1/8/2023 0 Comments Book of erebusOn a side note, I read some great articles about how if you were really watching GoT, Daenerys made horrid decisions from the moment she walked out of the flames in the first season, but because she was “righteous” people forgave her. Especially women they have labeled as “moral” and “just.” Women are held to a higher standard than men. People don’t want women to make bad choices. But after doing some Daenerys-oriented research, all I can think is that people don’t want women to be dictators. I have even been warned not to go “Daenerys” with Nyx. Then I might be excused for having a “lack of practice” as one typical male science fiction reader mansplained. Perhaps if I wrote the touted next best thing in commercial sci-fi with a dual perspective? One a rich white man and the other a military woman to explain away the lack of emotional depth required of a single point of view female driven science fiction book. Especially when most of my female pre-readers reported back with positive comments on my “smart” and “intelligent” female characters, including Nyx. I’m not sure what reality would be easiest to face… Let alone what her IQ has to do with it. When she is “chosen” by Kai, her somewhat love-interest, she slowly learns he doesn’t really have her best interests, or her ambitions, at heart even though they’ve been together for many years.Īnd when she is finally “chosen” by her sister, an AI God, she is given God-like powers that she can’t cope with at first. Reviews from that certain demographic of that certain male reader saying that Nyx has a low IQ and that she can’t face reality… Of course, her reality is that her father has chosen men over her repeatedly. Because readers want to identify with the softer side of a female character.īut now… I’m getting interesting reviews. However, as iterations of the book were produced and edited, I had to put more and more emotion into her, lest she feel cold and calculating, or too male. She takes on some masculine characteristics she’s ambitious, loud and crude, and she says what’s on her mind. Nyx, my point of view character is just a woman struggling to get ahead in a patriarchal constructed pirate society created by her own father, ahead of men who have had preferential treatment merely because they are seen as “strong” and the “strong rise.” Female-forward because many of my main characters are female, and they kick some serious cul (read: French for “ass”). You see, my book, EREBUS DAWNING, is billed quite sneakily as a female-forward villain origin story. I should have known that my little book was going to have challenges. And if they deign to crack the spine, their minds are so filled with notions of “feminist sci-fi” that their inner critic is already ticking the negative check boxes.Īnd unless an author has tons of clout, “feminist science fiction” is a hard sell. And it doesn’t matter if you are with a Big 5 publisher or a small indie press, anything written by a woman with a female lead gets hefted into the “it’s a woman, I don’t read that” category. Namely, a certain demographic of certain male readers is a gas-lighting, mansplaining, mess of wannabe critics. It’s well known in sci-fi circles that women who write sci-fi get the short end when it comes to readership. I have Women Who Write Women in Science Fiction Problems.
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