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1"It Feels Rapey" -- Three Horrible Mistakes To Avoid When Writing Romance · 4:53pm
2Live-reading of this blog, by Imrix. In case you don't feel like reading, now you can listen to it.
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4I’m not good with romance. I am to romance what a fiberglass handjob is to foreplay. I have been defined as “emotionally retarded” by at least three different psychologists.
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6I think kissing is so gross that the last time a girl leaned towards me I spat in her mouth and told her to savor the moment. A woman gently whispered in my ear that she wanted to wake up every morning next to me, and I just farted and went on drinking. My father fists cows for a living, and he’s the suave one in our household.
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8I’m saying this so you know that, even though vaginas quiver in awe whenever I walk by, I’m not exactly a connoisseur when it comes to the matters of the heart. But I’m making an effort to get better at this – day after day, I force myself to read romance-related fiction with no pause, so I can become an expert on love.
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10Losing my computer seemed like the perfect opportunity to dedicate even more effort to this. I focused my attention on AO3, a website rumored to have really high-quality stories in it, because it looked like the perfect place to do this.
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12And after two weeks reading romance fanfiction from there on my mobile phone, I can attest that those rumors are fucking bullshit.
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14Hi, I’m Aragón. I have never written a good romance, my emotional maturity is measured in pubic hair, and I’m imitating Seanbaby for this blog. Here are three common mistakes when writing romance so egregious even dumb fucks like me can’t understand why people keep making them.
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181. WHY THE FUCK ARE THEY IN LOVE.
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20In real life, people choose their lovers for a bunch of reasons, most of which of the pussy variety, both metaphorically and literally. The emotional blowjob that is love tends to appear because the person in question happens to fit your standards, be it personality-wise or looks-wise or whatever. It’s a beautiful thing.
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22And it matters fuck-all in writing. If you want me to believe this lovely lady fell in love with the fucking nerd that is your protagonist, then explain me why in terms that make sense to somebody who doesn’t masturbate with pizza crust.
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24You see, fanfiction is a terrible medium for romance, because more often than not the author is a fan of the relationship they want to portray (hence the term). This means that the important bit for said author is that the two parties are in love, not why they’re in love or how are they going to make it as a couple. The characters end up together no matter what, as if their genitalia had magnetic fields. Shit, if the genitals were magnets, the story would be more realistic, in fact.
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26I am talking about situations like this: A couple, guy and girl. She is a rich, cultured, beautiful lady with a promising future and tits the size of a penthouse. She’s with the protagonist, a dumb fuck who has absolutely nothing to offer as a person. If you asked this guy to entertain your parents for a minute while you’re in the bathroom, he’d piss his pants and then stare at the walls. This dipshit stutters, sweats all over the place, and his personality has the depth of a layer of Nutella on a stripper’s ass.
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28And they’re in love. Mad love. She thinks this guy is her soulmate.
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30That makes as much sense as two clowns having fun without murdering a single child. That guy is the kind of person who knows how much cotton do you need to make a blow-up doll feel like a sheep. The Government wouldn’t let this sad fuck become a eunuch because his dick is legally considered toxic waste.
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32I don’t give a shit about how you see love in reality. Maybe you think that anybody can fall in love with anybody if the circumstances are perfect enough. But in fiction, that’s a fart in a hurricane – unless you show exactly why both fell in love and why, it doesn’t fucking work. A character can’t fall in love without a reason. Dogs will try to impregnate any pillow in sight without a second thought, and even they bother to smell their mate’s asshole before the courting.
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34When a character falls in love with some other character, there’s a selecting process going on. They will choose their partner because said partner, in particular, has something to offer that nobody else can give them. This is about unique qualities, and what can the other person bring to the table. If they can’t offer a fucking single thing, they will die alone and everybody will laugh at them.
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36The EQG movie was a perfect example of a romance that has as much right to exist as elderly sex. It was there, and it was a reality, but it made us all uncomfortable and so we ignore it and silently euthanize whoever brings it up in public. Twilight Sparkle and Flash Sentry had less chemistry than a block of cement, and their dolls were more realistic than their romance.
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38Why? Because neither Twilight Sparkle nor Flash Sentry had any reason to fall in love with each other. They knew nothing about the other person, and they never bothered to find shit out, either, because fuck that noise. A conversation is not necessarily needed to develop a realistic – or at least believable, which is the lowest fucking standard you have to force on yourself here – relationship in a work of fiction, so I’m not complaining about how they didn’t talk. But again, characters don’t fall in love with a person, they fall in love with a quality.
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40The definition of “quality” here is not as much “something good” as “something only they can give”. I mentioned uniqueness three paragraphs ago, and for a reason. Twilight is a horse and also a princess horse, and that could be why Flash falls in love with her. She’s weird, she offers something he can’t find anywhere else, and it’ll be both interesting and completely fucked up when she takes off his pants and sees he doesn’t have a monster cock like all the males in her world.
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42Healthy relationship? Fuck no, they’re not even the same species. Try to fuck a chicken and you tell me how your first date went. But at least it’s a start. In the fictional example I put above, the girl was an amazing person and the guy was the human equivalent of puking during a motorboating session. It didn’t make sense, because we saw that one character had a lot of qualities and uniqueness and the other was just a fucking dipshit. EQG is the same – we know that Twilight has unique qualities, but Flash doesn’t.
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44And even if he had, Twilight never really sees any of them. Sure, he saves her when she’s talking with Luna, but by then she’s already got a crush on that dude. Fucking why? And mind you, the exact same thing happens with Flash, because we know that Twilight has qualities as a person, but he fucking doesn’t, so the entire thing is just a total clusterfuck of absurdity.
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46Neither Twilight nor Flash have any idea what the other stands for. The scriptwriter didn’t give a single shit for their relationship, and it shows, because what matters is that they are together, not why. Ironically enough, if you care too much, or just enough but in the wrong way, you’ll make the exact same mistake, as I explained earlier.
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48Seriously, the only way for that movie’s romantic angle to work is to picture that, in-universe, Flash is really damn hot. He’s such a hunk that whenever more than three women look at him at the same time the air gets instantly moisturized and smells like fish. Likewise, for Flash to want Twilight so badly and give a shit about Luna screaming at her, Twilight has to be a knock-out; the kind of girl that makes guys pump their muscles, blush, faint, and then cry in the bathroom for sixteen hours.
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50So change “love” for “desire to bang each other”, and bam. Now both have a reason to be in love, and their actions are obviously justified – they want to enjoy that quality, the hotness. Fucking Pride and Prejudice right there, and the worst thing is, it’s still better than what we actually got.
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52You see, a romantic story isn’t selling the characters to each other. A romantic story is selling the relationship to the audience. The EQG romance is shitty because the viewer has to headcanon what the fuck is going on to get invested in anything at all, or at least to avoid being alienated. None of the characters show qualities to each other, so they’re all out of everybody’s league. What a goddamn masterpiece.
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54So when writing a romantic story, the author should always show both characters as equals, in the sense that both have a reason to fall in love. If one of them is perfect and the other is a piece of shit, then your story makes no sense. Sure, one can be slightly better than the other, adoration can be the basis of a sex agreement, after all. But it still has to feel justified.
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56The reader needs to feel like the characters are better now that they’re together. No matter the exact angle – can be emotional, physical, intellectual, philosophical, or whatever floats your fucking boat.
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58And for the record, “being nice” is not a fucking quality; it’s the lack of a flaw. It’s like fucking your postman because he didn’t beat up your senile grandfather this morning. Nobody ever got a blowjob for holding a door open, and if “he’s/she’s/I’m not an asshole” is the justification the characters use to explain why they are or should be in a relationship then at least one of them is a rapist.
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60You want your dick sucked, you work for charity, or play the guitar, or beat up monkeys with your kung-fu skills. You do something that’s real and measurable. If the story’s relationship is based on thoughts like “at least he doesn’t try to choke me while I sleep”, then you’re not reading a love story – you’re reading a manual on how to make sure your future children stab hobos when they grow up.
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632. THAT IS NOT HOW HUMANS WORK, YOU CUNTWEASEL.
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65Of all the godawful mistakes rookie authors make when writing a love story, “learning how an actual human actually operates” is basic enough to just know that everybody will fuck it up. This is a thing that’s justified if you’re thirteen and think that a passionate relationship is crying because you don’t sit next to each other during Arts and Crafts, but if you’re an adult, this shit is inexcusable.
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67Here I’m not talking about a general thing, by the way. That would be way too logical. A basic misunderstanding on psychology is normal when you’re writing for the first time; there’s a reason why we pay a lot of money to people who can write realistic characters. No, I’m talking about something so fucking specific that the mere fact it just keeps happening and nobody says a word about it is a slap in the face of God.
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69This point is about this particular scene, or minor variations of it: a character is thinking about something normal and boring. All of a sudden, they think of the romantic interest in affectionate terms. And then they say “WOAH, WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?!”
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71You know the scene. Showing surprise because suddenly they realize they’ve been in love this whole time, guys. Being baffled because they seem to have developed hyoo-man ee-mo-tzions. It’s been done a thousand fucking times.
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73”I mean, you don’t like anybody after all, do you?” asked Kickmyballs-chan in a way that was kawaii as fuck or whatever. “You don’t care for this stuff.”
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75“No, I…” Gilipo-kun shook his head in a cool yet mysterious way. “I don’t...” He blinked, still cool and mysterious, like my homeroom teacher when she refuses to look me in the eyes while she fucks me with a strap-on. It was hard for him to say the words, for some reason. That was weird, right? After all, he couldn’t think of a single person he liked—
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77Like a flash, Twat-kun’s face came to mind.
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79Gilipo-kun jumped in surprise. “Woah!” he exclaimed cooly. “Where did that come from?!”
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81This shit.
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83I have read this shit so many times in just two weeks.
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85Who the fuck thinks like this? Who wrote this bullshit first and how it got so popular everybody is trying to copy it? Even when it doesn’t appear like this, you can see traces of this line of thinking here and there. Characters suddenly going “Wait, I’m gay?! Where did that come from?!” or having to ponder if they like someone or not.
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87I thought “feelings” was the scientific name of that itchy shit you get on your dick after skinny dipping in a polluted lake until last year, and even I know that this is not how this fucking thing works. Guys, if you feel the thirst for balls in your mouth, trust me when I say you at least suspect it already. Ladies, if you think eating pussy is exactly like making out with an alien, I don’t expect you to go “WAIT A FUCKING SECOND” and start a lesbian rampage.
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89But then again, shit, at least the gay thing has an excuse. Maybe the character is in denial, or honestly never stopped to ponder about it. Being more than mildly surprised is a total exaggeration, unless you’re a rampaging homophobe, but I can see straight people writing this and not feel like they’re fucking stupid, because playing out of field is always rough.
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91The fucking “wait I was in love” line of thinking, though? Unless you’re a robot, that’s just not how it goes. You fucking know when you have a crush, you don’t need to be all startled about it. Trying to surprise the reader by having “X is in love with Y” as a twist is pretty damn stupid on its own, but trust me, you can do it without surprising the character as well.
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93The characters either fall in love slowly or all at once. Depends on the story and how the author wants to portray the relationship. But love is not a fucking ninja that sneaks up behind you and slashes your throat with a knife shaped like an erect nipple – the moment it happens, you fucking know.
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95I can’t stress this enough. I talked about falling in love with qualities before, and this is actually a continuation of that.
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97Some people mistake this for the well-known trope of “jealously equals love”. The idea that a person might discover he or she is in love when their Valentine starts hitting on a stranger or whatever. It’s similar, yes, but it’s not the same because here at least we have a justification for the thought. If somebody wants to take something that you think of as yours, then you get possessive. This might work as an epiphany for love.
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99Although it really is not. That’s not love, that’s manipulation. It’s the mental equivalent of throwing a microwave to a girl’s face and then feeling up her boobs. You’re forcing the character to make a choice in a rush – choose him now, or you’ll lose him forever. This is what salespeople do to force you to buy shitty cars.
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101But even then, the reader sees why it’s going on. There’s an emotion there, a quality, and a reason why it arises. The jealously, the possessiveness, and the fear of losing a future opportunity get mistaken for actual affection. Even then it shouldn’t be surprised, because if you’re possessive about a person you fucking know it, hence you being possessive in the first place. Sure, you can justify it by saying that “they’re in denial”, but being in denial implies they fucking know.
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103Not even having this jealous shit, though? Inexcusable. Characters who go all “OH WOW HOLY DICKS I LOVE HER SO MUCH” for no reason are the kind of people who grow up to be the kind of man who rubs himself against little boys in the subway.
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1063. CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN ME WHY THEY’RE ACTING LIKE LITTLE CHILDREN.
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108I’ll admit right away that this is petty as hell, but if two people have been fucking married for, like, seven years, and the guy blushes every time she expresses any affection whatsoever, she has all the right to stab that guy’s temples until his brain finally activates. My instinctive answer to a hug is a suplex, and even I know this is bullshit.
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110If two characters are in a relationship, showing affection is the goddamn standard. It’s not a rarity, it’s not a surprise, it’s not a twilight velvet; it’s the definition of their daily routine. That’s what “being in a relationship” means. I accept that doing this kind of shit in public might be uncomfortable for some people, and maybe the character feels that way, which is fine.
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112But I’ve seen this kind of scene happening all the time, no matter if the characters are alone or not.
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114There are thousands of stories out there in which the characters are flustered twenty-four-goddamn-seven, because the author finds it cute. So the characters will be doing whatever the hell they do for a living, and then he will kiss her, and then she will blush and almost faint, because even though they have been going on for over five years this is a new thing for her.
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116Look, humans get used to everything with time. We come to this world screaming, covered in shit, and causing indescribable pain to our mother. A kiss is not going to blow anybody’s mind after that. This is just stupid, especially if the characters are supposed to be emotionally developed.
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118The reason for this kind of scene, I think, is of a meta-story level. And that’s bad, because it breaks immersion. You see, this is not how the characters would react. It’s how the fans would like them to react. Maybe even what the author would do in such a situation. And sure, everybody includes bits of their own personality in their stories– it’s why all my characters have seven-foot schlongs – but that doesn’t make it any less stupid.
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120It’s the first time we see the characters kissing. Some readers might get flustered when reading that, and maybe the author does, too. But the characters don’t. In-universe this makes no sense whatsoever, so having this stuff, especially when it doesn’t fit the characters’ personalities, is not a good idea. The signal here is less “they’re so in love and cute together” and more “she’s holding his family hostage”. It’s not cute, it’s uncomfortable.
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122If the characters are alone, and have been together for a long-ass fucking time, then showing affection shouldn’t render them completely useless. Having sex with a person like that must be like rubbing your erect nipples against a bag full of dead cats and one dwarf – there’ll be a reaction, yes, but unless you’re into kinky shit it won’t be what you’re expecting.
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124There’s not a lot to say here, because this isn’t as generally wrong as the other two things. I already said this is petty as fuck. Maybe if the character is really really shy this can be justified, but even then – you’re showing that the character cringes whenever their lover tries to show affection.
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126Even a mime would think that’s rapey.
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130"It Feels Rapier than ever" -- Another Horrible Mistake To Avoid When Writing Romance · 6:18pm
131Audio version by Imrix.
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133I’m not good at romance.
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135A guy once tried to choke me and then begged for sex, and that’s just the third most horrible confession I’ve gone through. A girl in my high school refused to go out with a guy unless he stabbed his own arm with three needles to show his love. One of my teachers had to go to the hospital on New Year’s because she got a champagne bottle stuck to her vagina.
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137And among these folks, I was always labelled as “the unromantic one”. I’m such a fucking asshole gay men have to run for the bathroom whenever I walk by. I wear shorts without underwear and sit with my legs spread open because I like the suspense. The first time I touched a titty, I squeezed it and made a honk-honk noise.
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139I explain all this so you know that this blog is not coming from an expert on love and what that word means. I am probably the worst person you could ask for romantic advice. I can neuter cats just by looking at them. I’m allergic to Viagra because Nature wants me to die childless, just like my father.
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141And yet, after two weeks of reading romantic fanfiction on my phone, I came to realize some folks have it worse than I. And those folks like to write romance.
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143Hi, I’m Aragón. I have never written a good romantic story, I’ve never said anything intelligent in my life, and I have more testicles than neurons. Here’s another common mistake to avoid when writing romance.
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1481. “I’M GOING TO FUCKING MURDER YOU,” SHE LOVINGLY CARVED ON THE SIDE OF HIS COCK.
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150Whenever you’re feeling blue, whenever you think life is pulling you down, remember that, once upon a time, a bunch of imbeciles wanted to fuck a cartoon lady so hard that they normalized the fetishization of psychopathy. No matter how low you fucking are, somewhere, somehow, someone’s sunk far lower.
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152That’s fucking right, people, I’m talking about the “Tsundere” character. Of all the goddamn story-breaking clichés that plague the romance genre, this one probably the worst. At least the TMC (Twilight Male Character, discussed in the previous blog here) has the decency of recognizing it’s pornographic. But this?
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154This is the surprise turd to the TMC’s silent fart. TMC writers will fuck their dogs because human genitals rot in their presence, but only “Tsundere” writers will call the poodle a whore afterwards.
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156I have seen many things as a romance reader. I once read a story in which a guy romanced his tapeworm. I’ve seen stories where the twist is that both protagonists like shitting in diapers. And I’ve endured every single fucking thing with a stern face and a shit ton of vodka.
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158But show me the “Tsundere” tag, or mention that fucking word anywhere in the summary, and I’ll close the tab, reach for my car keys, and fuck your little sister in front of your dad. The TMC made me actively angry. The “Tsundere” doesn’t. I don’t feel mad when reading this shit. It just disgusts me.
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160Now, before it all starts—do I think that “Tsunderes” can’t be well-written? No. I have seen good examples of this archetype. I personally know people who have written amazing characters who also happen to be “Tsunderes”. Later, I’ll show you some of them. Likewise, I'm not confusing this term with the "Yandere" (which is like this, but presented as mentally unstable in-universe). That is a completely different topic, to be discussed in a completely different blog.
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162So no, I don’t think this child-fiddling concept is the root of all evil. I just think that, if you want your story to give me AIDS, writing a “Tsundere” is definitely a great start.
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164So what is a “Tsundere”? Usually, I don’t bother to explain it. Half of you already know what the term stands for, and the other half will probably get testicular cancer the moment you discover it.
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166But long story short, it’s a character—usually a girl—defined by a somewhat “dual” personality: she’s shy, romantic, and a huge softy, but at the same time she wants to act like a tough non-nonsense girl. This makes her easily flustered, but then she realizes she’s not acting as the boobalicious version of Predator and reacts furiously—and sometimes violently.
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168Man, that is pretty fucking specific, isn’t it? A sane person would think that’s less an archetype and more an actual, developed character. Archetypes tend to be vague. Shit like “Jesus, but not really Jesus” or “like the main character, but with a bigger cock”. You know why?
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170Because otherwise you end up with a fucking turd. That’s why. Archetypes need to be vague, so the writer can fill the gaps and make it feel like something distinct.
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172What does this mean? That the first fucking thing you need to know about the “Tsundere” character is that they’re all the same motherfucking girl. They all talk the same, react the same, think the same, and have tits the size of an elephant’s ballsack. Seen one, seen ’em all. Just by glancing at the fucking cover of the book, if it has a “Tsundere” character, I can tell how, why, and when it’ll end.
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174This is the literary equivalent of the Final Solution. Stories don’t need to be realistic, but there’s so much one can do without alienating the reader, and the “Tsunderes” sure like to fuck up everything they touch.
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176You know, when I was in high school, a cunt of a guy decided to grope the openly lesbian girl in his class, because he couldn’t get the dicks out of his mouth long enough to think about his actions. The girl, a fucking bull of a person who once wrestled a horse to submission for the simple hell of it, reacted by kicking his dick.
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178She kicked his dick so hard the turdnugget had to rush to the hospital, because she was wearing high heels and those things are pointy. His left testicle was extirpated. I watched that fucking thing live and I swear to God I still cringe whenever I think about it.
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180So what did Mr. Unicojorn do after coming back to class? He never approached Horsegirl ever again. He also sold his bike, because he couldn’t ride it—he was too unbalanced.
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182And, you see, from a normal, sane, nonretarded perspective, he made the right choice. If a girl high-heels my left testicle away, I’ll take the hint and assume she doesn’t want to rest my balls in her mouth. But the people who write “Tsunderes”? Fuck me, mate, they’ll tell you that girl is dying to shake what your mama gave you. She wants to massage your prostate with her tonsils. She’s just being a huge bitch about it.
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184Just by sheer fucking repetition, the “Tsundere” archetype is already more trite than Ariel’s fishy father. I’m going to tackle this issue first, even though it’s the least of this character’s problems: it’s been done. No matter what the fuck do you do with this, unless you make the character an actual character, it’s been done before.
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186The “Tsundere” is often explained by the quotes “I-It’s not like I’m doing this for you, you idiot!” or “I-I don’t really like you!” Note the stuttering, to make her feel cute. Note the obviously idiotic denial, so you can see she’s trying to act like she doesn’t care. Note how both sentences imply that she has the agency of fucking Dora the Explorer.
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188But there’s more to those sentences. They’re written that way because that’s the core of the “Tsundere” character. That, and the term “floaty cunt”. It’s as if you copypasted the entire bloody thing from one story to the other. This is not writing, this is mass-producing dildos and then selling them like Hello Kitty personal massagers.
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190They appear. They are major assholes. They act like fucking monsters towards the masturbatory main male character. They fall in love with said masturbatory main male character. They continue being huge cunts. They continue being in love. They try to juggle both sides of their personalities, and as a result they’re a perfect mixture of a schizophrenic fuck and the creepy uncle who wants you to smell his finger.
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192Romance is about characters. We already know the story: they’re going to blow each other at the end. People don’t read romance for the blowing, they read it for who’s going to be doing the blowing. You want the characters to be together, to be happy, to grow as people.
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194But, if instead of a character you just show me a fucking cow, which does nothing but eat, shit, and moo, then the plonkering knob of a story you want me to swallow is dead from the start. Why? Because how the fuck can one want to read about something so goddamn gross and predictable. Change the cow with a “Tsundere” and you pretty much know the entire thing.
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196You know the ending of the story. You know how the character will act. You know how she will evolve. You know how the relationship is going to go. Why the fuck would you read the story, then?
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198Because the “Tsundere”, while the bane of all shit in the story, is not the only good part. Oh, no. If you have a character with this kind of personality, then her love interest—which I already hinted as being a buggering cockmonger—is going to be the plainest thing since bloody Moldova. The story will be about them being cute and then the girl getting flustered and hitting the guy and hahahah whoops I think I just caught leukemia.
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200Goddamn fitting. “Tsunderes” are like cancer, only worse, because at least cancer is gentle enough to fucking kill you once it’s done with its bullshit. The melanoma spreads, and soon enough you’re bald and suffering.
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202Was the first Tsundere character a good addition to the story? Probably. Apparently it was the kind of cartoon girl that makes you wanna pound her and get all filthy on top of her. You wanted to traumatize her ancestors and make her father go blind, and make her shit on your chest or whatever.
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204She had a personality is what I mean, because you can’t do that with just looks. But that’s the thing—being a twittering weirdo can work, if that character’s backstory made her that way. She was shy, and violent, and easily flustered, and hated herself. Thus, she acted in a way that today is seen as stereotypical, but her flaws felt organic.
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206This is what I mean with “character first, archetype second”. They designed this girl and then gave her a fitting backstory that justified the way she acted, and thus the reason why your fat, basement-dweller children will all go to hell was born.
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208Then it got bloody popular, and some cunts ruined that shit forever.
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210Nowadays, “Tsunderes” are made with the motto of “archetype first, tits second”, and then they snort the weight of their giant balls’ worth of cocaine. There’s no character. A “Tsundere” wouldn’t pass a Turing Test, because they’re just action-reaction machines.
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212They’re not even good action-reaction machines, because the lack of justification for how they move around life makes them look creepier than Fofo the Rapist Clown at Sunday Church School. They are perfectly normal people who, for some reason, attack the main character every time they can, and then they’ll blush and think that they’re in love.
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214But they’re fucking not. They just beat the shit of him because he fucking said something nice, or groped her on accident, or whatever bullshit cliché you used as a plot point. That’s not love. They’re in denial about their feelings? Okay, I can accept that. But they’re not acting like human beings. They’re acting like the result of a doctor not being brave enough to pull the plug.
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216What kind of romance is this, in which half of the couple is either fucking crazy or doesn’t know how to behave in a non-murderous way? Can you get any unhealthier? Either you’re forcing her to be with you, because the signals she’s giving rhyme with “luck blow”, or she’s going to stab your lungs one night because she loves you so, so much.
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218But she’s not written in a creepy way. The creepy implications are there, but the character is normalized and portrayed as some kind of ideal character, someone that’s desirable—hence, she becomes an archetype.
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220And everybody suffers from this. The writers, the story, the readers. Even the character, who gets no chance to shine. Read the script, you bitch, and then make sure all the losers want to pierce you with their dick. That’s the only reason you were born. Be cute and adorable and make them long for what they’ll never have.
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222Oh hey, are we getting fucking political? We are! Isn’t this fucking Christmas?!
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224“Tsunderes” are the product of the worst kind of wish-fulfillment. Escapism through literature is not a bad thing—I myself started to read to run away from the horrors of having such a humongous cock during my childhood.
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226But the place you’re escaping to can be a good one, or a bad one. And guess what, fuckwit: “Tsunderes” are not a good shelter for you.
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228What is the message the “Tsundere” gives? Why are they so fucking popular? You already know, if you’ve read this far. The “Tsundere” is a girl who acts like she doesn’t want you, like she hates you, like she despises every move of yours, every pass at her you make, every touch or breath or word you say.
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230But she loves you! Really! She’s just being a twat! You just need to push her so she shows her true colors.
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232Yeah.
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234For once, I’d love to complain about some bullshit romantic cliché without recurring to rape as the reason why it sucks.
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236Who the fuck saw a character that was designed to be as off-putting and jerky as possible and decided it was sexy as fuck? The “Tsundere” archetype, at its worst, is designed to make lonely losers long for that cute girl who keeps rejecting you. It presents the idea that “no” means “yes”, because this character just slapped the guy and told him she hates him and then ran to the bathroom to furiously slap his photograph against her womb.
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238Clearly, this shows that women don’t know what the fuck they want. You know better, stud. So go rape some chicks; they’ll thank you later.
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240The “Tsundere” is based on the idea that girls want your dick so fucking badly they have to be absolute asswipes just to resist your manly appeal. Hence the constant genital trauma: they’re just shy about it.
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242By the way, remember how the main character was described as plain? This is why. He’s not there to be an actual character—he’s just a mirror for the reader, who will live happy knowing that the girl likes him, even if she doesn’t know it yet. This is also why 99% of the “Tsunderes” are straight cute girls—because this is clearly directed to heterosexual males.
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244Then again, it’s not like changing the sexual orientation fixes anything here. If fisting didn’t exist, lesbian “Tsunderes” would invent it by punching their girlfriends’ vaginas and then getting stuck.
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246Does this mean all “Tsunderes” commend rape? No. Most of them, especially if written in the same cookie cutter way, do normalize the idea that women say one thing when meaning the exact opposite—a logic that all rapists use, because they’re fucking rapists—but one can write a “Tsundere-ish” character and still make it work.
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248How? By writing the character first, which shouldn’t be too hard. The only thing you need is to avoid being dead from the neck upwards, and you’re pretty much good to go.
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250There are thousands of examples of this: Kitsunerisu’s Dust and Harmony has a Twilight that, in his words, “was written as a Tsundere”, and it’s still one of the best AUs in this god-forsaken website. Percy Jackson’s Annabeth was tolerable, and she ended up growing up on me. I would wear bikini chainmail and fuck Han Solo if I had the chance. This happened last year.
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252There are ways to make this work, as always. If you’re good enough, or original enough, or not the human equivalent of the sound of Hitler farting cum, then you can do this. But it’s surprisingly fucking easy, judging by the insane amount of works with a horrible “Tsundere” in them, to fuck this up.
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254So just stop using this shit if you’re a writer. That’s my major advice. It’ll kill the story, it’ll alienate everybody who’s not a creep desperately longing for human touch, and it’ll imply some messages you might not (and shouldn’t) be comfortable with.
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256The TMC was bad because it taught men that they have to be assholes to succeed. It made me angry because I know I’m not the only son of a bitch who studies romantic fiction to know how to behave in society.
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258But the “Tsundere” is worse, because it goes the easy way. At least the TMC forces the reader to work on their attitude. The “Tsundere” just says all women are stupid and asks you to ignore the things they say or do, because you know what they really want.
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260As I said, it doesn’t make me angry. It makes me feel nauseous. This is not looking into the abyss and the abyss looking back. This is gazing into Satan’s gaping asshole, and Satan farting on my eyes.
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262It fucking stings, is what I mean.
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264
265To be continued.
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271"Hell is Empty": Another Mistake To Avoid When Writing Romance · 7:16pm
272Audio version, by Imrix.
273
274I’m not good at romance.
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276My dad refuses to use any other word than “the bagpipe” to refer to the human penis. When I was in Elementary School, three songs that came out of nowhere became popular among the students – and they were all about anal sex. A girl once confessed her love to me by changing her wifi password to a portmanteau of our names, then suggesting it’d be a good name for our daughter.
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278And among these folks, I was always labelled “the unromantic one”. I believe the uvula counts as genitalia. I giggled at a fart during a funeral. I’ve had two pets in my entire life, and they ate all their children.
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280Hi, I’m Aragón. I’m a colossal idiot, I’ve never written anything romantic, and I’m currently fisting somebody precious to you. Here’s another blog on the subject of shitty romance.
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2851. GOD IS DEAD AND YOU CUNTS KILLED HIM.
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289I honestly can’t tell if they’re fucking with me on purpose at this point.
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291I mean, until now I just sorta assumed all romance writers were idiots. The idea was that only a total cockmonger would write the shit I’ve read – because I’m sorry, I just refuse to believe that whoever came up with “they fall in love because both have hemorrhoids” has a functional brain. This is not something that appears naturally in the human race. This is retarded by design. This is going back in time to feed bleach to your pregnant mother and then high-giving yourself.
292
293But then I see shit like the stuff I’m going to point out in this blog, and I can't help but change my mind. You can only go so far with idiocy. This is not the romance writers being stupid. This is the romance writers going out of their way to piss me off.
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295What are they doing, you ask? It’s a little tricky to explain. In this blog, I’ll be talking about forced lack of communication between characters. About a discrepancy between character motivation and character action. About a lack of an internal consistency within the story to make room for the author.
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297I’ll be talking about the use of artificial plot points and misunderstandings to lengthen the story as much as possible, sacrificing the entire story itself.
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299I’ll be talking padding. Fucking padding. Larding, faffing, aggrandizing, filling out. Wearing high heels to the stilt convention. Stuffing your briefs with cotton when hiring a prostitute. Wearing the fleshlight as you penetrate a cavernous vagina.
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301I’m talking about motherfucking filler.
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303In a romantic story.
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305Look: I’m an idiot. I’m the reason why doctors ask you to please not blow bubbles in the glucose dropper. I’m the intended audience for every fart joke in your favorite cartoon. But even I realize that trying to use filler in a romance is like asking a homeopath for contraceptives.
306
307And yet, here we are! Talking filler! Aren’t you glad you were born. I sure am.
308
309This is filler done wrong, by the way. Those idiots really aren’t conquering the world any time soon. I don’t even know how to feel about how they still mess up – relieved? Offended? I think I’ll go by offended, because really, this makes me rage. This is where the lines between stupidity, laziness and evil blur into a goddamn mess. This is calling your Eskimo friend a nigger.
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311But first things first: yes, filler is to modern storytelling what casual racism is to Australia. When you’re telling a story that’s episodic in nature – because, say, you’re the writer of a TV show – sometimes you need to throw some pauses in there. It’s good for the pacing of the entire show, and to make sure the audience can breathe between plot points. It can also be well-written, and help us take a peek into the characters’ everyday life. It makes them look whole, fleshed out, like actual fucking human beings. Filler, when done right, can be really immersive.
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313When done right.
314
315But this? This is not filler done well. This is to literature what diaper fetishists are to kindergartens.
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317I have seen filler in bad romantic stories done a thousand times, and so have you. Everybody has, because that turd is omnipresent in the genre. But, precisely because of that ubiquity, it’s really fucking hard to point out the specifics. If we take the romantic genre and picture it as a room, then my blog posts are me walking in and pointing at the huge piece of shit on the carpet. But this time I can’t focus my attention on any particular log, because the writer just farted and left. And at first we think there’s no shit in the room, but then we breathe, and our lungs burn like embers. We can smell the mess, we notice the author ate tacos last night, but we never actually see it.
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319But untangle your bollocks, because not all is lost. You can’t fart like that without leaving a mark in your underwear. And holy fucking shit guys, am I going to point that mark out.
320
321It’s too complicated to explain this in abstract, so let’s talk examples first. I'll explain three cases where this happens, and then I'll make a point to talk about what those scenes imply, and what they have in common. See if they ring any bells.
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323Bad romantic filler is when the writer tries to retcon the ending of the story so it’s not actually the ending. When the two main characters finally confess, kiss, fuck, or whatever the shit the endgame is for your particular story – but then in comes the next episode, and they’re back at square one. Because they forgot that they confessed. Or they are too embarrassed to do anything else about it. Or they couldn’t hear what the other was saying.
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325Reading this is like pissing with an erection. Swingers would say this is cheating. Onan would deem it a dick move.
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327Why? Because this bullshit isn’t a fair move. What the writer is doing here is not telling the story – in fact, the writer is doing the exact opposite. But just one example is not enough, so let’s talk two more before getting to the point.
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329Bad romantic filler is when the characters flirt with the finesse of a redneck fucking his shotgun, but they’re still not together. Because that’s exactly the level of social awareness romance writers possess, I assume. The two characters have telegraphed the other what they feel a thousand times, and it’s absurd how they’re still not an item, and everybody knows this. And then, one day, they finally man the fuck up, and decide to confess, and as the words come out of their mouths—
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331The phone rings. A building explodes. A dog barks, somebody opens the door, the guy’s anus prolapses – doesn’t fucking matter. Something interrupts them. They get flustered. And then they stop the confession.
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333And they act as if nothing had happened.
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335So they’re still not together.
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337Because Hell is empty.
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339And of course, this doesn’t happen once – it happens many, many times. But we’re not done yet.
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341Bad romantic filler is when the characters are together and they still doubt if the other loves them. Sure, they have kissed and cuddled and they can still feel each other’s smegma around their lips, but that means squat. Some people kiss their dogs, and you don't assume they love them until they get the peanut butter.
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343So in short, the characters assume that physical intimacy does not equal emotional closeness. They don't know if their love interest would jam up their emotional crotch for them, we could say. Okay. Cool. Whatever. I’m Spanish, I think I'm rude if I'm not making out with your wife two seconds after learning her name – I understand that a kiss doesn’t really mean anything.
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345But Papa says just ‘cause ye shot yer dick off ain’t mean shotgun’s gonna fuck itself, so of course, right after we establish that in this story we’re aiming for that tone, the protagonist sees her love interest kiss somebody else on the cheek, and then I don’t even bother with the rest of the story. I just hiss the word “retarded”, close the tab, and my soul abandons my mortal body.
346
347Because if the main characters are the ones kissing each other nobody gives a shit... But the very moment somebody else enters the picture, that philosophy becomes more useless than a woman in Utah. Mr-Love-Interest looked at another girl, so he’s obviously heads over heels. The rules change if it means that we're introducing a love triangle: the gestures that didn't matter before are important now. You kiss it, you love it. Go buy an engagement ring for my asshole.
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349Then, of course, cue the thousand episodes of pointless drama and misunderstandings, and "I thought you loved me"s and "I only love you"s. And in the end nobody learns anything. If they get together again? Expect more questions about what does a kiss really mean.
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351I gave you three examples of bad filler, but the list goes on, and on, and fucking on. It never ends. Said three examples – “forgot the confession”, “constant interruptions”, and “suck my dick” – are prominent, but they surely aren't the only ones. Padding. Faffing. Bullshit.
352
353And there’s a thematic connection, of course. There’s a reason why this idiocy feels so tacked on, even though at first sight it shouldn’t – it’s drama, yes, but it’s unnecessary drama. It’s drama that fucks with the plot, with the characters, with absolutely everything that the story stands for.
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355Remember how I mentioned episodic storytelling earlier? Yes, that was for a goddamn reason. Episodic stories are told in chunks, with pauses between the chapters, with time skips between the episodes. So they can have filler, because it’s possible to end an episode and then tell a completely different story in the next one. A story that has nothing to do with the main plot. You’re fighting aliens? Good. Here, enjoy twenty minutes of farting around at the beach.
356
357But see, linear storytelling can’t have that. Because that’s what "linear" fucking means. So if you want to pad out the story, you can’t make it unrelated – there are no side stories, no “off” chapters. Everything has to do with the main plot, the central conflict, the drama.
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359However, the shitty romance writers want filler, because they can’t let the story end. So they write it anyway, and they integrate it into the story.
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361It’s a retarded solution to a retarded problem. It’s resorting to incest because you don’t know want to memorize an extra birthday. By changing the story to add elements that have nothing to do the previous shit you've established, you’re breaking the characters’ minds.
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363In “forgot the confession” and “constant interruption,” the first two examples, there’s no reason why the characters shouldn’t be together already. Their motivation is to be with each other, or at least that’s what the stupid author keeps telling us – but it’s really not. With those scenes, a discrepancy is created, and now the audience realizes that the characters' real motivation is to be in love but never move on from there. The story wants the unresolved sexual tension, the cheap thrills of teenager drama. The moment they get to the point where the next step is unavoidable, something happens and we go back to square one.
364
365What happens here is that it’s easier to write people in love than to write people that are together. Thinking about a plot is harder when you can’t just trust your colon and go for the clichés. So the result is that the characters become huge hypocrites. They say they love each other, but they don't. They don’t want a relationship, and they’ll use any excuse to dodge that particular bullet.
366
367The third example – “suck my cock” – is slightly different, but it follows the same idea: the characters, while together, have a particular brand of drama going on. But when that is about to get resolved, the author introduces a completely different plot thread so the story can drag on a little more. Like the junkie that mixes aspirin with the cocaine so he can snort more often because he just doesn’t give a shit anymore.
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369There are some rules, some motivations that the story establishes and follows all the way up to the climax. But if they get to the climax, the story ends. So, the moment the story catches its final breath, everything goes through he fucking window, and we’re forced to canter on. Everything looks the same, and we keep hearing that this is going to end in romance, but we can see through that lie now.
370
371It’s all really meta, and that makes it even worse. It's the author thinking "no, fuck this, I do what I want," and consciously making a bad choice. Consicously lessening the story's quality and breaking suspension of disbelief because it's simpler this way. At least the “tsundere”, horrible as she is, has some consistency. But this is literally a disrespect to the already-shitty-story we’re reading. This is everything and everybody going out of character at the same time. This is CPR-ing a rotten corpse. This is masturbating in Planned Parenthood.
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373Because, again, the author believes that writing people together is harder than writing people who aren’t. So it all stops. Cheap drama appears, asinine plots are repeated time and time again, and whatever excuse to make the story last longer is used. This is a choice taken for reasons unrelated to the story. The characters refuse to advance on their own will, the story’s universe seems to conspire against evolution, and the narration kicks our dicks and says it’s a blowjob.
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375This is telling a story for the sake of telling a story. It’s degrading the entire thing time and time again to make it last forever, to always have that last plot threat hanging, to make sure your readers don't (or can't) escape. And everything that could have been good about the story slowly fades away.
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377With the TMC and the “tsundere” the authors were going for the lazy, stupid route; they’re fucking puppets and I can see the cunt that moves them. But this? This filler? This is the writer cutting the strings, and then assuring us the puppets are still dancing.
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379This is cancer for all things literary. All things story-related. This is a son of a bitch making fun of absolutely everything, included the story itself, and believing that storytelling doesn’t deserve at least a little bit of respect. This is treating a story like something artificial and worthless, that you can play with, that you can destroy or reassemble at your own pace. This is insulting everybody who ever gave a shit about your characters.
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381This is probably the worst sin that a romantic story can commit. This is one of those things that make me hate a story, no matter how good everything else is. This is bullshit.
382
383Let me be absolutely fucking clear, Author. You’re not being clever. You’re not staying true to yourself. You’re not “playfully teasing” the readers. If you write yourself into a corner, then continue writing and see where that gets you. If the plot has ran its course, let it end. If the characters demand you to finish the tale, finish it. Because right now, you’re not telling me a story.
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385You’re wasting my fucking time.
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389
390To be continued
391
392This one felt too short, or too weak for you? Worry not. Consider this a breather episode, because the next installment of the series is going to tackle something that makes the “tsundere” and the TMC look like Hamlet.
393
394Next time: The Harem Protagonist, or “Wish Fulfillment”.
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405It Feels Rapey, and it Breaks My Heart -- The Harem Comedy, Greatest Mistake when Writing Romance · 5:19pm
406Live-reading of this blog, by Imrix.
407
408I’m not good at romance. My idea of a contraceptive is a fake telephone number. I date girls with glasses to look at my reflection while we fuck. I blow raspberries while eating girls out.
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410But after losing my computer for a week, I decided I had to change. I needed to learn from the masters. This was both for the sake of my pride, and for the sake of every girl out there who will take a ride on the Aragón Train. This was a decisive step in my life.
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412I read every single love story that fell into my hands, good and bad.
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414I learned a lot of things.
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416All of them were fucking horrible,
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418Hi, I’m Aragón. I’ve never written a romantic story, I know nothing about storytelling, and I’d go fuck myself if I ever had the chance. Here is the reason why children are afraid of the dark and why Harem Comedies killed God.
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4221. Of Course It Feels Rapey, but This Shit Fucking Manages to Go Even Further.
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424Fuck off.
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426Fuck off right away.
427
428I can’t stand this shit. This is beyond bad writing. This goes all the way to prove the existence of my genitalia, because there’s just no way there can be so much darkness in the world without a little bit of light. So far, I’ve been angry at all the bad instances of romance I’ve seen, but this? This isn’t giving me cancer. This isn’t making me bang my head against a wall.
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430This makes me want to actively look for the author and beat the shit out of him.
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432At least the TMC could be mistaken for bad writing, or a lazy misunderstanding on what makes a character appealing. At least the “Tsundere” had the chance to be someone trying to write what’s popular instead of what’s new because they’re fucking idiots. At least the filler might have been a writer genuinely not knowing when to stop telling a story, that with the huge sack of pus they have instead of a brain.
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434But this?! Fucking this?! This has no excuse. This requires the author to slowly and carefully thread a delicate web of bullshit, to have it all thought-out before the story even begins. This is planned fuckery, designed spunk, autotuned literary flatulence.
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436In the case of the Harem Comedy, the writer is the one to blame, not the character. So I don’t hate the game. I hate the player. If my dick is a bagpipe, I’m going to give the player a kilt and ask him to choke on the girth.
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438What is, you ask, the Harem Comedy? Chances are, if you’re reading this, you already know, but it never hurts to make sure.
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440A harem is a group of women who all fuck one single dude. Said single dude tends to be less a surprisingly nice boyfriend who just happens to be into fucking many girls, and more the kind of douche not even your mother would use to clean her aforementioned cavernous vagina.
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442The Harem Comedy is obviously built around this idea. It’s a romance—usually a romantic comedy, hence the nomenclature—in which there’s only one male character of importance, but there are at least four or five females, and they’re all desperately in love with him. They adore the way he drools and stares at their breasts. They find it charming how he has no personality whatsoever. They wet themselves whenever he opens his big dumb fucking mouth.
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444They’re romances in the lesser sense of the word. Sometimes there’s an excuse plot built around it all to give the first chapters a minimum of direction—the Harem Protagonist is new in town, and he has a distant goal he’s working hard to achieve, like earning money, finding his long lost mother, or fingering a mountain lion—but this is merely used to explain why he’s always surrounded by women and to set up the basic background of the story.
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446(“Gilipo-kun, turns out the Mountain Lion Fingering Foundation was exclusively for girls till three seconds ago!” “Cricketty biscuits, I’m going to fuck like a champion!”)
447
448The moment the series’ sorry excuse for a pathos is established, though, the plot quickly peters out into vapid fuckery, inane bullshit with no plot or consequences. Ill-defined as “Slice of Life”, the story lets the characters flop around like salmons out of water, bouncing off each other but never achieving anything.
449
450So what is the point, then? Well, here lays the first of many, many problems in this genre. The focus of this story, you see, is not the romance. Or the plot. Or the protagonist, who, seeing how works part time as a pheromone lighthouse, one would think is at least mildly interesting.
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452No. The Harem Genre exists for one reason and one reason only, and that’s the girls who are in love with the main character. I said it before: at least four girls, usually more. And each one is slightly different, in that fantastically simplistic way that makes you think that when the author was fourteen he bought a sex-doll, taped a picture of his father to its face, and then cried himself to sleep.
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454There’s the Sweet Girl. She’s sweet, and kind, and she wants to fuck you. There’s the “Tsundere”. She acts like she hates you, but in reality she just wants to fuck you. There’s the Young One. She literally has nothing going on aside for the fact that she’s creepy young and wants to fuck you, but it’s all right because it’s not rape if it’s statutory. There’s Big Boob Girl. She has Big Boobs. Great Bazongas. Huge Hoohaahoohaas. Titanic Tatas. You get the drill.
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456The flaws are starting to pop out on their own, aren’t they?
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458I could wrap this early. I could just explain that the Harem Genre objectifies women to an insane degree for the excuse of creating a weird onanistic shooting range, where lonely fucks can fool themselves into thinking somebody would ever love them, and then call it a day and go on with my life.
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460But that would be too easy, and it wouldn’t be in-depth enough. And you know that? Fuck that. Fuck letting them go easy on this. Fuck defenders of this God-forsaken genre and fuck the possibility of them saying me pointing out that I have a modicum of self-awareness is not enough to criticize this insult to humanity.
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462I’m going full-out Nuremberg on this bitch. I sat down and listed all the issues I have with this genre, because I hate myself and I want to die. This is the closest I’ve ever been to brain death, and it’s not over yet, because now I’m going to write them all in here. I’m too far gone. There’s no turning back now.
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464Let’s forget the creepy objectification and the blatant sexism for now, then, and focus on something more objective: from a storytelling point of view, the Harem Genre is like going to New Jersey to taste French cuisine.
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466Why? Because the mere structure of it prevents it from ever working, and in facts deems it to suck more than a vacuum cleaner after a couple shots.
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468I like the Slice of Life genre. I think it’s fine. There are good stories that work around the Slice of Life scenario, but that’s not what the Harem is trying to do. A Slice of Life is based on many things, but one of them—that many people forget—is that things happen in SoL stories.
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470See, a good ongoing Slice of Life will have character development. People change over time, we learn from our mistakes, and so on. We grow up. We change. Little things happen, and they make us what we are.
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472A good Slice of Life explores this, no matter how gradual the evolution of the characters, the world, or the relationships that form the main core of the story. A good Slice of life is about this.
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474But Harem Comedies aren’t about this, and in fact, they would never allow an exploration on the growth of people. They’ll have the barest bones of a Slice of Life scenario; that is, we see the character’s usual lives. It presents an everyday scenario in every chapter, and save some necessary exceptions (the beach episode, the mountain episode, and so on) it always happens in the same geographical space.
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476Nothing else from the Slice of Life genre is there. Forget the nuance, the growth, the coziness, the ongoing evolution of the elements in the story. Harem Comedy wants to have its cake and eat it: it wants to be frozen in time, but also use the so-low-they-don’t-exist stakes of Slice of Life to avoid telling a greater story.
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478Because the Harem Comedy is not really a Slice of Life story. It labels itself as such as an excuse to do what it wants to do: show off the girls in the hopes you masturbate to them.
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480See, Harem Comedies hate women, but they don’t even hate women properly. At least they could be asked to hate actual women, as in, human beings who also happen to have boobs.
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482But that wouldn’t be nearly as lucrative, so fuck that. Let’s hate the idea of women. Let’s hate this weird fiction that doesn’t even approach reality in the slightest.
483
484The women in there aren’t women, they are abstract concepts, stereotypes so exacerbated that my pet giraffe feels more human. See, a Harem is done in such a way that no matter your fetish, something caters to you. You like “Tsunderes”? Got you covered. Big boobs? Worry not. You like to fuck kids? Aren’t you in for a treat!
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486It’s not storytelling; it’s marketing. It’s done in a way that Harem Comedy fans can point at their favorite character and declare her their waifu. They’re designed with nothing but that in mind – get a creep to obsess over said character, get the money from that creep.
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488Any deviation from the norm, any change to the formula, would be seen as breaking the rules, and the waifu stops being the waifu. So we can’t allow this. God forbid character development, or inner motivations, or characters with a modicum of agency. That would imply the girls aren’t exactly what they seem to be at first sight, and that’s what made them popular. That is all that matters.
489
490The safest route, then, is to produce the same scenario, the same chapter, the same product, a thousand times. Change the fucking window dressing, nobody will care, and then come here and feast on the sweet fuckypillow cash.
491
492It’s about the readers being lazy, not about the writers, for once. Certain archetypes are popular within certain demographics, and it’s easier for some fat fucks to just pick the loli one in the Harem and pay somebody to draw porn of her instead of making the effort of reading the characters and choosing a favorite based on good writing, chemistry, or whatever the shit you want in a piece of media.
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494It’s an exercise in cynicism, and if you’re a storyteller you might as well cut your arms and legs, paint yourself orange, and live the rest of your life as a carrot. The characters are frozen in time, and they can’t evolve because that’s seen as bad, and the plot is strictly about everyday life.
495
496So what the fuck can you write about? There’s no conflict, no adventure, no suspense, no plot, no character arc… All you can do is throw outside forces at them and see how they react.
497
498“See how they react” – and those are the keywords. Harem Comedies are reactive. It’s about things happening to the characters, but never about the characters doing things. It’s always the circus coming to town, a storm fucking up the lights, the mountain lions fingering them back in revenge. It’s never about them joining the circus, or them fucking up a storm, or them starting a mountain lion civil war.
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500This makes for a natural staleness that no Harem Comedy can shake off, no matter how hard they try to. Because to shake it off, you need to create some kind of ongoing narrative, but that means creating conflict and not being able to show the cookie cutter reactions from the harem.
501
502Do you think the Sweet Girl will be able to react sweetly to mountain lions shooting at her? Of course not! She’ll piss her pants and then go full Rambo on their asses. So that’s out of the question, because if the Sweet Girl can’t act sweet, then the Sweet Girl might as well not be there, and that means we’re losing the Sweet Girl demographic.
503
504So fuck adventure, that’s out from the get-go. What about the Slice of Life natural narrative? Impossible. Any deviation from the standard is going to be perceived as heresy, so no change can be permanent: we can’t afford the waifu being anything but the quintessential waifu. If something happens, they have to react exactly how the readership expects them to react, forever and always. Nothing else is allowed.
505
506In other words: call me Daucus Carota Sativa the First, King of the Underground and the Armless People, because there’s no leeway here. No Slice of Life, no Adventure. What the fuck do you do?
507
508But wait, maybe it’s possible to pull it off. The Simpsons have been doing this exact same thing – everyday antics, static characters – for decades, and the first eight seasons are a masterpiece, after all.
509
510No such luck. See, there’s a minor difference: the characters are fresh. The characters are nuanced. The characters are not a steaming pile of shit. You can indeed write a Slice of Life series in which the characters reset at the start of every new episode, but you need three-dimensional characters to do this.
511
512A series that works this way needs nuanced personalities carrying the series. In one episode you see the protagonist’s playful side, but in the other you see that he can be dark if the situation calls for it. You need interesting characters, realistic characters, you need complexity.
513
514Bart Simpson is a scoundrel. Bart Simpson also felt that mixture of fear and guilt only ten year olds can feel when his mother saw that he had stolen a videogame. Bart Simpson also threw his hockey stick to the side and hugged his sister when people were asking for blood. Fuck you, Harem writer. You’re not writing Bart Simpson. Don’t you fucking dare to use that excuse.
515
516See the problem? See why I hate this? There are many more issues, there are a thousand complains I can write about this genre, but this one is, first and foremost, the worst one. The characters can’t progress, the characters aren’t allowed to be complex enough to ditch progress, and the world can’t be exciting enough to outshine the characters, because it’s the characters that must always, always have the spotlight.
517
518It’s a perfect recipe for nothing good ever happening to the series. No matter how much care they take in making the fruit look fresh and ripe from outside, the core is rotten and full of worms, and the only way to solve that is throwing it away and picking another apple.
519
520A Harem Comedy is never gonna get better. By conscious choice and design, there’s no personality, no story, no message, nothing. It’s just marketing. It’s creating the most standard gallery of bullshit characters and degrading them as much as possible, all for the sake of getting money. It’s art with an F.
521
522And you know what’s the worst part of this?
523
524A Harem Comedy is not an easy thing to do. It takes effort to pump situation after situation, always slightly different between them all, to at least pretend that there’s something going on. It’s arduous. It’s taking a shit with spikes. It’s limp swordfighting. It’s buying a present to your cousin twice removed whom you haven’t seen in over fifteen years and is named fucking “Ronald”.
525
526This is what pisses me off the most. Read this sentence twice to make sure you interiorize it fully: you have to make an effort to write a Harem Comedy. You have to make an effort to write a Harem Comedy. It takes time. And conscious thought. And careful execution.
527
528There are two options here: the author is either a really determined moron or a full-blown sociopath. I can’t tell which is worse anymore. It takes a special kind of cockmonger to sell out before you even start to write.
529
530Hence me hating the author even more than the genre or the character, like I did with the previous examples. Fuck that. For the TMC I could blame society, or literary trends, or the stars, or the Muses. But this? This is well-plotted. This is an aforethought that becomes a reality through earnest activity.
531
532Fuck you.
533
534Just, just fuck you.
535
536The reason why this story can’t have a plot is, as it’s already been established, because the characters need their time to shine and show off their perfectly predictable reaction to every single thing that happens. The Sweet Girl needs to be Sweet at everything, no matter what happens. If you have an actual plot going on, they will lose the spotlight, and you might lose money.
537
538But what about the romance? A set of archetypical characters all reacting to each other, a stale background and being frozen in time – maybe you can use this to actually build a love story?
539
540No. You might as well be a dance interpreted by a group of French ladies, because you can’t, cunt.
541
542There are many reasons for this. The female characters being completely one-note is the main reason, of course, but there are more. Have you noticed how I’ve talked endlessly about the girls but I’ve barely mentioned the male protagonist, aside from implying he can’t tell a punching bag from a pregnant woman?
543
544Guess why.
545
546Fucking guess why.
547
548I understand that pointing out what’s “the worst part” in a Harem Comedy is as useful as finding out which knuckle hurt the most when Mike the Drunken Biker punched your throat. But on the other hand, it’s good to know where to aim the crowbar when you’re sneaking up on him.
549
550With that philosophy in mind: the Harem Protagonist is the worst thing in a Harem Comedy, outside of meta reasons (like why did this piece of shit get produced). It’s the extra sugar in the obese mother’s coffee.
551
552The main problem with the Harem Protagonist is that he’s not a character—he’s a stand-in for the audience. The name of the game is wish-fulfillment, or giving false hopes to the reader.
553
554But just like a really flexible masturbator, I’m getting a-head of myself.
555
556Purely writing-wise, the main problem with the Harem Protagonist is that, by mere virtue of the nature of the story, he doesn’t have an active personality. He’s exclusively limited to react to stuff, and has absolutely no initiative on his own. He’ll scream when his pants are on fire, but he won’t punch the guy holding the torch.
557
558In a romance, this is the worst thing you can do. It’s easy to point out a completely inactive female in a love story, but the male is a little trickier, because one can’t call chauvinism on this dick. Simply put: the Harem Protagonist exists so the girls fall in love with him, but there’s no reason why that would happen.
559
560He’s never extremely attractive. This is established early on, and it’s a really important plot point, because the audience is supposed to relate with him, and attractive guys don’t read masturbatory fantasies, they live them.
561
562So that’s out, but with no physical attractiveness, the only reason why a girl would fall in love with this guy is personality, or chemistry, or virtues. But the Harem Protagonist has no virtues. He’s defined by negative qualities: he’s not an asshole, he’s not a rapist, he’s not one of those rude muscular guys who will treat you horribly, ladies.
563
564He’s just sorta there. Reacting to shit so you know he’s alive and breathing, and never making a choice.
565
566As such, he makes it impossible for the girls to fall in love with him. I already pointed out that, in a romance, you don’t fall in love with characters—you fall in love with qualities. This motherfucker needs to bring something to the table, something only he can provide and that makes it attractive for the other characters to become infatuated.
567
568But he doesn’t have any. He’s just there, doing nothing, and not being actively horrible. That matters jack shit in literature. You don’t have sex with a person just because they failed to kick your dog. You don’t marry your sweetheart because she doesn’t punch you as hard as your ex.
569
570Yet that’s all the story will throw at you in regards to the Harem Protagonist. He’s nice. When asked to describe themselves, normal people say what they are, but losers say what they are not, because if you are able to do things you’re not a loser.
571
572And that’s the gist: losers don’t get laid! That’s why they’re fucking losers! I don’t give a shit about your audience—if the Harem Protagonist is drowning in pussy, you better portray him as a goddamn chick magnet, because WHY WOULD HE DROWN IN PUSSY OTHERWISE. You’re trying to be immersive so hard that you break immersion, which has to be by far the most retarded way to fuck up a story I’ve seen in a while.
573
574It’s just not possible, no matter how you look at it. It makes no sense, and it feels artificial. The girls love him because fuck you, we wouldn’t have a series otherwise. Well, then don’t write a series! If I see my kid has no legs, I don’t ask him to run a Marathon, you fucking cunt!
575
576So either write a loser who doesn’t get any girls at first, and then works hard to stop being a loser, and then gets the girls, or don’t write a loser in the first place! You can’t have your cake and eat it. If you’re purposely portraying the kind of asshole who never has women flocking around him like vultures around a cow giving birth, then it’s impossible to make him popular. You’re being contradictory. You’re literally signaling that your own plot is impossible within the plot itself.
577
578“Oh, but that’s the whole point!” I hear some idiot complain, because there’s always an idiot complaining. “It’s wish-fulfillment! It’s a fantasy, that’s why he’s a loser but he still gets the girls! So losers can read it and dream that they get the girls too!”
579
580To which I reply two things: first, you’re a wanker. You’ll always be a wanker. You have the face of a wanker, and the soul of a wanker, and I will rip your dick off and slap you with it until you admit it yourself, because you’re defending this shit.
581
582This shit is unforgivable. There’s no way, absolutely NO WAY that someone would defend a standard Harem Comedy, the kind of Harem Comedy I’m talking about, without knowing they’re playing Devil’s Advocate. And if you’re arguing a point that you know is moot just to feel like the smartest person in the room, then please, gently shove a cacti up your ass and let the grownups talk.
583
584There are some exceptions to everything I’ve been saying so far; series that define themselves as Harem Comedies but don’t necessarily follow my points. I know. I’ll talk about that later. For now, though, you know exactly what kind of shitty series I’m criticizing, so don’t try to get cheeky and say something like “Oh, but Space Soldier DingleCock doesn’t do this, the girls fuck each other instead of the protagonist!” to try to defend a genre that’s been rotten from day one.
585
586You wanker.
587
588But that’s just one thing, and I’d say I’d reply with two. So now I’m elaborating on your actual point: that this is all wish-fulfillment, and that magically makes it okay.
589
590Look, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wish-fulfillment. Most pieces of media use wish-fulfillment, because reading is great for escapism, and you gotta get your readers somehow. And while it has some really negative connotations, I understand that wish-fulfillment can be really useful if it teaches good ideals. Every kid wants to be Captain America, that’s why he’s such a popular hero, and the writers use that power to teach good lessons, to defend ideals they feel are worth defending.
591
592Resized to 36% of 645px × 874px
593
594Case in point.
595
596But fucking this?! What the shit are you teaching? The Harem Protagonist is featureless, a blank canvas made of anthrax, all for the sake of allowing the fucking reader to think that hey, maybe they’d love me too!
597
598This doesn’t defend a moral worth defending. This teaches the worst lesson imaginable: that by merely existing, men deserve an entire army of chicks who thrive for his body fluids. That women are to love them no matter what. That they don’t have to earn any kind of affection. “Shit, the guy is as good a person as me, and yet I don’t have a harem on my own. Clearly, the women are at fault here!”
599
600Because the fucking Harem Protagonist does nothing! Fucking being kind to a girl every day is not the basis of a healthy relationship, it’s the barest minimum requisite to not be labelled a goddamn psycho.
601
602This genre is made so you believe that the Harem Protagonist is you. This is perfectly designed so you forget your shitty life and hope, just for a moment at least, that an extremely young girl loves you in a totally not creepy way, because look, everybody is okay with it!
603
604It’s evil. It can only be described as evil. You, just by the grace of being you, have a harem. It’s yours, and they all love you, and they will always love you, and they will fight against each other for your affection, and they will give you presents, and they will remain pure for you.
605
606It would be so easy to turn this into a good thing. Wish-fulfillment is a powerful tool, as I said. Every kid wants to be Harry Potter at eleven. But guess what?! Harry Potter has a fucking character arc!
607
608He starts a tosser, and an idiot, and a little piece of shit. Sure, everybody loves him and he’s already famous and the Fucking Chosen One, because that’s wish-fulfillment for you—but he’s still greener than rotten guacamole at the start of the series. And then he fucking grows up. He makes mistakes, and fucks up, and learns from those mistakes, and works hard, and ends up a better human being.
609
610Objective quality matters fuck-all. I couldn’t give less of a shit if you think Harry Potter is a good example or not—but at least it tries to teach a good lesson. It tries to show character growth as a positive thing, as a desirable thing. It explainsthat if you want to make your life easier, or to follow your dreams, you have to better yourself first.
611
612A character arc. That’s all the Harem Protagonist needs. A character arc, a chance to become a better person, a chance to fuck up and feel despair and work and make an example. Then it’s okay. Then you’re encouraging people to change, to become healthier people, to work on their flaws so they’re attractive to others and have an actual fucking life.
613
614BUT GUESS WHAT.
615
616HAREM COMEDIES FORCE CHARACTERS TO BE FROZEN IN TIME.
617
618THE CHARACTERS CAN’T DEVIATE FROM THE NORM.
619
620Of course we can’t have the Protagonist go through a character arc! Then, if a new reader who just happens to be a loser reads Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty instead of Chapter One for some fucking reason, then he might not relate with the main character! We’re losing potential audience!
621
622He has to stay the same, always. He can’t change. He’s like the waifus, only his role is even more restricted. He can’t outshine the audience, least he (GOD FORBID) steal the waifu. For, you see, if the waifu falls in love with him because of some quality our average reader doesn’t share, then the reader won’t think that the girl would love him instead.
623
624So fuck that! Let him be static! Let him be one-note, and never mind the fact that he doesn’t have a note to begin with! Are we teaching a horrible lesson in the meantime? Are we implying that men naturally deserve women, and that changing is a bad thing, because the girls love this asshole precisely because he’s unchanged? Who cares! We’re making money!
625
626And don’t be fooled: I’m not insulting the audience. They are. The shits who write this godawful mess are the ones who think Harem Comedy readers deserve nothing. That’s why they write the way they write. That’s why the industry is so saturated with this jack-off-ish poppycock.
627
628“Our audience are lifeless losers who don’t know quality if it slaps it in the face, so why bother?” That’s their philosophy. They work hard to create a product that reflects this line of thinking. They learn how to write series that propagate this idea and makes it mainstream.
629
630The girls are archetypes. The Harem Protagonist is the worst kind of blank canvas. The story can’t evolve. The plot isn’t allowed to happen. The Slice of Life genre is insulted. The worst kind of lesson is implied.
631
632
633
634To be continued.
635
636
637And this is merely a fucking introduction to the genre.
638
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651
652
653It Feels Rapey: Harem Comedies, or How I Hate your Waifu · 10:52pm
654Audio version of this blog, by Imrix. This is Part Two of a series. Part One can be read here.
655
656Look, 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.
657
658Is 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.
659
660They are not worth our time, is what I mean.
661
662But 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.
663
664So the question remains. Why bother?
665
666Well, 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.
667
668Fuck 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”.
669
670‘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.
671
672That’s why I’m writing this instead of, say, feeding my balls to a baby whale.
673
674Hi, I’m Aragón. This is “Harem Comedies, part Two.”
675
676Let’s talk about the girls.
677
678
679
680
6812. LET’S TALK ABOUT THE GIRLS.
682
683
684If 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.
685
686This 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.
687
688Harem 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?
689
690Because 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.
691
692Every 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.
693
694If 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.
695
696This 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.
697
698But 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.
699
700Buckle up, ‘cause this will be a long one.
701
702
703
7042.1 – The “Tsundere”.
705
706You 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.
707
708But even I have my limits. In Japanese media, the “tsundere” is more prevalent than tentacles, and God, do I hate her.
709
710The “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.
711
712Harem 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?
713
714As 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.
715
716Only, you don’t. Because the “tsundere” always wins. So there’s absolutely no point to anything.
717
718Why, 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?
719
720Resized to 46% of 500px × 374px
721
722With one beautiful exception.
723
724He’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.
725
726It’s always the same, because it’s the easiest story to tell.
727
728This 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?
729
730This 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.
731
732So 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.
733
734Here’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.
735
736Yeah, 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:
737
738· 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.
739
740· 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.
741
742See, 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.
743
744But 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..
745
746Here’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.
747
748Even 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.
749
750This 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.
751
752She’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.
753
754At 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.
755
756Is 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.
757
758Because literally every other character is even worse.
759
760
761
7622.2 – The Big Boobs.
763
764
765I once met a farmer who couldn’t stop masturbating to his cow’s udders, and even he had more shame than this character.
766
767Big 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.
768
769Some 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.
770
771Someone didn’t get the memo, though. Big Boobs characters are designed around their cleavage, in this hilariously retarded 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.
772
773They 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.
774
775This 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.
776
777A 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.
778
779Good 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.
780
781This 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.
782
783But 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.
784
785They’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.
786
787It 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.
788
789Juvenile 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.
790
791I honestly can’t tell what Harem Writers hate the most: women, or themselves.
792
793
794
7952.3 – The Foreigner
796
797
798Well, at this point this doesn’t surprise me, not going to lie.
799
800Indeed, 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.
801
802Resized to 42% of 556px × 556px
803
804Yeah. This looks harmless.
805
806I 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.
807
808Which 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.
809
810Some 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.
811
812
813
8142.4 – The Perfect Girl
815
816
817People tend to mystify what they don’t understand. Following this logic, Harem Writers believe pussy cures cancer.
818
819And 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.
820
821The 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.
822
823They 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.
824
825And 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.
826
827What’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.
828
829In 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.
830
831You 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.
832
833You’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.
834
835
836
8372.5 – The Big Sister.
838
839
840When I die, I won’t die smiling, and you can blame the Big Sister archetype for it.
841
842So 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.
843
844When 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.
845
846So 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.
847
848As 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.
849
850“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.
851
852That’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.
853
854That’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.
855
856Yeah, 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.
857
858
859
8602.6 – The Little Kid You Can Fuck
861
862
863Fuck.
864
865Fuck.
866
867Okay. Holy shit.
868
869Drill 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.
870
871There 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.
872
873At 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!
874
875I 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.
876
877This 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.
878
879
880
8812.7 – The Shy Girl.
882
883
884The 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.
885
886This 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.
887
888You can tell which people enjoy this character, because they’ve fucked so many farm animals their jizz smells like goat cheese.
889
890Can 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.
891
892
893
8942.8 – The Tomboy.
895
896
897The 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.
898
899The 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.
900
901Never 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~.
902
903Hence, 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.
904
905If 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.
906
907There 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.
908
909But 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.
910
911What 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.
912
913There’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.
914
915
916
9172.9 – The Ending
918
919
920Eight characters.
921
922Are 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.
923
924Now, 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.
925
926Whatever. 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.
927
928And 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.
929
930I 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.
931
932But 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.
933
934But first, we’ll have a little breather—next blog will be an in-depth exploration on The Little Kid You Can Fuck.
935
936Because that will be a joy to write.
937
938
939
940
941To be continued.