It Feels Rapey: Harem Comedies, or How I Hate your Waifu · 3:52am Jan 24th, 2017
Audio version of this blog, by Imrix. This is Part Two of a series. Part One can be read here.
Look, we both know Harem Writers only work on their craft because so far nobody has invented a way to French-kiss your own asshole. But even the most cynical of idiots eventually has to stop and wonder what even the point is.
Is it making money? It has to be making money. Harem Comedies are to human culture what clown makeup is to innocence. There’s no way anybody is creating this with an honest belief that they are contributing something to the world. Harem comedies are a story-shaped void, a fucking time vampire, mediocrity made flesh.
They are not worth our time, is what I mean.
But if we follow this reasoning, then why the hell am I doing this blog series? Nothing I’m gonna say is convincing anybody that wasn’t on my side to begin with, and quite honestly, there are better ways to masturbate. This shit is still successful. It’s everywhere. I’m just shortening my lifespan by forcing myself to actively think about this garbage.
So the question remains. Why bother?
Well, that’s fucking easy to answer, isn’t it. It’s because I’m a spiteful, sad, bitter son of a bitch, and I won’t rest until you’re all as miserable as I am. Because I’ve developed a serious “us vs. them” attitude when it comes to this. That’s why I bother.
Fuck giving them an easy way out. Fuck giving up on the critique just because it’s a lot of work. Fuck giving them the chance of ignoring my points because they’re not thorough enough. Fuck letting them say that I just “don’t get it”.
‘Cause I get it, you weaselfuck, I really fucking get it. That’s why I’m such a spiteful, sad, bitter son of a bitch. Because I know exactly what’s happening, why this shit is so popular. And I hate it.
That’s why I’m writing this instead of, say, feeding my balls to a baby whale.
Hi, I’m Aragón. This is “Harem Comedies, part Two.”
Let’s talk about the girls.
2. LET’S TALK ABOUT THE GIRLS.
If I ever met my clone, we would fight to see who gets to give the first blowjob. And yet, I still find Harem Comedies offensive in their shamelessness.
This is a story where the main hook is that there are seven completely different girls, and they all want to fuck you. This is the adult version of shoving your pet turtle in the microwave and hoping you’ll get a ninja. Every time I try to picture the Harem Writer’s thought process, everything becomes blurry—and I wake up three weeks later, covered in semen, feeling like there’s a flower made of farts in my brain.
Harem Comedies are fanservice and wish-fulfillment first, story second. They’re the best way to masturbate if you hate your own penis. But it’s one thing to set yourself such a stupid fucking goal, but to then fail at it?
Because they fail. They fail so hard. They try to write a masturbatory fantasy, but they have no idea how—there are a hundred million fucking Harem Comedies out there, and they all have the exact same characters.
Every time I think of this I become dumber by proxy. I’d say Harem Writers think “originality” is a venereal disease, but that would imply they want to be original. All I know about women is that anal’s fair if it’s my birthday, and I still see this as stupid.
If the entire concept of your story is that the reader can pick between a number of different girls, why on Earth would you make them all look and act the same. This is so goddamn stupid. If the story is character-driven, you can’t recycle characters. The entire genre is stale because of this shit.
This is the basic problem of every Harem Comedy: it’s been done. If you’re so fucking dumb you can’t understand why this is not a good thing, go read the first part of this series. To the rest of you: this is just really fucking bad. It’s the worst thing that can happen to a story. Recycling characters again and again is not just a failure. It’s having a Yu Gi Oh pun as a pick-up line.
But that’s surface-level criticism. For once, I’m not talking about your dad when I say I’m going deep in this bitch. What I’m going to do here, in this blog, is list all the clones the Harem Comedy uses in all their iterations, and then I’ll explain what is wrong with every single one of them.
Buckle up, ‘cause this will be a long one.
2.1 – The “Tsundere”.
You know me: I adore recycling stuff, walking the well-traveled road, making my life easier. I won’t bother chewing an apple if I can slurp the juice off a hobo’s mouth. I only fuck married women, because their standards have been comfortably lowered.
But even I have my limits. In Japanese media, the “tsundere” is more prevalent than tentacles, and God, do I hate her.
The “tsundere” is to romance what BDSM is to kindergartens. I’ve talked about it before, in depth, so I won’t bother re-telling everything that was said there, but this archetype still deserves a mention. Why? Because no matter which Harem Comedy you’re reading, she’ll always be the main heroine.
Harem Comedies lie to the readers. In-universe, and if we take this as a story instead of an excuse to jack off, the premise is: a bunch of girls all want to kiss the same dude. Said same dude has emotional erectile dysfunction. So who will be the final girl? Who will the protagonist choose?
As far as hooks go, this is weaker than a French boxer. It’s sort of a reimagining of the murder mystery—any girl can win, and you need to pick up on clues to see what the end will be like.
Only, you don’t. Because the “tsundere” always wins. So there’s absolutely no point to anything.
Why, you might ask? It’s obvious to a skullfucking degree, if you think about it. Do you know how every single piece of media made around the figure of Casanova has the exact same storyline?
With one beautiful exception.
He’s the perfect lover. And he falls in love with the only woman he can’t seduce. This is the high concept—the story itself will be about his attempts to actually gain that woman’s love. In the meantime, he becomes less of a sociopath, something something true love, then happy ending.
It’s always the same, because it’s the easiest story to tell.
This is what I like to call the “Casanova Clause”. Giacomo Casanova, as a fictional character, can be interesting. But if you turn him into the most shallow, featureless piece of garbage you can muster, he’s defined only by one trait: he can fuck any woman. And when you have this little to work with, there’s only a story to tell with him: What if he can’t fuck a woman?
This is what the Casanova Clause dictates: certain characters—especially if you’re an idiot—have only one story in them. Their personality is made in such a way that they can only go in one direction, and once that road is traveled there’s nothing else to them. They have a pre-set character arc. They can’t deviate.
So why is the “tsundere” always the flagship girl of the Harem Comedy, the alpha bitch of the pack? Because she’s a Casanova, she follows the Clause. She wants to fuck the main character but won’t admit it, and that’s her main trait. The only thing she can do, then, is to learn to admit that she dreams of that sweet boipussy.
Here’s where the danger lies—if every “tsundere” goes through the same character arc, then she can’t be the main girl. Because this means that the show’s main conflict will always follow the same structure, and the plot will be exactly the same.
Yeah, we’ve already established that’s not an issue for the Harem Writer. But wait, it gets better. You have to remember two things here:
· First: in this genre, the characters are frozen in time. They are not allowed to grow or change, because then they would stop being archetypes, and that’s what sells the most money.
· Second: Harem Comedies are carefully engineered to be as appealing as possible, and to fool the readers into thinking this is worth their fucking time.
See, a “tsundere” never really grows. She doesn’t undergo a character arc, she never becomes anything new in an organic way. Her entire shtick is to be sweet but also kind of an asshole, and somehow switching between one or the other, depending on what is more titillating. It’s understood that “growing” is, for her, to stop being an asshole and just being sweet all the time, or at least being sweet more often.
But plain and simple, that is not going to happen while the story is running. Because a “tsundere” that doesn’t act like a dick at random times is not really a “tsundere”, and as we said, we can’t allow that..
Here’s the trick, though. See, what matters is not what happens during the story; Harem Comedies are 99% filler anyway. What the readers are going to remember once it’s all said and done is the ending.
Even the shittiest of stories needs at least the illusion of an arc, to fool idiots into thinking something happened along the way. So at the last possible moment of the story, the “tsundere” will suddenly change gears, and go full saccharine, all but forgetting the way she’s been acting for what has possibly been years in- and out-of-story.
This means that, effectively, the “tsundere” is a completely different character come the end of the story. But in all honesty, who gives a shit? The “tsundere” at least has a clear goal, an emotional place she has to reach—you can’t even say that about the rest of the girls. So slap that fucking sweetness on her tits and move on with your life, because we’re only using this for the last few chapters and by then the story isn’t lucrative anymore.
She’s been frozen in time all the way up until now, but we need to wrap this up somehow. If the writer wants to offer some kind of closure—to avoid post-ending backlash, for example—then the classiest way is to retcon the entirety of the series into a character study.
At no point whatsoever did the character grow into liking anybody, she just suddenly wasn’t useful as a “tsundere” anymore. So she kisses the main character. Her arc is complete. The story sorta kinda maybe feels like it had some heart, because look, character development.
Is this good? No. I sing Bon Jovi at weddings, and even I find this tacky. But still, this is the best way to go. This is the best choice Harem Writers have when coming up with an ending.
Because literally every other character is even worse.
2.2 – The Big Boobs.
I once met a farmer who couldn’t stop masturbating to his cow’s udders, and even he had more shame than this character.
Big Boobs characters are natural, in that “Koalas eat their mom’s shit when they’re six months old” kind of way. It makes sense why they pop up, but it still makes me puke. A Big Boobs character is what happens when a person who knows nothing about tits or women tries to write both.
Some schools of thought believe that women are independent from their boobs—I abide to this philosophy, because it makes sexism easier. The breast is an afterthought, an addendum, a plus to the person attached to them. Ask your girlfriend if you’re not sure: most women won’t even think about their own tits 24/7, because sucking my dick takes most of their schedule.
Someone didn’t get the memo, though. Big Boobs characters are designed around their cleavage, in this hilariously stupid way that makes it clear Harem Writers think “irony” is German for “toilet paper”. Big Boobs are an excuse to gain broad appeal, the most basic entity men would like to fuck.
They think of the nipple, and then build the rest around it. Archetype first, character second—you might remember those words from the “Tsundere” blog, and they’re equally accurate here. They have NOTHING going on, aside from their physical appearance. That is the entire basis of their creation.
This means that, yes, Big Boobs characters are bad because, even if we ignore the obvious sexism inherent to them—we can play this game all night long people: objectification, ridiculous standards, dehumanization, fetishization…—even if we ignore that? They’re always empty, shallow, with no depth. You can’t create a house without bricks, and you can’t turn a body part into an actual characterization. “Is fat” is a more engaging personality trait, because that at least means the character likes to eat. What the fuck do you get from “has boobs?” That she has a certain combination of chromosomes? I’ve fucked Sumo wrestlers who would agree to disagree.
A screaming baboon makes for a better story arc. Big Boobs characters, softcore porn aside, are always split into two groups: Good Boobs and Bad Boobs. When you can reduce an entire literary genre into a binary choice, that’s when you know the pastor was right when he advised your mother to kill you.
Good Boobs covers her quivering bosom. She sees her bust as a source of embarrassment. She dresses modestly, acts introverted, quiet, and shy—she’s pretty much Fluttershy in human form. Have you ever wondered why people tend to humanize Shy with huge bazongas? Thank this cliché.
This is a pure woman, so she realizes that sex is evil. She’ll never ride the Aragón Train, so she avoids showing off her cleavage and pretty much denies her own boobs. She’s defined by opposition.
But wait, we’re not done yet—Bad Boobs is still unexplained, and she makes it even clearer that the author sniffs his mother’s underwear whenever she’s not around. Bad Boobs is the absolute opposite of Good Boobs; she loves sex and being sexual, dresses provocately, brags about her beauty.
They’re what an awkward fuck thinks a flirt is supposed to be like—so she unbuckles your pants five minutes into the conversation, and chances are she’s not even aware that she’s doing it. If Good Boobs is a denial of sex, this is an approval nod.
It all boils down to the tits, really. Tits equal sex, and sex either repulses you or excites you. You might recognize this mentality as that of a five year old—and if media is supposed to teach us lessons and carry morals, endorsing this kind of character is oiling your face to fight acne.
Juvenile is the word you’re looking for. Fetish fuel, creepy paradoxes (boobs are great, but also evil), and the idea that good women should be embarrassed by their own bodies. This character represents both their ideal partner and the horrible skunk that said she wouldn’t go to the prom with them.
I honestly can’t tell what Harem Writers hate the most: women, or themselves.
2.3 – The Foreigner
Well, at this point this doesn’t surprise me, not going to lie.
Indeed, most Harem Comedies, especially the ones in Japanese comic format, have at least one foreigner character. This being Japan, the racism couldn’t be more blatant if they called the girl Watermelon McNigNog. The foreigners are constantly laughing, dreadfully stupid, “Jungle Fever” pretty, and have no fucking idea how to act in a civilized society. I’m from a country where our most popular sweets are named Lil’ Congos, and even I find this offensive.
Yeah. This looks harmless.
I get that from a Western point of view this doesn’t sound bad, but trust me, in Japan, they are racist towards white people. They expect you to wear a cowboy hat and fuck a cheeseburger as soon as you arrive to the airport.
Which makes sense if you’re from Alabama—but to the rest of the world, this is a painful reminder that no matter what race you are, some people will always ask the Italian kid if his last name is Spaghetti.
Some people will fight me over this, though, that’s the best part. For those who are ready to call me a liberal motherfucker: Writing foreign characters as part of a Harem is, by all means, not harmful on its own. Writing every goddamn Western girl as a mixture of quirky and fucking idiotic, however, is.
2.4 – The Perfect Girl
People tend to mystify what they don’t understand. Following this logic, Harem Writers believe pussy cures cancer.
And shit, why wouldn’t it? Dumb people define themselves by contradiction—you see something you dislike, and you build yourself as its total opposite. It’s easier than thinking, and it makes you feel like you’re special. That’s why every teenager thinks they’re fighting the status quo by wearing anarchist t-shirts, why the Internet is better at screaming than arguing, and why goths think we give a shit.
The Harem Writers do something similar here. They assume that their audience is consumed by self-hatred, so they create its diametrical opposite: a smart, popular, pretty girl. She’s athletic and gets perfect grades. She’s the president of the Student Council. She has a fan club. Everybody loves her.
They overdo it, is what I mean, because they legitimately seethe their readers, and there’s just no limit to this. Thus, the Perfect Girl is born: she has no flaws, no weak points, no inner demons. The only struggle she faces is that she’s too perfect, to the point that she can’t connect with people. All that admiration they feel for her gets in the way.
And what does this character do in the series? She falls in love with the main character. Of course she does. This is Robocop with tits, and you make her fall in love with the braindead husk you call your protagonist.
What’s the problem here? Well, same as ever: it doesn’t make sense. Breaks immersion, ‘cause there’s no reason why she would be enamored with something as vapid as the Harem Protagonist.
In fiction, you fall in love with qualities—and I’m sorry, she kind of sets the bar way too high. To this kind of character, NOTHING counts as a virtue. Whatever you do, she’s done it already. You’re pretty? She’s a professional supermodel. You play guitar? She once shat a piano. Seven-inch dick? THIRTEEN-FOOT VAGINA.
You can’t fuck the perfect girl. Nobody can, and that’s the whole point. This isn’t even me being a cunt, it’s literally stated in every Harem Comedy ever: she can’t connect with people. That’s her character arc. Only person worthy enough of diddling Robocop is Robocop. Batman, maybe.
You’re dealing with neither, though. So, fuck immersion, and in the meantime, fuck the Perfect Girl. Let’s hope the whole curing cancer thing is a metaphor, though; otherwise she’ll immediately kill the main character.
2.5 – The Big Sister.
When I die, I won’t die smiling, and you can blame the Big Sister archetype for it.
So the Japanese call her “Onee-chan,” and a lot of western fans prefer that term to just “the Big Sister”, because it helps in hiding the blatant incestuous undertones. This is what I like to think of as the sweet spot of shame: you’re self-aware enough to realize that this is fucked up, but you’re still going to masturbate to that SpongeBob picture.
When your intended audience will die either a virgin or a rapist, there’s only so much wiggle room. The Big Sister isn’t even Freudian, it’s just appealing to familiarity—the first and last moment they touched a vagina was when they got pushed through it, and unlike me, they don’t do this every Saturday evening behind the gas station.
So the Harem Writers invent a mother figure, because that’s the only woman in the audience’s supposed lives. Here, have something you recognize: now slap its face on a pillow and hump it till you’re wheezing.
As a result, the Big Sister tends to be rather bland. This is based on your mom, and your mom is legally forced to put up with your shit, and they just extrapolate. Big Sisters barely react to things. They don’t get mad, they don’t get scared. They just smile.
“Passively happy” is the key phrase. But, just like my penis, I don’t apply it to you—I apply it to your mother. Because if your mother is passively happy, it means that she’s okay, without any input from your part. So she’s not bothering you, but you don’t have to feel guilty. You can just continue caressing your rosy cheeks with Go-Cheese, knowing that your mere existence is enough to keep her content.
That’s the Big Sister, plain and simple. It’s solving guilt with incest. It’s a condescending motherly figure that takes away your responsibilities so you can keep avoiding life, but it’s also made in a way that you don’t have to care about her feelings, and you can fuck her if you ever feel the need.
That’s the easiest way to identify the Big Sister. Look for the motherly figure, the one that’s always older than the main character, the one with a job or actual things to do. The one that never gets angry. The one who will always caress your hair and tell you you’re a good boy. The one that puts up with your shit for no real reason. The one who’s always there, making life so, so much easier.
Yeah, the Big Sister is just depressing, I’m not going to lie. If she was allowed to have feelings, then she would just be that—a character that represents motherly love—but the way she’s written, and the fact that we’re dealing with wish-fulfillment, makes me think of that kind of dude who will unironically call his momma a whore, and then wonder why women don’t date nice guys. At least we can’t get worse than this.
2.6 – The Little Kid You Can Fuck
Fuck.
Fuck.
Okay. Holy shit.
Drill my tits and fill’em up—Hey, Harem Writer, I just found out why you can never find a date. See, it’s not just because your breath smells like your own semen. It’s because when you’re given the task of writing a self-insert, your first thought is to make him an unrepentant pedophile.
There are many arguments to defend this point, but to be honest most of them boil down to “stop trying to fuck children”. Relating to the protagonist of Lolita is like shitting on your garden and calling yourself a farmer: I understand that there’s a thought process behind your actions, but if anything, that only makes you more of a bell end. If the girl is not sure if Santa is real, then she’s not ready for vaginal penetration. It’s not that difficult, man.
At this point, the Harem Writer will be quick to point out that the clearly underage character they wrote is not, in fact, underage. There’s always an excuse—maybe she’s a vampire, and so, she’s actually a thousand years old! Maybe she just looks like she’s eight years old, but in reality she’s thirty five!
I appreciate the effort. Really, I do. But catharsis is not the same as normalization, and a rose by any other name is still too young to touch your cock. There are ways to get help if you’re a pedophile, but trying to gaslight society into thinking it’s “not that bad” is definitely not one of them.
This is a delicate issue, because some people get offended when you imply that raping children is wrong. Which goes to show that there’s imbeciles, and then there’s Harem Writers. As such, I’ll keep from being too extensive in this bit—save it for another blog. It’ll be hilarious, trust me.
2.7 – The Shy Girl.
The most charming thing about Shy Girls in Harem Comedies is that they’re usually defined by the fans as “rapeable”. That oughta tell you everything you need to know.
This is a character who blushes a lot, and would rather be left alone—so obviously, she’ll be constantly put in embarrassing, and overly sexual situations. Meek widdle girl who keeps struggling but is powerless to really do anything. Because it’s more fun if they try to fight back.
You can tell which people enjoy this character, because they’ve fucked so many farm animals their jizz smells like goat cheese.
Can you write a shy character without making it rapey? Sure you can. The problem here is not the character herself as much as what surrounds her; most of the characters in this list can be seen as another Shy Girl. ‘Cause suffering never comes alone, it has to bring its fucking friends along.
2.8 – The Tomboy.
The Tomboy girl in a Harem Comedy goes to show that you can have sex with a woman and still make it really fucking gay. To the Harem Writer who enjoys this kind of character, I can only say one thing: Mate, if I had a vagina, I’d still fuck your ass.
The Pussification of the Pussy is the other name of the Tomboy—a girl defined by her lack of feminine traits, only not really. See, the Tomboy will have short hair, and she’ll be wearing pants under her skirt, and she’ll like sports and talk in a boyish way—but she’s just another fragile flower for you to pick up and sniff.
Never in my life have I seen a Tomboy in a Harem Comedy that wasn’t secretly girly. Cute stuff makes them weak in the knees, they want to be delicate and pretty, they want to ~feel like a real woman~.
Hence, Pussification. I once saw a woman shoot a Ping-Pong ball out her vagina so fast it knocked off one of my teeth. A dick can break if you treat it roughly, but if you punch a cunt you’re only making it stronger.
If I want to fuck a dainty meek person who talks about their feelings I just sodomize some Europeans. I once dated a woman named Lady Barbara Florentine McArthur, and she still farted like a champion. Women are disgusting, and rude, and as full of shit as any man. If you don’t agree with this, chances are you haven’t talked with any.
There are exceptions to the rule, of course there are exceptions to the rule. There are exceptions to ANY rule. I’m sure there are Sex and the City fans who aren’t meth dealers, too, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop beating the shit out of them.
But still. We’re writing fiction. You can create an extremely “feminine” character, if that’s what you’re into. Sure, your definition of what “feminine” means has nothing to do with actual women, but it’s not like that is going to stop any Harem Writer, so who gives a shit.
What is honestly stupid, though, is to have a Tomboy—a character specifically designed to subvert this Platonic ideal you’ve got going on—and then have her be a European man in disguise anyway. If you’re afraid of not being the alpha in your relationship, then lift some weights, you pussy. Wishing everybody else had the character and consistency of a ripe peach will do little more than causing some unintended erections.
There’s also a lot of sexism in this character, I suppose—but at this point, that’s like saying there’s a tongue close to your grandpa’s asshole. It’s a given. And if you think otherwise, chances are you’re the one doing the rimming.
2.9 – The Ending
Eight characters.
Are those all the Harem Comedy stereotypes? No. There are many more, but these are the big ones. I left out the Rich Girl, the Nerdy Girl, and the Cheery Girl—because they tend to be combined with the stereotypes listed in here. They don’t matter. These ones, however, do.
Now, while every fucking Harem Comedy is the same, they still have to change some things to avoid copyright blindfuckery—so maybe in one story in every hundred million, the protagonist won’t be a “tsundere”. The Boob Girls won’t be COMPLETELY shameless about her flirting. The Foreigner will be black.
Whatever. Look at the comments, I’m sure they’ll be full of examples. What matters here, though, is: at its core, the standard Harem Comedy fails. The stereotypical, go-to Harem Comedy fails at writing, at masturbating and at pretty much everything it sets itself up to do.
And within that failure, there’s another failure, because every fucking character is horrible. Every character is a fucking waste. On so many levels. I’m starting to black out again. I can already smell the spunk all over me.
I hate this genre. I can’t stand this fucking genre. It’s taken me almost a year to write this shit, because I just despise this genre so fucking much.
But I’m not done yet. There’s still things to say. Part Three will, hopefully, be the last one in the Harem Comedy series. It will, also hopefully, come really really soon.
But first, we’ll have a little breather—next blog will be an in-depth exploration on The Little Kid You Can Fuck.
Because that will be a joy to write.
To be continued.
The classical intro was ditched for this blog because it's the second part in a series, and I felt like cutting straight to the chase would be better. Of course, this plan made more sense back at the start, when this blog didn't take almost a fucking year to come out.
Sorry, folks. Commissions, and all that. Next one won't take so long. And I'll probably get even more angry. LIFE'S BEAUTIFUL, ISN'T IT.
This is a quote from me! It's something I posted on Aragon's Facebook wall. His response was;
So yeah. He won that one.
...I'd totally fuck a cheeseburger after landing in Japan.
Your lifespan is about to be uncomfortably lowered.
Fixed that for you.
Considering your stories about people discovering sex terribly where you live, I'm not even surprised anymore.
Internet discussion boards are often full of cancer and lonely guys.
68.media.tumblr.com/fb45b7c44ee2c89c98e031827f4e2ab6/tumblr_nn499efu7R1sh43kgo1_400.gif
Sounds like a short story.
Cool blog post. Felt you might have overdone it with only making sex jokes, but then I believe that was the point, so never mind.
So just because a thousand-year-old vampire looks like she's eight, she should never be allowed to love? You gunna stand there and tell me you have the right to deny her the same freedoms that you enjoy just because her body-type isn't attractive?
Your body-shaming makes me sick.
*idly wonders how many people will take this joke as an endorsement of pedophilia*
I can't be the only US citizen who is completely fine with this.
Keep up the good work!
This gave me a chortle of schadenfreude I honestly needed. Thank you. Catharsis may not be normalization, but it sure feels good.
And how.
I make a compilation of quotes that i find funny. How do you make me add 26 more with a single blog post? And how is this not the most quotes i added from one of your blog post?!
I'm going to sleep now, my brain is overloaded and i'm drunk.
Your points are all valids.
4394474 Tbh the classic intro was getting a little repetitive, anyways. I was relieved to see this mixed it up.
I TRUST YOU
4394506 I think this is very well expect now after the McChicken incident.
Reading this is great way to start a day. To shatter my blissful ignorance of existence of this cancer. But damn if it isn't enjoyable to read these blogs.
The Casanova thing tickled me. I've sometimes imagined writing a story whose central conceit is that idea: Casanova finds the woman he can't seduce. It intrigues him, so he sets about trying to make it happen anyway. Lots of crazy hijinks happen, until finally she reaches the point where she is in fact seduced. She wants him.
And suddenly Casanova just isn't interested.
The mystery is gone. The challenge destroyed. Now she's just another conquest, reduced to just another lay in an endless parade of lays. He walks out, never to return, before she's even got her knickers off.
You're doing God's work. Well, a god's work. Don't ask which. All of its altars were demolished and its holy texts burned. There was much feasting and rejoicing on that day.
That said, keep it up.
Is that David Tennant? O.o
Well, screw you, my waifu bucks that trend! She's a shy girl with big boobs from a distant land, who immigrated here to play professional sports, participate in the Big Sister program for underprivileged youths, and to study hard for a future great and successful job. She's not sure if she loves me, or if that's just an upsetting case of minor gas, but I'm sure she'll come around.
Oh, and because she's foreign, she's already considered an adult, even though-
I mean...
Wait, but she's patently Perfect! She can't be Perfect and under-aged!
But if she's not also supposedly-not-too-young, then she can't be the ideal harem-replacement-waifu!
But Perfect!
But too-young harem waifu!
But-!
Auuuuuggggggghhh!
Mary Sues are hard...
Amen
I was told to comment. It has been done.
ahhhh this is great. upbote
This was far more entertaining that any harem anime or story I've ever come across. Well done, my friend.
Another stellar write up... that also reinforces my position that the 'Tenchi' series is the finest and most convention breaking example of the harem comedy.
All true points. Still love Tenchi.
4394686 We are not to speak of the McChicken Incident.
I was expecting a secret 9th girl who is really an all-consuming oblong horror in a gestational disguise and episode three is when the foreign girl finds the tentacle-riddled corpse of the supposed protagonist.
4395792 We're speaking about the McChicken incident now though.
4395847 Saying the name of the McChicken incident is not speaking about the McChicken incident.
I repeat, we do not speak about the McChicken incident.
Someone's not thinking with portals!
)
(I'm sure Twilight once found a way to do this on some lonely night after some hard studying...
4395848 You sure you don't want to speak about the McChicken incident?
4396070 We do not speak of the McChicken incident.
Right though you may be, God damn are you a salty bastard.
I will be bookmarking this as ammunition. Thank you.
4396071
Aragon. You are what Hunter Thompson could have been, if he'd done less drugs and more hentai. It's rare to see good literary analysis mixed with good semen jokes.
>Have you ever wondered why people tend to humanize Shy with huge bazongas? Thank this cliché.
Shit, you're right.
I put this into my blog post index.
This is an example of the general pattern that commercial fiction is more repetitive than fan-fiction. I'm reading academic writing about fan-fiction, and a point they harp on is that fan-fiction writers like to retell the same stories over and over again. Whereas actually reading fan-fiction and listening to fan-fiction readers shows that they read fan-fiction in order not to hear the same stories over and over again. Mainstream fiction is more repetitive, because you can just paste in some new names and tell the same story again. You can't do that as easily in fan-fiction, because the story would have the same plot and the same characters, and it would be obvious it was the same story.
But there is something especially repetitive about manga and anime. There must be some special love of repetition and familiarity, or some indifference to novelty, in Japanese culture.
What do you think about those "idol animes", Japan's answer to those that felt that Harem comedy girls were too distinctive?
this is a great and entertaining blog series, it is so true that the girls in harem comedies are not characters, they are basically just fetishes.
Ah yes, one of the main reasons I stopped trying to follow anime around a decade ago.
Even when the girls in question are adults the 'fan-service' in anime / manga is usually so over the top and in your face that it becomes obnoxious. I'm not a prude or anything, I simply have different tastes in media when I’m trying to masturbate and when I'm not, and I don't need or want several hours of plot when I'm trying to masturbate.
The main reason I love the short film 'Little Witch Academia' is because it is a magical girl film that doesn't give you the uncomfortable feeling that the intended audience is pedophiles instead of little girls. - just like finding a van full of candy on sale...
I'm not responding to your blog post on the grounds that this series of yours is all just another one of your attempts to get reactions. Yikes.
By the way, update your user page now that this is out. I'm aware you're a troll, but you should still be tidy.
4394817
It is! BBC's "Casanova" miniseries -- it's the first David Tennant thing I ever watched, and I immediately became a fan. It's great; look it up.
4395603
4395741
Enough of these comments have been done to make me watch Tenchi Muyo -- I've scheduled a marathon with a friend. From what I've read of the series, though, I'm not sure if that's a good thing for anybody.
Highly doubt that I'll mention Tenchi directly in the blogs, but I'll at least be able to reply to y'all when you say this.
4396366
Harem Comedies are so insipid that SOMEONE has to bring some flavor.
4396871
I think I'm starting one of those "Things Said About Me" things; I wanna immortalize that quote somehow. Neat that you liked it! And that you added it to the index, too.
As per repetition in japanese culture -- it's something I want to look up at some point, because it's not just inherent to manga and anime. Murakami wrote one book 20 years ago and has been repeating it ever since.
Manga and anime and all that shit are extremely niche (especially in japan) and as I said in the blogs, they take that as an excuse for releasing the same shit time and time again. Most of the authors that write that stuff nowadays aren' writers, they're just fans of manga or anime themselves.
Your writing, usually, somehow reflects your experiences. When a person who's never been alone writes about people, they have interesting insights. But if your entire life has been dedicated to read niche comics, all you'll write will be niche comics.
The way they talk about their work makes it clear they know this, too. "I want to write a tsundere and a cool guy in a harem comedy", stuff like this. They even write it down in their A/N. It's all they know, so it's all they write.
Man, I have to blog about the manga industry in general at one point. It nurtures stress and bad writing. The authors suffer, their work suffers, and overall why the fuck is Japan romanticised so much, fucking hell. Gagh.
4396971
Some of my best friends are fans of idolm@ster, and I watched it with them.
Had to bail out after episode 7. As a general rule, it'd take us 90 minutes to watch a 22 minute episode, because I kept pausing to rant about it.
So yeah. My friends hated me for it. Then, I managed to watch all of Cinderella Girls, but I never stopped riffing it, and some guys got really angry 'cause I insulted their waifus.
(Rightfully so. Those shows are really bad, and the idol industry as a whole is creepy. That band with 48 idols is honestly one of the inner circles of hell).
So yeah. Hate those shows, with a PASSION.
4399821
Fanservice makes me extremely uncomfortable, but I can stomach it most of the time, or at least ignore it. Little kids, tho? I draw the line there. Fuck that.
Trigger can be geat, tho. LWA is on my "watch with little brother" list, because it honestly looks cute, so far. Love the designs.
4401039
Either you're not aware of what a troll is, or you're perfectly aware but you're not really good at it.
I guess commenting with "I won't comment" is dumb enough to work, tho. Made me reply. But yeah, stop commenting on my stuff to say that I'm somehow trolling people with everything I do, mate. Gets old fast.
4395603 The thing is, it's NOT a harem comedy. Taking the first series as a perfect example, of the "harem" members only two of them have interest in Tenchi himself, Ayeka (Princess) & Ryoko (Space Pirate). Sasami (Younger Princess)/Tsunami (Goddess) sees him as nothing more than an older brother, especially since that's pretty much what he is. Freaky alien culture... Mihoshi (Space Cop) is LITERALLY STRANDED. She pays Tenchi the same level of romantic interest as she does his dad and grandfather. While Kiyone (Mihoshi's Cop Partner) wasn't a part of the first series, in the ones she does show up she does NOT have an interest in the Tenchi. Like Mihoshi, she's stuck on Earth, and PISSED about it. (Though that could just be because she's stuck there WITH Mioshi) Last up is Washu (Super Genius/Goddess). She spends most of her time in a childlike body, and yes she both flirts with Tenchi and keeps trying to collect a "sample". It's also quite clear she's doing that ONLY because she enjoys fucking with EVERYONE. And teasing/flirting with Tenchi lets her fuck with him, Ayeka, AND Ryoko (Her Daughter) all at the same time, making it a perfect trifecta of dickery she just cant leave alone.
As for Tenchi himself, it's clear that he does develop feelings for Ayeka and for Ryoko, it's also clear he's still only 15 or so, and KNOWS better than to get involved when even he himself is uncertain how he feels. Why does he do nice things for the other girls from time to time? Because he's genuinely a nice guy. An idiot for not picking the sexy space pirate, but a nice guy. I could go on, but I've given enough spoilers already.
4401100 Enjoy. I'm a fan of the various Tenchi verses. MOST of them are NOT part of the same continuity, so if you go from watching Tenchi Muyo to watching Tenchi Universe you're going to have to understand that they don't connect. Also, you're in luck. There is NO Tsundere.
4401132 Excellent points all.
4401100 Maybe if you weren't a troll I would take you seriously. Consider that. You obviously just want a reaction given your tone, so I'm not taking you seriously.
Also I'm mostly here because I have a strange need to see if people's stories improve when I review their shit. Maybe I can do some good for this world. Kindly write a chapter or whatever so I can determine if I'm the unsung hero I want to be, or some gay delusional shit I'unno.
EDIT: Given that it still says "Romance Blog #6" on your page, I can safely assume I'm wasting my time. Goodness gracious, you're just desperate for reactions. Get the fuck over your persecution complex, m'dear.
EDIT 2: i.gyazo.com/1864052edb09eb3d0e7800c5a1f73c48.png
So you can't take what you dish out, Mr. "I won't defend my points because
I can't admit I've got internalized misandryhe wants a reaction, a claim I'm making based off absolutely nothing but my own hurt feelings?" Interesting. It's almost like you know you're full of shit...Amazing, Zach! He's so deep into his anti-male propaganda, that he's applying it to himself! To think that not only he'd lash out at the idea of giving socially inferior men hope, he'd even lash out at himself! In my years of profiling, this is definitely one of the most fascinating cases I've observed...
EDIT 3: I was going to call out your shit on your latest blog. Then I remembered you blocked me because you're a goddamn pussy. That really ruined my day. Oh well, where there's a will, there's a way.
To be continued. Bitch.
4401100
I can usually ignore fan service too, but at the same time it just feels insulting…
Like the people who make anime has this image of the people who watch anime and it goes a little like this.
Anime producers: on today's episode, we introduce a new female character!
Anime fans: Tits or GTFO
Anime producer: she is, like, twelve. Guys, come on!
Anime fans: Tits or GTFO!
Anime producer: okay fine.
Watching anime, it is easy to get the feeling the producers are afraid that their audience will lose interest and watch porn instead. at this point I find that Animes that don’t try to use panty shots to keep their audience in the seats are usually far more interesting and remembered more fondly.
I might have to form a compilation of various self-deprecating lines and just copy your entire blog into the references.
To validate that one comment about the comments including examples of 'exceptions', I have to say, I actually like one harem comedy.
And that's because apparently, in its making, all the writers decided to have a particularly long pizza break and Bob "Uses blood instead of detergent" Chungus the Janitor stapled the Doom comic over half the storyboard. The writers, elated with this literary miracle, decided to just scribble on a half-assed reunion at the end and call it a day.
That is to say, all the harem 'love interests' get horrifically gored by aliens that look like Giger's Starship Troopers induced acid nightmare, the main protagonist literally steals a personality from somewhere in the aether between worlds and goes through a character arc that is most accurately approximated by this.
That isn't to say that anything before or after the diversion to one of Mars' moons wasn't awful. It was so cheesy and painful I'd rather just take a molten gorgonzola injection to the jugular than to go through it again. It was, sadly, merely a transitory phase.
But I did learn a lesson: If a harem visual novel wears the "explicit graphic gore" tag and everyone handily forgets to tell you about it, you're in for a wonderful time.
4408084
I mean, if you want to see a Harem Comedy being subverted to its most logical extreme, you just gotta look at School Days. Every character in this kind of show feels sociopathic anyway, so that just brings it full circle.
I find School Days to be funny, in a way. Lotta people hate it, and they say it's bad. I guess it might have plot holes or whatever, I never really looked that much into it, but I can't find any review or commentary on it that isn't just complaining about how despicable the characters are -- which for once is the entire goddamn point. So, yeah.
Still kinda wonder what story you're talking about, though. Sounds like a recipe for an interesting Wikipedia reading, at least.
4408122
It's not really subversion when both its prequel and its sequel are the worst of harem visual novels to a T. It's more of a lucky accident made all the more potent by its spontaneity and the execution. Mistakes into miracles, all that.
It's called Muv Luv if you do plan on wasting an evening; and you will have to waste an evening, since the wikipedia article only covers the sub-standard and completely forgettable anime adaptation. The first two parts - "Extra" and "Unlimited" - are the bad ones, but also sadly kind of necessary to establish the setting and the stupid character stereotypes, though you'd do perfectly well with just a cliff notes version of Extra. Unlimited is much more watered down on the harem aspect, just with a single universal option to pick whichever whore you want right at the end like some kind of proverbial pat on the back.
Is it weird I follow you for blogs rather than stories?
4394498
Given the fact he now used your joke though... did he really?
4401132
Tenchi OVAs...are actually a very good example of what's known as an "Unbuilt Trope"...namely, that there are two areas where you get the most subversions of the cliches of a trope. The last examples, and the first examples. Because, since the first ones are before those cliches become standardized.
Ironically, Tenchi Universe and Tenchi in Tokyo...DO have these cliches, or at least move closer to them.
4394766
...
That...sounds like a good mini-fic. It wouldn't make a good longer work, because it relies on the crux of the Casanova utterly abandoning all his character development...so he can't have developed over the fic too much...
Crap. My inner writer/editor is out, and I never actually WRITE anything.