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oh i thought you were talking about everyone loves large chests which, from what i recall, is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy worse about that sort of stuff than blue core
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Jan 28, 2022 04:59
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Lone Goat posted:Also written by the same author who did that porno dungeon serial the what
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Jan 28, 2022 05:14
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tithin posted:the what honestly it wasnt that pornographic compared with the competition, lol. it had a few sex scenes early on and then it had some graphic stuff behind the patreon wall, but all in all there are way more pertinent complaints to be made of blue core than calling it "porno" like why the gently caress is the protagonist the most boring character in the goddamn text??? yes i know what will hold the readers' attention, 40 more pages of playing minecraft
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Jan 28, 2022 05:25
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A big flaming stink posted:honestly it wasnt that pornographic compared with the competition, lol. those stories are absurdly popular
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Jan 28, 2022 05:30
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Larry Parrish posted:those stories are absurdly popular well they suck!! 
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Jan 28, 2022 05:31
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Blue Core's pivot was kinda funny. The author set out to write consentacles porn with plot and then discovered he didn't like writing porn and switched to writing an empire building sim.
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Jan 28, 2022 05:40
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Effort post about harems, because I like thinking about the weird bits of online fiction writing and reading. I mostly wrote this to help myself think about it, and to think about why it's both creepy and why it works enough that it keeps showing up. (Note: I'm taking a mulligan on magic collar slaves in harems, because I already spent too much time typing this and everything about that conversation sucks. If nothing else, the actual story mechanic is incredibly boring.) For harem I will be referencing a male/female MC with multiple female love interests because that's the majority of web fiction I see. I can't comment on problems with LBGT+ directed fiction because I'm not the audience. I assume anyway that's what everyone is coming to the table to decry as gross is talking about when they talk about harem fiction. I believe there are good reasons to write harem. Well, maybe not if your looking to win literary awards. But there's always going to be people who don't get into enough gun fights who want to read a Tom Clancy novel. Like war stories, Harem stories do well, they appeal to people, and authors can work with them enough to keep putting out new ones. I want to make a distinction between the first three ways to go about a harem that came to my mind: The many girls trying to start an exclusive romantic relationship with an MC, Many girls in a romantic relationship with an MC, and a polycule where 3 or more people have relations with each other. I won't focus on the last one at all because it's vanishingly rare to have a balanced relationship 3+ person relationship, and as a writer it's hard enough to write a realistic romance let alone trying to make 3 believable ones happen all at once. I'm not counting the hand wave of saying the two girls who like a guy also sleep with each other. I think the expanse did this well. I think the Youtube channel Mother's Basement has a few really good breakdown of anime style harems where the MC has multiple girls he *might* end up with. You can play 'will they or won't they' with a lot of different characters and as long as each girl is likable you can get more mileage out of your setting because the readers pick teams and end up wanting their girl to win. The key points are a) The characters competing balances them out, meaning you can get more content out of the conflict between a bunch of people who all want to date the same person vs the trials of finding romance in the real world split between multiple main characters. b) Having lots of romance targets you can make them all party members or mech pilots or wizard school classmates, and that means that you spend less time having characters that might not be important to the story talking VS girls who feel important because one of them might end up with the main character. c) You can write lots of different TYPES of romance if you want to. d) The story appeals to someone who isn't experienced with romance getting to finally vicariously go hog wild and get the attention and love they crave, in the same way a cartoon kid orders a billion scoop sunday or makes a six hundred layer sandwich that no one human could ever eat without getting seriously ill. e) The biggest conceit the concept needs is the idea that a bunch of women would actively compete for a boring guy and not have at least half them say 'this isn't worth it.' Most harem protagonists are boring to make them easy for the reader to blend into. It's why isekai shows up over and over even when it adds nothing obvious to the plot or main character... the reader should in some way think this could be them. Type 2, is the 1 person X girls type. This is what most web fiction tends to present, and probably what everyone is really worried about. I have to inherently discard anything that's flat out vile. We are talking about consenting adults across the board. It usually is a one man many woman setup, but sometimes there's a girl with lots of girls. These harems don't tend to be subtle, as the focus is on the guy getting lots of love, usually a little jealousy, and the relationships are all aimed at sex and possibly an implied marriage but sex first. I'm sure there's examples of stories that hedge the line between dating a bunch of girls and bedding a bunch of them (like the NC17 harem animes) but I want to think about the bedding side. The barely safe NC17 harem anime thing isn't as interesting because it's just a commercial product that's as raunchy as it can be while still being marketable on satellite TV or whatever. The first thing that any mention of sex brings is that stories with it are 'gross'. You rarely get follow up, because living on the internet we've found gross things and people, and they tend to cluster around sex. Let's think about it. Roll up your sleeves. Lets get gross. For harem stories, part of why they are considered gross is that these stories simplify seduction and chemistry, and tend to ignore the motivations and aspirations of women. Once they fall in love with the main character any real conflict between two woman in the harem would detract from wish fulfillment, assuming it's a major issue and the author doesn't say a magic threesome is the solution. I think there are authors who could probably form a good enough framework to have a harem who all love one guy and still feel believable as people, but the only one I know of is dead (RIP Robert Jordan) and MC-kun in that story was not having a good time despite the attention. But as it stands: the women in these stories are very rarely the kind of character that is meant to simulate a person with hopes, dreams, and fears. People can reject you, or fall out of love, and would reject getting 1/2rd or less of someones attention without a really good reason why. Society has worked hard to get it into people's heads women are people, so that is part of the context as to why people find harem stories gross. So harem members often fade into the background after they hit the bed, unless an author works to give a set number of love interests features that let them become novel again. I'll talk about it more, but this is because the romance in these stories is part of rising action (pun unintended but welcome) and it's more exciting to watch someone go from stranger (or enemy) into a lover. Harem members are often problems to be solved, because a problem is exciting and drives conflict and suspense. In the same manner, that means that you get flat personalities sometimes because it's far easier for the reader (and writer) to remember who's who when there's a shorthand that tells you everything about the character. You will see authors crib from anime and hentai archtypes (tsundere, yandare, childhood friend) because of how well established harem romance tropes are in that line of media. It's lazy writing, but not always bad writing: The tsundere does an incredible amount of work in giving the reader a fantasy that someone who hates them secretly likes them. If there's a lot of girls, they get woo'd over 5 to 10 chapters, maybe with a gap, sex happens, then they fade away until they pop in to say something in a scene. To some people, the lack of care for harem targets (or just saying 'then I took care of the rest of the girls') is dehumanizing, and an afront to women. I agree that it's one of the most difficult parts of writing anything that has a lot of characters: what do you do with everyone who's there but doesn't have anything to say? If a story was about getting girls then had them fade into the background and was meant to be taken 100 percent seriously I'd also bounce off it, and I think the writer would have failed to meet the needs of the genre. So my own take on it is just that it's not always gross, but a measure that the author knows they can get away with dropping old characters to push new ones to attention. I think the appearance of these cliches and simplified characters in western web fiction is also response to modern dating and gender roles, and how media has changed how we approach romance and desire. Men still want sex, they want to hear about it, and they want to think about the possibility of it happening in stories. That goes against where the commercial world has moved to, because guy sex is different from girl sex is different from LGBTQ+ sex, and if your trying to sell to everyone it's better to just double down on pretending it doesn't exist while casting attractive people and let your fans do the work. When fantasy and sci-fi was written by middle age white dudes, there was a lot of sex. Modern fantasy and sci-fi have both put a lot of time and effort into hearing new voices and getting them on the book shelf, and that's good as we get to hear stories that were drowned out by the old style where a hero finds a sword and gets a wizard dad to tell him how to be a king. I think there's less sex in genre fiction these days, and when it comes up it feels less like what the author thinks is exciting and more what the reader will accept as okay. These scenes often feel like they are only are there to show that in the future or in fantasy land, nobody cares who's having sex with who. The sex is happening but often isn't given much screen time. You just have an important guy waking up next to his husband to go talk about spaceships with another main character. Or something like when Ian Mc.Donald is writing about how a character uses future technology to define themselves sexually. The focus is on how something we can't do yet might empower or define a new other, representing our current others. I'll get back on track, but the key here is that opening books that take place back in the 70s there was a lot more sci-fi loving. The ol' middle-of-the-novel sex scene was less complicated and more tactile. These books were written for boys and young men and older guys who were sold on the Frazzetta art on the front. Moving back from sex, this added emphasis on empathy and complex psychology also means that you have fiction where all these main characters are incredibly complicated in lives and goals and problems, and an audience that often doesn't like when the solution is just being the best at violence. These books might have incredible payoffs but at the cost of being, all too often, somewhat draining to read. I'm thinking of my first reading "Ancillary Justice" by Ann Leckie as an amazing book that also required me to work hard the first time I went through it because it demanded my attention as a complicated story that made it worth it. In a harem story, the goal is not to challenge the reader with complications. It's not meant for a wide scope of people. These stories present problems and complications with the harem members, then destroy them in over the top manners, simplifying and removing them with the goal being to metaphorically... disrobe the reader. What does that mean? *in tim rogers voice* Oh don't worry BUDDY, I'll GET there. Let me back up. A web novel author is not trying to sell to everyone. They don't have to worry about appealing to a wide variety of readers picking their work up. In fact, it's probably as likely they sat down and started writing to make money as they did because they wanted a particular type of story that combined Tenchi-Muyo with a traditional dungeons and dragons world as well as a few hentai they've seen come hell or high water. There is an element of wish fulfillment from the writer in these types of stories. Sex also gets views, and authors on RR forums talk shop about how they might market their erotica differently then their mainstream stories. Frequent sex can keep viewers, and a harem story is a good way to make those encounters frequent. If I set out to write a very explicit story, not tagging it harem means I'd have to figuring out a different structural gimmick to explain having women come and go, because young men looking for thrills also want novelty (and I don't like the bond method of death for breakfast). Just as much as some readers see 'sexual content' and drop out, for others it's the greenlight, because somewhere in the book, stuff is going to go down. We're still dancing around the point, and I think the responses in this thread actually support why these harem stories still exist: the assumption is that guys who want to have sex are gross, and ones who want to have a lot of it are extra gross. Why? Because these guys want to do it with women, and women do not want to have sex nearly as much, and this creates a lot of problems in real life. When we hear about sex, it's almost always in a bad light, because it was something a real man did to a real woman and it's come to our attention because she really didn't want to. Even when discussing sex in media, the focus is on the unusual because we seek novelty. It's very hard to have a male character having sex with lots of women in a story without it seeming backwards, partially because the tide has changed with the other side of these real life experiences saying 'hey this is bullshit.' Stories sent to the general public that don't reflect this reality, especially ones drafted in the last ten years, are going to get endlessly ripped apart for it. There's no attention on web stories stories, no pressure for them not to, say, explore going from office worker to guy who brutally kills people for no reason in a xanxia setting. Same deal with hapless students becoming the guy who has too many lovers: It's an outlet for people to write and read about things that in one way or another are out of reach both in their lives and media. The extreme lack of commercial cost of sitting down at a computer and typing means that aside from time spent, these works do not require investors to make and thus are not beholden as much to what the market thinks. So the web format is where these stories end up. So you have a site where these stories thrive, and adding a harem is a powerful tool for adding a level of absurdity that cuts away a lot of objections elsewhere. It is not a suspension of disbelief as it is calling total war on reality. Now, I'm sure there's readers who read these stories from a place of complete social ignorance and think 'this is what real life should be like!' but I don't read many stories where I feel like the author is that ignorant. I see authors tend to have sex scenes as their own skippable chapters for readers who like the romancing of lots of characters but are not reading for titilation, or perhaps don't find reading endless purple prose about how good sex is. They usually preface the sex scenes with both sides consenting and often times the MC thinking about their own hangups and expectations and very often they think something like: 'This woman shouldn't want what's going on here!' because the authors are predicting that some of their readers are people who would rather jump off a bridge then admit they are reading sex scenes in web fiction, and stating these things removes the expectation that it's below them, because the author by extention the MC thought of everything the reader would object to, and state it then dismiss it. All this factors into disrobing the reader. A good author writing erotica or a raunchy story knows they have readers who respect the hell out of women, possibly have girlfriends, wives, or female bosses, and basically live in a world where there is no good time to be aroused. Especially not to anyone but your confirmed partner who you've asked permission from before expressing it in any way. We live in that mantle all the time, or don't and are sex pests. So, there's a thrill and perverse enjoyment out of watching characters do things we cannot do, but might if it was totally okay with everyone in the universe. If you have read any of these stories, you will know this: Everyone is really, really okay with it. The main character will ask them: is this really okay? They will tell him: It's really, really, really okay. So the harem tag becomes a strength from there on out, as the writer has put their foot on the ground, the reader accepts their in, and both can move to weird, new things. Readers enjoy novelty, especially with an activity that's as fun as sex. Setting down from moment one that the story breaks one of the most basic expectations western society has about sex (that you're only supposed to do it with one person) means readers are already on the mine cart for weird shadow clone sex with their ninja buddies, or making love to a magical talking bush, or whatever makes the author type (explicit) next to it. There's also the narrative building aspect. Having a new girl show up is the loaded gun of the harem story. Especially if the author is careful about how they present each conquest. And lets be clear: the path from meeting a new harem member to bedding them is the progression, and often a major component of the story. It drives chapters just as much as a sword fight on a cliff side might push other books forward. All this means that it's a really great way to establish that you have an escapist work that's centered around sex. It serves an audience who has a large appetite for new works. It has specific societal expectations that it provides an escape from, often by simplifying interpersonal connections. Those expectations exist in commercial alternatives too, which is why you have so many of these stories dotting user-made fiction. If read or written poorly, it can be creepy because it de-humanizes female characters. If done correctly, the stories momentum and goals discard those expectations. So that's how I see it. Does harem include in it's target audience very lonely people? Of course. But the audience is also people who go out into the world and eat their salad all day so they can read a story that's a big bowl of ice cream. Just like magic dispels expectations that people can't fly, the Harem is an easing of those burdens between the reader and the weird sex the author wants to write about and they secretly want to read about. Unless you stick to your guns and think it's still gross, and that's cool too, because I mean, how many stories have the main character ever changing the sheets? I'll tell you how many. 0.
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Jan 28, 2022 06:05
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Plorkyeran posted:Blue Core's pivot was kinda funny. The author set out to write consentacles porn with plot and then discovered he didn't like writing porn and switched to writing an empire building sim. He also sort of just gave 2 of the 3 harem members a full time jobs + kids as a solution to them not having a lot of room to develop, with the third becoming basically a gestalt so the MC can explore with her when he needs a break from empire building.
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Jan 28, 2022 06:13
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That's an excellent effortpost, thank you.
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Jan 28, 2022 06:18
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Plorkyeran posted:Blue Core's pivot was kinda funny. The author set out to write consentacles porn with plot and then discovered he didn't like writing porn and switched to writing an empire building sim. the thing that truly gets me about blue core is a ton of the side characters are genuinely interesting and enjoyable to have as a POV. but then we have the blue who is just so loving dull. Undermind had a similar problem. youve shown you can write better than this author, why do you keep doing it? give me my one-eye green chapters!!!! Whaleporn posted:loads of words honestly ive seen type 3 pop up with increasing frequency lately! both the daily grind and Katalepsis feature it (though katalepsis could be argued as type 2, its a very weird setup to begin with) A big flaming stink fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Jan 28, 2022 |
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Jan 28, 2022 06:27
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i think it's gross in the same way that using those weird assymetricsl Japanese brackets is: the author is lazily adapting something that doesn't really exist in American fiction (well, harem stories exist, but not the kind we're talking about until extremely recently) because its a genre signifier. there has to be generic anime character tropes because it wouldn't be a harem story without them. and it has to be a harem story and be set in a bizzarely generic d&d style world because there's 30 years of increasingly similar light novels the author and presumably the fans of these stories have read fan translations of and this style must be preserved for reasons. i don't really have a problem with sex in fiction otherwise, though. i don't like relationships with multiple partners because i would never do that myself, and it feels off to read about. unfortunately while there's a billion romance novels of the type i like, there's not many that are also in a suitably interesting genre setting, so i end up sifting through a billion harem novels trying to find something that reminds me of paladin's strength but with outright wizards or something. but I've accepted that I'm a freak: my escapist fantasy is just a regular rear end life, but better and maybe there's magic or space ships. Lol.
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Jan 28, 2022 06:29
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I see your brackets and raise you the same 3 pages describing the same guild system every story uses.
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Jan 28, 2022 07:11
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What are the good harem stories because the one mentioned a while back reads like feminism personally murdered the author's dog or something.
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Jan 28, 2022 07:38
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Tagichatn posted:What are the good harem stories because the one mentioned a while back reads like feminism personally murdered the author's dog or something. I've never read a good one.
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Jan 28, 2022 07:39
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as i noted above, katalepsis is kind of a harem type 2 story, though its kind of loving crazy how it ends up there
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Jan 28, 2022 07:39
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Tagichatn posted:What are the good harem stories because the one mentioned a while back reads like feminism personally murdered the author's dog or something. Beware of Chicken, once you realize that Big D is the harem protagonist.
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Jan 28, 2022 07:48
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Larry Parrish posted:i think it's gross in the same way that using those weird assymetricsl Japanese brackets is: the author is lazily adapting something that doesn't really exist in American fiction (well, harem stories exist, but not the kind we're talking about until extremely recently) because its a genre signifier. This doesn't excuse the trope, but I've seen a few serials lean into it and state that it's an in-world linguistic distinction. Punch and [Punch] are two semantically different words, pronounced distinctly, that refer to a mundane action and a [Skill], respectively. It's a neat worldbuilding trick that establishes that [The System] is a fully integrated part of the world. Most serials are not quite so clever.
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Jan 28, 2022 08:23
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blastron posted:This doesn't excuse the trope, but I've seen a few serials lean into it and state that it's an in-world linguistic distinction. Punch and [Punch] are two semantically different words, pronounced distinctly, that refer to a mundane action and a [Skill], respectively. It's a neat worldbuilding trick that establishes that [The System] is a fully integrated part of the world. Yeah, that's fine. It's a trope from light novels, and while it's sort of annoying, I get what they mean. It's a better way of showing emphasis than random title casing, when used right. I meant using「 and 」These crazy things that even take up double space, they even gently caress up the line spacing on my phone. It's weirdly common once you notice it, and it's not like it's easy to just pop in a Unicode control code while you're writing lol. I'm realizing I sound a little pedantic here but it infuriates me.
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Jan 28, 2022 08:29
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japan-specific punctuation and brackets are aesthetically interesting to me but i could see them being irritating if overused. i've never read a story that used them in any consistent or regular way
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Jan 28, 2022 08:46
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I haven't seen them used either, but maybe now I will Thanks Larry
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Jan 28, 2022 09:15
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Lone Goat posted:Also written by the same author who did that porno dungeon serial Calling Blue Core a porno dungeon is kinda misrepresentative. Sure it kinda starts that way, with a key point of consent being incredibly important which was the only reason I kept reading seriously at the start instead of passing by, but after a few scenes the sex stuff is completely shunted off into separate chapters and becomes skippable. Then about a third of the way through they start becoming rarer (when they weren't that common to begin with) until they're mostly referenced in passing and only explicit when fulfilling obligations from earlier in the story. If you're interested in Paranoid Mage, don't let what Blue Core was keep you from it. It's going to be very different on that front. No explicit scenes at all, for example. That said, I'm probably going to pass on Paranoid Mage. I wanted to give it a try after enjoying parts of Blue Core, but it's just not grabbing me. I find the MC frustrating and the side characters aren't enough to keep me around either, (Patreon spoilers) because they don't stick around long enough to get a chance to.
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Jan 28, 2022 10:44
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I kinda enjoyed Blue Core  I got a 190 chapters into it until the weird focus on marriage irritated me enough to stop reading. Sometimes I just wanna read something with a bit of sex in it, and the female characters in Blue Core weren't too badly developed, they all had their own lives and goals at least.
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Jan 28, 2022 11:13
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Whaleporn posted:[...], or making love to a magical talking bush, or whatever makes the author type (explicit) next to it.[...] If you should meet God on the road...
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Jan 28, 2022 12:36
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How can you talk about harem LitRPG without mentioning how common reverse Harem stories are in (paranormal) romance ? That's been going on a lot longer, just think of Anita Blake. I think there's a demand for romance novels for men that is simply being filled with those stories, because there isn't anything else.
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Jan 28, 2022 13:58
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I want to see a TingRPG (Tingler LitRPG) (yes, I know there's an rpg)
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Jan 28, 2022 14:18
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Whaleporn posted:Many words. That was a fascinating effortpost, thank you. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the nature of harem stories too, though from an LGBT+ perspective. A big flaming stink posted:as i noted above, katalepsis is kind of a harem type 2 story, though its kind of loving crazy how it ends up there I'm not sure I would call Katalepsis a harem story at all, though of course as the author I am categorically incapable of judging my own work (not joking), and this isn't me trying to reject the label. I've never added a harem tag to it or anything, because I think the harem-reading audience would not enjoy what the story has to offer. The relationships in the story draw on real-life polyamorous community stuff rather than anime tropes; I made a commitment early on to never show sex 'on screen', even in bonus chapters or whatever; Raine and Heather get together and have sex pretty early on in the story, but it doesn't really solve any of their long term problems. On some level the story is an attempt at writing a relatively realistic lesbian polycule, at least in the early stages of formation, complete the with emotional problems of incredible complexity that arise from that. There is a lot of focus on Heather, sure, but the other characters have their own stuff going on relative to each other, too. There's also some stuff in the story specifically calling out artificial narrative attitudes of trying to mash characters together like action figures. Also, as of the time of writing this, Heather has only ever actually had sex with Raine. Heather and Zheng seem to have settled into a decidedly non-sexual relationship, while I don't even know what is going on with Sevens. I'm not sure I can call it a harem story where we're over a million words in and the protagonist has only bedded one person. Maybe? Take this all with a grain of salt though! The author is dead, I have no authority over any of this once it's on the page.
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Jan 28, 2022 14:21
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I'ma defend Blue Core a bit here. Calling it "The dungeon porno" is pretty wrong. There are only a handful of sex scenes in the entire book, they're clearly marked and skippable if you want. 1) The author asked himself "How can I make curing depletion something that not everyone can have/do?" If it was just pain, money, or really anything else, there was no obstacle to entry-level Blue purifying everyone he could, which negated the threat of depletion. 2) The author intended Shayma to be the MC, and Blue as more of "This weird horror unknowable horror", then write from Blue's POV as.... "He's just a huge dork."
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Jan 28, 2022 16:53
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Hungry posted:I'm not sure I can call it a harem story where we're over a million words in and the protagonist has only bedded one person. Maybe? I don't think sex is necessary for a harem story. The fantasy is mainly about desirability rather than strict sexual encounter count. It is the MC's power.
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Jan 28, 2022 16:53
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Harem anime typically end with the MC still a virgin.
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Jan 28, 2022 19:39
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Selkie Myth posted:I'ma defend Blue Core a bit here. I called it that because it was a dungeon story that slammed on the brakes to have a porno scene every so often. When I made that post, someone immediately knew which story I was talking about, so that's further evidence that it's The Dungeon Porno. This could be easily avoided by not having explicit gently caress chapters in your otherwise normal book. And it's not that hard to come up with a roadblock to infinite purification other than GOTTA BE HOT, NO HOMO~ Paranoid Mage is ok so far, author still found a way to get all the way up their own rear end writing thousands of words of a guy just shoveling mana around, but the parts where things are actually happening were interesting enough.
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Jan 28, 2022 19:52
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Gladi posted:I don't think sex is necessary for a harem story. The fantasy is mainly about desirability rather than strict sexual encounter count. It is the MC's power. Bringing this full circle, the ave x rem whatever protagonist has boned only one member of his harem (and that’s all offscreen and fade to black). It’s about the power/desirability/numbers-go-up-ness factor.
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Jan 28, 2022 20:03
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Lone Goat posted:I called it that because it was a dungeon story that slammed on the brakes to have a porno scene every so often. When I made that post, someone immediately knew which story I was talking about, so that's further evidence that it's The Dungeon Porno. I'd say that has more to do with being an incredibly popular story with sex in it, which makes it more likely someone's heard of it. Meanwhile there's stuff like (seriously  there were sex scenes like every 4 chapters back before I stopped reading a couple years ago, dunno if that's still the case now) Ero Dungeon Online which fit the part to a T. It's just got a "measly" 750k views (Scribble Hub) compared to Blue Core's 9 million (Royal Road).
Onean fucked around with this message at 22:23 on Jan 28, 2022 |
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Jan 28, 2022 22:21
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I think it's also considering that audiences tend to be pretty sensitive to sex in stories. A thousand page story with ten pages of sexual content will get readers defining it around that sex. The amount of violence a story has to feature to be labeled as gross is insanely high. The amount of sex a story has to contain to be labeled creepy or pornographic verges on "any."
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Jan 28, 2022 22:41
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Jazerus posted:japan-specific punctuation and brackets are aesthetically interesting to me but i could see them being irritating if overused. i've never read a story that used them in any consistent or regular way It's relevant to the harem discussion because the freak who wrote Weakest Summoner loves it and after that I kept seeing it everywhere.
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Jan 29, 2022 05:14
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Also re: romance stories for men I guess that's a good point. I would like a romance book intended for me to enjoy but sadly it's rare to see something that's not a frail woman being rescued by the alpha male whether literal or figurative, or a mostly generic stand-in who has 7 girlfriends. Am I insane for wanting to read regular genre fiction where the two main characters love eachother? Apparently yes lol.
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Jan 29, 2022 05:20
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Wittgen posted:I think it's also considering that audiences tend to be pretty sensitive to sex in stories. A thousand page story with ten pages of sexual content will get readers defining it around that sex. Look no further than this thread! There's tons of hosed up poo poo in Worth the Candle, but it's the weird sex stuff that gets a thread title.
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Jan 29, 2022 07:35
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Tbf there's quite a bit of that too
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Jan 29, 2022 09:42
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Larry Parrish posted:Also re: romance stories for men I guess that's a good point. I would like a romance book intended for me to enjoy but sadly it's rare to see something that's not a frail woman being rescued by the alpha male whether literal or figurative, or a mostly generic stand-in who has 7 girlfriends. And have a happily ever after or a happier for now ? No not insane.
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Jan 29, 2022 14:28
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I got into Maker of Fire today. It’s pretty good. Isekai but no cultivation or system. Can be a little or a lot distressing depending on your sensitivity because it’s set in a Bronze-age magically enforced slave culture with all the awfulness that entails. Doesn’t wallow in it but doesn’t shy away, either. Primary MC is a 71 year old geologist/materials scientist reincarnated into the slave caste and enjoined by the Gods to fix the world through applied science. The author seems to be knowledgeable and there’s not the usual hand wavy bullshit that most of these stories use to get around tooling and supply chain issues(except when the gods get involved and do something explicitly hand wavy).
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Jan 29, 2022 22:36
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There's only one science that can fix a slave political economy 
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Jan 30, 2022 02:52
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