The Simulacrum

"He who fights with harem tropes should see to it that he himself does not become a harem protagonist. And if you gaze for long into a narrative, the narrative gazes also into you." ---Friedrich Nietzsche (probably?) How would you react if one day you found yourself in an environment running on tropes and clichés? For allegedly average high-schooler Leonard Dunning, this rhetorical question became uncomfortably real on the day he woke up on a strangely pristine island country in the middle of the Atlantic. Without memories, surrounded by countless characterless placeholders, and with a classic harem protagonist and his various love interests for friends, he tries his best to fit in and figure out what's going on. That would be difficult enough already, yet his investigation into the rules governing the world, sabotaging the harem tropes, and his odd blend of outside-context knowledge, unique abilities, and a penchant for causing trouble wherever he goes, ends up drawing the attention of the world's nebulous narrative... Disclaimer: This is a tongue-in-cheek, slice of life romantic comedy, with occasional sprinkles of combat and mystery to spice things up. Please do not expect a straight up deconstruction beyond some in-universe meta-commentary by the characters.