On Worldbuilding: Harem Considerations 2
New
Sift Green
Getting out there.
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2026
- Messages
- 13
- Likes received
- 45
And here's the second one:
So in most circles it wouldn't be controversial to say that most of the Harem Genre is trash, with a lot of people who aren't interested in the genre assuming that the trashiness is a fundamental issue with the genre. However anyone who's actually looked into the genre can confidently tell you that the issues causing the trashiness aren't fundamental, as you can find plenty of harem stories that are genuinely good not just for the genre but in general.
No the real reason why most of the harem genre is considered trash is because the wrong questions were asked and answered in the brainstorming process. You see every author irregardless of genre needs to ask and answer a list of important questions to make their story work; now they don't have to be deep answers, but they do need to be there. (You know questions like "Why is the Bad Guy doing bad things?" The answer could be deep, it could be shallow, but in any case it needs to be there for the villain's actions to make sense in story.) Some of these questions happen to be genre specific, and unfortunately a lot of people working in the harem genre fail to ask and answer the questions specific to their genre.
Questions like: "What is it about our harem protagonist that causes multiple people to fall for them? Are those things enough for those people to stick around in spite of the competition?" Those are simple enough questions that are easy to answer since those are the same questions needed for the industry staple love triangles found in the wider romance genre.
Now if your harem story ultimately ends with the protagonist picking one of the girls you can stop asking questions because then you're just dealing with a more complicated love triangle, but if you're going to go with a true harem ending of some sort you need to ask more questions. Questions like: "Would the harem actually be stable? Are the girls that are going to end up in the harem actually capable of sharing, or will our protagonist become the enteral referee?"
Basically you need to have some consideration of what happens after the wedding/other-official-get-together-milestone if you want to have a satisfying conclusion to the story. Trash harem stories build harems that feel like they'll fall apart the instant the camera stops rolling. Good harem stories build a harem that feels like it will stand the test of time.
And that's why I like RWBY harem stories, Jaune harem stories in particular. I've already touched upon how Jaune is the most natural harem protagonist out of the available boys in the cast, so we'll be focusing on the women's end of the equation.
The three girls closest to Jaune in the canon show are:
1. Jaune's partner and secret admirer Pyrrha Nikos
2. Jaune's best friend who only needed one or two plot developments to become the girlfriend Ruby Rose and
3. His first on screen crush Weiss Schnee, and if her reaction to him being the Rusted Knight meant anything she's who he probably would have ended up with if the show had both continued and given Jaune a happy ending.
These three girls mesh well.
Weiss gets along well enough with Ruby that It isn't hard to construct a believable scenario where Weiss decides she'd be okay sharing Jaune with Ruby. Weiss also admired Pyrrha to such an extent that it also isn't hard to construct a scenario where she'd be okay sharing Jaune with Pyrrha.
Ruby in turn was affected enough by Pyrrha's death that we can infer the two of them became close at Beacon even though the show didn't actually show it and we have to assume they bonded offscreen. In any case it's still easy to construct a believable scenario where Ruby decides she's okay sharing Jaune with Pyrrha, just like it's easy to construct a scenario where Ruby's okay with sharing him with Weiss.
Pyrrha is interesting because of how passive she was in her longing for Jaune in spite of how all consuming that longing was. If another girl got Jaune first and then turned around and offered Pyrrha some kind of place alongside them it's believable that she'd latch onto that offer and refuse to let go, especially if the offer came from a girl like Ruby or Weiss.
In other words the girls closest to Jaune in the canon show are all girls that could believably be willing to try sharing him with each other without breaking character, and then make it work long term.
And it isn't just Jaune and the girls he was close to in canon. It's believable that Yang would be willing to share a guy like Jaune with Ruby, and vice versa. Sun, Blake and Ilia make a believable trio thanks to how Sun and Ilia are both into Blake, giving us a solid core for a different harem. Penny's overeager and sweet nature makes it believable that she'd be willing to share a paramour with a close friend. Emerald's devotion to Cinder in the early volumes make it believable that she'd follow Cinder into a man's bed, and it isn't difficult to see that level of devotion transfer to someone else once Emerald parts from Cinder after internalizing her heel realization. Whitley is an almost perfect harem lead who just needed a few canon interactions with girls not predisposed to distrust him for that to be obvious.
Basically RWBY canon gave us a wide selection of girls that could believably be happy in a harem together without breaking character, to the point that it'd be faster to list the combinations that don't work than it would be to list the combinations that do.
In fact there are enough girls that could believably be happy in a harem together that you could take the three most natural harem leads of Jaune, Sun and Whitley and give each of them their own respectably sized harem within the same story.
So that's why RWBY harem stories appeal to me; all the questions you need to consider in order to make a harem story where the harem ending is a happy ending with little to no caveats have answers right there in the open for you to pick up. As a result most RWBY harems stories are at least decent so long as the author is trying, even if they're a relative novice.
TLDR; Harems in RWBY just work, and that's why I like to see them.
So in most circles it wouldn't be controversial to say that most of the Harem Genre is trash, with a lot of people who aren't interested in the genre assuming that the trashiness is a fundamental issue with the genre. However anyone who's actually looked into the genre can confidently tell you that the issues causing the trashiness aren't fundamental, as you can find plenty of harem stories that are genuinely good not just for the genre but in general.
No the real reason why most of the harem genre is considered trash is because the wrong questions were asked and answered in the brainstorming process. You see every author irregardless of genre needs to ask and answer a list of important questions to make their story work; now they don't have to be deep answers, but they do need to be there. (You know questions like "Why is the Bad Guy doing bad things?" The answer could be deep, it could be shallow, but in any case it needs to be there for the villain's actions to make sense in story.) Some of these questions happen to be genre specific, and unfortunately a lot of people working in the harem genre fail to ask and answer the questions specific to their genre.
Questions like: "What is it about our harem protagonist that causes multiple people to fall for them? Are those things enough for those people to stick around in spite of the competition?" Those are simple enough questions that are easy to answer since those are the same questions needed for the industry staple love triangles found in the wider romance genre.
Now if your harem story ultimately ends with the protagonist picking one of the girls you can stop asking questions because then you're just dealing with a more complicated love triangle, but if you're going to go with a true harem ending of some sort you need to ask more questions. Questions like: "Would the harem actually be stable? Are the girls that are going to end up in the harem actually capable of sharing, or will our protagonist become the enteral referee?"
Basically you need to have some consideration of what happens after the wedding/other-official-get-together-milestone if you want to have a satisfying conclusion to the story. Trash harem stories build harems that feel like they'll fall apart the instant the camera stops rolling. Good harem stories build a harem that feels like it will stand the test of time.
And that's why I like RWBY harem stories, Jaune harem stories in particular. I've already touched upon how Jaune is the most natural harem protagonist out of the available boys in the cast, so we'll be focusing on the women's end of the equation.
The three girls closest to Jaune in the canon show are:
1. Jaune's partner and secret admirer Pyrrha Nikos
2. Jaune's best friend who only needed one or two plot developments to become the girlfriend Ruby Rose and
3. His first on screen crush Weiss Schnee, and if her reaction to him being the Rusted Knight meant anything she's who he probably would have ended up with if the show had both continued and given Jaune a happy ending.
These three girls mesh well.
Weiss gets along well enough with Ruby that It isn't hard to construct a believable scenario where Weiss decides she'd be okay sharing Jaune with Ruby. Weiss also admired Pyrrha to such an extent that it also isn't hard to construct a scenario where she'd be okay sharing Jaune with Pyrrha.
Ruby in turn was affected enough by Pyrrha's death that we can infer the two of them became close at Beacon even though the show didn't actually show it and we have to assume they bonded offscreen. In any case it's still easy to construct a believable scenario where Ruby decides she's okay sharing Jaune with Pyrrha, just like it's easy to construct a scenario where Ruby's okay with sharing him with Weiss.
Pyrrha is interesting because of how passive she was in her longing for Jaune in spite of how all consuming that longing was. If another girl got Jaune first and then turned around and offered Pyrrha some kind of place alongside them it's believable that she'd latch onto that offer and refuse to let go, especially if the offer came from a girl like Ruby or Weiss.
In other words the girls closest to Jaune in the canon show are all girls that could believably be willing to try sharing him with each other without breaking character, and then make it work long term.
And it isn't just Jaune and the girls he was close to in canon. It's believable that Yang would be willing to share a guy like Jaune with Ruby, and vice versa. Sun, Blake and Ilia make a believable trio thanks to how Sun and Ilia are both into Blake, giving us a solid core for a different harem. Penny's overeager and sweet nature makes it believable that she'd be willing to share a paramour with a close friend. Emerald's devotion to Cinder in the early volumes make it believable that she'd follow Cinder into a man's bed, and it isn't difficult to see that level of devotion transfer to someone else once Emerald parts from Cinder after internalizing her heel realization. Whitley is an almost perfect harem lead who just needed a few canon interactions with girls not predisposed to distrust him for that to be obvious.
Basically RWBY canon gave us a wide selection of girls that could believably be happy in a harem together without breaking character, to the point that it'd be faster to list the combinations that don't work than it would be to list the combinations that do.
In fact there are enough girls that could believably be happy in a harem together that you could take the three most natural harem leads of Jaune, Sun and Whitley and give each of them their own respectably sized harem within the same story.
So that's why RWBY harem stories appeal to me; all the questions you need to consider in order to make a harem story where the harem ending is a happy ending with little to no caveats have answers right there in the open for you to pick up. As a result most RWBY harems stories are at least decent so long as the author is trying, even if they're a relative novice.
TLDR; Harems in RWBY just work, and that's why I like to see them.