- #26
I love these kinds of questions!
1) Harems. Absolutely loath harems. On rare (very extremely endangered species level rare) occasions there's a reasonable explanation for a harem happening inside a story. Most of the time it's just author wish-fulfillment (which makes me not like the author) and/or them regurgitating a tried and true trope in hopes of attracting an audience. Often the women and men in any given harem are quality enough that there's no reason they should settle for "sharing" their love with someone else. If they were in any other story, they'd be living fulfilling lives and probably in a healthy relationship with someone who's loyal to them and treats them like gold. But in the harem story, they're not even second class citizens, they're third class citizens (aka, the third wheel in their own relationship). Just commodities to make the MC look more desirable, or to help the MC at certain parts of the story only to be forgotten later.
2) Stories that are suppose to be B/G but the author keeps putting B/B and G/G in the secondary characters. Often the tags don't reflect the BL/GL elements because it's not the main couple. I'll be reading along and thinking everything is fine, only to get side swiped by BL/GL. Note that my issue isn't having gay characters in a story, but when the author takes a B/G story and shoe-horns BL/GL in there through the secondary characters. They emphasis the secondary characters relationship to a point it's basically overshadowing the main couple (perhaps not permanently, but often for several chapters). At that point... just go write BL/GL. There's whole genres for that, why are you stuffing such elements so heavy handedly into an unrelated genre? I've dropped stories for this reason alone.
3) Too much face-slapping (revenge). This seems to be a problem almost entirely within Chinese novels, so I guess I've only myself to blame for keep going to them. A little face-slapping at the right time can be VERY satisfying, but often there's just no end to it. Usually in these novels the MC has the philosophy of "hit me once, I hit you back twice as hard" and act like they're righteous and just for thinking so. But... like... doesn't that make the MC intrinsically WORSE than the "villains" supposedly abusing them? While an "eye for an eye" can be classified as justice (punishment fits the crime), a "cut off the limbs for an eye" is just being ruthless and cruel (the electric chair for stealing, as an example). Also, this form of ruthless "justice" simply escalates the grudges into something far worse. I can't get behind a MC like that so I end up dropping the story.
1) Harems. Absolutely loath harems. On rare (very extremely endangered species level rare) occasions there's a reasonable explanation for a harem happening inside a story. Most of the time it's just author wish-fulfillment (which makes me not like the author) and/or them regurgitating a tried and true trope in hopes of attracting an audience. Often the women and men in any given harem are quality enough that there's no reason they should settle for "sharing" their love with someone else. If they were in any other story, they'd be living fulfilling lives and probably in a healthy relationship with someone who's loyal to them and treats them like gold. But in the harem story, they're not even second class citizens, they're third class citizens (aka, the third wheel in their own relationship). Just commodities to make the MC look more desirable, or to help the MC at certain parts of the story only to be forgotten later.
2) Stories that are suppose to be B/G but the author keeps putting B/B and G/G in the secondary characters. Often the tags don't reflect the BL/GL elements because it's not the main couple. I'll be reading along and thinking everything is fine, only to get side swiped by BL/GL. Note that my issue isn't having gay characters in a story, but when the author takes a B/G story and shoe-horns BL/GL in there through the secondary characters. They emphasis the secondary characters relationship to a point it's basically overshadowing the main couple (perhaps not permanently, but often for several chapters). At that point... just go write BL/GL. There's whole genres for that, why are you stuffing such elements so heavy handedly into an unrelated genre? I've dropped stories for this reason alone.
3) Too much face-slapping (revenge). This seems to be a problem almost entirely within Chinese novels, so I guess I've only myself to blame for keep going to them. A little face-slapping at the right time can be VERY satisfying, but often there's just no end to it. Usually in these novels the MC has the philosophy of "hit me once, I hit you back twice as hard" and act like they're righteous and just for thinking so. But... like... doesn't that make the MC intrinsically WORSE than the "villains" supposedly abusing them? While an "eye for an eye" can be classified as justice (punishment fits the crime), a "cut off the limbs for an eye" is just being ruthless and cruel (the electric chair for stealing, as an example). Also, this form of ruthless "justice" simply escalates the grudges into something far worse. I can't get behind a MC like that so I end up dropping the story.
