I hate guideverse

It’s dog shit. I get the whole deal with it, especially in yaoi series, where it’s like “oh this character needs this other character or they’ll die” but for some reason, in literally every single series I’ve read with this new genre, it is always just so shitty. It doesn’t matter how good the art is like it was in “S Class Guide as Sweet as Honey”. I always find that the main character is always put in these extremely uncomfortable situations that are just anxiety inducing. All the characters surrounding the MC are almost always preying on him/her and it doesn’t feel right. I get that irl it might be difficult to leave situations like that but at some point it’s like “holy shit he should really leave wtf is he doing???” I’ve nearly convinced myself that the MC actually WANTS to be put in these situations with how stubborn they’ve been. Even the actual ML in the series is always possessive and oftentimes rapey. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve read my fair share of series that seem pretty clearly non-con but this is just horrible. I can’t stand it. The only one I’ve read that hasn’t made it completely ridiculous with this trope is “The One and Only Guide” but even this story has many issues of its own, though that’s a whole other post.

What I also hate about it is how absolutely powerless the MCs are in these. I’ve only ever seen series where the MC is the guide so that’s what I’ll be talking about in this paragraph. While it’s true that they’re technically the key to keeping even the most powerful espers from going insane and exploding or whatever, the guide is literally just a normal person otherwise. They have no way of defending themselves physically and mentally they’re almost always easy for the MLs to manipulate by guilt tripping or through shitty contracts. This makes it so shallow and predictable that I’m just sick of reading the same weak MC in every single guideverse series. It feels like the authors just use “ok this is a guideverse series” as their focus point and don’t feel like properly fleshing out characters properly. They might throw in the occasional traumatic guiding flashback but that’s it. Like I said before, it feels shallow and cheap.

Guideverse has a lot of potential but they way how most series has been going about it pisses me off.

Anyways yall are free to enjoy it but I hope they prioritize making different series like hunterverse rather than guideverse ones. They’re similar but one is clearly better than the other.

Fuck guideverse