I don't know how old you mean when you say old school ntr, but from "Isaku" by elf in 1995, to the famous "True Blue" by LiLim Darkness in 2002, a lot of ntr games have both good and bad ends. In some good ends the girls might still have sex with others but whether they "fall" completely or not depends on the players.
You absolutely can prefer extremely dark endings. But "the story is no longer a NTR story", "Netorare is final and brutal, the defeat of love in the face of lust and all that" I just can't agree with those. I don't think theres a definition that netorare story must be dark until the very end. Unless you can find evidence, definitions by japanese etc, this is just your opinion, but you make it sound like its a fact. Your definition of "NTR story" is extremely restrictive and limiting and is not good for any kinds of creative development.
You can say its hard to write good endings for a NTR story but in the end sex is far from the most important thing of most peoples lives and good writers should be able to write good or bittersweet endings if they want/have planned to.
Imagine someone tells you Shakespeare is wrong and Hamlet isnt a tragedy because Hamlet's ending isnt dark enough. Hamlet should not be able to kill Claudius, he should have failed and this just ruined the whole story, its not a tragedy anymore.
You're reaching so far with some of what you said in there that we might be able to build space elevators if we could turn that reach into cables...
Ok. So. Lemme break things down a bit. Starting from the end, because that's the stupidest comparison I've ever seen and you should be ashamed for ever making it.
First of all, you can't compare a static play with a VN or game with multiple endings. It's absurd. A static play is just a single story with a single outcome. No matter how many times you watch Hamlet, it's not going to change. A VN and games with multiple endings are different. They don't tell a singular story specifically. They essentially tell multiple stories. Even if most of the road is the same, at some point, it diverges into multiple paths, and the destination you end up with is completely different.
As such, I can and will say that good endings in NTR games... are NOT NTR. That does not mean that the entire VN or game is not a NTR VN/game anymore, just that the specific story with the specific ending is not NTR anymore.
Now, why do I say that? Because there is one single, literal fact about netorare. That's the fact that it literally translates into "to be taken away". This means that there's one absolute of netorare, and that 'someone' is taken away. Additionally, that 'someone' also belongs to the person that they're being taken away from to some degree or another. Now, I don't know about you, but I can't consider someone 'taken away'... if you get them back. Case in point, in the good ending, Harry gets Laura back and Luca fucks off into the sunset. Would a relationship change because of all that happened? Yes. Can they still get their happy ending? Absolutely yes given how young they are. The whole story to the good ending may have been traumatic for Laura and Harry, but it's at the end of the day a hill they climb over and which they overcome.
It's not netorare, because Laura gets back with Harry. It's just a rape story. If the good ending was the ONLY ending of the VN, then I wouldn't tag it as NTR, because it's really, really not. As far as I know, games that didn't have that absolute ending as part of at least one storyline didn't get tagged as NTR until relatively recently... I'm not sure if they DO get tagged on dlsite without the specific detail that there's at least one ending where someone gets taken away for good.
Now, I will give you this. While the literal translation means 'to be taken away'... how people perceive what that means will vary. For some, just having someone looking at their girl means that she's been taken away to some degree or another... but I strongly disagree with it. Much like how I disagree that netorare can exist without a true, solid relationship between the initial couple... because without that, there is no claim. I'm sorry, just because someone else asks out the girl before the cuck does, doesn't mean the cuck was NTRed, it just means that the cuck was a moron. The girl was free to enter whatever relationship she wanted at that point, even if she had feelings for the cuck or not.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaall that said...
I will have to concede that netorare is a... very subjective fetish. In the sense that, aside from the literal meaning of the word, how that meaning is perceived can vary a lot from person to person. It's why netorare has become so diluted presently. Because NTR haters will tag just about every little bit of cheating and/or unwilling rape as NTR... to the point where the word loses all meaning.
