practically evidence showing intuitively how explosive the response to the new work was.
That’s why I was excited enough to swim in gold coins.
Not simply because I earned a lot of money.
It was also evidence that I had been acknowledged as an author to that extent.
I’m not a rotten adult who only likes numbers.
But compared to a boring, pedantic explanation, saying “I earned 100,000 gold” just hits different and is instantly understandable, right?
“Saying it like that, you sound like some kind of miser.
For an author, isn’t people’s evaluation more important than money?”
“Of course, I’m properly checking people’s real evaluations too.”
I said that, but the fact that revenue doesn’t always equal quality was proven even by golf ball games in my previous life.
For me, whose goal wasn’t simply commercial success but spreading entertainment culture.
As long as it was within my ability, of course I had to care about people’s evaluations.
“But right now, even those people’s evaluations are good.”
And regardless of gender or status, at that.
Since it was a typical romance work.
Of course, the most popular demographic was commoner women readers.
But it was also quite popular among nobles and men.
Because in this world, the book I wrote was the first of its kind.
There was no prejudice yet that it was a genre mainly for women.
And because noble and commoner protagonists appeared together, it must have been easy to immerse oneself in regardless of status.
It wasn’t simply popular.
—“The theme of forbidden love between a noble and a commoner accurately points out the problems of current noble society, which insists solely on political marriages for the growth of the household while ignoring the feelings of the parties involved.”—
—“The Goddess also left words that among faith, hope, and love, the greatest is love.
Mary and Michael, who sacrifice everything they have for love and overcome adversity.
Shouldn’t we learn the purity and devotion of love that we have forgotten from their appearance?”—
—“There probably aren’t many readers who didn’t feel catharsis at the downfall of the villainous characters.
But why do they not try to put that into practice?
We should take this opportunity to look back on whether we ourselves are not such villains...”—
To the point that such reviews appeared even in newspapers.
Aside from entertainment value, they were considered to contain lessons for readers.
Hm.
Honestly, it would be a lie to say I didn’t intend those lessons at all.
‘But it feels much more overblown than my intention?’
I hadn’t planned to include such grandiose messages.
They were decoding messages I had never put in, so I couldn’t help but feel slightly bewildered.
Is this how the poet felt when they tried solving a test question about their own work and got everything wrong?
Having directly experienced the “What does the author know!?” that I had only heard about...
“Isn’t this great? Pure profit, right?”
It wasn’t as bad a feeling as I thought.
Wasn’t it too much overinterpretation? Though it was a bit scary.
It wasn’t like they were distorting the original intention to curse at me.
They were interpreting it in a good direction on their own—did I really need to insensitively say, “That’s not it”?
Wouldn’t it be best to just say, “Actually, all of your guesses are correct!” since all’s well that ends well?
“If I had put in that ‘ah, shit’ dream sequence that briefly crossed my mind, things would have gone terribly wrong.”
Of course, I wasn’t really going to include it.
If I had, I really would have ended up an unidentified corpse.
If so, all this goodwill would have turned into malice, and they would have torn me to shreds.
Anyway, that foolish thought fortunately remained just a thought.
As a result.
The romance novel [I Became the Ice Duke’s Maid]
was causing such a tremendous craze that the phrase “syndrome” from my previous life came to mind.
“Even if we gathered all the gold on the continent, it wouldn’t weigh more than a single strand of your hair.”
“Ah! That’s what Michael said on page 175 while braiding Mary’s hair, right?!”
“Recently, my son suddenly burst through my door and shouted, ‘If it hinders love, I have no need for such a title or fortune!’”
“Huh, did your son have such a passionate partner?”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“...? Then what?”
“He said he was just copying a scene from the book because it looked cool.
I’m so vexed that I’m planning to cut off his allowance for a while.”
It went without saying that couples everywhere were imitating famous lines and scenes like a trend.
“Everyone, have you all prepared your outfits for this ‘Commoner Experience’?”
“Of course! I even commissioned them to make Mary’s casual clothes exactly as described in the book!”
“Oh my! Is that true?!
Could you show me too?”
Among nobles, something called a “Commoner Experience,” where they dressed up as commoners and wandered the streets, was rising as a new trend, apparently?
And to top it all off.
—Shock! Fiction Becomes Reality?!
The heir to Count Huntington’s family decides to formally take a commoner lover as his wife!—
An actual couple attempting a marriage transcending status had appeared.
“We were able to gain great courage after reading Author Wei’s [I Became the Ice Duke’s Maid].
We will strive to achieve a love unbound by status, like Michael and Mary!
And we are truly grateful to Author Wei, who gave us courage!”
They even sent their gratitude through the Publishing Guild, saying they had gained the courage to decide because of the book I wrote.
Naturally, this marriage of the century caused a huge stir.
It was on the lips of countless people regardless of whether they were commoners or nobles.
In conclusion, this couple gained overwhelming support from commoners.
And surprisingly, even received tacit approval from noble society.
They truly succeeded in getting their marriage recognized.
“Love is greater than gold and blue blood!”
“Author Wei! He is the god of love!”
Naturally, my name value rose automatically from influencing all these events.
Because I had truly made them break a social taboo.
Even in my previous life where the class system was gone, it was utter chaos when a celebrity married a commoner.
So how would it be in this place where the class system is alive and kicking?
If it had been before I published my book, the noble’s reputation would have nosedived in noble society.
The commoner partner would have been forcibly separated, and merely being driven out in one piece would have been considered a generous punishment.
Thus, making a noble and a commoner marry formally without any hindrance or fuss was indeed an achievement worth making a fuss about.
Of course, as an author, I was very proud and satisfied that readers had achieved love thanks to me.
But unfortunately, a new event occurred that prevented me from paying deep attention to that couple.
“Author. The Publishing Guild has sent fan letters. Where shall I put them?”
“Ah, please put them on the desk, Miss Aria.”
Hundreds, thousands of fan letters poured out to me through the Publishing Guild.
While slowly reading through them, I found one letter that stood out.
[The Fiancee Young Lady’s True Feelings]
—After reading your book, I organized on my own the true feelings of the fiancee young lady that I felt, the reason she couldn’t help but be that way, and what I thought could have been done better!
I would be happy if I could properly follow your thoughts, Author!—
“Miss Aria!”
“Yes? What is it, Author? Why are you smiling so brightly?”
“I would like to meet one of the fans who sent a fan letter.
Is it possible to contact them through the Publishing Guild?”
The goal for which I had started this whole thing.
The seed of the cultural revolution was germinating faster than I had thought.