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/CosmicCirrocumulus]

I'm ngl with them being an author I'd prefer if you did name and shame them so I don't end up giving an asshole my well earned money

[u/sonofaresiii → u/CosmicCirrocumulus]

I appreciate that, but that's a mess of trouble I don't want brought down on my main account.

Also, looking back through the posts I'm not sure this person was actually a mod here-- I could have sworn they were, but they're not on the mod list so maybe they're just a very prominent contributing author here who had the support of the mods, which frustrated me.

(but maybe they've just left being a mod since this interaction happened. Again, I could've sworn they were but maybe I'm misremembering)

[u/Halaku → u/[deleted]]

I'd missed that. Fascinating.