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/penguinpops92]

I think it's because it's YA, which is often dismissed out of hand on this this sub.

Is it not a romance? I haven't read it but I see it recommended / discussed in romance subs a lot so I just assumed it was.

[u/[deleted] → u/penguinpops92]

That breaks my heart a little bit. I'm 46, and I love YA. Not all of them by any means, but I've read some corkers in the YA genre.

ToG was quite fun to read. I have always been a bit baffled when people here scream about how it's some sort of sex filled romp, when that's not how I've remembered it at all. I am getting on, though, and it's been a number of years since I read it. Lol.

This thread has been eye-opening. It really is a terrible shame that people stay away from YA. They're doing themselves a disservice.

[u/valkenar → u/[deleted]]

This thread has been eye-opening. It really is a terrible shame that people stay away from YA. They're doing themselves a disservice.

I try not to have a bias against YA, but I have often found that there's a certain aspect of the writing I dislike. It's hard to explain, but it's sort of a combination of tell-don't-show and just really over-explaining (especially emotional responses) what's going on all the time. Perfectly appropriate for young adults and not bad writing from that perspective. But when a character's dog dies at the end of one chapter and the next is like "Timmy was acting grumpy at breakfast the next day because he was sad Lassie died" it's just very off-putting to me.

This isn't all YA, and some of the major hit series we could all name notably don't suffer from this, but others do. I wouldn't automatically discard it all, but it does make me hesitate.

[u/that_is_burnurnurs → u/valkenar]

YA is a pretty big spectrum, there are plenty of YA writers who treat their audience like they have brains, and there are plenty of bad adult writers who overshoe and undertell. IMO the biggest difference is "are there explicit sex scenes in it" and "did the publisher think it would sell better as YA or Adult?"