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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25595 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 18, 2025

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There's a pretty decent number of women authors who just write male-focused or general fiction, especially for teen and young adult audiences. See Diane Duane (the first three Young Wizards and then Book of Night With Moon are highlights) or (and 6/6 of Erin Hunter) for better-known examples. It's probably more interesting to talk about women writing female-oriented-relationship-stuff in ways guys wouldn't be repulsed by. For that... :

  • Diana Wynne Jones is best-known these days for Howl's Moving Castle, but I like to recommend her Dark Lord of Derkholm and Year of the Griffin as good examples of stories that have a plot, but are about relationships. In Derkholm (tl;dr: fantasy send-up of portal fantasy from the view of the world's natives who are treated as a tourist spot, as a commentary on industrialized evil and pointy-haired bosses), between the main character and his wife and family, and with his immediate peers; in Year of the Griffin (tl;dr wizard school story with the interesting twist that the main characters don't struggle to fit in) between the protagonists and a society that they don't know if they can trust.
  • CJ Cherryh's more standard scifi fare, and she's no Zahn, but she's a pretty good writer, and especially Chanur is driven by relationships far more than tactics or technobabble, but still hits that Pernish 'there's an actual plot, it's just not faffing and then suddenly everybody's friends/lovers'.
  • Bujold should go without saying, but the Vorkorsigan saga is very much about phrasing women-relationship-things into forms men and especially young men are trying to grow into: honor, loyalty, trustworthiness, and legitimate use of force. I'll recognize that Gentleman Jole isn't very good, but Komarr, Memory, Cetaganda, just very strong each.
  • Mercedes Lackey... is mixed. Valdemar is Very female, even by the standards of Telecoms (if you liked that bit of Pern) or Romantic Fantasy; the Elemental Masters series (and not-quite-part-of-it Fire Rose) are extremely well revised takes on classical fairie tales in ways that are more enjoyable reads than technically impressive. But she's pretty much a distillation of what guys say they don't like, without the obnoxious parts that they don't like about it.
  • Tamora Piece is more male-friendly and often technically better, but in turn it's less clearly women's-relationship-writing in most works, if still less could-pass-as-male as Duane.

((That said, I'm one of probably thirty people on the planet who liked Darkship Thieves, so my taste is... not very refined.))

EDIT: for a 'do they follow the Hero's Journey' rule, I'd say most of them fit pretty well. No on Fire Rose and there's a couple of the Vorkorsigan books that break from it, though they've still got the 'failed-to-do-thing, developed-skills, do-the-thing' bit. Year of The Griffin's Abyss is pretty shallow -- it's a ultimately a comedy -- but the points are there and somewhat refreshing for not just slapping the Harry Potter-style stuff in. Book of Night With Moon's Abyss is both deep and realistic enough (Satan kills the viewpoint character's mom and drowns The New Guy's siblings such that he contributed to their deaths to survive) that I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for younger readers, but the mirrors to the Monomyth actually play a pretty big role in the denouement.

There's a pretty decent number of women authors who just write male-focused or general fiction, especially for teen and young adult audiences.

I recently delved into LitRPG/Cultivation sphere, which I think is somwhat newish offhoot of scifi/fantasy genre and is at least adjacent to YA scene/audience. And to be frank, I start to think that female protagonists like in surprisingly interesting Azarinth Healer series may work better in that context. The male protagonists in many of these stories are some combination of weak whiners, being overshadowed and constantly scolded/humiliated by female side characters, having weird fetish/harem sidestories and more.

The pet theory of mine is that feminism is basically projection of male virtues/characteristics on females. Terrible girl-bossing is just projection of what feminists view as toxic masculinity on women: aggressive know-it-alls, emotionless or even cruel leaders etc. If the author can do modicum of work to reign that tic at least a little bit, they can actually end up with decent formerly male character only in skirt. With female protagonist you will not see her being literally hit on head if she says something "dumb", scolded for being a creep, being told that she is an idiot, humiliated or womensplained for not knowing something or any other type of terrible writing now so prevalent with male heroes. Or to me more precise even if they are addressed like that, they have a mature response to it.

It reminds me of the story how the character of Ellen Ripley from Alien was originally written for male actor and how it surprisingly worked well for female - especially in a world where only women are allowed to have oldschool male traits/virtues.

Mercedes Lackey... is mixed. Valdemar is Very female, even by the standards of Telecoms

...huh. Wasn't expecting to see a link to one of my own old posts.

Mind if I ask what prompted you to keep a link to it?

You've got a strong skill for explanations available to outsiders, so I've got a pretty decent number in that category. Here you also go into both the appeal of the genre and a lot of its weaknesses, and how they could be much stronger if writers engaged with them more critically, in ways that even a lot of strong fans of the genre (and even some Digimon fans!) tend to overlook.

Well, uh... awkward. And a bit embarrassing. But glad it resonated, and thank you for answering.

Cheers!

((That said, I'm one of probably thirty people on the planet who liked Darkship Thieves, so my taste is... not very refined.))

I liked it okay, for what was basically Heinlein fan-fiction with a self-insert Mary Sue.

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