Discussion Does anybody else despise harem endings?

1: Multiple characters WITH DEPTH. Harem characters don't have depth in most cases (unless romance focused and even then only rarely) because developing characters takes time. Time and effort from the author, but also in the pacing and flow of your novel. Well, harem tends to suck in both so we.
2: Romance should be a result of the plot and a characters development, never the other way round. Unless you unironically follow terrible writing advice's advice.
3: Shit writing is shit writing. Well developed characters are more cruxial than "horse racing" between four shittily written walking tropes. I already established why multiple well developed characters are a pain in the arse (Martin is a bloody genius, but GoT also isn't harem).
4: Don't write shitty garbage and the story is engaging regardless. How well liked a novel is has little to do with its romance. Proper use of style, tensions and character development will always trump your idea of horse racing. This idea of yours aims to be the cream of the crap, not truly good writing.
5: Characters shine by being well written. Not by being a single dim lightbulb in a shop full of broken ones. Your idea of writing leads to garbage like SOTR, aka the "everyone but the MC is severly retarded" trope. "By comparison" does not make great characters and does not let them shine. It makes the readers drop the novel instead.

The rest is pointless drivel and not even worth answering to.

 

Well what are you reading is webnovels that author written without much project or plan in mind so your counterpoint number one all the way through five all just saying just write better without anything else to add.
I'll answer just this one.
"Proper use of style, tensions and character development will always trump your idea of horse racing." I agree but that's not always works nor are guaranteed to be well received by your audience. Just answer what can you pick up by regular reader on the comments section ? "Oh that character is cute" "that character is evil" etc etc regular reader does react to them regardless whether they're written rather poorly or not.

At the end of the day you should just graduate completely from shounen oriented novel because as far as i can see they're mostly like that even those that are successfully published by big media such as dengeki bunko etc.

Oh and quit reading webnovels already if you find no entertainment from it. Like i said bring your complaints and critics directly to the author themselves rather than eating away your heart out by useless rants.

 

It depends a lot on one's view of the world and how they expect their life together to go like.

Most family time with a harem would probably involve all members together instead of only 2 people at a time, since... You know, it's family time, and they're all family and need to get along well for the harem to form in the first place.

Of course there would be a need for some private 1-on-1 time, but the amount needed per week probably not be thaaat big, so it would probably be manageable for as long as the harem isn't something crazy like... More than 5 people.

But yes, in most of the Western world, people are very unused to the idea of harems and couldn't fathom being in one and dividing the romantic love of their significant other... At the same time, polygamy still happens in the East, yanno? And Open relationships and what not also happen in the West. It's not like... Super duper common, but it does happen.

It really depends on each person's view on how a romantic relationship should function, but it's certainly possible to work out.

Not Cheating is a matter of commitment. If you don't want to cheat, you won't cheat, that's all there is to it.

Even if the relationship is falling apart, for as long as you're committed to it, you won't cheat. It's the bare minimum of respect you should show towards the person you swore to love for life.

 

If there're multiple love interests, then I prefer the harem ending rather than 1v1 because I don't like seeing people with lost love.

 

Even the harem concept has evolved you know, one example would be the harem in The World of Otome Games is Tough For Mobs, in this one the protagonist's fiancees are in love with him and also in love between them.

 

Thats assuming a heavily braindwashed woman/girl. Humans are fickle creatues, and women more so than men. If they feel neglected in a relationship their commitment is gone very quickly. And what they feel... thats as subjective as it can get. Interaction is the basis for that commitment to begin with, and it is heavily limited in a harem where the bonding is often shallow. Not that any female in a harem novel has enough personality for such a thing to matter. They are blatant wish-fullfillment after all, and badly written on top of it.

All of that is assuming a roughly equal standing ofc, which doesn't apply to irl examples. And historically harems tend to be a mess of cat fights over influence with no family time to be found. Women don't like to share their men all that much. And a single malcontent one would suffice to start the mess, which is even worse.

 

Uhn... I don't get the brainwash argument, do you think you'd cheat on your significant other if you felt neglected? Because I don't know anybody that would act that way. The people I know would either break up the relationship or try to talk things out to solve the problem. Cheating is not a solution for relationship troubles, a good honest conversation is.

I don't know that much about RL examples of harems, so take my words with a grain of salt. But from what I know, there is a small and mostly negligible difference between first wife to second wife and so on forth, and most people don't really give this difference much heed at all, so I don't see why you think that equal standing doesn't apply to IRL examples.
Like, sure, historical harems certainly had a different and complex social structure, but since we're talking about isekai here, we're talking about a protagonist with a modern mindset and that will therefore view harem with a modern mindset, which usually implies equal or near-equal standing.

As for the sharing a significant other argument... All you need to solve that is to have coolheaded people having a proper conversation on the matter while understanding the intricacies of their own relationship. And if any of the people involved can't deal with the situation, they'd probably be free to leave, as a marriage is not a forced commitment after all.

 

I don't think that having a harem story precludes it from being good. The main problem with this story mechanic is that it requires doing a good job juggling the relationships of multiple characters and making it all compelling. This is pretty hard to do and it's well beyond the ability of most of the writers out there. Most of them will just employ the same old paper thin characters without making the attempt to do anything interesting with them (see Sevens). And guess what? If the writer doesn't want to do anything interesting with his characters, putting them into a harem will only make things worse.

The thing is, writing better really is the only thing that can improve a lot of these games. It's all about making a commitment to writing well-constructed characters and otherwise putting in a real effort at producing good writing. A writer who goes in willy-nilly with no clear plans in mind and with no interest putting in hard work to improve his craft is almost never going to produce anything worthwhile.

That's not entirely fair because there are tons of good webnovels out there, and there are a lot of writers willing to put in some real effort.

 

Of course there is a committed web novel writers but they aren't that many in comparison.
"It's all about making a commitment to writing well-constructed characters and otherwise putting in a real effort at producing good writing. A writer who goes in willy-nilly with no clear plans in mind and with no interest putting in hard work to improve his craft is almost never going to produce anything worthwhile." Again i agree and maybe you should bring those critics directly to author. That was no advice but a negative input still an input nonetheless.Nothing would happen by useless rants.

Anyway this is basically complaints of a choosy beggars. You want something to have certain quality in it maybe you should look harder and be willing to pay for them.

 

Are there really that few of them out there? Sure, if all you read are Japanese webnovels, but I can tell you for a fact that Chinese webnovelists tend to care more about their craft. Good characterization and world building, well-researched topics, and properly planned plots are pretty common to come across.

Besides, what's useless about properly thought out criticism? The whole idea behind this is to identify the strengths and weaknesses to certain types of writing. There's a certain amount of value inherent to this; even if it's only to avoid constantly running around in circles. And hell, it's even directly relevant to this topic by correctly focusing the blame on the writing itself rather than the story mechanic.

 

well this thread already funny when op not care about is the story well written or not~ at this case harem~
why? cuz well written story will have proper background to explain thing that op ask while bad one it explained by~ MAGIC!
with or without harem bad writing will poking around~

 

A critics is useless when they don't have an address.

 

That's wrong.

 

Lol please bring that well thought out critics to the writer themselves so it can do something. It become a mere gossips in here.

 

Hint: critiques aren't only meant for the original writer to read.

 

I think Cheating is a matter of belief instead of commitment, some people got married but somehow still played with others behind their partner back, but if they believe an act of cheating is a crime, just like murder or stealing, they might or not will do it.

 

All form criticism are meant to catch attention of the one it meant to be addressed to and they are meant to be constructive. We called talking about their bad points behind their backs as gossips or slander not criticism because they aren't intended to be constructive.

What was the criticism again ? Don't write harem ? Harem is unrealistic ? Don't write bad plot ? Well ?

 

The problem is that most cheating comes derives from some sort of dissatisfaction in the marriage. Making people less willing to cheat doesn't really fix anything, just like banning divorces doesn't do anything to make dysfunctional marriages any happier.

That's only part of the reason. There are plenty of other reasons for writing critiques.

That most of the complaints being laid out in this thread are caused by bad writing rather than the story having a harem.

 

Well, if people are less willing to cheat, then doesn't it mean it fixed cheating? I mean, if I was less willing to eat, I won't eat unless I had to.

I never heard the idea of banning divorce, banning marriage is one thing...

 

Depends on the story and what region of the world your fictional tale may come from. Because If I recall the term harem, its Arabic.

Spoiler: حريم‎ ḥarīm, "a sacred inviolable place

حريم‎ ḥarīm, "a sacred inviolable place; harem; female members of the family" properly refers to domestic spaces that are reserved for the women of the house in a Muslim family. This private space has been traditionally understood as serving the purposes of maintaining the modesty, privilege, and protection of women.

A harem may house a man's wife — or wives and concubines, as in royal harems of the past — their pre-pubescent male children, unmarried daughters, female domestic workers, and other unmarried female relatives. In former times some harems were guarded by eunuchs who were allowed inside. The structure of the harem and the extent of monogamy or polygamy has varied depending on the family's personalities, socio-economic status, and local customs.

Ideally the use of it in Asian/ Oriental fiction varies on the writers creative prowess.

Other than Japanese, Chinese or Korean writings. You can scour poems and epics of men that have taken women into their charge, and the relationship between the two isn't sexual. Some platonic and more so for companionship. Other times its politcal in nature.

There are stories of the desert caravans and the traveling girls, princes and princesses, the roaming warrior, a fallen general. each a tale of both sexes having more than one partner.

Truhfully the use of the "family harem" is more of a socio-traditonal thing, and it varies. It usually tends to deal with the patriarchal households.

----------
On another note, I don't expect Japanese, Korean, Chinese, etc. stories written for a teenage or young adult audience, to carry a more mature concept of utilizing the harem trope.

I believe well developed stories which, explain the backstory for why the harem is part of the culture would, make it realistic in the sense, that you are experiencing a new world.

The current Harem troupe, told to younger readers, is that it involves an individual having multiple partners. Sexual in nature or not.

And that is where i think the story writing fails to an extent. I mean you can also see similar parallels when it comes to writing slavery or serfdom.