I'm not against author's being successful, but I do wish that people could at least write good erotica, instead of circa 1990s AOL chatroom cybersex, which is what 100% of the sex scenes I have skipped are written like. Guys, seriously, if you want to write good erotica, at least READ good erotica first. The Earth's Children series, by Jean M. Auel, and the Kushiel's Legacy series by Jacqueline Carey, are two series that I'd recommend to anyone wanting to know how to write good erotica. They're both pretty prosey and flowery, but there's a certain flow to a good sex scene that everyone seems to be lacking. Either that, or they're too afraid to let the reader's imagination take over at any given point - we really, really, really don't need to know exactly what each individual limb is doing at any given time in any given sex scene. That just takes us out of the scene and completely wrecks the immersion. As far as harem goes, I actually enjoy it. It's a guilty pleasure of mine, but I could do without the terrible sex. Since I haven't found a single harem book that lacks the terrible sex scenes, the whole trend is something I cannot hate enough.
I find the concept of Harem generally to be boring. I mean for one thing you are telling me this book is for boys (not men, boys) so might as well put a no girls allowed on your book cover. I've had this discussion with someone recently regarding anime as they love the harem concept, She argued that there is reverse harem for women... Nope both suffer from the same issues. In a harem book the MC is kept blank so you can fill in his shoes and play it as your own fantasy... but then you see all those barbie proportioned women at his feet and you keep asking yourself "Why? Why would they even look at him? he's so meh..." And it breaks the illusion. Same for reverse harem. The MC is dull and you end up paying more attention to the harem because in some cases they do have they're own individual personalities (Not always in litrpg) In the end the concept of harem relays heavily on sex appeal to sell you something. In the few shows I've watched where the concept worked was where the harem was left in the background as a gag while the story and characters took front and center. Put it in the foreground and you no longer have a story or characters just the equivalent of this :-
I think the thing about Harem (Reverse or otherwise) is that it's just really dull to me. Partially for the reasons Kidlike said, but also because it's always so...one-sided. The "love interests" are all fawning and cooing and gasping over the MC (male or female), but rarely even notice each other. Or if they do, it's barely in passing and there's never a hint of jealousy or having to work out anything or actually building a relationship. They all just fall over the MC and it's perfect serene bliss because they're all just so lucky to have a piece of the MC's magical groin area. It's completely boring and makes the love interests boring as hell. I don't mean they have to constantly fight or anything, but for a three or more person relationship to work there has to be communication and some kind of feelings between everyone. Not even actual historical harems in the Middle East and such worked that way. There was resentment, jockeying for position, getting to know each other, and a lot of things good and bad that went into dealing with being in that situation. It's not just a "oh, you want to boink them too? Neat!" and that's it. I think I'd like harem more if it felt a bit more polyamorous or at least supportive, or even jealous! Just some emotion other than docilely accepting that the MC is just so incredibly amazing that they must have a harem of incredibly hot lovers because they're just too awesome to be monogamous. That said, I totally get the power fantasy of the standard harems of one super awesome MC that gets all the hotties. I just personally find it flat and dull because there's no depth or attention given to anything but stroking the MC's ego.
unfortunately most of the harems are just written so meh that if I see one is involved in a book nowadays I generally skip the book. I hope that the fad for harems in litrpg fades away soon because to me it isn't adding anything to the books but is just taking up space in 90 percent of them.
Or the ancient Chinese and Turkish Harems. The most popular TV show for the last three years over here was about the Turkish Harem and how the women interacted with each other. Something as simple as wearing a specific piece of jewelry was enough to spark tension as to the males it meant nothing but would send a message to the women not just in attendance but in the entire harem. In the Chinese one there was full on hierarchy and if you wanted a piece of the magical groin (I'm sorry but I love that!) then you'd have to climb the ladder stepping on the heads of those in front of you every single step of the way. Seriously I went to an all girls school. We may look nice but put us all in one place fighting for the same thing and the claws come out. 9/10 will lose their focus on the guy and instead shift to focusing on the rival... the tenth girl is already dating him LOL!
In order for a harem to merit my Ya Done Good© Seal of Approval, it has to develop everyone involved to a reasonable degree. The problem with harem LitRPGs (above and beyond the terribly written erotica) is that they don't develop any of the characters involved. It pretty much boils down to this: "So there's this guy, and every woman just instantly falls in love with him and immediately jumps into bed with him" "Okay, that's a bit ... wish fulfill-y. Why do the women just fall into bed with him?" "Because he's AWESOME" "Okay, but what makes him awesome?" "He just is. And the women are HAWT" "You... you do realize that standards of attraction differ from person to person, right?" "Uhhh, no, bruh, it's just like... you know how everyone thinks [insert famous person here] is hot? They're like that, just... hot" "Right. So tell me more about them? Why should I care enough about them to justify wasting the time I'll inevitably want back after reading your... 'book'?" "Because he's AWESOME and all the women are fkn HAWT dude - weren't you paying attention?" And that's every harem LitRPG ever, boiled down to its (to borrow a term from game development) minimum viable product.
I came across a random video regarding writing Mary Sues and there was one line it that stuck with me. A Mary Sue isn't bad because she's bland or boring, she's bad because she distorts the world around her like a singularity. Everything becomes about the Mary sue, Everything is about praising her awesomeness. Because of that the writer actually forgets to MAKE her awesome. It's just assumed from page one so the rest of the characters don't matter, only the Mary Sue. This is the same for every Harem book I've read in litrpg. and what @CheshirePhoenix just described. The one author that's made a career of harem is Rumiko Takahashi. Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha, Urusei Yatsura. The are all the same story just retold. Guy attracts so many girls that it's turning into a Harem. Main girl is jealous or hiding her feelings because of this. And that's really it. She was the only person successful with this because there were no Mary Sues, everyone including the MCs had a distinct personality with both predictable flaws and strength. Every one got the chance to develop (they never do though but are given chances to do so!) And the interactions between the characters keeps you interested. Male MC = Always a playboy Female MC = Usually a tomboy but not always Supporting cast = EACH GETS THEIR OWN LIFE ASIDE FROM I LOVE MC!!! Also the supporting cast DO NOT BENEFIT THE MC IN ANY WAY. In litrpg the MC is using the women for something be it their strength, their neither region...etc. And has no power of his own. It's all borrowed from the women... sorry but that's gross. Don't wax poetics about someone that just uses those that care for him.
I've watched Chinese 'royal concubines' ones and they're actually about politics, not love, which is exactly how it would be in such situations. In an all-female situation, you'd also have all sorts of nuances and actions-that-mean-something-but-actually-means-something-else that just kinda goes over the guy's head and that can be really fun That's how you do harems properly.
I love to read about the royal concubines! When written well love will have nothing to do with it. It's all about advancing one's station in life. She would love him as much as a person could love another without really knowing them which makes sense. As someone scarred from living in an all-female situation through high school I can tell you there will be a lot of backstabbing, gossip, what-did-she-mean-by-that, and more psychological warfare going on... and that's WITHOUT dangling a token prize for the victor! It always strikes me as shallow when in a Harem book or anime they never seem to interact with each other except when you need some girl on girl action. Even sisters fight and those are related by blood AND housing LOL!
Exactly! Show me some interactions between the "harem". Give them personalities with more depth than a small piece of corn! Have them do something other than have big muscles/tits and gasp in awe at the normally dull-as-drying-paint MC! Give me something! Anything! And ha! Perhaps someone needs to write "The Magical Groin™" series of harem books. (Wait, isn't that the Anita Blake series? She's pretty much got the harem thing down pat and a magical groin.)
Oh god, You made me think of a book cover that's just a zoom in on a guy's tidy whites with sparkles around it!!! I seriously laughed out loud at the thought!!
If anyone's interested, check out "The Amazing Cleavage: The Adventures of a Battle Axe" on Royal Road. Characters have some good depth, and the MC is a battle axe with a four-foot demon dong for a handle.
I mean, it's not my particular cup of tea, but the reason why there are so many LitRPG harems out there nowadays is because new entry authors are basically releasing one or two books that are erotica with stats and instantly claiming five figures a month. Just by calculating book sales and ranks, I'm fairly certain that the lowest earning harem litRPG that's been released in the past three months still net its author over $1,000, unless there are any that I missed (I didn't look at books with one-star or two-star averages). When something is basically a cheat code for money, it makes sense people would flock towards it. Sit your ass down, write about 3,000 to 4,000 words a day about people f**cking in video games (especially a large group wanting to f**k one individual), do that for about one month, ???, profit, repeat. You don't even need particularly realistic sex scenes because you have the excuse of it being a video game. From an erotic-romance writer's perpective, litRPG erotica is a godsend because you're earning big bucks for what's otherwise really vanilla smut. LitRPG is by itself a "niche", so you don't need any special knowledge of things like cuckholding, knotting, MPREG, gangbanging, MMF, MFM, spooning, etc. All you have to do is set it in a video game and not f**k it up by making it seem like the last time you ever played a video game was Frogger or Pitfall on the Atari 2600, or Bejeweled, or Farmville. Yeah, a Farmville-themed LitRPG, I'd love to see someone try to tackle that one. It can be straightforward male/female, and that's pretty much all you have to do. At least, at the present moment. From a purely LitRPG perspective, this is already a pulp genre popular amongst young men interested in power fantasies. Harems are merely another aspect of that. Having a dozen lovers appeals to that old wannabe god-king desire a lot of us have, so when you actually do get to roleplay as a bit of a god-king in an RPG, it's just the icing on the cake.
