Discussion Xianxia harem defense force

Discussion in 'Novel Discussion' started by Joospinch, Mar 17, 2021.

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  1. Joospinch

    Joospinch Don't click my avatar!!!

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    Soooo i was reading divine throne of primordial blood and so far MC is pretty loyal to main girl, he cried like a bitch when she rejected him and finally they got in a hidden sort of relationship anyways cus blah blah they cant be together cus of cultivator prejudice, so they seem pretty in love and all but guess what? This other girl thats been enemies with MC for a few years(yeah she survived cus shes pretty obvioisly the ruthless against enemy trope wont work against her) anways she and her clan has always been at odds with MC and he even killed an important elder to her and clan members that were protecting her she was captured and seen mc's daily life got some stockholm syndrome action and was memory wiped by MC until they met a few years later in different circumstances fast forward till she falls in love again and regains her memory, the infallible MC who clearly has the main girl who he was pursuing in his heart and her only suddenly fell to an aphrodisiac and fucked this other girl, he felt bad obviously and wanted to travel back and explain to his 'wife' but ofcourse since he is alchemist and the aphrodisiac was part of his makings he had to 'test' it out so they tumbled again, i just couldnt continue because of the hypocrisy it reeked istg MC was portrayed to be ashamed and sad to betray his loved one guess what? Lets continue cheating and now i dont know it seems he is not going back to his wife to apologize but rather induct another girl to the hall of fame/harem.

    I really liked this novel everything was great until the harem tag shat on my plate. Whats sad is that even the main girl basically added nothing in the way of characterization only being someone who drives the plot forvward because her clan wont allow her to marry mc or he must save her hence why even the romance is ass.

    Over the years ive come to notice that its not that i hate harem but its the hypocritical and unrealistic way its done, even the shitty justification they(girl harem members) convince themselves with is that MC is too ambitious/strong/powerful to have a single wife and im pretty damn sure this is going to happen further in this story, what a bullshit excuse imagine that happened irl? Do you see millionaires escorted by harems everywhere? Where in this world wealth is power by this shitty logic that should be the case.

    Honestly any real woman would castrate their husband if something as retarded as this where to happen or atleast not accept it so willingly.

    Now this is where my rant leads to, i want to vent my frustration by reading a xianxia novel where mc tries to build a harem but is heavily denied by his wife maybe even beaten up, any recs?
     
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  2. oKrBn

    oKrBn Well-Known Member

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    This is why I started to despise harems. I've read too many where what you said above happens. He goes on an on about his love for the girl yet when she's taken away or whatever cliche is involved he starts fucking random thots hes met for like a day. Its honestly infuriating
     
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  3. Zeusomega

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

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    Man u got me in the part "castrate" lmao.. XD

    Idk any of such... Don't think there are any infact.. Xianxia is written by middle age Chinese men who are driven in adding flamboyant masochism in their novels... Even if there were any female xianxia writers I doubt they would even touch upon harem... Most likely reverse harem
     
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  4. Emissary Nouvelle

    Emissary Nouvelle Well-Known Member

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    *Sees title *
    *Thumps Chest *

    REPORTING FOR DUTY SIR!!!!!!

    *Reads the actual comment *
    Nani!
    I was,tricked
    .....
    Addressing your problem, I don't read harem with two since it doesn't match my definition if a harem. Like Divine throne and wu.dong kian kun (I think that's the spelling). It's more like a why bother for.me. I don't really read romance since I read a lot of them when I was younger and liked reading books. And there are movies as well. So many love stories, why do I need more when they are so easy to find, movies are also better since they are more emotional. I'm not ashamed to say I cried manly tears a few times watching some romance movies.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 19, 2021
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  5. aShinyVaporeon

    aShinyVaporeon Well-Known Member

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    Generally I'm ok with harem, but I hate it when they try to pair the MC with one of them or put 'romance' in it. I can ignore a background harem, but when there's a main girl and the MC still is indulging other girls it feels weird. The less character development for a harem there is, the less I am attached to the harem member, and the more I can ignore it. It's also ok in mainly romance novels if the MC doesn't indulge others, is only in one relationship at a time and gives proper answers to all of their harem members. I just think of it as the novel having a few extra second male/female leads.

    Consensual harems (everyone involved is ok with the situation) are eh when done right but seriously immersion-breaking if the author gives it a weird justification. Generally I can brush it over if the harem is just like "oh, MC is happier when we're all there" and the rest of the novel is ok, but if the harem is the main component of the novel, I might flip a table and drop the novel.
     
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  6. DustySpiral

    DustySpiral Well-Known Member

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    I felt the Aphro thing in divine throne was stupid too, and basically skipped ahead to see what was happening with the first girl before going back eventually reading the arc where he hasn't told her yet. The hypocrisy :mad:. Anyway, to spoil future stuff in Divine Throne of Primordial Blood / talk more about the relationship situation in that one:
    > The first gal is not okay with this, and it's pretty clear if the plot didn't bend over backwards to give the MC a chance their relationship would have been through. Alas, the plot does exactly that: The MC chooses to bring the affair up at a point in time where cleanly cutting ties with him would be really bad (for her). She nearly breaks it off anyway... but not quite so he gets a chance to work things out he doesn't deserve. MC ends up with both of them as wives.. eventually.
    > The second gal continues to be more important to the plot than #1 for most of the series. At least, as a character. #1 certainly serves as a goal to achieve early on, and as a weapon to unleash in the latter volumes. IMO, the MC has changed as a person since he and #1 fell for each other in the first volume and this disconnect would show if the author ever tried describing their interactions outside of a few short spurts - #2 genuinely fits him better but he's not willing to choose and the plot has his back. This is relative though - #2 doesn't get tons of screen time either but look who she's competing against.
    > This doesn't make the aphro scene any less stupid, especially for an MC that should have other ways of resolving the situation, but the aphro-bs in that case was an absurd plot-excuse for two characters that wanted to have an affair to have an affair. It could be reasoned that the MC fell for it because he intentionally made no attempt to stop it once it started. The 'testing' excuse was certainly just straight-up cheating - especially since the MC and (IIRC) gal #2 both complete what the testing is supposed to be doing for them and then fail to mention that to keep it going. Which is somewhat unusual as the BS aphro trope is usually used to initiate an emotional connection instead of being used after a female antagonist and the MC have already developed feelings for each other in a more normal-ish fashion (the second time in her case, not the obvious stockholm syndrome time).

    tldr: In summary, it's treated as / first gal views it as an intentional affair (which it is) that the MC is a dirtbag for having (which he is), but the first gal's circumstances are so bad he eventually gets both of them anyway (bleh). It'd have been interesting if the first gal HAD broken it off completely, and the MC resolved her issues anyway both as an apology and because he still cares about her suffering even if they aren't getting married. The subset of readers used to such harem-creation tropes probably would have been enraged by that though, and I don't know how large or small a portion of the financial base of the series such readers are/were.

    ----------------------
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    As for the question you actually made this thread to ask: I wish I knew of a series like that, but I’ve never seen one. I think it'd be less "beats him up" and more "breaks up with him / doesn't keep pursuing him" though.

    I do know of an isekai series where the MC has feelings for a woman, that has feelings for him, and he doesn't pursue a relationship because it'd obviously make his wife sad even though he knows she wouldn't break up with him for it due to {reasons}. Because he, y'know, loves his wife and doesn't want to do that to her. It falls a bit short though due to a previous plot element having already basically created a harem without him having cheated (see spoiler). The fact that he doesn't expand it when he does have a choice is.. it's not nothing but less than what I was hoping for.
    The series gave that MC plot reasons to combine with a copy of himself that had been living his own life with a different lover without explaining why he can't just split himself back into two afterward. It doesn't seem like there's a reason why he couldn't do that. The MC refusing to expand the harem is nice and all but there's no reason for that story have one in the first place. Particularly since it's a series that consistently showed MC harems as being awful things. Granted, given realm timeflow differences and the second woman being mortal while the MC / #1 are immortal this might not be an issue for long but it's still enraging.
     
    Last edited: Mar 17, 2021
  7. Joospinch

    Joospinch Don't click my avatar!!!

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    Glad you spoiled on me what happens with #1 and with how opportunistic it seems for MC to help her then as a result get her to acquiesce to the harem is opportunistic so im leaving it as it is

    Honestly that novel you are speaking about looks like its trying to bend logic and force a harem situation to please the audience, like bruh im not against harem but please do it properly
     
    Last edited: Mar 18, 2021
  8. Joospinch

    Joospinch Don't click my avatar!!!

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    Haha i didnt mean to bait you like this, but yea i dont read xianxia for the romance as that would paint the whole romance genre in a very bad light resulting in unrealistic expectations and because its quite honestly bad, i hate it when its always part of a xianxia novel because ik 9/10 times it will be bad, its the equivalent of trying to download an antivirus and you are forced to download like a weird web browser with it
     
  9. Joospinch

    Joospinch Don't click my avatar!!!

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    This is where i stand, have a harem but do it right not in the weasly immersion breaking manner that you just mentioned
     
  10. Joospinch

    Joospinch Don't click my avatar!!!

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    I haven't read any xianxia made by female author but you are right that the vast majority of xianxia is made by middle aged men and the way they perceive romantic relationships is a bit skewed hence why the disconnect and unrealistic depiction in their novel. What is sad is that im not even interested in the romance aspect of xianxia but its being shoved down my throat its like a flower placed on top of cow dung(lol)
     
  11. Joospinch

    Joospinch Don't click my avatar!!!

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    *Salutes*
    Excellent work, soldier!
     
  12. powwder

    powwder Well-Known Member

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    your problem is you are using modern standards to judge another fictional world. the beliefs you hold as a modern human only work today and using it as the basis for everything is wrong. For example in Romeo and Juliet, Juliet was only 13. Another example is back in the day (1642) the penalty for adultery was death. imagine if cheating meant death today. if those were too long ago even more recent is in 2020 62% of americans supported same sex marriage but in 2007 it was only 36%. morals have changed and what we believe to be correct changes as well.

    why does this matter? simple in standard cultivation novels it makes sense for a great man to have a harem. the powerful can do literally anything they want and just like in real life women want to be with competent powerful men. you used modern rich people as an example, can you imagine what would happen if Jeff Bezos punched someone in the face or killed someone in public? forget that, what if Jeff Bezos said something racist, could you imagine what would happen to him? this would never happen in cultivation novels. a rich powerful man in a cultivation novel can kill anyone he wants for whatever reason in front of literal kings with zero repercussion.

    if this didn't convince you then here is the final truth.....Harems still exist. Polygyny (polygamy in which a man has more than one wife) is legal in 58 of 200 sovereign states the vast majority of them being Muslim majority countries in Africa and Asia. Plus you can look at people such as Hugh Heffner and Dan Bilzerian as modern rich people with harems. So yeah i've seen harems of women, and even though they aren't married look at any millionaire or anyone famous who goes out partying and look at all the THOTs they attract.
     
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  13. DustySpiral

    DustySpiral Well-Known Member

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    powwder, it's true that the post you're responding to is claiming the MC getting away with it is more unrealistic than it likely would be. I agree, the MC getting away with it in such settings is reasonable enough. I feel the opening post had three-ish arguments/feelings in it, however.

    The first was the lack of realism in the MC getting away with it, which you covered.

    The second is that the women involved get over it too easily / the lack of jealousy and other reasonable infighting that is often shown if it isn't the MC's harem being displayed. You brought up the THOT cloud that follows the rich and powerful; if MC harems were comprised entirely of gold-diggers that'd make a quite a bit of sense! After all, if harem member #14 is signing up for wealth and power then them not minding that the MC has virtually no time to do things with them is fair enough. But MC harems usually are NOT comprised entirely of THOTS, and that's where their lack of pain/jealously/anger/etc starts feeling ridiculous. Culture has changed, humans largely have not. History is also filled with love rivals undermining each other, after all. You can go back much farther than the middle ages to get stories of that!

    This is especially absurd in the kind of series the OP is talking about - ones where the first woman thought they were in an exclusive relationship for years until they suddenly weren't. I do feel the novel the OP is talking about does address this, as it were, but the MC is still a dirtbag taking advantage of the plot handing him away to get away with it. Which brings us to the third argument.

    The third argument is that the MC was in line with a moral value the OP holds for much of the series and then suddenly they weren't. Let's imagine the same thing happening with a different moral value: In many cultivation series the MC could get away with refining mortal children into treasures. They're just mortals, after all. But if an otherwise normal-ish, somewhat morally upstanding MC suddenly started hunting kids 400 chapters in readers are likely going to feel a bit.. betrayed? Disappointed? Angry, perhaps. The MC being able to get away with it because their culture allows for it isn't going to change that feeling.

    Most fictional worlds are still populated with humans, and these humans are generally assumed to be similar to RL humans. Accepting the existence of a harem isn't the same as being pleased about it. Even in cultivation series the cultivators are often portrayed as being normal-ish humans with mighty powers, especially when it comes to relationships.
     
  14. Fishy_MC_FishMan

    Fishy_MC_FishMan The Fishiest of Fishes

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    Personally, I don’t really love, or hate, harem stories, but I definitely like the discussions about them because they are so often charged with strong emotions making them an interesting read.

    I do feel the OP’s pain in regards to a good romance being destroyed by sudden onset harem syndrome. Recently I was reading such a story. The only thing I liked about it was the romance, but then they separated the two characters, and added a new female companion, so I knew what was coming :LOL:. I kind of lost interest after that:(.

    Anyways, I’ve found that I’m never really that satisfied with the love stuff in stories these days. Even when it’s absent I’m still unsatisfied because they still feel the need to constantly validate the MC by having people falling for them, and then I start too resent the MC for ignoring them all.

    After thinking about it for a long time, I think I’ve realized what the problem is, basically what I really want is for the MC to have a low drama, normal fluffy monogamist romance in the background of the story not taking up too much of the word count. This doesn't seem to be popular though, unfortunately for me :LOL:.... . . :(.

    All that aside, I find the topic of realistic characters really interesting because I’m not too sure I really believe in them. That's because so much of us, and thus the character we make, are influenced by our culture. Really, it is so hard to see outside our cultural influences, at least for me it is, so I think we tend to falsely assume our cultural realities are true in all times, and places.
     
    Last edited: Mar 20, 2021
  15. Fluffums

    Fluffums 【R-18 Researcher】【Seeker of Moe】

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    Re: xianxia harems...

    ... If anyone can support a harem, it's someone who will eventually become a god.

    Though, the way authors try to justify harems is just ridiculous, given that they don't try to justify randomly acquiring cheat abilities, arrogant young master stampedes, all-knowing teachers who go to a small town for no real reason, etc. If it's not "I want a harem" but "I just happened to fall in love with multiple women and I have the resources and strength to support them" then that's all the author should really need.

    My firm feeling in 100% of these cases is that none of these authors could handle developing a monogamous relationship in the story due to lack of experience, so they replaced that with starting new relationships over and over, but they didn't want to make the previous heroines leave, so they needed it to be a harem, but referring to their lack of experience in even monogamous relationships, who could expect them to handle getting a harem properly?

    The lot of them should just leave the romance out of it.
     
  16. God slayer

    God slayer Retired God Slayer

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    You've my condolences you're not the only one who has suffered like that..... ಥ‿ಥ
     
  17. Joospinch

    Joospinch Don't click my avatar!!!

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    Congratulations, you probably got the closest towards my reasoning.

    The thing with harem is that many authors who can't even write normal romance want to tackle it, its like putting the horse before the cart(lol). Its less about the realism because truth be told no one can truly write a harem accurately unless they had one but like you said earlier the author and the reader had a rapport of almost 200 chapters showcasing a healthy monogamous relationship only for it to end up in adultery, u can see where the sourness is coming from right? I don't paricularly hate harem and im a firm believer that it can be good when done right, but the vast majority of authors want to build a computer before they even know how to make a calculator. Soo many good stories ruined because of this *sigh*

    Well who wouldnt lose interest at that? Its like a small dosage of ntr unless you have a fetish you wouldnt enjoy that, personally i gave the author a few chances, i was willing to overlook the whole adultery because of aphrodisiac mainly because the MC showed remorse and wanted to immediately travel back to his main wife, guess what? The author spat a fat loogey back at my face, had the mc fuck the other girl just to *test* the aphrodisiac(mc is an alchemist he made this drug) the final nail in the coffin is me finding out that this situation which would normally end in divorce carried little to no repercussion to our mc because of plot. What an awful fucking way to introduce a harem. All the time when authors make people fall for the MC just got too bland for me tbh its just wish fulfilment and kinda breaks the immersion in the story because who in their right mind believes that a girl would fall for you because say you "didn't treat her like royalty/noble/etc"

    This could be it? A vicious cycle of ingesting more heroin to scratch the itch, its like a fat child trying not to steal from the candy jar yet failing miserably, ah we introduced and hyped up this heroine and finally inducted her into the hall of fame(MCs harem) lets retire her from the story and look for new fresh fruit. Its just horrible writing, i just hope they stop adding romance ffs im here to read an action packed xianxia...

    This is such a cruel reality to our brethren... We only want to read thrilling action but are sidetracked by these horrible episodes of "harem".

    If at the very least they were gold diggers i would accept that as thats more realistic but not this crap. @powwder thinks im against harem because its against my cultural and societal ideas, but im not rather im against shitty writing
     
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  18. Joospinch

    Joospinch Don't click my avatar!!!

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    Make Harem Great Again!
    This is where the name of this thread comes from!
     
  19. Isaac20

    Isaac20 Dark Lord | RS

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    Haha... Is there this kind of defense force?
    :sushi_peak: I'm fine with harem as long as they don't interfere with the hero's path.:blobhero::sushi_hide:
     
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