What's with the Ugly Bastard Genre?

For many people, Lewd Games (and porn in general), are about the fantasy of sex and lust, so you may be surprised or even repulsed to learn that there is an entire subgenre devoted to fat, unsightly losers: the ugly bastard.

As the creator of one such lewd game (Court Magician), I often receive a lot of frustration and negative attention from consumers who lament why there is an ugly character as the protagonist at the center of my game.

These comments range from personal insults (“did you look in the mirror to make this game?”) to anger and disgust (“that ugly freak on the cover isn’t helping”) to lament and confusion. I don’t speak for everyone in the genre but given some of the morbid curiosity (“why…just why?”),I thought I could offer some insight into what the genre is and why some people are into it.

So what is the ugly bastard genre?

Ugly bastard requires 3 elements, 1) an ugly male character 2) that the aforementioned ugly male must be a “bastard”, which is to say, a jerk, usually mean and cruel and often a rapist. Finally, we need the object of the bastard’s affections. This is usually a beautiful young woman, but is nearly as often a beautiful milf or older woman. I will mention that there is also the gay version which seems to be popular and seems to focus exclusively on girly young guys, but admittedly this is not something that I am into or have much exposure with.

Now I’ll get into why I think this genre can be fun and shouldn’t receive nearly the hate that it does, but before I do I’ll give a little bit of history on the genre and some of the criticisms. Finally, I’ll talk about how this influenced my own game.

There are two main areas where you will regularly find ugly bastards. First is the villain in the “damsel-in-distress” trope in popular culture, and second is in Manga and Hentai.

The damsel in distress in popular culture is extremely old (thousands of years) in western and eastern mythology including Princess Andromeda from the Persues myth and the princess Sita in the Ramayana.

I won’t dally too much on the history, but this trope continued from ancient times until today with sometimes more and sometimes less sexual overtones.

One notable stop that we can mention is the monster movies of classic Hollywood which often feature a monster and a beautiful woman.

This pairing of sex and violence is a winning formula in Hollywood, but the movies themselves fail to deliver on the promise of the poster. As one producer infamously put it, “promise them everything and give them nothing”.

For countless men out there, this this pairing of threatening monsters with beautiful, scantily clad and vulnerable woman is like a cocaine hit to the brain.

I don’t mean that in a good way or a bad way, just that mixing fear, disgust, anger, sexual attraction and sexual opportunity is a potent cocktail to the male brain. It hijacks the male brain by igniting the most deeply engrained instincts regarding danger and sex.

For anyone who consumes this kind of art, especially in visual media such as films, you are basically creating a pavlovian conditioning that associates sex and monsters.

In my own experience this hit me with 3 formative exposures: Return of the Jedi, Aladdin and Lord of the Rings – Two Towers. Return of the Jedi was the first video tape I remember purchasing as a child and I was terrified and fascinated by Slave Princess Leia and Jabba the Hutt. Before I even understood what sexual arousal was, I knew that I loved those scenes. I never identified with Jabba, nor was I rooting for him, but somehow the whole interaction fascinated me.

A few years later, during the Disney renaissance Aladdin was released, and again my child brain was exposed to an evil villain holding a scantily clad princess in chains.

With both Jasmine and Leia, the heroines were strong, proud, high status and beautiful and yet they were subjugated by villainous thugs in sexual servitude.

The third film that influenced me came about when I was an adult, The Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers. In this film (both the Peter Jackson and the Ralph Bakshi versions) we see the villainous, Beta-male Grima Wormtongue attempt to take sexual control of the strong and beautiful Princess Eowyn.

Although Grima is far less successful in his pursuit of Eowyn than either Jabba or Jafar, he embodies a more subtle form of power. Whereas Jabba is physically imposing and rules with threats and force, Grima is physically weak and deals in secrets, manipulation and influence.

This underhandedness is something that he has in common with Jafar, although Jafar also magical power and physical height.

One thing that the ugly bastards have in common in popular culture is that the Ugly Bastards are usually unsuccessful in their attempts to seduce, coerce or outright rape the beautiful princesses. As in my examples above, the Ugly Bastard is typically the villain and there is often a white-knight hero who is designed to be the one wins the princess’s heart. The ugly bastard is the embodiment of evil and vulgarity and therefore we typically cheer when they lose.

However, there is one place where the Ugly Bastard is the hero. And of course, that place is Japan. The Japanese have perfected perversion to a fine art and in hentai (the pornographic countrerpart of manga and anime) there is a genre devoted to the Ugly Bastard.

Kisaku the Lech is one of the grad-daddies of this genre, as well as the male characters Mistreated Bride. I’m not an expert in the hentai Ugly Bastards, but one key area where they diverge from their Western Pop-Culture counterparts is in their success in bedding the various women. Additionally (this being hentai), the sexual success is shown graphically and gratuitously.

Its in the hentai manga and anime that the Ugly Bastard genre is most well-defined and explicitly created for sexual gratification. It is often paired with NTR (a cheating fetish, which is another, much hated/loved genre in lewd gaming) and the ugly bastard is usually either very old or very fat (sometimes both) and often with an exaggerated, ugly face.

The ugly bastard is not universally high or low-status, nor is the female but there is almost always a power dynamic at play. Sometimes the ugly bastard is a low-status person like a janitor who somehow gains power over a high status female, like a popular college student successful business woman. Sometimes the ugly bastard is simply a rich or powerful person in a position of authority over the female.

However, in either case, the female is somehow blackmailed, coerced, tricked , or even just outright raped through brute force. It is more rare that the Ugly Bastard actually seduces the woman. The nonconsensual, male dominant nature of the interactions is a defining feature of the genre (it’s the “Bastard” in Ugly Bastard), and seems to be a major part of the appeal. As opposed to the beauty and the beast trope of a beautiful woman who falls in love with an ugly male with a heart of gold, here the ugliness of the male is as ugly an on the outside as he is on the inside.

This leads us to the major criticisms of the genre. There are basically two. Those who hate the ugly and those who hate the bastard. In the lewd game and erotic art space, it is primarily the “ugly” part that people don’t like.

There is a fair degree of tolerance for different fetishes and preferences in the online-porn world, but having ugly characters is one of those categories that can really upset people.

Honestly, I understand the annoyance. If one is in the mood for getting frisky with themselves, and then they inadvertently come across an image that kills their boner, well I would see why that would piss you off. When I post content online, I typically try to warn people that there is an Ugly Bastard in the images, but saying something about it in the title. There are still those who get upset by it, or who just feel the need to troll ugly bastard posts, but whatever, this is the internet.

The other criticism of the Ugly Bastard genre is that glorifies violence against women. To that, I can’t really argue with that. Ugly Bastard pornography and lewd games definitely fetishizes something that is extremely harmful in real life. I wouldn’t say that it “glorifies” it per se, because it is often portrayed as being tragic to the woman, and the ugly bastard himself is often portrayed as a loser or at least a villain.

However, at the same time, humans seem to be attracted to viewing all kinds of crazy things in their art that often represent horrible depraved acts. The History channel (back when tv was a thing…) was 90% documentaries on WW2 where 70-85 million people died horribly. My wife loves true crime podcasts (usually where a young woman is killed by a maniac), which tend to have predominantly female audiences. In modern pop-culture, Tv shows like “Dexter” and “You” follow anti-hero protagonists who are literally psychopaths.

Personally, I don’t particularly care for movies and tv that include gore and gratuitous violence, but I acknowledge that its art and I don’t judge people for liking it or watching it. The point is, making a game about an ugly bastard who coerces women into sex promotes sexual violence anymore than a tv show about a vigilante serial killer promotes vigilantism.

This brings up the whole concept of fantasy. People often enjoy fantasizing about things that key into biological instincts (e.g. sex and violence) that they don’t really want to engage in, in real life.

For me there is appeal in fantasizing about being an ugly beta male who gets sexual gratification from high status women as a form of revenge. However, it doesn’t mean that I want to be an ugly beta male in real life, nor do I want to manipulate or coerce women.

However, this domination of women does seem to be a common fantasy.

Bondage, S&M and Domination are all extremely common fantasies, pornographic content and sex play.

These are not things which I particularly enjoy in my personal sex-life, but I do enjoy them sometimes in fantasy.

In my own game, Court Magician, I lay into all of these influences heavily. The entire look and feel of the game is designed to look like renaissance Disney films mixed with Sierra Adventure games. This is to very clearly communicate that this is a safe, fantasy that is not meant to be taken too seriously.

The protagonist of my game, Greely, is a literally a cartoonish villain who leans into the tropes of evil wizards like Grima Wormtongue, Rasputin and Ja’far.

The ugly bastard trope is definitely part of the appeal. For me, the fact that the ugly protagonist is achieving something sexually that is far beyond their “league” (albeit through nefarious means) makes it more exciting.

The juxtaposition of the ugly characters next to the beautiful characters accentuates both and pushes them towards the extremes.

You will see direct influences from Return of the Jedi, including the Slave Leiah outfit. I also lean heavily into the underhanded Court Magician trope, as the major part of the gameplay includes social manipulation, lying, intrigue, blackmail and dealing with secrets.

At the end of the day, this is supposed to be an erotic game and I designed it to be titillating. This includes multiple, highly visual, animated and interactive sexual acts with various characters.

However, one thing that I’ve realized about what I’m creating, is that a core part of the fantasy is about the characters. We can go online and look at any depraved activity that we want at any time. What makes the ugly bastard genre unique is not only the outward appearances of the characters but also the inner story.

The Ugly Bastard genre is about the combination of opposites. Outwardly the beautiful character is bedded by the ugly character. Unspoken is the idea that the powerful woman is outmatched by the weak man. In their minds one character feels revulsion while the other feels lust.

This combination of opposites and the play between the outer and inner worlds of the characters is what makes video games the perfect medium for this fantasy. We show a lot of the outer fantasy to the player in images and animations, but a lot of the internal fantasy is done by the player themselves in their head.

In my games, I try to partner with the player to allow the fantasy to develop and unfold and create depth underneath the surface-level content.

Choices and dynamic storytelling are a big part of games, perhaps they are core to what a game is.

Thanks for reading! To check out my game, you can find it here:

Itch: https://sinandsalvationgames.itch.io/court-magician

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/courtmagician

Subscribestar: https://subscribestar.adult/the-court-magician