To readers of harem web novels.

[RepresentingWrath]

Honestly, I feel like a lot of harem stories go down a more 'rapey' path purely due to laziness and/or impatience.

While it may be a bit messed up, it is simply easier to for an author to not care about their characters consenting so that they get straight into writing smut scenes. Of course they could also just have the characters be complete nymphos or be extremely casual about that sort of thing, but, uh... that's where the laziness comes in. Not that that isn't also pretty lazy.

Also, lets be honest, a lot of readers (though obviously not all) don't care too much about the circumstances surrounding the smut scenes. They just want to 'enjoy' the adult content and don't have the patience or attention span to read dozens upon dozens of chapters building up to that. Especially not when they can just read a story that does go straight into it. So if an author is impatient and just wants to hook their readers in right away...

You are correct. BUT. There's always this sneaky "but" eh? Stories written by lazy authors are boring crap. Even smut they write is boring, not interesting, and usually cringe. It's like getting impatient with food. You think food takes too long so you quickly get whatever you can, but you end up with a bunch of raw ingredients.

It's not even a cup ramen or fast food quality at this point. It's like pouring hot water into cup ramen and eating it after only 30 seconds have passed. Or cooking a burger patty in McD for ten second before assembling a cheeseburger. It's raw, it tastes like crap, and you can fall ill.

So what's the point then? I'm not asking for people to have enough attention to finish Shakespeare. I'm just saying, can we at least let the cup ramen stay for 5-10 minutes before we shove it inside? Not using rape in fiction really isn't that hard.

I didn't like litrpgs until I started reading litrpgs, and thought maybe that was true of harem stories too. So I listened to the audiobook of Dungeon Diving 101, but all it did was cement the opinions I already had.

What the hell is Dungeon Diving 101? Sounds like utter garbage.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I don't want to sound like a boomer or a luddite, but... that sort of thing (the catering to a lazy audience, not using rape as a crutch) isn't even limited to written work. It is unfortunately pretty common even in shortform content where videos that are just a minute or two long will have a message at the beginning telling the viewers to 'watch until the end'. It's insane and a bit depressing. But that's reality nowadays.

Most of those videos I've seen might be cute if only a minute or two long, but stretch out to five, eight, even ten minutes, where it goes from "kind of interesting" to "frustrating" to "sheer torture, I'm fast forwarding or just moving away from this crap..."

 

[RepresentingWrath]

then there is nothing I can do to stop them.

Oh but you CAN! You, me, US! We should write good harem stories and replace trashy ones with our works! Together we will make harem genre great again. MHGGA! ?

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

Whelp, time to write the most deplorable and illegal in 30 countries harem with the greatest plot to exist.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Whelp, time to write the most deplorable and illegal in 30 countries harem with the greatest plot to exist.

Handholding in every chapter. ?

 

[Gray_Mann]

Handholding in every chapter. ?

The ladies will be holding something, but it won't be a hand.... >.>

 

[Juia_Darkcrest]

The ladies will be holding something, but it won't be a hand.... >.>

What...are...are they holding the cheque...omg is your harem story going to be one where the lady pays for everything instead? Revolutionary!

 

[Gray_Mann]

the lady pays for everything instead? Revolutionary!

Sounds like a terribly written, unrealistic smut-fantasy story. Sorry madam, but I do real and cultured smut. It is a little.....overly sticky? Sure. But it's also really real.

Begone with you charlatan!!!

 

[RepresentingWrath]

the lady pays for everything instead? Revolutionary!

Sounds like a JP light novel title. Those retarded 'reverse morals' ones.

 

[ThisAdamGuy]

What the hell is Dungeon Diving 101? Sounds like utter garbage.

An academy story about adventurers training to become dungeon divers. The main character gets a weird class and the world's strongest (and hottest) adventurer gets him enrolled in an all girl's school so she can be his teacher (and future lover) and within a week he's sleeping with three of the hottest students.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

An academy story about adventurers training to become dungeon divers. The main character gets a weird class and the world's strongest (and hottest) adventurer gets him enrolled in an all girl's school so she can be his teacher (and future lover) and within a week he's sleeping with three of the hottest students.

Yeah, sounds like terrible harem.

 

[ThisAdamGuy]

Yeah, sounds like terrible harem.

I didn't even mention that the third girl is an elvin princess who's been sent to our world on a diplomatic mission. The main character kills a monster, the monster drops a ring, he bends over to get it, and the elf princess (who he somehow didn't see right in front of him) thinks he (the first human she's seen literally seconds after arriving) is proposing to her, so she immediately falls in love with him and agrees to marry him on the spot.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I didn't even mention that the third girl is an elvin princess who's been sent to our world on a diplomatic mission. The main character kills a monster, the monster drops a ring, he bends over to get it, and the elf princess (who he somehow didn't see right in front of him) thinks he (the first human she's seen literally seconds after arriving) is proposing to her, so she immediately falls in love with him and agrees to marry him on the spot.

 

[Juia_Darkcrest]

I didn't even mention that the third girl is an elvin princess who's been sent to our world on a diplomatic mission. The main character kills a monster, the monster drops a ring, he bends over to get it, and the elf princess (who he somehow didn't see right in front of him) thinks he (the first human she's seen literally seconds after arriving) is proposing to her, so she immediately falls in love with him and agrees to marry him on the spot.

A beautiful love story right there

 

[goth_dropping_in]

*waves*

Harem/GL author here. I write it because I'm polyamorous & have an open relationship in real life, and most of my characters are either expies of pieces of me or smushed together blends of my IRL girlfriends/sex-friends with original stuff mixed in for originality. I think a lot of people like the darker kinks because they've been taught to believe that smut/sex is shameful and bad, so they think having sex is taboo/"evil", and that attitude bleeds out into how they treat their characters and sometimes the actual people they know.

Bodice-rippers are also not a new trend; the idea of being "Forced" to get something, or having the freedom to do and take whatever you want, can be very appealing fantasies. I myself have a hypno-app story posted to a smaller writing community, but it's because I kink on it and not because I really see women that way. (In my story the protag comes clean about the fact they've got it to the person the app gave them as their "tutorial", and they end up getting it on but consensually beacuse they're both into the abilities the app gives them/the app target is a huge sub.)

Some people are also just asses, tbqh. In six billion people on the planet you're going to have some bad rolls.

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

Handholding in every chapter. ?

And an "I love you" in the first 150. I know. I'm deranged.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

*waves*

Harem/GL author here. I write it because I'm polyamorous & have an open relationship in real life, and most of my characters are either expies of pieces of me or smushed together blends of my IRL girlfriends/sex-friends with original stuff mixed in for originality. I think a lot of people like the darker kinks because they've been taught to believe that smut/sex is shameful and bad, so they think having sex is taboo/"evil", and that attitude bleeds out into how they treat their characters and sometimes the actual people they know.

Bodice-rippers are also not a new trend; the idea of being "Forced" to get something, or having the freedom to do and take whatever you want, can be very appealing fantasies. I myself have a hypno-app story posted to a smaller writing community, but it's because I kink on it and not because I really see women that way. (In my story the protag comes clean about the fact they've got it to the person the app gave them as their "tutorial", and they end up getting it on but consensually beacuse they're both into the abilities the app gives them/the app target is a huge sub.)

Some people are also just asses, tbqh. In six billion people on the planet you're going to have some bad rolls.

Ahh... So you are a part of the problem, huh? Well shame on you!

 

[Golden_Hyde]

anyways, the one I worked on currently is likely the only harem work I will ever write, as I'm focusing more on monogamous relationship. Not saying I hate harem, it's just that given how I'm tired of the same pussy-chasing asshole or straight-up spineless schmuck being featured in most work, it'll take a long time to cook a true gentleman protagonist who happened to be given harem (and that's without making it like a black belly pimp)