you know whatās really genuinely unsettling? the degree to which men fucking do not want to sympathize with/be interested in women.
male audiences will happily watch a dozen superhero shows, but then something like Agent Carter or Supergirl turn up and theyāre panned from the first trailer and have to struggle for ratings. male audiences will watch countless installments of a franchise as long as itās about men doing man things but the second a character like Rey or Furiosa or god forbid four entire female Ghostbusters steps up and takes a position of prominence itāsĀ āpandering sjw bullshitā.
itās not pandering. men just aggressively donāt want to have to be invested in a womanās narrative and itās really gross.
anyway re: everyone telling me toĀ āStop making this a gender thingā or some variation on that
this isnāt likeā¦ an opinion Iām pulling out of my ass here? this starts where earlier than tv shows and hollywood blockbusters, when all the kids in a class are reading Harry Potter or Percy Jackson or Eragon o Lord of the Rings or Maze Runner or whatever the hip book is right now. the books like that, the ones that become popular reading, are overwhelmingly about male leads, because male is still considered the default.Ā
thereās a split in YA literature, between books that areĀ āfor everyoneā andĀ āfor girlsā, and thatās honestly the entire issue in a tiny little box right there. stories about men are supposed to be accessible for everyone, but stories about girls are seen as 1.) inherently for women and 2.) something that only women will care about.
men grow up in a society that doesnāt make them go out of their way to get into the heads of women and empathize with then. historically itās been very easy for men to not engage with female-led media if they donāt want to, whereas (like someone else commented on this post) girls and women have had very little choice in the past because everything was about men. we didnāt even question it.
and now the women are arriving in mainstream media in ways that say theyāre important and they matter and
small (or sometimes not so small) but loud-enough-to-be-acknowledged groups of men lose. their. shit.
because they think thereās something inherently Not For Them about a womanās story, and they never learned how to deal with it.
(also once again, because Ā LOT of yaāll donāt seem to get this here: Iām trying to talk about knee-jerk reactions to female-centered works – often before they even come out. not whether or not you personally thought [x show or movie] was good. ya feel?)
i donāt think iāve ever read a single post that iāve agreed with so totally and so immediately and hereās why:
i love books, right? and from the ages of about 11-15 i was insanely invested in teenage/ya fantasy and sci-fi. harry potter, percy jackson, all of the books op listed above- and one of the things that made those books so great was that you could have a conversation about them with anyone! a lot of the guys in my class also loved this type of genre and iād often talk about books with them (even my own brother has read all of the books listed above) weād have long, interesting conversations about these books and it was great.
but then iād mention something about the hunger games, or the divergent series, or uglies, the raven cycle, mara dyer, the mortal instruments, the selection, etc. and the response would always be the same: eitherĀ āi havenāt read itā orĀ āi couldnāt get into itā orĀ āit doesnāt seem like my type of thingā
even outside of the ya genre, looking at something like contemporary fiction or whatever- do you know how many guys will talk endlessly about the great gatsby or catcher in the rye or any other male-centric novel? but when you bring up something as influential as pride and prejudice or jane eyre or practically /anything/ written by/focused around a woman- you get the same responses as before
society has made it so that women have no choice whether to engage with male-centric stories or not: from children, a big portion of the media we consume focuses on the male perspective and like,,, thatās not necessarily a bad thing /in itself/- the bad thing is that it doesnāt work both ways and itās not an even split. whereas young girls are surrounded by and expected to empathise with films/books/media concerning men, itās not the same for young boys: they have narratives that either focus entirely or largely around them.Ā
women have no trouble consuming media that focuses on a male narrative because itās been labelled as the default, the ānormalā- whereas men struggle to watch/read anything that doesnāt focus around them because theyāve never /had/ to.
This is very much true from a race angle as well. White men are the main characters in nearly every piece of popular media. Because that is the mainstream, nearly all people consume it. All people learn to empathize with white men and see them as fully fleshed out human beings – even internalizing the idea of white men as the default human being.
White men, however, only have to be exposed to narratives about themselves. They have to go out of their way to find something NOT about them. When theyāre exposed to any piece of media thatās not about them, they feel left out because theyāve literally never known what it is to be left out of media unless theyāve intentionally sought out narratives about POC/ women. Very few actually seek out those narratives because not being centered is unbearably foreign and uncomfortable to them.
If we want to change this, we need to stop telling boys, āno, this toy/book/show is for girls.ā Start giving them books and shows that have diverse characters at a young age. Donāt let your kids reach adulthood without challenging white male supremacy in media by introducing them to things by and about POC/women in general. If you have a white son, this is especially crucial.
Haha this is why im not paying to see a male movie. Im not buying tickets or dvds of male stars. Writers. Or directors
@actuallyhashtag full offense but I donāt want approval from trans exclusive feminists, thanks
[Image description: A series of tweets by Low Level Yankee Luminary, @bombsfall. They are transcribed below as text broken into paragraphs by tweet.]
We need a name for a thing Iām about to describe. *I* need a name for it at least. Iām sure thereās a name for it.
Thereās a modern (or at least louder in modern era) tendency in both fiction and the interpretation of fiction that every narrative be some sort of very specific kind of hyper-literal puzzle box that can beĀ āsolvedā by wiki and lore and clues
and that this is in fact the goal of fiction, to create such a thing, the raw materials for this after-the-fact puzzle solving.
All aspects of a work must be read hyper-literally so that they can all be made into puzzle pieces. Metaphors canāt really exist except to further the puzzle-solving. All parts are gears, locks, or keys, essentially.
I saw someone refer to this as wiki-culture, but thatās already a term. Itās a good one for this, though.
There are a lot of stories that follow these assumptions that I like, btw! Not saying that itāsĀ ālowerā. Just that it is often assumed to be theĀ ācorrectā way to do or interpret narrative and that leads to very specific kinds of storytelling and story reading
The replies on this are really great on this already and Iāll RT some in a bit. First, some context:
After we released our game I was really blown away by how large the hunger was for really concrete literal explanations for things that were by design shadowy and vague and open to interpretation.
But like, not in the sense ofĀ āhey Iām curiousā, butĀ āhey you left this out, when are you going to finish it or write the backstory lore etcā
Or, for example, we spent a lot of time on in-world fiction. Stories about constellations, fairytales, religious narratives. And Iād get emails asking if Mae was the descendant of an in-world fictional character. B/c what was the point of the in-world fiction otherwise?
The fairytales have to have a literal fact basis that directly drives the literal facts in the primary plot. They need genealogies. Birthrights. Gear A needs to turn Gear Q, etc.
And again, let me stress, thereās nothing wrong with stories that do this kind of thing. I like a lot of them! But this mode of /analysis/ just doesnāt lend itself to discussing themes, or metaphor, or subjectivity. And those are to me the most interesting parts of stories.
And it leads to seeing things that arenāt written like that as incomplete or broken or full ofĀ āpointlessā bits. Itās like reading Watchmen and trying to figure out how Tales of the Black Freighter literally fits into the literal history of not just the world, but the main cast.
Like Ozymandius needs to be the great great grandson of the guy from Freighter, a thing that actually happened, or else itās just a vestigial pointless frustrating addition.
ppl who dont even like shakespeare: WOW how DARE you alter the original text these are CLASSICS have you no RESPECT, going around DESECRATING these sacred texts in the name of POLITICAL CORRECTNESS!!!!!!!!!
people who love shakespeare: im going to stage a production of hamlet where all the actors are dogs
In the same vein as otherĀ āthings humans do that aliens might be weirded out byā what if human pattern recognition skills were the thing? Like the ability to see a cloud resolve into a dog, or faces in wall patterns. Stuff that evolved from predators having camouflaging abilities, or letās face it, bugs that can look basicaly like a leaf to prey ON.Ā
Imagine an alien being super confounded by a human being likeĀ āoh, that control board looks like a faceā and itās just this big grouping of random lights and line but no ALL the humans on board think it looks like a FACE and theyve started NAMING it. And it just seems so confusing- is there anything on this flat painted wall?Ā āNo of course notā HOW IS THERE AN OF COURSE NOT. What about in that galaxy? And the human squints and stares at it and saysĀ āyeah, it looks like a cat.ā
And they an draw out what theyāre recognizing in the lines but itās just so strange.Ā
And then an enemy developsĀ ācloaking technologyā thatās based on camouflaging and are so angry that every single human is able to point it out because itās a completely obvious moving shape to them.Ā
or: alien species are introduced to leaf insects, tigers, and that one octopus that imitates a coconut and freak the heck out.
god I love this kind of post
āWhat do you mean you can still see me?ā
The humans in the room, all four of them that were invited to witness The Garālikxāit councilās unveiling of the newest cloaking technology, stare at the Grand Iikxiir with confusion.
The leader of the scientific core spoke, the translator kicking in a moment later, āSir, I uh.. I mean, itās just clothing patterned to match the wallpaper.ā
A second human added, āI.. I uh mean, itās not even done well, sir? The pattern is off at the seams,ā
Iikxiir clicked irritably as the other humans moved their singular cranial structures in unison, several adding the now-recognizable agreement hum in their chest cavities. āIt took our top engineers 9 solar cycles to come up with this!ā
āUhm, I donāt mean to speak out of turn, but perhaps maybe Stu could help?ā said the leader, gesturing to the larger human seated at the back, āHeās pretty handy with sewing, could at the very least adjust the pattern to matchā¦ but, Uhm..ā
āItās green, sir.ā
Iikxir flicked itās eyestalks towards the reverberation, āWhat is green?ā
āItās a color sir. We can see them, and uhā¦ the wallās blue.ā
[Image is a thread of tweets from Micro SF/F stories (@MicroSFF), which read as follows:
The robot opened itself, took out five power cells, and placed them at the pentagram points. Not blood, but it hoped the sacrifice would do.It began the incantation. A sticky darkness fell over the center of the pentagram, the power cells exploded, and a shadowy figure appeared.The demon probed the mystic bonds, then turned to the robot. āWhy have you summoned me?ā āDo I have a soul?ā āWould you bargain with it?āāDo I have a soul?ā the robot repeated. āA machine can not summon or bind my kind,ā the demon said. āYes, you have a soul. Do you offer it?āāNow I know,ā the robot said, and performed the banishment ritual. It could not smile, nor frown, but stood still in thought. āNow I know.ā The End]
why are wlw books so angsty and deep all the time like where is my casual wlw romcom or my fantasy lesbians, space bis and trans princesses like not every wlw has some lost love in some town in the middle of nowhere
I live for posts like this, because there are soooo many good f/f books out there that donāt get the attention they deserve because of the way wlw are marginalized. So!
Here are some recs for casual/feel-good f/f representation! All links are to my reviews.
Promises, Promises – parody of LotR/D&D starring three lesbians on a quest for magical stuff
Everything Leads to You – Hollywood f/f YA about a young set designer who falls for a girl she meets under mysterious circumstances
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet – ensemble-castĀ ācrew of a spaceshipā story. Mostly just random adventures, includes a f/f couple who survive the book.
Roller Girl – contemporary f/f romance about trans woman who joins a roller derby team
Not fluffy, but the angst is SFF-stress rather thanĀ āliving under homophobia/biphobiaā stress:
Ascension– queer disabled ladies fighting Big Pharma in spaceāyou wanted space biās, come get your space biās (actually, if you want more space biās also check out the anthology Fierce Family.)
Chameleon Moon – review is of an earlier edition and I hear the new one has even more great representation. Trans woman superhero with two female partners living in a dystopian city thatās on lockdown from the government after everyone develops mutant powers in response to a wonderdrug.
Not Your Sidekick – in the future, what happens when your parents are superheroes but you never developed powers? You intern for the baddie, of course! MC is bi and ends up in a f/f relationship, and the sequel will star her trans bestie.
Hope this helps. Feel free to browse myĀ ālesbian booksā tag for more recs (there are bi/pan girls in some of those recs, too.)
I mean, this is basically true ā f/f fluff is kinda the cornerstone of my body of writing š (Thanks!)
All I Want For Christmas by Clare Lydon – Fluffy wlw romantic comedy (I know itās not really in season at the moment but itās so cute)
Gay Pride and Prejudice by Kate Christie – What it says on the tin. Elizabeth Bennett is a lesbian and the haughty Caroline Bingley is the last woman she could ever be prevailed upon to love.
Heart Trouble by Jae – A doctor gets shocked by a defibrillator while saving a womanās life in the ER. Now they have a soul bond!
Finding Ms Write by Jae & Jove Belle – Collection of short stories about women who love women and also love books.
The Wind City by Summer Wigmore – Urban fantasy drawing on Maori mythology. Protagonist describes herself asĀ āat least 60% gayā and falls in love with a monster girl.
Sword of the Guardian by Merry Shannon – Bi princess and lesbian bodyguard fall in love.
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