Am I the only one?

[Leti]

Am I the only one who ignores all the popular fantasy authors and series, yet reads the worst, f-tier crap written by authors from my country?

I would do the same thing but the only Polish author I know is @Saileri so his work is s-tier by default.

 

[matnun]

Nope. I read fanfics, that's gotta be worse.

He's the chosen one!!!!

My guilty pleasure is the usual "Extra MC" shenanigans, 99.9% of the time it's garbage but that 0.1% man, that 0.1% makes it worth it I swear

 

[SRB]

He's the chosen one!!!!

My guilty pleasure is the usual "Extra MC" shenanigans, 99.9% of the time it's garbage but that 0.1% man, that 0.1% makes it worth it I swear

Can you recommend something?

 

[AnonUnlimited]

Am I the only one who ignores all the popular fantasy authors and series, yet reads the worst, f-tier crap written by authors from my country?

The popular stuff is the f-tier crap, because people are crap. Don't let their standards be your standards.

Keep winning my friend.

 

[aToTeT]

I choose books at random and then comment on every single chapter.

You are my favourite kind if person.

The only way to truly know you failed as an author is when your every-chapter commenters *don’t have anything to say*

 

[Daydreamers]

I choose books at random and then comment on every single chapter.

I guess I haven't won the lottery

 

[Seaspecter]

You are my favourite kind if person.

The only way to truly know you failed as an author is when your every-chapter commenters *don’t have anything to say*

Thanks, most people just think I'm annoying.

I've found that readers will only comment if you post something controversial, most of my slice-of-life chapters only have a TFTC comment.

I guess I haven't won the lottery

Are you sure you want the eyes from beyond to gaze upon your story?

 

[Daydreamers]

Are you sure you want the eyes from beyond to gaze upon your story?

no please don't.
let me swim in my blessed pool of ignorance

 

[Seaspecter]

no please don't.
let me swim in my blessed pool of ignorance

Don't worry I'll be gentle.

 

[aToTeT]

Sadly, every bit of so-called popular fantasy currently coming out has 3 things in common.

1) Has a female author
2) Is inevitably fantasy with more romance than necessary, and the romance is very clearly written from an unrealistic woman's POV
3) The author is Brandon Sanderson.

Source? I've been to various Walmarts in 5 different states over the past month. It's the same crap in all of them. The authors change, but they still follow those same 3 rules I listed above.

I CAN give my views of Lady-Fantasy fiction because I have read it. I randomly picked 4 different authors among the many, many more I saw in different Wal-Mart selections and read the first books in their series. It's nauseating how accurately I could predict what happens.

For example, wanna know which male character gets with female MC in the end? Guaranteed, it's the one that ignored her and/or treated her like a cockroach in the beginning during their first interaction. Guaranteed.

The nice guy? Either ends of being the villain in the end, or sacrifices himself in some way for female MC. Guaranteed. No deviations. Not. A. Single. One.

As for Brandon Sanderson, I honestly can't make myself read him. When I see something EVERYWHERE like I'm seeing him as of the past 2 years, (I mean even overseas guys!), it gives me an almost physical repulsion to it. Its too much. He is fucking everywhere. Literally. It's absurd.
Maybe I would like him, but I'll never know. I feel like you could almost chant his name before going to sleep and he would speak to you in your dreams. He's just...too much...all over the place.

You hate Sanderson because… he’s popular?

I too haven’t read him (I like my magic woo-y), but he’s on my long list of books I don’t deserve until I’ve finished off my bookshelf), but I think he’s an alright dude.

More than I can say for Maas or Rowling.

He’s got an actually not bad podcast, made audible give others a better (still not great) deal. His writing lectures aren’t particularly lacking from what I’ve seen on youtube and many a guru exist solely to disgrace learning.

So I genuinely appreciate his presence unless I’m given a good reason to do otherwise.

As for Romantasy and the predilection for female authors (am one myself, if my half-baked works can be called authorship) : you’re not necessarily wrong, and you didn’t even touch on the darker rendition of it (hope you didn’t get Mass as your first pick, but if you did… iirc the first book of her series technically ends with the ‘original love interest’ getting back together with her…. Whether you could call it a good story is…. Well, you can’t. But I did appreciate a character willing to have pity sex and I’m sorry I don’t love you sex: which while I’m all for slugmen and lesbianism, gotta say: odd. I overall enjoyed reading it once, but then the second book started and I stopped shortly thereafter as character development was beyond the scope of the story.)

But it’s no better that women in publishing now make it harder for men to publish sword and board harem male power fantasy than it was for men in publishing to make it harder for women to publish make-him-grovel and see me female power fantasy.

In the end, web fiction’s where it is at. Freeform, read at your own risk, and more often interesting than not.

Web serials gave me Salvos, Defiance of the Fall, and smut that actually worked for me — going places no trad publisher had ever gone before ;)

Thanks, most people just think I'm annoying.

I've found that readers will only comment if you post something controversial, most of my slice-of-life chapters only have a TFTC comment.

Poppycock. Not possible.

A thanks for the chapter is a nice comment.

Sounds like it is my time to brag, behold! The most amazing comment I have ever received, the most gripping you’ve ever heard (and I do mean I truly do love it):

F

 

[Daydreamers]

Don't worry I'll be gentle.

you are a nice person, so i'll spare you the trouble,
however If causality allowed it, and my story came to your hands seemingly by chance, then let it be. as Void would like to say

 

[Seaspecter]

Sounds like it is my time to brag, behold! The most amazing comment I have ever received, the most gripping you’ve ever heard (and I do mean I truly do love it):

F

This is my favorite.

This story is like cutting the head of a chicken the giving the body ultimate power and watching it bumble about doing random stuff.

 

[aToTeT]

Am I the only one who ignores all the popular fantasy authors and series, yet reads the worst, f-tier crap written by authors from my country?

Hard to say.

I definitely ignore what’s popular unless it’s a web serial.

However I’m not sure how I’d distinguish the authors from my country save by a decade and a half of reading fiction from other countries.

The first few years were Japanese manga, but every ittle
Baby Cultivator has to start somewhere.

Now I read trashy girls love novels and rarely touch something without a female protagonist… when I’m not writing, or being overly cerebral on a forum because I’m suffering from my mortality too much to do anything more enriching to my faculties.

I wish I could unread Harry Potter, and fill that space with better series like The Immortal Alchemist Nicholas Flamel. Luckily Rowling only holds my headspace hostage when I see a multi hour YouTube video dissing her and deriding her (haven’t got to the theft one yet, but oh boy am I excited to parasocially extend my disgust towards her august body of work).

This is my favorite.

This story is like cutting the head of a chicken the giving the body ultimate power and watching it bumble about doing random stuff.

That’s beautiful.

i read mtl version of chinese novels really often, so i wasn't that far off.

I’ve got a monkey chasing a rooster living rent-free in my head.

You learn a lot about your own language when you read MTL.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Hard to say.

I definitely ignore what’s popular unless it’s a web serial.

However I’m not sure how I’d distinguish the authors from my country save by a decade and a half of reading fiction from other countries.

I don't ignore popular series and authors conciously. It happens on its own. I usually follow this logic. I can't read Terry Pratchett in a day, meanwhile I can read trash in one day. Another thing, I don't distinguish authors from my country. I simply see the book cover, title, and I think to myself, "This is the shit I will read today."

 

[Clo]

no please don't.
let me swim in my blessed pool of ignorance

@Seaspecter is a gem and his comments on my novel are a balm to my wrinkled little heart. I totally encourage you to reconsider!

 

[Iloveshovels]

Am I the only one who ignores all the popular fantasy authors and series, yet reads the worst, f-tier crap written by authors from my country?

You aren’t special, you are FREEDOM

 

[Daydreamers]

@Seaspecter is a gem and his comments on my novel are a balm to my wrinkled little heart. I totally encourage you to reconsider!

yeah I saw his comments when i was reading your novel,
i write just to get things out of my head so even if he is to curse me in the comment section i wouldn't mind . however it is the more reason why i rather not force him to read my work.
we need to protect him

 

[Seaspecter]

i write just to get things out of my head

I have a chapter in my book where my MC bakes cupcakes, and a few chapters later she rips the balls off a troll...

Needless to say, I have a lot of weird going on in my head so I doubt you'd surprise me.

 

[aToTeT]

The direction of the topic was slowly switching to, what's coming out right now so I went with that. None of the names you mentioned appear in easy access in my country. You have to go to specific book stores which are slowly vanishing or order online. So I described what I see in most supermarkets that have large book sections.

I'm a dude so I generally didn't expect to like all of this "lady-fantasy" but I decided to give it a try because a woman I know said I was "muh generalizing."

Nah, I was right. Quite often in reality, you CAN judge a book (or person) by its cover and be VERY accurate. I know I've been fairly accurate in doing so. But oh well.

Most villainess stories (and we’re not talking Bakarina breaking everyone’s hearts) end up with the original (by the standards of the reader) love interest, even if there might be guys who flirt with them or otherwise compete for their attention.

If you read trashy mass-marketed works, you’re going to find trashy mass-marketed plots with trope-safe proven character and plot devices (enemies to lovers)(triangle)(self insert).

Publishers don’t want to lose money, so they don’t take risks. Most of their reader base will be younger girls (young adults, teens, and tweens) and if older women do go for it, they’re often already used to the endless supply of popcorn romance novels (my mother owns such a collection as to astound the local library) which probably serve as a reprieve for an absent marital life. I will say, Twilight and ACOTAR and Fifty Shades are like babies first gothic romance (though the baby eating its way out of Bella is metal; it’s week writing), baby’s first fantastical smut, and baby’s first BDSM.

Romance isn’t a bad genre, let alone core concept; You’ve Got Mail is among my top three favourite movies (others being The Mummy and PiratesOTC, which feature romance (and what is the Mummy if not romance?), and even good love triangles (or quadrangles? Whatever is up with Miss Swan, who is a great character, she ends up with Will and that was a pretty cool scene at the end of pirates 3; I was moved anyway).

Even romance written by women: Jane Austen’s works are not beloved because they’re bad.

Besides romance itself, many women have written works that contain romantic subplots or driving forces that are centred on wholly different matters: Frankenstein’s Monster seeks a mate, Little Women has courtship going on in the background, hell: a woman wrote Fullmetal Alchemist — a work where she gave us a shapeshifter posing as a doting father’s wife to kill him, a girl working on the mechanical arm of her totally-not-boyfriend, and a man who walked out on his family to save the world and doomed his wife to death by heartbreak (or disease, whatever).

It can’t be bad because it’s written by women.

Their framing might be different than yours (relationships (all kinds) vs external conflicts, resilience vs heroism, and action vs empathy — this is generalising, which I don’t really care for), but then being written by women is not the cause of mainstream romance (where it has intersected with fantasy: there are many excellent female fantasy writers who have been also affected by romantasy’s rise) reading like a publisher told them to add enemies to lovers to the story.

Neither gender nor genre of any rendition will come out as strictly quality or strictly bad.

Take girls love as a genre; I adore it, it’s what I tend to read when I am given the choice to read anything, and far beyond the smut-infused (which has its place); I adore the romances depicted within. Let’s not [Obliterate] is wonderful, and I don’t care if it was written by a man, woman, child, century-old WW2 Vet, or President Trump on a bad day. It is so cute.

 

[Daydreamers]

I have a chapter in my book where my MC bakes cupcakes, and a few chapters later she rips the balls off a troll...

Needless to say, I have a lot of weird going on in my head so I doubt you'd surprise me.

how dare you spoil my fun. i'm on the first paragraph