Love Triangles and Harem Anime

questions
#1

One of the classic romance tropes is the “love triangle,” where one character is in love with two, and they must struggle to choose which one they will start a relationship with. Dramatica works best with one Main Character and one Impact Character, so how would this work? I recognize that there are certain types of love triangles that will work just fine in Dramatica. For example, if the character is already in a relationship but is tempted away by another, like in the video game “Catherine,” then the temptress would be the Impact Character and the original woman would not be a significant Subjective Character. This isn’t what I want to do, though. I want to write a love triangle where both choices feel equally valid. I know who the Main Character will end up with, but I don’t want the audience to know until the very end. How do you do this without both of them feeling like the exact same character? Would it have to be two separate storyforms, with one of them being Failure and one of them being Success, or… what?

To expand this idea out to an extreme, consider the concept of “harem anime.” In a harem anime, the main character has quite a lot of different choices available to him. Since we’re talking about Dramatica here, let’s say there are seven girls available to our guy: one for each Archetypal Character and our main character representing the Protagonist. How do I write an effective harem anime so that every single girl feels like a realistic option? Is there some way to mask the effect of the one true love as Impact Character so that she appears to be a similar candidate to all the others?

This idea is really bugging me, since I see a lot of romance stories that try to do love triangles, but it’s so obvious from the start which way the character’s going to go. In the Twilight movies, for example, Jacob is never really set up as a possible choice for Bella, as much as the story attempts to swing it that way. We know Bella loves Edward only, and any progress she makes with Jacob will evaporate when Edward comes back (and he will, because he’s the one she really loves). Superman always picks Lois Lane over Lana Lang; Spider-Man will never choose Gwen Stacy instead of Mary-Jane; and so on. How can Dramatica help me craft a story where every option feels like an equal possibility until the very end?

#2

It depends on how the story is set up. There is usually one potential partner that’s focused on, usually a newcomer, someone who turns the MC’s world upside down. That’s the IC.

Of course, over the course of a series, you can shuffle around the IC and even the MC in specific episodes. Give one of the girls a problem that the protagonist has to solve. Then give another girl a different problem, etc.

#3

I can tell you, but your prolly aren’t gonna like my answer. The only way to mask who is the end choice is to set it up so the RIGHT choice is a poly relationship. Each of the characters has to bring the exact right but opposite thing to the party. Another option is to give the final choice to one or both of the potentials.

One recommendation is that neither potential be the impact character.

For the actual dynamics might I suggest watching several seasons of The Bachelor or The Bachelorette (Season 9 with Desiree Hartsock was particularly brutal when her choice/favorite bowed out).

Without knowing more of the story you have in mind it, it’s difficult to make specific suggestions.

#4

Hah, lol, I was gonna mention excluding poly relationships, but I forgot. :stuck_out_tongue: Also, I don’t really have any particular story in mind. It’s more of a thought experiment that was running through my head.

Also also, I considered the idea of having neither of them being the Impact Character, but that means the relationship in question can’t be in the Relationship Throughline. I was sort of under the impression that you got the most development and heart out of that.

@JSensebe, good points, but that line, “There is usually one potential partner that’s focused on, usually a newcomer, someone who turns the MC’s world upside down,” is what I meant by the example I gave in my first post. But as to shuffling them around, yeah, that’s what I was afraid of. :confused: It means you’ve gotta do a bunch of parallel stories at once.

#5

Remember, actingpower, that the Impact Character is in the story to challenge the Main Character’s preferred approach to addressing the Story Problem. So clarifying your Story Problem will tell you a lot about who the IC needs to be, and what that IC needs to stand for in order to represent that “alternative approach” to the Story Problem.

Obviously, the original Dramatica keeps the defining of the Problem in pretty abstract terms, like Ending, or Induction, or whatever. But Dramatica Story Expert can give you some fairly specific Gists to help you decide what kind of Story Problem involves having WAY too many options in the soulmate department.

I mean, is that a rough definition of your Story Problem right now: “Too many options in the soulmate department”?

Or do you want your Story Problem to have more to do with deciding how to choose between the several soulmate options, as in “What part of your soul is most important to you?”

Or does it all boil down to an unconsidered girl (a long-time friend, perhaps) suddenly becoming an option in the last few moments of your story? (In this latter case, of course, she who has been the IC all the way through suddenly becomes “the soulmate I never before saw!”)

Whatever your choice, I hope the above helps you see that the IC does not at all have to be one of the soulmate options. But as easily could be, depending on how your define your OS (and MC) Story Problem,

#6

You are setting up some sort of false premise here.

If there is choice partner A, partner B, Neither or Both.

If the story demonstrates that partner A or B is the “right” choice, you call that predictable
If the story demonstrates that a particular choice is right but the hero/ine chooses the other partner, that’s tragic and doesn’t usually fall under the romance genre. (Thinking Dune here.)
If the story demonstrates that both are perfectly acceptable and it doesn’t matter who ends up with who, what’s the point of the romance then? Don’t do this to romance readers–ever. They will skin you alive.

#7

actingpower, I agree with Diane/jassnip: It’s a huge no-no to suggest that all (or any) of the soulmates are equal in quality to all (or any) of the others. In a Success-Good romance, the MC ends up with the “right” character, because that person is the best-for-this-MC soulmate among all those offered.

It’s just a matter of revealing, as late in the game as possible, what the MC is truly needing and wanting in a soulmate, then connecting the dots that, of all the suggested soulmates, only Soulmate X had that essential quality.

And if the MC is a Change character, that means the IC had something to do with helping the MC realize what that must-have-in-a-soulmate quality always was.

So perhaps the IC is not the “right” soulmate, but the IC nonetheless helps the MC see what it is that makes Girl X the “right” soulmate.

Or perhaps the IC is the “right” soulmate, but it takes until the last few minutes of the story for the MC to finally recognize that she had what he was looking for all along. But Diane is fully correct: If you try to tell the romance-movie audience that who they love doesn’t matter, they will burn your script/bite your head off.

#8

Hmm, @keypayton re: Story Problem, that’s a good point. I definitely understand how setting up the Problem in a different light would require a different Solution. It also makes it clear which love interest the Main Character might pursue as the Response to the Symptom he feels. (So, for example, if he feels like his Problem rests in Conscience [following his family’s moral system, say], then he might be drawn to the Temptation character who wants him to run away with her into the black. Of course, his Problem is really in Logic [he sees his family’s moral system as the most rational course of action], so the one he should truly pursue is the Feelings character [the one who makes him want to follow his heart].) That makes total sense. The problem is just masking this line of thought so it isn’t as immediately obvious.

@jassnip @keypayton Oh. …Wow. I… did not expect that level of vitriol. I didn’t realize there were such deep preconceptions about what is or isn’t romance! I guess I’ve been so ingrained in the Internet shipping community (with its incessant arguing over who is or isn’t the One True Pairing) that I’ve always thought stories worked best when you could get people up in arms over who was truly the best for the Main Character. You hit the nail on the head, though, when you said: “It’s just a matter of revealing as late in the game as possible what the MC is truly needing and wanting in a soulmate.” That’s pretty much what I was shooting for. But that still doesn’t answer the question of how you mask where the Impact is coming from.

I guess the question boils down to this: does the love interest have to be the Impact Character for the central romance to be most effective? Since we want the love interest to be more to the Main Character than just a trophy to be won or an afterthought when all’s said and done, it seems to me like they need to be the Impact Character. (In this case, I’m not just talking about romance stories, but any story where romance plays a part.)

…Having written this out, I think I may have had a revelation. You do the same thing you do as when you want to mask the true intentions of a character: you complicate their Overall Character Traits. Say my character is a young woman who’s just moved into a new town. She gets a job and makes some friends, but she still doesn’t feel stable. Let’s call it… Situation/Progress/Threat. If we make the Problem Theory (her carefully-crafted idea of what her life should be like), then her solution is Hunch (to try crazy new things and find new satisfaction). Hunch is an Emotion Element, so I can make a potential guy/girl for her appear like the right choice by giving them Emotion traits; alternatively, I can make the correct guy/girl for her appear incorrect with other traits (particularly Reason traits) blocking the Hunch signal. So perhaps she’ll feel some satisfaction with the Test character or the Uncontrolled character, but they don’t quite scratch every itch. It’s only the Hunch character, who maybe she doesn’t know at first is a Hunch character thanks to his Trust or Probability traits, that can ultimately fill all of her needs.

What does everyone think of that? I mean, it’s basically just a late-game twist like in this post.

#9

A side note on shipping…shipping has very little to do with character or story development or reveals. Shipping is projection on who the shipper would pick, not for the character, but for themselves and trying to live out their attraction vicariously. It’s really kinda creepy. Btw, shippers will deny this utterly; don’t believe them.

#10

…Well, if that’s what you meant by “shipping,” then that’s not what I meant by “shipping.”

#11

Shipping is the audience/reader pairing up characters that they would like to see together. As you say Team Edward vs. Team Jacob. But I’m telling you the psychology behind it. Most shipping is done by, as far as I can tell, teenage girls. But they aren’t looking at the story–they are looking within. Trust me, I’ve been watching this play out rampantly on The 100 pages on both FB and the twitterverse. We are talking about the same thing, I’m pretty sure. I’m just explaining how/why it happens.

#12

Well, I have no idea what is going on here, so I’m going to start from scratch.

I think @actingpower that you are potentially mixing up a couple of things, which is complicating your thinking.

The first thing I see is that you seem to think that the love interest is also the IC. This leads to a specific problem: if you do an IC hand-off between the two potential love interests, then they are really representing the same kind of choice, so that’s not a well-constructed dilemma.

It is true that the Love Interest – the one who wins anyway – is the IC a lot of the time. But it doesn’t need to be that way. You could always have the love interests be Objective Characters and the IC be someone else entirely.

B…b…but then we don’t get to know the Love Interest in an interesting way, and we don’t get to see the relationship evolve. Hmmm… good point. Well, then just tell two stories, with two ICs – both love interests. You get to develop both that way, and since we’ll be interested in both, it’ll be a tough choice in the end.

The point I’m making is that you don’t have to align things the way most stories are aligned.

The other thing to think about is that there are many devices that make characters appealing – stakes, goals, characterization. You might find that this is the route to the best love triangle, not thinking in terms of an IC.

Another consideration is that audiences may not want what you are asking for. Do we want someone who could go either way? Or do we merely want to watch a character have to make a decision – and the tension is that we know the right decision and we are seeing if the character does it?

#13

Some people ship Kirk and Spock. You have to look really hard (possibly playing episodes backwards) to see anything romantic between the two in the TV show or movies. Shipping is definitely an audience imposition.

I agree with what others have said. The IC in the overall arc is going to be the one the MC ends up with or doesn’t. In individual episodes, you can have individual problems, in which the IC and/or the MC may be different characters, and the main IC and/or MC are just Objective Story characters.

I have seen a grand total of one harem anime. The name escapes me, but there was one girl who was the main IC, one who was kind of a sidekick to the MC, a couple who started out as contagonist or antagonist in individual episodes, and in the end, the MC didn’t really end up with anybody. He was pretty much where he started, which made for a funny ending to the series. These shows don’t seem to have very high stakes overall, so they can get away with Failure/Bad endings without being downers.

#14

Full Disclosure: I despise love triangles. And Harem Anime even more so.

I thought that one way to do this kind of thing is to make Love Interest A a player in the main character throughline and Love Interest B the Influence Character. That way, both love interests are developed in relation to the actual main character and in contrast to each other.
Additionally, you could say that, if the main character remains steadfast, he goes with A, and if he changes, he goes with B.
Looking at it from the other way around: Going with A means that the main character remains who he is; maybe he has grown into himself, but he didn’t do a 180. Going with B means that the main character changes/has changed.
A is “birds of a feather.” B is “opposites attract.” A is the old way. B is the new way.
Since there wouldn’t be a relationship throughline between the main character and A, their relationship won’t have as much development… but they’re pretty much talking to another version of themselves so…

Shipping is weird, but mostly harmless. Shipping actual, real people is absolutely disgusting and yes, people do that.