Percy Jackson: The Cursed Hunter

I'm basically writing this to tell y'all that I'm still alive. This chapter will most definitely go into the auxiliary volume on Saturday once I start writing again. I have my last final final tomorrow, so fingers crossed I get a good score and come out good at the end of the day.

Anyways, here's my personal tierlist of romantic relationships/tropes. The ones listed are the ones I have strong feelings about, any other romantic relationship/trope that y'all can think of, for me, is probably categorized as I would probably read it if it had a high enough rating, but I don't care for it either.

Disclaimers before I continue, the following will be a collection of my thoughts as a reader, not a writer, so I might say that I don't feel too strongly about a certain trope, but I might and probably will add it to my stories as a writer. Also, I tend to gravitate to more bittersweet/tragic romances over happy ones (hence why I'm having so much goddamn trouble writing the romance for this fic). And, I read purely Male MC novels these days except for literally one story that is an exception, the product of having force fed myself YA novels back when I was in Elementary/Middle school causing me to grow sick of female protags and their hyper cliche romances.

I also won't go into yaoi/yuri. I haven't read a single yuri before so I wouldn't know (I got into eastern media only after I swore off female MC stories, and welp...). As for yaoi, let's just say that I've been so mentally scarred by the three that I read in my life that I don't wanna touch them ever again (Jinx, LAA, and one that I actually enjoyed but I will not name because it's practically a straight story, cause the entire time, the other dude is a crossdresser so you don't ever really see him as a boy).

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Let's start from F-Tier:

Love Triangles - I hate them, I hate them, I hate them so much as a reader. So much to the point wherein I stopped reading love triangle stories by the time I turned 14. As a writer though, well... has there ever been a more effective romantic plot driver as a love triangle? (Currently, only one of the ideas I've been cooking out of the 6 have a love triangle kinda, it's complicated. I probably won't get to writing that one until like two years in the future anyways.)

Age Gap (Older Male) - Pretty self explanatory, it's disgusting, although there is a weird societal nuance to this that I myself have been affected by in terms of my reading preferences. I'll talk more about it in the S-Tier though.

Any of the deres - They make the characters too one dimensional and I end up not being able to invest myself in the story at all. Sure, I do like some components of certain dere stereotypes, and aren't adverse to most of their features, just, basing your character's appeal solely off one of the "templates" is really boring and I cringe when I read that shit.

Harem - I'll admit, up to about when I was 16, I read harem stories, I even enjoyed them. After the age of 16 though, I found myself slowly falling out of love with the trope until I completely became disgusted by it. These days, I see the harem tag and I won't even give the story a chance.

NTR - Self-explanatory.

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B-Tier

Childhood Friends - The most basic of the basic ass bitch tropes. Would still read, but ain't anywhere close to as crazy as I was about them when I first entered the sphere of eastern media and had been blown away by the concept of "childhood friends."

"Two Peas in a Pod" - Don't really know how else to describe this trope. Basically, the two leads are both missing something that their partner brings into their life. Two puzzles that fit perfectly within one another (energetic x sloth, happy x depressed, delinquent x model student, etc. etc. etc.). It's a trope as old as time itself, and was bored of it long before I entered the sphere of eastern media. I'd still read though it if the plot outside the romance was compelling enough.

Trauma - Basically, the leads both went through a traumatic even together and only the other understands them. It's S-Tier when done really really well (ie. showing how the two are trying to cope with the traumatic experience and move on with their life), but it can also be F-Tier if done incorrectly (ie. the two both become serial killers that do shit for the sake of it catching the reader's attention because it's so gory or horrifying).

High School Romances in General - I'll still read them, I've just grown to like romance stories about more mature characters after, well, just growing up.

Character x Single Parent - Either the MC or the partner can be the single parent, it doesn't really matter. Just love this shit because there are so many relationship dynamics that just aren't explored in regular relationships. Heck, one of my biggest writing inspirations is a story with this sort of relationship, and it's still one of the two stories that I think about to this day (I think I mentioned the two in an A/N a while back). I'll literally just silently shed a tear just from the thought of the ending of that story. Only reason it's in the mid tier is because I've literally only found one good story from this trope ever. The rest were all shoujo/shounen (generic) slop.

Normie x Famous Person - I can see the potential (and I plan on capitalizing on it in the future), but there just ain't any good ones out right now.

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S-Tier:

Before I get into the ones I wanna do a deep dive into, here are the ones that I think also deserve a spot in the S-Tier.

Normie x Trauma - It's a much better relationship in my opinion when only one of the two has been through a traumatic event. Think Kaede's arc in "Sensitive Boy." I like these because the normie had to somehow figure out how to be there for their partner when they're breaking down without being pretentious our looking down on them with pity, whilst the traumatized of the pair will have to slowly learn to be a part of society again with the normie's help. (Kaede x Rio all the way, fight me.)

Nostalgia - Personally, nostalgia is the trope that breaks my heart the absolute most. Remembering the happy times, and then realizing that they will never happen again is possibly one of the saddest things in life, only if the story can do it correctly. The second masterpiece that I think about and cry about all the time falls into this category. You were once so happy, but now time has passed, and those days will never be realized once more. You just have to move on and try and find happiness yourself... (My heart is breaking again thinking about that manhwa after writing this 😭.) My absolute favorite romantic relationship type of all time. Nothing can surpass it in my opinion. The way the well written stories in this category can wrench at your heart is literally 2nd to none. Unbeatable.

There'll be a common core trope herein with the rest of the S-Tier, but what can I say? At least for now, I really do like this shit (my taste will most likely change in the future). But yuh, it's forbidden romances. I, personally, believe that forbidden romances are king. Basically, I love them because, instead of a love triangle's horrid tension and infighting being the main plot driver of these stories, it's the subtle, visceral tension between the two leads that are doing something that they aren't supposed to be doing. There are really weird tropes within the core category of forbidden romances though, so let's go from least controversial to most controversial.

Enemy's to Lovers - I know, I know, super damn cliche, but it just tugs at those right heartstrings, you know? Seeing the two leads who, at one point, wanted to kill each other, slowly realizing that the other, although not perfect, is still a human just like them and then falling in love with that fact is pure gold. One of my favorite tropes, I'll eat this shit up no matter how dogshit the actual plot is as long as the romance isn't too rushed.

Age Gap (Older Female) - I'll talk about the nuance mentioned earlier here. As a person that grew up in society, my opinions and likes have thus been shaped by society, even though my logical brain is screaming at me because of how illogical this opinion is. When you think about a romantic age gap, (let's say the younger one is in high school and the age gap is >5 years), with an older male, it's all considered disgusting by society, no matter what the circumstances are. Now lets talk about older females though. There's actually a word for them, and it's cougars. Yet, the term "cougar" only specifies a very narrow minority of the female population, wealthy females who use their money to "attract" the younguns. Thus, from what I've seen, as long as the two wait until after the male has left high school to go past kissing, and the female isn't some sort of rich weirdo, and is, let's just say, an office worker, society will, in general, accept the relationship as a "sweet romance that breaks boundaries but doesn't go too far." This makes no sense to the logical me considering males aren't given the same leeway, but it makes sense to the me who grew up in society. And I LOVE stories exploring this dynamic. To be clear though, there is a difference between what I'm talking about and Shota and MILF stories respectively. The younger male needs to be at least in the last two years of high school for me, and the stories I prefer reading wouldn't be considered MILF ones at all (think, "Shounen Wo Kau," "Mizu wa Umi ni Mukatte Nagareru," and "Watashi no Shounen"). If you take a look at the mangas I've mentioned, welp, I don't think any of y'all would try justifying "MILF" with how the female leads are looking and how the stories develop.

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Haa...

I honestly do not know if I should even be discussing this last one or not, but here it is, the most controversial trope, I'm literally dedicating a whole section to it.

Fuck...

You know what, Imma not mention it directly (the word is probably shadow banned on WN anyways).

Sigh...

...

...

...

So, I hate myself for saying this, but I kinda agree with the slightly less demented female writers on ao3.

I'm not talking about the ones with daddy issues nor the ones that are literally just straight up smut, I'm talking about the ones that just want to write a bittersweet romance no matter how they know it'll never work in the end.

And it reflects in their works too.

They themselves know that the pairing will never work out, and they respect that. This also goes for all other writers of stories regarding this trope (I'm talking about the serious stories here, not the straight up nrop [read that backwords]).

I think it's the bittersweetness itself that draws me to these stories. The fact that, no matter how much they love each other, they will be driven apart one way or the other.

Sure, it kills my heart reading these stories (I might be a masochist), but I do consider myself a romantic, and what's more romantic than watching a stuttering love blossom only to know that the bright flower will eventually decay into ashes?

There's just, something hauntingly beautiful about the idea.

Akin to when I lay my eyes on a double page spread in a manga that just depicts a hollow apocalyptic wasteland.

...Ah, yes, the word I was looking for was hollowness.

Because going into these stories, I know that I'll be left feeling so goddamn hollow by the end of it that I won't even be able to shed a tear.

Is it fucked up, romanticizing this kind of romance? Yes. But you can't help but romanticize it, no?

Reading every single one of these stories is like reliving the time when you were still a naive kid and you picked a flower. You eventually noticed it was dying, so you put it in a vase and filled the vase with water. Yet, the flower was still dying, slowly dying as the days dragged on and passed, until you finally realized that its death was inevitable.

How beautiful is that?

Okay okay, alright, I might, just might be a little fucked in the head.

But hey, what do you expect from a philosophy major?

Again, I want to make it clear, I'm talking about stories where the relationship progresses at a normal pace or where they don't even make it past holding hands.

I savor the moments as I witness everything crumbling apart before my eyes...

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Hey.

Stop touching me.

You caught me, okay?

Fuck... I mean, I guess it was predictable by now...

Lol, fine, fine, I maybe, just maybe...

...

...Okay, okay, I get it!

I perchance might've written that last part just to try and argue a horrendously lost position because of my debate brain wanting to try and win from a completely losing hand. I'm also genuinely curious what you absolute degenerates on webnovel think of it (at the very least, take solace in the fact that I'd take a male degenerate on webnovel over a female on wa++pad or ao3 any day) .

UGH. I can't seem to slip these past y'all anymore.

But yuh, tell me what y'all think about the rest. It's midnight now, and I got that final tomorrow, or well, I guess today.

Cy'all on Saturday!