- TheOverSeether : TIKNIG
- of_blood_and_salt : who
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— Shitpost 2077 (@shitpost_2077) May 13, 2024
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Jesus Christ, lady, I hope your book has paragraphs!
Let's chop this up a bit.
...it's in a fantasy setting, it also has a coming of age aspect to it and takes place over about 6 years, and they age from 12-18. im thinking hard about how to write them right in their early ages, like 12-14, and i feel like i'm doing it wrong. i'm putting more focus on their character and specific personalities but i'm wondering if, as a girl, maybe i'm accidentally making them too โgirlyโ and โsoft.โ
i like to make them enjoy the simple things in life, like exploring and enjoying nature, and they also like to talk about their feelings and their hurts. but is that a thing boys do? im trying to make them realistic but sometimes i forget that i was never a boy and i'll never know what it is like to be a boy. and to top it all off, it's a gay romance (it takes awhile though, so they're just friends in the beginning). it just happened to be that way, i wanted a romance that wasn't straight and i felt my story didn't fit two girls (again, there's a difference but idk what it is!)
... i just want these characters to feel real and not how i โthinkโ they're supposed to be. i can't decide if gender is just a construct and it doesn't matter if they're a boy or a girl, or if their outlook on life IS different and they should be written differently. both? what mistakes should i avoid in writing male leads when i'm not a male?
"Have you tried adding reason and accountability?"
Nah, it's a good question. Writing any type of romance you haven't been in is obviously challenging. Writing the opposite s*x requires observation skills, reading and engaging with their work (a bitter pill for moids), and a healthy imagination. You also have to be able to set aside your preconceptions about how people should work, and your desire to fix them. For example, in this case it's not just that men usually don't talk about our feelings, or that we feel uncomfortable doing so. Often, we don't want to. How do these sorts of things affect a developing gay relationship?
But as usual, /r/writing offers reassurance instead of seriously engaging with an OP who wants real answers. Many also get bogged down making very important points about gender.
It's MY SETTING, and I get to pick the gender roles!!
Actual good advice to tell a story about boys erased in real time by genderslop.
In my fictional society, sexy women with big tits are expected to throw themselves at members of !bookworms and !writecel
Of course you can write a world with different social "rules." But the farther it diverges, the less it has to say about real people in our own world, and the more it has to say about the author's own desires and hangups. Might as well say some coomer's monster girl erotica is commentary about female gender roles.
This isn't actually out of nowhere because the full OP mentioned "The Song of Achilles," but lmao
Differentiate your characters from each other. Give them flaws. Let their differences and flaws produce tension. Two guys who are just soft and sensitive and slowly start touching peepees isn't a story. Even a hack writer would make one of them the emotional one and the other the moody, silent one or whatever.
A couple more people actually gave decent advice, like here, but of course low effort "You're perfect just the way you are!" advice is upvoted while interesting stuff is near the bottom.
As a straight man, I'll never understand this trend. If the men in your gay romance act like women, why make them men at all? Reading gay erotica should be a form of escapism where you can imagine loving relationships without having to deal with women. At least, that's why I read it.
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autodrama: returning jobs to dramautists. Ping HeyMoon if there are any problems or you have a suggestion
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I'm proud of myself.
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So we are going to drop โA Crockett Clapback Collection.โ This collection will feature various swag that includes random things Iโve said. The money will go to ensuring that we have a Democratic House! Give me a little time to really get the swag online etc., but B6 will dropโฆ pic.twitter.com/7RnPQ4jVHs
— Jasmine Crockett (@JasmineForUS) May 18, 2024
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nothing more aggravating after being on hold for 10 minutes than hearing an Indian accent proof crapitalism has failed
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- Boot1171oohrah : Animal abuse
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Today, Parliament has the chance to ban ninja swords - lethal weapons which have been used to kill on Britain's streets.
— Yvette Cooper (@YvetteCooperMP) May 15, 2024
Families & communities across country face devastating knife crime. Up 80% since 2015.
Iโm urging Tory Ministers to vote for our plan. No excuse not to act. pic.twitter.com/I3uObmAEqk
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the frog gangโs all here โค๏ธ๐งก๐๐ค pic.twitter.com/ZjdbAM1eB3
— Kelly ๐ Onelani ๐ Fanime (@kellyonelani) May 18, 2024