domain:nfinf.substack.com
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.
A 2008 British study of about 4,000 children aged 4–16 found that only 5% of boys preferred books with a girl protagonist, while 22% of girls were comfortable with male protagonists.
I didn't read the article or the paper. However, those aren't parallel statements, as currently written. The percentage of boys comfortable with girl protagonists could be higher than 5%. The percentage of girls who prefer boy protagonists could be lower than 22%.
Heroism generally involves some combination of self-sacrifice, self-improvement, hyper-agency, hyper-competency, physical and/or mental strength. Based upon their Lived Experiences of interacting with boys/men and girls/women, it'd be sensible that readers (whether it be boys, girls, men, or women) would more easily suspend disbelief for a male hero than a female heroine. And that girls/women would find a male hero more plausible than boys/men a female heroine.
It's like how preteens will more readily accept teenaged or adult heroes than vice versa, teenagers will more readily accept adult heroes than vice versa. And adults are usually disinterested in works where the protagonists are preteens or teenagers (sometimes even young adults)—a common gripe is that even kid side characters are a negative value-add to a story, just a source of annoyance, "idiot plot," and plot armor.
gattsuru
8hr ago
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.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
8hr ago
I mean other than that congress would get even less done with thousands of members? I think the size limit is needed simply because there’s no way that a 3000 member house is going to get any useful work done. 500 members is already pretty big, and the current congress hasn’t passed a proper budget in over a decade. Adding more people to the body isn’t going to fix the inertia.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
8hr ago
There were lots of hot Indian girls in my New Jersey high school. But Indians aren't very popular on 4chan's /gif/ and /s/ boards, so I haven't seen many hot ones since leaving high school.
Checking Pornhub, I am somewhat astonished to see that, if I search for "bikini" and filter by the Indian category, there are only 89 matching videos on the entire site (versus 1712 in the Asian category), and most of them are not particularly appealing.
Searching for "india pageant" on YouTube reveals Miss Universe India 2025 Grand Finale, which is five hours long. You could use that as a guide for what the subcontinent's exemplars of beauty look like.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
8hr ago
Phones.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
8hr ago
Interestingly, also seems to be a Kickstarter in progress right now.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
8hr ago
I think a lot of modern writers directors and producers are simply unaware of why a given decision was made, so they end up copying the look and mannerisms without understanding why it worked or why it doesn’t work in their context.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
8hr ago
I can't really say; it just didn't grab me. Part of it is that frankly, the Napoleonic era is just not a setting that has ever interested me much.
erwgv3g34
8hr ago
Big Fat Liar (2002). Surprisingly good for a kid's film; the "Hungry Like the Wolf" pool scene is very memorable, as is the "I Wish" warehouse montage, and, of course, the "Right Here, Right Now" helicopter ride. And, yes, very 2000's; right up there with Shrek (2001) and Digimon: The Movie (2000).
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
8hr ago
John C. Wright is a former atheist who did a hard-right turn into Catholicism. He's written space operas pre- and post-conversion.
Dean
Flairless
8hr ago
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?
Throwaway05
8hr ago
Thank you for sharing.
The subset of these types of people who end up requiring medical attention is of course not representative of the true population but I've Noticed Some Things that are of course not captured in the literature even when they are hinted at so it is useful to collect more N.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
9hr ago
((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.
Throwaway05
9hr ago
I can only speak to the first season as I mentioned, but it's one of the best seasons of television of the last ten years. Full stop.
Now admittedly it's not to everyone's taste, it's a slow and deliberate Cold War spy thriller living in the most Star Wars feeling Star Wars since the original trilogy.
If you are the kind of person who liked Better Call Saul as much or more than Breaking Bad you are 100% going to love it, but I don't fault people for needing a faster pace etc.
Put another way it reminds me of Winter Soldier which duct taped an excellent non Marvel script to Marvel IP and kept the advantages of both.
It does have some woke elements but they are chiefly background casting stuff that isn't too annoying when it's drowned in quality. It is also explicitly anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian but not in the childish modern politics way so it shouldn't chafe too much.
It's much less Wolfenstein haha kill the nazis and much more Das Leben der Anderen this is the reality of these systems. Sure the woke end up liking it but that's by accident.
Dean
Flairless
9hr ago
Wasn't that the one where the male passes on the romantic opportunity with a pretty girl in favor of his horse or something?
hydroacetylene
9hr ago
The Texas democratic party reacted to Trump's victory in '24 by firing their chair for suggesting that it might be wise to put trans issues on the back burner- he didn't even ask for a platform change. These people's idea for winning over young men was trying to pay fraternities to listen to Olivia Juliana(they refused). They ran Beto of 'hell yeah we're going to take your AR-15 away' fame as a moderate on gun control- and he kept it front and center.
The only thing they reliably accomplish is being a very inefficient machine for converting turn Texas blue money into inane twitter drama and circular firing squads.
gattsuru
9hr ago
Aw, I liked Tremaire (although I didn't even think of the author's gender until now). Not a fan of how hard it leaned into the telecom tropes, or an issue the writing quality/plot pacing?
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 (
hydroacetylene
9hr ago
Consider the number who become obese, refuse to socialize, or are just unpleasant and offputting, there's clearly a 'something' she has to do.
Mantergeistmann
9hr ago
They were making 25% of revenue from licensed games, and in 2021 EA suggested that had been $2bn between 2019 and 2021 alone, and that’s pure margin.
I can't really even remember any games from that time. Battlefront II (the second Battlefront II), the one with the lootboxes, I guess?
hydroacetylene
9hr ago
Disney lost a bunch of parents pushing gay shit too. Like toddler movies that aren't good is recoverable from- they're toddler movies, after all- and probably doesn't even make a difference. But the people writing their preteen sitcoms being in charge of pixar wasn't the thing that pissed people off. It was GayBC agenda pushing.
She just has to avoid failing; she wins by default. It's completely different from a man, who can be nice, safe, reliable, and still end up completely overlooked.
There is a reason Fluttershy is the most popular of the mane six. Butterscotch would have ended up FA.
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