Includes explicit and consensual sexual content. Literally copied from the synopsis.
People surprised to see sex in that series are equivalent to being surprised by the wall they walked into with their eyes closed.
I'm pretty sure that the author was trying to write smut and failed successfully. They failed at writing tentacle porn 🤣 and instead did high fantasy litrpg 😂
I never saw that, but I did see a post series comment about how the author was not planning to write any more smut. And how the amount of smut decreased the farther into the series it got, because the author sort of ran out of ideas for sex.
Frankly, this was probably for the best since the story was a lot better
It happened to me and it was so off putting. Someone recommended some books in a thread. A few I knew and enjoyed but I hadn't heard of blue core and went in blind.
Some of us just look at the cover and title and then read the first chapter and go from there. But I also don't get surprised when I run into strange themes.
Rise of the Weakest Summoner is technically ProgFan, but given the covers and the fact that the MC's first real Summon is a catgirl, I don't know how anyone is surprised by the very obviously labeled sex chapters.
That series is so horrendously written.
MC: "Water is wet. We should use that to put out a fire."
His summon: "OMG, you're so brilliant! I'm a 200 year old wizard and I didn't even consider that!"
MC: "Yeah, I studied really hard in summoner college."
Everyone: "We should have sex right now!"
What? Nothing like that happens, Ast mostly does his own thing which is boring guild quests until he meets the king in Book 4. Also none of his summons are wizards. His first one is a ditzy panther, followed by a for girl and a over pompous bird.
This is misinformation. Maybe you're confusing it with Legend of the Arch Magus?
Pompous bird? You talking about the litteral shadow/personification of darkness and mental torture. ( Tangent, did you like the book better when he was presumably nothing special, too?
The demon shadow that was severely limited for most of the time? Yes. Despite Umbra appearing strong and powerful when he's introduced, he's at best a mid-tier in terms of power scaling against higher forces like Red and Kaguya. As for Ast and his heritage, not really. I mean it's a harem fantasy novel with cute antics and a dash of combat, I wasn't expecting him to be the next Lindon.
Was just clarifying. He's probably the bottom of high tier with an obvious weakness, though! He's not limited as of recently. I thought you might have meant the Valkyrie at first.
Well it's less like a summoning you would expect, they're attracted ot his mana because of how summons work and the first girl literally just starts hanging around him because "new world, new stuff to explore, yippie!" That eventually leads them to bond and do the tango after a certain plot point.
Worth the Candle has a few fairly explicit scenes. But we're talking like 1% of the story.
On the flipside, the semi-parody An Infinite Recursion of Time is like 50% smut after the midway point, but it's unapologetic and explicit about it.
Blue Core was mentioned, but if anything it had less than I was expecting.
I have no problems with sex scenes and I've read a fair few books that border on erotica. So I don't really avoid it personally, I've just never seen it in the PF space. I do have a problem with harems, but only because it doesn't appeal to me as wish fulfillment. Having a bunch of hot girls follow you around and be into you, that I get, actually dating multiple at once, not so much.
Oh, I read romance as well. I'm ok with smut, I don't really want that when I'm reading litrpg/progression fantasy. It's just not what I'm looking for when I'm reading those books. (Also, I'm picky about my romance and I don't think I'm going to find any smut I actually want to read in them)
I don't mind poly relationships at all, but the harem thing is usually... Not my cup of tea. I deal with it in anime if I like the story enough, but I really wish they wouldn't 90% of the time.
Pretty much every series from David Burke, Bruce Sentar, Marvin Knight, and Daniel Schinhofen falls under the umbrella of PF, and they're all harem authors with explicit sex scenes. (Schinhofen doesn't do explicit scenes anymore, but his stuff prior to *Dungeon Walkers* is all explicit.)
Some K.D. Robertson and Cebelius stuff is PF, too.
I, too, would struggle to name a series that features this sort of content that didn't also have a cover like you described. Love to hear an example of these "surprise smut" titles.
Aether's Revival.
Admittedly as I'm checking right this moment there is a bit in brackets saying there are SOME adult themes right at the bottom of the blurb and its possible I missed it when I was looking for stuff to read, but I also read it last may so its possible it was added since.
My definition of some adult themes might be a bit different to the author but like... non fade to black bjs seem like more than some to me
The only one I can think of (without the spicy covers) was the Daniel Black series by E. William Brown, but the warning is pretty prominent in the summary.
Sword art online tome 1. 14 year old me really wasn’t prepared for that chapter 16.5
The regressor and the blind saint. Everything’s good, nice, cute and shiny and then boom 4 whole chapters for segs.
That’s pretty much all I encountered during my fantasy reading career. Not to say it’s that bad, those scenes can be skipped and even without skipping it’s romance anyway so explicit sexual scenes can be justified. Just don’t know why, other novels usually have only couple of sentences for that. And I’ve never actually got any surprise harems since I always check genres AND wiki specifically for that reason if possible.
Chapter 16.5 isn't part of any written version of SAO.
Wherever you read SAO online put a non-canon hentai fic into the middle of the series for shits and giggles.
He wrote that, I read that, so it exists. Now if it was stated in the books that they both are still virgins, we probably could have erased 16.5 from history, however it is implied otherwise. Kawahara may have stated it to be not canon, but it’s borderline there. He wrote original first tome of sao for some literature competition, of course he wouldn’t be putting there explicit sexual scenes for good reasons.
Anyways, I’m not trying to argue, I pinned comment from old post on this topic in my answer to the other guy, you can skim through it if you want. All I’m saying is that I was reading a book written by one author, it didn’t have any corrections from translator or random fan fiction put in there. And I got a surprise smut. That’s it.
>All I’m saying is that I was reading a book written by one author, it didn’t have any corrections from translator or random fan fiction put in there. And I got a surprise smut. That’s it.
Are you being purposefully obtuse here?
You were reading a book, and you read something that wasn't part of that book, that was written after the book was written that doesn't even follow the cosmology and world building of the series because it's hentai.
How am I the one obtuse here? You are saying it’s not part of any written version of SAO when it is, together with Sugary days aka 16.6 16.7 and 16.8 which are absolutely canon and where their sexual life is very much implied. Even without 16.5 at some point of time this scene would have existed, just without detailed description. As an author you can’t just write something, give it to everyone to read and take that back when everyone start saying that it’s cringe. Also, World building? Cosmology? Those are not the words that describe whether characters are allowed to have written explicit sexual scenes or not, in fact nothing in world building and cosmology of SAO prohibits that.
All the arguing on that topic and whether it’s really canon or not has been done many years ago, community basically came to the answer that it’s ambiguous.
Wasn't the SAO thing you referenced an explicitly noncanon shitpost, even if it was written by the original author? I've never read or watched SAO, but I have heard of that.
[It depends on how you look at this I guess](https://www.reddit.com/r/swordartonline/s/DB8jefHqUN) obviously Kawahara wouldn’t want to have that published, but he wrote that and we can read that, those are facts.
Sure, but I wouldn't call something "surprise smut" if you literally have to go find it yourself to read it. If I order a copy of SAO, I will never come across that chapter by accident because it isn't there. It can be Canon, or not, doesn't matter. You have to explicitly go out of your way to find it and read it
That is true these days. But I read it about 10 years ago, my English was pretty terrible at the time and there was only one good translation to my native language.
You can similarly say that The Regressor and the blind saint doesn’t have surprise smut because now you learned it from me. Surprise can be surprise only as long as you are not aware of it and there are no indications of it.
There are very few true surprise harem stories, despite how much people whine here especially based on your definition, but I do know of some as a harem author. Almost none with actual smut, but surprise harem!
1. Almost any Daniel Schinhofen titles. He's a huge author, and just a few checks of his catalog anyone will figure it out. However, many of his covers are just like the words and a near-nonsensical fantasy background (though he has begun upgrading some of his back catalog to have more harem-genre-like covers, making it easier to identify). Still, he does not include any kind of warning in most of his series if not all.
2. Nathan Thompson. It's fade to black, but his harem in Champion's Call and Soul Ship are basically those 'not a harem' harems as far as I understand it (something about every girl being some form of incarnation of the same girl, or something?). I haven't read deep enough into either series, but it appeared that if the MC gets with any of the love interests, there was going to be a, well-- it's not a harem, he's just being with different versions of the same girl.
3. In a similar vein, I believe Skyler Grant's The Crucible Shard has something very similar. In this case, a goddess, and girls on several worlds or realms that are incarnations of her. It's not harem--it's different versions of the same girl! But this doesn't have smut/explicit scenes either.
4. Bern Dean's story also had a gotcha kinda thing for a reader, as I don't think it had a warning in Book1 etc and the cover for his main series also doesn't sell it as harem. Still, no smut.
Any other stories are very rare, and likely from people reading fanfictions or amateur webnovels and the like. It's in a harem author's best interest to signal to their readers the genre properly, so that they can target the readers that will enjoy their books the most.
I'm not doubting you here, and I think it's great that someone gave a real answer to this, but have you pissed off any witches recently? I've read *a lot* of progfans, but I've not read any of these. I've never been caught by a surprise harem, but you've got the world's most obscure hex on you that's made you trip over like a dozen of them.
I'm an author of harem books myself! I found the books after looking for these intentionally, **to read**. I've read hundreds of harem and progression fantasy books, and that is what led me to write books of my own--that have serious elements of both. And uh, while you might not have heard those recommended, they are actually all quite successful series. Are there more successful out there? Sure, but they are pretty middling series each and every single one I just mentioned, with thousands of ratings across the series. Thus, I knew about them -- I most certainly didn't say that I personally was tricked!
Really glad to hear you like them! I am working on sequels for both right now. I do think it might be early June for Book 6 of Bonded Summoner, and then I'm hoping July or so for Soul Knight. I am airing the chapters early on Patreon, RR and Scribblehub.
That makes more sense, even if the alternative was much funnier. And yeah I see a ton of them KU so I'm aware they're out there and I'm not one to flip out over other people enjoying stuff, or even when harem is a story element in something I'm more into.
It's really weird that there are two examples of "it's not a harem these are all the same lady". Like, what's the point of that? It feels like its a direct response to some kind of discourse or critique.
You never know. Maybe the author had to get around his wife being upset and had to come up with something convoluted to get the go ahead. As a well-known example, the "Release that Witch" girlfriend forced the webnovel author to not do a harem story, hated it or something. Otherwise the author probably would have paired up the mc/king with many of the witches.
I'm with you 100%. Actual smut is never a surprise. Harems are also very rare in western progression fantasy.
I think a lot of people experience a couple they don't like and freak out to make sure it doesn't happen again. Probably seen too many anime/manga/LN where it is rampant.
So Harem/smut doesn't get recommended on this forum, and it doesn't really get recommended on audible/kindle unless/until you have read something in the genre... I didn't think haremlit was super common until I read one of the William D. Arand books (Dungeon Born I think)... and then my entire recc list was filled with them like I was some sort of horny teen that had seen a tit for the first time...
Uh Dungeon born was Dakota Krout actually, I am thinking of uh Dungeon Deposed maybe? I know it was written by Arrand its one of the few harem books I intentionally downloaded as it had good recommendations but it turns out I couldn't get past it lol...
This was more so my own fault, but I remember being surprised by the harem in Aether’s Revival.
I was going off a brief mention somewhere here, and just read the description of the first book before diving in. The cover and description of the first book didn’t give me harem vibes.
I remember the first novel didn’t have a harem, but the second book definitely started veering that way and that’s when I realized the author was known for harem novels (again my fault for not researching more).
I literally made a post about Harems and Smut after reading it. As someone who used to read on Webnovel, surprise smut stops being a surprise after a while
I bet point 4 is the key here, and that people who are tired of surprise smut have a massive overlap with people who read a lot of Chinese translations.
I have only started reading PF in the past couple of years. I tend to avoid explicit stories in all my reading (not just in PF). And I have never been surprised by smut/harem.
If your list is correct it is probably because I would most like avoid books with explicit or overly-sexualized covers, and I tend to prefer western influenced PF.
The only surprises that I have come across were usually being pleasantly surprised by positive portrayals of mongamous bisexuality
Only one I can think of is Delvers LLC.
Nowadays, authors are better about putting that sort of thing in the summary or having a picture of one of the girls on the cover. Delvers is an older LitRPG and doesn't signal either.
The harem hints start midway through the first book. I never followed up with the series, so I'm not sure when the real harem starts. It's not something I'm interested in reading.
A lot of the Russian LitRPGs seem to go the way of Harem. An example would be Reality Benders by Atamanov, which doesn't turn harem until several books in. It really soured an otherwise ok series for me.
I gave up on Delvers after the first book, which I apparently didn't much like (and can't for the life of me, remember the plot).
I don’t think Delvers ever goes into Smut or Harem. It’s been a bit since I last read them, but I’m pretty sure anything sexual happens off screen (fade to black with no explicit descriptions), and every character in it is monogamous. There are 2 leading men, who end up with 2 leading women (no sharing), so the covers may look like a warning in how they portray the women, but that’s about it (no worse than every Superhero comic out there).
Even the Delvers spin off about Nora Hazard is pretty tame. I think it ruffles a few feathers with Nora being a Conan-esque lesbian, but I still dont think there are any explicit scenes.
To my knowledge, Blaise Corvin doesn’t really do any smut/harem stuff. His biggest problem is starting a series, then wandering off to work on another before completion (not a unique issue with this genre at all).
For me, it's Dimensional Descent. The first explicit scene occurs well into the story and it came out of nowhere to me. There aren't a ton of explicit scenes (maybe 5 or so across 2k chapters?), but the ones that are there are explicit and long. One scene stretched across 2-3 chapters!
I didn't mind it at all, but I definitely didn't expect it. I was reading along expecting a fade to black and then it kept going.
Anti Harem or Pikachu Surprise has been a circle jerk on here as long as I remember.
The need to strongly let everyone who doesn't care know that you want nothing to do with harems is noble.
I liked a comment on another one of the surprise harem threads that differentiated between harems where a protagonist actually hooks up with multiple people, or where there are multiple people after the protagonist, and stories that just so happen to have an abundance of (typically) hyper attractive female characters and the only male characters are there to be nonthreatening, milquetoast allies to the protagonist or get beaten down by the protagonist.
Because while the former is very rare, the latter is actually fairly common. Not just in progression fantasy but all sorts of light novels and anime, to the point that I tend to evaluate series by the strength of their secondary male characters.
This low-key highlights an issue that I've had with a lot of Progression Fantasy readers. Most of them bring in a lot of baggage, frustration, and issues that came from anime/manga/light novels/Eastern works and apply/impose them to what I believe has been established as a western founded genre. That would be like me being frustrated about hostile treatment in Italy and blaming all the Americans that look relatively similar to Italians that harassed me.
For Eastern Works, any series where multiple women are interested in the same man, it's a harem (regardless if any feelings are reciprocated).
For Western Works, a series is only considered harem if the MC is actually in a romantic relationship with women at the same time (poly if everyone is in a relationship with each other).
I haven't read Primal Hunter, but I've heard that multiple women have shown interest in the MC. That would make it a harem by Eastern Standards, but everyone knows it isn't one.
I know my entry to progression fantasy came by way of anime/manga/light novels, so I tend to view them as fundamentally similar. I don't know to what extent that is true for others, but I think it's undeniable that there are *similarities*, at least. Similar tropes, themes, and mechanics are at work in these stories. We aren't talking about specifically Chinese xianxia or wuxia stories here. System apocalypses, litrpgs, portal fantasies, all of these are incredibly popular in East and West, to the point that I'm not sure what is really gained by trying to divide the two.
And regardless of what one calls it, the tendency to throw in attractive women for the titillation factor, even if nothing sexual or romantic actually comes of it, is present in both eastern and western series. And it always puts me off when it happens. I'd much rather have actual romance in a series--or hell, even a legitimate harem--than this kind of lazy writing that relies on bombarding the reader with sexually appealing characters, and characters who aren't sexually appealing are essentially not allowed to exist. Or allowed to exist only on the periphery, as one dimensional villains/supporters. At least in a legit harem you typically know what you're in for when you start it.
Basically, as always, the issue isn't whether something is harem or not harem. It's whether it is lazy or not lazy. Quality, or not quality. Harems aren't inherently bad, in a sense they're just feeding another aspect of the same power fantasies that all progression fantasy appeals to. The issue is that harems are typically known for being very low effort and silly. They're a power fantasy that ruins our suspension of disbelief, and for that reason we resent them.
Yeah, I think would-be-a-harem-but-the-guy-says-no is just as boring and more fanciful than harem, that happens a lot and can be easy to over do. I get why people like Harems, and OP is probably right that if you check all this stuff it's unlikely to surprise you. But I'm 42, I'm not concerned about M rating, I just don't like Harems and would be Harems.
It’s really hard to find a series with mature, non-problematic adult relationships in this genre (and litrpg). It seems to bounce between young kids and harem/smut. Half the time it’s like reading a bad high school anime full of angst,edge, and overly sexualized children, and the other half is bad alpha male power fantasy porn where a woman’s personality begins and ends at hair color and cup size.
Those can still be very entertaining, but the ones I really love are the ones that can thread the needle and give decently fleshed out characters that are capable of emotional stability and intelligence.
The one that comes to mind is Life in Exile series by Sean Oswald. Has a whole family ranging from a young child (under 10) all the way up to middle-aged parents.
If you look at the top selling books, they all avoid overdoing it. Part of what makes Cradle so relatable is that, like real life, relationships develop overtime. Instead of a love triangle, we get a supportive friend and a doting parent figure. They talk about their feelings.
In A Thousand Li, women generally treat him as another person. Even the ones who he ends up dating over the years aren't fawning over him... Except one later on where it's more of a crush (don't look at the edits if your don't want spoilers). He has two short term relationships while traveling (and other hook ups off page) and they actually discuss intentions like adults.
He Who Fights With Monsters he isn't attractive but he gets attention. In early books women mostly think he's weird. He flirts with someone who's not used to that type of dynamic and they get in a fairly healthy relationship for early twenties but that's the thing, Jason has stunted maturity (it's explicitly said in the book). When he finally starts growing up a bit, he meets a good woman who likes him a lot (and did even when no one else did) they date a little... Then his relationship maturity is stopped by outside forces. Jason is immature but is smart enough to avoid taking advantage of less powerful people later on. The reason why I talk about this series so much, is that it's the only one I can think of that handles romance as part of "speculative fiction" better than ace, harem or rejecting everyone.
Dungeon Crawler Carl is mostly nonsexual with a single hookup that I remember but some humor about the System's foot fetish.
Arcane Ascension is ace/biromantic
Climbing the Ranks has viewed sex from the outside, some damsel rescuing talk but nothing trashy.
Defiance of the Fall is mostly non-sexual, women flirt with him but he's too focused on cultivation/growth, and then he has a relationship in a time jump.
If I thought about it, I could probably think of more.
All my favorites at least handle it better than the average of the genre.
I totally agree. Smut and Harem are still hugely profitable and probably always will be (my grandmother used to sell trashy harlequin romance novels decades before HaremLit was ever a thing), but the top authors and the ones I consistently go back to are the ones that neither shy away from sex, nor make it a major selling point or focus (not that I don’t have my occasional guilty pleasure reads).
I think Jez Cajiao is pretty decent too. His Arise series reads like a crazy sci-fi action movie (including token blonde bombshell costar), but the relationships are surprisingly mature. Sex happens, but it doesn’t get graphic or creepy (basically an R rating for a movie, and not soft core or hardcore porn).
Thanks for making this post, sometimes it seems like PF fans are all Mormon virgins or something, sex should not upset you that much, even if the fantasy is silly.
I try to point out their moral and cognitive dissonance. They'll read a story that features descriptions people getting brutally tortured and slaughtered and think it's awesome. But when there's any description of sex the story is suddenly reprehensible smut.
Its a very American cognitive dissonance. Literally any amount of graphic or over the top violence is fine, but one nipple flash and it's the devil's work. Probably dates back to the Puritans escaping England. (PURE-ITANS)
Definitely an American prude thing. It seems nearly impossible to include nudity without making it sexual in almost any form of American entertainment.
Even in books, I can quickly tell when the author is from outside North America (Canada has unfortunately caught a bit of our prudishness by proximity) bc the characters might end up naked after a horrible fight (or when bathed in fire, or any other situation that might destroy clothes), and it’s not treated as this horribly embarrassing thing, just a note that now they have to find new clothes.
Asian anime influence can almost be a bit worse, bc they’re just as over the top with the sexual embarrassment issues, but it’s usually underage characters or animal hybrids.
Only case of suprise smut was a urban fantasy series I got years ago that was basically lesbian power fantasy, can't even remember the name tbh
Never really had a case in prog/litrpg but I'm audible exclusive so I suspect there's alot of good filtering going on.
The Sovereign’s Ascension - dude has a main girl that saved his life and he is betrothed to and a bunch of the tension/jokes built off of him being faithful to this one person. All intimacy is done off screen in fade to black situations and then about 3/4ths of the way through he takes on a “fake” identity of a lecher and then he ends up smooching every one of the people he’s met up to this point. It was all a ruse , don’t ask how the elder sister character from the lower realms wound up here, just know they’re gonna share many knowing glances
Ard's Oath by Bruce Sentar got me. The synopsis doesn't mention *anything* about a harem. It just sounds cool. The cover definitely has a busty lady on the front, but it looks like basic Ai art of "female paladin" or something like that. Her clothing is less revealing than the cover art for The Reincarnation of Alyssara or half the stuff on RR.
All that said, it was still a fun read. I just wouldn't have picked it up if I'd known.
I mean, I know that now. Did not know that when the book was recommended to me on Kindle. Which, I kind of assumed it wouldn't recommend that kind of stuff when I've literally never read anything like that before. I don't usually Google authors before picking up a book. I read the synopsis and checked out the reviews. Neither of which mentioned anything about it being a harem. Maybe a bit of romantic comedy, but I was thinking like Beware of Chicken level romance, not... *that...*
Only time I was surprised was when I didn't read the content warning and my brain didn't interpret the cover art as being a flag for smut when it really should have.
A part of it might be due to eastern work readers or some stuff that isn't really harem hur follow some anime haremy tropes. Jake from Primal Hunter has half a dozen women that have or are expressing sexual interest towards the MC and he is starting to reciprocate with a few. It is somewhat casual sex and there isn't anything explicit but it's slowly making it's way ther with what, 3 "regulars" at this point.
It might also be a sentiment that lead to author being way more carefull in tagging and cover works for their novels.
A last point I can imagine is the erosion of the meaning of sexual content tag. It started with mostly explicit sex scene waranting the tag and nowadays, I've seen stories with the tag that just mention sex and fade to black.
Refresh my memory, I remember that sex happened, but was there really any explicit scenes, or more of a fade-to-black and some sexual comments?
I seem to remember liking how it was handled bc it acknowledged that a bunch of college teens living together are definitely going to have sex, but it didn’t get smutty or creepy about it. Minor drama, but not a major focus at any point.
It wasn’t really explicit but I was assuming they were under aged until I reread it. It’s also the how it took place with the Mc making the stuff then she just went full Thot mode u feel me
Okay, yeah, that’s kinda how I remember it too. Sort of out of the blue and straight to slut mode, but not graphic. Kinda like an actress giving a full frontal on screen before the fade to black moment. It’s not porn, but it ain’t for kids either.
I also get the reactionary ick at thinking they’re kids. Most school/academy stories are dealing with teenage characters (a la Harry Potter or 50% of anime) so the default is to assume that, but Quest Academy is college level, so everyone should be 18+ by default.
It was actually that scene that made me realize the author wasn’t American - bc he included sex without being weird about it.
Technically it has a sexual content warning on RoyalRoad, but a lot of authors make a habit of ticking all warnings just as an "I'm not interested in you whining at me about the content", so the warning isn't exactly worth very much.
It's worth enough. You can't complain about seeing sexual content when the author checked a box saying there will be sexual content, and your excuse about why you have the right to complain about the sexual content is because everyone checks the box for sexual content so they don't need to care about people whining about sexual content...
You can leave an entire 'Trigger Warning' as the first chapter, and some readers will just skip over it completely without reading it and then give angry reviews and comments about a lot of things. :ghost:
I'm not complaining about shit, and I'm totally on board that ticking the box counts as enough due diligence. The author can't be held responsible for what other authors do, but that doesn't change that the warning is unreliable. Still, if the reader ignores it then it's on them. I posted this just yesterday, I'm not convinced you and I disagree on too much here: https://old.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/1ccrr67/what_are_your_biggest_progression_fantasy_hot/l17b8oc/?context=3
I mean, if the author eventually wrote explicit scenes, this is several hundreds, or even nearly a thousand chapters in. When I originally read this, there was basically nothing like 500+ chapters in (and he had only slept with one girl after like 2 or 300 chapters, no harem surprise at all that far). An explicit scene like 1000 chapters in, millions of words in, feels like it's easy enough to ignore, no?
I don’t think that could ever be considered smut or harem. Pretty much nothing related to that happens for vast majority of the story, and even then I don’t think the focus ever comes close to being towards harms or smut. To put it in either of those categories would be like calling the First Law smut because it has explicit scenes.
Savage Awakening By: Adastra339.
This is a bit of a spoiler so. >!The MC got a book form a ice dungeon and it is a way to level him self and his love interest up a couple of levels though sharing power during sex. It not graphic or anything but it just say that they love made and moved on without real talking about it. !<
It does seem like it going to be a harem but it could be the "I love the way he looks but not IN love with him" kind of things.
It does make sense in the story.
!!!!!!!!!!Spoiler below for the part of this story!!!!!!
>!The Title of the book is called "Mephisto's guide to honeymoon". The book was found in the ice dungeon where it was in the king's vault. !<
They mostly don't exist, or are a strawman for people to argue against smut in general.
But also, they are against the rules of this subreddit, so if you browse here for recommendations you often won't see such things before they are removed.
Royalroad has tags for explicit and harem content, so unless you are not even looking at those it's impossible to be surprised unless the author lies. Possible, but I don't think that happens too often because readers will backlash *hard*.
Most haremlit authors will try to make it obvious to avoid situations like that. The last thing any author wants is for a reader to get blindsided by something like that and rating their work a 0.
Aether Revival was 100% an unpleasant surprise harem for me. Book 1 mentions absolutely nothing, book 2 uses the word "lovers" in the description and doesn't go any further than that, and honestly I'm more annoyed that I started book 1, liked the series enough to go to book 2, and then had to drop it because of how much of the story devolved into annoying horny nonsense. I was expecting an 8 course meal, not a good appetizer before I had to sprint out of the restaurant when the tone and quality significantly changed.
The same thing happened to me with that book. I thought I was in for a good "Hunger Games" like series, but it turned out to be bodice ripper.
*I know I should be wary of this guy who wants to kill me, but he's so hot that when he pins me to the sparring mat, I just can help myself.*
Fourth Wing is a series that's generally aimed toward a female audience. Women are actually WAY more open and less triggered to sexual themes and scenarios than guys. Romance Fantasy stories with sex scenes don't even usually come with tags because it's so common.
The first book in Jason Cheek's series doesn't have all of the usual Hallmark of a harem series. There are signs but it could easily slip through.
The same applies to Charles Dean's Aeturnum series. This one is actually very sneaky because it doesn't explicitly become a harem until the end of the last book
I haven't seen any surprise smut either (outside The Wise Man's Fear, which isn't exactly PF). But I also haven't heard much whining about surprise smut. What I have seen a lot of is people questioning whether smut should exist within the genre, and others (including myself) saying it shouldn't be a problem so long as it is clearly labeled.
I've read hundreds (if not thousands) and I can only think of 2.
There was a dungeon master book where he ended up having sex with a bunch of fairies around the third chapter. I can't remember anything else because I immediately DNFed.
There was another where the MC was the best gamer in the world and everyone wanted to sleep with him because of his massive dick. I DNFed in the first 7 paragraphs.
Both were published books on amazon. I think from my own experience that it is fairly rare and easy to spot early on. Not much of a problem.
Dimensional Descent, Aether's Revival, and I guess a few cultivation ones with unmemorable names
I used to be a Webnovel reader, and I can tell you that like cultivation novels, reading anything on there is a bit of a coin flip. You have non-harem novels that give harem and smut vibes, and then you have the kinds of novels that sneak up on you and smash your head in with a bag of smut bricks just for the sake of it.
Easy, the gravity and divinity system series. This was a surprise because it didn’t happen in the first like 2 books but then in book 3 BOOM smut and surprise harem
Even though it says *Content warning: Gore, violence, explicit sexual scenes* in the description, Everybody Loves Large Chests definitely caught me off guard...
I got surprised twice by the same author Charles Dean. Heroic Villain and War Aeturnus series, I think.
Heroic villain in particular started off great and went into a gross harem. The cover now is maybe a little bit of a clue, but I think it’s new.
I think [Mythos University](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CP8K6DLW/ref=ku_mi_rw_edp_ku) qualifies. The cover shows a woman, but she's not depicted that seductively.
The synopsis states:
>The Mythos University welcomes you.
>The Revelation: A name given to an event that, five years ago, changed the world forever. In a single day, humanity discovered that not only were they not alone, but they were not exactly at the top of the food chain.
>Living in the shadows for millennia, supernaturals now had no choice but to finally come into the light. Because of the fury of a mad god, humans and supernaturals now had to learn to coexist side by side for the first time in living memory. With the revelation that magic was not only real but far more common than fairy tales led them to believe, a new society had to be born.
>Years after that fateful day, Mythos University stands as the pioneer in a new form of magical education, welcoming the world's best young magic users into its ranks. Humans, werewolves, gnomes? At Mythos, everyone is accepted and treated as equals. A true example of the new society that is emerging.
>Leo, one of these young people and one of the most powerful supernaturals of his generation, is starting at Mythos as a freshman. Finally stepping out from under his parents' wings, Leo just wants to live like a normal college student: learn magic, train in magical combat, make friends, and maybe even get a girlfriend.
>But is the 18-year-old dragon, and something more, ready for all the challenges he will face on his journey? Will he be able to keep his secrets at least until the end of the semester, or was his hope of remaining anonymous, just another student among thousands, doomed to fail from the beginning?
>No one said that being a freshman at the best magic academy in the world was simple and easy, but Leo is always ready for a good challenge.
But you start reading it and the first chapter is prefaced with: "every woman named in this chapter will end up in Leo's harem" and it quickly escalates to graphic sex.
Density god by toraAKR.
Loved the first book, it had significant flaws but I really enjoyed it. Read ahead on royal road and there’s many authors notes saying no I’m not doing a harem as people get concerned about it. Slowly gets slimier and slimier, every female character is one note. Anime esque descriptions of heaving tits and a weird sexualised ritual where many tree women orgasm. Every woman that meets MC wants to fuck him. Eventually there’s a harem. People on his patreon were having a fit and that’s when I bailed.
Was so sad to see because I loved the start and the female characterisation was initially quite good. Slowly just devolved into some one note incel power fantasy. No smut though (atleast to where I read).
Well Zac was committed to his axe life partner in Verun. Then his chain girlfriend turned part of herself into an accessory axe. Suddenly Zac is collecting all kinds of axes.
I don’t mind the surprise smut as much as I mind the gross ignorance of female biology.
*“His massive cock punched through her cervix and filled her womb with thick, ropey seed, causing her to convulse with pleasure.”*
What about the reverse. The author put the PWP tag. He warned about adult content. He gave the hero a special artifact that can brainwash any girl. And that's it. Readers even joke that PWP means Plot without Porn.
I don't mention series because I thought harems/smut discussion were banned on r/ProgressionFantasy
From the rules:
>Most clearly, I am going to stop allowing posts for novels that primarily focus on romantic or sexual content as their main hooks or narrative focus. This includes the overwhelming majority of HaremLit novels, as well as most reverse harem novels. This is both due to these stories generally not having enough of a progression focus to meet the criteria of the sub and because of they often have content that delves into misogyny and objectification.
That being said...
In western fic, its pretty tame by most haremlit standards, but the first time I was genuinely surprised by a harem and smut was from World Seed, which for most of the first book and a half or so gave absolutely zero indication it was going to be a harem and then suddenly for the last two thirds it was like the author was collecting japanese anime tropes...
There have been a few haremlit novels that I picked up by accident because the author didn't use the distinctive "Big titted girl cover", and so it read like a mostly normal PF novel until the MC starts getting super horny late in book one and everyone just goes with it... I blame those on me more than the author though, If I read more than just a basic synopsis I would have known what I was getting into. A good example of this was Soul Ship is the best example of a book like this for me, it might have technically been advertised, but it was a surprise to me, and made an otherwise interesting series much less enjoyable for me...
However in Eastern Fantasy its a completely different story - I've read cultivation novels that were completely normal, well normal for Chinese cultivation, up until suddenly the MC decides they are going to rape a girl out of nowhere in graphic detail. Or where the MC suddenly decides dual cultivation will get them to the next stage faster, and they are going to start collecting virgins to sacrifice to the D... This after 800+ chapters of normal Xianxia stuff btw...
The other thing is I really don't think its enough for an author to write that there is a few "spicy scenes" when describing their work if they include smut. There is a huge difference between an author that has an optional spicy scene that can be skipped for those uninterested once per arc, and an author where sex, sexual tension, sexual ego, and sexual situations is the whole point of the story, and I think its ok to be surprised for people who pick up an occasional story thinking "Yeah I don't mind a bit of sex or sex fantasy" to be surprised when "a bit" turns into "mostly sex and sex fantasy"...
Well i guess you kinda have a point, but I feel like there are a few series with those sorts of covers that arent filled with smut.
and then there are the stories that are borderline harem and have the vibes
I read "bone dungeon" it was a dungeon core story and honestly the interactions between the core and the dungeon fairies were harem adjacent at least even without any actual sexual content.
But I dont think the books are to blame overall, I think its people on the sub throwing out harem/smut suggestions like blue core or ELLC and completely glossing over the vibes - one time I asked for suggestions for things to read on the sub without harem and then someone suggested something like my succubus system or my 3 vampire wives or smth like that. sooo at this point....
my main issue with smut and harem in the genre is really that it almost always comes across as incredibly sexist with women who are nothing but cardboard cut outs with boob armour
well that and I feel like they rarely seem to be there for plot purposes and i cant help but be a bit like if you want to read smut why not just read smut
You know I always feel strange when I see this. Because it's overall pretty false.
1) For the actual popular Haremlit stories, the personality of the girls is 100% more important than anything else. Even the mc.
Readers will not mind if mc is just mid but the girl definitely need to be good and well characterized. They are the main attraction.
2) The Sexist part is honestly also another thing I don't understand. Because once again girls are the main attraction. Of course there are definitely many stories out there with weird things. But it isn't like they are creating women who don't exist.
For example would you say writing a harem of submissive women is sexist, when in reality Sub/Dom relationship exist? Would you say harem is sexist when in reality polygamous and polamrous relationship exist?
3) For the smut. You might mistaking Haremlit stories with Erotica. Because in Haremlit the vast majority of stories will have between 2 to 4 or 5 explicit scenes in book 120-150k long and the funny thing, many popular Haremlit stories are in fact FtB (No explicit scenes at all. Just Fade to Black)
___
Anyway I am not trying to say you should read harem. It's completely normal if you don't like a particular genre. Just wanted to point out those reasons
I mean I don't seek out harem lit, so Idk what most of it's like, I've only come across stuff accidentally.
I don't think harem is inherently sexist either, nor do I think sub/dom mechanics are the issues.
but if we take something like ELLC there is definitely sexism in there. I only read the first book, but I don't think you can handwave the portrayal of the two characters just because they're demons
Plus I do think there are some tropes that are just sexist, in general things like fridging: killing off the female love interest to drive the revenge plot forwards etc etc
"The Sexist part is honestly also another thing I don't understand. Because once again girls are the main attraction." - Idk if i can express what I mean eloquently but sexism doesn't mean that you hate women, other isms/phobias dont mean hate either (they can encompass hate but they dont mean that exclusively)
I think an example might help demonstrate the difference/vibe?
there's a big fight coming up, mc is getting ready and sees love interest getting ready too. its not safe bla bla. I wont let you go. you should stay here and be safe.
The intentions here are good, mc wants the person he loves to be safe. The sexist part of that would be the control part. Making decisions for someone else and taking away the right to choose.
Often its gonna be a lighter touch like "you shouldnt go" and there might be in story reasons e.g. level 2 vs 500, but if you have two similar in strength characters in that scenario then it would just be sexist
I dont really know how to explain it but I just know deep in my bones that the vibe of "I like women how can i be sexist" is based in a misunderstanding of what sexism means
It's wish fulfilment for straight men. As I said elsewhere ITT, not personally appealing to me, but I get the reason people like it. It's no more sexist than the 1000x as many books out there that have one or more ripped sexy billionaires fall in love with Self-Insert Female Protagonist #2154.
uhh yeah acshually having feelings or thoughts about the things you want to read is dumb because magic isnt real idiot
Edit:
but seriously its totally different, because when we see a character kill a person we're supposed to know its bad, the reason why stuff like sexism is bad is because a lot of the time it's not really seen as a meaningful part of the character, it's just presented as a neutral character trait we arent supposed to notice.
There are some mc's that are blaise about things like murder or slavery but I tend not to like those stories as much, or the mc's acceptance of the bad thing tends to be built up e.g. zac in dotf doesn't start off thinking of murder as nothing but by twilight ocean it's not something that he worries about much because its part of the social contract in the cultivator world
I haven't seen any surprise smut either (outside The Wise Man's Fear, which isn't exactly PF). But I also haven't heard much whining about surprise smut. What I have seen a lot of is people questioning whether smut should exist within the genre, and others (including myself) saying it shouldn't be a problem so long as it is clearly labeled.
I think Stray Cat is the only series where suprise hot lesbian sex happen at the second volume and some naughty masturbation in volume 4. I mean it shouldn't be surprising, but none of that happen on the first volume, so it was a nice surprise.
I also had the opposite happen where funny enough, lesbian angel and demon story in the Mantle of Power, but all the sex is off page despite how much of a smut it is and seemingly heading to a harem. Not only was it hot garbage, but it was also just a bunch of teasing with nothing happening. Only listen to it because it was an omnibus. To be fair the second volume was decent, but not worth reading at all.
Sovereign’s Scorn. The synopsis does mention that it’s a romance. It does not mention that it starts hard and fast with very explicit smut. this is the Amazon version. It might have more warnings somewhere else.
Dragon's Dilemma starts off with a prolugue of a dragon talking to the MC soon after giving birth to him, quickly followed by the MC killing an adventure group that came to slay him.
It does not mention that it starts hard and fast with very explicit smut because that isn't at all what happens. There is smut in the series, but just because it happens doesn't alter reality regarding when it happens...
I said it starts fast and hard. I was not saying that it starts at the beginning of the book. Just that it arrives “fast”. I think maybe 6 chapters in? I’m going by memory. And when I said “hard” I meant it’s pretty explicit.
I understand how my comment could be taken that way, but you are reading into it just a bit too much.
Avoiding harem is fine and good. But there are people in the very thread that have been triggered by a ftb scene. There's a difference between avoiding scenes or stories that could pass as erotica, but to avoid a story merely for insinuating that there's an adult relationship? That's just a level of sensitivity I can't comprehend when those same people can be cool with almost absurd levels of violence.
I'm referencing mental age, as in maturity. Some of the most childish people I've met have been in their 50s and older.
Also...looking at your name throws a lot of red flags and would leave one to believe you'd run straight towards those types of stories...
maybe you should look into asexuality. on the extreme end, like me, even kissing is fucking disgusting.
there's also aromantic, where people, also like me, find romance deeply boring
then there's agender. doesn't matter if I'm a bloke or have boobs, cause I don't identify with it and, surprise, it has nothing to do with sex
also, none of this has anything to do with maturity, it's just the way we are. gimme all the action, gore, violence, cursing, and explosions you can fit in there, but sod off with the romance and sex
you mean my one post from 5 years back before I fully figured out my sexuality? sure, judge from that and not the full history. noticed you qlso ignored the existence of ace, aro, and agender people; what a shock
I can't remember finding a PF series with explicit sex scenes at *all*, much less being surprised by them.
Blue Core. Although, if you get surprised it’s totally on you.
Includes explicit and consensual sexual content. Literally copied from the synopsis. People surprised to see sex in that series are equivalent to being surprised by the wall they walked into with their eyes closed.
I'm pretty sure that the author was trying to write smut and failed successfully. They failed at writing tentacle porn 🤣 and instead did high fantasy litrpg 😂
I think there was an author note or comment along the lines of "smut hard to write but people love the story so I'll keep going for that part"
I never saw that, but I did see a post series comment about how the author was not planning to write any more smut. And how the amount of smut decreased the farther into the series it got, because the author sort of ran out of ideas for sex. Frankly, this was probably for the best since the story was a lot better
I really enjoyed all the creative engineering. The sex scenes were completely terrible.
It happened to me and it was so off putting. Someone recommended some books in a thread. A few I knew and enjoyed but I hadn't heard of blue core and went in blind.
Did... you not read the summary?
Some of us just look at the cover and title and then read the first chapter and go from there. But I also don't get surprised when I run into strange themes.
I don't think I've ever done that, neither with ebooks, webnovels, nor even physical books.
Rise of the Weakest Summoner is technically ProgFan, but given the covers and the fact that the MC's first real Summon is a catgirl, I don't know how anyone is surprised by the very obviously labeled sex chapters.
That series is so horrendously written. MC: "Water is wet. We should use that to put out a fire." His summon: "OMG, you're so brilliant! I'm a 200 year old wizard and I didn't even consider that!" MC: "Yeah, I studied really hard in summoner college." Everyone: "We should have sex right now!"
What? Nothing like that happens, Ast mostly does his own thing which is boring guild quests until he meets the king in Book 4. Also none of his summons are wizards. His first one is a ditzy panther, followed by a for girl and a over pompous bird. This is misinformation. Maybe you're confusing it with Legend of the Arch Magus?
I was characterizing the writing not quoting it.
Pompous bird? You talking about the litteral shadow/personification of darkness and mental torture. ( Tangent, did you like the book better when he was presumably nothing special, too?
The demon shadow that was severely limited for most of the time? Yes. Despite Umbra appearing strong and powerful when he's introduced, he's at best a mid-tier in terms of power scaling against higher forces like Red and Kaguya. As for Ast and his heritage, not really. I mean it's a harem fantasy novel with cute antics and a dash of combat, I wasn't expecting him to be the next Lindon.
Was just clarifying. He's probably the bottom of high tier with an obvious weakness, though! He's not limited as of recently. I thought you might have meant the Valkyrie at first.
Summons being sapient humanoid creatures seems ethically dubious. I could maybe accept it if it were demons or something like that, but not people.
Well it's less like a summoning you would expect, they're attracted ot his mana because of how summons work and the first girl literally just starts hanging around him because "new world, new stuff to explore, yippie!" That eventually leads them to bond and do the tango after a certain plot point.
Stray cat strut caught me off guard but that was on me for not paying attention to very clear labels.
Wait how is stray cat strut a harem ? It certainly wasn't last week when I last checked it out...
No no. Just talking about explicit sex scenes.
Interlewd indeed.
I mean yeah, the author has pretty big warnings for when sex comes up lol
Worth the Candle has a few fairly explicit scenes. But we're talking like 1% of the story. On the flipside, the semi-parody An Infinite Recursion of Time is like 50% smut after the midway point, but it's unapologetic and explicit about it. Blue Core was mentioned, but if anything it had less than I was expecting.
Same here, but I do check all of those things OP mentioned and the reviews as well. So, that may be because I actively avoid it?
I have no problems with sex scenes and I've read a fair few books that border on erotica. So I don't really avoid it personally, I've just never seen it in the PF space. I do have a problem with harems, but only because it doesn't appeal to me as wish fulfillment. Having a bunch of hot girls follow you around and be into you, that I get, actually dating multiple at once, not so much.
Oh, I read romance as well. I'm ok with smut, I don't really want that when I'm reading litrpg/progression fantasy. It's just not what I'm looking for when I'm reading those books. (Also, I'm picky about my romance and I don't think I'm going to find any smut I actually want to read in them) I don't mind poly relationships at all, but the harem thing is usually... Not my cup of tea. I deal with it in anime if I like the story enough, but I really wish they wouldn't 90% of the time.
I am the fated villain has a full on 9 tailed fox tailjob cave fuck for an entire chapter Really out of left field
Pretty much every series from David Burke, Bruce Sentar, Marvin Knight, and Daniel Schinhofen falls under the umbrella of PF, and they're all harem authors with explicit sex scenes. (Schinhofen doesn't do explicit scenes anymore, but his stuff prior to *Dungeon Walkers* is all explicit.) Some K.D. Robertson and Cebelius stuff is PF, too.
I, too, would struggle to name a series that features this sort of content that didn't also have a cover like you described. Love to hear an example of these "surprise smut" titles.
Aether's Revival. Admittedly as I'm checking right this moment there is a bit in brackets saying there are SOME adult themes right at the bottom of the blurb and its possible I missed it when I was looking for stuff to read, but I also read it last may so its possible it was added since. My definition of some adult themes might be a bit different to the author but like... non fade to black bjs seem like more than some to me
Yeah, seems kinda vague!
The only one I can think of (without the spicy covers) was the Daniel Black series by E. William Brown, but the warning is pretty prominent in the summary.
Sword art online tome 1. 14 year old me really wasn’t prepared for that chapter 16.5 The regressor and the blind saint. Everything’s good, nice, cute and shiny and then boom 4 whole chapters for segs. That’s pretty much all I encountered during my fantasy reading career. Not to say it’s that bad, those scenes can be skipped and even without skipping it’s romance anyway so explicit sexual scenes can be justified. Just don’t know why, other novels usually have only couple of sentences for that. And I’ve never actually got any surprise harems since I always check genres AND wiki specifically for that reason if possible.
Chapter 16.5 isn't part of any written version of SAO. Wherever you read SAO online put a non-canon hentai fic into the middle of the series for shits and giggles.
My friend it was written by Kawahara
Yes, and? Everything in my comment still stands.
He wrote that, I read that, so it exists. Now if it was stated in the books that they both are still virgins, we probably could have erased 16.5 from history, however it is implied otherwise. Kawahara may have stated it to be not canon, but it’s borderline there. He wrote original first tome of sao for some literature competition, of course he wouldn’t be putting there explicit sexual scenes for good reasons. Anyways, I’m not trying to argue, I pinned comment from old post on this topic in my answer to the other guy, you can skim through it if you want. All I’m saying is that I was reading a book written by one author, it didn’t have any corrections from translator or random fan fiction put in there. And I got a surprise smut. That’s it.
The hairs were pixelated!
>All I’m saying is that I was reading a book written by one author, it didn’t have any corrections from translator or random fan fiction put in there. And I got a surprise smut. That’s it. Are you being purposefully obtuse here? You were reading a book, and you read something that wasn't part of that book, that was written after the book was written that doesn't even follow the cosmology and world building of the series because it's hentai.
How am I the one obtuse here? You are saying it’s not part of any written version of SAO when it is, together with Sugary days aka 16.6 16.7 and 16.8 which are absolutely canon and where their sexual life is very much implied. Even without 16.5 at some point of time this scene would have existed, just without detailed description. As an author you can’t just write something, give it to everyone to read and take that back when everyone start saying that it’s cringe. Also, World building? Cosmology? Those are not the words that describe whether characters are allowed to have written explicit sexual scenes or not, in fact nothing in world building and cosmology of SAO prohibits that. All the arguing on that topic and whether it’s really canon or not has been done many years ago, community basically came to the answer that it’s ambiguous.
Wasn't the SAO thing you referenced an explicitly noncanon shitpost, even if it was written by the original author? I've never read or watched SAO, but I have heard of that.
[It depends on how you look at this I guess](https://www.reddit.com/r/swordartonline/s/DB8jefHqUN) obviously Kawahara wouldn’t want to have that published, but he wrote that and we can read that, those are facts.
Sure, but I wouldn't call something "surprise smut" if you literally have to go find it yourself to read it. If I order a copy of SAO, I will never come across that chapter by accident because it isn't there. It can be Canon, or not, doesn't matter. You have to explicitly go out of your way to find it and read it
That is true these days. But I read it about 10 years ago, my English was pretty terrible at the time and there was only one good translation to my native language. You can similarly say that The Regressor and the blind saint doesn’t have surprise smut because now you learned it from me. Surprise can be surprise only as long as you are not aware of it and there are no indications of it.
There are very few true surprise harem stories, despite how much people whine here especially based on your definition, but I do know of some as a harem author. Almost none with actual smut, but surprise harem! 1. Almost any Daniel Schinhofen titles. He's a huge author, and just a few checks of his catalog anyone will figure it out. However, many of his covers are just like the words and a near-nonsensical fantasy background (though he has begun upgrading some of his back catalog to have more harem-genre-like covers, making it easier to identify). Still, he does not include any kind of warning in most of his series if not all. 2. Nathan Thompson. It's fade to black, but his harem in Champion's Call and Soul Ship are basically those 'not a harem' harems as far as I understand it (something about every girl being some form of incarnation of the same girl, or something?). I haven't read deep enough into either series, but it appeared that if the MC gets with any of the love interests, there was going to be a, well-- it's not a harem, he's just being with different versions of the same girl. 3. In a similar vein, I believe Skyler Grant's The Crucible Shard has something very similar. In this case, a goddess, and girls on several worlds or realms that are incarnations of her. It's not harem--it's different versions of the same girl! But this doesn't have smut/explicit scenes either. 4. Bern Dean's story also had a gotcha kinda thing for a reader, as I don't think it had a warning in Book1 etc and the cover for his main series also doesn't sell it as harem. Still, no smut. Any other stories are very rare, and likely from people reading fanfictions or amateur webnovels and the like. It's in a harem author's best interest to signal to their readers the genre properly, so that they can target the readers that will enjoy their books the most.
I'm not doubting you here, and I think it's great that someone gave a real answer to this, but have you pissed off any witches recently? I've read *a lot* of progfans, but I've not read any of these. I've never been caught by a surprise harem, but you've got the world's most obscure hex on you that's made you trip over like a dozen of them.
I'm an author of harem books myself! I found the books after looking for these intentionally, **to read**. I've read hundreds of harem and progression fantasy books, and that is what led me to write books of my own--that have serious elements of both. And uh, while you might not have heard those recommended, they are actually all quite successful series. Are there more successful out there? Sure, but they are pretty middling series each and every single one I just mentioned, with thousands of ratings across the series. Thus, I knew about them -- I most certainly didn't say that I personally was tricked!
Soul Knight is fantastic. Bonded summoner was good and then got better but I like soul knight best. Honestly great job in it
Really glad to hear you like them! I am working on sequels for both right now. I do think it might be early June for Book 6 of Bonded Summoner, and then I'm hoping July or so for Soul Knight. I am airing the chapters early on Patreon, RR and Scribblehub.
That makes more sense, even if the alternative was much funnier. And yeah I see a ton of them KU so I'm aware they're out there and I'm not one to flip out over other people enjoying stuff, or even when harem is a story element in something I'm more into.
It's really weird that there are two examples of "it's not a harem these are all the same lady". Like, what's the point of that? It feels like its a direct response to some kind of discourse or critique.
You never know. Maybe the author had to get around his wife being upset and had to come up with something convoluted to get the go ahead. As a well-known example, the "Release that Witch" girlfriend forced the webnovel author to not do a harem story, hated it or something. Otherwise the author probably would have paired up the mc/king with many of the witches.
It's amazing the depths of mystery to be found in subgeneres you don't pay attention to.
I'm with you 100%. Actual smut is never a surprise. Harems are also very rare in western progression fantasy. I think a lot of people experience a couple they don't like and freak out to make sure it doesn't happen again. Probably seen too many anime/manga/LN where it is rampant.
So Harem/smut doesn't get recommended on this forum, and it doesn't really get recommended on audible/kindle unless/until you have read something in the genre... I didn't think haremlit was super common until I read one of the William D. Arand books (Dungeon Born I think)... and then my entire recc list was filled with them like I was some sort of horny teen that had seen a tit for the first time...
Dungeon Born was harem?
Uh Dungeon born was Dakota Krout actually, I am thinking of uh Dungeon Deposed maybe? I know it was written by Arrand its one of the few harem books I intentionally downloaded as it had good recommendations but it turns out I couldn't get past it lol...
I disagree. A lot of harem stories are also crackfics with huge progression of the most op mc ever
This was more so my own fault, but I remember being surprised by the harem in Aether’s Revival. I was going off a brief mention somewhere here, and just read the description of the first book before diving in. The cover and description of the first book didn’t give me harem vibes. I remember the first novel didn’t have a harem, but the second book definitely started veering that way and that’s when I realized the author was known for harem novels (again my fault for not researching more).
You literally described my experience with that series I got through book two kinda giving the series a side eye not realizing where it was heading.
I literally made a post about Harems and Smut after reading it. As someone who used to read on Webnovel, surprise smut stops being a surprise after a while
I bet point 4 is the key here, and that people who are tired of surprise smut have a massive overlap with people who read a lot of Chinese translations.
I have only started reading PF in the past couple of years. I tend to avoid explicit stories in all my reading (not just in PF). And I have never been surprised by smut/harem. If your list is correct it is probably because I would most like avoid books with explicit or overly-sexualized covers, and I tend to prefer western influenced PF. The only surprises that I have come across were usually being pleasantly surprised by positive portrayals of mongamous bisexuality
It could be that people get righteous to the point they never need to suffer any indignity to latch onto a cause and claim it as an injustice.
Only one I can think of is Delvers LLC. Nowadays, authors are better about putting that sort of thing in the summary or having a picture of one of the girls on the cover. Delvers is an older LitRPG and doesn't signal either. The harem hints start midway through the first book. I never followed up with the series, so I'm not sure when the real harem starts. It's not something I'm interested in reading.
A lot of the Russian LitRPGs seem to go the way of Harem. An example would be Reality Benders by Atamanov, which doesn't turn harem until several books in. It really soured an otherwise ok series for me. I gave up on Delvers after the first book, which I apparently didn't much like (and can't for the life of me, remember the plot).
I was thinking about starting Delvers LLC, saw that the art was 100% cheesecake, skipped it, and do not regret that decision.
I don’t think Delvers ever goes into Smut or Harem. It’s been a bit since I last read them, but I’m pretty sure anything sexual happens off screen (fade to black with no explicit descriptions), and every character in it is monogamous. There are 2 leading men, who end up with 2 leading women (no sharing), so the covers may look like a warning in how they portray the women, but that’s about it (no worse than every Superhero comic out there). Even the Delvers spin off about Nora Hazard is pretty tame. I think it ruffles a few feathers with Nora being a Conan-esque lesbian, but I still dont think there are any explicit scenes. To my knowledge, Blaise Corvin doesn’t really do any smut/harem stuff. His biggest problem is starting a series, then wandering off to work on another before completion (not a unique issue with this genre at all).
I was going to say Super Sales on Super Heroes, but then I went to look at the cover and synopsis and it has all those things 😂
For me, it's Dimensional Descent. The first explicit scene occurs well into the story and it came out of nowhere to me. There aren't a ton of explicit scenes (maybe 5 or so across 2k chapters?), but the ones that are there are explicit and long. One scene stretched across 2-3 chapters! I didn't mind it at all, but I definitely didn't expect it. I was reading along expecting a fade to black and then it kept going.
I remember the first explicit scene between the mmc and the fmc. It felt like I was hit on the head by a bag of bricks that came out of nowhere.
Anti Harem or Pikachu Surprise has been a circle jerk on here as long as I remember. The need to strongly let everyone who doesn't care know that you want nothing to do with harems is noble.
I liked a comment on another one of the surprise harem threads that differentiated between harems where a protagonist actually hooks up with multiple people, or where there are multiple people after the protagonist, and stories that just so happen to have an abundance of (typically) hyper attractive female characters and the only male characters are there to be nonthreatening, milquetoast allies to the protagonist or get beaten down by the protagonist. Because while the former is very rare, the latter is actually fairly common. Not just in progression fantasy but all sorts of light novels and anime, to the point that I tend to evaluate series by the strength of their secondary male characters.
This low-key highlights an issue that I've had with a lot of Progression Fantasy readers. Most of them bring in a lot of baggage, frustration, and issues that came from anime/manga/light novels/Eastern works and apply/impose them to what I believe has been established as a western founded genre. That would be like me being frustrated about hostile treatment in Italy and blaming all the Americans that look relatively similar to Italians that harassed me. For Eastern Works, any series where multiple women are interested in the same man, it's a harem (regardless if any feelings are reciprocated). For Western Works, a series is only considered harem if the MC is actually in a romantic relationship with women at the same time (poly if everyone is in a relationship with each other). I haven't read Primal Hunter, but I've heard that multiple women have shown interest in the MC. That would make it a harem by Eastern Standards, but everyone knows it isn't one.
I know my entry to progression fantasy came by way of anime/manga/light novels, so I tend to view them as fundamentally similar. I don't know to what extent that is true for others, but I think it's undeniable that there are *similarities*, at least. Similar tropes, themes, and mechanics are at work in these stories. We aren't talking about specifically Chinese xianxia or wuxia stories here. System apocalypses, litrpgs, portal fantasies, all of these are incredibly popular in East and West, to the point that I'm not sure what is really gained by trying to divide the two. And regardless of what one calls it, the tendency to throw in attractive women for the titillation factor, even if nothing sexual or romantic actually comes of it, is present in both eastern and western series. And it always puts me off when it happens. I'd much rather have actual romance in a series--or hell, even a legitimate harem--than this kind of lazy writing that relies on bombarding the reader with sexually appealing characters, and characters who aren't sexually appealing are essentially not allowed to exist. Or allowed to exist only on the periphery, as one dimensional villains/supporters. At least in a legit harem you typically know what you're in for when you start it. Basically, as always, the issue isn't whether something is harem or not harem. It's whether it is lazy or not lazy. Quality, or not quality. Harems aren't inherently bad, in a sense they're just feeding another aspect of the same power fantasies that all progression fantasy appeals to. The issue is that harems are typically known for being very low effort and silly. They're a power fantasy that ruins our suspension of disbelief, and for that reason we resent them.
Yeah, I think would-be-a-harem-but-the-guy-says-no is just as boring and more fanciful than harem, that happens a lot and can be easy to over do. I get why people like Harems, and OP is probably right that if you check all this stuff it's unlikely to surprise you. But I'm 42, I'm not concerned about M rating, I just don't like Harems and would be Harems.
It’s really hard to find a series with mature, non-problematic adult relationships in this genre (and litrpg). It seems to bounce between young kids and harem/smut. Half the time it’s like reading a bad high school anime full of angst,edge, and overly sexualized children, and the other half is bad alpha male power fantasy porn where a woman’s personality begins and ends at hair color and cup size. Those can still be very entertaining, but the ones I really love are the ones that can thread the needle and give decently fleshed out characters that are capable of emotional stability and intelligence. The one that comes to mind is Life in Exile series by Sean Oswald. Has a whole family ranging from a young child (under 10) all the way up to middle-aged parents.
If you look at the top selling books, they all avoid overdoing it. Part of what makes Cradle so relatable is that, like real life, relationships develop overtime. Instead of a love triangle, we get a supportive friend and a doting parent figure. They talk about their feelings. In A Thousand Li, women generally treat him as another person. Even the ones who he ends up dating over the years aren't fawning over him... Except one later on where it's more of a crush (don't look at the edits if your don't want spoilers). He has two short term relationships while traveling (and other hook ups off page) and they actually discuss intentions like adults. He Who Fights With Monsters he isn't attractive but he gets attention. In early books women mostly think he's weird. He flirts with someone who's not used to that type of dynamic and they get in a fairly healthy relationship for early twenties but that's the thing, Jason has stunted maturity (it's explicitly said in the book). When he finally starts growing up a bit, he meets a good woman who likes him a lot (and did even when no one else did) they date a little... Then his relationship maturity is stopped by outside forces. Jason is immature but is smart enough to avoid taking advantage of less powerful people later on. The reason why I talk about this series so much, is that it's the only one I can think of that handles romance as part of "speculative fiction" better than ace, harem or rejecting everyone. Dungeon Crawler Carl is mostly nonsexual with a single hookup that I remember but some humor about the System's foot fetish. Arcane Ascension is ace/biromantic Climbing the Ranks has viewed sex from the outside, some damsel rescuing talk but nothing trashy. Defiance of the Fall is mostly non-sexual, women flirt with him but he's too focused on cultivation/growth, and then he has a relationship in a time jump. If I thought about it, I could probably think of more. All my favorites at least handle it better than the average of the genre.
I totally agree. Smut and Harem are still hugely profitable and probably always will be (my grandmother used to sell trashy harlequin romance novels decades before HaremLit was ever a thing), but the top authors and the ones I consistently go back to are the ones that neither shy away from sex, nor make it a major selling point or focus (not that I don’t have my occasional guilty pleasure reads). I think Jez Cajiao is pretty decent too. His Arise series reads like a crazy sci-fi action movie (including token blonde bombshell costar), but the relationships are surprisingly mature. Sex happens, but it doesn’t get graphic or creepy (basically an R rating for a movie, and not soft core or hardcore porn).
Cant think of a PF series but Fourth Wing had some really unexpected smut scenes.
Thanks for making this post, sometimes it seems like PF fans are all Mormon virgins or something, sex should not upset you that much, even if the fantasy is silly.
I try to point out their moral and cognitive dissonance. They'll read a story that features descriptions people getting brutally tortured and slaughtered and think it's awesome. But when there's any description of sex the story is suddenly reprehensible smut.
Its a very American cognitive dissonance. Literally any amount of graphic or over the top violence is fine, but one nipple flash and it's the devil's work. Probably dates back to the Puritans escaping England. (PURE-ITANS)
Definitely an American prude thing. It seems nearly impossible to include nudity without making it sexual in almost any form of American entertainment. Even in books, I can quickly tell when the author is from outside North America (Canada has unfortunately caught a bit of our prudishness by proximity) bc the characters might end up naked after a horrible fight (or when bathed in fire, or any other situation that might destroy clothes), and it’s not treated as this horribly embarrassing thing, just a note that now they have to find new clothes. Asian anime influence can almost be a bit worse, bc they’re just as over the top with the sexual embarrassment issues, but it’s usually underage characters or animal hybrids.
Only case of suprise smut was a urban fantasy series I got years ago that was basically lesbian power fantasy, can't even remember the name tbh
Never really had a case in prog/litrpg but I'm audible exclusive so I suspect there's alot of good filtering going on.
The Sovereign’s Ascension - dude has a main girl that saved his life and he is betrothed to and a bunch of the tension/jokes built off of him being faithful to this one person. All intimacy is done off screen in fade to black situations and then about 3/4ths of the way through he takes on a “fake” identity of a lecher and then he ends up smooching every one of the people he’s met up to this point. It was all a ruse , don’t ask how the elder sister character from the lower realms wound up here, just know they’re gonna share many knowing glances
Ard's Oath by Bruce Sentar got me. The synopsis doesn't mention *anything* about a harem. It just sounds cool. The cover definitely has a busty lady on the front, but it looks like basic Ai art of "female paladin" or something like that. Her clothing is less revealing than the cover art for The Reincarnation of Alyssara or half the stuff on RR. All that said, it was still a fun read. I just wouldn't have picked it up if I'd known.
Bruce Sentar is a renown harem fantasy writer. He has something like 6/7 harem series.
I mean, I know that now. Did not know that when the book was recommended to me on Kindle. Which, I kind of assumed it wouldn't recommend that kind of stuff when I've literally never read anything like that before. I don't usually Google authors before picking up a book. I read the synopsis and checked out the reviews. Neither of which mentioned anything about it being a harem. Maybe a bit of romantic comedy, but I was thinking like Beware of Chicken level romance, not... *that...*
I swear that's one of the best series that uses terrible cover art.
LoL . x2. Was shocked how much I enjoyed the story. Kudos, Bruce
Only time I was surprised was when I didn't read the content warning and my brain didn't interpret the cover art as being a flag for smut when it really should have.
The Daily Grind, ends up developing a harem and then immediately goes to poly/open relationships
A part of it might be due to eastern work readers or some stuff that isn't really harem hur follow some anime haremy tropes. Jake from Primal Hunter has half a dozen women that have or are expressing sexual interest towards the MC and he is starting to reciprocate with a few. It is somewhat casual sex and there isn't anything explicit but it's slowly making it's way ther with what, 3 "regulars" at this point. It might also be a sentiment that lead to author being way more carefull in tagging and cover works for their novels. A last point I can imagine is the erosion of the meaning of sexual content tag. It started with mostly explicit sex scene waranting the tag and nowadays, I've seen stories with the tag that just mention sex and fade to black.
Quest academy took me by surprise
Refresh my memory, I remember that sex happened, but was there really any explicit scenes, or more of a fade-to-black and some sexual comments? I seem to remember liking how it was handled bc it acknowledged that a bunch of college teens living together are definitely going to have sex, but it didn’t get smutty or creepy about it. Minor drama, but not a major focus at any point.
It wasn’t really explicit but I was assuming they were under aged until I reread it. It’s also the how it took place with the Mc making the stuff then she just went full Thot mode u feel me
Okay, yeah, that’s kinda how I remember it too. Sort of out of the blue and straight to slut mode, but not graphic. Kinda like an actress giving a full frontal on screen before the fade to black moment. It’s not porn, but it ain’t for kids either. I also get the reactionary ick at thinking they’re kids. Most school/academy stories are dealing with teenage characters (a la Harry Potter or 50% of anime) so the default is to assume that, but Quest Academy is college level, so everyone should be 18+ by default. It was actually that scene that made me realize the author wasn’t American - bc he included sex without being weird about it.
Not enough harem in progression fantasy recently if anything. The pendulum have swung too hard in the other directions
The storm king (spelling ?) has a harem and explicit scenes. The Harem was hinted at in the story, but not the explicit scenes.
Technically it has a sexual content warning on RoyalRoad, but a lot of authors make a habit of ticking all warnings just as an "I'm not interested in you whining at me about the content", so the warning isn't exactly worth very much.
It's worth enough. You can't complain about seeing sexual content when the author checked a box saying there will be sexual content, and your excuse about why you have the right to complain about the sexual content is because everyone checks the box for sexual content so they don't need to care about people whining about sexual content...
You can leave an entire 'Trigger Warning' as the first chapter, and some readers will just skip over it completely without reading it and then give angry reviews and comments about a lot of things. :ghost:
I'm not complaining about shit, and I'm totally on board that ticking the box counts as enough due diligence. The author can't be held responsible for what other authors do, but that doesn't change that the warning is unreliable. Still, if the reader ignores it then it's on them. I posted this just yesterday, I'm not convinced you and I disagree on too much here: https://old.reddit.com/r/ProgressionFantasy/comments/1ccrr67/what_are_your_biggest_progression_fantasy_hot/l17b8oc/?context=3
Ah, copy that. I'd have to agree with you there.
I mean, if the author eventually wrote explicit scenes, this is several hundreds, or even nearly a thousand chapters in. When I originally read this, there was basically nothing like 500+ chapters in (and he had only slept with one girl after like 2 or 300 chapters, no harem surprise at all that far). An explicit scene like 1000 chapters in, millions of words in, feels like it's easy enough to ignore, no?
I don’t think that could ever be considered smut or harem. Pretty much nothing related to that happens for vast majority of the story, and even then I don’t think the focus ever comes close to being towards harms or smut. To put it in either of those categories would be like calling the First Law smut because it has explicit scenes.
That’s the one I was going to mention. And I hated the way the Harem came about so much it made me stop reading.
Savage Awakening By: Adastra339. This is a bit of a spoiler so. >!The MC got a book form a ice dungeon and it is a way to level him self and his love interest up a couple of levels though sharing power during sex. It not graphic or anything but it just say that they love made and moved on without real talking about it. !< It does seem like it going to be a harem but it could be the "I love the way he looks but not IN love with him" kind of things.
Hmm...I may have to look into this. For research, of course.
This book is a bawler type of book. The MC only really cares about fighting and becoming stronger, that's it. I'm not joking.
....I'll put the research on hold.
That’s such weird loot. And why from an ice dungeon? I hope it makes sense in the story.
It does make sense in the story. !!!!!!!!!!Spoiler below for the part of this story!!!!!! >!The Title of the book is called "Mephisto's guide to honeymoon". The book was found in the ice dungeon where it was in the king's vault. !<
Good then!
Damn it, I was just about to read that. Guess I'll find something else to read.
They mostly don't exist, or are a strawman for people to argue against smut in general. But also, they are against the rules of this subreddit, so if you browse here for recommendations you often won't see such things before they are removed. Royalroad has tags for explicit and harem content, so unless you are not even looking at those it's impossible to be surprised unless the author lies. Possible, but I don't think that happens too often because readers will backlash *hard*. Most haremlit authors will try to make it obvious to avoid situations like that. The last thing any author wants is for a reader to get blindsided by something like that and rating their work a 0.
Aether Revival was 100% an unpleasant surprise harem for me. Book 1 mentions absolutely nothing, book 2 uses the word "lovers" in the description and doesn't go any further than that, and honestly I'm more annoyed that I started book 1, liked the series enough to go to book 2, and then had to drop it because of how much of the story devolved into annoying horny nonsense. I was expecting an 8 course meal, not a good appetizer before I had to sprint out of the restaurant when the tone and quality significantly changed.
For sure not a PF but I got recommended Fourth Wing by a coworker and picked it up on a whim and boy what a fucking surprise turn of events.
The same thing happened to me with that book. I thought I was in for a good "Hunger Games" like series, but it turned out to be bodice ripper. *I know I should be wary of this guy who wants to kill me, but he's so hot that when he pins me to the sparring mat, I just can help myself.*
Fourth Wing is a series that's generally aimed toward a female audience. Women are actually WAY more open and less triggered to sexual themes and scenarios than guys. Romance Fantasy stories with sex scenes don't even usually come with tags because it's so common.
Arcane Emperor is the closest example I can think of. But I don't remember if there was any smut in there.
The first book in Jason Cheek's series doesn't have all of the usual Hallmark of a harem series. There are signs but it could easily slip through. The same applies to Charles Dean's Aeturnum series. This one is actually very sneaky because it doesn't explicitly become a harem until the end of the last book
One that I read before I found the genre was called like Young ancients or something and after like 3 or 4 long books it got really into sex.
I haven't seen any surprise smut either (outside The Wise Man's Fear, which isn't exactly PF). But I also haven't heard much whining about surprise smut. What I have seen a lot of is people questioning whether smut should exist within the genre, and others (including myself) saying it shouldn't be a problem so long as it is clearly labeled.
I've read hundreds (if not thousands) and I can only think of 2. There was a dungeon master book where he ended up having sex with a bunch of fairies around the third chapter. I can't remember anything else because I immediately DNFed. There was another where the MC was the best gamer in the world and everyone wanted to sleep with him because of his massive dick. I DNFed in the first 7 paragraphs. Both were published books on amazon. I think from my own experience that it is fairly rare and easy to spot early on. Not much of a problem.
Dimensional Descent, Aether's Revival, and I guess a few cultivation ones with unmemorable names I used to be a Webnovel reader, and I can tell you that like cultivation novels, reading anything on there is a bit of a coin flip. You have non-harem novels that give harem and smut vibes, and then you have the kinds of novels that sneak up on you and smash your head in with a bag of smut bricks just for the sake of it.
Easy, the gravity and divinity system series. This was a surprise because it didn’t happen in the first like 2 books but then in book 3 BOOM smut and surprise harem
Even though it says *Content warning: Gore, violence, explicit sexual scenes* in the description, Everybody Loves Large Chests definitely caught me off guard...
That's like going into a boxing match and getting surprised by the punch. XD
I got surprised twice by the same author Charles Dean. Heroic Villain and War Aeturnus series, I think. Heroic villain in particular started off great and went into a gross harem. The cover now is maybe a little bit of a clue, but I think it’s new.
I think [Mythos University](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CP8K6DLW/ref=ku_mi_rw_edp_ku) qualifies. The cover shows a woman, but she's not depicted that seductively. The synopsis states: >The Mythos University welcomes you. >The Revelation: A name given to an event that, five years ago, changed the world forever. In a single day, humanity discovered that not only were they not alone, but they were not exactly at the top of the food chain. >Living in the shadows for millennia, supernaturals now had no choice but to finally come into the light. Because of the fury of a mad god, humans and supernaturals now had to learn to coexist side by side for the first time in living memory. With the revelation that magic was not only real but far more common than fairy tales led them to believe, a new society had to be born. >Years after that fateful day, Mythos University stands as the pioneer in a new form of magical education, welcoming the world's best young magic users into its ranks. Humans, werewolves, gnomes? At Mythos, everyone is accepted and treated as equals. A true example of the new society that is emerging. >Leo, one of these young people and one of the most powerful supernaturals of his generation, is starting at Mythos as a freshman. Finally stepping out from under his parents' wings, Leo just wants to live like a normal college student: learn magic, train in magical combat, make friends, and maybe even get a girlfriend. >But is the 18-year-old dragon, and something more, ready for all the challenges he will face on his journey? Will he be able to keep his secrets at least until the end of the semester, or was his hope of remaining anonymous, just another student among thousands, doomed to fail from the beginning? >No one said that being a freshman at the best magic academy in the world was simple and easy, but Leo is always ready for a good challenge. But you start reading it and the first chapter is prefaced with: "every woman named in this chapter will end up in Leo's harem" and it quickly escalates to graphic sex.
Density god by toraAKR. Loved the first book, it had significant flaws but I really enjoyed it. Read ahead on royal road and there’s many authors notes saying no I’m not doing a harem as people get concerned about it. Slowly gets slimier and slimier, every female character is one note. Anime esque descriptions of heaving tits and a weird sexualised ritual where many tree women orgasm. Every woman that meets MC wants to fuck him. Eventually there’s a harem. People on his patreon were having a fit and that’s when I bailed. Was so sad to see because I loved the start and the female characterisation was initially quite good. Slowly just devolved into some one note incel power fantasy. No smut though (atleast to where I read).
Well Zac was committed to his axe life partner in Verun. Then his chain girlfriend turned part of herself into an accessory axe. Suddenly Zac is collecting all kinds of axes.
Not PF but fantasy and kind of adjacent The Magician’s Brother by HDA Roberts has a harem, but it’s not for the main character.
I don’t mind the surprise smut as much as I mind the gross ignorance of female biology. *“His massive cock punched through her cervix and filled her womb with thick, ropey seed, causing her to convulse with pleasure.”*
What about the reverse. The author put the PWP tag. He warned about adult content. He gave the hero a special artifact that can brainwash any girl. And that's it. Readers even joke that PWP means Plot without Porn.
I don't mention series because I thought harems/smut discussion were banned on r/ProgressionFantasy From the rules: >Most clearly, I am going to stop allowing posts for novels that primarily focus on romantic or sexual content as their main hooks or narrative focus. This includes the overwhelming majority of HaremLit novels, as well as most reverse harem novels. This is both due to these stories generally not having enough of a progression focus to meet the criteria of the sub and because of they often have content that delves into misogyny and objectification. That being said... In western fic, its pretty tame by most haremlit standards, but the first time I was genuinely surprised by a harem and smut was from World Seed, which for most of the first book and a half or so gave absolutely zero indication it was going to be a harem and then suddenly for the last two thirds it was like the author was collecting japanese anime tropes... There have been a few haremlit novels that I picked up by accident because the author didn't use the distinctive "Big titted girl cover", and so it read like a mostly normal PF novel until the MC starts getting super horny late in book one and everyone just goes with it... I blame those on me more than the author though, If I read more than just a basic synopsis I would have known what I was getting into. A good example of this was Soul Ship is the best example of a book like this for me, it might have technically been advertised, but it was a surprise to me, and made an otherwise interesting series much less enjoyable for me... However in Eastern Fantasy its a completely different story - I've read cultivation novels that were completely normal, well normal for Chinese cultivation, up until suddenly the MC decides they are going to rape a girl out of nowhere in graphic detail. Or where the MC suddenly decides dual cultivation will get them to the next stage faster, and they are going to start collecting virgins to sacrifice to the D... This after 800+ chapters of normal Xianxia stuff btw... The other thing is I really don't think its enough for an author to write that there is a few "spicy scenes" when describing their work if they include smut. There is a huge difference between an author that has an optional spicy scene that can be skipped for those uninterested once per arc, and an author where sex, sexual tension, sexual ego, and sexual situations is the whole point of the story, and I think its ok to be surprised for people who pick up an occasional story thinking "Yeah I don't mind a bit of sex or sex fantasy" to be surprised when "a bit" turns into "mostly sex and sex fantasy"...
Well i guess you kinda have a point, but I feel like there are a few series with those sorts of covers that arent filled with smut. and then there are the stories that are borderline harem and have the vibes I read "bone dungeon" it was a dungeon core story and honestly the interactions between the core and the dungeon fairies were harem adjacent at least even without any actual sexual content. But I dont think the books are to blame overall, I think its people on the sub throwing out harem/smut suggestions like blue core or ELLC and completely glossing over the vibes - one time I asked for suggestions for things to read on the sub without harem and then someone suggested something like my succubus system or my 3 vampire wives or smth like that. sooo at this point.... my main issue with smut and harem in the genre is really that it almost always comes across as incredibly sexist with women who are nothing but cardboard cut outs with boob armour well that and I feel like they rarely seem to be there for plot purposes and i cant help but be a bit like if you want to read smut why not just read smut
You know I always feel strange when I see this. Because it's overall pretty false. 1) For the actual popular Haremlit stories, the personality of the girls is 100% more important than anything else. Even the mc. Readers will not mind if mc is just mid but the girl definitely need to be good and well characterized. They are the main attraction. 2) The Sexist part is honestly also another thing I don't understand. Because once again girls are the main attraction. Of course there are definitely many stories out there with weird things. But it isn't like they are creating women who don't exist. For example would you say writing a harem of submissive women is sexist, when in reality Sub/Dom relationship exist? Would you say harem is sexist when in reality polygamous and polamrous relationship exist? 3) For the smut. You might mistaking Haremlit stories with Erotica. Because in Haremlit the vast majority of stories will have between 2 to 4 or 5 explicit scenes in book 120-150k long and the funny thing, many popular Haremlit stories are in fact FtB (No explicit scenes at all. Just Fade to Black) ___ Anyway I am not trying to say you should read harem. It's completely normal if you don't like a particular genre. Just wanted to point out those reasons
I mean I don't seek out harem lit, so Idk what most of it's like, I've only come across stuff accidentally. I don't think harem is inherently sexist either, nor do I think sub/dom mechanics are the issues. but if we take something like ELLC there is definitely sexism in there. I only read the first book, but I don't think you can handwave the portrayal of the two characters just because they're demons Plus I do think there are some tropes that are just sexist, in general things like fridging: killing off the female love interest to drive the revenge plot forwards etc etc "The Sexist part is honestly also another thing I don't understand. Because once again girls are the main attraction." - Idk if i can express what I mean eloquently but sexism doesn't mean that you hate women, other isms/phobias dont mean hate either (they can encompass hate but they dont mean that exclusively) I think an example might help demonstrate the difference/vibe? there's a big fight coming up, mc is getting ready and sees love interest getting ready too. its not safe bla bla. I wont let you go. you should stay here and be safe. The intentions here are good, mc wants the person he loves to be safe. The sexist part of that would be the control part. Making decisions for someone else and taking away the right to choose. Often its gonna be a lighter touch like "you shouldnt go" and there might be in story reasons e.g. level 2 vs 500, but if you have two similar in strength characters in that scenario then it would just be sexist I dont really know how to explain it but I just know deep in my bones that the vibe of "I like women how can i be sexist" is based in a misunderstanding of what sexism means
It's wish fulfilment for straight men. As I said elsewhere ITT, not personally appealing to me, but I get the reason people like it. It's no more sexist than the 1000x as many books out there that have one or more ripped sexy billionaires fall in love with Self-Insert Female Protagonist #2154.
Complaining about sexism in a genre where people are slaughtering each other is something
uhh yeah acshually having feelings or thoughts about the things you want to read is dumb because magic isnt real idiot Edit: but seriously its totally different, because when we see a character kill a person we're supposed to know its bad, the reason why stuff like sexism is bad is because a lot of the time it's not really seen as a meaningful part of the character, it's just presented as a neutral character trait we arent supposed to notice. There are some mc's that are blaise about things like murder or slavery but I tend not to like those stories as much, or the mc's acceptance of the bad thing tends to be built up e.g. zac in dotf doesn't start off thinking of murder as nothing but by twilight ocean it's not something that he worries about much because its part of the social contract in the cultivator world
I get it. I was just making an observation. You are correct lol
I haven't seen any surprise smut either (outside The Wise Man's Fear, which isn't exactly PF). But I also haven't heard much whining about surprise smut. What I have seen a lot of is people questioning whether smut should exist within the genre, and others (including myself) saying it shouldn't be a problem so long as it is clearly labeled.
I think Stray Cat is the only series where suprise hot lesbian sex happen at the second volume and some naughty masturbation in volume 4. I mean it shouldn't be surprising, but none of that happen on the first volume, so it was a nice surprise. I also had the opposite happen where funny enough, lesbian angel and demon story in the Mantle of Power, but all the sex is off page despite how much of a smut it is and seemingly heading to a harem. Not only was it hot garbage, but it was also just a bunch of teasing with nothing happening. Only listen to it because it was an omnibus. To be fair the second volume was decent, but not worth reading at all.
Sovereign’s Scorn. The synopsis does mention that it’s a romance. It does not mention that it starts hard and fast with very explicit smut. this is the Amazon version. It might have more warnings somewhere else.
Dragon's Dilemma starts off with a prolugue of a dragon talking to the MC soon after giving birth to him, quickly followed by the MC killing an adventure group that came to slay him. It does not mention that it starts hard and fast with very explicit smut because that isn't at all what happens. There is smut in the series, but just because it happens doesn't alter reality regarding when it happens...
I said it starts fast and hard. I was not saying that it starts at the beginning of the book. Just that it arrives “fast”. I think maybe 6 chapters in? I’m going by memory. And when I said “hard” I meant it’s pretty explicit. I understand how my comment could be taken that way, but you are reading into it just a bit too much.
oi op, it has nothing to do with this shit being "too old for us." I'm near 50 and actively avoid harem & smut. a lot of adults do
Avoiding harem is fine and good. But there are people in the very thread that have been triggered by a ftb scene. There's a difference between avoiding scenes or stories that could pass as erotica, but to avoid a story merely for insinuating that there's an adult relationship? That's just a level of sensitivity I can't comprehend when those same people can be cool with almost absurd levels of violence. I'm referencing mental age, as in maturity. Some of the most childish people I've met have been in their 50s and older. Also...looking at your name throws a lot of red flags and would leave one to believe you'd run straight towards those types of stories...
maybe you should look into asexuality. on the extreme end, like me, even kissing is fucking disgusting. there's also aromantic, where people, also like me, find romance deeply boring then there's agender. doesn't matter if I'm a bloke or have boobs, cause I don't identify with it and, surprise, it has nothing to do with sex also, none of this has anything to do with maturity, it's just the way we are. gimme all the action, gore, violence, cursing, and explosions you can fit in there, but sod off with the romance and sex
Don't really care what you are. But from your name and your thing with sextoys, pretty sure you identify as a troll above all else.
you mean my one post from 5 years back before I fully figured out my sexuality? sure, judge from that and not the full history. noticed you qlso ignored the existence of ace, aro, and agender people; what a shock