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Interestingly enough I am a fan of LitRPG and progression fantasy and this space is absolutely horrible. It is riddled with various feminist tropes that make it unreadable for me and I think large part of male population. In general this slop genre is riddled with something I call "nagging female companion", that literally abuses the nerdy incel male hero to oblivion while at the same time serves as some kind of supposed "prize" and "source of tension". The hero needs to power up in order to deserve romantic interest from such a bitch and he swoons over her for no reason, while she does not bring any value to him except of nagging, disrespect and drama. She is there just as a foil and to keep the hero back. The author Phil Tucker is king of this genre, such as with his Dawn of The Void series where the hero is literal homeless alcoholic who shares System Apocalypse with literal female crackhead to whom he trauma bonds. I did not manage to read too far into it, but the start is literal toxic abuse that would be grounds for immediate decapitation if it was not female "companion" but some male villain.
Paradoxically one way to avoid this is by having a female protagonist, you have rare Ellen Rippley style character like in Azarinth Healer, where by virtue of being female she does not give a shit about some nagging disrespecting sidechick. Other escape is autistic power fantasy of male protagonist who does not give a shit such as in Primal Hunter or Defiance of the Fall and the like - who are basically Conan The Barbiarian style pulp fiction male fantasy characters with extra steps. However these are surprisingly rare. It is impossible to find genre where you have just bunch of male friends doing the progression and apocalypse, while women are actually supportive of them and do not create some stupid drama or are just background noise. Even military litrpg authors cannot help themselves and they do have to introduce some version of hated purple haired Admiral Holdo wannabe or some sarcastic and sassy katana wielding female Captain Marvel type of character.
And that is just feminist tropes. Other tropes are sarcastic nihilist know-it-all moron who moralizes over world where he was Isekaied - ideally telling them how slavery or religion is bad, throwing some bad and dated cultural puns plus literal Atheism+ with dense dose of progressive spices - one example is Jason from He Who Fights with Monsters. Other than that there is the anime incel tropes of some gamer moron who is dumb, stupid and mentally and socially inept but somehow became The Chosen One by sheer luck. But the most time it is all three, a moralizing Atheism+ moronic dumb incel being the Chosen one, who has some nagging combative female sidechick or at least some system who is there to create drama and tension and with whom he trauma bonds, and who throws bad dated puns and Young Adult/Marvel style of grating supposedly comedic relief that has no place in the setting. The landscape is very dry to be sure.
Sounds like the issue isn’t that the “nagging female companion” trope is too unrealistic, it’s that it’s too realistic of a depiction of many marriages—thus taking the escapism out of it and/or hitting too close to home.
I take it you aren’t a fan of girlpower quips like this one from X-Men?
“By the way, the women are always saving the men around here. You might want to think about changing the name to X-Women.”
Sure, I guess many of these are just projections of author, including using heroes as mouthpieces for their ideology. There are so many ruined projects. For instance there was Steel Foundations - a 16th century knight from Holy Roman Empire is Isekaied into medieval fantasy world with levels and skills. What an amazing premise. Only the protagonist is not a 16th century knight, but basically your cookie-cutter nerd from San Francisco. He hates religion and he was a secret atheist, he actually hates authorities and he is secretly liberal, he takes shit from girlbosses around him and he is all for women equity. While he is is an atheist who mocks religion he at the same time loves to meditate and treats eastern mystics who know how to brew tea with great reverence and respect. His backstory is there just to make him wear plate armor and Langschwert, otherwise he is just a projection of author.
The same goes for many other things where the social structure is nonsensical. Imagine Walking Dead but dialed to eleven. Yes there is apocalypse, but there is still the same stupid drama as if we are in an episode of Friends with zombies. Rick also dedicates half if not more of his time to just keep bunch of morons in check. He is fighting zombies as much as his stupid wife and other whining morons from his group who complain about lack of toilet paper. It is basically a middle management bad office drama story, cheating wives, stupid kids doing stupid shit but just with zombies. In fact zombies are something like bad weather or environmental hazard, it could as well be a series about bunch of morons being transported to Alaska and slowly dying to diseases by eating berries or going to hug bears just to prove that Rick is incorrect. In fact it is completely good parallel with katana wielding badass diverse character who eventually becomes heroes romantic interest and 50 something abused wife Carrol, who becomes the best tactical genius, sniper and survivalist who single handedly dismantles fortified base of cannibal cultist as some Black Ops genius. But at least they are cooperative and supportive of Rick and his stupid wife died - I would consider it as a rare quality gem in litrpg if Rick had levels. In reality they would also be his wife in one.
My understanding is that's most zombie stories. They're not about the zombies, they're about the people, and the zombies are -- as you say -- easily replaceable by any stressful environmental hazard. They're window dressing for the set.
Sure, the thing is that it is generic modern environmental hazard. Instead of zombies and hostile cannibals it could be local criminals and gals from HR. The structure is completely off and it should be apparent to anybody who reads let's say some war memoires of soldiers or other people in extreme circumstances and how people actually behave.
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Not only that, Rick raises his wife’s affair baby as his own. She didn’t wait very long after thinking he was dead to monkeybranch, letting his best friend rail her and knock her up. Epic handshake potential between Rick and Billy “my wife’s son” Butcher.
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I guess the fitting parallel would be clueless Evangelical beta chumps, gamer nerds or red-piller right-wing MAGA chuds writing romantasy novels aimed at women, featuring content they think women should be reading.
Women: "I hate these maga chud romance novels. Where's the rape??"
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