I have a new book out today: Host Club on the Pleasure Planet! It’s part of a shared world with a bunch of other awesome authors. The series is set in a dystopian sci-fi world, where Kateria, the pleasure planet, operates outside the bounds of the law. The planet offers all kinds of pleasures, but in doing so, it has also become a haven for criminality. Humans are rare and incredibly sought-after, and sometimes, they’re sold as slaves or put in zoos.
I’ve visited the pleasure planet before, in the novella Host Club Heist, which first appeared in an anthology in Fall 2023. It’s now available for free to my newsletter subscribers. While it isn’t required reading for Host Club on the Pleasure Planet, it will introduce you to some of the characters, some of the events that happened prior to this story, and get you familiar with both the world of the pleasure planet and the world of the host club, Saveur.
My First Ideas Got Shot Down
When the shared world was first proposed, I had signed up for a different industry. Yet, when I talked it over with the series lead, she felt like my ideas for the story direction simply weren’t going to work.
After some angsting about it, I pitched the idea of a restaurant industry. I mean, some people consider food to be one of life’s biggest pleasures, even to the point of gluttony. Even if you don’t agree with that sentiment, everyone needs to eat. Of course there are going to be restaurants on a planet full of pleasure-seeking tourists.
I also pitched the host club angle, which was immediately approved. Host clubs are something that seem, at first glance, quite unique to Japanese culture. They’re something that feature in anime and manga, but if you were to look at Western society, there isn’t really an equivalent.
The Western Supper Club
However, something similar to “host clubs” have existed in the West at various points in time. Most recently, the “supper club” was a similar sort of venue. In the 1940s and 1950s, supper clubs provided an exclusive night out for their patrons—it’s where the idea of “dinner and show” come from. You can see representations of supper clubs in old cartoons, like Tex Avery and Looney Tunes. Perhaps the most famous one in slightly more recent memory is Jessica Rabbit’s performance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? While the venue, at first glance, might seem like a nightclub or a lounge, it is, in fact, a supper club.
Supper clubs fell out of favor from the 1960s. The advent of TV and other cultural changes meant it was just as easy to stay home. Today, the term supper club is having a renaissance, but with a slightly different twist: you’ll usually go to the chef’s establishment after close for an exclusive dining experience. This isn’t your grandma’s supper club, that’s for sure.
An Even Closer Match: Bars Paying Women to Flirt
Even closer to the host club idea is the fact that American bars, in the 1940s and 1950s, used to pay beautiful women to butter up male customers. The bartender would be instructed to serve these women mocktails or other non-alcoholic drinks, even as the male patrons got increasingly drunk.
There was a key difference between this and the Japanese host club. In the Japanese host club, patrons are aware that the person schmoozing with them is a paid employee of the club. They know this person is literally being paid to give the patron their company for the evening. In the American version, the male bar patrons were not usually aware the women were in the employ of the bar. They were often left feeling manipulated. They’d thought these beautiful women were flirting with them out of genuine attraction and interest.
The Host Club on the Pleasure Planet
Saveur, the host club on Kateria, is more modeled after the modern Japanese host club than the older American version. Patrons know exactly what they’re getting. They often come back time and again for the company of a particular host.
This being the notorious pleasure planet, of course, most of the hosts are either indentured servants, who are trying to work off a debt, or slaves.
That fact wrapped me right back around to the issue that caused my original ideas to be shot down. I was, effectively, writing a slave romance. And that kind of narrative presents enormous issues around consent.
The major issue in a slave romance is consent. Can someone who has no rights actually consent to a relationship? To sex?
The short answer is no, they can’t. The power dynamics simply don’t allow for it. The person who owns the slave has all the power; the slave has none. Even if the owner is saying the slave can say no, the slave can’t—not really. The master can say that the slave can say no all they want, but the slave may not feel as though they can. And even if they did, what’s to stop the master from disrespecting the slave’s wishes?
Consent in Romance Is Kind of My Wheelhouse
This presents a problem for a writer like me, who has made consent in romance core to my brand. Even when I’m writing something in the vein of dark romance, consent is paramount. In Rare Flower, for example, Narcissus and Ant explore non-consensual fantasies, but Ant points out key differences in acting out fantasies and actual non-con scenarios. So the two of them are playing with what looks like non-con, but it is fully consensual.
The power dynamic of slave/master doesn’t fully allow for that. The slave can’t truly withdraw their consent. And because of that, they might not say no in the first place. They might realize there’s the chance the master will move ahead with whatever they want to do no matter what the slave says. And there is always the threat of violence if the slave doesn’t comply.
That was why the original storyline I’d picked for this shared world wasn’t working. So now I’d landed myself right back in the issues I’d been trying to avoid by switching industries in the first place.
A Precursor in Host Club Heist
I played with the slave romance a bit in Host Club Heist, although it’s softer than what you’ll find in Host Club on the Pleasure Planet. In that story, Andrew is an indentured servant, not a slave, and his love interest isn’t his owner. Instead, it’s the slave trafficker who captured him and sold him into bondage with his current owner.
The power dynamics there are still twisted. Andrew, as an indentured servant, doesn’t have much power. The difference is his love interest doesn’t have that much power over him. In fact, the two of them compare notes and realize that Tor is only one step from being in the same boat as Andrew himself. And Tor is now using the limited power he does have to help Andrew escape from the situation.
It’s not precisely ethical, but it shifts the power dynamics sideways from the usual slave/master narrative that it becomes, perhaps, less uncomfortable.
Can a Slave Romance Ever Be Ethical?
In Host Club on the Pleasure Planet, I chose to embrace the more traditional slave/master romance narrative. But that brings forth the issues of consent and asks, can a slave romance ever be ethical?
I’ve tried to answer that question: “yes.” In Host Club, I give the narrative a twist. Benedict is not a slave owner who has a change of heart after falling in love with one of his slaves. It’s not that he’s a bad person who has to be redeemed or that his slave love interest is “fixing” him—this isn’t that kind of this narrative.
Instead, I chose to have Benedict end up in the position of slave owner by accident. He doesn’t own slaves because he’s out there buying them. Instead, he inherits them. He was unaware of his aunt’s activities until he inherits her empire. He’s benefited from her criminal empire without his knowledge. Further to that, he’s a monk of a religious order, and he views slavery as inherently wrong.
So he is horrified by the fact he’s now in a position that he views as unethical. Yet he’s naive enough to hope that the situation isn’t as dire as he thinks it is. That’s part of the reason it takes him so long to unravel exactly what’s going on.
Throughout the story, though, he has ethics front and center in his mind. The story becomes a bit of a slow burn for that reason. Both he and Oz, the bartender who is a slave, feel for each other, but Benedict repeatedly refuses to act on his desires because he knows acting on them is unethical.
Balancing Power Dynamics in Host Club on the Pleasure Planet
Another step I took to try and make the slave/master romance narrative less uncomfortable was giving Oz back some power. Benedict is naive and hapless, which makes him reliant on Oz’s help. In that sense, Oz has some power. Given that Benedict is also concerned about ethics, he’s often unwilling to push back against Oz when the bartender refuses to do something.
When the two finally do act on their desires, it’s with explicit consent. Benedict refuses to act until Oz confirms that he also wants it. But in this scenario, Benedict is also drunk—which means he’s not in a position to consent himself.
In this way, Oz is taking advantage of Benedict. So as much as the power dynamics skew toward Benedict holding power over Oz, in this situation, Oz regains some of his power. The two of them are both consenting and equally unable to consent.
Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right
Does that make it right or ethical? Not exactly—the situation is certainly murky. Yet, at the end of it, we see that both characters take pains to try and act ethically toward each other—Benedict in particular—and both of them are aware of the power dynamics that exist between them. And when we get to the happy ending, we find that there is still mutual consent. Benedict retracts his power, Oz regains his, and the two of them mutually agree on the future they want.
This is probably the only way a slave/master narrative can be ethical. The slave owner must relinquish their power and give their former slave the freedom to choose. And it has to be real freedom—the slave can’t be reliant on the former master for money or anything else. Consent has to be given freely, and they have to come to the mutual agreement that they want to be in a relationship together.
That’s what I’ve tried to do in Host Club on the Pleasure Planet. Whether it works or not is another story—one that the reader has to be the judge of.
