f0Ri5
Versed in the lewd.
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- Jul 30, 2021
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I'm reading a light novel called 'Breaking up with the heroine in an otome game', and the female leads are constantly remarking about how the MC doesn't have a good face, isn't attractive etc. But he still gets them in the end.
Man, this trope really annoys me. It's one of those things that takes 'suspension of disbelief' waaay too far. I'm sure if you go over the planet's population with a fine-toothed comb, you'd find a hot girl with an ugly guy, but it really is the exception that proves the rule.
Hot girls can be friends with ugly guys, but that's all it's ever going to be. They won't go for relationships, especially not when there are better options around. And this novel in particular was originally supposed to be a reverse harem novel with plenty of hot, rich and strong guys around.
To make matters worse, the protagonist doesn't have any special powers, unlike the other male characters. He just has information about the world, qualifying him to be a tactician type character. To be clear, I have no problem with that kind of story, I like it even, but it's like saying the high school chess captain valedictorian is pulling all the girls because of his brain. That just isn't true.
We all know the two rules to getting girls:
1.) Be attractive
2.) Don't be unattractive
Going the opposite way just really makes it hard for me immerse myself in a story's world. It just isn't believable. And this kind of thing appearing in a story is usually a symptom of a larger problem—a lack of understanding from the author on how worldbuilding works.
The foundation of worldbuilding should be a sort-of fundamental realism. Having regular people (that is to say, people that operate like actual human beings) react or behave differently when faced with a weird fantasy/sci-fi world.
It's not the degree and amount of differences between the real world and fictional worlds that make said fictional world interesting. It's the similarities. It makes the story feel grounded, like it's not just a bunch of garbled nonsense.
But maybe I'm ranting too much. So I'm done now.
Man, this trope really annoys me. It's one of those things that takes 'suspension of disbelief' waaay too far. I'm sure if you go over the planet's population with a fine-toothed comb, you'd find a hot girl with an ugly guy, but it really is the exception that proves the rule.
Hot girls can be friends with ugly guys, but that's all it's ever going to be. They won't go for relationships, especially not when there are better options around. And this novel in particular was originally supposed to be a reverse harem novel with plenty of hot, rich and strong guys around.
To make matters worse, the protagonist doesn't have any special powers, unlike the other male characters. He just has information about the world, qualifying him to be a tactician type character. To be clear, I have no problem with that kind of story, I like it even, but it's like saying the high school chess captain valedictorian is pulling all the girls because of his brain. That just isn't true.
We all know the two rules to getting girls:
1.) Be attractive
2.) Don't be unattractive
Going the opposite way just really makes it hard for me immerse myself in a story's world. It just isn't believable. And this kind of thing appearing in a story is usually a symptom of a larger problem—a lack of understanding from the author on how worldbuilding works.
The foundation of worldbuilding should be a sort-of fundamental realism. Having regular people (that is to say, people that operate like actual human beings) react or behave differently when faced with a weird fantasy/sci-fi world.
It's not the degree and amount of differences between the real world and fictional worlds that make said fictional world interesting. It's the similarities. It makes the story feel grounded, like it's not just a bunch of garbled nonsense.
But maybe I'm ranting too much. So I'm done now.
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