Discussion Why do people instantly downvote harem when they come across one?

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by Daoist Ghoul, Jun 23, 2022.

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  1. IceLight303

    IceLight303 Well-Known Member

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    It was weird. They showed everyone their settings and it was set up properly. The consensus was that it was either a bug or having too many filters contradicted itself.
     
  2. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, it's a pretty pathetic argument.

    I agree that the Bechdel Test is commonly misused; both by its proponents and probably even more commonly by its critics. However, it's still a useful tool; albeit only for specific purposes. It's true that it started as a joke and it's more of an observation than a test but I don't think that matters that much.

    First let's lay the groundwork for what the Bechdel Test isn't. For starters it's meant to critique films and other similar media, and not for works like written fiction. Next, and this is the part that everyone gets wrong, is that the Bechdel Test is not meant to analyze individual pieces of fiction. What I mean by this is that while the Bechdel Test can tell us whether a work passes or not, it says nothing about whether that work is good or not. Moreover, even if a work that wouldn't pass was changed to make it pass, that wouldn't necessarily be an improvement and doing it the other way around wouldn't necessarily make it any worse.

    So what use is the Bechdel Test then? It's a statistical tool. It's meant to be applied to a large number of works to see how many (or more likely how few) of them have a significant number of female characters, and how they're involved in the stories. [e.g. Of the last 50 Hollywood films, only 5 of them pass the Bechdel Test] Is it super comprehensive and explanatory? No, but that's not what it's intended for so that shouldn't matter.

    Oh, and the people who actively avoid stories that pass the Bechdel Test, they're definitely BL fans. The more they protest otherwise, the more they're in denial.

    There would be no point. The reason why the Bechdel Test existed in the first place is because male characters are the default throughout fiction while female characters are relegated to being peripheral figures. Until male characters are subjected to the same fate in just about every story, then using it to apply to them only demonstrates the lack of understanding what the Bechdel Test is.
     
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  3. hyperion79

    hyperion79 Active Member

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    It's probably yaoi translators and readers
     
  4. Nimroth

    Nimroth Someone

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    Even if the Bechdel test isn't really meant to be taken seriously, I still would say that a harem story failing it would in "most" cases be a red flag.
    For the simple reason that these are typically stories with a high number of female characters in the main cast, so if those are not allowed to interact between each other it kind of comes off as strange to me.
     
  5. Mnotia

    Mnotia The Trash Man

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    NGL I dont watch action movies.

    I only really watch wartime documentaries and romance films. Don't even know the plot to gladiator or 300.
     
  6. Darius Drake

    Darius Drake A poster of verbose posts

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    Your preferences don't counteract my argument in any way, shape or form. Particularly since I only used the two popular action movies as a starting point that displays that failing the test on an individual level doesn't mean that the movie wouldn't be enjoyed, successful, and have a good plot. The second paragraph, which you ignored, goes into why applying the test on an individual story basis is outright flawed.


    That would involve people using it at a meta-level, and you can't trust people to pay any attention to a meta-level unless they get something out of it. Particularly when you can get something out of abusing the "test" at a direct-level.

    Which is why I said it's turned from the joke it started as into a weapon to hit the media industry with. Those who want to weaponise it get more out of it that way than those who want to utilise it legitimately, because people don't pay attention to the meta-level.
     
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  7. Mnotia

    Mnotia The Trash Man

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    [​IMG]


    Im not being argumentative. Me saying I dont watch action films is another way of me acknowledging your statement by me admitting to being ignorant of other films.

    Also, im not reading all them paragraphs
     
  8. Kaylee

    Kaylee Well-Known Member

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    The same reason with people that downvote BL/GL the moment they see the tag maybe.
     
  9. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    It's not about the meta-level; it's that the Bechdel Test is mostly useful as a tool for media analysis. Is Neflix doing a better job at representing women now than it was three years ago? How many of the MCU projects are able to incorporate significant numbers of female characters? And so on.

    Anyone claiming that the Bechdel Test is completely useless is claiming that this is all unimportant, and they're dead wrong about that.

    I find that the naysayers end up with much more poorly thought out counter arguments and that they tend to be the ones to mischaracterize the Bechdel Test. Because at the end of the day, the people who promote the Bechdel Test incorrectly still tend to be right. And the reason for this is quite simple: female characters are undeniably underrepresented in fiction. In the vast majority of works, if it doesn't matter whether a particular character is a man or a woman, it's always a man.

    And to put a cap to this, literary tools are misused in discussions all the damned time: plot holes, Mary Sues, and tropes in general are things that people get wrong all the damned time. In comparison, mistakenly promoting the Bechdel Test is far less egregious than these other misuses, and they get a lot more flak than they deserve.
     
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  10. iamuareme

    iamuareme Member

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    they are scum who rate novel without reading them
     
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  11. Reanee

    Reanee Well-Known Member

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    I never gave bad rate at harem novels, tho I don't like most of them I do read few good harem novels.
     
  12. ansusta

    ansusta Well-Known Member

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    i don't really hate harems and i've read a lot of them so far , but sometimes it gets reallly annoying
    that is when there isn't a real reason for all those gorgeous women to fall for the averge guy , like , authors don't really bother explaining it , they'll just brush it off by puting a cliche line , something like "no one has ever been this kind to me" ma'am you're a talented beautifull woman , i don't beleive no one was "that kind to you"
    or something like "i've never seen a man like him in my life" what? never seen a man like this "average guy that you can find anywhere" ?
     
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  13. ToastedRossi

    ToastedRossi Well-Known Member

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    It really works best when there's a large amount of culture shock involved. If someone with no real outstanding qualities is supposed to appear special, you'd have to put him in an environment where what he qualities he has actually are unique. Isekai stories should be ideal for this because the protagonist's background is totally different from everyone else's. It's just too bad that most of these stories have such weak characterization and poor worldbuilding that they can't take advantage of this. On the other hand, I've seen writers take small bits of cultural difference and uses them as character and environment building tools, and the story works so much better as a result.
     
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  14. UnknownSaint171

    UnknownSaint171 To Something Sounds Cooler

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    Once you've read so many CNs, you will eventually find yourself just not bothering with them. There are tons of CNs out there better off wasting your time with.
    Chinese Harems are ideas easier to milk and earn some revenue..
    But the quality of writing drastically drops when a Harem is involved. Well, you know because it's CNs!

    Just earlier I was reading a decent novel of an MC inheriting his Head position, normally you'd think he'd deal with supernatural or increase his sect strength. But no, what we got MC getting girls as if he entered the music industry or something. Then I skipped unto the next one, a School-Life, I'm like "Oh sh*t, again" and the cycle continues... Goes on and on.
    Just lazy writing. So ignore it.
     
    Last edited: Jun 30, 2022
  15. ExiledMage

    ExiledMage Well-Known Member

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    99.9 percent of harem is trash, the only 0.1 harem I found acceptable is mushoku tense (The grandfather of isekai), because it made it a side story, that Light Novel could barely make the harem in the acceptable range.
    If the harem is the main focus of the story, there’s no need to waste your time reading it, it just declared it self as trash.
     
  16. sjmcc13

    sjmcc13 Well-Known Member

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    Ya, there is plenty of isekai series older then 2012...
     
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  17. ExiledMage

    ExiledMage Well-Known Member

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    “Its Web Novel was released in 2012 the same year as Konosuba and Re:Zero were published. The reason why the other two aren't called the grandfathers of isekai as well is because they aren't as defining of the genre as Mushoku Tensei is.
    it's the novel that defined the modern isekai genre, It started the isekai troupes such as: getting hit by a truck, elf girls, magic loli, the tsundere, OP protagonist, magic powers, sword fighting, adventurers guild, racial segregation, reverse harem, social war/battle ,etc..”
     
  18. sjmcc13

    sjmcc13 Well-Known Member

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    Do you have a citation for that? Though I will have to say the list of tropes this quote claims it "started" makes it feel like a Journalism failure where it was written by an idiot who did not do their research. Also, you previously stated Isekai as a genre, do not shift goal posts by adding in restrictions after the fact, since that quote is restricting it to modern isekai, not isekai in general which is a huge difference.

    For example, Tsundere are just part of Japanese fiction, and had been for YEARS before this, so claiming is popularized thaty rope is just horribly wrong. "The concept has received increasing attention in Japan, with a maid cafe named Nagomi in Akihabara started having tsundere events in 2006", let alone the ones (like half of that list) that were just part of fantasy stories/manga and/or fantasy video games for years before hand. Elf girls have been part of fantasy writing for ages, magic powers and sword fighting are core components of fantasy in general, same with adventurers guilds in Japanese literature. Racial segregation is older then dirt in literature, etc

    Heck, keep in mind Konosuba is a parody series, those do not come out till other parts have been around for years.

    It did not originate things, it was just the most popular novel when the site took off in popularity. Which makes this feel like the standard idiocy of really being "the first one I saw" not the defining or originating one, but thinking it is because you do not bother to ask what is it based on/derived from. Which seems to happen the same time anything is the first work of a specific type to becomes a big success in a different region.

    Also : https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/fe...-the-pioneer-of-isekai-web-novels-but/.170429
    Defining a sub-set or sub-genre is not sufficient to be the genre defining work, no where close to sufficient. It helpes define modern reincarnation isekai, but that is not and never has been the entirety of Isekai, fell into another world and summoning have been around for a long time, and are still parts of the genre. Especially when it is really just the first work to reach a certain level of popularity.
     
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  19. Mr gentleman

    Mr gentleman Ok

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    Because the female characters are dumb, lack any sort of personalities, have a bootlicking attitude, every single female falls in love with protagonist. And most importantly it's for kids.
     
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  20. Zyrphox

    Zyrphox Member

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    Cause harem is garbage also most people prefer romance that doesn't have more than one love interests ig