Dresden vs everyone in the Genre

[DragonFire]

Your statement "Female authors, male or female lead characters, tend to emphasise romantic relationships and such, in their stories" did not read to me as limited to this particular subset of SF/fantasy. My apologies if that was a misreading.

Given the thread was about urban fantasy, I thought it was implied that my statement related to that, not SF\F as a whole.

There is a perception of a certain kind of urban fantasies with female protagonists - paranormal romances, vampire shaggers, nosferotica, call them what you will - as being principally about romance with action secondary if present at all.  This is a marketing perception.  It leads publishers to think more of this stuff will sell.  It leads authors to think that this kind of stuff will sell; or, perhaps a more apropos and less cynical way of putting it, it leads authors who want to do things with lots of romance in to find that market appealing.  The more of it there is, the more the people who like that kind of thing will buy, the stronger the genre gets, it's self-sustaining and self-fulfilling, and I think LKH and Buffy are explanation enough for how the whole thing got started.

Possibly. However, there is a lot of stuff I find sitting in teh 'Fantasy' section of my bookstore, that when I read it, could go under romance.
Don't mistake me however, LKH, Kim Harrison and Kelley Armstrong aren't writing romance, it's urban fantasy. It's just that the stories always seem to include worry over a man/love life, being attracted to men, and that being distracting, and so on. Breathless descriptions of how attractive man A is, or how it's unfair that man B is such an asshole, yet so pretty.
Lavish descriptions of clothes and shoes and the rest.

Compare that to some male authors, and you don't have that. There tends to be more action. Yes, they might have partners/sex, but it's a sideline, or a seldom mentioned thing, rather than every 20 pages.

Now, all that said, does it mean every female author who writes urban fantasy does this? Of course not.
It is a trend I've noticed??
Yes, it is.

That was all I was saying.

How are you defining urban fantasy ?  I don't think the biases you express about women and romance extend to Emma Bull or Kara Dalkey, for example, in the work of theirs I think of as urban fantasy.

Never read them. The defintion of 'urban fantasy' is very fluid. I define it as fantasy in the modern world.

If you want to define urban fantasy specifically as meaning paranormal romance, then yes, sure, lots of it is by female authors and romance-focused; I think what this says is that at the paranormal romance is a popular subgenre and easier to sell than other kinds of urban fantasy, [ witness for example the total failure of the final part of Walter Jon Williams' Metropolitan trilogy to find a publisher ] and I do find going from that to generalisations about how men and women write to be problematic.

Becuase I didn't do this, you did.
You took what I said, assumed I was either talking about a sub genre, or paranormal romance, and ran from there, getting more upset as you went.
What I said was what I had observed from my own reading and my own writing.
Yes, it was a generalisation, but so what.
I never claimed the male or female 'way' was superior. YOu did that in your own mind.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Now, all that said, does it mean every female author who writes urban fantasy does this? Of course not.
It is a trend I've noticed??
Yes, it is.

I'm not actually sure there's any point to continuing this argument, because you are making it circular by narrowly defining the grounds you are talking about to give a tautological result.  If your argument is that women writing paranormal romance tend to focus on romance, that's true but is it actually saying anything meaningful ?  If you want to call LKH's books urban fantasy rather than paranormal romance, fine, but if you then want to exclude other threads of urban fantasy, by whatever definition, until "urban fantasy" is left meaning paranormal romance that happens to be shelved under SF/Fantasy rather than romance, that really does become pointless.

.
You took what I said, assumed I was either talking about a sub genre, or paranormal romance, and ran from there, getting more upset as you went.

I assumed you were talking about a subgenre because you said you were talking about urban fantasy rather than SF/Fantasy in general, and you are disregarding any counterexamples I make, in urban fantasy or out of it, that do not fit your thesis.

I never claimed the male or female 'way' was superior. YOu did that in your own mind.

I've not accused you of saying that.  What I am saying, and continue to believe, is that your identification of a particular style as "the female way" is just plain wrong.

[Shecky]

just plain wrong.

How very male of you.

What? I couldn't resist getting in the middle of a wordfight that I wasn't already involved in LOL!

[DragonFire]

I'm not actually sure there's any point to continuing this argument, because you are making it circular by narrowly defining the grounds you are talking about to give a tautological result.  If your argument is that women writing paranormal romance tend to focus on romance, that's true but is it actually saying anything meaningful ?  If you want to call LKH's books urban fantasy rather than paranormal romance, fine, but if you then want to exclude other threads of urban fantasy, by whatever definition, until "urban fantasy" is left meaning paranormal romance that happens to be shelved under SF/Fantasy rather than romance, that really does become pointless.

THat is not what I am doing.
Read it again.
I've noticed that a majority, of female writers, despite writing GOOD urban fantasy, play up the romance elements.
THis doesn't mean they are writing paranormal romance, nor am I claiming that all urban fantasy with a romance element is 'paranormal romance'.
A completely seperate point I was making, which may have confused you, was that after urban fantasy started to get popular, a lot of 'paranormal romance' was rebadged and sold as 'urban fantasy'.
I am NOT redefining urban fantasy to be 'paranormal romance'. It was, before all this crap started, simply my observation to LIzard King's question.

I assumed you were talking about a subgenre because you said you were talking about urban fantasy rather than SF/Fantasy in general, and you are disregarding any counterexamples I make, in urban fantasy or out of it, that do not fit your thesis.

My point was that I can only go on books that I, personally, have read. I haven't read the books you offer as a rebuttal, therefore I cannot take them into account, can I?
If you can offer a couterexample I HAVE read, then by all means, we can take this further, although I've already noted that not all female writers do this.

I've not accused you of saying that.  What I am saying, and continue to believe, is that your identification of a particular style as "the female way" is just plain wrong.

Well agree to disagree. Multiple female authors all including similar elements, despite vastly different ideas, writing styles and characters?
And Male authors doing the SAME THING, but with different elements?
See, you turned this into a gender debate, when all I was trying to tell Lizard King was that I think male and female authors have a different slant.
It's not a slur on anyone's gender.
Different doesn't equal worse, simply different. Some people may like the male 'way' better, others, the female.
THat was all I was saying.
Men and women think differently, and it's not suprise that that would show up in something like their writing.

[Lizard King]

Men and women think differently, and it's not suprise that that would show up in something like their writing.

Now that HAS to be something we can all agree on!  C'mon!

[Sandor Clegane]

Ignores last 17 posts...

Rob Thurman is a pretty good read. I didn't like Caliban as he was in the first book, he just didn't impress me, but that is okay because it was still a great read. I liked him more in Moonshine anyway.

Oh and Glen Cook's Black Company Series, very intersting characters, very gray morals, very real and gritty characters and scenes. Yep The Black Company rules. How are his other series?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Now that HAS to be something we can all agree on!  C'mon!

Not only do I disagree, I find it pernicious and harmful to believe so. It too easily becomes an excuse for not making the effort to communicate better, at very least, and often worse things than that.

Men are from Earth; women are from Earth; cope.

[Lizard King]

Not only do I disagree, I find it pernicious and harmful to believe so. It too easily becomes an excuse for not making the effort to communicate better, at very least, and often worse things than that.

Men are from Earth; women are from Earth; cope.

We are totally off topic, but are you serious???  Recognizing the differences in how men and women think and percieve is the most effective way to promote effective communications and healthy relationships.  Pretending that men and women think identically, and that we are simply clones with different genitals and glands is junvile and mislead.  Those physical differences promote different chemical reactions which effect the way we think and react.

Recognize that we are different, and that in that difference we compliement each other, and we are all better for it. 

And to pull it back on topic, as Lightsabre has put forth, those differences are real.  Women and Men see the world differently, as a whole.  And our creations will illustrate those differences.  I don't know how you can realisitically argue that point. 

[Shecky]

Not only do I disagree, I find it pernicious and harmful to believe so. It too easily becomes an excuse for not making the effort to communicate better, at very least, and often worse things than that.

Men are from Earth; women are from Earth; cope.

There are significant biochemical differences in the processes of men's brains and women's brains in general (as always, there are individual exceptions and degrees of difference, but on the whole, there's a sizeable functional variation between the two). In other words, in general, men and women DO think differently. The effort to communicate better has to take that into consideration and accommodate it, not attempt to ignore those differences arbitrarily. We ARE different. Equal, just not the same. It's a biological fact. The only way that should affect our actions is by taking it into account, accepting it and WORKING with it. We have to UNDERSTAND that the other gender undergoes different biological processes in thinking in order for the genders to BEGIN to understand each other. That's the whole point - understanding and dealing with the Other. This applies not only to gender differences but to individuals as well; Joe just ain't gonna think exactly the same way as Bill. Our job is to cope with those differences by accepting them and moving past them anyway. Sweeping those glaring neurochemical differences under a rug of PC will NOT nullify them.

[DragonFire]

Not only do I disagree, I find it pernicious and harmful to believe so. It too easily becomes an excuse for not making the effort to communicate better, at very least, and often worse things than that.

Men are from Earth; women are from Earth; cope.

What does this have to do with communication?
As the others have said, Men and Women do think differently.
IT's a biological fact.
Cope.
Sweeping it all into a 'we're all exactly the same' cupboard is not just hazardous to communication, it's hazardous to development of humankind in general.

[Ursiel]

What does this have to do with communication?
As the others have said, Men and Women do think differently.
IT's a biological fact.
Cope.
Sweeping it all into a 'we're all exactly the same' cupboard is not just hazardous to communication, it's hazardous to development of humankind in general.

I agree. We were all made different for a reason. Although I don't really know the reason but we're not one and the same.

[seradhe]

... Wow

Gods I miss a day I miss a lot. ahh forum life.

My wife had the displeasure of skimming the posts over my shoulder just now, and I'll spare our fellow Forumites the series of four, five, and six letter words that came out of her mouth.

Biological differences aside, we are also talking about over 2,000 years of social identification to work against. I'm not saying it's impossible for a female author to think, or write, like a male one. I am saying that by the time one is old enough to read and write, they have been subject to the unwritten social standards of everyday society, whether directly or indirectly. I am not meaning this as a negative point, it's just an observation of the slight-but-there variations between male and female daily life.

we've come a long way from the paleolithic ideals of "Hunter/gatherer and childbearer". Socially women are on equal grounds with men. To demand that women think exactly like men is either A) Utopian and therefore doomed to fail, or B) pushing that women are still inferior to men on some level because they think differently.

I can't say I've read nearly as many books as many of you, so I am reserved to arguing on the biological/social grounds, and leave noting the differences between author X and author Y to those who have a larger Repertoire.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Biological differences aside, we are also talking about over 2,000 years of social identification to work against. I'm not saying it's impossible for a female author to think, or write, like a male one. I am saying that by the time one is old enough to read and write, they have been subject to the unwritten social standards of everyday society, whether directly or indirectly. I am not meaning this as a negative point, it's just an observation of the slight-but-there variations between male and female daily life.

Slight is kind of the point.  If there's any systemic difference between how men and women think, it's invisible behind the scale of the differences between expected social roles and between individuals, and if you've not had the occasion to see firm evidence of that, I can only suggest travelling more, reading more widely, and getting to know more cultures and more people, where the expected social roles are different or who just don't actually think those social roles worth accepting.  The "there are ways all women think alike and different ways all men think alike" argument dismisses the reality of far too many of the real people I know and care about, women and men, for me to accept it for a moment; that there are ways in which mainstream Western society expects and wants all women to think alike and different ways in which it expects and wants all men to think alike, sure, but so many of these ways seem deeply harmful to me that I'm entirely unwilling to accept them, and will oppose them wherever I can.

[seradhe]

Slight is kind of the point.  If there's any systemic difference between how men and women think, it's invisible behind the scale of the differences between expected social roles and between individuals, and if you've not had the occasion to see firm evidence of that, I can only suggest travelling more, reading more widely, and getting to know more cultures and more people, where the expected social roles are different or who just don't actually think those social roles worth accepting.  The "there are ways all women think alike and different ways all men think alike" argument dismisses the reality of far too many of the real people I know and care about, women and men, for me to accept it for a moment; that there are ways in which mainstream Western society expects and wants all women to think alike and different ways in which it expects and wants all men to think alike, sure, but so many of these ways seem deeply harmful to me that I'm entirely unwilling to accept them, and will oppose them wherever I can.

That is a completely Valid and personal rational for your beliefs, and I respect that.

It is also Valid to point out that these expectations are not enforced in any way other than the individuals desire/lack thereof to conform. The ubiquitous urge to "fit in" is a far worse prison for the mind than any standards or regulations on thought. It has been my experience that most people in the creative fields (artists, writers, architects etc...) are more often than not free thinkers above these standards.

This is more and more looking not like an argument between Male and Female perspectives, rather between Masculine and Feminine.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

It is also Valid to point out that these expectations are not enforced in any way other than the individuals desire/lack thereof to conform.

It would be really nice if social pressures against people in non-standard gender roles never translated into economic pressures or worse, but try telling that to, for example, a man who has a genuine gift for childcare trying to get a job in that direction.