- Apr 11, 2022
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As someone who doesn't like NTR I agree with you on many of the things you say.While I don't want to defend the crazy guy here (I love Eileen and think his stance on her is ridiculous), this is a bit of a strawman. No one's said that people who are not LIs getting laid is a problem (except the crazy guy, and I don't care about his opinion).
What people don't want is LIs (or future/potential LIs) who do talk explicitly and in detail about past sexual activity. I forget which game, but there was one where an LI went into graphic sexual detail about past relationships while talking to the MC, which was, shall we say, not appreciated by most players.
For example, my anti-NTR opinions are:
Guys other than the MC could be having sex 24 hours a day, but I (and most anti-NTR people) wouldn't care as long as we don't have to see it or be told about it, especially by an LI or future/potential LI. This is why it's so important to clearly delineate between future/potential LIs and women who will never have any interest in the MC.
- I don't want to see an LI or future/potential LI talking about how big her past lovers' cocks were (or anything similar)
- I don't want to see an LI or future/potential LI talking about how much she likes being fucked by other guys (or anything similar)
- I don't have any interest in seeing scenes of people having sex unless everyone involved is either the MC or an LI/future LI (not potential; they must be a definite LI or an optional LI) of the MC (there are some anti-NTR fans who don't like it when multiple LIs have sex without the MC; I am not one of them, but they definitely do exist as a significant but not universal portion of pro-harem/anti-NTR people)
To expand on that last part: one reason devs generally make non-LI women unattractive is because if they make an attractive woman, someone will ask them to make the woman an LI if she isn't. That can lead to negative situations. For instance, there is a game where one of the first characters the MC interacts with is a pretty woman who is in a relationship already with a guy who the MC is friendly with... But she also immediately flirts with the MC and hints that she's attracted to him. One of the next scenes (and the first lewd scene in the game) is a voyeurism scene where the MC watches the girl and her boyfriend fucking in an alley. The dev expected this to be appreciated 'because it's a sex scene and she's pretty', but there was a lot of pushback that resulted in the dev adding a skip option for that scene, and it's turned a lot of people off of the game anyway, because teasing an LI and then having another guy immediately fuck her as the first lewd scene is really shitty to do for non-NTR games.
Anti-NTR people generally hate multiple protagonist games categorically, almost as much as they hate NTR games. So it's not usually particularly relevant. But the answer is "if more than one protagonist is interested in an LI (and neither the LI nor the game make it clear that the LI is 100% off-limits to all but one of those protagonists), then it may not fit the definition, but anti-NTR people will hate it just as much as if it was straight-up full-on cheating/cucking NTR."
I especially like your third point. To me it would not be NTR for Erika and Norah to have sex with each other (with the MC's consent/knowledge). It's not going to happen in My Dorm because it wouldn't fit the story, but it wouldn't be NTR from my point of view. Maybe Sharing.
With multiple protagonists you could do some really cool stuff without it falling into the 3 letter category, but the system of updates every X months doesn't lend itself too well to it. At some point you have to cut the update and most likely the LI in some of those cuts will look like it's cheating on one of the protagonists. Publishing finished games would fit more to that genre.
Tying the two themes together, I had the idea that one of the students was dating an Owen Wilson-esque character in Meet the Parents when she arrives at the dorm. The "perfect boyfriend" who shows up from time to time but with whom you never see or hear of any sexual activity. The problem I have with that idea is that there might be people who would take him as NTR-esque before I can even explain his function in the story. Precisely because I can't develop his entire story arc in a single update.