If you were going to self-publish a YA series explicitly aimed at boys, what would be the best way of going about at it?
Like what platforms would work best and how would you go about writing the characters, setting, and overall genre?
I've actually gestated some half-baked ideas. A modern fantasy setting, like RWBY, except with more elaborate worldbuilding, revolving around several anachronistic city-states that mix 1980s Japanese technology with 1880s American capitalism. One of my main gripes with anime-inspired settings are how averse to grotesque and surreal imagery in favour of everything looking shiny and glamorous. This is where the New Weird influence comes in.
So the villains will have terrifying body-horror abilities like the pillar men, and the creepier parts of the cities will resemble New Crobuzon. Nonhuman characters will exist, although less focus will be put on angsting about how oppressed they are and more jokes about their characteristics and elaborately showing off how these qualities can aid them in battle and in daily life.
Also, I will shit on the concept of "Acceptable Rebellion" by having a conventionally pretty tiefling/catgirl soliloquy about how hard it is to be her, then immediately gossip about a sufficiently ugly/strange nonhuman. If you're going to whinge day and night about how nobody accepts you for who you are, you better damn well know the reason why. Take the flaws, make them grotesque, so much so there's no possible way for even the most rose-tinted tumblrite to spin it into something cute or quirky, and turn them into an overwhelming strength.
Like RWBY, everybody will be badass, but i'm a massive fan of the Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass trope. So completely mundane and even stupid things will be made into extremely valuable allies and deadly enemies.
I also don't like mooks. It's boring to see the same orc get his head cut off for the hundredth time. Enemies will be very, very diverse. No bullshit hollow message about "Be yourself! Everyone you like is unique, everyone you hate is a conformist!" because since childhood, that message has made my blood boil because it reeks of an inability to see from others' perspectives.
The main characters will be a pair of twelve year old delinquents with extremely defined powers derived from being reincarnated from ancient heroes who were once enemies. Every character design will look like an OC on DeviantArt in 2006, and shonen anime influence will be everywhere. The dialogue will involve lots of threats and posturing, yelling phrases in Japanese, and jokes as vulgar and off-color I can get away with.
Because this is aimed at boys, they won't fuck around and gabble about feelings. Every villain will either be misguided, a victim of circumstance, or an utter and complete monster. The former will reform and become allies, while the main characters will actively annihilate the latter in the most spectacular and brutal way possible. I will make the villains hateable by having them being completely immune to karma until the very end.
Every chapter will end with a character sheet, and every book will end with those of the main characters as they become quadratically more powerful with every entry. The art style will be angular and stylized, like 90s anime. The colour palette will be taken directly from windows paint to allow for maximum eye-bleed. The humour will be abrasive as sandpaper down your asscrack. It will make Peepo Choo look like Care Bears.
The story will begin as a very mundane conflict between schoolboys, which will slowly spiral out of control and become more fantastical and larger in scale. First it involves intrigue, spying, and pranks, and then by book 2 it's about delinquent gangs fighting each other, and by book 5 the fate of the universe is in their hands. Also, it will spoof other YA novels and children's books in very mean-spirited ways by means of genre splicing. "Hey... what if Kenshiro was the protagonist of a Roald Dahl book?"
It could be described as a mix between Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Captain Underpants, Ben 10, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Rock Hard Gladiators, RWBY, Hyper Police, Big Nate, and Unwind. Everything my inner ten year old likes.
Well now I gotta check out his blog more. Thanks for the rec, DungeonMaster.
