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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25592 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 18, 2025

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Worm was written by a man, and it shows. So was Practical Guide to Evil. It shows so hard that you can clock the author's sex just by reading the book, even when they use a totally sexless pseudonym and write an opposite sex protagonist.

A quick check confirms that Samus was created by a man as well.

If you've ever read chicklit, the difference is obvious. A female author of a female protagonist will linger on her interactions with every remotely relationship-appropriate male, to make sure the reader knows how desirable he is, and the flavor of his desire for the main character. Is he a good friend who respectfully hides it? A burning frenemy who offers aid even though he shouldn't? A simp?

As a man, reading that sort of book is alien in a way that few other things in sci-fi or fantasy manage. Like, you really go through life keenly aware that most men you interact with are at least some level of interested in you? Just because? As the default?

There is a male version of this, called "glazing", but it takes the form of gratuitous reaction shots to something impressive the male character has just done.

But women can more easily imagine being showered in attention and praise for doing something impressive than men can envision a world where they are loved and wanted just for existing.

Disclaimer: I think that last category might actually exist in anime, but I don't watch enough to know for sure.

It's amusing how online women will complain about "men writing women."

Yet, the archetypal outcome of a male author writing a female protagonist for a male audience is an unrealistically strong and independent badass female protagonist, like Samus or Lara Croft.

The archetypal outcome of a female author writing a female protagonist for a female audience is a realistically passive, hypoagentic female protagonist, like Bella from Twilight or Anastasia from 50 Shades of Grey.

It's also annoying because women aren't exactly better at writing men. I've seen some truly awful caricatures of what women think men are like (mainly from books my wife reads, and then asks me "is this accurate"). Yet the "men writing women" complainers act like this is a uniquely male offense. They don't seem to understand (or perhaps don't want to understand) that it's simply hard to get in the head of the opposite sex.

I swear you gotta find chinese cultivation literature written by women for women. The guys there are the angstiest most memory addled (literally necessary every female cultivation novels male protag gets hit by pans/trucks/magic/curses every 5 minutes) wangstfests ever. The men will have an all consuming inciting incident that traumatized them and they will have no plan of action (or a ridiculous 2 million step rube goldberg plan nothing in between) that cannot be resolved unless the female acts as the motivating force for them to move forward. After that its just endless emotional traumas and memory wipes to torture the protag and the male love interests repeatedly so the denouement of love declarations can be made over and over and over again.

Any idea on what's the source of mind wipe obsession?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Sm61Fau9w7k?si=z-rOmvg1_LzKWMBF

There are so many layers of doublethink about it, but like many other bits of feminist media criticism, "men writing women" complaints are fundamentally horror at the thought that a man might ever have sexual thoughts about a woman without permission (both her permission and the permission of You, The Female Observer). Any realism concerns are a fig leaf. All of this is trivially revealed, say, when women make a "men writing women" complaint and are then embarrassed to discover that the writer was a woman writing for women about her real nigh-universal woman experiences which they already knew they shared when making the complaint.

Closely related: women policing "unrealistically" attractive female characters as a crude disguise for envy that they're prettier than them.

Like, you really go through life keenly aware that most men you interact with are at least some level of interested in you? Just because? As the default?

Mate, in the last Culture War thread we had someone on here commenting about that immigrant case saying that sure, it's totes normal for an adult man to want to bang a 15 year old girl (because men are wired to be attracted to youth and fertility). Women do learn early that simply having boobs and a pulse gets you male attention in the "I'd hit that" sense. Not that they're interested in you as a person, that's where the fantasy wish-fulfilment comes in.

I'm not saying it isn't true, or at least very common. I'm saying that as a man who is usually invisible, it's not something I can easily relate to.

Yeah, it's tough for men. But for women, it's not attention as "here you are as a person", it's "here's boobs on legs". Visibility, sure, but might as well be invisibility. Some women work that angle, but when you're fourteen and growing into womanly features this kind of "every male from fourteen to forty is looking at my tits" is not the boon it might appear.

I wasn't thinking about it in a sort of "grass is greener" sense (I really am quite happy being invisible!) It strikes me more as a people vs things dichotomy. Like, the detailed flourishes of the attention are the draw of the work, for women readers, where as it's just not for male readers. And that isn't to say that women don't appreciate some plot, or men some interpersonal character moments. But I observe a sort of fascination from one or the other that serves as a fairly reliable tell.

And I would bet that for women authors, delivering satisfying amounts of good attentions, and satisfying comeuppances for bad attention is possibly the most important skill in their craft.

I'm the worst potential audience in the world for "romantasy" (and believe me, Tonstant Weader Fwowed up when I learned this neologism) so I can't speak for the mass audience of women readers of such stuff.

But I think it's more about soft porn (as per the devolution of the Anita Blake series) than romantic attention, as having two or more supernatural beings lusting after your PI/Wiccan/half-Fae heroine means you can stuff in the adult scenes that publishers crave for page-turning appeal; you can describe the ravaging by the werewolf tech executive founder of the billion-dollar startup on pages sixteen to twenty, then go for the seduction by the vampire biker gang leader on pages thirty to thirty four, and maybe throw in some will they-won't they UST between your hard-boiled heroine and her on-again/off-again boyfriend who's a half-demon sorceror running his own rival paranormal detective agency sprinkled all through the novel (volume six of the fifteen - and growing! - volume Susie Superb, Witch Attorney series, on sale in every good bookstore now!)

See Laurell Hamilton's Merry Gentry series, where she completely lost the plot, as the main focus is "I gotta get pregnant so I need to bang every single hot guy I encounter". All this is for ostensibly magical purposes, so that's why she has to have sex with fairies, humans, every other supernatural being, etc., but that's only the figleaf for "and now here's sexual encounter number fifty-six".

EDIT: I think the main difference between men and women readers of erotica (shall we say) is that the guys will go straight for the Hawt Action without much need for justifying it, but women need a lead in (hence the establishing of the love-hate relationship between Hot Guy Numbers One Through Four and the heroine before they bang, or the Merry Gentry "The Goddess said we have to bang so we can get our old magic powers back. Yeah, it's a divine command, so strip now").

glazing

Why have I never seen this word before this week, and yet like eighteen references in the last few days, each of which is presented in such a way as to help normalize it? Is this a psyop?

I don't think we had a lexical gap here. I don't think a new word is called for, and if it were, I definitely don't think it should be that one. Nothing about this feels organic or warranted.

For me, this was back in April with "crashout." These things come and these things go.

Why have I never seen this word before this week, and yet like eighteen references in the last few days, each of which is presented in such a way as to help normalize it? Is this a psyop?

It's popping up because it is slang and then it got picked up in the tech-sphere (which is highly adjacent to here) as the term of choice for the behavior of LLMs being overly supportive in chats.

It's all over the place right now because of people complaining about LLMs and then a bunch people picking up and using a youth term because "neat new" and "how do you do fellow kids."

I picked it up from my son, and it really feels like a perfect term to describe the thing in a lot of progression fantasy where the MC does something impressive, and then the focus swaps out to random other characters just to show how jaw-dropped impressed they are at how that was IMPOSSIBLE!

It hits a sweet spot as a specific term for unsightly over-praise.

Meng Hao walked into the McDonald's. The cultivator taking his order gave a derisive snort, but Meng Hao did not really care, because he had repressed his aura down to the Single Patty Realm, and a fool would not be able to tell his true level of burger eating.

"Give me... a Happy Meal!"

The cultivator's face flickered before he finally regained his composure and laughed. "You couldn't afford a Happy Meal. Get lost! Don't you see that there are Double Quarter Pounder Realm eaters waiting behind you?"

Meng Hao slapped his bag of holding and threw 80 billion spirit McDonald's coupons onto the counter, causing an earthquake which demolished half of the restaurant. Everyone dropped their jaws. None could see how this was possible!

Please, for the love of dog, actually fucking write this. I NEED to see the Burger Xianxia cinematic universe.

The full copypasta:

Meng Hao walked into the McDonald's. The cultivator taking his order gave a derisive snort, but Meng Hao did not really care, because he had repressed his aura down to the Single Patty Realm, and a fool would not be able to tell his true level of burger eating.

"Give me... a Happy Meal!"

The cultivator's face flickered before he finally regained his composure and laughed. "You couldn't afford a Happy Meal. Get lost! Don't you see that there are Double Quarter Pounder Realm eaters waiting behind you?"

Meng Hao slapped his bag of holding and threw 80 billion spirit McDonald's coupons onto the counter, causing an earthquake which demolished half of the restaurant. Everyone dropped their jaws. None could see how this was possible!

"I'll take that Happy Meal with a side order of fries, " Meng Hao said. He was as calm as the ocean in a painting of an insanely calm ocean. "And let me see your manager!"

The cashier cultivator coughed up a mouthful of ketchup. He simply could not handle Meng Hao's killing intent, because he was only at the Quarter Pounder with Cheese realm himself. Even though Meng Hao had suppressed his aura, because he had cultivated the Heavenly Burgin' Qi, this was enough to kill people a few levels higher if he truly wanted.

It was then that another man which a much more fierce aura stepped forward. "You dare make trouble here?"

"P... Patriarch Hamburglar!"

Patriarch Hamburglar was 99 cents of the way into the Big Mac Realm, plus tax! Meng Hao was pushed back two feet, knocking over a soda machine. Powerade Mountain Berry Blast geysered outward, killing several onlookers.

Of course, Mayor McCheese saw all this happen through the window.

Meng Hao coughed up a mouthful of blood, snorted, constricted his pupils, and then his expression went calm. He unleashed the aura of 64 patties, condensed down to a 2 patty stack that could fit into his mouth!

Mayor McCheese coughed up a mouthful of cheese. His pupils constricted.

"Is this... Seeking the McRib stage??"

Meng Hao had the gentle air of a scholar, but it wouldn't stop him from killing several people in a McDonald's.

"Burger Devouring Scripture! I'm Lovin' It!"

With the first keyword of the Burger Devouring Scripture, everyone below the early Quarter Pounder With Cheese stage exploded into purple mist. The light of the immense heavenly burger shone down with the contours of a golden arch as 9 illusory burgers floated around Meng Hao's body, which is probably an important xianxia number that matches the number of lakes in some sacred Chinese province I've never heard of. But that was only a fraction of Meng Hao's power. He waved his arm, bringing forth thirty more cultivation techniques that hadn't appeared in over 400 chapters!

"Heavenly Tribulation Fries! Eastern Everburning Egg McMuffin! Fruit Smoothie Guillotine! Soul McCafe Mocha Incarnation!"

Meng Hao's expression was the same as ever as he slapped his bag of holding, and brought out his karmic ketchup packet, Fry Cook Lord medallion, seventeen different wooden time spatulas, a five-coloured resurrection coupon, the silk burger wrapper, various souls of lightning McNuggets that he may or may not still have, and his mask of the legacy of Ronald McDonald. Oh, and the image of a flying Chicken Snack Wrap dragon appeared. Remember that? It was basically his Main Thing at the start of the novel, but quietly faded into irrelevance. Until now!

All of this takes some time to describe, but actually happened in the space of only a few breaths.

"What! Impossible!"

Meng Hao wanted to summon the parrot as well, but it was too overcome with eroticism by the purple fur depicted on a nearby poster of Grimace, and was busy drilling out a glory hole straight through the poster, and the wall it was pinned to, with its strong parrot erection.

But it was more than enough. The Hamburglar's soul flew out and was absorbed into his mask! He screamed as his body was destroyed completely.

Meng Hao brushed off his robe and swept up his spirit coupons and everyone's bags of holding which probably didn't have any cool sh*t inside unless I write him into a corner later, and anyways, don't worry about it for now. He surveyed the rubble that was all that remained of the McDonald's.

"Guess I'll be taking that Happy Meal... to go!"

Originally from this review of I Shall Seal the Heavens.

Thank you for giving me pointers elder brother

kowtows

It's a copypasta that's been around for ages.

Is there a parody yet of the fake-hero archetype, in which everyone around the main lead thinks they are an amazing cultivating power-scaler, and in reality they're a bumbling fake?

That sounds very much like Let This Grieving Soul Retire!: Woe Is the Weakling Who Leads the Strongest Party, which got an anime adaption last year. It's not cultivation though, just Japanese light-novel/webnovel fantasy.

Japan has its own demonstrations of the trope. Not as often as the leading main character, since those tend towards being crouching moron-hidden badass tropes. The Irresponsible Captain Tylor is about the only one I can loosely remember that played the 'could actually be incompetent' card... mostly straight?

Still, the 'incompetent but presumed hypercomptent' is a bit more common in supporting cast characters. One of the most famous examples is Hercule Satan from Dragonball Z. An actual legitimate world-class martial arts champion... who is hopeless in the context of the super-human saiyan power scaling. (And yet, is also the only person to survive fighting both of the end-game DBZ arc villains.)

King from One Punch?

Nah. One Punch doesn't work on Cultivator tropes, for most of the cast at least.

I'm thinking something like a genre-adapted version of Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM, whose reputation is wildly exagerrated beyond his actual skills. Which aren't inconsiderable, but still fall in the 'runs away into glory.'

For a cultivator parody, I'd imagine it being someone who is so clueless/innocuous, the cultivators around them think they are so OP that they're just pretending to be weak and clueless. And thus, the caution of all the cultivators around them convincing more cultivators to be on guard / cautious, leading to more unchallenged innocuousness.

More comments

I am both dispirited by the increasing influence of Chinese cultivator tropes, and cheered by the reminder that, yes, people are people (and often have bad taste).

What's this, Snow Crash fan fiction?

Gotta make it present tense for that.

It's used widely elsewhere in modern zoomer-ish parlance from what I can tell.

A quick search indicates that this forum saw its first use of "glaze" in this sense 11 months ago.

Why have I never seen this word before this week, and yet like eighteen references in the last few days, each of which is presented in such a way as to help normalize it? Is this a psyop?

It's relatively new, but I've seen it around more than one week. What you observe happens with all buzzwords, including "psyop".

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