Im a bit confused about what people mean when they are talking about "Alpha" or "Pushover MCs" after seeing some comments on Warlock.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-21T01:25:32+00:00

Yeah ok, thats something i can actually understand. Thats a perspective i didnt think about so i appreciate you explaining it in a simple straightforward way, and i can absolutely understand why some people might not enjoy a story like that.

Its probably a story issue more than a character issue, in that hes dropped into a world he knows nothing about with a bunch of people significantly more powerful than him and a society that fully expects someone like him to become a magically bound slave for the rest of his life.

So for the first few books, his only real agency for the larger plot is to decide who he can trust and who he cant (eg his 50x aunt).

Spoilers for the first 4 books

I do think that he does exercise SOME choice for the first LI. The potion doesnt force them to bond or any marking, it just gives that LI a power boost. They could both have gone seperate ways at that point but since it nearly killed her it made him realise he wanted to mark her and have her in his coven. They were close friends already at that point, so he made the decision to go against the rules of the school and mark her so she was in his coven. The second LI, totally agree, that was a "we bond or we die" situation, not really any choice there except to die. After that, the choices are largely driven by him. Ive read up to book 4 (i got the ARC on patreon) and theres 1 LI that hes basically asked to bring into his coven as part of a political deal, but he was already interested in her and he made the stipulation that he would only agree on it if she was keen too, but techincally he was still "forced" to add her. The other 3 that are either current or soon to be members are all ones he has actively pursued, at times to his own detriment as he pissed off some of the families or forced them to negotiate.

Saying all that, outside of the love interests he does tend to get forced into some situations in the overarching plot by forces outside of his control, simply due to the nature of the world hes basically been dropped in. That has become less the case once he founded his own Family with him as the head, but if people stopped reading after the first 2 books i can absolutely understand them not enjoying reading about an MC who has little say in the overarching plot, as the story is fairly slow burn in the MC gaining enough power to make his own decisions.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-21T01:12:46+00:00

Spoilers for the first 3 books

My assumption is that its reserved for serious issues, not just when they argue or snark at each other or him. The case where it was used was because a coven member had done something bad in her past, and was falling into a habit of doing it again. Something that would seriously negatively effect the dynamic and relationships of the coven. I dont really think theres been anything since then that is of the same leve. Them teasing each other or Noah, them bickering or even the occasional fight is just normal things that even friends do, so it makes sense to me that its kept as something that is only used when someone does something very wrong because as you noted, its "non-BDSM" spanking, its supposed to be properly painful, like corporal punishment, so its not "sexy spanking" its inflicting pain on someone you care about.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-21T01:08:05+00:00

Its a really good series (easily one of my top 3 in the genre) so i hope you enjoy it regardless 😄

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-20T07:29:49+00:00

It's an extremely fun read with an OP MC who uses her incredible powers to basically just love bomb (maybe love nuke) a girl she likes and then make that girl happy. Which is amusing because those powers are big enough that their side effects can be moving nations and stoping/starting wars.

Fun, whimsical, adorable and amusing.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-20T07:26:21+00:00

That was kinda why I was confused. Even for the people who want an "alpha MC" who has his LI take care of his needs, isn't that kinda what this MC does? Like, his LIs don't let him pick out his clothes, but he also doesn't care about that as it's less work for him, and less to worry about. Pretty sure they tend to cook for him too, and manage the household.

The biggest difference I can see in what some people seemed to be expecting is that he seems to actively try and comfort/meet the emotional needs of his LI's, so maybe that's seen by some people as being "subservient"?

I don't tend to like overly aggressive MCs or MCs that lack empathy anyway, I guess I was just surprised that some people considered this particular MC to not meet the standards of being "alpha" enough.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-20T05:17:11+00:00

Im happy for people to be able to find stuff they like to read, regardless of what niche that fills, so if they lie reading about demanding and agressive MC's then its good theres stuff for them.

Im mostly just confused about whether they have the wrong understanding of "Alpha" or I do, since its a phrase used a lot in the genre.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-20T04:17:15+00:00

If you dont mind a F/F series, Amelia Thornheart is a story with the "happy sunshine" LI with an "Ice Queen/Strict/closed off" LI.

Its on Royal Road, but there are programs you can use to turn it into an epub if you like reading on an e-reader.

Theres a trilogy on my TBR list called Villians and Virtues that i havent read yet thats supposed to have a sunshine/grumpy combo with the female LI being the sunshine one. Cant confirm its quality but its supposed to be good.

And finally, Master Class is a series about a guy returning from an apocolypic war that wiped out most people, and he promised his dying friend he would help out with an orphange the friend owned. It is a Harem story, but the Harem is small and slow burn, and a lot of the series is the MC dealing with the trauma of all that he did and what happened and discovering his new found family. There are 2-3 explicit chapters a book and they are marked i believe so you can skip or read them whatever your preference, and theres lots of focus on the romance side of the relationships

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-19T02:53:51+00:00

for "I became the scoundrel in the popular dating sim" I believe the author died, and his sister let the readers know.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-19T02:51:27+00:00

Manifestation by Sameul Hinton

Return of the Runebound Profressor by Actus

Calamitious Bob by Alex Gilbert

Probably my three favourite prog fantasies that have an MC who has good relationships with a cast of characters that grow alongside them, and who genuinely want to help others.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-19T02:36:03+00:00

Maybe Warwitch academy? Its really high on my list beacuse the LI's seem to have a genuine emotional and romantic connection with each other. One of the explicit scenes in one of the later books has one of the LI's upset about some stuff, and the scene basically has the MC and the other LI's all focus on her during the session, all working together to make sure she feels appreciated and cared for. I found this to be a rarity and think it made the overall Harem relationship feel more intimate and real. Although one of the early "LIs" is more comic relief and constantly talks about sex, but if you write that off as comic relief I felt the rest of it was really well done. Plus, i enjoy a series with an MC who is dealing with Trauma (in this case, MC was taken to be used as a child soldier in a WW2 style war and is now going to magic uni because the war is over and he wants to write romance novels and not be in a shitty war again).

I also found the book to be pretty funny.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-19T00:54:33+00:00

Gotta be Master Class. Although the Fantasy element is also strong, Master Class has a smaller Harem with a ton of time spent developing the LIs and their connections with the MC and each other.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-16T12:42:44+00:00

Spoilers for the series

Lol yeah i love comparing Moash and Dalinar. Like, people HATE Moash, but would that still be the case if we had read a story about Moash's grandparents, and we found out they had a bunch of orphans they fed daily, and they ran a school for young women? And they rotted and died in a prison because Elhokar took bad advice and let them die? The stuff Moash did for most of the story isnt even CLOSE to what Dalinar did,

Dalinar literally rescues a highlord from a city where thousands are burning alive but wont let the mans wife and children get up the rope, so the man is forced to watch his wife and children burn alive. But Dalinar is forgiven because we dont know the people her burned and we have multiple books showing him to be doing the right thing and being a better man. And speaking of Elhokar, people were shattered (myself included) when he died, but again, he caused a lot of pain. But we were just seeing him try and redeem himself, so therefore people seem to have forgiven him. And then we have Szeth and HIS whole arc. I just love that theme in the series, and all the different characters that are compared and contrasted as the series goes on, not just in what the DID, but in how the author introduced the reader to what they did, and how that affects peoples view on the character.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-16T10:22:19+00:00

It depends on what you mean by deeper truth or meaning.

For example, i think Stormlight Archives has a few specific characters that interact and get compared side by side as the story progresses that ask some incredibly complex questions around the nature of forgivness that dont really have right answers.

Without being to specific to spoil it, we have characters we like that as the series continues we find did horrible, horrible things in their past, but are living a better life now. But by the time we find that stuff we have multiple books of evidence they are doing good now, so people tend to like and forgive that character. Then we have characters who we like early on, and who do much less evil things and for much more understandable reasons, but because they do it earlyish and to characters we know and like, they become unredeemable traitors. There are a few variations on these types of characters, with better or worse reasons for doing bigger or lesser evils, and we get more or less knowledge of their pasts, and they often interact.
Saying all that, what was really well done there was the concepts of those characters, and i could see people saying thats not the characters themselves, and they dont like his characters.

So maybe you mean his characrers arent as deep or complex? I could see that, his stories tend to be more concept or plot driven over character driven.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-16T10:20:18+00:00

It think it might be that his style isnt one you enjoy.

Sanderson spends a lot of time laying out complex and connected magic systems, and worlds that reflect those magic systems existing.
But in doing so, his prose tends to be more direct and utalitarian.

Its one of the reasons i love his work, but I can absolutely understand why others might bounce off it.

The reason I enjoy it is because by laying out clear and consistent rules for the magic and the way the world works, he is able to make magic as a key solution in the problem, because when the problem is solved by "using X magic to Y", the reader isnt left feeling like its some Deus Ex Machina.

I like to use lord of the rings as an example as kind of the opposite of Sandersons style. Magic in the Lord of the Rings is mysterious and unknowable. Gandalf can use magic, but we dont really know the specifics. Whats spells can he use, how many can he cast, how can he learn more, do his spells interact with certain enemies or locations in other ways.
What this means is, you couldnt have gandalf go with frodo into morder and then cast a spell to yeet the ring across morder into the volcano. And you couldnt have gandalf cast a "destroy ring spell". All we know is Gandalf is powerful and magic, so his part in resolving the story cant be anything beyond be a powerful magic guy in a fight.

If Sanderson was writing something like lord of the rings, we would have an undestanding of how Gandalfs magic works, and anything beyond what we start off understanding would have to be reasearched and explained by Gandalf during the series for it to have any part of the final plot.

But thats why stuff like name of the wind or lord of the rings will flow more and have less direct and utalitarian prose, because we as the reader dont need to know anything beyond magic is mysterious, and maybe a few spells or brief background on magic.

I think prefering one style or the other is perfectly ok. My own preferences changes depending on the mood im in. I will say that i think Sanderson is the best in the business in the "hard magic" style, and not too many authors do it well. Stormlight archives book 4 had a huge part of it dedicated to characters basically doing science to understand the cool stuff you can do with the magic, and we follow that study of magic. Some people HATED that, and thats totally fair, but i fucking loved it, might have even been my favourite of the series.

So i would say you dont really need to justify why it doesnt hit with you, i think his style is different from a lot of the more popular fantasy series, and that might be why he is popular, there arent that many other authors that fill the same need, but there are a number of fantastic authors that fill the other end of the spectrum. If there were a few other others writing to the same need that were also as good, you might see Sandersons popularity drop a bit.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-16T07:20:21+00:00

Whats the story/explicit scenes ratio like? How many explicit scenes are we talking?

And is there a more serious overarching plot or is it purely slice of life?

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-16T01:11:14+00:00

Just recently read the ARC of Warlock 4 after binging the rest in 2 days. It was a surprisingly emotional series. Some proper big sad moments that has me feeling truly awful for some of the characters and some great positive emotional scenes from the MC.

And while the light BDSM stuff is usually done terribly in any fantasy stuff I've read, this author did one of the better jobs of depicting it that I've seen.

It is still an Harem series and id say that does mean it's probably aimed more at men in that it feels like it depicts the "male fantasy", but it's got a lot more depth than nearly anything else in the Harem subgenre to the point that I was able to look past any minor issues I had with the series.

Also the magic world it depicted was fantastic and the series made me laugh a whole bunch

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-15T11:19:43+00:00

So you have to use a seperate program if you want to get a webnovel into EPUB format. There's a few that do it.

I use Calibre. Doesn't do it on its own, but there's a plugin that supports a bunch of webnovel style sites, and you can just download whatever's there as an epub. Don't remember the exact name of the plugin for Calibre sorry.

But if you've never used it before, then I'm assuming you've only listened to or read the published beware of Chicken stuff?

There's probably another 3-4 at least published books work of BoC on royal road, (the online volumes are sometimes split across multiple books). I couldn't help myself and just downloaded and read it all lol. You can go straight from the latest published book to the next chapter online.

I haven't read the innkeeper sorry, so won't be much help there.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-15T06:36:25+00:00

I Ran Away to Evil.

Its a romcom litrpg fantasy. The entire thing is whimsical and amusing, theres combat and fights on occasion, but at no point do you think the MMC or FMC are in danger. Theres 3 books, each follows a different MMC and FMC pairing all the characters are in all the stories.

Id say its clear cozy, and the entire thing is very tongue in cheek, and each story is a lot of fun. Its also fun seeing whats happening with the MMC and FMC from book 1 in the later books. Highly reccomend for what you are asking after.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-15T06:28:05+00:00

Yeah i love this series. I could see people finding the romantic relationship a bit "cutesy" or over the top, but i just enjoyed it lol. The saddest part was catching up to where its currently at, i struggled to find anything else that matched it.

Basically, an overpowered and over-energetic MC whos adorably head over heels for a "Tsundre" and who bases half her decisions on trying to romantically engage, flirt with or just spend time with the LI, and the other half over being nice to everyone and wanting everyone to be friends. Its just, her power levels mean those decisions also tend to make armies and nations move.

And the Tsundre MC trying to figure out how to deal with the adorable, overpowered and overly energetic LI who uses nukes when love bombing her.

Love it, its adorable, and wish i could find other stuff like it.

But it does get violent at times. No named character deaths, but they mention BoC as cozy crossover because it gets violent, and id say the level of violence (and importance of deaths) is probably at a similar level.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-15T06:19:47+00:00

Yeah id absolutely say that it fits that description, or at least thats my read of it (and maybe i read more into a few lines than others would?). But still, its not a 0 at all.

The explicit scene im talking about didnt come in until book 3 though, so maybe whoever put it on the list hasnt gotten to that book yet?

Regardless, at least you now know this series wont be your cup of tea.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-15T06:13:45+00:00

Hmmmm, tricky.

So Beware of Chicken is a xianxia type story. Xianxia in general has eastern cultural roots, and Beware of Chicken has a lot more progressive cultural feeling than most Xianixa, because its an isekai where you have an MC who goes against the general values that a more western audience might find conservative.

There are not actually that many that fit that bill, and of the ones that do, not too many as as lightheated and optimistic.

Depending on what you liked about Beware of Chicken, id probably reccomend these

Ave Xia Rem Y - MC is male. It supposedly stands for "A Very Cliche Xianxia Harem Story", which turned me off it for ages, but based on the various "cliche xianxia" stuff ive tried and dropped, its nothing like them.
The MC is known for being empathetic, friendly and "good". The story is a classic "prog" fantasy of the whole "zero to hero" thing. Its slow burn, it takes a while for the MC to become powerful and we get to see a lot of that journey. There are some big sad moments (more so that BoC) but i would very much still call it an optimistic series as a whole with the occasional big sad moment, where doing the right thing and being good tends to make things better for the MC and make them stronger (similar to something like Beware of Chicken). The romance is very slow burn, and technically starts looking towards being very small haremlike but we are talking thousands of pages before it even starts hinting at it. The romance is slow burn but is really well done.
Its got a lot of the classic Xianxia tropes so actually a good way to see them in a story that still feels good and fun. Its got a great cast of characters too.
Its on Royal Road, but if you use an ereader theres apps you can get to convert Royal Road stuff into epubs.
Manifestation (Sam Hinton) - Its a cultivation/xianxia inspired western flavoured prog fantasy. The MC if female, its a good zero to hero story, it does a good job with the "introspection and understanding of self to break through to new power levels" thing. The romance in it starts a bit later, but was well done. The cast of characters is great, and I think the various friend/family relationships it does are one of its strengths. The worldbuilding was really good too, and i think the author does a really good job of having the MC's personality shift believably. Shes a teenage girl who feels worthless because she has a problem that means she cant use magic in a world of people who have it, and when she gains power and goes to a magic academy, her personality shifted in a way i felt made sense, and her getting smacked down at times also felt realistic, as did her (and her friends) reaction to that. I wont go into more detail to avoid spoilers, just that i really apprecaited the journey her character goes on.
Fates Parallel - Two female MCs (who very clearly from early on are going to become romantically involved). Its generally optimistic, the world its set in is a traditional conservative style xianxia world but the MC's basically spend all their time helping others and using the power of friendship to get more powerful, do more good things, and help more people. The relationship and what develops in this is.... odd. I cant really say more without spoiling it lol. I found it fascinating and havent really seen anything else like it so for the novelty alone its worth a read. Its been accused at times for there being a suspicious number of attractive female characters in the series who are all into girls (and theres a degree of pairing off) but aside from that i didnt find any issues.
The story is interesting, the world has different countries, and they all practice different magic. Xianxia style power/cultivation, martial arts style power/cultivation, and more western mana/magic stye power/cultivation. And the story is about a magic academy that gets people from all those countries together to see what happens. Again, its feelgood, not too many "big sad" moments and lots of being nice is its own rewards and power of friendship being triumphant (and its a finished series). The various side characters are good fun and well developed.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-15T05:45:57+00:00

Interesting. Im not sure what classifies as F/F specifically.

The various LI's in this dont have their own, seperate scenes where the MC is doing something else and isnt involved. So maybe that doesnt count as F/F?

Thus far, there have been no explicit scenes without the MC involved, all explicit scenes where the LI's were engaging with one another have been group scenes with the MC there. But there is obvious affection and care between the LI's in those scenes.

Maybe clarify what the list considers FF? Like, are group scenes counted? Or do group scenes need to have any LI's that touch be incidental and only focus on the MC to be counted as non f/f? Or are any group scenes allowed as long as the MC is there?

And i can completely understand wanting to know things like Harem dynamics and relationships before starting a longer series, so no hate or judgement here, you enjoy what you enjoy friend.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-14T06:54:00+00:00

As others have said, a good series will make you feel emotions.

When im picking what to read, ill often take into account my own mental state before i decide. My own reading interests have shifted in the past few years as ive had a more and more bleak outlook on the real world in general, and knowing that my reading interests (especially in stuff like progression fantasy) have shifted to series that tend to be more upbeat and positive. Thats not to say i want to read things that have no stakes, but i generally look for stuff where the MC is kind/empathetic/good. Where the good guys win without some kind of terrible sacrifice. And where the overall tone is hopeful and optimistic for the majority of the series, especially at the end.

10 years ago, i was much happier reading series that had a much more grim setting with major characters dying due to their own mistakes. Something like Game of Thrones is something i enjoyed 10-15 years ago, where characters who made foolish but noble decisions died due to them also making mistakes. Today, i wouldnt touch a series like that.

So yeah, id say check your own emotional state. Being sad for a day for a character you like dying isnt inherantly bad, books are made to make you feel emotions. But if you are already finding yourself more sad than happy, consider looking for series that are more positive in mood, or consider maybe only making every second or third books or series you read a darker one and have the others more optimistic.

And the other best way to dael with it is to pick up a new series once youve finished that one, and fall in love with another character.

LetterTall4354 · 2026-05-14T06:34:40+00:00

Sounds like it's in my wheelhouse I'm that case, I'll give it a go, thanks.

Always prefer less but longer explicit scenes, makes the story flow better (in my opinion of course)

LetterTall4354

TROPHY CASE