Men's and Women's Fantasy bounces back

[sartorias]

I know I posted on this the other day, but because the discussion was so interesting, and because I hope that people might respond--and make suggestions of good books to read--I modified the post a bit and put it up at BVC

Comments

[asakiyume]

When you say another circle of readers, can you describe more?

[sartorias]

In other words, posting the topic to BVC I hope reaches readers who don't read here at my blog. Spread the word a tad.

[asakiyume]

Oooh, okay, I get it!

[sartorias]

Oooh, I wish you'd put your comment back. It deserves to be seen and thought about (and the link read) and not everyone goes over to the BVC links.

[asakiyume]

I have no recommendations, alas, in part because I just read so comparatively few books (and these days my reading has revolved around various projects), and in part because I just don’t conceive of books that way. theferrett, whose blog I’ve started reading recently, was talking about stories feeling masculine or feminine the other day (entry is here), and I realized, reading the entry, that I tend to find that for me, these discussions end up flipping in the other direction: that is, I end up finding out about people’s beliefs about gender when I read these entries.

[sartorias]

Thank you for reposting this. I hope people will click the link--that entry is different from what one might expect, and at least it caused me to do some reflection.

There is a lot of ground for further discussion in this topic indeed.

[asakiyume]

I was interested that theferret insisted that it wasn't the gender of the protagonist that determined whether he thought his stories were girl-stories or boy-stories... and yet, when I asked him (and I wasn't trying to bait; I was really curious) about how that worked with "Saurkraut Station"--which, themewise and plot-element-wise, seemed to me to be very much as likely to be a boy story as a girl story--he came back to the fact that the main, powerful characters were female.

[3rdragon]

Huh. I never even considered the idea of "boy stories" or "girl stories." Stories about boys, stories about girls, yes, stories boys read, stories girls read, yes . . . but the stories themselves? I have trouble wrapping my mind around that one. Stories have always just been stories to me.

[rachelmanija]

I think "boy stories" and "girl stories" is too general for me to wrap my head around, men and women differ so much from each other. There are certainly stories which seem aimed at men and women who fit traditional gender roles... but that's different.

It reminds me of when my friend Jeremy and I decided to collaborate on a commercial screenplay. (Like all projects intended to be commercial, it turned out to be anything but.) We ran into a mutual acquaintance at the cafe where we were writing, and explained that since technothrillers and romances were popular at the moment, we were co-writing a technothriller romance.

"We figured that we each have different areas of expertise, and that way we could each play to our strengths," I explained.

"So Jeremy's writing the technothriller bits, and you're writing the romance?" the acquaintance said.

"Actually, no," said Jeremy. "Rachel's writing the action sequences with the military hardware, and I'm writing the romance!"

[sartorias]

heh!

[oracne]

I tweeted both of your WFC posts last week!

[sartorias]

Thank you!