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A GLISTENING HODOR posted:Wild Cards are the finest human beings I've ever known and it continues to be an honor to serve with you fine gentlemen (and lllllllllllllladies... ) In our Saving Private Ryan platoon, I like to think I'm the Jeremy Davies.
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Aug 24, 2012 04:34
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While I personally think erotic fanfiction is the ultimate form of flattery, I seem to remember that George has a rather low opinion of it. The fanfiction part, not eroticism, obviously. Something about how the best narratives arise from original characters. Arguments about what defines originality aside, do any of you have what it takes to make your own pornographic literature, or are you too small to stand in your own two suspenders?
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Aug 24, 2012 07:01
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There is a Wildcard or two that write erotic fiction, yes.
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Aug 24, 2012 07:03
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I abandoned reading this thread when you were speaking about 50 Shades of Gray and writing erotic fan fiction. Now, over a thousand new posts later I come here again to see you still talking about erotic fan fiction.  Anyway, I just came to say I'm going to the library to return Dreamsongs Vol 2. After reading the first two Tuf stories I just couldn't go on and even that story set in Westeros only managed to keep me interested for a few pages, then I abandoned it. I think GRRM was just a phase I went through. It's his lack of scale and sensibility which bothers me the most. The Wall is 700 feet high and yet arrows can be shot there from the ground below and they're still deadly? Gregor Clegane manages to fight as an armored knight and not die due to heart conditions because of his size? And how on earth there are so many healthy people in the age range of 90 - 100 around in this medieval series? GRRM is good at writing characters and having stuff happen to them (not Dany of course), but his world building isn't that good. And because Asoiaf just drags on and on without anything new to read, there's more time to think about all the faults that just become more and more obvious. In a sense GRRM is a really immature writer. His books, even Ice and Fire ones, have this comic book feel to them (and so did those Tuf stories I read). Characters can be good and they're even brilliant sometimes, but you must not look too closely upon the world they inhabit (much like in superhero comics). That actually explains why he can't just get poo poo done (that requires perseverence and thus maturity). And why he's so obsessed with Wild Cards (if they're not comicky I don't know what is).
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Aug 24, 2012 10:01
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Aurubin posted:While I personally think erotic fanfiction is the ultimate form of flattery, I seem to remember that George has a rather low opinion of it. The fanfiction part, not eroticism, obviously. Something about how the best narratives arise from original characters. Arguments about what defines originality aside, do any of you have what it takes to make your own pornographic literature, or are you too small to stand in your own two suspenders? Yes. Also GRRM writes and edits a fifty volume series of lovely fanfiction and teases us with "big news" about his lovely fanfiction being published and there's a character named "Shad" in it so gently caress what he thinks. GRRM is the ultimate expression of why it's best to just read a book and never learn anything about the author. I don't buy physical books much anymore but from now on I'm taking a sharpie to the jacket blurb. Rurik posted:I abandoned reading this thread when you were speaking about 50 Shades of Gray and writing erotic fan fiction. Now, over a thousand new posts later I come here again to see you still talking about erotic fan fiction. We discussed this earlier and either GRRM has no sense of scale (which makes sense, since nothing involving a number in these books, be it the size of an army, people's ages, the physical scale of objects, the length of winters) makes any loving sense at all. This is the most likely explanation. It's not just the wall, all of the descriptions are absurd. Even Winterfell is absurdly oversized. The better explanation is that ASOAIF world is smaller than Earth and has lower gravity, and everything is bigger as a result including people. The best explanation is that GRRM is using his own definition of foot without saying so and all of the main characters are really four feet tall and Gregor is about average in height. The double best explanation is that GRRM is a child in an adult body and seven hundred feet is like HUGE and the pretty girl in his eighth grades science class wouldn't talk to him so he made one up and wrote a whole book series about torturing her. Also there was this other girl he wanted to watch poo poo but couldn't so welp making GBS threads description in loving detail. Thulsa Doom fucked around with this message at 10:30 on Aug 24, 2012 |
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Aug 24, 2012 10:23
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whowhatwhere posted:wannabe men. This one's me. Rurik posted:It's his lack of scale and sensibility which bothers me the most. The Wall is 700 feet high and yet arrows can be shot there from the ground below and they're still deadly? Gregor Clegane manages to fight as an armored knight and not die due to heart conditions because of his size? And how on earth there are so many healthy people in the age range of 90 - 100 around in this medieval series? This is what makes me laugh when people argue that the women need to be treated like chattel or lunatics in Westeros because otherwise it's not authentic to the setting. If you want your setting to be patriarchal then that's your call, but don't be like "He had no choice! The setting must be realistic! (Don't look at the dragons or the magic or the impossibly giant walls or the really old people, thanks.)" The show managed to find some nuance, strength, and progressiveness in some of the female characters that was not on the page though. Sansa in particular. I'll give them that.
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Aug 24, 2012 11:56
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Also, there's erotic parody fanfic and then there's completely earnest Sansa/Stannis fanfic. I'd just like to say hahahahahaha. Stan/San Fanfic posted:Didn’t the Queen proud herself to be a lioness? Didn't she? Sophia posted:This one's me. There's actually quite a lot of progressiveness on the page if you look for it. Whether it's something he consciously chose to add or not, much of ASOIaF is critical of nerders and nerdery. The whole Hound/Sansa thing is an indictment of the typical nerd fantasy of being a scarred badass archetypal nice guy who woos the princess with his Wolveriney ways. Brienne is a nice commentary on the chainmail bikini thing. The social commentary in Martin's novels is by no means original or even particularly well executed (you mean war as an institution cruelly grinds down the soldiers while the aristocracy glorifies it? My word!) but it's somewhat refreshing in a genre that's dominated by while male fascist power fantasies. Even if ASOIAF is basically a fascist white male power fantasy. Unfortunately that's all lost in the books' quagmire of unironic self inserts and meandering half-assed discovery plotting. I blame the editors. Thulsa Doom fucked around with this message at 13:06 on Aug 24, 2012 |
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Aug 24, 2012 12:15
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Thulsa Doom posted:There's actually quite a lot of progressiveness on the page if you look for it. Whether it's something he consciously chose to add or not, much of ASOIaF is critical of nerders and nerdery. The whole Hound/Sansa thing is an indictment of the typical nerd fantasy of being a scarred badass archetypal nice guy who woos the princess with his Wolveriney ways. Brienne is a nice commentary on the chainmail bikini thing. It's true it is a send up (or deconstruction). Martin's works are nothing if not good at taking a fantasy trope and subverting it. But the first example you mentioned is still a send up of specifically the male character. The female character is played basically straight. Basically, the guy is not as expected (he is an alcoholic rear end in a top hat instead of a hero), and the situation doesn't turn out as it usually would, but the girl is still a dewy-eyed princess robot. A princess who doesn't get what princesses usually get in stories, to be sure, but as a character fundamentally no different. With Brienne, I'm not sure that there's a clear victor between "Girls who fight are hot" and "Girls who fight are mannish and will never be good for marriage" fantasy standards, so there he simply chose the second one to feed. Which of course doesn't mean Brienne is a bad character by that alone, but the fact that he made one of her driving motivations (from my memory) bitterness about not getting a guy cut her legs out from under her very efficiently. None of his characters are strictly regressive on first glance even in a patriarchal society (except for maybe Sansa); it's the way he has them think and the things that drive all of them - boys, children, not being a boy - that does it. Except for Arya who is young enough to be written as gender neutral without causing him undue strain. Sophia fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Aug 24, 2012 |
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Aug 24, 2012 13:39
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Aurubin posted:I seem to remember that George has a rather low opinion of [fanfiction]. George RR Martin, New York Times best-selling author of War of the Roses fanfic series A Song of Ice and Fire. 
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Aug 24, 2012 13:58
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Masculinity and manhood are of course key to the underlying themes of the series. The entire thing is about a resentment towards physical power and the masculine ideal of identity; the root cause of all of the conflict is various macho bullshit and the sympathetic or "badass" characters all have some background involving being physically bullied and underestimated by a society that values physical strength over mental ability. It somehow manages to be somewhat progressive in that direction while bring regressive in others; Littlefinger's motivation is literally that a jock beat him up and "stole" "his" girlfriend. Still, there's an underlying self awareness there since it's explicit in the text that Cat didn't have that sort of affection for him and he's just a creeper. The show hits the audience over the head with it, though. There's a deliberate contrast between Cersei, Sansa, and Brienne. You have Cersei who openly resents her gender role and the place in society it confers on her and tries to seize power in a very aggressive, masculine way; Sansa whose illusions are similarly undermined, and is shown a path to power by Littlefinger, who represents a middle path of background manipulation and unmanly scheming. It's ufortunate that her path to empowerment comes in the form of a man who views her as a sex object. No doubt Martin plans for Sansa to avert some sort of sexual assault and in a "badass" moment murder him or turn his schemes around but that doesn't erase the unfortunate implications. Brienne is hard to place. As in comics, the fantasy archetype of the female warrior is inherently there for the benefit of men; she's either Red Sonja or she just needs to take off the armor and wipe the poo poo off her face to be attractive. She's another commentary on the imaginary high school pecking order that underlies most fantasy fiction; the fantasy society has no place for her in it since she provides no utility to men (and actively undermines their masculine power in some instances). You're right, though, that A Song of Ice and Fire is innately not a feminist work. Its chief concern is masculinity and manhood and the patriarchal social pecking order. Honestly, I wish he'd written a series of novels about Robert's Rebellion instead, it's a more interesting story and the gender politics would be less weird even if Lyanna is presented as a more traditional badass fantasy gurrrrl.
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Aug 24, 2012 14:02
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thornghost posted:Here you are sir. I sent a request for access to this as well. It's the rturnzz deal e-mail thing. Please let me read. 
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Aug 24, 2012 14:23
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That monstrosity is only about 18,000 words away from being an actual novel.
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Aug 24, 2012 14:25
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And I will purchase it!
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Aug 24, 2012 14:27
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Thulsa Doom posted:There's a deliberate contrast between Cersei, Sansa, and Brienne. Hm, this is interesting. I definitely don't connect these three characters together in my mind (especially after watching the show, which either clarified or co-opted things from the original source where they did not exist intentionally in some cases). I see it more as pairings contrasting women and representing a light / dark or public / private power duology: Dany and Sansa, Cersei and Catelyn, Arya and Brienne, and maybe Asha and Margaery. And in some way I think they made a pairing of Ros and Shae as well. With Dany and Sansa, they are both young princesses bartered by their families to a ruler and have inverted journeys to similar destinations. The one who looks nice is a dick, and the one who looks savage is worthwhile. (I'm ignoring the rape implications in all of this because, GRRM.) Dany and Sansa both gain awareness through the first season and fight against their situations after it, but in opposite directions - Dany by smashing the rules and forcing others to submit, Sansa by internalizing the rules to the point where she can use them as a weapon against her captors. Dany becomes fire and Sansa becomes ice when asserting their power of individuality. There is a nice mirroring of their stories here, to the point where I'm hoping these two will be the final showdown for Westeros. The yin and the yang of the show. Cersei and Catelyn are tied by their defining characteristic or power of child-love, but their difference being that Cersei is basically proactive in her protection from trheats while Catelyn is essentially reactive. Arya and Brienne are tied by being warrior women, the power of physical force, but Brienne fights as a woman openly while Arya does so from the shadows. The fact that the Stark women here are all the ones working from the more shaded, less attention-grabbing position in the duo, is actually kind of poetic, and I wish I could believe it was intentional. Asha and Margaery do not desire children, only political power, and they represent its two sides - taking it by replacing a man for Asha, or taking it by marrying men for Margaery. And Ros and Shae could represent the public and private sides of sexual power (and the fact that they are the weakest of the characters shows what a weak power that is). Again this is something that's done a lot more in the show than it is in the books. I think you're right that the books are a lot more about confronting the stereotypes or preconceptions of male power, which isn't without merit I suppose. It just doesn't interest me as much, for obvious reasons. The show seems a little more balanced.
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Aug 24, 2012 14:29
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Fantasy writers are pretty awful at writing the opposite gender of their own. This is not really a new thing.
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Aug 24, 2012 14:33
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IRQ posted:Fantasy writers are pretty awful at writing the opposite gender of their own. This is not really a new thing. They're rooted in the mentality of an adolescent boy and adolescent boys can't understand anyone but themselves. The fantasy genre is the inside of a teenage boy's head as he reads The Lord of the Rings. Sophia posted:Hm, this is interesting. I definitely don't connect these three characters together in my mind (especially after watching the show, which either clarified or co-opted things from the original source where they did not exist intentionally in some cases). I see it more as pairings contrasting women and representing a light / dark or public / private power duology: Dany and Sansa, Cersei and Catelyn, Arya and Brienne, and maybe Asha and Margaery. And in some way I think they made a pairing of Ros and Shae as well. Shae is probably the most problematic character in the books. I think we're meant to take her at face value in all that she does, including her betrayal of Tyrion. The point of Shae is that whores are just whores and romantic notions about the hooker with a heart of gold are bullshit. It's a slap at another fantasy trope but in this case it's just mean spirited and doesn't say anything of real value. It also fits into a disturbing trend that women in Martin's world are harbingers of ruin, almost mystically so. Catelyn's actions lead to the direct fulfillment of the prophecy of the dead direwolf, Melisandre is actively hindering the appearance of Azor Ahai, Cersei has ruined everyone associated with her and is running the kingdom into the ground, and Dany undoes nations and is associated with apocalyptic imagery (the dragons, the ghost grass) and is arguably a sort of antichrist. In fact, I think, contrary to the notions that some have that she's supposed to end up incestuously marrying Jon and being his queen or something, she represents an antichrist to his messiah- Dany is a false prophet and the dragons represent a force of destruction.
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Aug 24, 2012 14:49
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Thulsa Doom posted:The social commentary in Martin's novels is by no means original or even particularly well executed (you mean war as an institution cruelly grinds down the soldiers while the aristocracy glorifies it? My word!) but it's somewhat refreshing in a genre that's dominated by while male fascist power fantasies. Even if ASOIAF is basically a fascist white male power fantasy. Thank you! Martin's sense of progressive politics is very much the stodgy, old-guy Democrat kind, but it is still progressive. He's basically the John Kerry of fantasy writers (politically).
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Aug 24, 2012 14:58
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Thulsa Doom posted:They're rooted in the mentality of an adolescent boy and adolescent boys can't understand anyone but themselves. The fantasy genre is the inside of a teenage boy's head as he reads The Lord of the Rings. Female fantasy writers are pretty awful at writing male characters too, but the genre is such a sausage festival that I can understand the generalization, and indeed it may hold true even when the author is a woman. tldr: fantasy is inherently pretty conservative and backward. I'll let Sophia write the essay on that one, she'll say it better than I can.
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Aug 24, 2012 14:58
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There are female fantasy writers? Are they also unicorns? The backwardness comes from the genre's inherent ties to violence. Every single fantasy story is about a problem that can only be solved through violence. Every. Single. One.
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Aug 24, 2012 14:59
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I'm not seeing the problem with books about violent things occuring violently. If you want to read a fantasy novel about a bloodless political machination, go ahead and write it, there may just be an audience for it; plenty of people are dismissive of fantasy because it is Swords 'n' Sorcery, maybe you can tap that market.
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Aug 24, 2012 15:05
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It's not that the stories contain violence, is that they're all set up to justify violence. The big bad macguffin allforce can never even possibly be defeated without killing something.
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Aug 24, 2012 15:13
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Thulsa Doom posted:There are female fantasy writers? Are they also unicorns? Sure, I can think of a few. None of them are unicorns though.  Blade_of_tyshalle posted:I'm not seeing the problem with books about violent things occuring violently. Because feminism-chat. lovely depictions of women because fantasy is backward and conservative because it's centered around violence. If you buy that train of thought. Do you need to agree/care? Up to you. I'll still read the poo poo because it entertains me and I'm not always looking for Literature.
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Aug 24, 2012 15:15
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IRQ posted:Sure, I can think of a few. None of them are unicorns though. Obviously, I wouldn't have bought a Conan-themed username and avatar if I eschewed the genre completely, but the constant re-treading of the same ground and the common factor of every big name author bogging their work down in their own personal hangups and fetishes is getting tiresome. I find it particularly annoying with Martin's work because there's a magnificent work that redeems the genre buried under a pile of figurative poo poo that gradually transforms into figurative poo poo. He had a strong start but now he is more poo poo than man, twisted and riddled with e-coli.
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Aug 24, 2012 15:21
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Thulsa Doom posted:Masculinity and manhood are of course key to the underlying themes of the series. The entire thing is about a resentment towards physical power and the masculine ideal of identity; the root cause of all of the conflict is various macho bullshit and the sympathetic or "badass" characters all have some background involving being physically bullied and underestimated by a society that values physical strength over mental ability. It somehow manages to be somewhat progressive in that direction while bring regressive in others; Littlefinger's motivation is literally that a jock beat him up and "stole" "his" girlfriend. Still, there's an underlying self awareness there since it's explicit in the text that Cat didn't have that sort of affection for him and he's just a creeper. The show hits the audience over the head with it, though. The problem is that GURM is stuck in an oroboros of immaturity and grudge settling that is too high on loving with its supposed audience to truly explore a fantastical world organically and with real meaning. GURM is plenty intelligent and has pretty substantial literary skills but his talent has pretty narrow boundaries (which his love of gaming has probably helped with, but who knows). Faux middle ages style politicking and war happenings is something where his passion obviously lies . But anything out of it, like near oriental civilizations or female heroines, are farted out with not much thought or deliberation (or worth). He's just not curious enough or empathetic enough to really plumb something very different from himself, or what he wants to be. IRQ posted:Fantasy writers are pretty awful at writing the opposite gender of their own. This is not really a new thing. Ursula Le Guin. Robin Cook. Madeline T'Engle (before she got all Christian-y). Doris Lessing. There are plenty of examples that show this not to be too steady a rule. But its a shame that I had to think about these names, or that they're so few. What is it about fantasy that makes it an almost boys club? Well, other than the sword fetishing I guess. Shageletic fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Aug 24, 2012 |
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Aug 24, 2012 15:41
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Thulsa Doom posted:The backwardness comes from the genre's inherent ties to violence. Every single fantasy story is about a problem that can only be solved through violence. Every. Single. One. I'm not sure that's true - LotR was solved by the destruction of a thing, I guess, but destruction of the old is always a part of change, which all stories need. And that was a relatively peaceful destruction. I think it's more that the people who write and read them like the violence (and the power that comes with it) so it's always up in there even when not needed. And I really want to reply to your awesome other post but I can't read this thread from work and phone typing sucks so hard. Stop talking about cool poo poo during my day!
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Aug 24, 2012 15:44
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Thulsa Doom posted:It also fits into a disturbing trend that women in Martin's world are harbingers of ruin, almost mystically so. I thought about bringing this up as well because I kind of agree (especially with regards to the religious or mystical sense) but I didn't because in honesty everyone is ruining poo poo on the regular including the men. The books are basically an exercise in loving yourself and everyone around you over by doing what you want rather than what you should. The women bear more of the burden of this on the whole, but it is a concept that exists for everyone.
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Aug 24, 2012 15:50
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That's the crux of it. What makes it obvious is that if you cut the Wall and Essos plotlines completely, that is completely removed them from the books, they'd still be basically the same. There's a few details here and there but he could have plotted around those. The Wall is someone tied in with the main plot but Essos is just out there in space, the characters themselves basically comment on it. Or, he could have come up with a better explanation for why his not-mongols don't invade not-europe than slapping an ocean where Poland would be. Seriously, look at the map. It's Eurasia with an arbitrary ocean splitting it. Sophia posted:I thought about bringing this up as well because I kind of agree (especially with regards to the religious or mystical sense) but I didn't because in honesty everyone is ruining poo poo on the regular including the men. The books are basically an exercise in loving yourself and everyone around you over by doing what you want rather than what you should. The women bear more of the burden of this on the whole, but it is a concept that exists for everyone. True, but the books take a specific attitude based on gender- the male fuckups are all about exercising honor and duty or sympathetic masculine things like Theon's desire to impress his father. When the women gently caress up, it's because they're stupid, incompetent, trying to break their natural role in society, or they're apparently some sort of magic anti-messiah. It's Daenerys that suffers from this most, but Catelyn also; they both are connected to the breaking and negative fulfillment of prophecies, because they insist on defying the wisdom of men (Ned's resolve to stay in Winterfell and sit out King's Landing politics, Drogo's understanding that he'll be fine when his wound closes, presumably since he's already had several that were as bad or worse and he was fine then). Thulsa Doom fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Aug 24, 2012 |
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Aug 24, 2012 15:51
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Shageletic posted:What is it about fantasy that makes it an almost boys club? Is this really a problem, though? Do people bemoan the lack of male authors in the romance section?
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Aug 24, 2012 15:52
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e: ^^^^^^ I don't think it's fair to compare fantasy to romance. Unless you read fantasy to jack off I guess.Shageletic posted:Ursula Le Guin. Robin Cook. Madeline T'Engle (before she got all Christian-y). Doris Lessing. Are you just listing female authors or ones that can write male characters well? I'm not familiar with any of those, at least not off the top of my head. IRQ fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Aug 24, 2012 |
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Aug 24, 2012 15:52
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Is this really a problem, though? Do people bemoan the lack of male authors in the romance section? There's more male authors in the romance section that you think. Using a female pen name is basically par for the course. Romance series publishers have really weird and specific guidelines, as a matter of fact.
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Aug 24, 2012 15:56
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Robot_Z posted:I sent a request for access to this as well. It's the rturnzz deal e-mail thing. Please let me read. Since you're not on the contributor's list, I gave you read-only access. For posting so nicely, you get a special sneak peek at the masterpiece. You'd better buy it and rate it five stars on Amazon when it comes out!  REMINDER!!!Today is the last day to show progress on your claimed chapters if you haven't showed us anything at all yet before your claim goes back up for grabs! After today, anyone can claim your chapters. If no one claims them, you can still lock them down by showing progress, but if someone else claims it you will lose it!
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Aug 24, 2012 15:57
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Is this really a problem, though? Do people bemoan the lack of male authors in the romance section? I'm sure when men become interested in reading romance there will be. They're just not there yet. Women are already interested in reading fantasy though. Tamora Pierce is hands down my favorite female fantasy author, though I can't speak to the authenticity of her male characters. They seemed okay to me, but it's hard to judge. She also writes in the medieval sphere, so everyone is a tough fighter, but they don't come off as brutishly macho.
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Aug 24, 2012 15:59
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thornghost posted:
Do I have to send it to that email or something? I have some poo poo done, but it's not finished.
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Aug 24, 2012 16:05
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Is this really a problem, though? Do people bemoan the lack of male authors in the romance section? Its only a problem for people that see a lot of great things in the genre. Having new takes from different viewpoints can only be a boon to it, and having the main voices found in it to have a somewhat similar ring only narrows the appeal, at least to me. IRQ posted:e: ^^^^^^ I don't think it's fair to compare fantasy to romance. Unless you read fantasy to jack off I guess. I listed some authors (though I meant Robin Hobb, not Cook) that I thought was a breath air for fantasy. That managed to add dimension to the emotions that can exist in the style of books (Hobb, check out the Farseer Trilogy) or an invigorating sense of empathy, and frankly, wisdom (most anything Le Guin wrote pretty much), or just a really original take on the genre (the Wrinkle of Time books, by L'engle, were a touchstone of my childhood). EDIT: And for the most part, their male characters are just as (or more even) fully realized as any others in the genre. Shageletic fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Aug 24, 2012 |
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Aug 24, 2012 16:08
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IRQ posted:I don't think it's fair to compare fantasy to romance. Unless you read fantasy to jack off I guess. They have a lot of commonalities, actually. They're mostly forgettable, escapist, bullshit churned out like a factory by an industry filled to bursting with mostly mediocre authors chasing trends in search of that sweet payday, with a few good authors here and there who upon achieving great success are instantly elevated to "literature" status by the public. They're really quite similar. I think the crossover between the two is the western genre, personally. Louis l'Amour and such. Thulsa Doom posted:There's more male authors in the romance section that you think. Using a female pen name is basically par for the course. The corollary is that fantasy has a bunch of female authors pretending to be men for the very same reason. Dorothy Fontana wrote for Star Trek, for instance, and had to "hide" behind her initials because people are derpy as all hell about this poo poo. Sophia posted:I'm sure when men become interested in reading romance there will be. They're just not there yet. Women are already interested in reading fantasy though. Why is it important to read a book by someone the same gender as you, though? I don't really get this part of the argument, sorry. Is it a feeling of "yeah, this person gets my point of view"?
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Aug 24, 2012 16:09
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Some of the best fantasy I've read struggles to be really good, but is weighed down by the author's weird gender politics. It's like they want to be more progressive than they are, but keep pulling back from it or ruining it with a conscious choice to show how hardcore they are by using the word "whore" a lot. It's sort of like those in-depth arguments you have with a hyperconservative where the right leading questions leads them to an almost-epiphany and then you see a flash of fear in their eyes and they raise their mental barriers in horror. Blade_of_tyshalle posted:
I have to admit, I never even thought about this before.I suppose it's a logical assumption since every big name female author that writes fantasy or scifi or whatever, especially series and licensed stuff, gets an incredible amount of poo poo at the drop of the hat. The readers definitely assume there's some kind of Feminist Agenda behind their work even if it's banal. I have to blame the audience as much as the writers. Nerds, collectively, demand mediocrity, they want everything they consume to be easily packaged and consumed and comfortable, ready to be identified with a superficial glance; they want to look at the cover the book and have a reasonable idea of what's inside and know that it won't challenge any of their power fantasies. Unless it's really over the top, like that guy who wrote a novel about alternate universe Hitler's fantasy novels. They eat that poo poo up. Thulsa Doom fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Aug 24, 2012 |
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Aug 24, 2012 16:11
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Why is it important to read a book by someone the same gender as you, though? I don't really get this part of the argument, sorry. Is it a feeling of "yeah, this person gets my point of view"? Mostly because the inability to write about people who are not like you is not limited by gender. Great writers can do it, of course, but as you point out very few great writers are drawn to fantasy or romance exclusively. All stories have aspects of these things, because life is full of fantasy and romance, but they are not the entirety of the work. And so, when you have people who can only write honestly about themselves, and stereotypically about everyone else, it is very grating to have every writer be essentially the same type of person. And it is really wearying when you are not like them. I enjoy a lot of books by guys who could not write a plausible three-dimensional woman to save their lives, but I don't enjoy it being every book. Variety in author-type adds spice to the genre that the authors have difficulty adding within their works.
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Aug 24, 2012 16:26
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I can certainly appreciate how perhaps we might want better writers of women than Brandon Sanderson and George RR Martin floating about. I think a lot of it comes from this odd engrained response a lot of guys are socialized into having, it's like an avoidance or even dismissal of women's personhood? I'm not sure how to put my thumb on it, but I guess if I run in circles screaming PATRIARCHY loud enough, you'll understand. I know a lot of dudes who think women are like this other species entirely, and I can only imagine them trying to write a woman with that mindset. I imagine there would be a lot of skirt-smoothing and braid-tugging.
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Aug 24, 2012 17:36
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Shageletic posted:I listed some authors (though I meant Robin Hobb, not Cook) that I thought was a breath air for fantasy. That managed to add dimension to the emotions that can exist in the style of books (Hobb, check out the Farseer Trilogy) Robin Hobb was actually who I had in mind when I was saying women fantasy authors suck at writing men, heh.
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Aug 24, 2012 17:41
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IRQ posted:Robin Hobb was actually who I had in mind when I was saying women fantasy authors suck at writing men, heh. HOW DARE YOU HAVE OPINIONS DIFFERENT THAN ME
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Aug 24, 2012 18:15
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