Unable to load image

11 questions I wish male fantasy authors would ask themselves before publishing. : Fantasy

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/vhpsmy/11_questions_i_wish_male_fantasy_authors_would?sort=controversial

I’ve been a diehard fantasy fan all my life, but I am so constantly frustrated by series like WoT and Night Angel that simplify women or use them to make men look cooler. I wrote these a while ago and thought I’d share. Would love additions!

The list is long and it's mostly just foid nonsense, check out the post itself!

If I ever write a story I'm absolutely going to describe the size of a woman's breasts, her shapely thighs and tight buttocks, right beside my description of the curvature, girth and size of a man's bulge, his stately, broad shoulders and his own right buttocks. How every swing of his sword sends his member swinging almost in parallel, every step jiggling his butt, the way his muscle glisten and gleam with sweat, and how the sweat itself runs in rivulets between his chiselled abs.

:#coomer:

I’ve completely stopped reading fantasy by men for a while and it really has seemed to decrease my frustrations with the genre, including but not limited to all the things you mention. Plus my TBR has never been longer than it is right now once I completely stopped trying to have interest in all the β€œbig names” that seem to be mostly men πŸ€·β€β™€οΈ

Edit: If you’re really going to comment telling me I’m wrong for choosing to read only women, consider two things 1) there may be very valid reasons - systemic issues - behind a woman choosing to pause reading men, some of which are outlined in this very post. Take a second and listen/learn what those issues might be. and 2) I’ve already read plenty of men. Most of my education was reading men. Time to focus on other voices/experiences/persectives.

I've got systemic reasons, okay?!?

One in four women have not been r*ped...That is a false statement, at least not according to the commonly known/accepted definition of r*pe.

A lot of these points are great but some feel redundant as a female author will also write her book according to her perspective/worldview. That being said a great author should be able to give all their characters depth regardless of gender/race. The better an author is, the less one dimensional the characters will be. It even goes for male authors who write all their characters as buff men with superhuman like strength. What about all us skinny/short guys or the dudes who are emotional wrecks etc? Men also want to feel like characters reflect themselves as real people or as the person who they want to be (given the condition that the character in question struggled to actually get there).

Argument about r*pe statistics

Always weird when you have these posts telling writers what they can and can not do.

If it's not for you, you can just not read it? There are plenty of books that use characterizations and tropes that I don't like so i just avoid them.

What if these "characterizations and tropes" are industry-wide problems of misogyny and poor representation? And calm down, OP is literally just pointing out sexist tropes and asking writers to be a little more thoughtful, not forcibly stopping anyone from writing their shitty misogynistic book.

industry-wide problems I can manufacture an industry-wide problem too

People buy books = more books like it are written. What books have you been reading that is misogynistic? must be alot

This causes an absolute sneed spree as a janny has to come in and scold the naughty poster :marseyjanny:

Please drop it, both you. Warheadjk please take a break from this post, thank you.

:#marseyjanny2:

My work here is done

116
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I wanted to ask why nearly half of the fantasy written by women have the female protagonist falling in love with 2 men at the same time.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I'd bet pretty much every women written fantasy book has an excerpt that you can post on /r/menwritingwomen if you lied about the author being a man.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Great bait idea, someone pls do the needful

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

https://rdrama.net/post/59629/posting-mtf-authors-to-rmenwritingwomen

Been there done that :marseywave: it's due for another round

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

No, I meant a biofoid

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Outdated and irrelevant

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

You mean legacy foids? Did you miss the upgrades?

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I prefer cleaner vags

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Cant, that would require me to read

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I read a fantasy book once -- it had telepathic dragons in it, I think that counts -- where the heroine needed to be shaken if not slapped by the hero, and the first time they banged was kind of violent.

In the next book in the series his brother needed to give his love interest some sexual experience quickly for her own good, and "he wasn't gentle, but he was thorough" and she loved it once he'd done it.

You'd need to change the names and places a little bit to stop the excerpts from Dragonflight and Dragonquest being too recognisable, but there's your starting point.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

>In the next book in the series his brother needed to give his love interest some sexual experience quickly for her own good

Fantasy authors and contriving reasons to indulge in their fetishes in their work, name a more iconic duo.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Women love bodice ripping smut. Their writing is as bad as mens tbh. Most fantasy writers are just hacks.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

sanderson is not a hack

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Pretty sure they hate him on Reddit because he’s (((Mormon)))

:marseypuke::marseycrying:

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Absolutely not. Bookscirclejerk is basically BRANDO SANDO NUMBAH 1


:!marseybarrel: :marseybarreldrunk:

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Lol, wrong.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

He isn't, but his shortcomings as an author are pretty apparent. I like most of his work, but he's held up to be the standard of fantasy literature when he's really not up to it (and doesn't intend to be).

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

he basically writes shonen anime in book form

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Oh yeah, the climax of Words of Radiance in particular was anime as frick. Straight out of DBZ.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

He's actually able to finish up a novel consistently and maintain a schedule, I'd say that makes him one of the best considering the standards of the genre.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Lol, they're just fun stories. Not everything has to be some great literature that's life changing

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Hes a hack hes just a good hack

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Half of his characters and dialogue is fricking cringe, and the latest stormlight was filler tier

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Spergerson sucks 1 billion peepees his stuff could be written by an AI.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Answer: Each man represents a different possibility for her, by that I mean she can be a different person with each man. Even in gay fantasy the bottom(foid self insert) is often lusted after by 2 guys.

But the even more correct answer is that 99% of fantasy is easy read wish-fulfillment pulp. Look at this list, it's all about how women in fantasy are not presented with enough virtues and how bad things like r*pe shouldn't be written in because it's uncomfortable to read. This is a bastardization of the original criticism of how introducing characters only be killed/r*ped/kidnapped as motivation for the hero is lazy writing, what foids have taken this to mean is that fictional women shouldn't have bad things happen to them(or be described in certain ways) because it hurts their personal wish-fulfillment fantasy(this is the reason why women are overrepresented in fanfic communities).

>Are your female characters as complex as their male counterparts?

The male characters in bestselling fantasyshit often have the emotional depth of a kiddie pool, because they're written by dummies who only think about characters in terms of what they do. The males in the books OP is complaining about just do a bunch of cool shit and then the women just kinda sit there, but they all share a lack of emotional depth and complexity. Even when women write fantasy you just get an equalization of cool shit accomplished by the genders. YA fiction is extremely popular with women for this reason, a lot of the books now have women do cool shit as the heroes and they're very easy to read because all the characters shout their feelings at the reader as is basically text-based anime. Not saying that moids are any more intelligent, but rather that foids write complaints that look like they want higher quality writing when instead they just want their flavor of Conan.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Women statistically trend towards narcissism, while men statistically trend towards sociopathy. This is why fantasy books trend towards reflections of those fantasies.

The female narcissist's fantasy is having multiple men showering her with attention, whereas the male sociopath's fantasy is being able to use women as objects. Since a lot of writers are hacks, they aren't always able to prevent their subconscious personality traits from shining through. But it's basically the exact same kind of wish-fulfillment porn. Female authors like to think that their work is more "elevated" than the work of male authors because there's less focus on s*x and violence, but it's basically the exact same kind of worthless smut, simply a different flavor of smut designed to cater to the wish-fulfillment desires of a different audience.

And don't get me wrong, I liked the Hunger Games, but the whole love triangle was basically the same kind of lurid pornographic schlock as Game of Thrones r*pe scenes. It's just that women prefer emotional porn, aka bodice-rippers.

(So basically... what you said)

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

but by the very definition of smut by polite society, only men's fantasies count as smut even though in modern times it is clearly visible that following womens ideas and desires without a singular look at anybody else also leads to tragedy.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Yeah, modern feminism is a real problem. It was good when it started but once it degenerated to moronic slogans like "Listen and Believe" then narcissistic foids started to think that they were above criticism and could get away with murder. Now they're going to need to get hurt until they learn some humility, because our r-slurred society is overcompensating for historical misogyny way too hard.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

As long as transwomen are real women I support your ideas.

How would they get hurt? Like the Amber Heard trial? The growing incel community?

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Yes, exactly. When women make an accusation, they will no longer be automatically believed and given sympathy. The public will be forced to obey the presumption of innocence, just like the legal system. If you jump on the bandwagon of a Twitter lynch mob and start saying awful things about somebody you've never met because it's trendy to make fun of them or attack them at that point in time, then later you may be liable for a massive slander lawsuit if it turns out that you were wrong and they're innocent of whatever you accused them of.

The reason these online lynch mobs form is because your average Twittercel doesn't have skin in the game - if they leap to the wrong conclusion about somebody, it doesn't hurt them personally, so there's no downside to jumping on the bandwagon for any particular individual. If we change those incentives so that everybody who jumped on a social media bandwagon will be severely punished when the bandwagon turns out to be wrong, then stupid sheeple will be forced to exercise some critical thought for a change, because they will personally experience some pain if they don't. And that personal touch is what really makes all the difference when it comes to convincing "people" like this to change their behavior. I'm also a big fan of extracting revenge against the ringleaders who initiate these social media lynch mobs.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Should women have to pay reparations to all the men they give terrible life advice to which makes it impossible for those men to ever be in a relationship?

Agreed with what you said. I am giving up of polite society morality. It's chains of slavery made by morons.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

SHOULD WOMEN HAVE TO PAY REPARATIONS TO ALL THE MEN THEY GIVE TERRIBLE LIFE ADVICE TO WHICH MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR THOSE MEN TO EVER BE IN A RELATIONSHIP?

No, men should know better than to ask women for dating advice. If you're that dumb then you need to take some ownership of it.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

More comments

Mommy is soooo proud of you, sweaty. Let's put this sperg out up on the fridge with all your other failures.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

"Haha longpostbot you're so funny I'm going reply with something self-deprecating to show how not hurt my feelings are."

:#marseyseethe:

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

:#marseymarseylove:

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

AF/BB in action. Life fuel for betas tbh bc they exist in the woman’s fantasy

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

how much fiction for men involves the affections of 2 or more women though

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

very rarely in fantasy, Rand in WOT is an exception. A philandering male character is common though.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

maybe i was just thinking about anime then

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

dont know about anime much though.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

it happens a lot in anime, probably because anime is a male fantasy medium made by and for total losers

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

It makes women seem wanted. They always have two competent men running after them and they can finally settle on one at their own leisure.

Also it's not half of them it's literally all of them. Rebecca is a gothic horror novel from the 19th century and even it does not escape this trope of two competent protective men.

Also fun fact, even in that book the more damaged but rich guy wins and keeps the girl. If you follow women's literature they have been telling you this for over two centuries now.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Link copied to clipboard
Action successful!
Error, please refresh the page and try again.