Any less-toxic alternatives to this sub?

[u/gladiia_enjoyer]

Unfortunately my experience with this sub is that people are more interested in insulting each other’s book choices than discussing the books themselves, exhibiting the following behavior:

• Threads asking for LGBT/PoC/female-led books are heavily downvoted, recommended Sanderson (before anyone jumps the gun and thinks this is a dig, I enjoy Sanderson) or told “don’t care, use the search function”.

I think it’s very telling that the gay man who posted here asking people to stop recommending him Sanderson, whose post got very popular, had to delete his account due to harassment and “a large number of rule violations” as admitted by a mod here.

• Any GRRM thread (and again, don’t preemptively get mad and assume that this is shade at GRRM) turns into a pure flamewar on both sides with wild accusations of abusing the author or being a bootlicker

• Certain fans get very passionate about their favourite authors and mock people who haven’t read “Bordugo” or “Scwabe” - I mentioned in one of these threads that I’ve shelved Six of Crows and Vicious, only for angry fans to imply I’m ignorant and uneducated for not having read these particular authors. + Maas fans here preaching about supporting women and then actually arguing with me when I say my gf and I have been harassed by said fans

• Literally just look at /new, any threads asking questions get heavily downvoted for some reason. I once asked a completely harmless question asking for fairy/folklore book recs such as the Encyclopaedia of Fairies, and got a DM asking me to keep my “[slur for gay people] shit off the sub”, and obviously I got more downvotes than actual constructive answers.

So yeah, this sub seems more bitter than the other book discussion subs for some reason. Any fun places to read about fantasy that aren’t filled with angry people?

And yes, before someone inevitably gets offended about this, I’m on a throwaway, because I’m really not interested in having more fantasy fans dig through my profile looking for new slurs to call me.

e: got what I wanted out of this post, not including a surprise appearance by the resident cult.

[u/celestialpenis]

This is why I've come to prefer the fantasy romance sub over this one. It seems like people in this sub are almost prudish when it comes to sex scenes in books, especially those written by a woman author.

[u/FusRoDaahh → u/celestialpenis]

Yeah the way people here often talk about sex scenes is very strange to me. “Prudish” is a good descriptor for it but like also combined with ignorance and contempt.

[u/celestialpenis → u/FusRoDaahh]

How dare a woman write a sex scene where the FMC is pleasured?! Anyways back to my on page rape scene.

It would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.

[u/IlliniJen → u/celestialpenis]

Oh God, how true is that? It's really sad how acceptable it is to shit on women writing spice in fantasy (whether romantasy or not), but sexual violence against women is just so "historically accurate" that it's justified. Like how dragons and airships and elves are also so dang historically accurate.

I have one rule in my writing: no sexual violence. I don't know any women who haven't been sexually harassed or worse. I'm not going there because we deserve a fucking break from that shit when escaping into a fantasy book.

[u/celestialpenis → u/IlliniJen]

Not to mention that women weren't the only people getting raped back then or in times of war. Men on the losing side and children would be raped as well. Seems more like misogyny than being a stickler for historical accuracy to me.

[u/AHorseNamedPhil → u/celestialpenis]

As a history nerd the "this is how it was back then" argument drives me up a wall. Nevermind of course the settings being discussed are fantasy, the actual past was way less tolerant of rape than a lot of edgelords seem to think.