Well, you could look at the story in AO3, read the first part and think wether you’d like the phywical book, reading it on AO3, or neither.

https://archiveofourown.org/series/3713407

I think the physical book goes until the part named “Rescue Hound” (included), but I haven’t read it so I don’t really know.

Wouldn’t it be proof of the opposite since the one who spent more didn’t win?

With this meme I thought that the story would be about mecha fights and politics but it is more character driven from the small sample I got and very horny in my opinion.

Tbf, yeah… Warhound, specifically, focuses on the story of Sartha as a Hound, and how those around her react/interact with that fact.

It still takes autonomy away unconsented, and I think also has themes of losing oneself (honestly, I haven’t gotten that much into it), but that “benevolent empire” is genuinely benevolent, just in a “I’m gonna help you against your desires in ways you way not want to and make you happy in a way you would otherwise hate”

@mavenbushlog@lemmy.world’s life has changed after reading the book, not necessarily for the better, as Maven has probably developed a BDSM kink with mechas and the Dommies you see on the bottom right of the meme.

I definitely don’t wanna be Sartha Thrace and be turned into a barely human but still valuable weapon of war for a fascist mommy that abuses me like the object I am to her, at all (/s)

Guess I’m officially terminally online now lol (Tbf I found it due to someone posting a meme on a less niche subreddit)

And that’s honestly fair and valid! Not all stories are for everyone. For example, I don’t find Human Domestication Guide (which I consider kinda adjacent to Warhound/Mechsploitation, at least in terms of “lose autonomy”) appealing to me because I’m more of a “malicious empire” enjoyer than “benevolent empire” one.

Warhound is a mech, smut and horror story that has a Hound-Handler dynamic. The Hound is a pilot that is heavily brainwashed, dehumanized, abused, exploited, and a Handler is their superior that inflicts that abuse on them and who they obey to.

In Warhound the Hounds wear muzzles, like fucking boots, and have trigger words that make them go feral, and the Handlers generally wear leather and use drugs to brainwash the Hounds.

Mechsploitation is the genre it belongs to, which I’d say it’s rather broad. Technically any mech story with exploitation fits, but I’d say the Hound-Handler thing is an iconic trope of it.

The content warnings (CW) in the title are just put to follow the community rules.

It’s probably a shit explanation still, but I said what I could lol

Well, what part did you not understand?