Web Novel Glossary: 70+ Terms From MC to Xianxia

Web novel terms are the shorthand readers use for characters, story setups, genres and publishing habits. MC means main character, isekai names a story where someone lands in another world, and readers use xianxia for Chinese fantasy about cultivating power toward immortality. Some of them have documented roots in Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Russian fiction, and we link the source wherever one exists.

This glossary defines 73 of the terms you'll see in tags, blurbs, reviews and comment threads. Every definition stands on its own, so jump straight to the word that stumped you. Where a term has a documented history, such as a dictionary entry, we link to the source. If you're brand new to the format, start with our guide to reading web novels free online.

Key takeaways

• The core shorthand is simple: MC means main character, OP means overpowered, and ML and FL mean male lead and female lead.
• Isekai (transported or reborn into another world), transmigration (waking up in someone else's body) and regression (sent back in time within your own life) sound alike but describe different setups.
• Readers use wuxia for human-scale martial arts adventure, xianxia for cultivation toward immortality, and xuanhuan as a looser fantasy label. Murim is the martial world of Korean martial arts fantasy.
• LitRPG stands for literary role-playing game: levels, stats and system messages shape the plot.
• Some of these words are now in English dictionaries. The Oxford English Dictionary added "manhwa" in 2021 and "isekai" in 2024.

Jump to a section:

• Characters and roles (12 terms)
• Story setups and tropes (15 terms)
• Genres and formats (16 terms)
• Cultivation and power systems (9 terms)
• Publishing and reading terms (14 terms)
• Community slang (7 terms)
• Where web novel terms come from
• Frequently asked questions

Characters and roles

Character terms tell you who the story is about and what kind of person they are. You'll see most of them in blurbs and reviews, often as abbreviations.

MC

MC stands for main character, the protagonist whose story you follow. Readers use it constantly, as in "the MC finally broke through" or "I couldn't stand the MC."

FMC and MMC

FMC means female main character and MMC means male main character. The labels are handy when a story, often a romance, follows both leads.

ML and FL

ML and FL mean male lead and female lead, usually the romantic leads of a story. "Second ML" is the love interest who doesn't end up with the heroine.

OP MC

An OP MC is an overpowered main character who is far stronger than everyone around them, often from the first few chapters. The appeal is watching how the MC uses that power, not wondering whether they'll win.

Weak to strong

Weak to strong describes an MC who starts at the bottom, powerless or mocked, and climbs to the top over the course of the story. It's the opposite promise to an OP MC and a core tag in progression fantasy.

Villainess

A villainess is the female antagonist of a romance story. The word also names a genre in which the heroine wakes up as that villainess and tries to escape her doomed ending.

Young master

The young master is a stock antagonist: an arrogant heir of a powerful family or sect who picks a fight with the MC and loses. His defeat usually sets up a face-slapping scene.

Senior brother and junior sister

Senior brother, junior sister and similar titles rank members of a sect or disciples of a master by who joined first. They signal seniority, not family ties.

Tsundere

A tsundere is a character who acts cold or prickly toward someone they secretly like, then lets a softer side slip out. The word is a portmanteau of the Japanese tsuntsun ("aloof, standoffish") and deredere ("lovestruck"), according to Dictionary.com.

Yandere

A yandere is a character whose affection turns obsessive and dangerous, sometimes violent. The word combines the Japanese yanderu ("to be sick") and deredere ("lovestruck"), according to Dictionary.com.

Chuunibyou

Chuunibyou describes a character who acts out grand delusions of secret powers or a tragic destiny, and readers also use it for self-consciously edgy writing. The Japanese name is translated as "eighth-grader syndrome," according to a 2021 study in PLOS One. It isn't a recognized medical condition.

Cannon fodder

Cannon fodder characters exist to be defeated, killed or humiliated so the plot can move on. In some transmigration stories, the MC wakes up as a cannon fodder character and has to rewrite their fate to survive.

Story setups and tropes

Setup terms describe how a story starts or what keeps happening in it. In our view, they're the most useful words to learn, because they double as tags when you're searching for your next series.

Isekai

Isekai is a genre of stories in which the main character is transported to or reborn in another world, usually a fantasy one. The Oxford English Dictionary added the word in March 2024, Anime News Network reported. The OED defines it as "a Japanese genre of science or fantasy fiction featuring a protagonist who is transported to or reincarnated in a different, strange, or unfamiliar world."

Truck-kun

Truck-kun is fan slang for the speeding truck that kills an isekai protagonist in chapter one and sends them to another world. Readers use it as a joke for any abrupt death that kicks off an isekai.

Reincarnation

A reincarnation story begins with the MC dying and being reborn, often as a baby, while keeping memories of their past life. Growing up with an adult mind gives the MC a head start.

Transmigration

Transmigration means the MC's soul moves into someone else's body, usually a person who already has a life, relationships and enemies.

Possession

Possession, also called book transmigration, is when the MC wakes up inside a novel, game or webtoon they once read, usually as a minor character. Knowing the plot lets them try to change it.

Regression

Regression is a setup in which the MC is sent back to an earlier point in their own life while keeping memories of the future. The MC, called a regressor, uses that knowledge to prevent a disaster, fix mistakes or take revenge.

System

A system is a game-like interface, usually visible only to the MC, that hands out quests, stats, skills and rewards. System stories range from full LitRPG to fantasy with an occasional notification.

Status window

A status window is the pop-up screen in system and LitRPG stories that lists a character's level, stats and skills.

Cheat (golden finger)

A cheat, also called a golden finger, is a unique advantage only the MC has, such as a system, a talking artifact or knowledge of the future. It explains why this particular person rises so far.

Face slapping

Face slapping describes scenes where someone who looked down on the MC is proven humiliatingly wrong, usually in public. It's the payoff that follows an insult to the MC.

Harem and reverse harem

A harem story has one MC with several romantic interests, usually a male MC. Reverse harem is the same setup with a female MC and several male love interests.

Slow burn

A slow burn is a romance that takes many chapters to become a relationship. The tag warns impatient readers and promises a payoff to patient ones.

Kingdom building

Kingdom building stories focus on the MC growing a village, territory, sect or business, and much of the pleasure is watching it expand. Similar tags include base building and town building.

Hunter and gates

Hunter stories are set in a modern world where gates or dungeons open and people with awakened powers, called hunters, fight the monsters inside. Hunters are often ranked by letter, with S at the top.

Tower

Tower stories center on a huge tower of floors, each with its own trial or boss, that characters climb for power or survival.

Genres and formats

Genre labels come from several countries, and some describe the same idea from different angles. For a deeper look at what each genre offers and where to start, see our web novel genres guide.

Wuxia

Wuxia is a genre of Chinese fiction and film about the adventures of chivalrous, sword-wielding heroes, as Dictionary.com defines it. Compared with xianxia, readers use wuxia for stories that stay closer to human-scale martial arts.

Jianghu

Jianghu is the world of martial artists, wanderers and outlaws that exists alongside ordinary society in wuxia stories. It runs on its own code of honor, feuds and reputations.

Wulin and murim

Wulin is the name wuxia readers use for the community of martial artists within the jianghu. Murim is the term readers use for the martial world of Korean martial arts fantasy, with its sects, clans and rival masters.

Xianxia

Readers use xianxia for Chinese fantasy, set in what The China Project describes as a fantastical version of ancient China, in which characters cultivate their inner energy to grow stronger and pursue immortality. Sects, demons and magical treasures fill these worlds. Where wuxia is about martial heroes, xianxia is about becoming more than human.

Xuanhuan

Xuanhuan is a looser Chinese fantasy label for stories that mix cultivation-style power growth with other elements, such as Western magic, other worlds or invented settings. Readers and sites draw the line between xuanhuan and xianxia differently, so treat both tags as rough guides.

Cultivation

Cultivation is the practice, central to xianxia and xuanhuan, of training body and spirit to climb through named realms of power. "Cultivation novel" is also used as a catch-all for any story built on that system.

LitRPG

LitRPG stands for literary role-playing game, a genre in which game mechanics such as levels, stats and system messages are part of the world and shape the plot. The label was popularized in Russia in the early 2010s, according to LitRPG publisher Magic Dome Books.

GameLit

GameLit is a broader label for stories set in or around games, or with game-like elements, that show fewer numbers on the page than LitRPG. Many readers treat LitRPG as a subset of GameLit.

Progression fantasy

Progression fantasy is any fantasy built around the MC getting steadily and visibly stronger. Cultivation stories and LitRPG both sit under this umbrella.

Light novel

A light novel is an illustrated Japanese prose novel, typically around 300 pages per volume. The term is wasei-eigo (English-sounding Japanese coined in Japan), and Anime News Network credits its coinage around 1990 to Keita Kamikita. Our explainer on what a light novel is covers the format in depth.

Naro-kei

Naro-kei, or "Naro-style," refers to stories that follow patterns associated with Shosetsuka ni Naro ("Let's Become a Novelist"), a free Japanese web novel site. Readers often use the label for stories with an isekai setup, game-like abilities and an MC with a big advantage.

Manga, manhwa and manhua

Manga are Japanese comics, manhwa are Korean comics and manhua are Chinese comics, and some web novels are adapted into one of the three. The Oxford English Dictionary added "manhwa" in its September 2021 update, one of 26 Korean words added at once, according to CBC Radio.

Webtoon

A webtoon is a Korean-style digital comic laid out for vertical scrolling, usually read on a phone. Vertical-format webtoon manhwa became popular by 2010 because they were easier to read on a smartphone, according to EBSCO Research Starters.

Romance fantasy

Romance fantasy is a genre that puts a romance at the center of a fantasy world, frequently a European-style noble court. Villainess and possession setups can sit within it.

Otome isekai

Otome isekai is a subgenre in which the heroine is reborn or transported into an otome game, a romance video game aimed at women, often as its villainess. She usually knows the game's routes and endings and tries to steer around the bad ones.

BL and GL

BL (boys' love) and GL (girls' love) label romances between two men or two women. In Chinese contexts, the genre of male-male romance stories is called danmei, literally "indulgence in beauty," which the USC US-China Institute describes as mostly produced by and for women.

Cultivation and power systems

Power-system words come up constantly in cultivation, LitRPG and hunter stories. Once you know them, battle chapters and chapter titles make a lot more sense.

Qi

Qi is the life energy that characters absorb and refine in cultivation stories. Gathering and controlling qi is how cultivators grow stronger.

Dantian

A dantian is the energy center in the body where a cultivator stores qi. A shattered or crippled dantian is a classic opening disaster for a weak-to-strong MC.

Sect

A sect is an organized school of cultivators or martial artists with its own techniques, ranks and rivalries. Joining, rising in or leaving a sect can drive a whole plot.

Realm

A realm is a named stage of power in a cultivation system, such as Foundation Establishment or Core Formation, often split into early, middle and late levels. Realm names vary from story to story, but moving up a realm is usually a big event.

Breakthrough

A breakthrough is the moment a cultivator advances to the next realm or level. Breakthrough chapters are often the climax of an arc.

Tribulation

A tribulation is a trial, often heavenly lightning, that a cultivator must survive to advance to a higher realm. Failing a tribulation can mean death, which is why they make good cliffhangers.

Dao

The Dao (Chinese for "way" or "road," per Britannica) is, in cultivation stories, the deeper truth of the universe that cultivators seek to understand. A character's "Dao heart" is their resolve and conviction, and doubts can shake it.

Ranks

Ranks sort characters, monsters, skills or items by power, often on a letter scale in which S is the highest standard grade, with SS or SSS above it in some stories. Hunter and system stories use ranks heavily.

Power creep

Power creep happens when the power scale keeps inflating so fast that earlier victories and enemies stop meaning anything. In our view, it's the biggest risk in long-running progression series.

Publishing and reading terms

Publishing terms tell you how a story is released and whether it's safe to start. They matter most when you're deciding between an ongoing series and a finished one.

Web novel

A web novel is a story published online, usually one chapter at a time, often while the author is still writing it.

Chapter

A chapter is the basic unit of a web novel release. Each update adds one or more chapters, and readers track their progress by chapter number.

Arc

An arc is a self-contained stretch of story with its own goal, conflict and climax. Long web novels are made of many arcs.

Volume

A volume is a larger grouping of chapters that often matches one or more arcs. Some web novels number their chapters within each volume, so "Volume 3, Chapter 12" is a normal address.

Ongoing and completed

An ongoing novel is still being updated, while a completed novel has reached its ending. On ChapterChase, each novel page shows its status, and the completed novels list collects finished series for binge reading.

Hiatus

A hiatus is a pause in updates, announced or not, after which the author may or may not return. Our advice: check the latest chapter date before starting a long series.

Dropped

Dropped means abandoned. Readers say "I dropped it at chapter 50" when they stopped reading, and a dropped novel is one the author stopped writing.

Buffer

A buffer is a stock of finished chapters an author keeps in reserve so they can keep a steady release schedule through busy weeks.

Bonus chapter and side story

A bonus chapter is an extra release on top of the regular schedule, and a side story is a chapter away from the main plot, often about a side character. On ChapterChase, some bonus chapters and side stories are unlocked with Pran Points, an optional platform currency.

Early chapters

Early chapters, also called advance chapters, are chapters released to paying supporters before they go public. On ChapterChase, the Premium Reader plan includes access to early chapters.

Raw

A raw is the original, untranslated text of a story, such as the Chinese, Korean or Japanese chapters. "Reading raws" means reading ahead in the original language.

TL and TL note

TL is short for translation or translator, and a TL note is a comment the translator adds to explain a pun, idiom or cultural reference. Good TL notes are a painless way to learn the terms in this glossary.

MTL

MTL means machine translation, a chapter run through automated translation software with little or no human editing. Readers use the label as a warning about awkward grammar and inconsistent names.

Tags

Tags are short labels, such as regression, slow burn or kingdom building, that describe what a story contains beyond its main genre. Our advice: combine several tags to find stories that match a specific taste.

Community slang

Community slang shows up in comment threads, reviews and forums. Much of it is borrowed from general fandom, with a web novel twist.

Spoiler

A spoiler is any detail that reveals a plot development before a reader reaches it. On the ChapterChase forum, spoilers belong in the body of a post, never in the title.

Binge

To binge is to read many chapters in one sitting. Completed series and novels with large back catalogs are the easiest to binge.

Cliffhanger

A cliffhanger is a chapter ending that stops on unresolved tension so you have to click "next." Serialized fiction uses them to carry readers from one chapter to the next.

Filler

Filler describes chapters that readers feel don't move the story forward. One reader's filler is often another reader's favorite slice-of-life chapter.

Plot armor

Plot armor is when a character survives something only because the story needs them to. It's a common complaint about MCs who escape certain death too often.

Info dump

An info dump is a long block of exposition, such as world history or system rules, delivered all at once instead of woven into the story. In our view, they work best in small doses.

Megathread

A megathread is a single forum thread that gathers all discussion on one topic, such as a whole arc or a series' theories. Every novel on ChapterChase has its own forum board with per-chapter discussion threads and megathreads.

Where web novel terms come from

Some web novel terms have a documented origin: a dictionary entry, a named coiner or a source that ties them to one country's fiction. The table below groups only those terms; the rest of this glossary defines words by how readers use them, without an origin claim.

Web novel terms grouped by origin, with documented milestones (sources linked in the glossary entries above where available)

Origin	Terms in this glossary	Documented milestone
Japan	isekai, light novel, Naro-kei, tsundere, yandere, chuunibyou	"Light novel" coined around 1990 (Anime News Network); "isekai" added to the OED in March 2024 (Anime News Network)
China	wuxia, xianxia, Dao, danmei	"Wuxia" defined in Dictionary.com as a genre of Chinese fiction and film
Korea	manhwa, webtoon, murim	"Manhwa" added to the OED in September 2021 (CBC Radio)
Russia	LitRPG	"LitRPG" popularized in Russia in the early 2010s (Magic Dome Books)

A word's language isn't always a reliable guide to where it came from. "Light novel" looks like English, but it is wasei-eigo, coined in Japan.

Korean web fiction has a large paying audience at home. Citing 2021 data, KED Global reported 5.87 million web novel users in Korea, 77.8% of whom paid for content.

Frequently asked questions

What does MC mean in web novels?

MC means main character, the protagonist whose story a web novel follows. Related abbreviations include FMC and MMC (female and male main character) and OP MC, an overpowered main character who is stronger than everyone around them.

What does isekai mean?

Isekai names stories in which the main character is transported to or reborn in another world, usually a fantasy one. The Oxford English Dictionary added the word in March 2024 and defines it as a Japanese genre of science or fantasy fiction built on that setup.

What is the difference between wuxia, xianxia and xuanhuan?

Compared with xianxia, readers use wuxia for stories that stay closer to human-scale martial arts. Readers use xianxia for stories with cultivation, immortals and the supernatural, where characters train to become immortal. Xuanhuan is a looser fantasy label that mixes cultivation-style power growth with other elements, and readers draw its line with xianxia in different places.

What does OP MC mean?

OP MC means overpowered main character: a protagonist who is far stronger than everyone around them, often from the start of the story. OP MC stories focus on how the character uses their power rather than whether they'll win.

What is a regression novel?

A regression novel is a story in which the main character is sent back to an earlier point in their own life while keeping memories of the future. The character, called a regressor, uses that knowledge to change what happens.

What does LitRPG stand for?

LitRPG stands for literary role-playing game. It describes stories in which game mechanics such as levels, stats and system messages exist inside the world and shape the plot. The label was popularized in Russia in the early 2010s, according to LitRPG publisher Magic Dome Books.

Use these terms to find your next series

Most of these terms double as tags, so once you know you like regression, slow burn or kingdom building, you can search for exactly that. The ChapterChase novel filter lets you combine a genre with several tags, choose ongoing or completed, and sort by Top Rated or Most Bookmarks.

How we wrote this guide: the ChapterChase editorial team checked every statistic against the linked source, and labels our own advice as advice. Spotted an error? Contact us, or read more about us.

Keep this glossary open for your first few series

You don't need to memorize all 73 terms. Start with the ones in the tags of the story you're reading, and the rest will stick as you go. When you're ready for something new, our guide to finding your next web novel shows how to turn the tags you like into a reading list.