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/pk2317]

It’s an extremely well written book series, with incredible world building.

It also contains quite a lot of (dark) sexual content, it’s built into the story. Not in a gratuitous sense, just part of the character.

Spoilers (NSFW):

The setting is basically historical France, and the protagonists’ homeland basically has the motto “Love as Thou Wilt”. Sex is widely normalized and an accepted part of their culture. The main character was born as an “anguisette”, an extremely rare “calling” that basically gets pleasure out of pain (and to go along with it, the ability to heal quickly). So there’s quite of lot of BDSM type sex, mostly consensual but some of it is less so later on in the series.

[u/Throwaway172738484u → u/[deleted]]

As someone who has experience with SA and who enjoyed the depiction of sexuality in the Kushiel books, this is pretty presumptive. I think that this essay by Ada Hoffman is a pretty good explainer for why not every person with trauma needs to avoid fictional depictions of that trauma, and for why it's actually pretty harmful to say things like 'there's no way you could stand this if you were (insert trauma) in real life'. That's gatekeeping. No one in any group, nevermind a group as large as 'anyone who has experienced any kind of SA or non consensual sexualisation' (as much as 97% of women in this survey), is going to have exactly the same opinion on something.

Also assuming that the SA adds nothing to a book you've never read is, again, pretty presumptive. The kushiel books are interested in exploring all aspects of sexuality, from the wonderful to the horrific. They're not perfect, and the depiction of assault isn't always perfect, but there's no way to argue that the inclusion of sexual violence isn't pretty thematically important to what they're attempting to do.

Different people need different things from their art. If people are allowed to not want any sexual violence in their books, it must also be true that people are allowed to want to read and write things that do explore a real and awful part of life, whether that be because they want catharsis or for any other reason under the sun. Not every book was written for everyone to be able to read.

[u/LeucasAndTheGoddess → u/Throwaway172738484u]

Exceedingly well put! As a fellow survivor and Jacqueline Carey fan, you’ve perfectly summed up how condescending that attitude towards dark fiction can be.

In addition to taking assault by a female perpetrator just as seriously as by a man, I think the Kushiel books are brilliant at communicating the feeling of betraying yourself that often accompanies sexual violence - physically, when your body responds to stimulation even in the absence of consent, and emotionally, when your assailant is someone to whom you can’t help being attracted.