It Feels Rapey, and it Breaks My Heart -- The Harem Comedy, Greatest Mistake when Writing Romance · 9:19pm Jul 15th, 2016
I’m not good at romance. My idea of a contraceptive is a fake telephone number. I date girls with glasses to look at my reflection while we fuck. I blow raspberries while eating girls out.
But after losing my computer for a week, I decided I had to change. I needed to learn from the masters. This was both for the sake of my pride, and for the sake of every girl out there who will take a ride on the Aragón Train. This was a decisive step in my life.
I read every single love story that fell into my hands, good and bad.
I learned a lot of things.
All of them were fucking horrible,
Hi, I’m Aragón. I’ve never written a romantic story, I know nothing about storytelling, and I’d go fuck myself if I ever had the chance. Here is the reason why children are afraid of the dark and why Harem Comedies killed God.
1. Of Course It Feels Rapey, but This Shit Fucking Manages to Go Even Further.
Fuck off.
Fuck off right away.
I can’t stand this shit. This is beyond bad writing. This goes all the way to prove the existence of my genitalia, because there’s just no way there can be so much darkness in the world without a little bit of light. So far, I’ve been angry at all the bad instances of romance I’ve seen, but this? This isn’t giving me cancer. This isn’t making me bang my head against a wall.
This makes me want to actively look for the author and beat the shit out of him.
At least the TMC could be mistaken for bad writing, or a lazy misunderstanding on what makes a character appealing. At least the “Tsundere” had the chance to be someone trying to write what’s popular instead of what’s new because they’re fucking idiots. At least the filler might have been a writer genuinely not knowing when to stop telling a story, that with the huge sack of pus they have instead of a brain.
But this?! Fucking this?! This has no excuse. This requires the author to slowly and carefully thread a delicate web of bullshit, to have it all thought-out before the story even begins. This is planned fuckery, designed spunk, autotuned literary flatulence.
In the case of the Harem Comedy, the writer is the one to blame, not the character. So I don’t hate the game. I hate the player. If my dick is a bagpipe, I’m going to give the player a kilt and ask him to choke on the girth.
What is, you ask, the Harem Comedy? Chances are, if you’re reading this, you already know, but it never hurts to make sure.
A harem is a group of women who all fuck one single dude. Said single dude tends to be less a surprisingly nice boyfriend who just happens to be into fucking many girls, and more the kind of douche not even your mother would use to clean her aforementioned cavernous vagina.
The Harem Comedy is obviously built around this idea. It’s a romance—usually a romantic comedy, hence the nomenclature—in which there’s only one male character of importance, but there are at least four or five females, and they’re all desperately in love with him. They adore the way he drools and stares at their breasts. They find it charming how he has no personality whatsoever. They wet themselves whenever he opens his big dumb fucking mouth.
They’re romances in the lesser sense of the word. Sometimes there’s an excuse plot built around it all to give the first chapters a minimum of direction—the Harem Protagonist is new in town, and he has a distant goal he’s working hard to achieve, like earning money, finding his long lost mother, or fingering a mountain lion—but this is merely used to explain why he’s always surrounded by women and to set up the basic background of the story.
(“Gilipo-kun, turns out the Mountain Lion Fingering Foundation was exclusively for girls till three seconds ago!” “Cricketty biscuits, I’m going to fuck like a champion!”)
The moment the series’ sorry excuse for a pathos is established, though, the plot quickly peters out into vapid fuckery, inane bullshit with no plot or consequences. Ill-defined as “Slice of Life”, the story lets the characters flop around like salmons out of water, bouncing off each other but never achieving anything.
So what is the point, then? Well, here lays the first of many, many problems in this genre. The focus of this story, you see, is not the romance. Or the plot. Or the protagonist, who, seeing how works part time as a pheromone lighthouse, one would think is at least mildly interesting.
No. The Harem Genre exists for one reason and one reason only, and that’s the girls who are in love with the main character. I said it before: at least four girls, usually more. And each one is slightly different, in that fantastically simplistic way that makes you think that when the author was fourteen he bought a sex-doll, taped a picture of his father to its face, and then cried himself to sleep.
There’s the Sweet Girl. She’s sweet, and kind, and she wants to fuck you. There’s the “Tsundere”. She acts like she hates you, but in reality she just wants to fuck you. There’s the Young One. She literally has nothing going on aside for the fact that she’s creepy young and wants to fuck you, but it’s all right because it’s not rape if it’s statutory. There’s Big Boob Girl. She has Big Boobs. Great Bazongas. Huge Hoohaahoohaas. Titanic Tatas. You get the drill.
The flaws are starting to pop out on their own, aren’t they?
I could wrap this early. I could just explain that the Harem Genre objectifies women to an insane degree for the excuse of creating a weird onanistic shooting range, where lonely fucks can fool themselves into thinking somebody would ever love them, and then call it a day and go on with my life.
But that would be too easy, and it wouldn’t be in-depth enough. And you know that? Fuck that. Fuck letting them go easy on this. Fuck defenders of this God-forsaken genre and fuck the possibility of them saying me pointing out that I have a modicum of self-awareness is not enough to criticize this insult to humanity.
I’m going full-out Nuremberg on this bitch. I sat down and listed all the issues I have with this genre, because I hate myself and I want to die. This is the closest I’ve ever been to brain death, and it’s not over yet, because now I’m going to write them all in here. I’m too far gone. There’s no turning back now.
Let’s forget the creepy objectification and the blatant sexism for now, then, and focus on something more objective: from a storytelling point of view, the Harem Genre is like going to New Jersey to taste French cuisine.
Why? Because the mere structure of it prevents it from ever working, and in facts deems it to suck more than a vacuum cleaner after a couple shots.
I like the Slice of Life genre. I think it’s fine. There are good stories that work around the Slice of Life scenario, but that’s not what the Harem is trying to do. A Slice of Life is based on many things, but one of them—that many people forget—is that things happen in SoL stories.
See, a good ongoing Slice of Life will have character development. People change over time, we learn from our mistakes, and so on. We grow up. We change. Little things happen, and they make us what we are.
A good Slice of Life explores this, no matter how gradual the evolution of the characters, the world, or the relationships that form the main core of the story. A good Slice of life is about this.
But Harem Comedies aren’t about this, and in fact, they would never allow an exploration on the growth of people. They’ll have the barest bones of a Slice of Life scenario; that is, we see the character’s usual lives. It presents an everyday scenario in every chapter, and save some necessary exceptions (the beach episode, the mountain episode, and so on) it always happens in the same geographical space.
Nothing else from the Slice of Life genre is there. Forget the nuance, the growth, the coziness, the ongoing evolution of the elements in the story. Harem Comedy wants to have its cake and eat it: it wants to be frozen in time, but also use the so-low-they-don’t-exist stakes of Slice of Life to avoid telling a greater story.
Because the Harem Comedy is not really a Slice of Life story. It labels itself as such as an excuse to do what it wants to do: show off the girls in the hopes you masturbate to them.
See, Harem Comedies hate women, but they don’t even hate women properly. At least they could be asked to hate actual women, as in, human beings who also happen to have boobs.
But that wouldn’t be nearly as lucrative, so fuck that. Let’s hate the idea of women. Let’s hate this weird fiction that doesn’t even approach reality in the slightest.
The women in there aren’t women, they are abstract concepts, stereotypes so exacerbated that my pet giraffe feels more human. See, a Harem is done in such a way that no matter your fetish, something caters to you. You like “Tsunderes”? Got you covered. Big boobs? Worry not. You like to fuck kids? Aren’t you in for a treat!
It’s not storytelling; it’s marketing. It’s done in a way that Harem Comedy fans can point at their favorite character and declare her their waifu. They’re designed with nothing but that in mind – get a creep to obsess over said character, get the money from that creep.
Any deviation from the norm, any change to the formula, would be seen as breaking the rules, and the waifu stops being the waifu. So we can’t allow this. God forbid character development, or inner motivations, or characters with a modicum of agency. That would imply the girls aren’t exactly what they seem to be at first sight, and that’s what made them popular. That is all that matters.
The safest route, then, is to produce the same scenario, the same chapter, the same product, a thousand times. Change the fucking window dressing, nobody will care, and then come here and feast on the sweet fuckypillow cash.
It’s about the readers being lazy, not about the writers, for once. Certain archetypes are popular within certain demographics, and it’s easier for some fat fucks to just pick the loli one in the Harem and pay somebody to draw porn of her instead of making the effort of reading the characters and choosing a favorite based on good writing, chemistry, or whatever the shit you want in a piece of media.
It’s an exercise in cynicism, and if you’re a storyteller you might as well cut your arms and legs, paint yourself orange, and live the rest of your life as a carrot. The characters are frozen in time, and they can’t evolve because that’s seen as bad, and the plot is strictly about everyday life.
So what the fuck can you write about? There’s no conflict, no adventure, no suspense, no plot, no character arc… All you can do is throw outside forces at them and see how they react.
“See how they react” – and those are the keywords. Harem Comedies are reactive. It’s about things happening to the characters, but never about the characters doing things. It’s always the circus coming to town, a storm fucking up the lights, the mountain lions fingering them back in revenge. It’s never about them joining the circus, or them fucking up a storm, or them starting a mountain lion civil war.
This makes for a natural staleness that no Harem Comedy can shake off, no matter how hard they try to. Because to shake it off, you need to create some kind of ongoing narrative, but that means creating conflict and not being able to show the cookie cutter reactions from the harem.
Do you think the Sweet Girl will be able to react sweetly to mountain lions shooting at her? Of course not! She’ll piss her pants and then go full Rambo on their asses. So that’s out of the question, because if the Sweet Girl can’t act sweet, then the Sweet Girl might as well not be there, and that means we’re losing the Sweet Girl demographic.
So fuck adventure, that’s out from the get-go. What about the Slice of Life natural narrative? Impossible. Any deviation from the standard is going to be perceived as heresy, so no change can be permanent: we can’t afford the waifu being anything but the quintessential waifu. If something happens, they have to react exactly how the readership expects them to react, forever and always. Nothing else is allowed.
In other words: call me Daucus Carota Sativa the First, King of the Underground and the Armless People, because there’s no leeway here. No Slice of Life, no Adventure. What the fuck do you do?
But wait, maybe it’s possible to pull it off. The Simpsons have been doing this exact same thing – everyday antics, static characters – for decades, and the first eight seasons are a masterpiece, after all.
No such luck. See, there’s a minor difference: the characters are fresh. The characters are nuanced. The characters are not a steaming pile of shit. You can indeed write a Slice of Life series in which the characters reset at the start of every new episode, but you need three-dimensional characters to do this.
A series that works this way needs nuanced personalities carrying the series. In one episode you see the protagonist’s playful side, but in the other you see that he can be dark if the situation calls for it. You need interesting characters, realistic characters, you need complexity.
Bart Simpson is a scoundrel. Bart Simpson also felt that mixture of fear and guilt only ten year olds can feel when his mother saw that he had stolen a videogame. Bart Simpson also threw his hockey stick to the side and hugged his sister when people were asking for blood. Fuck you, Harem writer. You’re not writing Bart Simpson. Don’t you fucking dare to use that excuse.
See the problem? See why I hate this? There are many more issues, there are a thousand complains I can write about this genre, but this one is, first and foremost, the worst one. The characters can’t progress, the characters aren’t allowed to be complex enough to ditch progress, and the world can’t be exciting enough to outshine the characters, because it’s the characters that must always, always have the spotlight.
It’s a perfect recipe for nothing good ever happening to the series. No matter how much care they take in making the fruit look fresh and ripe from outside, the core is rotten and full of worms, and the only way to solve that is throwing it away and picking another apple.
A Harem Comedy is never gonna get better. By conscious choice and design, there’s no personality, no story, no message, nothing. It’s just marketing. It’s creating the most standard gallery of bullshit characters and degrading them as much as possible, all for the sake of getting money. It’s art with an F.
And you know what’s the worst part of this?
A Harem Comedy is not an easy thing to do. It takes effort to pump situation after situation, always slightly different between them all, to at least pretend that there’s something going on. It’s arduous. It’s taking a shit with spikes. It’s limp swordfighting. It’s buying a present to your cousin twice removed whom you haven’t seen in over fifteen years and is named fucking “Ronald”.
This is what pisses me off the most. Read this sentence twice to make sure you interiorize it fully: you have to make an effort to write a Harem Comedy. You have to make an effort to write a Harem Comedy. It takes time. And conscious thought. And careful execution.
There are two options here: the author is either a really determined moron or a full-blown sociopath. I can’t tell which is worse anymore. It takes a special kind of cockmonger to sell out before you even start to write.
Hence me hating the author even more than the genre or the character, like I did with the previous examples. Fuck that. For the TMC I could blame society, or literary trends, or the stars, or the Muses. But this? This is well-plotted. This is an aforethought that becomes a reality through earnest activity.
Fuck you.
Just, just fuck you.
The reason why this story can’t have a plot is, as it’s already been established, because the characters need their time to shine and show off their perfectly predictable reaction to every single thing that happens. The Sweet Girl needs to be Sweet at everything, no matter what happens. If you have an actual plot going on, they will lose the spotlight, and you might lose money.
But what about the romance? A set of archetypical characters all reacting to each other, a stale background and being frozen in time – maybe you can use this to actually build a love story?
No. You might as well be a dance interpreted by a group of French ladies, because you can’t, cunt.
There are many reasons for this. The female characters being completely one-note is the main reason, of course, but there are more. Have you noticed how I’ve talked endlessly about the girls but I’ve barely mentioned the male protagonist, aside from implying he can’t tell a punching bag from a pregnant woman?
Guess why.
Fucking guess why.
I understand that pointing out what’s “the worst part” in a Harem Comedy is as useful as finding out which knuckle hurt the most when Mike the Drunken Biker punched your throat. But on the other hand, it’s good to know where to aim the crowbar when you’re sneaking up on him.
With that philosophy in mind: the Harem Protagonist is the worst thing in a Harem Comedy, outside of meta reasons (like why did this piece of shit get produced). It’s the extra sugar in the obese mother’s coffee.
The main problem with the Harem Protagonist is that he’s not a character—he’s a stand-in for the audience. The name of the game is wish-fulfillment, or giving false hopes to the reader.
But just like a really flexible masturbator, I’m getting a-head of myself.
Purely writing-wise, the main problem with the Harem Protagonist is that, by mere virtue of the nature of the story, he doesn’t have an active personality. He’s exclusively limited to react to stuff, and has absolutely no initiative on his own. He’ll scream when his pants are on fire, but he won’t punch the guy holding the torch.
In a romance, this is the worst thing you can do. It’s easy to point out a completely inactive female in a love story, but the male is a little trickier, because one can’t call chauvinism on this dick. Simply put: the Harem Protagonist exists so the girls fall in love with him, but there’s no reason why that would happen.
He’s never extremely attractive. This is established early on, and it’s a really important plot point, because the audience is supposed to relate with him, and attractive guys don’t read masturbatory fantasies, they live them.
So that’s out, but with no physical attractiveness, the only reason why a girl would fall in love with this guy is personality, or chemistry, or virtues. But the Harem Protagonist has no virtues. He’s defined by negative qualities: he’s not an asshole, he’s not a rapist, he’s not one of those rude muscular guys who will treat you horribly, ladies.
He’s just sorta there. Reacting to shit so you know he’s alive and breathing, and never making a choice.
As such, he makes it impossible for the girls to fall in love with him. I already pointed out that, in a romance, you don’t fall in love with characters—you fall in love with qualities. This motherfucker needs to bring something to the table, something only he can provide and that makes it attractive for the other characters to become infatuated.
But he doesn’t have any. He’s just there, doing nothing, and not being actively horrible. That matters jack shit in literature. You don’t have sex with a person just because they failed to kick your dog. You don’t marry your sweetheart because she doesn’t punch you as hard as your ex.
Yet that’s all the story will throw at you in regards to the Harem Protagonist. He’s nice. When asked to describe themselves, normal people say what they are, but losers say what they are not, because if you are able to do things you’re not a loser.
And that’s the gist: losers don’t get laid! That’s why they’re fucking losers! I don’t give a shit about your audience—if the Harem Protagonist is drowning in pussy, you better portray him as a goddamn chick magnet, because WHY WOULD HE DROWN IN PUSSY OTHERWISE. You’re trying to be immersive so hard that you break immersion, which has to be by far the most idiotic way to fuck up a story I’ve seen in a while.
It’s just not possible, no matter how you look at it. It makes no sense, and it feels artificial. The girls love him because fuck you, we wouldn’t have a series otherwise. Well, then don’t write a series! If I see my kid has no legs, I don’t ask him to run a Marathon, you fucking cunt!
So either write a loser who doesn’t get any girls at first, and then works hard to stop being a loser, and then gets the girls, or don’t write a loser in the first place! You can’t have your cake and eat it. If you’re purposely portraying the kind of asshole who never has women flocking around him like vultures around a cow giving birth, then it’s impossible to make him popular. You’re being contradictory. You’re literally signaling that your own plot is impossible within the plot itself.
“Oh, but that’s the whole point!” I hear some idiot complain, because there’s always an idiot complaining. “It’s wish-fulfillment! It’s a fantasy, that’s why he’s a loser but he still gets the girls! So losers can read it and dream that they get the girls too!”
To which I reply two things: first, you’re a wanker. You’ll always be a wanker. You have the face of a wanker, and the soul of a wanker, and I will rip your dick off and slap you with it until you admit it yourself, because you’re defending this shit.
This shit is unforgivable. There’s no way, absolutely NO WAY that someone would defend a standard Harem Comedy, the kind of Harem Comedy I’m talking about, without knowing they’re playing Devil’s Advocate. And if you’re arguing a point that you know is moot just to feel like the smartest person in the room, then please, gently shove a cacti up your ass and let the grownups talk.
There are some exceptions to everything I’ve been saying so far; series that define themselves as Harem Comedies but don’t necessarily follow my points. I know. I’ll talk about that later. For now, though, you know exactly what kind of shitty series I’m criticizing, so don’t try to get cheeky and say something like “Oh, but Space Soldier DingleCock doesn’t do this, the girls fuck each other instead of the protagonist!” to try to defend a genre that’s been rotten from day one.
You wanker.
But that’s just one thing, and I’d say I’d reply with two. So now I’m elaborating on your actual point: that this is all wish-fulfillment, and that magically makes it okay.
Look, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wish-fulfillment. Most pieces of media use wish-fulfillment, because reading is great for escapism, and you gotta get your readers somehow. And while it has some really negative connotations, I understand that wish-fulfillment can be really useful if it teaches good ideals. Every kid wants to be Captain America, that’s why he’s such a popular hero, and the writers use that power to teach good lessons, to defend ideals they feel are worth defending.
Case in point.
But fucking this?! What the shit are you teaching? The Harem Protagonist is featureless, a blank canvas made of anthrax, all for the sake of allowing the fucking reader to think that hey, maybe they’d love me too!
This doesn’t defend a moral worth defending. This teaches the worst lesson imaginable: that by merely existing, men deserve an entire army of chicks who thrive for his body fluids. That women are to love them no matter what. That they don’t have to earn any kind of affection. “Shit, the guy is as good a person as me, and yet I don’t have a harem on my own. Clearly, the women are at fault here!”
Because the fucking Harem Protagonist does nothing! Fucking being kind to a girl every day is not the basis of a healthy relationship, it’s the barest minimum requisite to not be labelled a goddamn psycho.
This genre is made so you believe that the Harem Protagonist is you. This is perfectly designed so you forget your shitty life and hope, just for a moment at least, that an extremely young girl loves you in a totally not creepy way, because look, everybody is okay with it!
It’s evil. It can only be described as evil. You, just by the grace of being you, have a harem. It’s yours, and they all love you, and they will always love you, and they will fight against each other for your affection, and they will give you presents, and they will remain pure for you.
It would be so easy to turn this into a good thing. Wish-fulfillment is a powerful tool, as I said. Every kid wants to be Harry Potter at eleven. But guess what?! Harry Potter has a fucking character arc!
He starts a tosser, and an idiot, and a little piece of shit. Sure, everybody loves him and he’s already famous and the Fucking Chosen One, because that’s wish-fulfillment for you—but he’s still greener than rotten guacamole at the start of the series. And then he fucking grows up. He makes mistakes, and fucks up, and learns from those mistakes, and works hard, and ends up a better human being.
Objective quality matters fuck-all. I couldn’t give less of a shit if you think Harry Potter is a good example or not—but at least it tries to teach a good lesson. It tries to show character growth as a positive thing, as a desirable thing. It explainsthat if you want to make your life easier, or to follow your dreams, you have to better yourself first.
A character arc. That’s all the Harem Protagonist needs. A character arc, a chance to become a better person, a chance to fuck up and feel despair and work and make an example. Then it’s okay. Then you’re encouraging people to change, to become healthier people, to work on their flaws so they’re attractive to others and have an actual fucking life.
BUT GUESS WHAT.
HAREM COMEDIES FORCE CHARACTERS TO BE FROZEN IN TIME.
THE CHARACTERS CAN’T DEVIATE FROM THE NORM.
Of course we can’t have the Protagonist go through a character arc! Then, if a new reader who just happens to be a loser reads Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty instead of Chapter One for some fucking reason, then he might not relate with the main character! We’re losing potential audience!
He has to stay the same, always. He can’t change. He’s like the waifus, only his role is even more restricted. He can’t outshine the audience, least he (GOD FORBID) steal the waifu. For, you see, if the waifu falls in love with him because of some quality our average reader doesn’t share, then the reader won’t think that the girl would love him instead.
So fuck that! Let him be static! Let him be one-note, and never mind the fact that he doesn’t have a note to begin with! Are we teaching a horrible lesson in the meantime? Are we implying that men naturally deserve women, and that changing is a bad thing, because the girls love this asshole precisely because he’s unchanged? Who cares! We’re making money!
And don’t be fooled: I’m not insulting the audience. They are. The shits who write this godawful mess are the ones who think Harem Comedy readers deserve nothing. That’s why they write the way they write. That’s why the industry is so saturated with this jack-off-ish poppycock.
“Our audience are lifeless losers who don’t know quality if it slaps it in the face, so why bother?” That’s their philosophy. They work hard to create a product that reflects this line of thinking. They learn how to write series that propagate this idea and makes it mainstream.
The girls are archetypes. The Harem Protagonist is the worst kind of blank canvas. The story can’t evolve. The plot isn’t allowed to happen. The Slice of Life genre is insulted. The worst kind of lesson is implied.
To be continued.
And this is merely a fucking introduction to the genre.
Due to its enormous size , this instance of the Romance Blogs will be continued in Part Two. This part alone is already five thousand words long, and I don’t want to alienate my audience. So if you see that some points aren’t fully explored, or touched at all, don’t worry – they will come in time. This is merely an introduction, and a general explanation on why the mere existence of this genre is enough to make angels weep.
This isn’t over. This isn’t over at all.
Feel free to discuss this blog or call me an idiot in the meantime, though. It might affect the incoming blogs, if it makes me think.
To the three guys who will make it to the end of this blog: I'll be away in Hungary till the 28th, and chances are I won't be able to finish (or post) Part Two till I'm back. So I'm afraid you'll have to wait a little.
The wait will still be shorter than the one you suffered between this and the previous entry, so hey!
(Also, sorry for the lack of jokes in this one, I got too angry. Next one will be funnier.)
...wow.
Holy crap!
lanocheamericana.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/love-hina-negima-tomo.jpg
wholeheartedly agree with you. but i cant stop.
Two words contradicting much of what you said ...
Tenchi Muyo.
But then in many ways that show isn't standard. Tenchi has virtues (notably courage, honor and compassion) and everyone in his harem subverts her type.
Yeah, this is one of those genres I wish just plain didn't exist so it's wouldn't drag anime down (this and moe). There are a couple exceptions that kind of work but the fact they pull that off just makes the remaining 99.9% look worse in comparison. It's not even Sturgeon's Law, that would at least give us a solid 10%.
So what's wrong with raspberries? (100% agreement for the rest)
4093887
Yeah I sorta replied to this kind of comment in the blog already. In a caustic way, of course, but don't take it personally.
Ctrl+F "dinglecock".
More will come in part two, but as a preview: if the only defense to the genre is "this work that subverts it is not total shit", then the genre is not worth defending. It doesn't share the common flaws because it's designed as an oposition to the standard. That shit actually HELPS my whole points.
Now I'm wondering how a harem comedy would look like if the genders were flipped.
You'd have a somewhat Bridget Jones-like* protagonist, who'd have to deal with The Hunk, the Rich Successful Guy, the Intellectual Lit Professor, the Brooding Artist...
And wow, guy-specific sexualized stereotypes are much more flattering than the reverse, aren't they?
*Warning: I've never actually read or watched Bridget Jones. What I'm picturing is a somewhat overweight female NEET who perpetually starts and breaks diets.
4093948
Holy carp, this is awesome! I only wish I had read it before I bought the 837 volume set of Shugishugi No Codswallop.
Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but how is me being a non-asshole bad?
Oh man, that legit frustration.
But yeah harem comedies are pretty awful.
I hate that my inner daredevil wants to write one now just because it looks challenging to make slightly decent.
Sir, that is a dire insult to the culinary community of New Jersey.
I'm not even joking; we have awesome food.
In any case, definitely looking forward to part 2 of this. It's like watching someone use a chainsaw to make an ice sculpture, only with frozen time.
4093816 Enjoy Hungary, try not to suck too much cock and honestly, you being this pissed is such a novel experience that jokes would only damage the authenticity of it.
Wait a goddamn minute....
YOU HAVE A PET GIRAFFE?!
4093816
Can I nickname you Argon?
4093816 have fun in hungry nerd
eat some... *googles hungarian food* goulash for me while you're there
4094226
It's not bad, but it's not GOOD either. It's what's expected of any normal human being. The lack of a flaw is not a virtue.
Think about it this way: I wouldn't list "I have five fingers in each hand" as a virtue.
Ken Akamatsu, creator of one of the most famous harem manga, Love Hina, wanted to do something different for his next work. His publishers said, NO! MORE HAREM! So he started Negima, which looked like another harem manga at first. Slowly, he turned it into a fantasy adventure fighting comedy with some romance. By the time his publishers realized what was going on, it was too late, it was too popular to cancel.
4094253
I cannot promise miracles but I will watch over him.
4093816 *Waits*
To me, this reads like a laundry list of which points one must subvert when attempting to redefine the genre.
Which is even more hilarious because I know I'll never do that.
Have fun in Hungary.
4094276 So, you'll watch him suck cock?
Wow... holy crap that was brutal!
I would like to say that this is why I have always found shameless clopfics to be annoying and or the other genre of one-shot sex stories. There's really nothing there. No character arc. Just the slight notification from the author that said characters (canon or not) have fallen for each other for certain reasons without going too in-depth with it. I've read a couple of these one-shot stories and only ever, and I do mean, only a slight few have gotten a favorite from me. (I'm a very stubborn reader and it may sound like I'm picky... but I have to be, I guess)?
And here's a question. Which of these Harem stories have you read that you feel is the worst one? (If you have or haven't... although judging by the blog itself it sounds like you've read quite a few).
Yet another oddly informative yet not the less vital and important warning about bad writing.
I've read the others you've written, such as the Tsundere one, and I'd like to say you've actually helped me improve my own writing with your rants/advice. They may be loud, brash, and harsh, just like you, but that doesn't make them any less true, or you any less of an awesome writer.
Thanks for the help, and here's hoping part 2 is just a great (of course it will be, you're you!)
*bows in reverence before your glory*
Did you just... threaten a genre of literature? Bravo, sir.
If you haven't read it, Not the Hero by alarajrogers makes some similar points.
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The wonderful thing about stereotypical female-wish-fulfillment guys is that their traits aren't mutually exclusive, unlike with male-wish-fulfillment girls, which means that instead of harems, you have gestalt characters who hit all the perfect-guy points at the same time. This is how you end up with the super-brooding TMC Fortune-500 CEO Nobel-Prize-winning doctor who is also part of a military special operations teams and is hottest guy ever to the point where women just throw themselves at him whenever he walks into a room. Oh, and he's great in bed too.
No joke, this is actually a character in a romance novel that I've read (Spider Game by Christine Feehan, for those who are curious). Whoever thinks fanfiction is worse than actual fiction hasn't walked into the Romance section of a bookstore before.
Fuck yes, I hate harem anime so much. But cricketty biscuits, that's a long post!
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Specifically, while Tenchi superficially resembles the typical Harem Comedy protagonist, he's more of a low-keyed classical hero -- he's very nice, very polite (except when being driven nuts by someone, usually Washu or Ryoko) and extremely brave, compassionate and honorable, rather a combination of the traditional virtues of the knight and the samurai. He's also willing to fight -- and risk his life against the odds -- for these women. It's actually very easy to see why the women who know him well tend to like him a lot (most seriously, Ayeka and Ryoko, who love him and wind up marrying him -- the Jurai royals are polygynous.
Tenchi's female friends are also far from the cliche "types." Ayeka seems sweet and traditional, but she's also a scheming sadomasochist with all the intelligence and ruthlessness one would expect from a Princess of an interstellar empire. Ryoko is an artificial life form with some serious emotional problems. Sasami isn't just a cute little girl, but also the host to a semi-divine being, Tsunami. Washu is both a brilliant scientist and the manifesttion of another semi-divine being. And Mihoshi is a ditz, but a highly lucky and competent one. And every one of these characters changes over the course of the series.
Perhaps because it's seriously character centered, there's also not much actual sex in the series. Someone actually having sex with Tenchi would deeply change the dynamic, because it would be important to Tenchi. Which is more like real life works.
I like Monster Musume, Cerea is hot and Suu is adorable
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Actually a lot of Harem comedies have little to no actually sex, specifically to keep the characters in stuck moving in holding patterns, so that's not a Tenchi specific thing.
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Tenchi is not so much in a "holding pattern" as an armed mutual standoff. Ayeka and Ryoko are insane by Terran standards, and very odd even by the standards of the Jurai Empire.
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It really makes no difference to my point about the trait being common, though.
This.
Majestic.
Also, can't help but wonder where in Hungary are you going.
Enjoy the z's in everything, especially names.
I agree with most of these points and am not a regular viewer of the "harem" genre however in reference to your point on " I'm not insulting the audience I'm insulting the creator I present this simple statement. People vote with their wallets if people are not retarded enough to to buy it then it wont be successful. while it may be immoral to create this monstrosity they are right to think the audience is retarded because if they where not then the genera would be dead.
But what if your 'romance' story is a rape story? Is it still bad if it feels rapey?
This is the post that makes me want to do a dramatic reading of your blogpost series. People keep telling me I have a storytellers voice, and I can think of no better purpose to put it to than this.
4095416 But Konosuba is exactly what he isn't talking about. There the protagonist starts as an asshole, then grows up to be better. You see the girls constantly going against type. And most important, it is sexual while never being romantic. Kazuma isn't surrounded by chicks who all fall in love with him for no good reason. They are too busy being useless, and getting turned on by weird shit that has nothing to do with the protagonist.
The thing is, the cast being like a Harem isn't what defines a Harem comedy. If you are just looking at the Male-to-Female ratio, then you could point stuff like Netoge or Chuunibyou, which are about the protagonist meeting a girl, and that making him start getting into situations involving other girls. The defining characteristic isn't the gender of the characters, but how the opposites react to each other.
I remember liking this genre when I was a teen (also, how did you know about my sex doll?), swearing black and blue that I liked them for their stories. *cough*
So I recently re-watched Love Hina when extremely bored… I got to about episode 3, invented a time travelling device and kicked my past self in the crotch.
Point is, I am infertile now. That is the point. Always was.
I think the saddest thing about stuff like this is that it demonstrates there's a large market that just doesn't care.
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I'm not sure that "is hot and has money and social status" is actually any better than "is hot". And I'm pretty sure a lot of harem series add girls who have money and/or social status too.
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I guess, but at least there's the fig leaf of "person who has worked and put effort into getting that position" while in women those things "come naturally" (if you're pretty it's because you were born that way, wealthy girls in harems are mostly princesses or heiresses, and generally do not have a career to speak of).
I think the difference is that what is valued in women harems are almost exclusively inborn traits, while in male harems what is valued is achievements.
Of course though, women can and are as shallow as men when acting on their sexual preferences, but the first impact is what I was thinking about.
...on the other hand, though, Edward Cullen of Twilight has no notable qualities besides being constantly described as an Adonis, so it's entirely possible I'm completely wrong.
...I'd still like to see a harem comedy aimed at women, just to catalogue the differences.
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There are female-oriented harem comedies, usually dubbed "inverse harems" or "reverse harems". They tend to have its own share of stereotypes too, and will be explored on Part Three of this blog series (probably).
I've read a bunch -- I can only recommend one, though, the rest tend to be really bad [1]. Tho not as bad as the normal harem comedies, as they tend to be more feeling-focused, so there's A MODICUM of rationale behind them.
And the stereotypes are always the same:
Rich Guy, Smart Guy, Glasses Guy (not necessarily the same as Smart Guy), Gentle Guy (tends to be a senpai too for good measure), Older Guy, Bad-and-Dangerous Guy, Rebel-Who's-Actually-Nice Guy, Talented Guy (think a musician, or a painter) and Energetic Guy. Sometimes there's a Younger Guy but he never gets the girl. And they're all hot and brooding and desperately in love with the protagonist and with abs you can use to do your laundry.
Usually there are more than one rich guy, tho, and they're always executives who wear suits. If the guy is rich because he's a heir, he doesn't count as Rich Guy, he tends to be Rebel Guy (and the fact that he's rich is a surprise).
Honestly, every single harem comedy out there, no matter the focus, is the exact fucking same. But as I said, more to come later. YOU'LL HAVE TO BE PATIENT.
THIS IS JUST FORESHADOWING.
I'M A GREAT WRITER.
But yeah, I'm with Titanium Dragon -- while the specifics change, and they personally don't offend me that much 'cause I'm biased, reverse harem stereotypes are in the same level of awful as women stereotypes. I'll say they're less harmful to the guys who have them, tho -- harem girls are entirely defined by how they act towards the male protagonist, while harem guys are defined by how they're great for the female character to show them around. But yeah, same substance, two flavors.
[1] And it's a parody of the genre, so take from that what you want. Ouran High School Host Club, it's called. The Rich Dude fucking start the show saying "I'm Rich Dude, and clearly the protagonist, so you guys can just be gay in the background for the fans while I start the romance, thank you very much".
And, I mean, they obey.
So yeah. If there's one to check, that's a good start.
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I think you accidentally a word. But yeah, this is what I was trying and failing to say:
Except with appearance/superficial impression/demeanor substituted for attitude. Except I just realized demeanor and attitude can be used interchangeably in this conversation so I fail at words
Also, I submit a modest proposal for the title of the next entry in this series:
Harem comedy: it feels rapey, because it IS rapey
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Whoops. Blame writing it on the phone. Also nah, I get you -- to be fair, I also think that female characters got the short straw when it comes to stereotypes (they just look worse, and knowing that this is mainly a Japanese thing, and that Japanese media is sexist as fuck, they probably do so for a reason), but I admit I'm really biased.
Simply put: I have a personal ideology that muddles up my objectivity when it comes to this, so I'm always wary of showing my opinion, in case I'm deadly wrong. Better to shut up and learn, in my case, 'cause when I talk I talk a lot. I agree with you, as I said, though, so there's that.
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Oh man, it gets worse than that. In my experience, the only Harem Comedies that work are the ones that defy or subvert the standard Harem Comedy genre. So, as I said before: "this work that does its best to do the TOTAL OPPOSITE of the genre's standard doesn't suck!"
That's like, a hell of a defense towards my idea that Harem Comedies fucking suck. They're only good if they don't work like Harem Comedies. The spawn of Satan, I swear to God.
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Man, they're like when a girl takes the word "blow-job" too literally. Hilarious, also if I remember correctly probably fatal if you insert air down there.
Hilarious tho. Hilarious.
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I mean, yeah, if you subvert this you might end up with an actually good story, so you can see this as a challenge to write a good Harem Comedy -- but then again, why would you handicap yourself with such a premise on the first place?
Forcing all the females -- or the vast majority of them -- to focus on the same dude forces them all to like the exact same things on a man, or forces the guy to be damn perfect. You can write a conventionally attractive person who just happens to appeal to broad audiences, I guess, but overall it feels extremely one-note for me to define an entire cast by their relationship with ONE person.
Now, if you're AWARE of that, and you play with the idea -- exploring the relationship of a cast that all share a feeling that's mutually exclusive (if we assume the guy is monogamous, which tends to be the case for the sake of drama and plot and bullshit writing) that might be interesting?
But, yeah. You're still showing how fucked up the Harem Comedy is. One can write a good one if you know what to subvert -- wait for part, I don't know, Part Two or Part Three of the blog for me to expand on this -- but the standard of the genre fucking sucks, and that's mostly what I'm arguing here.
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I mean, no offense? But the more I hear about Tenchi Muyo, the worse it sounds.
It has an apparently useless protagonist (fat chance "compassionate and brave and nice" actually matter when it comes to romance, they're still virtues defined by the lack of a flaw, rather than shit like him just happening to know how to play guitar or whatever), and you listed the tsundere, the creepy yandere whatever, the creepy young kid with an excuse so it's okay to fuck her, and the Rei Anayami clone, which just happens to be a girl with no emotions, because some people are into that.
To each his own, and I haven't read the series so I can't judge, but in all fairness, your arguments are proving my point rather than dismissing it. The lack of actual sex because it would "change the dynamics of the cast" is another red flag -- that's what usually you LOOK FOR in a story. Changing dynamics is good, it keeps the story fresh. If the entire premise relies on the main character randomly growing a chastity belt even though it goes against his otherwise cohesive personality, then you're not doing it for the plot -- you're doing it for the sake of writing the same stuff over and over.
Not gonna look at Tenchi Muyo any time soon, is what I mean. It just doesn't sound for me. If it has any redeeming qualities, I don't see them.
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Eeeh. I've read enough Harem Comedies, both subversions and the ones that play it straight, and I'm just tired at this point. Reading another series that tries to be cheeky and bring a fresh piece of bread to the table is not gonna cut it anymore. Just don't use the harem plotline and call it a day -- much easier, much cleaner, much better, and your story doesn't get dragged down by the lingering smell of wish-fulfillment.
That I just happen to strongly dislike anime is probably also helping this reaction, though. Still, thanks for the suggestions; if my little brother ask me to endure an anime series with him again this summer, I'll pop one of those and give it a chance, if anything. I can't really promise that much, though, so don't look forward to me changing my mind any time soon.
(Also, getting angry in the blog is part of the fun, isn't it?)
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Look.
I don't make promises I know I'm going to break.
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Thanks for the praise! (and I hope I didn't forget anybody). It's great to have this kind of comment. Makes my day.
Gotta say, I kind of feel guilty over taking so much to write this blog -- I had so many things to say I was afraid I'd get clogged up on the whole thing and end up producing nothing. I planned it all, but I only sat down to write when I got two random unrelated comments in the span of three hours that explained how much they were looking forward to the next romance blog, wink wink nudge nudge.
I really gotta start making this, like, an organized thing. Schedules and all. At least a couple people seem to enjoy the rants, and it's great to have something to point at whenever somebody asks me "Just why do you hate [X] so much, man?"
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Yeah, I know, I've read Negima. Starts bad, gets passable, then gets actually pretty neat, then plunges into Horrible Fucking Shit territory. The last chunk of Negima is unbearable.
I get that the author was depressed because of the movie and all, but that matters jack-shit. Judging by the final product, I wouldn't recommend Negima. It's just not worth the time, when over half the series is absolute shit, and the good part is not even THAT great. Plus, unnecessary fanservice, and fuck that. I'm aware there's a sequel dealing with the chick vampire (who is, all together now, "creepy young but has a plot excuse so it's okay to fuck her!") and how the world evolves now that magic is a thing? But I'm not touching it with a ten-foot pole.
And related to this:
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Love Hina is an odd duck to me, personally, because I grew up with that series and I have some nostalgia for it? But even as a kid, I remember disliking most of it, and only really digging the later part, when the main couple are an actual couple, the protagonist is at the end of his character arc (he gets a life! Learns kung-fu! Spends a whole year away excavating some ruins! Becomes an ACTUAL CHARACTER!) and the harem elements slowly peter out.
'Cept for that fucking incest plotline, which in all honesty, murders the series. So eh. I remember it fondly for my childhood, but I wouldn't say it's good.
Aaand that's all. Man, I'm surprisingly bitter when it comes to this genre, huh? I wonder why. I've definitely read an ungodly amount of Harem Comedies, though, so I know what I'm talking about -- you can at least say that.
4099290 Tenchi Muyo is pretty good, at least some series. There are at least 3, and also a spinoff where the only reason the main character doesn't fit the mold right is he's outright pathetic rather than merely bland. However one thing about Tenchi is while there are a lot of girls not all of them throw themselves at him. The jailbiat character does nearly instantly love him, but not in a creepy way, if I remeber right calling him brother and asking him for the sort of attiontion a big brother should give a little sister. This annoys some of the other girls, but they don't do anything becasue it isn't that sort of love. The sexy scientist at the very least teases him, but since her created daughter is more one of the ones acutally chasing him tends to fill a more motherly love sort of thing even if she doesn't always make it clear to Tenchi. The ditz may sorta like him, but while she might be there for Wifu reasons she isn't acutlaly after him. mainly you have the tough busty girl and the princess fighting over him, often with energy blasts and starships, and Tenchi trying to keep his house/the earth in one peace. Also by the end of every series he's fighting some actual bad guy with a sort of lightsaber. Tenchi is in other words a classic sort of chosen one great hero and everyone gets some change and character growth, Tenchi most of all. It's still not exactly that amazing and where it sticks to the formula outlined it does suffer.
Interesingly Heaven's Lost Property does something odd, it takes the failings and comes up for reasons for them which leads to character depth. Three of the four are Ageloids, because someone couldn't decide between angels and androids and decided why not both? To them basic decency is in fact amazingly great. Yes it gets depth in some odd sort of depressing ways. There is one nomal girl, and she likes the main character for his defining character trait, though she always denies it, violently. Though considering that trait is he's a huge perv it's understandable. Also while there there some episodes where they're just reacting, mostly it's the main guy doing very pervy things, and not with the ageloids since they aren't real. Though since he's lucked into being the master of one, she helps, no matter what it is. In other words most of the comedy is pure perversion even if not much is really seen covered by adorable censorship. it's odd in that the serious moments can get very serious, and very dark, including the battles being amazing, and also rather brutal. Then things go more or less back to normal, but this is actualy one thing the guy is after. Also it's all in a very small town so there just aren't that many other options, and even so the angeloids aren't used to the idea they even can look so end up stuck with the nice pervert. It certainly can subvert the genre one way, but stick to it rigidly for something else.
Somewhat late to the discussion, because I happened to catch this blog title when I looked at your profile on seeing Hear the Baby Laughing and going "I know I've read his stuff before, dangit, what was it?" (I read a lot of pony fanfiction.)
And before I read a lot of pony fanfiction, I read a lot of Naruto fanfiction, a modest proportion of which (counting even only the stuff that passes basic quality standards) delved into harems a bit. I've also seen Tenchi, but that's about as far as goes with my expierence with the genera.
So, speaking as a general outsider (since my own prefernces lie towards the "rather pour cold lumpy custard into my sockets than partake in romance/sex, thanks"), I never really "got" harem comedies. I could sort of see a point if it was aiming toward polyamorousness and orgies or something, from a purely titallation level, if that was someone's thing... But that so many don't seem to go anywhere like that with it baffles me a bit.
Holy shit you are the most angry Tumblrina in denial. Please, keep waxing poetic about how trashy stories are contributing to the GamerGating of women. Give us another speech about how everyone who likes mediocre animu is a misogynistic women-raping loser, and you're not saying that just to feel like you're more than some emotional fuck-up having the mother of all meltdowns. Don't forget to show us the true light of lesbian relationships, the ultimate enemy of the penis. You are destroying the patriarchy with your pure emotion, which brings an end to the toxic mascul-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Before you go "y-you like harem comedies, h-how dare you call out my insecurities," all I know about harem comedies is that the monster girl one has good porn and the protagonists look the same. Black hair and black clothes. But I might have to order a few complete sets just to trigger you. Remember to keep Tumblr on Tumblr, SJW* in training!
I don't like the term now that those nerds are trying to claim the term by making pins with all kinds of wacky and randumb RPG classes put at the end of "social justice," but I have a hunch this will only cause another temper tantrum.
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Hahah.
Yikes.
Yikes. The stuttering absolutely makes this comment, really.
I'm aware that making fun of a comment instead of arguing it is sort of a bad move? But c'mon, people. There's obvious trolls, and then there's this. I'm not gonna bother defending my points in the blog in here, because the guy just wants to get a reaction.
Welp...
I'm a loser.
I still don't like harem comedies though. If the story is billed as a romance, and no one ever actually hooks up, then you're doing it very, very wrong.