Request Xianxia with harem where the girls are NOT doomed to disappear (aka MC Lovers Curse)

Discussion in 'Novel Discussion' started by freemen muaddib, Feb 10, 2021.

  1. freemen muaddib

    freemen muaddib Well-Known Member

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    I’m sick and tired.
    Being a girl in an Harem Xianxia is truly a misfortune! Why the moment a girl finally falls in love with the MC, suddenly something unfortunate does happen to her and she get separated from the MC for years or even centuries? No matter what, one of the following is doomed to happen to her:

    1) she is hurt, she falls ill or is cursed, and then she gets frozen for 1000 years waiting for a cure impossible to find...
    2) she suddenly recovers her previous incarnation memories becoming another person and forgetting about the MC...
    3) she is taken back by her clan or sect and imprisoned until the MC reaches god-like cultivation level and can be then considered worthy or being able to forcefully free her...
    4) her master reveals to her that her cultivation method requires her to stay a virgin forever or else she will die or loose all her cultivation, and forces her to leave the MC..
    5) she is poisoned with the MC by some aphrodisiac and she ends pregnant, and to avoid revealing it to him, she quitely disappears to rise the child alone in hides...
    6) she suddenly discovers that she is a goddess or some supreme being from a superior plane and she is only spending a short time in the current world as a tribulation life cycle, and she needs to suffer death or sever all her feelings to get back...
    7) she suddenly remembers to be the reincarnated soul of the MC worst enemy...
    8) a powerful master takes her as a disciple and makes her disappear for ages. Also when she came back the MC discovers that the cultivation methods imparted to her was a heartless one and requires her to sever all feelings for him...
    9) she is blackmailed by a powerful figure and he tells to her that for some reason to save the MC life she can only follow him far away leaving the MC...
    10) she dies, her soul is entrapped/preserved somewhere and the MC must spend the rest of the novel to find a method to free her soul and revive her...
    11) Some powerful figure erases all her memories of the MC for some stupid reason...
    12) Her grandfather come and reveals that she is a princess of a nation (or clan) and that she was betrothed to an evil prince from some powerful country (or clan) to avoid a bloody war, and she needs to came back and marry him to save her people and guarantee the peace...

    Why??? Are there ANY harem xianxia novels where the girls are not doomed to disappear for some reason but they stay with the MC and fight with him? Please tell if you know...
     
    Last edited: Feb 10, 2021
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  2. Zeusomega

    Zeusomega M.D of Olympus Pvt Ltd. Seeking [Boltzmann brain]

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    12) She's left behind in the lower realm when mc ascends..


    suggestion - zi tian ji.
     
  3. Artistisk

    Artistisk Active Member

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    Legend of LingTian is the only thing that pops on my mind.
     
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  4. freemen muaddib

    freemen muaddib Well-Known Member

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    Yes! That happens too!!!
    And also the opposite happens:
    14) She ascends to an higher realm and the MC is left behind

    If I remember correctly Ze Tian Ji is not without such flaw.. to be more specific:
    Luo Luo gets her memories of the MC erased by a goddess so that she would not suffer for love...
     
    Last edited: Feb 10, 2021
  5. DustySpiral

    DustySpiral Well-Known Member

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    Think about what happens if the lady DOESN'T leave. At that point she's basically become a secondary MC and most Xianxia follow the path of loner MC wandering the heavens. Even non-harem Xianxia usually come up with an excuse to ditch the love interest with the MC's only long term companions being magical beasts or other entities that spend entire arcs sleeping. Having a partner will change the dynamic of the story as well - if you're going to have a couple adventuring together its better to have that start early in the story or else you risk the readers leaving (and the readers who'd like to read about the adventuring couple not slogging through the hundreds of solo chapters to get there). Light novels in general tend to overly focus on the MC at the expense of under-developing the other characters. :/

    All of that said, let's talk about the additional issues that arise when it's a harem Xianxia. JP isekai's keep the ladies with the MC, usually maintaining what I'd call the "artificial harem state" by having the MC be too dense/indecisive to move forward with any of the women surrounding them. It's the initial stages of attraction repeated over and over again with every relationship stalled indefinitely at/near the starting line. I could go more into how this effects the characters and story, but lets move on to Xianxia:

    Xianxia MCs usually aren't dense enough, nor indecisive enough, for their relationships to be stalled like that. If the woman stuck around they likely *would* progress the relationship. This would not only prevent a harem from forming in the first place**, but would require the author actually write a deeper long-term relationship interpersonal issues and all. That's quite different from writing "why is my chest hot?" x7.

    **Both because the lover is there when #2 is snooping around, and also because deepening the relationship would make the MC rightfully look like even more of a terrible person for cheating. It'd also flesh out #1 enough that it'd be harder to overlook her suddenly being okay with #2. I don't like claiming plot quirk XYZ is "unrealistic" as there are all kinds of people.. but seriously, check out the novels marketed towards women and tell me which one involves happily being in a harem. On the contrary, such novels tend to take the concept of "exclusively loving the FMC" and exaggerate it to a terrifying extent, creating MLs that brutally slaughter anyone that isn't the FMC at the drop of a hat. "Reverse harems" usually involve the the MLs trying to kill off their competitors or otherwise monopolize the FMC because she's their entire world and no one else can have her! Historical works sometimes have the FMC in a harem, but its portrayed as a challenge to be defeated / dominated / escaped from.
     
  6. freemen muaddib

    freemen muaddib Well-Known Member

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    I’ve read your analysis and I found it enlightening. But still, there are at least two xianxia novels that addressed this problem with a certain degree of success:

    - “Ancient Strenghtening Technique” by I Am Superfluous : Each new girl is conquered and then brought back to the clan as a wife, and the hero can go on to the next adventure while his wives are left home to rise babies with his family. We can call this the “Harem At Home (HATH)” approach. (link)

    -Womanizing Mage” by Heaven Is Not Lonely : Each girl is conquered and left in her own home as a fiancee. The hero can go on to the next adventure and then periodically visiting each girl and solving a quest in her turf (either helping her or her city/clan/country..). We can call this the “Spread Out Harem (SOH)” approach. (link)

    Yes, those two novels have unsatisfying endings, but while the story is not strong, the romance/harem part works PERFECTLY. As far as I know, those two are the only xianxia that solved the “wandering harem” issue with a solution that is both not too hateful (i.e. the “MC Lovers Curse (MCLC)” approach discussed in the OP) and not too unrealistic (i.e. the “Harem In The Pocket (HITP)” approach of Long Live Summons).

    So the question remains: both the above good solutions are almost never used (especially the SOH approach, my favourite), while the hateful MCLC approach is used/abused in 90% of the Xianxia... why?? Are xianxia readers masochists, or xianxia authors sadists??!
     
    Last edited: Feb 22, 2021
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  7. rajsmarts

    rajsmarts New Member

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    Well, idk about Xianxia, but if you wanted a harem Xuanhuan novel where the MC and lovers stay together, then Pocket Hunting Dimension works. As for Xianxias in particular, it's a cheap way to create tension/drama and give the MC a reason to go to the next realm quickly I guess.
     
  8. freemen muaddib

    freemen muaddib Well-Known Member

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    Of course xuanhuan novels are affected by the same issue. Pocket Hunting Dimension, right? I’ll check it out, thanks!
     
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  9. rajsmarts

    rajsmarts New Member

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    NP, in fact, these are my favorite type of novels too, the kinds where the harem is relevant, but in most of these cases, the powerups they get feel like bullshit since the MC has to work 20x as hard in order to get the same amount of materials handed out to the girls in order to keep them relevant. The MC is supposed to be a paragon quite often, so they have to be the most talented while being the most hard working. Only better resources can cause other people to keep up with them.
     
  10. Wakashii

    Wakashii Well-Known Member

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    This is by far the worst novel I ever read, the MC is epitome of thrash, he'll ask s*x for virgin girls for saving them. I really regret that I read this bullsh*t.
    ------------------------------

    Tbh I think you are wanting something that's never going to happen. To be the MC is the same as being someone extraordinary, you must be unique, so that almost no people can match you in fights/cultivation/will - that's what we expect from a MC. So, how can you also expect a mc to have wives that can actually help him? You can ask for novels with a single woman that really is going to fight along with the MC, but in an harem? I doubt that this exists.

    This is one of the reasons I hate harem, they are only in the novel to make the same plots and to disturb the MC. ATG is the perfect example, so many plots about his wives and I don't know how ppl endure that bullsh*t about: I love all my girls with my entire heart and i'm willing to die for them. I feel so bad that almost all novels with harem are destroyed by that *sigh*
     
  11. TypeFantasyHeart

    TypeFantasyHeart Well-Known Member

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    Isnt if because its chinese "culture", a woman there is treated as an object most of the time. Even more, any unmarried women older than 25 are called "Leftover" and im not kidding. For the chinese, women are only important for babies, but some may disagree.
     
  12. Voracious_Cachinnations

    Voracious_Cachinnations Member

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    MC lovers and friends are separated from him/her to allow the MC to grow on their own. Many of the opportunities he/she comes across are either specifically made for the MC or there is only a single person's portion left.
     
  13. nightbutterfly

    nightbutterfly Well-Known Member

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    o.o; Dropped this novel, I can't remember how many wives he has. Iirc he has more than 10 wives.
     
  14. Dewux

    Dewux Active Member

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    MGA is the epitome of the MCLC approach for them being gone for over 4000 chapters with occasional news to their journeys...
     
  15. Lunasmeow

    Lunasmeow New Member

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    ...If you think the only way to have a "realistic" harem is to have the initial wife be undeveloped then you know nothing of real harems and the cultures where those are not only accepted, but normal, and therefore have no idea how to determine what is "realistic".

    As for comparing that to female harem stories, that's not a measuring stick for "realism" either.

    There are indeed poly stories where the woman is happy to be in a harem, but most harems are competitive. The women tend to compete for the attention of the male, and vice versa in a female led harem. And yes, those exist in Xianxia too, despite what people who wish to cry "muh sexism" all the time will tell you. They even exist side by side in the same novel in multiple cases. You just see more harem than reverse harem, because by nature of it being more action oriented, cultivation novels haveore male fans than female, because despite what people wish to belive, in general, men and women have different interests, though obvisibly there is overlap because it isn't some magical absolute thing. It's a general trend.

    That said, even in such conflict having harems, friendships arise - some women will band together against others and so on. The idea being "Me and you are friends, if we team up we can seduce our husband more often than she can alone because threesomes are hotter than one-on-one and she's prettier than us so this is our best bet." Of course, this is, again, for harems that have conflict, not the "happy harem" fantasy where everyone involved is in love with/friends with/whatever with everyone else involved, but instead the more "typical" harem where one person is at the center and everyone else is orbiting them.

    But you are wrong also about the problem. The problem isn't harems, (Because it is not cheating to get a second wife if your first wife knows about it and knew it was a possibility, which is how Xianxia worlds work since they're fantasy ancient China... duh. It's cheating to sneak, not to do so openly and with her accepting.) the problem is modern people trying to write a harem where there is, or almost is, zero conflict between the partners, or seeing said conflict as a "bad thing" (to the extreme level of "must never happen" I mean. I believe this is probably feminist nonsense because of the "power" it gives the male over his women, seeing as you never see any complaints from these people, or see them have any such worries in reverse harems... just like you only see incels complain about reverse harems but never normal harems. Bias and nonsense all around no matter the gender.) somehow, when even normal marriages have conflicts. Instead of seeing it as an opportunity for drama and character growth and development.

    There is always going to be conflict in any relationship, it is only somehow specially bad if you have bais blinders on, causing you to presume on type of conflict is worse than the other, or when a partner is going to the level of abuse.

    Now, to add to the thread and answer the initial request... Blue Phoenix series, by Tinalynge.

    Harem, (eventual) girls don't get left behind, girls have agency and fight alongside the MC, girls are all fleshed out and shine in their own ways. They have their own "voices" and aren't all the same cookie cutter personality in different bodies... and they generally all even get along, because, as expected in a realistic "ancient China" style society, a man of high power and status is expected to have multiple wives, so none of them feel he is "cheating" they knew what they were getting into ahead of time.
    You lack imagination. You don't have to be "more powerful" to aid someone. Specialties exist. A wife might be a formation master. Another a poison expert. Another able to brew potions and make pills... It's called don't make the MC unbelievably great at everything, and guve everyone their own "thing" to do, like you do woth any adventuring party in a fantasy story or a videogame.

    You have a tank, a caster, a healer, a summoner... The MC doesn't have to "be the best at everything all at once" he just has to be powerful and special.

    The book series I recommended above showcases this.
    Nonsense. They're called "leftover" because their prime childbearing years are behind them. And they aren't valued only for having children, that's never been true. It is just their highest value because, holy shit... it's the one thing women can do that men can't do, so obviously it is their most important trait since it can't be replicated.

    Surprise, surprise... supply and demand is a thing. Anything women can do, men can do... except have babies. Just like anything men can do, women can do... except provide sperm. And since men aren't on a clock and women are...

    It's called reality, not the sexist nonsense you try to make it out to be. And yeah, having kids in kind of important, or, you know... we fucking go extinct. Especially in worlds where monsters exist that kill and eat people regularly.

    This is what I mean by feminist nonsense - when you are so desperate to see sexism that you ignore basic facts about the reality of the world to paint things in an oppressed light.

    Women cultivate and have their own harems in cultivation worlds all the time. If you haven't seen any, you haven't read enough. It's not sexist, it's about power. And just like in The real world... you have more men trying to be cultivators than women, because of the violence in that area of life. So obviously harems are more common than reverse harems, because there are less women who get to the top simply because less of them partake in the practice.

    Look at how many women try to become fighters vs men. It's always been that way, in almost every culture around the world. It can be changed, and has been changed in some historical cultures, (unlike what the incel types and the MRA types claim) but it takes significant pressure to do so. Because pressure is what guides evolution, not the whimsy of ideological movements. That's just facts of life.

    If you want to make that change, more power to you, but the only way you're going to do it is through force. Because that's what pressure is. Something forcing you to do shit you wouldn't otherwise do.
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2023
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  16. sgrey

    sgrey Well-Known Member

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    OMFG.... this hurt me. Yes, I am so fed up with this crap, this was part of the reason I stopped reading these novels. And often this happenes all at once because it's a harem. So one wife will be taken to her clan to be forcefully married off to someone for dual cultivation where she will die, another wife will be poisoned, third will be left behind in a different realm because she is too weak, and so fourth.

    It's like Chinese authors know only 1 way to add drama to MCs personal life...

    All of this just sounds like an excuse for untalented authors who lack imagination. First of all, why MC should be a loner? If he has 10 wives, what kind of bullshit loner is he? If he is a loner, don't give him a wife.
    Second, you can properly write an interesting story without doing all that cliche bullshit about memories and clans and marriage. If you just think about it for a few seconds, you will realize how stupid the idea is in most cases. I don't know why you believe that MC must be alone or the story isn't good. You can properly write battles and plot considering MC has a partner. They also don't have to be together at all times, but they also don't have to be separated for 100 thousand years or blocked from meeting by some bullshit cosmic excuse.

    I will give you several novels that all-in-all are interesting, but MC always have partners or family around him or just in general don't have this kind of bullshit:
    I Stayed At Home For A Century, When I Emerged I Was Invincible
    I’m Actually a Cultivation Bigshot
    Top Tier Providence, Secretly Cultivate for a Thousand Years

    There are probably more, but I don't remember at the moment
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2023
  17. DustySpiral

    DustySpiral Well-Known Member

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    ... I don't? There was no "me" in my post at all, just a discussion on the sorts of Xanxia novels OP is complaining about. The MCs in those tend to be loners, and since that's something the authors of those stories appear to value (or feel their target demographic desires), it creates the issues described in my post if they also want to throw in a harem.

    As for your suggestions, I'm familiar with Top Tier Providence (or at least the comic) and agree it's a good series. I would also agree that series does a better job of handling relationships. I'd note, however, that TTP spends more time developing the side cast in general. It's a series where characters besides the MC can actually get stuff done, which I prefer as a reader but I dunno how the crowd that likes "OP-Loner-That-Picks-Up-A-New-Jade-Beauty-Every-Other-Arc" novels would feel about that. The harem stuff in TTP is fairly minor as well, IMO, at least up to where I'm currently at in the story.

    If you're making suggestions though... eh, I guess this is off-topic, so it's spoiler time!:
    There is something I'd be interested in but haven't found - an action-adventure Xanxia featuring a battle couple that travels together for the majority of the story... specifically a story where *both* individuals have a significant and proactive influence over the plot in general (not just one arc, etc).

    Well, suggestions for series like Nanomancer Reborn where the MC is usually adventuring with friends and/or family would also be welcome (Despite the [incorrect] romance tag, the MC for NR has family but is single for most of the plot).

    Hrm... wasn't there a way to put text in boxes you'd have to click to expand? It's been awhile since I've posted...
     
  18. sgrey

    sgrey Well-Known Member

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    Well, ok, fair enough. But those protagonists in Chinese novels are not loners by any means, at least for the reason of, well, getting 10-20 wives most of the time. MC in Chinese novels gets a ton of allies, shares many of his secrets with others, gets "sworn brothers" who often fight with MC against enemies, becomes a member of sect an gets help from the sect and some powerful elder. They are often protected by someone so that some OP villain don't just kill them off outright. These are not traits of a loner who does everything by himself. And this is also why the op is complaining - MC builds a ton of relationships, gets a wife and then they all just get left behind and never seen, or in case of a wife, they might be missing for a 1000 chapters and then she suddenly shows up. And it's always, always a damsel in distress trope. I actually dropped many novels when the wife got kidnapped or tried to be married off or lost her memory for like fifth time in 500 chapters.
    A true loner MC, which also rubs me the wrong way is MC in Korean novels. That guy has no relationships, no romance, nothing. He gets no protection, really does everything by himself and if he does get helped, then the person who help often ends up dying or injured very badly. Even if he has some friends or potential love interest, Korean MC is always alone, never shares secrets with anyone and always keeps his distance from other people.

    I read the novel all the way to the end (it is fully human translated) and I have mixed feelings about it. Not to spoil anything, I didn't particularly enjoy MCs personality past the mid point and in the end, as well as the way it ended.

    You and me both. I keep looking for a novel like that, and can never find any. I guess "Release That Witch" would be the closest to a power couple kind of thing. Hmmm.... "My senior brother is too steady" is also not a bad candidate, it feels more natural in that regard.
    Honestly, it's really frustrating when all novels basically a rehash of one another with exact same plot points. After you read a handful, you basically read all of them.