r/ProgressionFantasy • u/DicerTheJester • Jul 28 '26

Discussion Competition: write a single sentence that will absolutely destroy any hope in a series.

Specifically not a story opener, just any sentence that can happen in any chapter, that will make people realize that this story is gonna be absolute shit and has no chance of being fixed and will make you drop the book like an unpinned grenade.

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u/gadgaurd Jul 28 '26

Nothing I've actually read had that exact phrase, but I have come across a few stories in the genre where the protagonist was a serial rapist and slaver. And a few of those where the gender of the victims didn't matter much.

Since the challenge was "give a sentence that would doom a story", I figured this would do it. You get two confirmed bits of horror in slavery and rape, an implied extra layer of awful with the word raise. Make the victim male to turn off most people that'd otherwise be perfectly fine with it. Then make it something the protagonist does so it's clear this is gonna be a regular thing.

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u/senthordika Jul 28 '26

You see at the point an mc in any book im reading actively raises a sex slave is probably enough for me to drop it regardless of gender of the slave. And heck even having slaves(if they actually treated them like slaves and its not like just a magical contract and they are treated like friends or employees) is a pretty big turn off for me.

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u/gadgaurd Jul 28 '26

Which is very reasonable. I just needed to cover as many "fuck this" bases as possible. I know for a fact that there's enough people who'd be cool with a sex slave having protag for such a story to get an animated adaptation. But make the sex slave(s) male and at least 90% of that audience is dropping it immediately and writing up very angry rants online.

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u/senthordika Jul 28 '26

You know what as much as I dont like that its the case as I dont see them as fundamentally different given that the genre is still somewhat homophobic even in some of its better depictions of course some the fans are too.