Discussion What makes a good harem story for you?

Most bad harem stories have the girls only for the sake of loving the MC. And that's it. You got a 2D characters which has no brain.
Alright let's start

The girls chase the MC really hard. Which is no brainer, do they don't have their own thoughts.

The relationship mood can change anytime, yes. I mean, relationship has that going weak and going strong and weak again and strong again. Not just "i love him so muchhh, oh my god" and that's going straight for the rest of the story, which is bullshit.

A good numbers is where people don't really notice it's a harem tilk they read it far enough lol.

 

order from most important parts of harem story , to least important:
1. MC doesn't try to avoid sex - unless there is an important reason - i.e. MC is already dating someone who will be upset by MC xxx others , or lots of people will die if MC has sex. 30 points (It's fine it this point is inapplicable, just ignore this point)
2. MC is a cool guy who actually deserves a harem 25 points
3. girls shouldn't fall for MC/be pushed onto MC for too flimsy reasons: like MC saving them only one time 20 points
4. if harem ending is dismissed, it isn't dismissed for no reason / flimsy reasons. similarly, if harem ending is pushed, the girls in harem should be memorable. 15 points.
5. MC isn't too dense 10 points

If a harem story gets less than 50% of the total of points I listed here (either 50/100 or 35/70 depending), I would probably prefer if story isn't a harem

 

1. Harem members must be no more than 4. I can still believe a person being in love with or 2-3 people at the same time. But when there are over 10-20 or even more members in a harem that is when it becomes hard to differentiate between love or lust.
2. Harem members must be capable and carry the story in their own way and not the type where you forgot their name after several chapters. Sadly this is where most of the story fail in my opinion. Most of the authors (and this is even for female authors who write romance novels or create romance manga) always want the female lead to be under the male lead. That is the reason why you always see when a female is good at swordmanship, the male lead is better, when the female lead is a strong cultivator the male lead is stronger. If the woman is good at business or inventing, the male lead is better at business or turn the female lead invention into actual profit. for example i forgot the name but a female lead who was a villainess remembered her past life and started her own business. But whenever she had problems with her business the so called crown prince was always there to save her ass. And this problem is already with monogamous relationships in novels. Putting this in a novel with 4-5 female leads and make every single one of them relevant and fill a part that the mc can't do is something I have never seen before.
3. I don't know why authors love to take the most annoying or arrogant female character in their stories that had absolutely no chemistry with the mc into a harem member. Always annoying to see.
4. Female character actually need to act like real people. No woman is okay with their husband, fiancee or boyfriend cheating on you and wanting to marry the other girl. At least let them be jealous, let their be catfights or let them actually strive for the mc love.
5. And the last thing is the main character himself can't think with his dick. Scum like the mc from atg, my wife is a beautifull ceo or most of the mc's from these cultivation novels who can't keep their d*cks inside their pants are annoying to see. Honestly when I read these novels I hope that at least one of these harem members will leave these mc's

 

Either having a proper, historical harem or not having any. Web and light novel writers NEVER have the literary skill necessary to portray a situation with a tangled romantic conflict between multiple people as something more than "all the girls UwU at the protagonist and that's their personality and relevance to the story in a nutshell".

 

When it's a realistic byproduct of the MC's actions. I've only seen it work in CN imperial harems so far, where most of the harem obviously didn't love the MC and coveted his power instead.

It's kind of hard to get into modern harems when all the characters seem to share the same single brain cell. It's doubly painful and cringy when it's obvious that the authors are single men or women that never were in a real relationship with anybody.