Discussion What's up with the irrational hate towards NTR?

This thing has confused me for the longest time. Even when I see people explaining why they hate NTR, it's mostly something vague like, "It just hurts," or "There's this tight feeling in my chest," or "I don't like it."
These explanations confuse me even more.

Sure, being cheated on/having your partner stolen is a horrible experience but so is being abandoned by your parents or being punted in school. I don't see these tropes getting as much hate as NTR.

See, even when there's the trope of the boy cheating on the girl, it does not garner as much hate as NTR. At least I don't see as many people inquiring whether the dude is a cheater before starting a manga/hua/hwa or novel. Sure, the people in the comments call him trash or call the other chick trash and drop the series but that agitation does not come near to the hate that ntr gets.
There are people who would drop a series before even starting it, purely because it contains ntr.

Why? What is even up with that? Sit down for a second and really think through the psychology and tell me, why do people hate NTR so much?

 

When you identify with the cuckold, you also live with his shame is what I think. I also believe your argument is a highly subjective and impressionistic one despite the garb of reason it seems to don.

 

Imo it the same situation as "it ok for men to have/want harem but not ok for women to have/want harem"

 

I don't really have a problem with it, porn is porn.

 

Please elaborate for I must know. I haven't been exposed to enough people these days to form an objective argument.

 

The point is different people react differently to various stimuli. How does one even compare feelings? It's not like they are measurable quantities. When dealing with emotions, be it hate or love, one can hardly have any subjective basis. The only frame of reference for your argument here is you yourself, hence the subjectivity. Our perspective is our only instrument for judging the world, true, but when one questions others based on one's highly impressionistic beliefs, problems arise.

 

When there are NTR elements, usually it's a bad end as in the real issues didn't get resolved and no one gets the warm and happy feeling after reading it. The elements of being abandoned by parents or bullied in school, on the other hand, can feel as bad as NTR but unlike NTR, one can actually expect a happy ending as in the issues to be resolved somehow in the end.

If one is looking for something that makes one feels all good and warm inside, NTR is the last thing one should touch. I only read it along with gore and so on when I'm feeling exceptionally bored or curious. So I totally get it if a high number of people actually avoid NTR like the plague.

Although I have to wonder about your definition of NTR. I've never seen anyone use it only when the girl/woman is the one cheating so why are you using it that way?

 

Yes, thank you.

 

Is it hate? For me, it's just revulsion. Hence, I avoid it.

At least with regular cheating, you know they'll break up and a better ML will come.

With NTR... I can't understand the MC at all, I don't even like looking at it, and the concept just grosses me out.

It's not really irrational.

 

There are two things about NTR that stick out to me. The first is that NTR is usually designed to appeal to a certain fetish, so it makes sense that people who don't share that fetish find it unappealing. It's not that different from stories that cater to rape fantasies or BDSM. The second is that some readers live vicariously through the protagonist so any discomfort they feel will get amplified.

I think that there are other things that bug readers just as much as NTR, and often for eve less reason. Just look at all those comments out there about hating how the protagonist keeps doing stupid things. Protagonists doing stupid things is one of the core staples of fiction so hate towards this is way harder to explain.

 

I feel what's really irrational is how any female an MC even glances at these days can't get into a relationship with a different guy without someone in the comments screaming "NTR". Staying in the vicinity of the MC for any significant period of time does not automagically make them his lover. That's not getting into that NTR is a more specific thing than cheating. As I don't read NTR-type stuff, my main annoyance is definitely coming from the people flipping out about it / warning people "it's NTR" when what actually happens is a completely normal/positive occurrence ("Oh, a lady I work with found a loving BF. Good for them!"). This might be more a manga comment section thing, but it's getting rather grating.

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OP: Inquiring whether the dude is a cheater/unfaithfull is generally folded into the more general question of whether it's harem or not, especially if it is a cultivation-type series as those tend to form harems via infidelity, and people get super heated about that. An MC that is a cheater in a non-harem series presumably suffered consequences from being an unfaithful bastard, at least to the extent that they didn't get to keep the first relationship, which would likely cool the raging mob just a little.

 

NTR hate isn't irrational at all, though. It's a strong hint that the main character will be unrelatable, he and/or the heroine will be idiotic, and the plot will be weak.

And, on the chance that the above is incorrect for a specific work, that just makes it painful.

Well, any work that can be described as fetish-driven has similar problems, not just NTR. I'm sure a lot of people would complain heavily if they were reading a self-insert OP protagonist who got hit by a loli and suddenly screamed "hit me more" and became her slave (... I believe I may have seen a dozen works or so where that happened. Thanks Japan). And I know for a fact that there was a decent amount of complaining about a novel where every girl seemed to end up in bondage and became a slave maid for the protagonist. That's because they're fetishes, by definition outside the range of normalcy, and by pushing them in the reader's face you will lose readers. For most fetishes, you can ignore a little, but NTR is about emotional pain, and many readers empathize with the protagonist and read to get away from the pain of real life...

 

I mind NTR when the whole plot revolves around it and there is no progress in the plot, the same way i avoid harem/reverse harem too if it covers a considerable amount of plot as its not something i would like to read as it involves lots of emotional entanglement and as the plot progresses it becomes more and more rubbish.

Well i do mind people just blindly commenting on novels being NTR when they are not. But i dont think people would mind reading novels with NTR if it is not the main topic of the plot it happens when the mc keeps on cheating and keeps on adding members to harem/reverse harem.


Most of the NTR ones are not written seriously they are mainly of fantasy genre so it gets more and more tough to be relatable to mc if its not seriously written. People would rather avoid it if the mc is female as there are more male readers who read fantasy genre female readers mostly like a heartwarming story and if male readers chances upon one they find them repulsive as they would connect more with the male lead the same way female readers avoid harem in modern setting. But female readers dont actively point it out as the male readers do by actively giving bad reviews and bad comments as most of the male population have this in mind that its not okay for them to cheat but if a women cheat they find it not acceptable at all, but i do think this mentality of men would keep on progressing as the years go by. But if you are trying to stop them from targeting NTR you can give bad reviews to harem novels in modern settings too to release your frustration or just ignore it there is no meaning in discussing its as it wont change there mentality at all.

 

I do agree that a lot of people cry NTR when it's just the relationship didn't work out and people getting too butthurt about it can be weird. I mean sometimes *** hapens and people break up, that's life and it's probably natural that it would show up in fiction at times. That being said, I feel like there's a lot of conflation with NTR and Harem, which seems off to me, because I always felt the good harems/reverse harems were the ones where everyone was on the same page.

Harems/Reverse-Harems are supposed to be fun. Harems are supposed to be non-harmful. For me, the best Harem's are basically just good romance multiplied. If the writing's done well, even if its fantastically unrealistic, everyone's on the same page, and usually everyone is more or less happy with the situation at the end. Alternatively, it can be one of those not-a-harem harems where there are lot of potential ships, but only one boat is going to end up going out to sea in the end, which is also fine.

NTRs on the otherhand are almost always like a punch to the gut.

I don't like NTR for the same reason that I generally will bail if a story's villain MC is too scummy. The reader rides the MCs shoulder and some rides are just plainly unpleasant. Let's put it this way, in Reverand Insanity there's a scene where the MC incapacitates a woman so he can cover her in honey and feed her to a **** bear. That was a rough ride, and pretty much cemented the story's place in my all-time least favorite stories. Bad NTR can have that sort of OOF factor.

 

/thread

 

I can't speak for others, but the main reason I dislike NTR is that the "stolen" lover is often just treated as a plot device or possibly even a villain, even in cases where they might be the real victim.
A lot of people don't seem to be able to draw a distinction between a character willingly cheating or being forced/blackmailed into it, and sometimes not even from the mc's one sided love just not working out, with no relationship to cheat on in the first place.
People definitely complain about NTR too often without nuance though, since you can still make a good story with it as long as you actually handle the characters well.

 

It depends on the story but generally NTR means you have a person being betrayed because he is incompetent, worthless, stupid and get abandoned. Then you also have the person doing the abandonment because they don't want to stick it to the end but run for greener pastures.

It doesn't matter how you hack it (unless you kill them all), it will be deeply personal and at least one person who survive is being finicky, easily swayed and disloyal sticking around like a bad rash.

 

In short. Your name tells us that you enjoy grass. But what if you treated someone the same way who was invited over for dinner at your place? What if you placed bowls filled with freshly plucked grass from your backyard? Grass juice for drinks! Grass cakes for dessert. Lunchboxes packed with grass for taking away leftovers!

Its the same thing with NTR. What's delicious food to you might be another man's poison. Not so difficult to figure this out now, I hope!

 

NTR the netorare aka lover get stolen maybe cuz hate about cheating and stuff~

as cat who like read drama which involves romance that sometimes have separation, netorare is good stuff.... if execute well, but most story especially hentai with NTR element is dumb enuf~ on par with vanilla story~
yare yare desu~


oh well hentai is different stuff altogether~
back to netorare on normal hmm tbh it hard to execute cuz its about drama no? seem simple like romance but to make it engaging its hard~

 

Depends on the type of ntr. Some go way out of the way to show the pain and loss. While others it's basically just about an alpha take from others.