 So, harems. Historically speaking, those were pretty nasty. It was basically just one very wealthy slash powerful man who had a whole bunch of women that were basically slaves to his desires. And sometimes they were wives, sometimes they weren't. But, you know, historically speaking, it wasn't great. Harems are also a thing in fiction. They're quite a bit different than they were in the real world. But in fiction, they're still pretty unpleasant. In the land of fiction, a harem is typically where one character, usually the protagonist of the story, is surrounded by a whole bunch of people that they are interested in. It's usually one man surrounded by a bunch of women. But there are also reverse harems where it's one girl and a bunch of dudes. And there's also harems of mixed sexualities. Gay harems and bisexual harems aren't all that common, but they do exist. They are out there. And seeing one person with multiple love interests, you might be thinking, oh, okay, so a harem is like a love triangle, except bigger and better. And that's actually the other way around. You see a love triangle is just a harem, but for cowards. Now, for several decades now, harems have been all over the place in anime, manga, and light novels. Like if you are or ever have been an anime fan, you know exactly what I'm talking about. They're all over. But they're becoming more and more common in crappy fantasy novels as well. Because as I've said more than once, crappy young adult fantasy novels are just the girl equivalent of crappy anime and light novels. Like they're the same thing. Just one is largely aimed at teenage boys and young men. The other one is largely aimed at teenage girls and young women. But the point is harems are all over the place. And harems are stupid pretty much by definition. They're just really, really stupid. But just because something is stupid doesn't mean it's automatically bad. Something can be done well or it can be done poorly. And so, yeah, let's do that. That this video is about how to do a harem well. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. So number one is to just admit that it's a harem. You know, admit it to the audience and admit it to yourself. Like if you're throwing it in there, you're not above doing it. You're not too good for a harem. Okay, it's just it's stupid. Embrace the fact that it's stupid. You know, if you try hiding it, then that just makes it worse. Because the people who are into that sort of thing aren't going to get anything out of it because, you know, you're you're being too, I don't think subtle is the right word, but like you're hiding it, you're almost ashamed of it. And the people who aren't into it are going to be annoyed by it anyways, because it's stupid. So like just embrace it, be honest with the fact that it's a harem, you know, like have the target of the harem, which again is usually the protagonist, but not always have the target of the harem spend some time with each member of the harem, which I'll go into a little bit more later. That way it makes it clear that yes, they are interested in all these people or all these people are interested in them or some combination thereof being trash is fine as long as you acknowledge that you're trash. Okay, that like a lot of the problems that you run into in the world are people not admitting that something is what it is. Number two is to give the harem an ending, you know, and there's a lot of different endings you can do. You can have some sort of weird polyamorous thing going on, which like Riverdale ended with that a couple of months ago. That was that was a weird show and had an even weirder ending. Some nights Archie would sneak into my bedroom and Veronica would go home with Jughead. Other nights Archie would spend the night at the Pembroke and I'd go over to Jughead's and sometimes more often than you'd imagine, I would find my way to Veronica's or you could have just the target of the harem be involved with all of the members of the harem in some way like, you know, like a traditional harem or like polygamy essentially where it's just one dude with a bunch of wives or you can have it end with a one true pairing in OTP where they find one person in the harem who they are truly in love with and while they may have liked all the others they are not in love with them the way they are with this person and so the two of them end up together at the end. Like there's a lot of different ways to do this but you should never ever just have it end ambiguously. There needs to be some sort of closure otherwise the audience is going to be unsatisfied you know they're just going to imagine that yep there was an endless string of hijinks until the end of time you know like just the main character or whoever the fuck is the target of the harem is just leading all these people on and never committing to anything and never growing a pair of balls and just doing anything at all with any of this that has fallen into their laps you know like I have there is exactly one manga that I ever read that has a harem that's focused on as part of the story and it ends ambiguously and was actually good and that's Rosario Vampire which spoilers for the end if you're curious about that basically in that series you had the main character whose name is Skune and he had a harem of a bunch of different monster girls but the one he was really in love with was a vampire named Moka and Moka actually had this rosary across that she wore which suppressed her vampire powers and it was only once she took it off that she like you know entered her vampire form and could actually fight and do crazy powerful stuff however it's revealed pretty early on that Moka acts differently when her powers are released not just because like she feels different or anything but because that is actually just a straight up different personality there's an inner Moka and outer Moka and again much later on we find out that the outer Moka that personality was created when Moka's mother she died but then her personality was put into that and then her memory was also erased and then at the end of the story the outer Moka the real Moka's mother the person that Skune was in love with dies and so all the rest of the members of his harem are still vying for his attention at the end and that one again it's ambiguous but it actually works out because like the OTP was broken up number three have the target of the harem actually interact with all of the members of the harem now the exact form this will take will vary depending on you know what sort of story you're telling but like have them actually interact you know don't just have it be okay this person has a crush on them and they are in the background and the target of the harem is barely even aware of their existence because that that's not really a harem at that point that's just unrequited love from a tertiary character you know like have them actually interact with them and show that okay yeah they do have feelings for this person and there is actual chemistry there and again this can range all the way from just PG where it's hand holding and kisses and going on an occasional date or something all the way up to there really is no point in just teasing the audience again your trash embrace the fact that your trash like your wish fulfillment embrace the fact that your wish fulfillment show the character who is the target of the wish fulfillment fulfilling those wishes hi my worthless fucking piece of shit computer doesn't want to take the next clip that I already filmed for some reason for for number four I don't know why and it has done this multiple times but you know what let's still have some fun number four is have the harem members interact with each other you know like whatever their relationship before and whatever sort of relationship they might have during the harem and maybe even after depending on how far the story goes along they would have some sort of relationship with one another you know historically in harem's members did jostle for position you know like they would want to be the sultan's favorite or the king's favorite or however however you want that to go and so that would probably be a thing in a fictional harem as well at least the type we're talking about or if we're going for more of a polyamorous relationship which I mentioned earlier they would probably be into each other as well and how acceptable that is would again depend on like the story and the setting and that's type of thing uh or maybe they're just friends or maybe they just dislike each other maybe there is some sort of magical components and they are trying to be with the target of the harem because I don't know it'll make their kingdom the strongest or something I don't know I'm literally just coming up with this off the top of my head but you know if there's some sort of other components other than love then yeah that would also give them reason to jockey for position and to try and gain more power more influence okay back to the other clips which I fucking filmed a while ago goodbye the final entry here is going to be number five and that is to make the harem members distinct from one another you know and by that I I mean a couple of different ways you can do that you can do that just in terms of their physical attributes which this applies more to visual mediums like again anime rather than written stuff but that is still valid there but you know make their physical attributes different you know have some with blonde hair some with red hair some short some tall some skinny some curvier etc you can also have them be different in terms of their personality you know some of them could be nerdy some could be short tempered some could be brooding uh ideally they would represent a part of the harem targets personality when we're just talking about you know their their personality being different like for example in the Hunger Games you had Katniss who was in love with both Gail and Peta but one of them represented embracing her anger and just trying to get revenge whereas the other one represented peace and moving on from the past you can also differentiate them based on you know their lifestyle and again that ties into like who is the target of the harem again usually the protagonist and what do they want out of life so their lifestyle could be like some of them are rich some of them are poor some of them live in rural areas some are more urban some might be uh nomadic depending on again the the setting they might just not never stay in one place for long your imagination really is the limit here and the important part is just that you don't throw in random archetypes or or just random cliches you know don't just throw that those in that's the main point I'm making with this video here because the thing about tropes is that they're not bad and they've never been bad but they become tropes when people started noticing certain patterns appearing in various stories and various types of media e.g. the brooding bad boy love interest as part of a love triangle alongside a nicer boy that became a trope because people just noticed it happening a bunch of different times in various types of media a trope becomes a cliche when writers just threw them in not because they had they just happened to have an idea for a similar character or just happened to have an idea for a similar plot point or anything but they threw it in specifically because well this is a trope that exists so I want to throw it in uh for example they would again throw in brooding bad boys but they would throw in bad boys who had no real reason to be bad boys they just they just are they're they're just brooding and stuff and sometimes they would go way over the top with how bad they were but you know that's a separate discussion and they also would have nothing to them beyond being a bad boy like nothing to them beyond being this trope and they're there's just literally nothing else there like there's nothing beyond the surface there's nothing else to their personality they don't have any other aspects to their life or anything they are just a bad boy which is thrown in because that's what people want uh another good example of this is the tsundere again if you're familiar with anime at all those should be the bane of your existence and that's what this boils down to if you want to make a good harem rather than thinking of different archetypes that you want to include just think of stuff that you want to include completely divorced from like the types of characters and everything you've seen before like what sort of things do you want to see and if while you're brainstorming you start coming up with the names of character archetypes and you start listing off tv tropes entries just stop just stop that's all goodbye hello people watched until the end why why would why would you do that nobody watched us to the end of youtube videos but you know what thanks for doing that i appreciate it and a huge thanks to all my patrons whose names you see right here they are opo savalainen olivia rayon brother santotes buffy valentine carolina clay chib zahoy dan and selie vich dark king dio echo flax gelal delul james m lexy delorm lyza rudakova lord tiebreaker michael and katie hake microphone mist boy mitzimona roby reviews sad martigan psych xs selene cilia the vixen stone stairs tesla shark vavictus vimex zole and wesley oh my goodness 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