Of Men, Women and Writers

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

There’s men, there’s women, there’s writers.

Sure, writers, in general, are women or men, but honestly, if we were free floating brains in jello it would make more sense. What I’m trying to tell you, ladies, germs and small octagonal coasters is that no, you can’t make broad sweeping statements like “women write” or “men write” X, Y or Z. Much less “women read” and “men read” X, Y or most definitely Z.

Oh, you can make broad statements about how female brains work, how male brains work. What you can’t do is extrapolate it to “I don’t read women, because they all write fairy princess unicorn sex with hot monsters.”

Or actually, no. You can absolutely extrapolate that. Because you have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and if it makes you happy to be an arrant idiot, who am to stop you?

Why yes, indeedy, I’ve woken up and chosen violence. If it makes you feel better I’m not writing this in the morning, but late at night on Thursday, so I’m actually falling asleep and chose violence. There. That’s better.

Look, there are certain tendencies in male and female writing, proceeding from our brains being different. This allows to say, broadly, men prefer things and how things work. Women prefer people and people’s relationships.

If you’re working with a broad enough group, you can — therefore — predict that more men will write techno-thrillers where how the McGuffin works is super important; more women will write romances.

This btw has absolutely zero to do with whether either book will have more sex. That depends more on trends in publishing, what the public expects and — if going trad pub — what the publisher demands. Sex is a different thing. Yeah, we can get into sex (the gentleman who giggled in the back row can sit outside with no books for ten minutes) later, but let’s say that saying “This book has tons of sex, therefore it’s for girls” is a non starter.

For years most romances were what we now call “sweet romances” and arguably they sold better than today’s “must have a sex scene four times during the book. Some of the best selling romance writers use the same scene every book, which I found out while I was reading romance (more on that later) and just change the color of the hair, dress, and what the girl tripped for to fit the circumstances, because they don’t care for that part, but the publisher wants it in. Don’t tell me that their readers are passionately interested in those scenes, or they’d protest more.

Anyway, you can generally say “if it’s a people oriented story, it’s more likely written by a woman” “if it’s a “how things work and consequences of how thing works” it’s probably written by a man.” And you’ll be right… Oh, 70% of the time, give or take two or three percent.

I pulled that figure out of the air, but it’s my “feel” from reading a lot.

Now this is somewhat skewed because you don’t actually know the sex of the writer, just what they put on the book spine, and writers are thoroughly unreliable for telling the truth. I mean, we make money from lying. I have it on good authority — know some of them — that some bestselling romance authors, with female names, are actually male. And there are thriller authors out there who use initials or well… just the closest male name.

The really cool thing, particularly if you’re an indie, is that you can be a dog just typing as fast as you can, on the internet no one knows.

Oh, I said romance because that’s the extreme, but cozy mysteries tend to have female names, versus thrillers, which actually tend towards initials.

“But Sarah,” You’ll say. “You can’t deny more women read romance and more men read mil sf or thrillers.”

Okay, you got me there. By self declared preference, I can’t deny that. I can’t deny it because two people I am closely related to and who are not only male but techy and very, very male-brain will be deeply upset if I reveal they like the goopiest romances and the floofiest of floofy cozies, to the point they’ll be talking about these books, and I’m going “You’re just making that up!”

Me? Well, me as a reader started out reading-like-a-boy mostly because I inherited all the books from my dad, brother and cousins, so of course I read “male.” However, note that they interested me more than the romances (blue cover collection. No, seriously) my female cousin had. I did however like A Little Princess, which my brother hated, and I enjoyed Enid Blyton’s boarding school books, which are very feminine, just as much as I enjoyed the adventure ones which yes, pretty much baffled my male family members.

I didn’t however read even Jane Austen till my early twenties, and no other romances till my mid thirties, and then at the behest of a male friend.

I prefer science fiction to fantasy (no, not hard science fiction, but that’s a discussion for later) and my fantasy tends to suffer from science fiction brain, in that I can’t just have “and suddenly everyone had magical powers” but I have to invent a mechanism for them and thread them backwards through history in a way that works. otherwise I don’t believe in them, and when I don’t believe in stuff it doesn’t get written.

(Understand the science fiction referenced here is a quality of the mind, and the quality is “okay, it might take a miracle to have anti-gravity, but if we had anti-gravity it would work via machines and in a way that was understood to someone who created it, not wished out of the blue by magic and therefore unreliable.” Yes, I know there are logic errors. You also know D*MN well the “feel” I’m talking about. I know science fiction when I nail it to the keyboard.)

By the time I read my first “romance, romance” I’d read hundreds of military biographies and military fiction, ranging from historical fiction to science fiction. (I can’t write it. No. The problem is not actually the battles, and I don’t flinch from action. No, my problem is the ranks and the mil-speak. It’s like another language, and I don’t absorb it from reading for some reason. To be fair, I also suck at learning dialects from reading. I can understand them fine, I just can’t write them.

Anyway, I even understand those of you who don’t want to read books with female names on the cover. It’s stupid, but it’s a stupidity I’ve engaged in myself. “If there’s a female name on the cover, there’s going to be stupid feminism inside.”

Now, it actually depends. Most Jane Austen fanfic, for instance, has female names on the cover (no, not all. Two of my favorite authors are male, and one, according to his bio is a marine. You can tell too. Why? Because every military man in the story, no matter how peripheral in the original is a boss and a hero in the story. They’re also all buff and super-sexy. Sigh. No projection going on there. BUT the guy writes characters WELL, and the stories hang together.) and the ratio of decent to suddenly suckerpunches me with OMG what Critical Race Theory or Feminist cant is about 7/3. Though I grant you only ONE male has sucker punched me that way. However he suckerpunched me very very hard, with vast amounts of 21st century psychobabble poured into the middle of a regency. Also considering there’s maybe 5 men I remember seeing, as opposed to 50 or so women, the fact one of those men is a leftist loon means we’re about even.

However science fiction with a female name on the cover? Six times out of ten — if not indie — it’s some woman creating the wonderful, beautiful female society in which all men are virtual slaves and not even sex slaves. Far more likely of course from recent and trad pub.

However men also have a high incidence of crazy in SF. Even fairly sane men will tell me that half of Europe is under water 200 years in the future because climate change.

Mystery in general trends more left than Science Fiction in my opinion because mystery lacked the equivalent of Baen, before indie became a thing.

Anyway, it’s like this, I was chased from science fiction, where I could only find lefty lectures, to mystery, where there were still mostly lefty lectures, to romance, where the older ones were okay, but increasingly, even in Regencies every woman was a suffragette and running a shelter for abused women, to history and biography where… the recent ones also couldn’t be trusted and became increasingly worse.

Then we got indie, and while I still get bitten sometimes, it’s a matter of evaluating, and remembering the names of authors who pissed me off (it’s a problem, as I usually only remember authors I love.)

Have I found differences between male and female? Well, no, not really. Sure, some people write in an excessively feminine way and are actually female. And some men are purveyors of zap zing bang fights and are male. (Some of the males also give me eye-glazing descriptions of the internal mechanisms of machines that never existed. Okay, guys, I know there’s such a thing as selling it as real, but there are also limits.)

I don’t write hard sf not because I’m female, but because right now, at this particular time in my life (this might change) I don’t have the ability/time to do copious amounts of research, and anyway, the stories I want to tell RIGHT NOW can’t fit into hard sf.

This might, and probably will change, once I get through the current batch of work that has been waiting, some of it over 40 years.

I don’t need to tell you there’s a ton of guys that write space opera and soft/adventure SF right?

In the same way, right now, I don’t write “red hot” romance or erotica. Will this change? I want to say probably no, given the things on the docket, but I’ve learned not to taunt the happy/fun muse.

On “But women just write sex with weird fantasy characters,” I want to make a point of order. An important one: I think women do that to escape the imperatives of feminism. Younger women don’t want to openly rebel (that’s another of those brain things. Most women are more group-oriented. Note “most”. Some of us were born with middle fingers aloft) but also don’t want to think about whether they’re as feminist as they should be, etc. Hence, fantasy monster romance, both for writing and reading. (No, I actually don’t get it. Not taunting the happy fun muse. Just confused. No interest in writing this. (The lady who just shouted an idea can wait outside the door for ten minutes, with no books.))

Almost every writing couple — there are a lot of them — I know, they both say all the goopey, romantic, sentimental scenes are the guy’s responsibility.

I believe that. In my 50/50 collab with a male, most of those sentimental “so many feelings” series I get accuse of having written (because vagina) the guy wrote. He will tell you that too.

And that’s the other thing “Women just write about feelings!” While it’s bad to write ABOUT feelings — ideally I should make you FEEL the feelings — this is another thing where you can shout it and stomp feet all you want to. BUT in the end story telling is meant to evoke feelings. If it doesn’t arouse your feelings — not those feelings. Outside the door. No books. Ten minutes — why are you reading it, instead of reading a technical manual? In fact, making you feel the feels and be in the character’s head is what written fiction has that is better than movies.

And guys, at the end of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress? When Mike doesn’t answer? I cry. No matter how many times I read it. And yeah, RAH was a man.

Sex — I told you I’d get there — there is a a lot more of it in books today, across the board, than in the past. All genres, all sub genres, from writers of either sex or or, you know, both sexes together.

I’m not sure that’s revealed preference of writers or readers. It’s simply because trad pub gyrated to it in a last scramble to sell. Because sex sells. (Less and less every time, but whatevs.) So, therefore, we got used to more sex in every book.

Does it help the book sell? I don’t know. I suspect some books need it as they have very little else. But every book? I doubt it.

Look, not only can people read/access porn in a million other ways, but for males at least — brain wiring thing — pictures are way better than words on a page. For women… it’s complicated. The words on a page work, but they usually want the emotions too.

I’m not anyone’s mother or morality police. But I do tend to get tired of sex that does nothing to advance the plot. I think a lot of indie authors suffer from a belief they’re living in the 1940s and that if they make the book spicy it will stand out. In fact, everyone is making the book spicy and it neither shocks, surprises nor tantalizes practically anyone.

In summation: you can be sure women just write this stuff you surely don’t like. But in fact all you know is that some people with female names on the cover write that, and others don’t.

I’m not your mother. I’m not your teacher. You’re allowed to say whatever stupid things you wish, even if they’re provably false. It’s a great country, isn’t it?

I have no problems with anyone not liking my writing. This is a thing. I’ve bounced off the writing of excellent authors that I know are excellent because people I trust love them. Writing is like dating. I could be a supermodel, but not everyone is going to want to date me.

I do have a problem with people not even trying me, even when they know my politics because “Every woman does x, y, z”. (Oh, and a word to the wise, if you’ve read one of my series, you’ve read that series. There is no earthly resemblance between say, the Shakespeare fantasies and Daring finds cozy mysteries. or Darkship Thieves. Look, I just read and write a lot of different styles, okay?)

I don’t expect to change the minds of anyone who thinks that way, no. If you think that way, it’s your right. But I reserve the right to vent.

Which is what this post has been.

And now I’m almost wholly asleep, and I’m going to bed, violence having been done.

253 thoughts on “Of Men, Women and Writers”

  1. “ But I do tend to get tired of sex that does nothing to advance the plot. “

    Took me only a short time to figure that out in real life.

    “ Look, not only can people read/access porn in a million other ways, but for males at least — brain wiring thing — pictures are way better than words on a page. For women… it’s complicated. The words on a page work, but they usually want the emotions too. “

    I suspect it’s more that visual is more important to male than female. Words on the page have to evoke slightly different senses, attitudes and emotions to work well for males versus females. Depending upon how it’s done makes a difference between art and porn whether visual, verbal or written.

    Now I’m ready to get up and do violence inn the morning! See there’s a gender difference right there! Who needs coffee?

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      1. Hi-

        This isn’t quite the place for this, but I need help from a group that reads like I do. Several years ago, I read the first couple of volumes of a space navy saga set in a FTL universe that bore a strong resemblance to Regency British Empire. The hero is the son of the home planet leader, who runs away to space to thwart his father’s plans for his career. Think Patrick O’Brian in space. Any way, I can’t remember the author or the title. It isn’t Blake Smith or David Feintuch. Any ideas?

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        1. Did the hero meet a librarian, whom he almost challenged to a duel in the first book, but who later became one of his best friends and closest allies? If so, then you’re thinking of the RCN series by David Drake. First book, With the Lightnings. See https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/lt-leary-rcn/ for the complete list of titles.

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          1. Reasons why it might not be David Drake’s RCN series:

            • You mentioned the hero being the son of the home planet leader. Daniel Leary is the son of one of the senators of his home planet — a highly influential one, to be sure, and one who could be argued is in practice the leader of his goverment, but not officially the leader of his government.
            • You mentioned the setting being similar to the Regency-era British Empire. Drake’s Cinnabar setting was more inspired by the Roman empire.

            Reasons why it might be the RCN series after all:

            • You compared it to Patrick O’Brien, not C.S. Forester. When you said “British Empire” I thought of Weber’s Honor Harrington series, but Honor Harrington is explicitly based on the Horatio Hornblower series. Whereas Drake’s RCN series is quite clearly based on Patrick O’Brien, with Daniel Leary playing the role of Jack Aubrey and Adele Mundy having many (but not all) the traits of Stephen Maturin.

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          2. A librarian who’s also a galaxy class hacker and cold-blooded killer, with an assistant who’s an outright sociopath and former secret police agent?

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            1. I was going to dispute “cold-blooded killer” with the fact that Adele has nightmares about the people she kills, but then I realized that it’s entirely correct. She knows she’ll have nightmares about the next person she kills, but she does it anyway, not because she hates that person but because it’s necessary for the success of the mission. Practically the definition of “cold-blooded”.

              And Tovera, while a sociopath, is smart enough to realize that she needs someone to be a consicence for her, and tell her whom it’s okay to kill and whom she shouldn’t, as a matter of survival. Which results in her being reliable: she won’t go around killing her allies, for example. (Though she would if Adele ordered it, because she knows Adele wouldn’t give that order unless there was a good reason. Which is why at one point Adele muses that giving Tovera the order to kill someone is just the same as picking up a gun and pulling the trigger with her own hands: the result is just as certain, and in both cases Adele is the one who decided the person should die.)

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  2. Without love, a sex scene is just biomechanics. A different sort of technothrill. Leaves me cold when two people who don’t love one another have a workout in bed with human gym equipment.

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    1. I call that “Tab A into Slot B” writing. Because when you aren’t a hormone-ridden s*x-starved young person, it’s very unattractive. And you can’t count on every reader being a hormonal/etc.

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      1. I’ve read an urban fantasy story where it gets rather explicit, and I just seem to tune it out. The rest of the books are fine, but I can do without the [unintentional double entendre deleted]. Said series has one book before completion. Don’t know if it will happen. I’ll get it if it does, but skim the naughty bits.

        Another series has references to boatloads of sex, but nothing more explicit on the page than serious kissing. The “bothering” is quite funny, and helps bring the characters to life (for values thereof…) [IYKWIMAITYD]

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        1. I read a select few “harem fantasy” writers. But I have to admit that George McIntyre has them beat by a light year. (In the “kick-ass women” department, too, since nearly all of them are actually BOLOs.)

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  3. There are men of any age that will screw anything that stands still long enough. There are men that aren’t interested at all in sex of any kind. There are some women that men have zero sexual attraction to, and there are some women that are sexually attractive to nearly all men. And there are some men whom there is only one woman they will ever be sexually attracted to.

    Heaven help the poor guy who has a woman come on to him so strongly that he has to go full on Bible-Thumper on her because of bad vibes.

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    1. When I was younger, and in a field where women constantly vamped to gain advantage, I never left home without the pictures of the wife and babies. That worked better than Bible thumping – and didn’t get me strange looks from bystanders.

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    2. I have no problem appreciating a sexy woman (by my definition – what some men like, I either think “Oh, their poor back!” or “At least they don’t need upholstered chairs to sit down.”) It is like appreciating a great piece of art.

      But I have never had a problem remaining strictly monogamous, both physically AND mentally. There is only ONE that is SEXUALLY attractive to me.

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      1. Indeed. If/when a partner objects to my appreciating the, uh, charms of another female, I explain that, much as I might admire, say, the Mona Lisa without wanting to bring it home and hang it on my wall, I can appreciate the display without wanting to take it home and put a notch on my bedpost.

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        1. I’m very fortunate in that my wife has always been of the opinion (stated) that looking (and the implied appreciation of female beauty) is natural; she knows it’s hardwired in males. She’s even pointed out (discreetly) a few I’ve failed to notice over the years as being worthy of a look or two. We had our 59th wedding anniversary last October, so it seems to work OK for us.😊

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    3. I’ve had to do that. It was not fun. Do not recommend.

      Don’t verb the crazy. Just don’t. Your life will be infinitely better for the not doing that.

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    4. ….that time I got pounced by a cougar at the EM club….

      She had persuaded me to “entertain” her in her car. As we approached, and despite her trying to block my view, I noticed the parking decal for an O-6/Colonel. (She was -not- an officer.)

      “bail out! Bail out!”

      man, was she -pissed-…

      Better her annoyed than a Brigade Commander or some General’s ambitious flunky. Not -on frakkin base-.

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      1. Beware Oh Man, the trophy spouse, while being consumed by your profession. For a neglected spouse will seek other hands for admiration and appreciation when yours are absent.

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  4. For years I’ve run two or three tabletop roleplaying campaigns in parallel, meeting on different weekends of the month. I’ve almost always had one that was focused on action (though I remember one cycle when that was set in Spanish Alta California in the Buffyverse) and one that was focused on relationships and sometimes one that went off sideways. And it’s been common that my women players favored the relationship one and my male players favored the action one. But then I’ve had one woman player who always went for the action campaigns and in fact played the biggest combat monsters. And I can’t say that I had one specific man who went for the campaigns about relationships, but I nearly always had at least one male player in those. So it’s a statistical tendency but not an absolute law.

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          1. It is my impression 11B has the quality card for saying “don’t call me sir…” and one of the several follow-up phrases. It may even be he has membership in the E-4…errr, benevolent society.

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            2. I can’t read most current Mil-sci-fi because the authors lack that qual card.

              Not because of jargon. (Who cares? Slang and acronyms have changed since I was in. Project it a hundred years or more in the future, and it’s going to change a time.)

              It’s that the authors have no concept of how things work, or the mindset you have to accept. Two examples that left dents in my wall:

              1. The Junior enlisted soldier went UA (AWOL) from his deploying unit to transfer himself to another duty station where he could be closer to his love interest.
              2. The staff NCO who could not accept that he and his subordinates were replaceable cogs. (You could pull it off with an E-2 or a 2nd Lt. but not an E-8 who has spent his career in a combat billet. Even though the declared billet should have been at least W-2.)

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              2. I recently tried to start reading a (kindle unlimited) space-navy ebook that had ton of positive reviews, but after the first few pages it left a virtual dent in the virtual wall.

                The starship’s XO, who just taken command of his shot up starship after the bridge was hit. Instead of doing, you know, command stuff, he was running randomly around the ship by himself opening jammed compartment doors just to look inside. He was poking his unprotected in-command nose into compartments he thought were leaking down to vacuum, just to make sure. Did I mention he was completely by himself?. Basically he was just generally wandering around – by himself – with apparently no thought of making himself locatable by the rest of the ships chain of command in case any, you know, command stuff came up.

                And this was happening in ships passageways that were eerily empty, except when he randomly got to sickbay and the doc yelled at him. No DC gear was ever in evidence anywhere, and the conspicuous lack of any NCOs making things happen or organized Damage Control parties doing their actual job on the damage anywhere on board was just odd.

                I guess he was supposed to be a man of action, but to me he just came off as an idiot, and I could seen no gain in reading about this idiot for a couple hundred pages.

                The reviews said it was really great, but I will never learn if it is actually the next Tale of Two Cities, because that book was wallward ho!

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                1. Maybe the author’s intent was to demonstrate that even being XO, and dropped into command, didn’t change an idiot into something else (although more than 5-10 pages describing his idiocy through his actions would be more than enough).

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                  1. Could be, but it went on long enough that I hit the Vance Threshold* and wallward it went.

                    • Vance Threshold: The point at which any topic when examined at sufficient length generates a definitive “I don’t really care, Margaret” response.

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              3. Something very like that happens in an early chapter of Gordon Dickson’s Dorsai! The hero catches him at it and, since the enemy attacked while he was doing it, court-martials him and sentences him to death.

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              1. Name dropper.😉

                Re: “second chance”…Seriously, you were extraordinarily fortunate in your “choice” of CO’s, as fortunate as PFC Ken McCoy in his encounter with Chesty Puller in Griffin’s first “Corps” novel.

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                1. Oh, yeah. Hit the Lotto lucky I was. The prior CO would probably have just flushed me like a dead mouse.

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  6. Neville Shute wrote highly entertaining novels with very little sex (and damn few sex scenes that I can recall). He did have boy meets girl stuff (including one with an middle-aged engineer and a has-been movie starlet), but it was about relationships. Admittedly old school, but still highly readable.

    For that matter Dumas had very little overt sex and most of that was to advance the plot (d’Artagnan and Milady, fer instance.) and he is still being read.

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    1. He also had the lovely one about the WWII Englishwoman internee in Malaya who met an Australian soldier under very trying circumstances and decided to look for him years later …

      I guess that I also “read male” growing up – because I couldn’t stand most of the teen-girl lit thrust at me. Honestly most of it made me barf chunks. I liked the stories on the boy’s reading list better, because they were all about adventure, escape, striving for a goal.

      Later on, when reading MK Wren’s space opera Phoenix Trilogy, I only began to suspect MK Wren was a woman when noting that a little more attention was paid to what characters were wearing. Not elaborate descriptions, but a little more than a male writer usually offers.

      For my own books, I always thought I was playing it right down the center, in writing about men and women and equally addressing female and male experiences, viewpoints and concerns. But strangely enough – my longtime reader fans are about two-thirds male, as nearly as I can deduce. Another (female) writer friend explained that it was because I had a rather gritty, realistic tone in writing that appealed to male readers.

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      1. In my old writing group, one of the ladies was always minutely describing clothes, right down to the color of the socks. Pages of it. I critiqued it as usual, but good grief. Page after page of coordinating colors and accessories.

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        1. I don’t get this. If I have a conversation with someone and you later ask me what they were wearing, I can tell you they weren’t naked. That’s about it. Unless it’s a formal occasion my own sartorial splendor is limited to “Are all the relevant bits covered and the clothes clean and without holes?”

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          1. There are settings where it’s part of the ambience (Heyer, for one), within reasonable limits, and then settings where it doesn’t matter, and sometimes storylines where it matters at a logistics level (disguise and impersonation, clean but embarrassing clothes after adventures) or at a symbolic/emotional level (dressing up for a special occasion, love interest notices and appreciates, wearer of a uniform grows into expectations). In real life, I tend to be kind of hopeless about clothes.

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            1. I’ve got a WIP where at one point a major character tells all the other women what to wear for a festival, chiefly focusing on becoming colors instead of the maidenly shades that their maids think will help overcome their looks. (None of them look that bad when wearing becoming colors.)

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          2. The way I dress myself is that I have a pile of pants and a pile of t-shirts and I pick one from each pile. I, too, can almost never remember what other people were wearing unless there was a conversation or some point. So I tend to skim descriptions of clothes in fiction.

            My husband for some reason kept wanting to make jokes about me being concerned about my clothes, which only meant that he really wasn’t paying attention. He spent much more time than me on clothes, though it did tend to consist of picking out humorous matching ties and suspenders and slightly “off” color themes. In the morning when getting dressed for church it took me five minutes and him almost thirty.

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              1. Depends on the person. There was one little thing whose pants were so shredded that I congratulated her for escaping the wolf. (She did not take it well. But it made her mom’s day.)

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                1. I was in a drinking establishment once when a young woman of dark completion started screaming at another of the barflies, contending that he’d made a racist statement. Turns out he’d called her ‘Termite Girl’ due to the state of her pants.

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            2. Looks at “around the property” shirt I’m wearing today and contemplates removing the sleeves altogether for that Larry the Cable Guy look. Shirt would look better…

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              1. I was watching a Matlock, and one witness talked about how some people liked to walk around with their jeans full of holes. The courtroom chuckled. I had forgotten that the trend was that old.

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              2. I am old enough to remember when jeans came in ONE color, dark indigo, and if you wanted torn/ faded/ etc. you had to damn well do it YOURSELF. (I remember in high school overhearing a conversation about how to hole your jeans PROPERLY–apparently to get the “worn out” vibe, you slit the denim with a razor and then rubbed it with sandpaper.)

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                1. “if you wanted torn/ faded/ etc. you had to damn well do it YOURSELF”

                  My grandad was a genuine born-and-raised Texas ranch hand. When that particular fad reached our town, he remarked to me that when his Levi’s started lookin’ like that, he th’owed ’em away.

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                  1. Not at grandma’s house (well great-grandma for our children). Worn faded, with holes or not, got recycled into quilts. The less worn (can’t see through) patches on outside of quilt (either side), well worn, see through, can’t patch, as part of the inside batting layer(s). If too worn even for batting? Kindling for the wood cook stove. Not “th’owed ’em away”. Consequences of young married, with small children, Oregon rural during the depression & WW2. Too be fair, similar with grandma who was raised and married rural Montana during the depression and WW2, just saved/repurposed differently.

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              3. I think the “distressed” holes-in-the-jeans look persists because it gives a tantalizing suggestion that discreet attention may be “inadvertently” rewarded. It’s like a woman in a thinnish gown with the light behind her: you can’t really see anything, but you can see that everything’s there. It’s why erotic art works, in a way that blatantly gynecological porn doesn’t.

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                1. Yep. and holes in jeans is OLD. It wasn’t new when I was young. So the commercial with someone objectively in her mid thirties throwing a fit her teen bought jeans with holes? Yeah.

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          4. Forgive me Great Aunt, I have sinned.

            I have written far too much scenery porn and clothing porn, because I know that I am trying to make a point in some way. When your character comes into a fancy gala ball (with all the fluffy stuff) dressed like a human razor blade-perfectly accurate but also so sharp her dull edges are deadly-there’s a point to be made.

            And relevant bits are important! Very, very important!

            Liked by 1 person

          6. “Ms. Hoyt, you testified that you spoke to the defendant. Are you certain he was not naked already at that point in time?”

            ”Erm… pretty sure?”

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            1. LOL. More than that I wouldn’t know.
              Conversations that hinge on “that coat you were wearing yesterday, do you have your license in the pocket?” “What coat? Was I wearing a coat yesterday?”

              Liked by 1 person

        2. To be fair, Robert Jordan was also inordinately fond of describing clothing and he was a guy.

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          1. At first, I just wasn’t interested. But thanks to Robert Jordan’s obsession, I came to loathe it.

            The girls showed up. Time to skip the pages. Nope. He’s still going.

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        3. If an outfit is important, the writer should still be able to describe it within a short paragraph. The outfit should advance the plot or foreshadow it (not usually the case, of course!), or provide some kind of mood, worldbuilding detail, etc.

          Heyer used to make a lot of hay with the historical colors of a season, including puce. (Which can be very attractive in certain shades, but is always a funny word to say.)

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      2. I remember a discussion with a young man at the library. I was pulling down Bujold books and he said I wouldn’t enjoy them because they were written by a man. I pointed out that she was a woman and he said that was impossible because he doesn’t enjoy books written by women. He also said at one point that he would never read a book written by a woman.

        Reminds me of the young man in college who said if I didn’t like pink I wasn’t female, and my grandmother who said she would never vote for a woman because they can’t be trusted. Same quasi-religious furvor in the tone, same lack of logic in the belief.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Additional note: after I showed him the biography in the back of the book, he put the books back and said he would never read her again.

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          1. There is just no reasoning with people like that. It’s like…you read the books, dude. You enjoyed them. Why are they suddenly bad because you found it the author is female…?

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            1. :dead straight face:

              Of course he stopped reading when he found out she’s a woman.

              Men are the rational sex, after all.

              {I kid you not, I have seen variations of this exchange….}

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              1. Eh, we’re more alike than different, men and women. But… we men tend to have more morons, statistically speaking, than women by a measurable percentage. I ain’t even going to try and defend another man’s plain faced idiocy. You just can’t fix stupid.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. :laughs:
                  Yeah, nah, it’s just the same nonsense as an emotionally abusive/completely ignores everyone else’s emotions gal who will go on and on about how women are more caring and emotionally aware.

                  Usually while lecturing you about how to deal with emotions you do not feel. :D

                  Liked by 2 people

            2. There are some authors who’s work I will never even try because of their behavior on social media. Nothing to do with their sex though.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. I have seen some (a few, but they are there) women on YouTube that are quite rational – even though they have the purple hair and unnatural piercings.

                I’ve met more that are completely “normal” in appearance – but are absolute fruitcakes.

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                    1. Wayne C. Booth’s The Rhetoric of Fiction is good on the differences between the author implied by a book and the real live person.

                      In A Rhetoric of Irony, he observed that Saul Bellow told him that it’s not surprising the implied author is better, what with all that revision.

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            1. Heh. I’d love to see their faces when it’s pointed out to them that they and the blue haired, pierced lefty crowd have a lot in common…

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        2. <quaddie facepalm>

          It’s like there’s some sort of manic lust for pigeon holes. “Pigeon holes. Pigeon holes! Everything must fit in the proper PIGEON HOLES!!!”

          Me, I learned long ago that when it comes to writing and reading, the differences between men and women are subtle and often twisted & peculiar. And before that I just figured that a tolerably competent male author would be able to write both male and female characters, and a tolerably competent female author would be able to write both male and female characters.

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            1. Those are relationships, and he seems to have covered the possibilities fairly well if you stretch them a bit (cousins for younger/older siblings, or boss/worker for ruler/subject, for instance).

              Everyone generally fits into pigeonholes, if the pigeonholes are well-thought-out. What we are not is interchangeable widgets.

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        3. I read books for the stories. I don’t really care who (or what) wrote them. I’m not dating the authors, after all.

          Now if their weirdness and/or Political Correctness contaminates the story, and makes it suck, then it matters. It’s still all about the story, though.

          Liked by 1 person

      3. I guess that I also “read male” growing up – because I couldn’t stand most of the teen-girl lit thrust at me. Honestly most of it made me barf chunks. I liked the stories on the boy’s reading list better, because they were all about adventure, escape, striving for a goal.

        See if this metric works better– did you read adult?

        Like, actually adult, not rated R– I just went over the books I loved as a kid, and can’t think of a single “kids book” that I liked– Hank the Cowdog is ranch comedy, Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys are mysteries, Encyclopedia Brown is trivia-and-puzzle with a thin plot, Enchanted Forest Chronicles is fantasy…. all of these are things that I read anything else I could get my hands on, too.

        And I still don’t read “books for [demographic]” writing. I don’t ‘get’ the point. Heck, frequently I’ll bounce off of a “popular story” because I go and read it, and it’s…contemporary [demographic] writing with elf ears pasted on it.

        The pattern I’ve recognized is that the world building for books that aren’t genre almost always sucks. After all, it’s real, so no need to explain, support, or examine your assumptions, right?

        …

        :stares in horror in ranch kid, seeing what some rich city kid thinks is unquestionably normal:

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        1. Comes under “depends”. Got books that were mom’s, and aunts (both grandmothers). Not an incomplete list but:

          Bobbsey Twins

          Nancy Drew

          Hardy Boys

          One based on Stewardess who also solved mysteries (series name ???)

          Farley’s Stallion books (Horses)

          Misty (Horse)

          Saber Horse from the Sea (Horse)

          US Revolutionary Fiction (Thorne ???) (Historical Fiction based on true event – HFBOTE)

          French/Indian colonial pre revolutionary war (HFBOTE)

          Civil War Fiction (both sides, A. Norton & ???)

          Andre Norton

          Heinlein

          Clark

          McCaffary

          Dune and sequel

          Westerns

          S/F

          Anything I could get my hands on …

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Oh, forgot the Bobbsey Twins (they were my sister’s, but I read them more than she did). Implausible, mostly – but they were doing things and facing life without backing down.

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          3. @ dep729 – I think you are referring to this series, which was one of my favorites. I have most of the authors on your list, many of them on my shelves.

             Vicki Barr Air Stewardess (16 Books) by Helen Wells

            Did you also read Cherry Ames – “a fictional nurse who solves crimes in various locations and time periods.”

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            1. I think you are right for the Helen Wells series.

              The Cheryl Ames, nurse, books do not sound familiar at all.

              Makes sense. When these were written the women protagonists had to have a career in a “woman” field: Nursing, Stewardess, Secretary, Homemaker, writer, to be remotely believable. Unlike over the last 40-50 -ish years where women now can be: PI’s (Paretsky’s “VI Warshawski”), Park Ranger (Barr’s “Anna Pigeon”), Veterans turned PI with or without a dog. Even some more recent military SF thrillers.

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              2. I liked Paretsky’s early stuff. Same with Patricia Cornwell, and some of the Kathy Reichs. But they all turned the “feminist propaganda” knob to 11 after a while, and I found other things to read.

                I don’t know if it’s a “modern” thing or a “mystery” thing. Leigh Brackett, CJ Cherryh, CL Moore, Andre Norton, or Joan D. Vinge never went strange like that.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. Yep. I liked the early “VI” books. I’ll pick them up on sale (free/$0.99) but that is it.

                  Norton, etc. Technically writing women doing stuff, point of view, was feminists. What was interesting is on Norton’s Witch World series, for example, she shows power corrupts no matter what your plumbing.

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          1. <click!>

            Miss Pickerell. That was the character’s name. I remembered the character, at least vaguely, but not the name. (It’s been a long long time since I last saw any Danny Dunn or Miss Pickerell books, although I did read them as a young sprout.)

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            1. I had to chuckle.

              Like you, I don’t remember reading the series but I remember seeing that cover.

              But what the series reminds me of the “complaint” about “why don’t we see an old woman going on Fantasy Quests”.

              Miss Pickerell was having Science Fiction adventures long before the “complainers” were (likely) readers.

              Of course, there have been other series where “women of a certain age” went on adventures.

              Oh, Paul Gallico had Mrs. ‘Arris and another author had an older woman who did missions for the CIA. (Can’t remember author or character).

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Oh, the older woman working for the CIA was Emily Pollifax and the author was Dorothy Gilman.

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      4. I know of one male writer that spends, to my mind, an inordinate amount of time describing the Laboutin (sp?) shoes that his characters find. But, IIRC, he did confess once that he gets all of that stuff from the wife, so probably doesn’t count.

        Liked by 1 person

  7. “Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.” – Dean Koontz

    To be frank, with the absolute plethora of sex in every media form, it seems the stuff that lacks sex scenes sells best. The MCU mostly avoided sex scenes – it sold wildly well for ten years. Lots of anime refuses to have a sex scene. Again, it’s the dominant genre on TV. Manga likewise is trouncing practically everything from mainstream publishers, not just American comics. Again, very little sex is ever present. If it is mentioned at all, it’s via innuendo or through subtle (these days) hints.

    Japanese light novels are a little more touch and go, but even they typically “fade to black” rather than show the deed (Sword Art Online – SAO – apparently being an exception here). Again, they sell like hot cakes. Apart from all the other reasons, it seems the lack of overt, in-the-reader’s-face sex is what helps them rocket to stardom.

    When everything is sex-saturated, the stuff that doesn’t have it is what stands out, not the reverse. I’m not sure why indies feel the need to imitate tradpub on this point (unless, perhaps, the genre/story calls for it and/or they’re making a point), but they generally stand out better by following the above examples than by seeking to imitate the culture of Hollywoodites and Manhattan editors….

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    1. I put a content statement at the beginning of my books, and got considerable pushback about the practice.

      Authors who wrote “Garbage starts in the second chapter” seemed to think I was causing problems for them–one woman actually used the word censorship, as if my desire for my readers to know what they were getting into would get her books banned.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I’ve run into some folks throwing a fit about those.

        …after getting burned a few too many times, I’ve started being suspicious about the folks who are noisiest.

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    2. It has gotten to the point for me that when a present day author draws the curtain and resumes narrative operations after the characters do their thing offscreen, it is notable and memorable.

      Nothing against those who do not, as I am one of the males who enjoy written word forms equally with visual, but it does often represent a story progression speed bump.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. @ FM in re curtainology, a couplet I have treasured since the seventies.

        “John Carter, as a hero, was a superman for certain.

        John Carter as a lover — let us quickly draw the curtain.”

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I frequently don’t even have occasion to draw the curtain. You, as reader, deduce activity by the heroine’s turning up pregnant.

        Liked by 1 person

    3. Not me. My attempts to write erotica … were laughable and not in a romantic-comedy sort of way. Besides, I don’t care to know what my characters are doing when they shut the bedroom door, thankyouverymuch. I got way too much of that when I was in college the first time, and by proxy when I had … vocal, enthusiastic, and appreciative … neighbors at one apartment.

      Liked by 1 person

    4. Rewatching SAO right now – and it never shows the deed. (At least in the American streaming version – is it bowdlerized there)?

      Closest to it was Asuna disrobing to undergarments when she and Kirito started their physical relationship (and smacking him when he does not get the point!) Then it goes right to the next morning.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. No idea if it made it into the anime at all. I’ve neither seen nor read SAO, but apparently the light novel…does not skip straight to the next morning for that scene. So I am given to understand, at least; I could be in error. The way it’s talked about, though, the light novel got…rather descriptive in I believe Chapter 16. Which is not typical of light novels, if the way SAO is talked about is any indication.

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        1. Large parts of Sword Art Online were originally published as a web serial; while I can’t be certain of the original, published version (SAO is unusual in that the author also did a rewrite after original publication and sold that rewrite to customers (again) as a sort of special edition in much the same way as Star Wars; the book I’ve read is this second version) I’d bet that the sex scenes were only in the web version.

          Liked by 1 person

      1. Are those cute little critters better fried, grilled, or baked? Do they taste like fish or chicken? /jk

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        1. I actually got booted hard out of a fairly recent popular humor series, because it was about cooking– and several of the monsters that were used as ingredients were intelligent enough to talk, and wear clothing.

          I nope’d out so hard the octopus still hasn’t caught up.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Yeah, Chinese webnovels where they eat goblin meat are nopes. I’m not sure that I’ve seen Korean or Japanese ones doing it, but ew, wherever you write from.

            OTOH, it does mean that Cordwainer Smith’s darkly comic short story about Chinese restaurants getting rid of dangerous aliens that taste like duck… was not as much of a joke as I thought.

            Liked by 1 person

  10. “When Mike doesn’t answer? I cry. No matter how many times I read it.”

    Yeah, me too. And I’m a guy.

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    1. Nah. Not me. Strange coincidence however how the furnace filter always seems to clog right as I get to that part and put a lot of dust in the air.

      Liked by 1 person

  11. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the oeuvre of Andre Norton aka Alice Mary Norton. She was a master of science fiction and fantasy. Her The Stars are Ours was the first science fiction book I read as a lad many years ago from the school library at Peter E. Howell Elementary School (after that I discovered the Heinlein juveniles – but that is another story). It wasn’t until many years later when I got involved in going to and putting on cons that I learned Norton’s true identity.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I went the other way – I discovered Heinlein when I read a book blurb on the back of a Norton comparing her work to his and said, “OK, let’s check this out.”

      Liked by 2 people

    2. I knew Andre was a boy’s name, but at some point I became convinced that Andre was also a girl’s name in that case. (Possibly because of author blurbs on library hardbacks, since they revealed that “she” was a retired librarian, after a certain point in her life. But I don’t recall clearly.)

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  12. I’m super intense into naval gazing, and the insides of my own colon, so I only read fiction by Daleks of Choler. I’m definitely not fairly driven to read fiction written by other people, in part to escape the inside of my own head. (above is a little bit sarcasm) (And I retreated inside my own head, and to my room, to get more space from other people in the first place. The problem is, if the dose of my own thinking is too high, and not cut with other things, the paranoid withdrawal just shuts me down entirely.)

    I used to think I was a fairly pure introvert. That isn’t correct, I am very dependent on engaging with people. The problem, my screws loose mean I need isolation so that I can remember who I really am, and filter out intensities of mental dysfunction. The problem is the dose, so that I also don’t get lost in imagining (without basis), that people hate me and are angry with me, and socially worrying over differences of opinion.

    Hilariously interesting the stuff I can learn about my self from experience, from trying to function better, and from trying to understand the implications of my error patterns.

    Anyhow, the too-weak-to-trust-as-theory correlations between type of fiction and sex also apply to some of the other demographics.

    Mental illness types can maybe correlate more strongly, but you still should expect a rate of drastic negative correlation samples. “I find the way these social behaviors described relatable” versus “this is precisely the thinking that I am tired of my exposure to”. Also, folks of Diagnosis A, who find other folks with A extremely offputting, or just plain wrong.

    Anyhow, some occupations have an extremely strong self selection adn also a shaping effect on the people who have put them into practice for years. (And also noticeably similar effects on some of the garbage wannabes.) Extremely strong effects on thinking, like almost everyone in occupation B is an asshole, still do not 100% correlate to associated taste in fiction.

    And, fiction sale, is a marketing problem. Your marketing is inside of, and outside of, the story. Writing 100% correlations, and confidence, into the story, as a marketeer, screws you over in proportion to a) the people your model is wrong for b) extent to which they would otherwise make up your market c) extent to which the rest of your market for the story can see that you were unnecessarily an idiot d) extent to which you screw up your execution of the story in pursuit of that model e) extent to which market is allergic to that particular screw up.

    Also applies to marketing non-fiction. If someone is one hundred percent confident that Blacks do not read mathematics textbooks, and this somehow does not otherwise harm the quality of their math textbooks, making a point of saying so is absurdly bad marketing. Because lots and lots of people are still allergic to that, even if they also loathe the DIE bastards.

    Suppose we are talking about the set of people utterly screwed by American public schools, who cannot read, write, or math, and also believe the Marxist ‘everything is a conspiracy, and it can stop you from just doing stuff’. Precisely because the Marxists more often posit conspiracies against women, blacks, mentally ill, etc., women, blacks, and mentally ill might have a small correlation to being utterly screwed by the public schools. If so, small effects might show up in a data set. Or, conversely, the messaging happens to work out the other way for a sample, and a data set shows small correlations in white men who are otherwise mentally healthy being utterly screwed by the primary and secondary public schooling.

    The most fundamental problem in what the directly injured people are experiencing, is the false certainty in what conspiracies can and cannot actually do to stop people from doing things.

    It is also a problem for an author to screw over their salesmanship by extrapolating from weak effect data to what the marketing should actually say. Especially data where the relationship between sample statistic and population parameters are opaque or unpersuasive. (I’m unclear how important it is for people to consider nonparametric statistics whenever they are trying to deal with some aggregate. (Demographics are aggregates, and can be an inappropriate proxy. And sometimes we need the correct proxy for our aggregate reasoning in the cases where we cannot simply consider the individual alone.))

    Anyway, I doubt your choice of ‘violence’ here is inappropriate.

    “Fisher did nothing wrong” could be an amusing troll, and could lead to insightful conversation about how we think about stats, models, and lots of interesting phenomena. It could also turn off a lot of people I could otherwise have a productive stats convo with, or draw the interest of people who are too boring on stats for me to want to engage with deeply about stats with.

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  13. I read a fantasy series that had explicit sex in it. First novel it was more or less integral.to the plot….angels and succubi and one nerd type schlub who put women on pedestals…eh anyway…lotnof feminie crap subverted with male wish fulfillment. The characters, treatment of supes and magic were good, and polts were decent. Stopped because too manynsmall things kept throwing it off. The writer had everything and gradually ruined it

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I believe I read the same series. My theory is the first one was written to get the story out of the authors head, along the lines of Ringo’s first “Ghost” book, and the success of that surprised the heck out of the author, so there was a lot of pantsing going on to generate the sequels, and it shows.

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  14. “But Sarah,” You’ll say. “You can’t deny more women read romance and more men read mil sf or thrillers.”

    Oh, gosh.

    Westerns.

    Clearly a guy thing right?

    My mom will read anything that doesn’t run away fast enough, got to talking with an older neighbor, and they were swapping books.

    She got brown paper bags full of “westerns” that should have set the bag on fire with how spicy they were. They were absolutely explicit romances, but bought by men, so they were “westerns”.

    …of course she read them. And traded off every “thriller” or “mystery” that was in the same style that she found at the used book store, especially if it got it out of the house before her kids could read it.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. She mostly succeeded, by the way.

      The only one I got a hold of was a vaguely Roman historical that was virtually identical to a romance of the same aim, but the cover was more like the Agatha Christie mid-80s covers– those ones with the “single primary color in a deep dark shade with black, white, or a metal color over it making the image.”

      Liked by 2 people

    2. Bahaha, my older brother once gave one of those spicy Westerns to my dad as a Christmas gift. Thankfully he’d specified that he bought it because the author was sitting in the bookstore looking lonely at his signing table, or Dad would’ve almost certainly thrown him, and the book, out of the house. Dad doesn’t much hold with explicit materials. Brother had a bad run of presents that year – every gift went awry in some memorable way. After that he’s always just gifted money.

      Liked by 1 person

  15. “…my problem is the ranks and the mil-speak. It’s like another language, and I don’t absorb it from reading for some reason.”

    Having spent fifteen years working as a civilian in a military organization, I feel your pain. By the same token I know a fair amount of that stuff because I had to learn it in self-defense.

    Should you ever feel the impetus, I would be happy to consult, edit or both regarding those topics.

    BTW one of my pet peeves in Hollywood stuff is how often they get that stuff so, so wrong. All it would take is for them to find some retired military guy and offer him a credit (“Military consultant”) and a few thousand bucks and they could get all that (ahem) “squared away.” ;-)

    Liked by 1 person

    1. What I found while trying to write a mil fantasy with #1 ducttape son is that what it needs is collaboration. I write in civ-speak, and someone has to go over and change it all. It’s tedious for the other person.

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      1. Understood, but should you get that particular bee in your bonnet someday, I stand ready to provide. And–to be clear–just for the hey of it, no charge! ;-)

        Liked by 1 person

    2. IIRC that’s exactly what happened with the original Stargate TV series. One of the actors had served in the military, and the writers decided to listen to his critiques/complaints and clean up a lot of the errors.

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      1. The pilot ep for Stargate: SG-1 is just painful. They have one guy with both enlisted and officer rank on his USAF service dress uniform, and another whose uniform rank insignia changes through the story back and forth between captain and major, only sometimes matching the dialog, and in all cases is positioned on his uniforms just totally incorrectly.

        Add that to all the ranks and form of address errors in the script and rewatching that one is difficult.

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    3. Belisarius Productions (as founded by the late Donald P. Bellisario) notoriously hired an ex-drill sergeant to be their military consultant for their various military-related productions, and occasionally to fill in as an actor, IIRC. (Although Bellisario himself had been a Marine, and was kind of his own consultant.)

      With JAG, they sent the actors to this guy’s short, easy version of boot camp (the actors were paid), so that they could learn the correct bearing and certain military ways of acting/thinking, to play Navy and Marine characters. The production wasn’t supposed to use exactly accurate uniforms (IIRC) because somebody got a stick up their butt about maybe the actors being mistaken for real military, but the Bellisario version of the uniforms was designed to look good on TV. (And grooming standards were actually stricter than real life, because the actors had hairstylists, makeup artists, etc. to help them out.)

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  16. Just remembering back almost 30 years ago when there was a group insisting that Steve Stirling was female. They said no man could write female characters the way he did, and he used initials on the cover.

    Steve said he used initials because it allowed his name could be in large type while still fitting on the cover.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. And there’s a really pernicious modern doctrine: it can’t be valid unless the author exactly matches the character. A man must write men, a woman must write women, people must write characters of the same ethnicity, or the work is not “valid.”

      I just saw a video on X where a very African young woman in a hijab was complaining all the teachers in the Irish school she’s attending are….Irish! Or white! None of them look like her, how can she be expected to be comfortable in that environment?

      The girl epitomizes the indoctrination being taught: Ireland needs even more Africans, so people like her can feel comfortable and welcome because they are surrounded with, “people like them”. Obviously the Irish who disagree are being very selfish and bigoted.

      The eventual backlash is going to be very ugly.

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      1. The current government of the Republic had taken the place of the Saxon and is running a plantation once again.

        There’s much more to say, but I’m far too angry to do it coherently.

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          1. I don’t know about the Irish, but some of the Gulf Coast hardware chains have very recently leaned hard into hiring people who can speak Spanish for all those people who work in construction’s convenience.

            …This is the Gulf Coast. Guess how many people are native speakers of Spanish? Guess what proportion of the ones that do are actually from this country?

            Yeah. The culture clash between employees is starting to get noticeable. It is not a good thing.

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      3. “really pernicious modern doctrine: it can’t be valid unless the author exactly matches the character.“

        ^^^ That is the definition of racist, sexist, and every kind of -phobic the left throws at conservatives.

        Humans are all Mark I Mod.1 Homo Sapiens, yes, even those guys over there. & we are ALL better than any of us realize. & worse. All at the same time. So we should try to be better. I believe God made us all different so the choir in Heaven will have more than just the one weak melody some imagine our “New Song” will be.

        I will be 26 years married in April & 8 years cancer-free in June & Praise God there is a chance The Republic may yet outlive me.

        Liked by 1 person

        2. Whether deliberate or not, it’s done in such a way as to exclude certain groups. White? Can’t write a black person. All characters straight? Not inclusive. Anti-grav world full of yellow striped carnivorous jellyfish? Hire a carnivorous jellyfish to read for offensive references. I kid you not, one of my friends had a book rejected by an agent because she hadn’t hired a sensitivity reader.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. I extend two large middle fingers to the concept of “sensitivity reader.”

            It’s an example of leftist weaponization:

            1. Take a respected custom, reasonable policy, or desirable reform
            2. Poison it
            3. Weaponize it
            4. Wave its stiffened carcass in the air as a banner, while demanding compliance

            The reasonable policy here is to not make silly mistakes, mistakes analogous to the eye-rollers concerning firearms or horses that the ignorant-and-don’t-know-it so often make. But poisoned. Weaponized. And I refuse to comply. Especially since, while I have a few black women characters in my various stories, I don’t have any present-day Earth black women characters – they’re characters in a fantasy world, or science fiction characters on an alien planet (or Earth in the far future, or in the 1950s but an alternate timeline).

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            2. My physical descriptions in the things I’ve written tend to be on the very sparse side, but the one book I managed to finish* has my own cover art, trying to match the character as I saw her in my head, which was in turn physically based on someone I knew in college.

              Which meant I found a photo of a young Navaho woman to use as the base, because said friend happened to have those high cheekbones and that eye shape. Turns out that this very blonde girl happened to have a native Mexican grandmother.

              Which further means that to make everything work in my head (not to mention making beards uncommon), most of the people in my mental map have a Native American to California Asian hybrid physiology.

              I could probably have offended a large number of people by mentioning that. But as I said, my physical descriptions are sparse, to the point where the secondary MC doesn’t even have a hair color listed.

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      5. I hate that ideology with the burning heat of a thousand suns. If everyone were the same it’d be a boring world, and much poorer for its sameness. This is why I carefully cultivate friendships with people who are wildly different than me – because I don’t WANT that! So I count young people, old people, people with differing opinions and life experiences and politics and nationalities and religions among my friends.

        That said, I do think that common aims are essential for communities. And it drives me nuts when actors get chosen for roles who don’t fit the role at all in appearance (black Anne Boleyn, I’m looking at you!)

        But hey, as an author, if I want to write about someone different than me, I hope to do so with careful research and sensitivity, sure, but who cares what I look like or what kinds of beliefs I subscribe to, so long as I manage to write that character believably?

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      6. Oh, for crying out loud. That young lady has never been taught to think for herself, and her video shows exactly why: she is a far more useful tool for her indoctrinators to use than if she could actually reason.

        My oldest son is the only one old enough (so far) to attend school, though his next sibling is going to start later this year. We send him to a bilingual $LANG/English school, where he has a mix of teachers. The ones who teach in $LANG are all of the same ethnicity, for obvious reasons. The ones who teach in English are from a mix of countries; most of them are white but one of them, if you hear his accent, is clearly from Africa, though I’m not good enough at accents to pinpoint the country and I haven’t asked him yet. (Looking at his skin you might guess black American, but the minute you hear him speak, you’ll say “Nope, he’s African.”)

        But do you hear me complaining that my son is learning $LANG from teachers who are all the same ethnicity? Not at all! They’re the ones who grew up speaking it, and that’s exactly who you want teaching you a language: native speakers, so that you have at least a chance at learning to speak it with the right accent. (Not everyone can, but the younger you are, the less set-in-stone your accent is, it seems.) Learn a language from a non-native speaker and there’s almost zero chance that you’ll be learning the native accent.

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      7. Wait, does that mean that I couldn’t write Alchemy of Shadows unless I was a centuries old alchemist hiding among the population? Or The Unmasking unless I was a vampire hunter that was also half vampire?

        Liked by 2 people

        1. Of course, you’re the wrong sex for the “Half-Vampire who hunts Vampires”. [Very Big Crazy Grin]

          Liked by 1 person

    2. Hm. Well I don’t read a ton of Stirling, but I find most of his women kinda creepy. It would never occur to me a woman would write a character like–say–the terrorist chick in the Falkenberg novels he co-wrote with Pournelle.

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      1. Have you read his “Emberverse” novels? Or the related “Nantucket” trilogy? Both have believable (given the context) women.

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  17. Somewhere I remember hearing that Charles Dickens was one of the few people who corrected guessed that George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) was a woman.

    Apparently Charles Dickens had a hard time writing female characters and noticed George Eliot wrote better female characters than male characters.

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    1. There is an SF writer who wrote under a male name who, when I first read I thought was a particularly soppy gay male.
      So, some people do wear it on their type.

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  18.  “This book has tons of sex, therefore it’s for girls” 

    John Ringo to the white courtesy phone please…

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    3. Though from his public comments on fan – um, Interactions? Offers? – those books did get him no small number of distaff readers.

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      1. Probably not a surprise given what I’ve been hearing lately…

        A few weeks ago there was talk on X about how in gacha games (games – usually mobile – in which you collect randomized items – often very attractive characters – via “card draws”) aimed at men, the focus is largely attractive women in revealing outfits who make flirty comments suggesting she might be interested in the player. In gacha games aimed at women, the focus is apparently often on attractive men who promise to utterly dominate the player in the bedroom.

        Guess which kind of game attracts all of the attention of the morality police?

        I’m not saying every woman is like that. And I have no idea what the actual percentage of women is who are attracted to that kind of thing. But there are apparently a lot of them. Otherwise no one would have cared about 50 Shades.

        Liked by 2 people

          1. I flipped through some of the books ditto. Argh. (I knew people personally who were into The Lifestyle and they would get red in the face when those books were mentioned. Then they either went silent or on a rant.)

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        3. ???

          The biggest Gatcha game right now would most likely be Genshin Impact– the most famous series is probably the FATE series.

          It’s nothing like what you describe. Maybe one of the war games where the ships and planes are all attractive women? A little, anyways.

          What you describe sounds more like the Romance gachas, at least for the men’s, but… women’s romance gachas are more like Tears of Themis. Where the draw is that the guys will actually defend you when attacked, and the characters aren’t expected to hop into bed.

          Still mostly innocently, a lot of guys will be playing the female-main-character Romance gachas. (Especially the spicier or lesbian ones– similar to how women tend to play the pretty-boy romances. There are actually sweet/PG rated versions of these, just like how romances aren’t all explicit, evne when there’s heavy flirting and implied activity.)

          Are you maybe thinking about the H-games?

          If so… both varieties are usually played by guys. The difference is which characters change.
          To the tune of the first result when I went and tried to look up the top h-gacha for women it was female fans screeching that they’d finally found one that was aimed at women, instead of guys.

          That’s why the female “main character” tends to start with improbable proportions stuffed into more improbable outfits, and it usually goes pr0n really dang quick after that. The… ignore the obvious pun… insert character, is the cards, not the other.

          Which is to say, folks focus on the “sexy girls” h-gacha because the income from the ones aimed at women are a rounding error.

          ********

          For 50 Shades of Grey–it might be useful to get some context. The Clan of the Cavebear first three novels sold more in the US, in the early 90s, in the US. (Counting as all three having sold, not a combined number of copies sold.)

          The publishers thought they had a new Harry Potter on their hands, but with sex and aimed at well-off middle aged women, who are the gold standard of what you’re told to market to.

          Kind of like how Twilight– which 50 Shades started as a fanfic of– sold more than 50 Shades did, by aiming at Desired Market #2, teen girls.

          Back to Potter, for that series… the numbers are basically “add a zero, minimum.”

          That is what actual super popular book would look like.

          As opposed to the one that three different people bought me copies of. Not interested, thank you! (squiiiiick)

          Liked by 1 person

    1. Apparently WP has introduced new “Double Seekrit Mod Triggers” including use of the name C H A R L E S (lets see if that gets through) that our esteemed hostess cannot even see on the admin end.

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      1. That’s funny. Sarah got deleted by groups.io on A Literary Horde because a comment I made here was accidentally marked as spam. Weird. We’re both back in.

        (Let’s hope this comment doesn’t do it again)

        Liked by 2 people

  20. Women who think an all female society would be superior and peaceful were the mean girls tormenting the rest of us in high school.

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    1. I think it’s human nature to think “If I was at the top, everything would be better.” And it is better, to a narcissist.

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    4. Opining as a guy, women who think an all female society would be superior and peaceful have never even talked to any women who attended any all-female school. The stories I have heard…

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    1. Horny teens sent outside coed to frolic unsupervised at “summer camp” was one of the techniques the NSDAP breeding program used to try and make selectively bred babies.

      Liked by 1 person

    1. The notion that a ‘group’ should have more rights than the people in it (or those not in it)? Definitely. It’s logically unsound, and also evil.

      And it’s the Democrats’ core principle.

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      1. Okay, good. Because it came up in another online discussion, and I didn’t want to declare it Marxist without knowing for sure. (I gave a brief description about how power to govern comes from the consent of the governed citizens, inalienable rights come from God to the individual person, inalienable means that you can’t give them away or pool them, etc.)

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Marx divides everyone up into groups, to which he assigns virtue, sin, rights, and responsibilities, solely as a group.

          Which makes the number of trustfund baby socialists a fairly interesting thing – who, exactly, do they think will be up against the wall first come the revolution?

          Liked by 1 person

        2. You’d probably have to do some digging, but with a little effort you could probably find some quotes by Mussolini (or maybe even the Austrian painter) speaking very positively of collective rights. Would probably have more of an effect in many circles than referring to it as “Marxist”.

          :p

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  23. As a male reader (not author), I enjoy good books written by women. Examples: In sci-fantasy), J.F Rivkin’s (actually two authors) Silverglass series (read several times), Mary Gentle’s Grunts (picture the Orc Marines!) (she does milspeak very well) that is hilarious. In nonfiction, Beryl Markham’s West With the Night, and much earlier Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa (1897). Kingsley had a flair for vivid description and unconventional words “The river mouth (she was about to wade) looked mighty crocodiley”.

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    1. Rogue Angel Series, listed author as Alex Archer. Not true. Name is a wrapper for multiple authors both women and men. I can’t tell the difference in the books.

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        1. I found the series late. I have all the ebooks. Last “few”, 20 or so (one new one ever quarter -ish, 3 or 4 a year) were as they were published. Then series was sold to Graphic Audio. New books but only in the new format (dang it). All the old books were also done in the new format.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. Valerie Moolman wrote quite a few of the “Nick Carter” sexy-spy novels. A Linda Stewart wrote one, Dee Stewart wrote a couple, Gayle Lynds wrote a few… I never noticed any difference. Granted, they were schlock, so it wasn’t a high bar. Though I was surprised to find that Dennis Lynds, Martin Cruz Smith, Robert Randisi, Robert Vardeman, Michael Jahn, Michael Avallone, Joseph Rosenberger, and Jerry Ahern appeared on the list, along with some prolific “works for hire” authors and some complete unknowns.

        I’m certain I remember Jerry Pournelle saying he wrote one, back on his subforum on BIX.

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    3. Don’t know any of those books, but if you like sci-fi, I highly recommend Rachel Neumeier’s No Foreign Sky. Fast-paced military sci-fi, lots of action, but also lovely relationships (no romance – yet), culture clashes, and several types of fun aliens.

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  25. Completely off topic, but I wonder how many of the leftist mob going after Tesla’s either drive or adore Volkswagons, especially the VW Beetle. Can’t wait until they find out that the VW Beetle was based on a style design by the actual Hitler who wanted a car for the “volk”

    Liked by 1 person

    3. There have been some memes about this. Someone doesn’t support Tesla because Musk is a “Nazi”. They only support brands like Volkswagen, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, etc… (all of whom were – at minimum – up to their eyeballs in the German war effort).

      Also the meme about supporting NASA and not SpaceX because SpaceX was founded by a Nazi. :P

      Liked by 1 person

    1. Uh. That’s not a Type 99 or Type 38 Arisaka. The cocking piece and bolt handle look like a Model 1903 Springfield.

      After “demilitarization”, American rifles might be easier to get than Japanese rifles?

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  27. I have been a part of three online writing groups in my life.

    In each case

    1) They were taken over by women (mostly housewives who had the most free time, so they became dominant in the group by default).

    2) The writing groups became romance novel writing groups.

    Take that for what it’s worth. Admittedly the sample size was small.

    Ironically, being a part of those groups was an eye-opener for me. It’s what showed me that yes, men and women are different. They think differently. They approach things differently. The feedback my samples got and how they took my feedback of their work demonstrated that quite inarguably.

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  28. “but I have to invent a mechanism for them and thread them backwards through history in a way that works. otherwise I don’t believe in them, and when I don’t believe in stuff it doesn’t get written.”

    (mad laughter) Somebody actually gets it! And my readers sometimes wonder why I start so slow.

    “However men also have a high incidence of crazy in SF. Even fairly sane men will tell me that half of Europe is under water 200 years in the future because climate change.”

    One world governments. Don’t even get me started on it. One world governments for humans (I can kinda see aliens, maybe, hive minds or mind readers) don’t work. Period. No, not even very small worlds. Smaller than that, they’re asteroids, not planets!

    “And that’s the other thing “Women just write about feelings!” While it’s bad to write ABOUT feelings — ideally I should make you FEEL the feelings — this is another thing where you can shout it and stomp feet all you want to. BUT in the end story telling is meant to evoke feelings. If it doesn’t arouse your feelings — not those feelings. Outside the door. No books. Ten minutes — why are you reading it, instead of reading a technical manual? In fact, making you feel the feels and be in the character’s head is what written fiction has that is better than movies.”

    Because the emotion is the story. Really. If it is just dry information, the story brain will never get engaged with the story, never conjure the imagination to work its magic on the psyche, never extrapolate with wonder and awe, fright, determination, tension, sadness, crippling madness, broken-ness, or clarity.

    We writers, we paint a canvass on the mind with all the colours of emotion. A story should evoke feelings, if it is any at all good to anyone. Those feelings are what make the story in our heads happen.

    A story is a cooperative contract, in a way, between the writer and the reader. Like secret santa, pen pals, and all those old things that don’t happen how because reasons. What we write is not and never can be the exact thing the appears in the mind of the reader. We suggest. We nudge. We frame, describe, and with a wink and a nod, we set them on the path. Every story is different in the minds of the reader. Even the same story, read at different periods of life.

    When it’s good and tight, the story captivates the mind. The reader feels what, to them, it is like to be in the story. Afraid, worried, or terrified. Aghast, amused, or titillated. Angered, wrathful, or scornful. And so on. All good stories play upon the emotions. As they very well should.

    “I could be a supermodel, but not everyone is going to want to date me.”

    Supermodels tend to be high maintenance. They like attention, which I do not. Supermodel looks and not high maintenance equals married, if of marriageable age. Not a complaint, an observation. Quality mates (of either sex) are in high demand. They tend to get snapped up quicklike.

    On sex in books specifically: if it don’t drive the plot, I tend to skip it as a reader. Just my taste in story, though. I rarely note the writers actuality- identity, gender, age? Bah, keep writing more, good writer. These things are irrelevant to me and the vast majority of those who actually read and purchase books. I want more of the characters I like, more of the plots that interest me, more of the worlds that fascinate.

    Not more of the writer’s hobby horses (an older term for the crapola that creeps into the story that not only doesn’t fit, it slaps the reader like a wet fish). You can insert personal ideas and weave them into the fabric of the story, but ham fistedly punching them in tends to eject the reader. And yes, I am talking about a few specific writers in particular who have earned my ire.

    Personal peeves aside, the story itself is what matters. If it is engaging, compelling, and evokes the sort of emotion the reader is looking for, it can cover a LOT of writerly sins of commission. Know your genre, your target audience, the tropes and pace of the story you want to write and put that together with plot, characters, and worldbuilding? All to the good. You create it, the readers will find it.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. You wrote, “Supermodels tend to be high maintenance. They like attention, which I do not. Supermodel looks and not high maintenance equals married, if of marriageable age. Not a complaint, an observation. Quality mates (of either sex) are in high demand. They tend to get snapped up quicklike.”

      There’s a helmet sticker that came to mind there. It reads “No matter how great she looks, someone somewhere is tired of her sh!t.” (Pardon the language, it IS a biker thing.) Looks alone are a poor basis for a relationship.

      No, I don’t just say this because I’ve been the UgIy One since puberty. You can learn a lot looking in from the outside.

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      1. Eh, the way the people you are surrounded by can and often will affect your personality, especially when young. Young minds are especially plastic. You can see this in how a young woman (or man) who is attractive changes in response to the attention and aggravation of others.

        I’ve been the one on the outside, too. Not a pretty or handsome man, me. Just medium tall, dark haired, and rather ordinary looking. Seen innocent and caring turn into callous, manipulative, and scornful. Seen it more than a few times.

        At some point, the constant attention begins to change the person. They really can’t help themselves, absent superhuman effort. People are needy. The constant neediness wears on a body. The attention of others rewards manipulative behavior. And so it goes.

        I do not excuse the bad behaviors of others, though. Far from it. Adults are responsible for their own behavior. And the pretty ones, well, as they age they tend to get hit harder by it than those of us who never had it to shield our mistakes.

        There are good ones out there, though. Ones that deny the pressure of “peers.” Ones that have strong moral standing, sharp intellect, and the wit to sift the weevils from the wheat, as it were. Pretty ones or not, those are the ones I have utmost respect for. Because it ain’t easy to stand in the spotlight.

        It makes you an easy target. An easy target for monsters in human form.

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    2. …

      …..

      ….

      “Drive my plot!” she cried wildly from the other room.

      (just couldn’t let that opportunity pass again.)

      Liked by 1 person

    3. I saw a piece of information about how trophy wives spent X amount of time catering to their appearance (which makes sense, since that’s the asset they’re trading on at the time.)

      I then thought, “If time spent on appearance is what makes a trophy wife, I must be a booby prize.” (And yes, I did realize the pun in short order.)

      Liked by 1 person

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