HiE Protagonists Go To Another World and Gain a Harem Stories · 11:03pm Apr 15th, 2018
Introduction:
A common type of fanfiction on this site consists of a (usually male) Human protagonist who goes to Equestria and accumulates a Harem of (usually female) Pony lovers or spouses. This harem may consist of some or all of the Mane Six, with possibly others instead of or in addition to those characters.
I. Protagonists Go To Another World
The "protagonists go to other world" is usually done as either social satire or power fantasy, sometimes a bit of both (Edgar Rice Burroughs would usually do both). Even if done primarily as social satire the protagonist needs to have somemething special about him if he is to meet important people and survive dangerous situations.
For instance, Lemuel Gulliver is not a This Loser Is You Everyman, he is more of an idealized Scholar-Gentry Everyman. He is highly-intelligent, a learned physician, a bold adventurer, a reasonably skilled fighter, and fairly strong, healthy and agile. He is not so capable as to be unbelievable: but he is sufficiently capable for it to believable that he survives his many and strange adventures.
Overpowering, however, is usually a mistake for the action part of a story, because it destroys any doubt about whether the hero will win. Barring such doubt, any suspense in the action is removed: we don't fear that the hero will lose or even be hurt in any meaningful way, and so what is left is merely a description of him beating, hacking or shooting his way through absurd numbers of foes.
Imagine how Gulliver's Travels would read if Lemuel Gulliver had the capabilities of Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four (which would greatly overpower him in dealing with everyone, even the Brobdignagians, given Reed Richards' combination of superpowers and gadgeteering skills). One would need to ramp-up the difficulties he faced, possibly giving him supervillian-level foes, or the story would be entirely about Gulliver encountering variously-uncooperative races and kicking the crap out of them until they admitted his superiority -- a very different tale!
II. Harems
The harem fantasy is a fantasy of romantic and sexual success. As I have seen most of them done in anime/manga, it is more a fantasy of being desired or loved than it is a fantasy of having sex with numerous females; for instance, Tenchi only winds up with two of the women he meets (Ayeka and Ryoko), but all of them love him and consider him a close and trusted friend; pretty much any of them would have become his wife or lover had he chosen them.
Several common assumptions which feed wish-fulfillment in the typical harem fantasy on this site are:
(1) Stallion Dearth: Somewhat justified by what we see on the show, but I think that what's actually going on is that the stallions are more likely to work in the field and the mares in the towns, plus the stallions work more dangerous jobs and adopt more dangerous hobbies, and thus die younger on average, so while there's a stallion dearth it's at most a 1:2 male:female sex ratio, and it bites more on the middle-aged than on the youngest. A stallion dearth would mean that Equestrian mares would be more culturally ready to share the love of a male than would, say, American women. It makes a stable harem more likely.
(2) Herding: Also somewhat justified by what we see on the show, plus real equine psychology, this posits that Ponies tend to form strong and generally stable social groups of several individuals, often of the same sex, who are in our terms "buddies" or nakama. Combined with (1) this creates the possibility of Mr. Protagonist marrying a whole herd of mares.
I actually go with herding in my stories, because we see several examples of it on the show (whose title, after all, is Friendship Is Magic, and explicitly posits that a special magical bond can form between the members of a group of friends). Bachelor herds are quite common in ungulate species, and the Mane Six are themselves a prime example of such a social unit.
There are potential compatibility problems with marrying a whole herd, though, the most obvious being that unless they have very similar personalities and goals, not all of them would want to marry any one particular male character. I thus assume that such marriages (called "Morgan-Marriages" in my world) rarely include more than two or three mares at a time.
Thus further suggests that sometimes bachelor herds must break up or be strained by marriages of some of the members. This problem and potential social tragedy of course very much exists in our own society as well. An individual can be torn between loyalty to a spouse or lover, and loyalty to her friends.
(3) Free Love: As I've stated elsewhere, I do not believe that Equestrian romantic and sexual culture is one of Free Love in the sense of sexual promiscuity (though it is very much one of free love in the sense of sexual and romantic relationships, including marriage, ideally being based on love-matches rather than financial or social motivations). There is a lot of vanilla canon evidence that romantic relationships are normally deemed signfiicant and normally exclusive rather than casual and promiscuous, at least where admirable Ponies are concerned.
The attraction of a Free Love Equestria to the harem fantasy, and to the HiE fantasy in general, is that -- if the writer understands how promiscuity works -- a person who is above average in terms of desirablity in terms of obvious traits can indeed reasonably have a lot of lovers (the flip side being that someone who is below average is less likely to have even one, because romantic relationships tend to be shallower and more superficial than in more restrained cultures). This can lead to the harem through the attachment of additional lovers to the protagonist's string of conquests.
What many writers do not realize is that the more casual the attachment, often the more superficial the initial bond and hence the requirement for a build-up of attachment even after the start of sexual intimacy. This is not always supported in-story: the writer often assumes that the lover is utterly-enamored of and faithful to the protagonist from the first sexual encounter ever after.
What's sort of going on here is that the writer is combining the virtues (from the protagonist's POV) of a Free Love culture (like that of the 1960's Hippies) with a Strong Love culture (like that of the mid 19th century Victorians): the prospective mate quickly and casually yields to him, but once she has done so considers their love strong and special to her. This is a subclass of Having One's Cake and Eating It Too. This is very common not only in MLP fanfictions, but indeed in Free Love Future science fiction or fantasy stories in general.
This doesn't mean, of course, that strong love is impossible in a Free Love culture. It does mean that -- realistically -- one cannot assume strong love simply because someone (or somepony) is willing to have sex with a character, and that this is less likely than in a culture which strongly associates sex with romantic love.
(4) Strong Heats: This is the idea that the Ponies have very strong heat cycles, during which they find it extremely difficult or even impossible to resist having sex. This is not precisely the thing as Free Love, but it often goes with it because of the social consequences of such a strong biological drive.
What this would mean in practice is either that mares in heat would segregate themselves and temporarily retire from society to avoid having sex or at least having sex with stallions who were not normally their lovers or spouses (and keep in mind that such sex would be more likely to result in pregnancy than sex off the heat cycle); or they would have sex freely with any and all comers during the cycle (with the resultant implications in terms of early loss of virginity, impossibility of exculsive romantic relationships, and very large numbers of foals of uncertain siring).
The reason writers like this is because it provides an easy excuse to have a mare have sex with the protagonist. The character and plot problem with this is that there may be little or no romantic connection before the sex, and there may be no obvious reason to assume that the sex will result in one. In a culture where such random sexual events were common, mares might regard random-sex-in-heat as merely an accident, more or less unfortunate depending upon the specific stallion with whom they had sex; stallions, even more so, would be inclined to consider such encounters trivial.
The larger verisimilitude problem with this is that this is not we see in vanilla canon; we do not even see the secondary effects of such a biology on culture. There are no purdah-quarters for mares in heat; there do not seem to be swarms of illegitimate foals (though an argument could be made that there are some).
In my Equestria there is a weak heat cycle, which has various social effects, but would rarely lead to mares behaving promiscuously (because they grow up with this cycle, and most-mares behaviorally-compensate for it by being more sexually-cautious when on Cycle. That is to say, they are less likely to take new lovers, because they are quite aware that their bodies are impelling them toward behavior they may well regret once the Cycles have passed: they are also aware that any sex on Cycle is more likely to result in pregnancy, hence are unlikely to have intercourse on Cycle unless they are trying for foals.
III. Writing a Good Story of This Sort: The way to avoid the problems mentioned herein is to be aware of them and compensate for them.
Protagonists need not be Over-Powered to be interesting, or even situationally-powerful. Simply coming from an advanced alien culture would make one important to the Equestrians, whether as potential ally or foe. Even though Equestria is itself an advanced civilization (don't be fooled by the psuedo-medieval/Renaissance decor of some of the towns: they have steam power, railroads and skyscrapers, and through magic and magitech can even do some things we can't yet accomplish), their technological heights and ours are not identical, and any reasonably well-educated Human from early 21st-century America would have all sorts of interesting things to teach them.
Likewise, a Human need not be an elite veteran US Ranger or Marine Force Recon type in order to have physical or combat skills that would give him a decent chance in an adventure. Simply knowing how to shoot or fence or brawl would be of some value; and lots and lots of people play sports or go camping or do other strenous physical activities.
It is possible that Humans can harmonize with the magic of Equestria and gain magical Talents like those of the Ponies. (It is also possible that they can't, or that the magic of Equestria will painfully destroy them as is the case in some of Starscribe's stories, but the writer gets to choose the assumptions here). These need not be ludicrously-awesome superpowers: indeed, by the logic of the Show, they would be amplifications of some talent the protagonist was already manifesting (think of what happens to the Humane Six and Sunset Shimmer when they get the Geodes; in fact the only overpowered character there was Daisy Gloriosa, who couldn't control that much power and was driven mad by it).
As for romance, this -- even harem romance -- is certainly possible without forcing it by improbable assumptions. First of all, Equestrians are much more open to interspecies love than are Humans, since they live in a world where there are other undeniably sapient species. This is even implicitly confirmed in vanilla canon: the non-equine natures of Spike and Discord do not seem to be obstacles to their courtships of Rarity and Fluttershy, respectively. There are obvious other obstacles, but the species issue appears relatively unimportant.
Secondly, to the extent that the Ponies are somewhat polygynous, this means that the mares in question would be less opposed to such relationships than would be the case for women from the modern West. They would indeed be predisposed to accept such marriages as unexceptional, possibly even normal.
This is even more true if the Human in Equestria is seen as socially-prominent and high-status, which may very well be the case if he is a Hero of Equestria fighting alongside the Mane Six or the Princesses or similar ponies. This would also be true if he were a famous inventor or rich and successful businessman. All these factors would make him more desirable, and hence more likely to attract mares, and for mares to be more willing to share him in a multiple marriage.
Some writers assume that the Human in Equestria is nicer than most Ponies to his love interests. This seems rather unlikely, as the Ponies as a species tend to be remarkably nice, kind and understanding of the difficulties and errors of others. Humans, if anything, would tend to be decisive and ruthless compared to most Ponies, and might attract Ponies who are looking for leadership or even, frankly, dominance in a love interest.
What's also possible, even likely, is a love based on a shared interest uncommon in Equestria. For instance, a character who was an Air Force officer (and would hence be knowledgable and interested in high-speed aeronautics) might find a Kindred Spirit in a pilot or designer of high-performance airships or even airplanes. (Someone like Spark Wheel from PhoenixDragon's stories, though he in particular is taken). Or an archaeologist introducing new techniques to the Equestrian practice might fall for an Equestrian archaeologist (no, it does not have to be Daring Do). And so on.
Conclusion:
Just because so many Human in Equestria harem fics are badly written wish-fulfillment fantasies doesn't mean they can't be done better. They can even be done as better wish-fulfillment fantasies. "Wish-fulfillment" is not necessarily a bad thing.
Just make sure that the stories make character-sense and are more or less consistent with vanilla canon, save in that they are deliberately alterate universes. That's all.
Will be copying this blog.
Thanks for sharing!
Well, I've seen criticisms of harem stories before, but rarely ones that try and point out why most of them fail and how they can be improved. Your comments about the 'choosiness' of Equestrian mares are well done. I doubt any of the Mane Six would fall for the human equivalent of Zephyr Breeze!
Then again there's mares like Sweetcream Scoops, who -- at least in the comics -- is either very horny or an outright prostitute. (In the comics she was once shown at a town fair running a kissing booth and with a pony-high pile of bits beside her; the comic's writer commented that 'she's totally a hooker but we can't say that.") She might be up for anything out of a simple case of 'Well, this'll be new.'
There are very few ideas that outright cannot be done well. Some are just much harder to pull off than others. It helps when the author's first priority is telling a good story and not self-gratification.
4841104 Now I'm imagining the EqG version of Zephyr Breeze going through the Mirror Portal, perhaps (figuratively or literally) pushed through by Human!Fluttershy who secretly wants him to shape up.
Or, for that matter, maybe he's literally kicked through by Human!Rainbow Dash.
Another observation: the Mane Six have such wildly and genuinely divergent interests, skills and personality that I personally can't imagine a sane human feeling romantic love for all of them simultaneously. Liking? Sure. Respect? Heck, yeah. Romantic love, I'm not seeing.
4841251
I think that's very true regarding the Mane Six. I could at most see someone able to appeal to two or three of them, but not all six. And as Ardashir points out, they are by strong implication in vanilla canon quite choosy, and could afford to be given their obviously high social status: it would take someone special to appeal to even one of them that much.
4841104
Indeed -- and too often the Human in Equestria is basically either explicitly a lot like Zephyr Breeze ("I like sitting around the house and watching cartoons, when I'm not just hanging around clubs, or working part-time at the Kwik-E-Mart to get money for beer") or a very unconvincing action hero (usually a military veteran written by someone with no concept of how the military or warfare work). The Mane Six would be unimpressed by the former and (given that Twilight Sparkle is from a military family and Rainbow Dash actually belongs to a military unit) not likely to be taken in by the latter.
Oh yes. There are a lot of mares who don't have very high standards. Actually, there's a lot of room in betwen Twilight Sparkle and Sweetcream Scoops (whose very name sounds like a dirty joke).
I have a question for you about Equestrian sexuality. I've got this little fun project where I'm shipping a human with a pony (yawn, right?) But the spin I'm putting on the whole thing is that there's a dimensional rift which links their beds together. Neither can fully cross over to the other's side, so this creates a fair bit of interesting tension/drama.
I'm also shooting for as much "realism" on the part of the human as possible. Having him respond legitimately how a typical "real life" person would respond.
The challenge is in the story's categorization because the pony is Sweetie Belle some years into the future. So we've done some discussion about how pony sexuality might get started (normally) and at what age, etc. Liberties are taken in terms of literal year-ages of sexual maturity. I'm also making the rather unusual decision to have mental maturity take place prior to sexual maturity. As in, Sweetie will not yet be sexually mature until after she's old enough to be on her own. This allows for a "sexual awakening" story to not be simultaneously a pedophilia/foalcon story.
Like with real horses, things like heat will apply to the story, but this is used primarily to fluctuate the intensity and style of sexual activity rather than merely switching it on and off. The story opens up more than a year before her "coming of age". There is no sexual activity until then, so this is definitely not foalcon or a "quick to clop" story. That is important to point out.
Things get interesting when we begin exploring the human's level of acceptance in having a friendship/relationship/romance with what is clearly a person but whose body is equine. The human is also a horse owner, so he will be struggling with regarding her as a person rather than an animal in the beginning.
Sweetie's acceptance level is smoother as I figure Equestrian ponies are comfortable with the fact that there are multiple sapient species in the world. This human is not quite so much a shock to her as she is to him. At first, she wonders if he's a draconequus, in fact.
Where this applies to your blog here is in the idea of how the sexual relationship might develop. My current model is that ponies aren't extremely promiscuous like most clop stories try to depict them. That they have intensely sexual relationships which build up after long periods of non-sexual friendship. In the case of my couple, I'm depicting them as building a friendship for over a year (nearly two perhaps) before sexytimes even begin.
Lastly, I considered whether or not to have there be "multiple partners" for our human, and it just felt like it would take away from the "specialness" of the relationship to not be monogamous. I think for the idea of "harems" that seems more like it exists for the purpose of being sexy/naughty whereas a meaningful romantic relationship I have a feeling would be monogamous. Even in Equestria.
Xenophilia was the story which introduced us all to the idea of "herds" I think. And this is how it is with horses in real life, so I can't fault it in that sense. But in this, I think it takes a very specific skill for an author to successfully portray a HiE romance using a "harem" model.
4841234
Given what I've seen of the EG!Zephyr -- wow but he gave off some creepy vibes when he hit on EG!Dash -- I can see her doing precisely that.
4841255
It'd take a lot of really, really good worldbuilding to make me buy into the "herding" concept. Yeah, they're equine but we rarely see much in the way of primal equine instincts show up in canon (as opposed to simple body language, which does.)
But I think the main reason I can't wrap my head around harem-type HiE is that a human likely to fall in love with Rainbow Dash is not likely to fall for Twilight is not likely to fall for Applejack, and the likelihood of (romantic) love decreases with each personality you add to the mix. Sex, sure; they're all adorable if you've gone ahead and decided to be a xenophile. But this being FiM, self-insert authors are likely to at least pay lip service to the idea of an emotional connection, and I just can't see realistic requited seven-way romance.
(Leaving aside the problems of *expressing* that love in any way but the physical. Twilight would interpret "let's hang out and read books and not talk unless we have something to say" *far* differently from the way Pinkie Pie or Rainbow Dash would. Also, how many hours does our harem protagonist HAVE per day?)
4841260 Reading this, I'm struck by how important it is to balance impressive versus relatable protagonists. Zephyr Breeze and the HiE equivalents of him are in some ways an extremely relatable protagonist to many of the fandom (the real reason I think some people hate his character so much), but of course he's not impressive. Your average Gary Stu is quite impressive, but not at all relatable.
It seems like the right balance is to make a protagonist that most of your readers could be like if they worked hard and made good life choices, and perhaps got lucky (in the case of someone with a superpower). Not "this guy is like me," but "this guy is like what I could be."
Of course I already calculated and parodied these factors in a story that is sadly still relevant today
But, self-congratulating aside, you raise very good points. I particularly agree with the need for awareness of these issues being able to turn them into strengths.
Warning: The Following Contains Dangerously Overlong Rambling
4841441
Such a relationship would by definition be based on compromise, as are all relationships really but this one more so. It is the extra level of compromise that brings up problems, at least for me, in introducing so many partners to a relationship.
I could perhaps see someone hold a relationship with about three members of the mane 6 simultaneously maximum, for example, as someone who was interested in Rainbow might be interested in Applejack for similar reasons and could conceivably share a different interest with one of the other four, but the number of people I know of that are interested in sport, manual labour and crochet are considerably lacking.
Relationships are complicated enough with only two participants and I cannot imagine the level of planing it would take just to spend an equal amount of time with each member of the aforementioned example group. I certainly understand why you'd think such a relationship would be untenable and I'm of a mind to agree, but I'd also like to float the idea that not all seven need to be mutually interested in one-another.
In a society where sharing romantic partners in a herd is common perhaps it is not uncommon for members to join a herd due to their relationship with a specific member or group within the herd. To build on the previous example, the protagonist is interested in Rainbow and Applejack who are both interested in each other but Rainbow is also interested with Twilight due to their shared interest of Daring Do whilst AJ just sees Twilight as a very close friend.
This actually leaves room for either expansion or exploration of the concept, for example our HiE is either uncomfortable or curious about someone he has a romantic interest in, and who returns those interests, having a romantic relationship with someone that he personally has no interest in. This gives the author the opportunity to explore the mechanics of such relationships as well as the culture that gave rise to them.
I don't think I've seen many 'fics actually take this approach outright and I'd be interested to see more author's attempt it.
PS: Sorry for the overly formal tone.
PPS: your comment about how differently the mane 6 would take the idea of sitting quietly and reading just made me think of an adorable image of the mane 6 all hanging out in the old library, Twilight sitting in the front with a book, the rest lounging on the couch and listening in or in Pinkie's case peeking over her shoulder (I'm pretty sure that's actually an old picture/piece of fan-art).The scene made me think, especially in regards to the logistics of a 'herd' relationship; wouldn't such a group, that's always struggling to find time together, cherish such moments?
I'm constantly told that the ability to just enjoy another person's company is a sign of a strong relationship and whilst you're right that Pinkie and Rainbow would probably dislike the idea of spending all their time together silently reading, spending time with all their loved ones doing something as a group would probably be worth sitting still for a little while.
Why yes, I did just justify a relationship based almost entirely on a cute mental picture, but you cannot deny that it would be adorable.
You hit the nail on the head, Jordan. Once again, I should say.
I read a wonderful Anon-in-Equestria Harem fic years ago. I say wonderful because it was really good. Anon was complex character and more than a collection of rude jokes (he was actually a rather nice fellow), the Mane Six fell in love with him but in a believable way, they had troubles and challenges and fun and happiness...
4841207
I think that when this specific idea is done, it's ususally done for cheap self-gratification. Often, it is paired with the fantasy of being a great hero of Equestria, with the implication that either the protagonist is just so utterly amazingly cool that all the members of the Mane Six (even the ones not inherently all that impressed by heroism, such as Pinkie and Fluttershy) just naturally fall in love with him; or worse, the implication that -- being so amazingly heroic -- he just naturally deserves the love of the Mane Six as a reward.
I don't like the notion of handing out sapient beings as sexual kewpie dolls to deserving individuals. Still less do I like it when the sapient beings are characters I personally find admirable.
There's an even worse version of this story, though. That's the one where the protagonist isn't even a particularly amazing or admirable character, just someone who behaves with reasonable courage and decency (sometimes, not even that), and who winds up having the Mane Six fall in love with him because he likes and "appreciates" them (as presumably no one ever has before).
Usually, to support this bizarre concept, Author will take every vanilla canon example of each Mane Six character experiencing any hardship, difficulty or even mild unpleasantness in her background and inflate it into dreadful and horrible abuse, or ladle on some non-canon backstory to make it even worse.
Thus, Twilight Sparkle was horribly picked on in school (there is no evidence of this, merely that she fears being laughed at in school), Applejack was callously exploited as a child for cheap labor (no, she merely worked hard, like any farm child), ditto for Pinkie Pie plus abuse by religious fanatics (evidence is that her family sincerely loved her, simply worked her hard like any farm child, plus they are a rather dour family who live farther from town than do the Apples). Fluttershy was somewhat abused in canon, but not so much that she is an emotionally-crippled adult, and she has rather a lot of love and friendship now (I actually give her a darker than vanilla canon backstory in the Shadow Wars Storyverse, to explain the degree to which she does seem damaged). Vanilla canon Rainbow Dash and Rarity were not badly treated in their backstory -- again, I made Rarity's backstory darker to explain why she seems the darkest and most brittle of all the Mane Six both in vanilla canon and in the comic books (especially the Nightmare Rarity arc). As for Rainbow Dash, she's had to put up with overenthusiastic parents, and unwanted attentions from Zephyr Breeze (who is not exactly the most horribly threatening stallion imaginable), and that's pretty much it.
It's obvious though that at the time of the Show, the Mane Six are not poor picked-upon little mares; they are honored and respected national heroines. They are not fawned-over quite to the extent that their equally-heroic analogues might be in our world (but then, the Ponies also aren't as nasty to them as we sometimes are to our celebrities.
Also rather obviously, they all have plenty of romantic opportunities from a variety of Ponies, if they chose to take advantage of them. The fact that they for the most part don't implies that they are all -- yes, even the pink one who smells like cupcake icing and the white marshmallow unicorn -- rather romantically choosy -- and there is no reason to think that they would all be smitten by some This Loser Is You hairless ape-thing, just because he's marginally nice to them.
4841234
Does that mean that Rainbow Dash would have to deal with Zephyr Breeze in stereo?
4841333
Zephyr Breeze doesn't mean to be a creep. He's just a slacker who imagines himself entitled to Dashie. Fortunately, Rainbow Dash can more than deal with any trivial threat he represents to her. However, Dashie is bascially a nice person and doesn't really like having to constantly fend him off, or deal him the level of humiliation or pain that would be needed to get him to leave her alone permanently.
4843405 Sounds like something Human!Rainbow would forget!
And then when someone (Twilight? Rarity?) reminds her, she decides to follow him to help her pony counterpart?
Alternatively, if it's Human!Fluttershy, perhaps she's decided the pony world would be better able to help him and do him some good.
4843402
Most of the recent anime I've seen that use the non-sexual harem concept (Sword Art Online, A Certain Magical Index) seem to end up combining the two, where the protagonist attracts women like flies to honey because he's just that awesome, but also by having him seemingly be the first decent guy these women have ever met.
It's interesting that you talk about a dearth of stallions, because the other thing I've noticed in these shows is the way that they not only have a pronounced gender imbalance amongst the cast of characters, but the other male characters are all rendered singularly unimpressive at best or evil psychotic rapists at worst to stack the deck in favour of the protagonist.
Which brings me on to the damsel-in-distress, or the fantasy of rescuing several of the same that seems baked into the examples of the genre that I'm familiar with. I can't think of a single member of Kirito's harem that he doesn't rescue either in the virtual or the real worlds (or both) at some point, and while Toma doesn't technically rescue Mikoto he does save her clone Sisters from Accelerator which counts to much the same thing.
Do you think that the established capability of the Mane Six represents a particular problem for writing in this genre in this fandom?