Chick Porn is what put me off Urban Fantasy long ago. I didn't know the difference in UF and Paranormal Romance back then. I read and enjoyed the first few Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter before they became full blown chick porn (1995ish?) and then when they declined I decided the whole genre was going straight to hell because again I thought it was all Urban Fantasy.
I wrote about this on a scifi fantasy forum back then and was called anti sex. Today I'm sure they'd call me an incel.
This was not meant to be a nested reply! Apologies.
There's very little horror-romance I did not find fundamentally repellent, so I off-shored reviewing it to those who could stand the genre, and kept the bare minimum and least egregious on the shelf.
The "WHY does it MA-tter" crew for who no sincere, nor accurate answer won't be argued down like a r/editor at 2am high on cheetoes and spite, have been undermining stories for generations now. The myriad individual gates and the boundaries, the threads of society are all important.
Three points of note: Academia writing was artfully-crafted perversions first. I wonder if it will help the Russia collusion people perceive the corruption if they know they are colluding with Putin's KGB on this one?
Propaganda is the death of craftsmanship, nihilism is the death of art. The storyteller brings his or her virtues to the tale, and the better the tale, the more powerful the presence or lack thereof.
I recall the depiction of violence in movies from the late 80s or 90s which was used to justify sex scenes. Rememember "BUT your MOOvie HAS killING in it! KillING is WORSE than SEX-!!!" Back then I pointed out that the frame of violence, its justification; set hard limits on its presence at all, and on the movie rating. And should do so for sex, if we're comparing two culturally-volcanic drives.
Since justice is not revenge, mercy and forgiveness to the repentant are virtues, protecting the innocent is a duty, and so forth, and since the sex-includers never, ever included a moral frame: They obviated the justification for including a sex-scene.
Now I wonder if we missed bigger picture. Without a reasonable frame of all virtues from within the writer himself, how can he tell a meaningful story? If he has to clumsily shoehorn his own heart into plot moments and characterizations that he doesn't himself share, it's murderous to his craftsmanship. Not just for SJWs or the Woke (who are stuck w/in a po-mo frame and with generic unquestionable premises), but Kathy Tyre's Firebird turned clunky after it was picked up by Bethany House. So Christian, or even just "good, beautiful, and true" editors have to be able to do for writers what that Juvenile Fiction editorial did for Heinlein's books, then too?
And finally, women are not particularly empathetic. For the longest time I assumed my own brain oddities were at fault, but no. Women and feminized men find appreciating how other people think and feel challenging, and usually fail at it, or at best only manage Christ's merciful command to love, even where we don't comprehend.
Women are extremely sympathetic, so mis-training those sympathies is dangerous. Especially since we translate mirrored-emotions, to "why I would have them".
Which leads me to the moral dilemma of how to review well-crafted, engaging "good", bad books. Especially those with just one, critic🤡👹🙉-shaped shard embedded, of those who are on the side of Christendom, or at least fighting against her foes. Ben Franklin's utilitarian model for revolutionaries does not apply, I don't think.
At the minimum, we have to say "don't share this with young men and women whose moral faculties are weak or partly-formed? IDK.
I definitely agree. And it's not just women; these days, men have surged back into written smut as well with the harem fiction. It makes it difficult for me to read modern books, especially fantasy, because it is EVERYWHERE and gets more explicit and more extreme.
the think is, the smut has taken over everything these days. As she says - sex sells.
But this is also makes it hard to even market yourself and your fiction. I like romance - I do NOT want spice, even when its a married couple. Sure, show the affection, show the desire, but I want it from a mental and romantic viewpoint, not a lustful, animalistic one that reduces the people involved to animals rooting around together in the mud and calling that "romance".
there is something to be said for "fading to black" and letting the understanding something intimate may have happened that did not have to be watched by voyeuristic readers.
The problem I run into, though, is that yes, inspiration clean romance exists, but I admit I don't read it much either because its also still not that well written. So this advent of badly written fiction in the modern era I don't think can be laid at the feet of smut, not entirely.
I always avoided Urban Fantasy - until recently. It never felt right and with all the sex being pushed into many of these books, it became a total turnoff.
However, within my group of critique partners, one did Urban Fantasy with romance - but romance without sex, even implied. Her books were also murder mystery with plenty of humor. Now that was a breath of fresh air. (PL Matthews, if you are interested.)
So you can find good stuff without the porn. But the speaker in the video is probably right, it is the publishers that are guiding what gets out, and they are currently fixated on porn.
I've been really happy to see all the discussion this video has brought about. I think just starting the conversation is such an important step in the right direction. And thank you for sharing my video!
The reason this was so impressive to me was last week, I sponsored a Books for Male Readers sale. So we had a week-long conversation about the reason that male-targeted books are not selling. And I thought it was all about marketing to women.
You really opened my eyes as to what was really going on and what we're really competing with.
I stare in wonder. Up to this moment I haven't heard the term "chick porn". And urban fantasy is something I connect with Charles de Lint out of an anthology curated by Mike Ashley. Oh and there is a TV-show aired years ago about a shop that sells strange stuff and there are conspiracies, too. Dear me I am out.
The presenter is misusing the term "women's fiction," which is a specific genre, a personal drama in which a woman is new to town and is dealing with jobs, boyfriends, apartments, etc., and she might fall in love, but falling in love isn't the purpose of the book.
Good literature isn't about ideology. "Low" art, what she's talking about, is nothing new. The nineteenth century had their own versions--Louisa Mae Alcott write trashy gothics.
I don't like romances. But I read a lot of things I don't like because I'm fascinated looking at the parts and seeing how they are made.
I also think she's making gross generalizations about women. I don't really need a backstory for the mailman. What she is saying is "not* how all women are. I haven't actually gotten through enough of ACTOR to see the sex scenes. Maybe some day with the rage cleaning.
I guess I don't see anything she's saying as particularly new. Someone would have made the same argument about Anne Rice or VC Andrews or Jacqueline Susann a few generations back. Or Forever Amber... Which ive never read, but keep meaning to. Pulp fiction is pulpy, be it focusing on violence, sex, explosions, or spies. Some of it transcends that.
Most does not.
What she's saying about morality is harder for me personally to parse.
I made a decision to be fairly explicit in my books because it seemed part of the retro vibe I was going for, and also it was something I wasn't seeing in contemporary space opera. There was a lot of identity stuff about sexuality... but not so much of the just sex, and people liking sex.
Although the sex scenes in navvy are deliberately a bit creepy and weird.
Sometimes sex or relationships in a book can serve as sort of a relatable shorthand for the reader. You don't need to know a fictional character's entire life. Knowing their attachments and their needs is like a quick way to establish tone and character. I think, anyways.
That may be true. There's a nasty undercurrent of misogyny poisoning many things of late, and I don't think it's just me getting old--it's definitely there.
I also think it is important to note that she did not say "sex in books is bad". She says, basically, "when the book is just an excuse for sex, that's not good."
When it becomes a dopamine addiction, rather than about the story...
In every way, this tells me you either don't read Jim Butcher or you're being deliberately obtuse. The entire encounter with the White Court vampires, the porn studio and Harry Dresden always getting so excited about pulling chairs out for women, LMAO EVEN!
I've read nearly every word Butcher has written about Harry Dresden. I love those books. Do they have sections less to my taste? Sure, but they have stuff I really like, too.
Harry has a few sex scenes...but not that many over the whole series.
When I was young, I hated guys pulling out chairs, because I was a Women's Libber. Now...I wish more guys still pulled out chairs for women. That's what gentlemen used to do if they had good manners. ;-)
Nah, at this point you can FUCKING SUFFAH in the hell world you've created by being a woman. I figured out The Truth Of The Horrid Reality. Women have always hated men who aren't 11/10 Genetically Ordained Super-Chad that smacks them around.
Dresden does the same thing as all the other Chick-Porn does, it makes you think that Super-Chads are going to be nice to you when they aren't. How can any man who's not an 11/10 Genetically Ordained Super-Chad compete with fictional wizards and vampire boys?
I've writing what I'd consider romantasy, but I just can't be that explicit. Also my heroines have way too much depth when blank slates a reader can project herself into or standard girlboss templates seem to be the norm.
Chick Porn is what put me off Urban Fantasy long ago. I didn't know the difference in UF and Paranormal Romance back then. I read and enjoyed the first few Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter before they became full blown chick porn (1995ish?) and then when they declined I decided the whole genre was going straight to hell because again I thought it was all Urban Fantasy.
I wrote about this on a scifi fantasy forum back then and was called anti sex. Today I'm sure they'd call me an incel.
But you're entirely right.
I am a number of my friends loved Anita Blake. And we stop reading it.
It stopped having a plot...well, a plotworth mentioning.
Yes! A little spice is nice. But it went full smut without enough action to be worthwhile.
Same with Sookie Stackhouse.
Was Snookie True Blood or Vampire Diaries? (i've started losing track)
True Blood
I seem to remember a time when Urban Fantasy was more like Death Wish, but with monsters and the supernatural.
Which - ironically - later became the television show "Supernatural" (which originally could be called "death wish with monsters."
There was a time when the term was first invented and it meant things like Charles deLint.
yep.
NB I owe you a comment on that forgiveness post btw.
Silence = still crunching away at it in the old noggin.
This was not meant to be a nested reply! Apologies.
There's very little horror-romance I did not find fundamentally repellent, so I off-shored reviewing it to those who could stand the genre, and kept the bare minimum and least egregious on the shelf.
One of the biggest conceits I've seen from people defending the GirlPorn novel epidemic is that, unlike other forms of porn, it doesn't harm anyone.
...There's a lot of naive people out there.
Yeah, she talks about that in the video.
I agree so much it's ridiculous.
The "WHY does it MA-tter" crew for who no sincere, nor accurate answer won't be argued down like a r/editor at 2am high on cheetoes and spite, have been undermining stories for generations now. The myriad individual gates and the boundaries, the threads of society are all important.
Three points of note: Academia writing was artfully-crafted perversions first. I wonder if it will help the Russia collusion people perceive the corruption if they know they are colluding with Putin's KGB on this one?
Propaganda is the death of craftsmanship, nihilism is the death of art. The storyteller brings his or her virtues to the tale, and the better the tale, the more powerful the presence or lack thereof.
I recall the depiction of violence in movies from the late 80s or 90s which was used to justify sex scenes. Rememember "BUT your MOOvie HAS killING in it! KillING is WORSE than SEX-!!!" Back then I pointed out that the frame of violence, its justification; set hard limits on its presence at all, and on the movie rating. And should do so for sex, if we're comparing two culturally-volcanic drives.
Since justice is not revenge, mercy and forgiveness to the repentant are virtues, protecting the innocent is a duty, and so forth, and since the sex-includers never, ever included a moral frame: They obviated the justification for including a sex-scene.
Now I wonder if we missed bigger picture. Without a reasonable frame of all virtues from within the writer himself, how can he tell a meaningful story? If he has to clumsily shoehorn his own heart into plot moments and characterizations that he doesn't himself share, it's murderous to his craftsmanship. Not just for SJWs or the Woke (who are stuck w/in a po-mo frame and with generic unquestionable premises), but Kathy Tyre's Firebird turned clunky after it was picked up by Bethany House. So Christian, or even just "good, beautiful, and true" editors have to be able to do for writers what that Juvenile Fiction editorial did for Heinlein's books, then too?
And finally, women are not particularly empathetic. For the longest time I assumed my own brain oddities were at fault, but no. Women and feminized men find appreciating how other people think and feel challenging, and usually fail at it, or at best only manage Christ's merciful command to love, even where we don't comprehend.
Women are extremely sympathetic, so mis-training those sympathies is dangerous. Especially since we translate mirrored-emotions, to "why I would have them".
Which leads me to the moral dilemma of how to review well-crafted, engaging "good", bad books. Especially those with just one, critic🤡👹🙉-shaped shard embedded, of those who are on the side of Christendom, or at least fighting against her foes. Ben Franklin's utilitarian model for revolutionaries does not apply, I don't think.
At the minimum, we have to say "don't share this with young men and women whose moral faculties are weak or partly-formed? IDK.
Sadly true.
A very good point about empathy vs sympathy.
I definitely agree. And it's not just women; these days, men have surged back into written smut as well with the harem fiction. It makes it difficult for me to read modern books, especially fantasy, because it is EVERYWHERE and gets more explicit and more extreme.
the think is, the smut has taken over everything these days. As she says - sex sells.
But this is also makes it hard to even market yourself and your fiction. I like romance - I do NOT want spice, even when its a married couple. Sure, show the affection, show the desire, but I want it from a mental and romantic viewpoint, not a lustful, animalistic one that reduces the people involved to animals rooting around together in the mud and calling that "romance".
there is something to be said for "fading to black" and letting the understanding something intimate may have happened that did not have to be watched by voyeuristic readers.
The problem I run into, though, is that yes, inspiration clean romance exists, but I admit I don't read it much either because its also still not that well written. So this advent of badly written fiction in the modern era I don't think can be laid at the feet of smut, not entirely.
You might possibly like the romance books I am writing. At least the first one.
I honestly cannot tell if most of what happens in the second one would count as sex or not. I think...probably not?
I always avoided Urban Fantasy - until recently. It never felt right and with all the sex being pushed into many of these books, it became a total turnoff.
However, within my group of critique partners, one did Urban Fantasy with romance - but romance without sex, even implied. Her books were also murder mystery with plenty of humor. Now that was a breath of fresh air. (PL Matthews, if you are interested.)
So you can find good stuff without the porn. But the speaker in the video is probably right, it is the publishers that are guiding what gets out, and they are currently fixated on porn.
Yes
Thank you for featuring my video! I'm glad you found it interesting.
This has been one of my most popular posts! With good discussion both here, and even more-so where I posted it on Facebook.
My husband and I listened to your other two most recent videos, which are also very insightful!
Thank you so much for doing them... particularly this one, which is opening so many people's eyes.
I've been really happy to see all the discussion this video has brought about. I think just starting the conversation is such an important step in the right direction. And thank you for sharing my video!
The reason this was so impressive to me was last week, I sponsored a Books for Male Readers sale. So we had a week-long conversation about the reason that male-targeted books are not selling. And I thought it was all about marketing to women.
You really opened my eyes as to what was really going on and what we're really competing with.
"We".. both people writing for men, and people writing non-smutty books for women. :-)
I stare in wonder. Up to this moment I haven't heard the term "chick porn". And urban fantasy is something I connect with Charles de Lint out of an anthology curated by Mike Ashley. Oh and there is a TV-show aired years ago about a shop that sells strange stuff and there are conspiracies, too. Dear me I am out.
Yeah. I thought Urban fantasy was Harry Dresden.
:-(
Now I know why a friend sounded reluctant when I said my book was Urban fantasy.
Once upon a time it should have been.
Though urban fantasy has got me to thinking about - and I've been wanting to talk to your husband about - urban sci-fi.
This plays into the pr0n problem, for both men and women: addiction to thrill.
Dr Anna Lembke is a psychiatrist who is also a recovering Romantacy addict. Some of her trials are detailed in her book "Dopamine Nation."
https://www.annalembke.com/dopamine-nation
The presenter is misusing the term "women's fiction," which is a specific genre, a personal drama in which a woman is new to town and is dealing with jobs, boyfriends, apartments, etc., and she might fall in love, but falling in love isn't the purpose of the book.
I’ve apparently been out of the loop longer than I thought. I had no idea this is what the fantasy genre has now become…
Me, too...and it's only been like five years.
Good literature isn't about ideology. "Low" art, what she's talking about, is nothing new. The nineteenth century had their own versions--Louisa Mae Alcott write trashy gothics.
I don't like romances. But I read a lot of things I don't like because I'm fascinated looking at the parts and seeing how they are made.
I also think she's making gross generalizations about women. I don't really need a backstory for the mailman. What she is saying is "not* how all women are. I haven't actually gotten through enough of ACTOR to see the sex scenes. Maybe some day with the rage cleaning.
She is talking about generalizations. Most women need a backstory for the mailman or they have 0 interest in any act he commits with anyone.
She's looking at buying trends over time. But she does mention that some women do not fall into these categories.
I guess I don't see anything she's saying as particularly new. Someone would have made the same argument about Anne Rice or VC Andrews or Jacqueline Susann a few generations back. Or Forever Amber... Which ive never read, but keep meaning to. Pulp fiction is pulpy, be it focusing on violence, sex, explosions, or spies. Some of it transcends that.
Most does not.
What she's saying about morality is harder for me personally to parse.
I made a decision to be fairly explicit in my books because it seemed part of the retro vibe I was going for, and also it was something I wasn't seeing in contemporary space opera. There was a lot of identity stuff about sexuality... but not so much of the just sex, and people liking sex.
Although the sex scenes in navvy are deliberately a bit creepy and weird.
Sometimes sex or relationships in a book can serve as sort of a relatable shorthand for the reader. You don't need to know a fictional character's entire life. Knowing their attachments and their needs is like a quick way to establish tone and character. I think, anyways.
Having read many of the books you mentioned, the modern romantases are much much more graphic and much more violent in their sex.
That may be true. There's a nasty undercurrent of misogyny poisoning many things of late, and I don't think it's just me getting old--it's definitely there.
I also think it is important to note that she did not say "sex in books is bad". She says, basically, "when the book is just an excuse for sex, that's not good."
When it becomes a dopamine addiction, rather than about the story...
(that is when I do things like listen to a Sarah J Maas book, when I am rage cleaning. )
Unlike sexual response, I suspect rage cleaning is universal.
lol Laughing here.
Lol, Fujoshi Ruin Everything.
Loved this video! Thanks for sharing!!
So glad!
I seem to remember a time when Urban Fantasy was more like Death Wish, but with monsters and the supernatural.
Yeah. I still think of Harry Dresden.
Harry Dresden is still a total Simp that does the same things as the Sarah J. Maas books, just without the explicit scenes.
In what way?
In every way, this tells me you either don't read Jim Butcher or you're being deliberately obtuse. The entire encounter with the White Court vampires, the porn studio and Harry Dresden always getting so excited about pulling chairs out for women, LMAO EVEN!
I've read nearly every word Butcher has written about Harry Dresden. I love those books. Do they have sections less to my taste? Sure, but they have stuff I really like, too.
Harry has a few sex scenes...but not that many over the whole series.
When I was young, I hated guys pulling out chairs, because I was a Women's Libber. Now...I wish more guys still pulled out chairs for women. That's what gentlemen used to do if they had good manners. ;-)
Nah, at this point you can FUCKING SUFFAH in the hell world you've created by being a woman. I figured out The Truth Of The Horrid Reality. Women have always hated men who aren't 11/10 Genetically Ordained Super-Chad that smacks them around.
Dresden does the same thing as all the other Chick-Porn does, it makes you think that Super-Chads are going to be nice to you when they aren't. How can any man who's not an 11/10 Genetically Ordained Super-Chad compete with fictional wizards and vampire boys?
It's Over. LDAR. Ashes and Echoes.
I've writing what I'd consider romantasy, but I just can't be that explicit. Also my heroines have way too much depth when blank slates a reader can project herself into or standard girlboss templates seem to be the norm.
I do think it’s funny that a lot
of women think that porn aimed at them somehow isn’t porn. Even those who understand that it is, and don’t support it, think it’s somehow different.
If a teenager is carefully kept from having a phone, etc, but pornographic “romance novels” are all over the house, well..yeah.
I really thought it was different fir years.
But .. :-(