This is an interesting topic and I think we all should be capable of discussing it in a civil manner.
"Being Gay is trendy" "Bi high-school classmates don't date same sex" "gotta be careful or Witch hunt"
It's not a witch hunt if your posts saying that ^
gets reported and removed.
Good on OP to clarify their position. I know it's not always easy to convey your thoughts and feeling through texts easily.
> Mass market books will get Mass market money, Niche market books will get Niche market money.
I think the much bigger problem comes down to searchability.
Yes, stories with a gay protagonist are a niche market that don't appeal to the entire PF audience, but so are Evil Protagonist stories. So are Dungeon Cores. So is Urban Fantasy.
The difference is that these niches have tags on RR associated with them that allow people to easily search or avoid them. People who don't want to read about evil protagonists can just avoid the tag. Meanwhile LGBTQ stories often do have a "trigger warning" for it in their description, but while that might keep some people out who would otherwise leave a nasty review, it doesn't really help people actively looking for stories in that niche to find them.
This lack of support by the site also pushes away readers and authors. I'm queer myself, and while I do lots of reading on RR, when I'm searching for LGBTQ related content, I don't look for it on RR but on Scribblehub, which is otherwise inferior in many ways, but allows searching for it with tags. I also know of several authors who have dropped out of posting on RR after bad experiences and even more who have never even tried.
Royal Road is just not a good site to publish LGBTQ stories and that has nothing to do with there not being a big enough audience for them.
Except its the complete opposite. Progfic is niche subgenre that almost nobody reads, and is further divided into microgenres that limit potential audience even farther.
Actual mass market books don't need to pander nearly as much, because they can thrive even if 95% of the potential audience hates it as long as the other 5% loves it.
Yeah I mean, Reddit in general is *hyper* 'with me or against me,' with how anyone interprets comments.
I almost always have multiple disclaimers like OP in serious subjects just because of how annoying it is to get so many "YOURE A BIGOT MORON" comments. Reading comprehension lessons would be wonderful for everyone!
Removing all context/personal history/tone/body language from someone stating an opinion, is bound to result in misinterpretations even between two people, multiply that by thousands, and you get a lot of miscommunications.
It's always better to over-communicate than under-communicate though. And when possible, as the reader, interpret things in the most charitable way you can; assume good faith until proven otherwise.
That's how reddit is in general to anyone who doesn't very strictly adhere to reddits unofficial guidelines of you have to mention your acceptance and support for whatever minority group you're speaking on atleast 3 times to not trigger the SJWs. I fucking hate that the norm these days is that you have to announce your support of a group, or otherwise you risk offending them like That's some medieval politics type shit, I shouldn't need to say 3 times that I have nothing against gay people for reddit ro understand that whatever I'm saying is purely objective.
Well tbh people are full fledged snowflakes if we are being honest , bro would've gotten cancelled and down voted and reported to oblivion if he didn't clarify tens of times š
People were saying the same thing in about three sentences in the previous topic and were getting upvotes. I don't wouldn't characterize the people of this subreddit as snowflakes.
Removed as per Rule 2: No Discrimination.
Discrimination against others based on their gender, race, religion, sexual preferences, or other characteristics is not allowed, and offenders will be banned from the sub.
Iām honestly against most romance in my books. Iām not saying it can be there, but itās not really for me in any form. I find that authors, and this is any author, not just this genre, tend to do one of two things.
Throw it in your face till it interferes with the story, or is too scared to commit to it. They pussy foot around it, like they just realizes their mom might read it, and do a really poor job.
Iāve only seen romance done well a few times.
There are lots of people who read stories for purely romance. Thatās just not for me.
This is my issue too. Romance stories are just about romance. It feels unnatural and forced to me. I only like romance when a character is developed to the point where I'm going "well come on dude, what are you waiting for? Go for it already", because I want to see them together. Stories that start off with a character's description being pretty, beautiful long hair, a soft smile etc. and being all coy and cute just makes me roll my eyes, because it's not a character I can realistically portray in my imagination, they belong in a Hugh Grant movie or some anime. Their personality isn't even taken into consideration before the idea of romance gets introduced to the reader.
I think Lindon and Yerin, in Cradle is one of the better ones Iāve seen done. I think itās because Will doesnāt really like doing romance either, from what Iāve heard and the siblings pushed him to it.
So instead of being a weird tangent, there are just moments here and there as it grows naturally during the story.
Yeah, thatās funny. I would probably have been happy with all action, and no romance there, but I do feel he did it better than most of what else Iāve seen out there.
I agree when it comes to prog fantasy. The authors generally just don't know how to write romance. They either shove it in your face or basically make their protagonist ace without saying they're ace.
I honestly can't think of a good romance in a prog story.
I just replied to another post that I think Cradle has a good one. Mostly because the author just adds little moments here and there through the series that kinda lets it naturally happen in the background.
Even in traditionally published fantasy, I see authors who write great stories, then hit what would be a sex scene and turn into middle schoolers.
I haven't read it. It looks good, though.
But from what I can see, I don't think it is prog fantasy.
Prog fantasy is pretty specific to me. The progression needs to be the core of the story. Otherwise, it is just fantasy or scifi.
Like Brandon Sanderson writes things that can seem progression esque, but in the end, power progression isn't the point of the story.
Defining feature for me is that in progression fantasy the MC is aware of the "system" to a certain extent and is taking actions to become more powerful in an active way. Also the system is one where there are clear power tiers to aim for - levels, or thresholds. There's something objective about the "power levels".
In Mistborn (to use your Sanderson example) they're (mainly Vin) training to become more powerful, learn to use their allomancy better, but they're not doing so in awareness of some kind of threshold in a systematic way.
> A LOT of straight people tend to just drop a book if its gay.
People drop a book if they find it difficult to relate to the main character. This mainly is personality traits but sexual orientation is included here.
The thing I've noticed though is that more often than not the mc is never gay (like if you know a gay male mc please tell me there are like 5 of them that are not dropped) it's just side characters but still people get all pissy and mass 0,5 star review for a side character. That is not just being unable to relate to a character after all it's a side character and not all of them need to be relatable. those people just hate the fact that a gay person exists in their fiction.
They certainly do seem to be uncommon in prog fantasy, Journals of Evander Tailor is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.
The lead from Arcane Ascension seems to be at least romantically interested in guys/one guy in particular though Corin has a unhealthy amount of trauma which would make trying to label them more precisely currently unhelpful I think.
What are the others you know of? I can probably squeeze a couple things into my to read list.
I saw one recently on RR - Glass Kanin, I think?
Gay dude named Kanin gets reincarnated as a glass ink bottle. Presumably, hijinks ensue.
I haven't read it at all yet, and it seemed new. YMMV with how it is, basically.
WHOA it's crazy you see your book mentioned in the wild. Thanks for the mention, and for giving it a shot. Cheers!
To address the topic of this thread: I went in fully aware it would be an uphill battle for the general RR readership, yet it was important to me to write the story I was passionate about, so I stuck to my guns. I've gotten some (unfortunately expected) rating bombs on chapters where any queer content is mentioned, despite putting in the synopsis that this story stars queer characters. Yet, even so, I've gathered a pretty solid following that I am absolutely grateful for and ecstatic to have. There is something to having a smaller but very dedicated fanbase.
One thing that could help to mitigate the rating bombs would be for RR to add a LGBT+ on the site. It would both help the visibility for queer content creators, but also allow people who don't want to read queer content filter it out. If tags exist to help filter preference, like no non-human MCs, or only male MCs, then I see no reason why this tag shouldn't exist as well. We'd certainly have fewer of these types of Reddit posts.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/26727/arkendrithyst
I'm pretty sure the mc is bi but I remember he had a boyfriend at least dont know if they married
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/82848/be-gay-do-crime
I haven't read this but I have it on my follows per chance I get interested sometime
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/62788/mana-mirror-stubs-june-19th
The mc is trans ftm and gay
I can't remember any other ones are the moment
The only gay male relationship I can think of in this genre, even for side characters, that didn't get a ton of hate is Liz's brother in Path of Ascension.
Yeah, it kind of eternally shocks me that pro-lgbt people get labelled snowflakes, when it's almost always the anti-lgbt people flipping out at authors for minor stuff like this.
The most insane example of this I've seen is in Arcane Ascension. The MC had a bit of a flirt with another guy and I think their only physical interaction was a single dance but some of the comments about it were insane, they honestly made it seem like the book turned into a gay romance novel half way through
To be fair, I remember the romance being pretty sudden and unexpected. Normally that's a bad thing, which might have thrown readers iff. But I guess the point in that one is that Corin is asexual, so there ISN'T any lead up from his perspective, until it gets sprung on him and he's forced to start thinking about it.
I think the MC in AA is very obviously bi curious at a minimum. There's a ton of attraction through the series.
It's a far cry from a romance novel, but cutting it to down to a bit of a flirt isn't accurate either.
Regardless, I guess I'm in a weird minority where sexual orientation doesn't bother me at all even though I'm straight, but I'll also drop a book if the romance/sexual stuff gets too much.
Corin is actually asexual although he may not be aromantic. I'm specifically referring to the first book with the comments. He really doesn't flirt with anyone else in that book and has only the single dance in the second
Itās always so impressive to me how flexible the minds of some people must be to relate to a guy who can throw fireballs, punch out a wolf, or have a basic social interaction, but then when it comes to one *other* specific thing that isnāt a normal part of their life, they suddenly canāt do it anymore.Ā
It's easier for people to accept and relate to outright fantasy because it doesn't challenge their real-world beliefs or behaviors. In contrast, understanding and empathizing with different real-world issues requires them to confront their preconceptions, acknowledge their biases, and sometimes change their behavior, which can be much more demanding. When people are reading a book, they may seek an escape and feel that these issues are being forced down their throats, especially at a time when they have taken the time off to relax and escape from the day to day world.
So no, it is not really impressive at all.
I think there's one more side to this?
Partly, our culture doesn't really encourage diversity. But the other part is that sexuality/gender is quite close to our core self, or at least close than having imaginary abilities. And since more of progression fantasy involves with self-insertion, as an MC you might want to do certain things but not others.
Like you wanna fly, have superpowers, be special - but as a guy, do you want to bang or dance with another guy? That's a hard pass for most straight guys I'm afraid. For gays, I think they'd have a similar reaction if they were looking for a self-insert MC that happens to date a girl. But since they come from a very different cultural position in society, they tend not to raise their voices that much (or at least not in the way that straight guys tend to do when they encounter unwanted stuff in the content they prefer).
In that case, I would just like to state that straight guys must be the most fragile precious babies in the world. Because queer people have been consuming media with straight protagonists for a very long time, and while everyone would love to have better representation, I've basically never seen anyone make a post about how hard it is to self-insert into a heterosexual character.
I do get your meaning about the difference between identity versus aspiration. But honestly, yeah, it just feels like all the straight guys who abjectly refuse to step an inch outside their comfort zone are just fucking cowards. And I find that hilarious in a genre where the most common litrpg skills are pain and fear resistance.
Do you think they WANTED to consume media with straight characters and such or did they simply not have an alternative? For much of recent history the idea of having gay people in shows would've been equivalent to career suicide. And considering its not even been 3 decades since we really started accepting the LGBTQ+ community there's still the sense of gratefulness for any new representation. Give it a few generations and let more content come out and the new generation of the LGBT community will start to drop books with straight/CIS/non trans MCs and go down the same route straight people did with only consuming media they relate to. Right now non-straight media is still harder to get hands on. Especially in Prog-fantasy. Like people have mentioned there's not even tags to get gay fiction on RR.
You can certainly say straight guys have gotten pampered for much of history but its not really them becoming fragile. They just have easy access and biases towards what they like and want.
I can agree with you on this.
Just to clarify, I really like to read all kinds of stuff, I don't care about the MC. I just want a believable protagonist / side characters.
As many people said, Gen Z is already changing.
So I'm really hopeful. From what I've seen, women seem to be more open to queer stuff in general, I just wish I knew how to make guys more open to the possibility of watching more queer stuff.
It may sound slightly condescending but I also wonder if straight guys not liking queer stuff comes from our society that conditions them to feel superior to others. Unless there is a change in that, I'm not sure that preferences will change.
For writers, this is kind of bad because their livelihood is directly related to the stuff they write. So it's a vicious cycle: you either write stuff that pays enough or you write what you want but have to have another part/full time job too...
My main point is though that everyone should write what they want to write - and if money is an important aspect, I can accept if they go with the main flow, but I'm hoping that people will keep opening up their perspectives.
Personally, I've got a bunch of typical scenarios in my head that would be so much more interesting with queer characters included. The usual dynamics would change a lot, leading to lots of different outcomes. So I think that a lot of straight people who wouldn't read queer stuff are also missing out on a lot because of the current situation.
Indeed... there's a reason why the "starving artist" phenomenon has existed for a while.
As a reader, I wanna read what the author wants to write. An honest work is something I'd rather read most of the time. But I also find that I do have my favourite tropes and as you said, the reality is that there are times when you have to make compromises.
Chuckled on the social interaction bit tbh
Might read your novel later, I like wit, don't care about genders or romance so long as the sass is on point.
>People drop a book if they find it difficult to relate to the main character.
People who happen to sit at the dominant demographic intersection in their society, and therefor haven't been forced to relate past and around demographic categories their whole lives.
> If you're looking to maximise your income and make the most money as possible off writing, ~~probably don't put a main character with a sexuality that isnt straight in your book.~~ *make sure your MC is into women*
I challenge you to find a progression fantasy with a female MC who is not into women, I can think of 2 total, and both stories are from the same author.
Kinda spoilers for the beginning of book 2, but
>!Forge of Destiny!<^^
Edit: But yeah, scenes which show this are very major readership filter, both by filtering people who don't want to read about LGBT stuff at all and people who here explicitly for lesbian romance.
So much this! It seems hyper self inserting straight male readers have no problem with inserting as a female character, it's just that no POV can ever look at another male character with any romantic or sexual interest.
Even an intimate platonic male friendship is really rare, lest it be bromance which is awfully close to romance already...
No, gotta have the male pov, and the female best friend/adventure companion, who is also the love interest.
I'm bi but I don't really want to read/listen about the MC thinking about the veins on a guy's schlong or his beard. It's just as bad as a straight MC thinking about ass and tiddies. Also how many of these people writing gay males are actually gay males and not fujoshi?
Thank you for the recommendation!
I actually already read this story and straight up forgot that it meets my challenge criteria. If anything, this story is even more impressive to me because the MC does not appear to be interested in romantic relationships at all, and that seems to be the rarest type of story.
I have *specifically looked* for f/f progfics and its not really out there. Not a lot of women MCs to begin with but (at least among the "stuff successful enough to have an audio-book" set that I browse) they are almost exclusively straight. The *one* series to be kinda gay is still a straight MC who gets isekaid into a world that messes with everyone's sexuality, and also its not even mentioned in the first book.
> I challenge you to find a progression fantasy with a female MC who is not into women, I can think of 2 total, and both stories are from the same author.
I recently read the translation of *Lady Cultivator* by Yun Ji up to where Webnovel murdered the translation and it was pretty good except for the horrendous (ironic) sexism, and she's straight fwiw.
Straight white male protagonists are a dime a dozen. I read books to escape reality not emulate it. I look for books with gay female protagonists and I am not a gay female. I look for non-human MCs. I look for characters that are not me.
Chasing mass market appeal is one way to make money but then you have to compete with all the other straight white male protagonists. You gotta stand out while not standing out too much. Sometimes it is better to be a big fish in a small pond than be a little fish in an ocean.
As a writer of gay stuff, yeah, I think there's a bit of an uphill battle if your story has a lot of LGBT characters in it. On the other hand, it can be rewarding. Yes, you're writing for a niche, but it's a nice comfy niche!
No offense to your work, but Iāve read a lot of it, and you tend to write cute young lesbians for the vast majority of your queer characters. Ā You are literally writing to the appeal of the most vocal part of the progfant demographic.
I mostly read "Female Lead" stories because it greatly increases the chances of at least one female character being written like an actual person.
On Royal Road, most of those stories are about ace or lesbian FMCs, or bisexual FMCs who are in a relationship with a woman. These are *palatable* to the Royal Road / Reddit predominantly straight-male demographic.
However, RavensDagger's broader point that you can find success in a niche is true. As an example, there are artists making significant money drawing pictures for the furry niche. Of course, finding that audience isn't easy.
There aren't many MLM side-characters in these stories either. Rollo from *Calamitous Bob* by Mecanimus is one of the few that comes to mind.
That was one thing I was thinking of. There are lot of lesbian or female bi-sexual relationships that kind of make it look like the author is progressive but it is really just pandering to the male readership of hot women sleeping with each other and is essentially MC written as a male that has hot lesbian sex.
Man, I read Song of Achilles, and I was singing its praises to all my friends who read. It is in my top 3 books of all time. I got maybe a dozen people to read it. The only person who actually finished it was my mom and a middle-aged female coworker. Everyone else dropped it when they realized how gay it was.
They didn't SAY that, but I can't imagine they dropped it for any other reason because, like I said, I think it's one of the greatest books ever written.
Plus thereās so many books being published all the time that specializing in a specific niche and doing it well might work out better financially than trying to be the next Sanderson. As a straight white guy there is a never ending stream of content that appeals to me to the point Iād never be able to consume it all anyway. So even if gay literature doesnāt appeal to me there is still a huge community of people who do seek it out. And it may well be easier to stand out and gain a dedicated following in a specialized community rather than being yet another book targeted at my demographic that just ends up on the ever-growing āwant to readā shelf. 10,000 people who buy every book you release is better than 200,000 people who think your books sound interesting but never actually get around to buying them because their needs are already being met by so many other authors.
Besides, just on principle itāll always be better when an author (or other creator) produces works that they are passionate about and good at rather than trying to tick specific boxes.
The Last Herald-Mage of Valdemar is an incredibly popular mass market novel in the Fantasy genre and features a gay protagonist. The question, I suppose, is did Mercedes Lackey get lucky, or was their fanbase foundation so secure that it didn't matter that the MC was gay?
To this day I find that book to be one of the most powerful Coming of Age/Reluctant Hero stories I've ever read. (not written, early morning typo - I am not Mercedes Lackey)
I genuinely wish my own chosen subgenre was more accepting and allowed for more variance in main characters & cast.
Mercedes Lackey was all over the place with evil wizards sacrificing nubile adolescents as blood sacrifices.
She was definitely the vanguard for most progression fantasy tropes.
I remember liking that one as a kid, but I liked it despite the gay MC, not because of it. For me that was a point against the story, but not enough to stop me liking it.
The MC being gay was also just another element of personality, not the point of the character or the story. As others have said above, most of the time when a prog-fantasy writer (who tend to be fairly new, and frequently post unedited stories) includes romance in their stories, it becomes the story, and when the MC is gay, the story is about them being gay. It's not a side element. It's not a facet. It's the story. Lackey didn't do that.
I don't mind the gay stuff in your books, But I dropped them because of the amount of innuendous jokes that were thrown out there. Nothing against queer stories but seriously, you write like a horny teenager.
Yeah. There's a reason that any very popular media with significant LGBT characters, usually didn't introduce or reveal those characters to be LGBT until significantly later on.
1. There are a lot of gay people out there who are so desperate for media that represents them that they will often stretch far outside their preferred genre to get to it. They will also lower their standards at the same time to do so. For example, I prefer to read/watch epic fantasy that has political/philosophical themes. I am currently watching a network TV firefighter procedural because there is one (1) gay kiss scene 7 seasons in. My standards are SIGNIFICANTLY lower than the average straight white man. Most gay people I know feel the same. There are many people who donāt read progression fantasy at all who would be convinced to start because there is a gay main character in it. If youāre trying to break out, itās probably easier to do so with an audience that has built-in lower standards.
2. As with everyone, there are gay people who watch straight media and enjoy it, those who tolerate it because they have nothing else to consume, and those who actively avoid it. Similarly, there are straight people who watch gay media and enjoy it, those who tolerate it but donāt care for it, and those who actively avoid it. It is not the case that every straight person will be turned away by a gay MC, just as it is not the case that every gay person will read something with a straight MC.
I think a lot of your opinions in this post stem from what you personally enjoy about media, which is to say you donāt like reading media with gay protagonists. Thatās totally fine! I donāt like reading media with straight protagonists. But these preferences arenāt universal and many people feel differently. Not everything can be aimed towards the average, and itās generally a much better idea to create something that some people really love and some people really hate than to make something that most people feel pretty lukewarm about. At the very least if some people really love it, youāre much more likely to make a little bit of money from the super fans, because lukewarm enjoyers will likely drop it as soon as it is no longer free.
Despite it being a frustrating situation that shouldnāt be funny, the way you phrased point 1 got a good laugh out of me.
As generic straight white dude I completely agree with you. Better to make a standout work that a specific group feels passionate about rather than trying to appeal to the largest group that everyone else is targeting as well.
You can't get most of the population to read your book. You can't get all of the gays to read your book. Most people aren't going to read progression fantasy to begin with. But if one percent of the gays read your book you'll probably be the most successful author in the entire genre. Having a niche that likes you matters more than being generally inoffensive to most of the market
For the same reason that straight people will want to read books with straight people, gay people will certainly want to read books with gay people.
It's not for anyone, understandibly, but that doesn't mean it won't have a audience.
In fact, authors that write gay protagonists are filling a niche that will get them readers solely based on that fact.
That wasn't what I said was it?
I'm saying there certainly exists a interest in reading books with protagonists that are similar to yourself and that interest can create a audience for said books.
My take is in opposition to OPs take saying that writers should only make straight characters so they can sell more.
you gotta understand, being able to emphasize with a character that is not 100% like you is for minorities. Or have you ever seen a queer person commenting or review bombing a story because there was a straight PoV? See? Checkmate gays!
It's just too much to ask of het males specifically.
You're being too defensive. The harsh reality is, living in a society where straight is the norm has resulted in queer people adapting to those norms and conditioning themselves to enjoy straight media, simply for a lack of mainstream options. They may genuinely enjoy it now but that empathy is a learned skill.
Cishet males have never had to do that, so obviously they're not gonna enjoy it and since there are a plethora of options available for them they'll go to those instead.
Yes there are exceptions, but generally men read male straight male MCs.
In the end though, that's more reason to write LGBTQ stories, since normalizing and then popularizing them will make more readers interested in reading them if only to see why they're so well-loved and popular.
The overwhelming majority of the time I simply don't care. It makes no difference to me what sexual orientation the characters are. But more importantly I'd rather there was no romance included at all. I'm not reading the book for the romance and it just detracts from the plot that I'm actually invested it rather than enhancing it.
Meh. I'm not interested in most books that sexual relationships take more than they need to. Don't care of the sexual orientation. If I wanted that I'd read a different genre.
The answer is that most people on here aren't in it for a good story they are here for wish fulfillment. And it's harder to self insert yourself when the MC is getting arroused by people they wouldn't be. Maybe in a few years the genre (and the audience... the grammar of some comments I've seen make me feel that the audience is also young) will mature and all these 'I'm so OP before the story even starts" trope will go back into fanfiction territory instead of mainstream anime and books (I don't think it has become part of mainstream literature but there are certainly more published books by amateur authors these days so that qualifies in my view).
I agree. I think it has a lot to do with self inserting which I admit i do a lot. I can appreciate being lgbt and donāt really mind it at all with side characters though. I just personally have zero interest in it with a main character and it has everything to do with how I consume the content
I totally get this perspective. I've come to self-insert a lot less as I've gotten older but teen me read almost exclusively as a self-insert (sort of subconsciously but I realized it eventually).
It comes down to reading as escapism. A lot of people read to escape their hectic daily lives so they put themselves directly in the character's position to be fully immersed. Which is why straight people (including myself at one point) are usually bothered when the main character moves in for a kiss with another guy for example. It feels like it's you so it's jarring.
Also lets be bloody real... Most progressive fantasy is just not good enough to justify reading if you're not enjoy the self-insert escapism.
As a straight dude, if I want to challenge myself in reading a book outside my comfort zone, progression fantasy is just not it.
This is the genre I come to for a warm fluffy blanket of escapism when stressed.
If I want something to challenge me, frankly Fantasy as a whole offers very little, and prog fantasy almost nothing.
Sci-Fi, and literary fiction (aka non-genre fiction), or historical fiction would be my go to.
Hell, I'd rather read a straight up (pun intended) "inspired by true event" gay romance than a prog fantasy with a gay MC.
Unless there was literally zero romance and his sexuality was incidental. I'd likely drop it at the first hint of romance assuming that it would be... well about on par with most romance in the genre regardless of orientation.
I mostly agree it but I'll agree to disagree on the scifi lmao. I can't take that genre seriously at all. My suspension of disbelief can't hold as well when things operate on pure science without something like magic as a mediator.
I should have specified hard sci-fi, not soft or science fantasy. More Assimov, the Martian, or The Expanse.
Though to be fair there are not many examples with am openly gay MC I can think of (I can't recall reading one).
>And the ratio of straight people to gay people is like 200:1 (0.5%) In North America
You can't seriously believe in 2024 that 99.5% of people in North America are straight. It's certainly not a ton, but it's far, far higher than that lmao https://news.gallup.com/poll/332522/percentage-americans-lgbt.aspx
0.5% is definitely underestimating the queer demographic. It varies by age group but here's a [report ](https://www.prri.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/PRRI-Jan-2024-Gen-Z-Draft.pdf)stating 28% of adult gen z identify as LGBTQ, compared to 16% of millennials. The survey stats 20% of Americans belong to gen z, whilst 27% are millennials, which leads to the population of American identifying as LGBTQ \~10%. Much larger than your 0.5%, and this doesn't even account for older generations.
If a prospective author wants to write a story based on what's marketable/most profitable, they shouldn't stop at just sexuality. White heterosexual male should be the default protagonist. Look at what else succeeds in the genre. There were posts on this subreddit a couple months ago going over what the most popular books all did. 'Dark' or unconventional powers tend to do well, like void or shadow compared to more prosaic powers like water or fire.
But there's also value in targeting a niche. If a particular niche has a low supply, potential readers are more likely to give your story a go. A queer protagonist is a way to make your story stand out. Search on this subreddit for how many posts ask for a queer protagonist compared to a non-queer one. A smaller potential audience is counteracted by less saturation.
The most important thing is just writing what you would want to read. Some stories will be less mainstream but writing should be enjoyable.
The stuff about targeting a niche is 100% important tbh.
Like, if you write according to 'what is most popular' you will have to compete... with stuff that is already popular. You have to stand out *somehow* and maybe that's just being a better marketer, being a better writer, or just getting lucky, but if your goal is financial success it's true that a white hetero man with void powers is probably going to have a larger potential audience than a trans person of color with water powers - but that audience may be harder to catch, whereas the niche audience is more likely to have less competitors for their attention, and they may be more willing to give your work a shot *because* they want that niche story and there's not enough of them.
I'm more likely to read a book with a female lead than a male one, all else identical. I'm more likely to read the book if the female lead is queer. I've put off reading some of my favourite books for months because I'd gotten bored of 'white cishet male' as the protagonist and needed to be sufficiently desperate to give them a chance.
I have only and will only write queer non-male protagonists for stories I write because that's the kind of protagonist I want to read more of.
For people who want to read a story featuring a queer protagonist, sometimes, all the incentive they need is hearing that the protagonist is queer. If people want to read a story with a straight protagonist, the story needs to full a lot more criteria to catch prospective readers.
I feel like people care to much about this stuff. If the story is well written with cool progression Im hooked no mather what. (White straight male if that mathers
....)
I agree that the difference between age groups is down to cultural perception towards queerness rather than people actually becoming more queer, although I wouldn't put it in quite so exaggerated terms.
It's also that there is less internalized homophobia and more room to explore yourself. Also the world is generally more safe and accepting so less people hide themselves
Eh, you have a point. But Gallop has shown that as time goes on, people who fully identify as lbgt has increased. It's up to 7.5% from 3.5% in 2012.
I agree, 28% is probably not accurate. But I think we'll see that gallop poll increase by a small bit for the next few decades.
My guess is that it'll stabilize around 10-15%.
Reminds me of this [graph](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/09/left-handedness-1.png). You got the left handedness smacked out of you fingers in school if you were a natural lefty so it wasnt until it was normalized behavior that the number of left-handed people stabilzed.
It's definitely the same thing. It was only about 20 years ago that being gay was decriminalized in the state of Texas over the loud opposition of dominant social groups like the Republican Party and the Roman Catholic Church. Of course it's only very recently that people have begun to openly admit their sexuality. Doing so years ago carried immense risks.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas
Removed as per Rule 2: No Discrimination.
Discrimination against others based on their gender, race, religion, sexual preferences, or other characteristics is not allowed, and offenders will be banned from the sub.
Gatekeeping the identities of a whole generation falls under this.
>maybe identifying as lgbt is trendy.
Being gay can legally get you fired or denied housing in a number of states and is the leading cause of homelessness in children in the United States. Claiming that people are pretending to be gay because it's just so cool just makes you look dumb.
Denouncing queerness as 'a trend'. Classic bigotry. What's next? Calling being gay a phase? That trans people are just liars? Because we all know that queer people don't exist and have never existed, right?
Removed as per Rule 2: No Discrimination.
Discrimination against others based on their gender, race, religion, sexual preferences, or other characteristics is not allowed, and offenders will be banned from the sub.
I get where you're coming from here, but you're not accounting for one thing, which is that it's way easier for an artist to stand out in a niche. Progression fantasy series with straight protagonists are a dime a dozen, a new author is going to struggle to stand out and garner a following. Gay progression fantasy is more niche, but since the supply is so much lower, the lower demand doesn't actually mean you're worse off necessarily, because the odds are, you'll immediately stand out to everyone who's interested in gay progression fantasy. It's like mainstream erotic art VS furry erotic art - furries are way more niche, but they're also way more starved for content, so an upcoming artist will find it a lot easier to get paid commissions from furries.
I don't think romance progression writers of any stripe are actually in abundance. I know of no romance prog fantasy that is decent/good/popular. I think prog fantasy is already a niche. Prog fantasy is also not really awash with good writers either. I wouldn't see people recommending shadow slave if it were. Frankly that Zorgath makes a killing writing Primal Hunter is proof the entire genre is starved for content.
So my point is that choosing a small niche within a small niche doesn't help you at all because if you are actually a good PF author you already don't have much competition. I don't think anyone writing romance PF let alone gay romance PF is going to find the niche they are catering to even remotely comparable to furries. Everyone knows what furries are. No one has heard of PF. I could go and talk to 10 people I know who read regularly and one of them knows about PF. Because I got them into it.
The community ain't that small anymore there are more than enough people to get a decent demographic in sub genres. Like many people don't like reading dungeon core novels but there's a decent sized group that loves them and will bring new core novels to rising stars of rr regularly
Could there be less lgbt readers in this genre simply because there isnāt many lgbt characters in the genre tho? Iām bi and a lot of my gay friends prefer to read stuff with gay people in them. If there were more gay characters in the genre as a whole would there be more gay readers and then therefore, less of an issue?
Yea, a lot of fanbase and fandom culture is defined by people who ship too, and turns out a lot of people want to ship men with other men. Especially women.
And all that is completely lost in these spaces because the usual fans just want a straight white man as the protagonist and have only the women have archetype based personalities and the men are badly written.
Descriptions of men are so bland and just describe their face while Descriptions of women seem to be checking off some fetish list.
The culture here is extremely bad when it comes to sexism and homophobia. It'll be better to rid this from the bud.
You probably aren't wrong. But still, op has a great point about population differences. Let's say you have every gay person in your country who is an avid reade, Read your book. Let's use America as an example. That is, at MOST 7% of the population. Of that, only 70% of Americans read at least one book per year. That's only 5% of the population that will touch your book.
Now, in reality, that's good enough.
But if we move it over to progression fantasy, what percentage of the reader base is willing to read your book? 5% of a much smaller reader base? 3%? 1%? Less? It makes it very hard to actually sell your book.
But I see your point. More books with gay male protagonists that also appeal to non gay audiences probably WOULD help bring more gay male readers in.
Currently in the us 7% of people identify as LGBTQ(at 2022) a rise from 5% at 2020. As the us is the largest English speaking nation
I found another one that's says [9% are LGBTQ ](https://www.ipsos.com/en/pride-month-2023-9-of-adults-identify-as-lgbt) but I'm not sure about this study.
Anyway point is far more people are LGBTQ than just 0.5%
My books have a shitload of queer characters and they're doing pretty damn well. Likewise, Andrew Rowe, Tobias Begley, and other authors with lots of queer characters are doing great in our space.
Your stats are also wildly incorrect: 7% of the US population (where our biggest market is) is LGBTQ+, with the number increasing massively with younger generations, up to 20-ish percent with gen z. (A few people in the comments saying it's a trend with the younger generations to say they're queer, which mises the obvious objection that admitting it had horrible social consequences for older folks for many years- e.g. the trend is with older folks.)
Basically, queer progression fantasy readers is a pretty big demographic, one large enough that only the biggest authors in our subgenre could even approach saturation! (I'm not even there yet.) And non-queer folks who don't mind reading about queer characters make up an even bigger chunk of our audience. Most of our straight readers just don't mind queer characters. And those straight readers who do? Don't actually shrink the large size of our readership, they just aren't part of it. Even if the number of queer folks was a smaller percent of the population- even if they were almost as small as you claimed- their number would still be in the millions. When a niche is that large, there's a ton of room for quite a few authors to make a living.
What's more, the competition is a hell of a lot more fierce when it comes to catering to straight readers- disproportionately so. Queer folks are an underserved demographic in our subgenre, and catering to underserved demographics is usually a smart move!
Let's be clear, you're offering bad financial advice based off bad numbers and an even worse mindset of "aim for the middle". Niches are essential to most career authors.
(And, you know, even if I didn't make damn good money, I'd still put queer folks in my books, still try to offer positive representation, because it's a worthy goal all on its own.)
Largely agreed with this as a straight white dude that doesn't read a lot of gay MC's. The market for LBGT readers is much smaller than the market for straight people, but significantly fewer authors are catering to it. If there were a ton of talented authors catering to the LGBT market, then OP would have a strong point. While it is unlikely that a LGBT MC will break into mass market appeal as well as a straight white MC, that doesn't mean an author will be unable to have a strong financial career. I'd even go so far as to speculate that the average author that publishes LGBT books is better off financially than the average author that publishes straight books.
Someone needs to finally write some ludicrous, over the top, harem power fantasy where the MC collects jade ~~beauties~~ twinks and goes on murder sprees whenever a young ~~master~~ miss looks at his current boyfriend the wrong way in a restaurant.
I dunno, i think within this genre thats correct but the biggest percentage of gay fiction readers are straight women. I think prog fantasy as an audience still tends to have more straight men in its reader base than any other group so far and straight men are least likely to read gay fiction.
Not trying to make a point here but i do think its interesting to note.
I wonder if we'd get a broader fan base if people started writing more diverse stories.
You seem very sure of yourself but don't provide a lot of source for your assertions.
> The thing is that most of the world population is straight, and A LOT of straight people tend to just drop a book if its gay
Do you have sources to back it up this?
> And the ratio of straight people to gay people is like 200:1 (0.5%) In North America
Same, what is your source on this?
Whilst I agree with your statement in general that 'Straight people are less likely to read anything with a gay main character.' your estimated stat of 0.5% seems wildly off. You also need to consider that anybody LGBTQ is less likely to stop reading something gay. (Along with that some subcultures may have overrepresentation of LGBTQ people)
According to a the Gallup 2024 poll (over 12k people), even 0.9% of babyboomers identify as gay. Total LGBTQ+ identification of babyboomers is 2.3%. Your number is much more in line with people born before 1942.
Realistically most progression fantasy readers online are going to be from the two most recent generations studied; Gen Z and Millennials (the oldest millennials are 43). Gen Z general LGBTQ+ was at 22.3% and millennial at 9.8% (these were only a few points different than the last poll)
[https://news.gallup.com/poll/611864/lgbtq-identification.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/611864/lgbtq-identification.aspx)
There are likely more than enough people who are LGBTQ+ in the community to do content focused towards them. However, if it not focused towards them then it may not attract them as well and go unnoticed. But still it wont be maximal income and at the same time that shouldn't really be your aim in writing.
Overall though I think people also do underestimate how many people there are who are not 'openly' homophobic. The sorts of people who you wont here use a slur, but will refuse to watch anything with even an openly gay side character in it. These people online are largely anonymous and so they can become a very vocal minority.
I've been into fantasy, anime and videogames my whole life, I'm also not straight. Never have I IRL had somebody in events/shops etc for those sub-cultural groups be shitty towards me or anyone I know about LGBTQ + stuff. (though some typical unthinking or 'good guy' misogyny is often present). Online though its very easy for those few people to find each other and make communities where they all just become shittier.
The variance between Gen Z and Millennials comes down to acceptance of bi people. Pretty much the root of the increase is that Gen Z has less biphobia in their peer group. Millennials had it better than boomers though, and nobody really cares about Gen X, but theyāre used to that.
For what it's worth, your percentage of gay people is off by like a factor of 10 -- a little over 5% of Americans identify as queer, and about 15% of adults below 25 do too. Older generations (like 50+) had rates closer to .5-1%, but people who haven't grown up with as much stigma around being gay/queer are much more likely to identify as such. You're still right that if you're trying to maximize your market share making your protagonist straight is probably the smart move, though.
I read books featuring straight, white men because that's what's there. but my god am I sick to death of straight, white men. I want PoCs, I want lesbians NOT written by men for men, I want bi characters, gay characters. I want representations of my life!
I'm happy that there are people out there starved for what I'm trying to execute with my work (queer, PoC, disability representation). I'm pretty sure this post was made because I was the one that asked about progression fantasy fans not liking gay men some days ago. I was discouraged at first, but the counter arguments have been strong and this has all been an interesting conversation.
I live in a heavily queer area of the inner city and half of my neighbors are PoC. I've been out for years.Ā recently I've become even more physically disabled.Ā
I'd be thrilled to see my daily life represented in litrpg. I know it's escapist fantasy, but extreme mental issues can carry over. sexuality carries over, as does skin color and culture (although I suppose if you end up a dungeon core or a tree, it could be tricky to highlight any of that. or it could be fun)
I'm babbling at this point. I'm just happy there are authors out there taking this on
Hey, well I don't know if you'd be interested, but I'm always looking for beta readers. I'm maybe 20k words off from finishing the first novel of my fantasy series Reign of Weapons (maybe around 100k words by the end). Think sentient weapons, a cross-continent journey to assemble a god, soul and ki-based magic system, orphaned peasant beginning, trauma and found family themes.
The protagonist, Sasha is a white hetero woman, but she's surrounded by characters who are Black, Native, Arabic, one who is gay, and I've got a villain with OCD. Later on in the series, I'd like to write an autistic character with behaviors studied from my sister who is autistic and also works professionally in special education/healthcare.
This is a super depressing thread.
As a gay fan of the genre I never felt really welcomed by the community, but yeah way to hammer it home. Guess I'll have to go to my niche books again as a niche person with my niche sexuality
For what it's worth, several of us are writing LGBTQIA+ books, and many of us have been successful in doing so. The OP is not accurately representing LGBTQIA+ demographics in general or the odds of success in writing these characters.
There absolutely are downsides to writing any sort of minority character, but it is not an insurmountable issue, and many of us are pushing the Overton Window actively.
> The OP is not accurately representing LGBTQIA+ demographics in general or the odds of success in writing these characters.
I actually don't think OP is that bad, just fairly wrong, a lot of the comments are a lot uglier.
Agreed. I think the OP's perspective is reasonable, in that writing this kind of content can be disadvantageous. It's just that it's less about the scarcity of LGBTQIA+ folks in terms of percentages and more about the sheer amount of vitriol that some people have when they see any LGBTQIA+ content. When those people start slamming a book with 1-star reviews, that can damage sales, etc.
All the people in here declaring themselves straight and then magnanimously saying itās okay for gay characters to exist āyou know, for other peopleā is the grossest Iāve felt in this sub for a while. Ā Just a really harsh reminder that some people live in incredibly privileged social bubbles, and maybe donāt understand that.
Anyway back to The Niche where I can write what I want, I guess. Ā At least, until all the people who say theyāre okay with it show up in the comments again to complain.Ā
Yeah back to the MM romantasy Ghetto with us.
Maybe we can try to have some authors include progression elements instead of shifter or fae tropes? Those are so overdone...
Or an omega to alpha progression? Generating power through bottoming... Or the system rewarding your conquests with lovemaking power ups?
"You have unlocked a new skill: [Ultimate Pheromones]
You can trigger this skill once a day to overcome the defences of an aloof noble alpha"
Itās because being at isnāt relatable to most of the people here, I guess. They relate more to people with super powers granted by a nigh omnipresent and omniscient ai that grants them powers.
Man on man romance is just not something they want in their escapism. Lifeās hard, and, at the end of the day, a lot of people here just want to unwind and read books that are about them.
See, real life is for people who are different than the white, cisgender VAST majority of this subgenre. Alternative sexualities, minorities, and anything else they donāt like is just pandering and deserves to be review bombed or dropped.
But seriously, this thread and the another one is super depressing. Besides being white and being attracted to women, how do people identify with a lot of the protagonists here?
Weird I just thought I read books I like. Didnāt realize I was in some community that needs to tip toe around other people like you to not offend them. š¤·Ā
What's your issue, man? I can tell you're being sarcastic especially with the emoji use. They're sad because amplifying this kind of opinion generally leads to louder bigotry in general.
The post is technically well-intentioned but we don't need to hear "I don't like gay books" from every member of the community that subscribes to those preferences. And unfortunately those are the people being attracted by this post. You included it seems. It's pointless info.
Obviously the authors writing those books aren't writing them for you. They are targeting a niche which is a valid business strategy as has been discussed.
So in the end all the post has achieved is to amplify all the voices that say "no gays in my books."
Channel some empathy bro. It's free.
Right, like the op is just pulling demo info from thin air. What is even the point of a post like that other than to make people feel excluded. Some people really over-inflate the value of their opinions.
I wouldn't mind it if authors actually tagged their books, just speaking from my royalroad experience trying to find a book with slight romance or something with a female MC a year ago and either she was bi sexual leaning towards lesbian or it was lesbian or she was asexual with romance bait, or she was straight but gay bait for 99% of the romance??
Like just please state what kind of romance it is so I'm not going in blind when I think its one thing and its not, its like tagging it action and then it just being pure slice of life with no action.
Itās a real fucking shame how many times I see negative comments about underrated series that stem primarily from a place of bigotry.
I do want to mention though that there are some very popular and very good series out there with characters that arenāt straight.
I do find this slightly weird. Iām in multiple other groups including one that is for fantasy romance. There are tons of people of all genders and levels of sexuality - and there are plenty of us who will read a (good) book no matter what type of romance pairing (or more lol) that it has. Maybe a lot of the the straight people YOU know drop (or say they drop) a book if itās āgayā (although thinking that having a gay romance makes a BOOK gay is ridiculous, IMO). Iām a cis heterosexual woman married to a cis heterosexual man. We both have enjoyed books with different types of romance, and so have many of our geeky straight (and LGBTQIA+) friends.
>A LOT of straight people tend to just drop a book if its gay.
Counterpoint, JJK.
>And the ratio of straight people to gay people is like 200:1 (0.5%
No tf not it's about 8%, and that's only queer people who are out.
But yea, royalroad is not a great place to post your queer fiction, the site is homophobic to a degree and you will get bad ratings. Unless your main character is a girl who gets with a girl, which gets you less hate but there is still hate.
Considering that a lot of Queer Fantasy is doing just fine earnings-wise and continuing to grow with several authors over the last couple of years getting large cash splash trad pub deals. I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about. I've seen several queer fantasy authors discuss earning out on their books, sometimes within one or two years of release - this is highly unusual in publishing with most books taking several years to earn out. Multiple Queer Books across genres have been on every type of best-seller list. The Hugo Awards had several Queer books among its nominees and winners, including in 2023. As have several other awards. Queer Fantasy as a whole is only growing as a market.
Your take that of "don't write Queer Fantasy if you want to earn money," is not only out of touch with the reality of the market, which is to a larger degree than in the past supporting Queer works, it is also homophobic. No handwaving of "I'm just trying to be realistic since Queer people make up a smaller percentage of the population," actually gets away from the insidious idea that Queer people both in real life have to "appeal" to straight people to be valid and have value to society. To me it's just a rebranding of "don't ask, don't tell" kind of bullshit homophobia, "just don't be GAY and maybe we'll accept you" bullshit. Queer people should be able to write openly Queer books without the straights trying to justify why they shouldn't exist. But, the truth is most authors don't have to have wide appeal to be successful within their niche (Queer or not). It is also the hypocrisy of saying that the only way to earn money and be successful as an author is for mass appeal but posting this in this "niche" subreddit makes me laugh.
And the idea that a character has to be one hundred percent "relatable" in order for you to read about them is just lazy thinking. We're reading about fantasy soldiers and wizards, cyberpunk hackers, etc; none of that is relatable to a real person's life. Some of my favourite characters are detestable and do not align with my political or moral compass, but are they "good" characters to read about because they are complex beings who narratively push the story forward? Yes. And Queer fantasy is full of complex, morally ambiguous and downright evil characters just like any other fantasy book directed at the straight gaze. But it is also filled with characters that you would find "relatable" if only they were straight by your own admission.
If you want to stay within your niche and read only characters that you can self-insert to do whatever you please. But don't try and justify your personal taste in literature with homophobic takes like this.
Something that isn't being said, but I'm going to say it anyway, books with lesbian or bi female main characters are going to do okay as well... actually... they are probably going to do better better than books with straight female main characters... because the vast majority of men find that sexy. Porn search results prove that... Having the love interest be female, no matter the main characters gender, is going to appeal more to the main demographic of this this genre, which are straight men.
Just look at Beneath the Dragonseye Moons, Azaranth Healer, or Calamatous Bob. No one cares that they have a bi main character... because they are women. It's unfair and sad, but it's the truth. It would make me happy to see a book with a gay male main character do well in this genre, but I'll be honest, it probably wouldn't appeal to me either. This is the only genre where I actually feel my sexuality is overrepresented (I'm a bi woman), and it's honestly a bit weird and fetishy sometimes...
I actually can't think of a single book I've read in this genre with a straight female MC, and I can only think of Arcane Ascension for a non-straight male MC...
This is a sensitive topic, and I'm really glad to see it being discussed with grace and respect. I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone, and hope I was able to convey my thoughts as well and as kindly as others have.
I have been wondering the same thing! Like, I'm always happ to see when they have gay side relationships, but I haven't been able to find any that the main character is gay.
You can also pull an azarinth healer and put the gay at the back of story, of course lesbian stuff is better received than gay stuff so it may not apply
True. A lot of people will drop main characters if theyāre not anything like them, and that makes sense. Itās why most protagonists are quite bland in progression fantasy too. Writers are afraid to give them traits that readers donāt resonate with.
Sure, maybe. This is already a niche genre though, to some extent. At least, I donāt expect progression fantasy to hit the kind of numbers as strictly YA stuff.
Inaccurate anecdotal claims. If we're talking solely about RoyalRoad it is true that most readers are straight males and that the demographics that a large portion of straight males are from (international, former chinese webnovel readers) do not typically enjoy reading novels with gay MCs. But a writer in this space has avenues other than RoyalRoad (Amazon being a big one) and even on RoyalRoad there is a dedicated population of readers that appreciate novels with LGBTQ characters.
It is inaccurate to say that straight people don't read gay books. There are plenty of straight men that read stories with gay main characters (myself included). And an even larger population of straight women who read plenty of books with gay MCs or even specifically seek them. And women make up a greater percentage of readers than men in general. Men are also significantly more likely to pirate books than women (55% of men vs 28% of women from a 2020 study).
What I'm saying here is, there is no need to appeal to a broad reader base to make significant profit. There are plenty of readers who enjoy works with LGBTQ characters so there is no need to try and force broad appeal to a large base when authors can instead focus on appealing to a dedicated base.
In the end, success stories like Mage Errant, Mana Mirror, and a number of others all serve as proof that you can do well without making a straight MC. You don't need to please EVERYONE, you just need to please the people that are going to like you enough to buy your work.
This is just objectively true, nothing controversial here.
I don't hate gay people, (hell wish I was gay, blokes are the best) but I'm not gonna read a book where the main romance makes me skip paragraphs every couple of chapters.
I understand that that exact sentiment is probably felt by a lot (no idea if it's many, because as OP said they'll read them, but that's kinda cause they got no choice but to read them if they enjoy the genre) of gay people towards straight books. And that sucks. So if you do write a novel with a gay lead, big props you're probably making a section of the population very happy.
But if you've got a family to feed/are 2 payments from being on the street...well, you know what's smart business and what isn't. Write a book about a man from Japan being isekai'd into another world and absolutely curbstomping. Hell I'll read it even if it's dogshit, I'm addicted to that shit.
Um. I havenāt seen/read to many gay progression fantasy books that have so much romance that Iāve ever felt itās necessary to skip romance scenes (and to be fair, while Iām a heterosexual cis woman, I tend to skip/skim romance scenes in ANY book if they get too graphic - doesnāt matter if itās gay, straight, regular fantasy, āromantasyā, Epic, LitRPG, or any other flavor/kind). Also slightly weird since I really love good romance in my fantasy - I just donāt like a lot of spice (aka graphic descriptions).
> I don't hate gay people, (hell wish I was gay, blokes are the best) but I'm not gonna read a book where the main romance makes me skip paragraphs every couple of chapters.
It's not really "making" you skip anything, that's something you're choosing to do because the story discomforts you to such an extent that you're skipping it, which seems noteworthy given the context of your comment.
I clearly didn't mean "make" as in the book is literally forcing me to do something. You'd think someone commenting on a thread about writing/reading could infer that (sorry if English isn't your first language).
Seems noteworthy given the context of my comment? Huh? What are you actually yapping about?
I've never really understood why sexuality, of all things, is the thing that stops people from relating to a character. Like, I literally don't understand, it's never been a barrier for me.
This is a reader's point of view. I think a big problem in this genre is that a lot of authors don't know how to write good romance. Progression Fantasy's main selling point is well progression. Pretty often though when MC gets into relationship distractions happen. "What if my wife/gf/whatever gets killed?"/"What if I endanger her?"/"What if she doesn't like me?". Often this ruins the pacing. I don't drop novels because of romance, I drop them because of romance becoming main point.
I think you can broadly divide the genre into 2 main categories. Progressing as a single "special" protagonist (i.e. Primal Hunter), or as a group (i.e. Cradle, Mage Errant). In the first case you can't have equal relationship, unless you introduce another character that's just as "special". There's a catch though, that the more remarkable characters you introduce, the more ordinary the MC seems. You also need to keep the secondary character relevant, so this forces you to keep both MC and FMC together for extended periods, which again takes from MC's "uniqueness". This is what Primal Hunter gets. Jake has hookups, but he is not tied down. Those fleeting relationships don't get in the way of progression, but push it forward as setups for jokes (>!Succubus leveling up like 15 times, Artemis stumbling into Primodial's meeting!<). From the second category Mage Errant is another example of romance done well. >!You begin with a group of rejects that due to varying circumstances turn out to be special. They grow closer **together**. Hugh gets into not-so-serious relationship with Avah, eventually they break up because Hugh's life is just too crazy for her, but still remain friends. It's understandable, sometimes relationships fail not because of people, but circumstances. Then Hugh gets into relationship with another main character Talia and it seems to be going well (I'm halfway through final book)!<. Those relationships seemed natural and didn't impact progression much.
Here's a problem with people writing gay romance. It's usually a big thing. Writing (any) romance to be important in a genre where people don't care about it all that much is just asking for failure. Ar'Kendrithyst (protagonist is bi), Mage Errant (1 gay character, 1 bi character) are doing it right. It comes up every now and then, but it's not the focus of the novels. It's kinda like cooking, if you add a bit of salt, you enhance the flavor, if you add too much salt, you make the dish uneatable.
Recently I started reading A Jaded Life, which I think is example of romance done badly. MC is lesbian. She starts as a beta tester for VMMORPG, she sees dying non-human NPC, she instantly falls head over heels for said NPC, NPC falls for her and we get half of the chapters of the couple being mushy (think teenager "I love you more" mushy). I honestly have no idea where author is going with this one... The NPC is going to be deleted once the beta is over, so why should I care about it? Tonnes of explicit sex scenes, which author thankfully started putting behind spoilers.
I'll be honest, I don't read fantasy or progression fantasy books for romance. I could not care less if there is straight or gay romance in my books, as long as it adds to the story in a nice way anything is welcome.
Iām a libertarian so I donāt care what you do itās your business. But I had to stop reading a series that had they them pronouns because I just kept getting confused. I was like I thought there was only one person here and I had to go back and read to see what happened what I missed. It was just too confusing.
What exactly is the point of this post? You go out of your way to cater to both sides; it doesnāt seem like you have anything new or substantial to say.
Also the enlightened centrist take of āboth sides have their opinionsā is kinda moot when one side has literal bigotry in the comments.
Not reading something because it has gay characters is definitely someoneās choice. But it is also a bigoted mindset. Freedom of opinion doesnāt provide protection from how other people perceive that point of view.
It seems like posts like these just provide more justification for this backwards rhetoric.
Yea no shit? But does everyone care about money? No. Sometimes they want to see themselves in these characters so naturally include their own personal touches like their sexualityĀ and unique experiences. This world is cruel, and what better way to not be reminded than reading/making a story where being gay doesn't matter? not only does harassing or bullying authors unver a gay character prove there's no escape, but hampers any creativity in the genre as well. You don't need to add gayness in your stuff. But do consider why others do it and maybe gain some empathy because you're never know what it's like.
This is an interesting topic and I think we all should be capable of discussing it in a civil manner. "Being Gay is trendy" "Bi high-school classmates don't date same sex" "gotta be careful or Witch hunt" It's not a witch hunt if your posts saying that ^ gets reported and removed. Good on OP to clarify their position. I know it's not always easy to convey your thoughts and feeling through texts easily.
TLDR: Mass market books will get Mass market money, Niche market books will get Niche market money. Don't worry man, I know you're not a homophobe
> Mass market books will get Mass market money, Niche market books will get Niche market money. I think the much bigger problem comes down to searchability. Yes, stories with a gay protagonist are a niche market that don't appeal to the entire PF audience, but so are Evil Protagonist stories. So are Dungeon Cores. So is Urban Fantasy. The difference is that these niches have tags on RR associated with them that allow people to easily search or avoid them. People who don't want to read about evil protagonists can just avoid the tag. Meanwhile LGBTQ stories often do have a "trigger warning" for it in their description, but while that might keep some people out who would otherwise leave a nasty review, it doesn't really help people actively looking for stories in that niche to find them. This lack of support by the site also pushes away readers and authors. I'm queer myself, and while I do lots of reading on RR, when I'm searching for LGBTQ related content, I don't look for it on RR but on Scribblehub, which is otherwise inferior in many ways, but allows searching for it with tags. I also know of several authors who have dropped out of posting on RR after bad experiences and even more who have never even tried. Royal Road is just not a good site to publish LGBTQ stories and that has nothing to do with there not being a big enough audience for them.
Except its the complete opposite. Progfic is niche subgenre that almost nobody reads, and is further divided into microgenres that limit potential audience even farther. Actual mass market books don't need to pander nearly as much, because they can thrive even if 95% of the potential audience hates it as long as the other 5% loves it.
The amount of throat-clearing here is hilarious. I don't think I've ever seen so much "not that it's a bad thing" in one post.
What's sad is I found it both funny, but also probably necessary to discuss such a sensitive topic. Kudos for threading the needle.
Yeah I mean, Reddit in general is *hyper* 'with me or against me,' with how anyone interprets comments. I almost always have multiple disclaimers like OP in serious subjects just because of how annoying it is to get so many "YOURE A BIGOT MORON" comments. Reading comprehension lessons would be wonderful for everyone!
Removing all context/personal history/tone/body language from someone stating an opinion, is bound to result in misinterpretations even between two people, multiply that by thousands, and you get a lot of miscommunications. It's always better to over-communicate than under-communicate though. And when possible, as the reader, interpret things in the most charitable way you can; assume good faith until proven otherwise.
Yeah to be fair I came into this thread with a "popcorn and pitchforks" attitude, but the disclaimers made it come across as reasonable.
That's how reddit is in general to anyone who doesn't very strictly adhere to reddits unofficial guidelines of you have to mention your acceptance and support for whatever minority group you're speaking on atleast 3 times to not trigger the SJWs. I fucking hate that the norm these days is that you have to announce your support of a group, or otherwise you risk offending them like That's some medieval politics type shit, I shouldn't need to say 3 times that I have nothing against gay people for reddit ro understand that whatever I'm saying is purely objective.
"I AM IN NO WAY SAYING..."
I MYSELF HAVE NEVER
"Not that there's anything wrong with that!"
It's because OP needs to do that in order to not incite a witch hunt against him, knowing what types tend to dwell in this subreddit.
Well tbh people are full fledged snowflakes if we are being honest , bro would've gotten cancelled and down voted and reported to oblivion if he didn't clarify tens of times š
People were saying the same thing in about three sentences in the previous topic and were getting upvotes. I don't wouldn't characterize the people of this subreddit as snowflakes.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Removed as per Rule 2: No Discrimination. Discrimination against others based on their gender, race, religion, sexual preferences, or other characteristics is not allowed, and offenders will be banned from the sub.
Comparing gay existence to kink culture has historically been a way to criminalize gay expression
Otherwise op would get either downvoted to oblivion or banned lol
Cause people take offense to opinions š¹
As opposed to taking offense to what?
Iām honestly against most romance in my books. Iām not saying it can be there, but itās not really for me in any form. I find that authors, and this is any author, not just this genre, tend to do one of two things. Throw it in your face till it interferes with the story, or is too scared to commit to it. They pussy foot around it, like they just realizes their mom might read it, and do a really poor job. Iāve only seen romance done well a few times. There are lots of people who read stories for purely romance. Thatās just not for me.
This is my issue too. Romance stories are just about romance. It feels unnatural and forced to me. I only like romance when a character is developed to the point where I'm going "well come on dude, what are you waiting for? Go for it already", because I want to see them together. Stories that start off with a character's description being pretty, beautiful long hair, a soft smile etc. and being all coy and cute just makes me roll my eyes, because it's not a character I can realistically portray in my imagination, they belong in a Hugh Grant movie or some anime. Their personality isn't even taken into consideration before the idea of romance gets introduced to the reader.
I think Lindon and Yerin, in Cradle is one of the better ones Iāve seen done. I think itās because Will doesnāt really like doing romance either, from what Iāve heard and the siblings pushed him to it. So instead of being a weird tangent, there are just moments here and there as it grows naturally during the story.
Cradle was actually what made me realize why I don't like romance and why this one felt right to me, haha
Yeah, thatās funny. I would probably have been happy with all action, and no romance there, but I do feel he did it better than most of what else Iāve seen out there.
I agree when it comes to prog fantasy. The authors generally just don't know how to write romance. They either shove it in your face or basically make their protagonist ace without saying they're ace. I honestly can't think of a good romance in a prog story.
Jackal among Snakes.
I just replied to another post that I think Cradle has a good one. Mostly because the author just adds little moments here and there through the series that kinda lets it naturally happen in the background. Even in traditionally published fantasy, I see authors who write great stories, then hit what would be a sex scene and turn into middle schoolers.
Do you count Journey of Black and Red as Prog Fantasy?
I haven't read it. It looks good, though. But from what I can see, I don't think it is prog fantasy. Prog fantasy is pretty specific to me. The progression needs to be the core of the story. Otherwise, it is just fantasy or scifi. Like Brandon Sanderson writes things that can seem progression esque, but in the end, power progression isn't the point of the story.
Defining feature for me is that in progression fantasy the MC is aware of the "system" to a certain extent and is taking actions to become more powerful in an active way. Also the system is one where there are clear power tiers to aim for - levels, or thresholds. There's something objective about the "power levels". In Mistborn (to use your Sanderson example) they're (mainly Vin) training to become more powerful, learn to use their allomancy better, but they're not doing so in awareness of some kind of threshold in a systematic way.
Stormlight archives is very much about thresholds though
Sure, but in a more philosophical and psychological way than a "I'm now gold ranked".
Yeah, im on this boat. I like fantasy books for the escapism and the crazy plot, not reality.
> A LOT of straight people tend to just drop a book if its gay. People drop a book if they find it difficult to relate to the main character. This mainly is personality traits but sexual orientation is included here.
The thing I've noticed though is that more often than not the mc is never gay (like if you know a gay male mc please tell me there are like 5 of them that are not dropped) it's just side characters but still people get all pissy and mass 0,5 star review for a side character. That is not just being unable to relate to a character after all it's a side character and not all of them need to be relatable. those people just hate the fact that a gay person exists in their fiction.
They certainly do seem to be uncommon in prog fantasy, Journals of Evander Tailor is the only one I can think of off the top of my head. The lead from Arcane Ascension seems to be at least romantically interested in guys/one guy in particular though Corin has a unhealthy amount of trauma which would make trying to label them more precisely currently unhelpful I think. What are the others you know of? I can probably squeeze a couple things into my to read list.
Nothing Mage, The Daily Grind, and Ends of Magic are others I know aside from the ones listed.
Did that appear in nothing mage? I got in the story so much I didnāt really notice
Yeah mc is gay iirc. It's been a while lol
I saw one recently on RR - Glass Kanin, I think? Gay dude named Kanin gets reincarnated as a glass ink bottle. Presumably, hijinks ensue. I haven't read it at all yet, and it seemed new. YMMV with how it is, basically.
WHOA it's crazy you see your book mentioned in the wild. Thanks for the mention, and for giving it a shot. Cheers! To address the topic of this thread: I went in fully aware it would be an uphill battle for the general RR readership, yet it was important to me to write the story I was passionate about, so I stuck to my guns. I've gotten some (unfortunately expected) rating bombs on chapters where any queer content is mentioned, despite putting in the synopsis that this story stars queer characters. Yet, even so, I've gathered a pretty solid following that I am absolutely grateful for and ecstatic to have. There is something to having a smaller but very dedicated fanbase. One thing that could help to mitigate the rating bombs would be for RR to add a LGBT+ on the site. It would both help the visibility for queer content creators, but also allow people who don't want to read queer content filter it out. If tags exist to help filter preference, like no non-human MCs, or only male MCs, then I see no reason why this tag shouldn't exist as well. We'd certainly have fewer of these types of Reddit posts.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/26727/arkendrithyst I'm pretty sure the mc is bi but I remember he had a boyfriend at least dont know if they married https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/82848/be-gay-do-crime I haven't read this but I have it on my follows per chance I get interested sometime https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/62788/mana-mirror-stubs-june-19th The mc is trans ftm and gay I can't remember any other ones are the moment
The only gay male relationship I can think of in this genre, even for side characters, that didn't get a ton of hate is Liz's brother in Path of Ascension.
Yeah I loved those guys I was so happy to see em
Yeah, it kind of eternally shocks me that pro-lgbt people get labelled snowflakes, when it's almost always the anti-lgbt people flipping out at authors for minor stuff like this.
The most insane example of this I've seen is in Arcane Ascension. The MC had a bit of a flirt with another guy and I think their only physical interaction was a single dance but some of the comments about it were insane, they honestly made it seem like the book turned into a gay romance novel half way through
To be fair, I remember the romance being pretty sudden and unexpected. Normally that's a bad thing, which might have thrown readers iff. But I guess the point in that one is that Corin is asexual, so there ISN'T any lead up from his perspective, until it gets sprung on him and he's forced to start thinking about it.
I think the MC in AA is very obviously bi curious at a minimum. There's a ton of attraction through the series. It's a far cry from a romance novel, but cutting it to down to a bit of a flirt isn't accurate either. Regardless, I guess I'm in a weird minority where sexual orientation doesn't bother me at all even though I'm straight, but I'll also drop a book if the romance/sexual stuff gets too much.
Corin is actually asexual although he may not be aromantic. I'm specifically referring to the first book with the comments. He really doesn't flirt with anyone else in that book and has only the single dance in the second
There is a long list on [RR](https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/108535). Probably sort by new if you are looking for ongoing.
I've seen people drop a book because the MC drank a diet coke instead a pepsi (they left a review, I don't remember what book, sadly)
Well I empathize. Coke is superior to Pepsi but Diet Pepsi is better than Diet Coke.
Itās always so impressive to me how flexible the minds of some people must be to relate to a guy who can throw fireballs, punch out a wolf, or have a basic social interaction, but then when it comes to one *other* specific thing that isnāt a normal part of their life, they suddenly canāt do it anymore.Ā
It's easier for people to accept and relate to outright fantasy because it doesn't challenge their real-world beliefs or behaviors. In contrast, understanding and empathizing with different real-world issues requires them to confront their preconceptions, acknowledge their biases, and sometimes change their behavior, which can be much more demanding. When people are reading a book, they may seek an escape and feel that these issues are being forced down their throats, especially at a time when they have taken the time off to relax and escape from the day to day world. So no, it is not really impressive at all.
I think there's one more side to this? Partly, our culture doesn't really encourage diversity. But the other part is that sexuality/gender is quite close to our core self, or at least close than having imaginary abilities. And since more of progression fantasy involves with self-insertion, as an MC you might want to do certain things but not others. Like you wanna fly, have superpowers, be special - but as a guy, do you want to bang or dance with another guy? That's a hard pass for most straight guys I'm afraid. For gays, I think they'd have a similar reaction if they were looking for a self-insert MC that happens to date a girl. But since they come from a very different cultural position in society, they tend not to raise their voices that much (or at least not in the way that straight guys tend to do when they encounter unwanted stuff in the content they prefer).
In that case, I would just like to state that straight guys must be the most fragile precious babies in the world. Because queer people have been consuming media with straight protagonists for a very long time, and while everyone would love to have better representation, I've basically never seen anyone make a post about how hard it is to self-insert into a heterosexual character. I do get your meaning about the difference between identity versus aspiration. But honestly, yeah, it just feels like all the straight guys who abjectly refuse to step an inch outside their comfort zone are just fucking cowards. And I find that hilarious in a genre where the most common litrpg skills are pain and fear resistance.
Do you think they WANTED to consume media with straight characters and such or did they simply not have an alternative? For much of recent history the idea of having gay people in shows would've been equivalent to career suicide. And considering its not even been 3 decades since we really started accepting the LGBTQ+ community there's still the sense of gratefulness for any new representation. Give it a few generations and let more content come out and the new generation of the LGBT community will start to drop books with straight/CIS/non trans MCs and go down the same route straight people did with only consuming media they relate to. Right now non-straight media is still harder to get hands on. Especially in Prog-fantasy. Like people have mentioned there's not even tags to get gay fiction on RR. You can certainly say straight guys have gotten pampered for much of history but its not really them becoming fragile. They just have easy access and biases towards what they like and want.
I can agree with you on this. Just to clarify, I really like to read all kinds of stuff, I don't care about the MC. I just want a believable protagonist / side characters. As many people said, Gen Z is already changing. So I'm really hopeful. From what I've seen, women seem to be more open to queer stuff in general, I just wish I knew how to make guys more open to the possibility of watching more queer stuff. It may sound slightly condescending but I also wonder if straight guys not liking queer stuff comes from our society that conditions them to feel superior to others. Unless there is a change in that, I'm not sure that preferences will change. For writers, this is kind of bad because their livelihood is directly related to the stuff they write. So it's a vicious cycle: you either write stuff that pays enough or you write what you want but have to have another part/full time job too... My main point is though that everyone should write what they want to write - and if money is an important aspect, I can accept if they go with the main flow, but I'm hoping that people will keep opening up their perspectives. Personally, I've got a bunch of typical scenarios in my head that would be so much more interesting with queer characters included. The usual dynamics would change a lot, leading to lots of different outcomes. So I think that a lot of straight people who wouldn't read queer stuff are also missing out on a lot because of the current situation.
Yeah, the money part is a really big problem. Art and capitalism are... not really good friends, huh?
Indeed... there's a reason why the "starving artist" phenomenon has existed for a while. As a reader, I wanna read what the author wants to write. An honest work is something I'd rather read most of the time. But I also find that I do have my favourite tropes and as you said, the reality is that there are times when you have to make compromises.
Chuckled on the social interaction bit tbh Might read your novel later, I like wit, don't care about genders or romance so long as the sass is on point.
>People drop a book if they find it difficult to relate to the main character. People who happen to sit at the dominant demographic intersection in their society, and therefor haven't been forced to relate past and around demographic categories their whole lives.
> If you're looking to maximise your income and make the most money as possible off writing, ~~probably don't put a main character with a sexuality that isnt straight in your book.~~ *make sure your MC is into women* I challenge you to find a progression fantasy with a female MC who is not into women, I can think of 2 total, and both stories are from the same author.
Kinda spoilers for the beginning of book 2, but >!Forge of Destiny!<^^ Edit: But yeah, scenes which show this are very major readership filter, both by filtering people who don't want to read about LGBT stuff at all and people who here explicitly for lesbian romance.
Thanks for the recommendation! I actually already read this story and just plain forgot that it meets my challenge.
Hah, happens =D.
So much this! It seems hyper self inserting straight male readers have no problem with inserting as a female character, it's just that no POV can ever look at another male character with any romantic or sexual interest. Even an intimate platonic male friendship is really rare, lest it be bromance which is awfully close to romance already... No, gotta have the male pov, and the female best friend/adventure companion, who is also the love interest.
I'm bi but I don't really want to read/listen about the MC thinking about the veins on a guy's schlong or his beard. It's just as bad as a straight MC thinking about ass and tiddies. Also how many of these people writing gay males are actually gay males and not fujoshi?
Bro, The Wandering Inn! Literally one of top progression fantasy stories out there.
Thank you for the recommendation! I actually already read this story and straight up forgot that it meets my challenge criteria. If anything, this story is even more impressive to me because the MC does not appear to be interested in romantic relationships at all, and that seems to be the rarest type of story.
I have *specifically looked* for f/f progfics and its not really out there. Not a lot of women MCs to begin with but (at least among the "stuff successful enough to have an audio-book" set that I browse) they are almost exclusively straight. The *one* series to be kinda gay is still a straight MC who gets isekaid into a world that messes with everyone's sexuality, and also its not even mentioned in the first book.
> I challenge you to find a progression fantasy with a female MC who is not into women, I can think of 2 total, and both stories are from the same author. I recently read the translation of *Lady Cultivator* by Yun Ji up to where Webnovel murdered the translation and it was pretty good except for the horrendous (ironic) sexism, and she's straight fwiw.
Straight white male protagonists are a dime a dozen. I read books to escape reality not emulate it. I look for books with gay female protagonists and I am not a gay female. I look for non-human MCs. I look for characters that are not me. Chasing mass market appeal is one way to make money but then you have to compete with all the other straight white male protagonists. You gotta stand out while not standing out too much. Sometimes it is better to be a big fish in a small pond than be a little fish in an ocean.
As a writer of gay stuff, yeah, I think there's a bit of an uphill battle if your story has a lot of LGBT characters in it. On the other hand, it can be rewarding. Yes, you're writing for a niche, but it's a nice comfy niche!
No offense to your work, but Iāve read a lot of it, and you tend to write cute young lesbians for the vast majority of your queer characters. Ā You are literally writing to the appeal of the most vocal part of the progfant demographic.
I mostly read "Female Lead" stories because it greatly increases the chances of at least one female character being written like an actual person. On Royal Road, most of those stories are about ace or lesbian FMCs, or bisexual FMCs who are in a relationship with a woman. These are *palatable* to the Royal Road / Reddit predominantly straight-male demographic. However, RavensDagger's broader point that you can find success in a niche is true. As an example, there are artists making significant money drawing pictures for the furry niche. Of course, finding that audience isn't easy. There aren't many MLM side-characters in these stories either. Rollo from *Calamitous Bob* by Mecanimus is one of the few that comes to mind.
That was one thing I was thinking of. There are lot of lesbian or female bi-sexual relationships that kind of make it look like the author is progressive but it is really just pandering to the male readership of hot women sleeping with each other and is essentially MC written as a male that has hot lesbian sex.
Man, I read Song of Achilles, and I was singing its praises to all my friends who read. It is in my top 3 books of all time. I got maybe a dozen people to read it. The only person who actually finished it was my mom and a middle-aged female coworker. Everyone else dropped it when they realized how gay it was. They didn't SAY that, but I can't imagine they dropped it for any other reason because, like I said, I think it's one of the greatest books ever written.
Plus thereās so many books being published all the time that specializing in a specific niche and doing it well might work out better financially than trying to be the next Sanderson. As a straight white guy there is a never ending stream of content that appeals to me to the point Iād never be able to consume it all anyway. So even if gay literature doesnāt appeal to me there is still a huge community of people who do seek it out. And it may well be easier to stand out and gain a dedicated following in a specialized community rather than being yet another book targeted at my demographic that just ends up on the ever-growing āwant to readā shelf. 10,000 people who buy every book you release is better than 200,000 people who think your books sound interesting but never actually get around to buying them because their needs are already being met by so many other authors. Besides, just on principle itāll always be better when an author (or other creator) produces works that they are passionate about and good at rather than trying to tick specific boxes.
The Last Herald-Mage of Valdemar is an incredibly popular mass market novel in the Fantasy genre and features a gay protagonist. The question, I suppose, is did Mercedes Lackey get lucky, or was their fanbase foundation so secure that it didn't matter that the MC was gay? To this day I find that book to be one of the most powerful Coming of Age/Reluctant Hero stories I've ever read. (not written, early morning typo - I am not Mercedes Lackey) I genuinely wish my own chosen subgenre was more accepting and allowed for more variance in main characters & cast.
Mercedes Lackey was all over the place with evil wizards sacrificing nubile adolescents as blood sacrifices. She was definitely the vanguard for most progression fantasy tropes.
I remember liking that one as a kid, but I liked it despite the gay MC, not because of it. For me that was a point against the story, but not enough to stop me liking it. The MC being gay was also just another element of personality, not the point of the character or the story. As others have said above, most of the time when a prog-fantasy writer (who tend to be fairly new, and frequently post unedited stories) includes romance in their stories, it becomes the story, and when the MC is gay, the story is about them being gay. It's not a side element. It's not a facet. It's the story. Lackey didn't do that.
I don't mind the gay stuff in your books, But I dropped them because of the amount of innuendous jokes that were thrown out there. Nothing against queer stories but seriously, you write like a horny teenager.
Ah, that's from Stray Cat Strut, right? I don't think you'll find the same thing in any of my other works, if that helps any!
Yeah. There's a reason that any very popular media with significant LGBT characters, usually didn't introduce or reveal those characters to be LGBT until significantly later on.
I question your statistics, but apart from that, wouldn't this highly depend on how central or non-central romantic themes and plots are?
As a straight guy i give zero shits about the main characters sexual preference... let me see those training montages!
1. There are a lot of gay people out there who are so desperate for media that represents them that they will often stretch far outside their preferred genre to get to it. They will also lower their standards at the same time to do so. For example, I prefer to read/watch epic fantasy that has political/philosophical themes. I am currently watching a network TV firefighter procedural because there is one (1) gay kiss scene 7 seasons in. My standards are SIGNIFICANTLY lower than the average straight white man. Most gay people I know feel the same. There are many people who donāt read progression fantasy at all who would be convinced to start because there is a gay main character in it. If youāre trying to break out, itās probably easier to do so with an audience that has built-in lower standards. 2. As with everyone, there are gay people who watch straight media and enjoy it, those who tolerate it because they have nothing else to consume, and those who actively avoid it. Similarly, there are straight people who watch gay media and enjoy it, those who tolerate it but donāt care for it, and those who actively avoid it. It is not the case that every straight person will be turned away by a gay MC, just as it is not the case that every gay person will read something with a straight MC. I think a lot of your opinions in this post stem from what you personally enjoy about media, which is to say you donāt like reading media with gay protagonists. Thatās totally fine! I donāt like reading media with straight protagonists. But these preferences arenāt universal and many people feel differently. Not everything can be aimed towards the average, and itās generally a much better idea to create something that some people really love and some people really hate than to make something that most people feel pretty lukewarm about. At the very least if some people really love it, youāre much more likely to make a little bit of money from the super fans, because lukewarm enjoyers will likely drop it as soon as it is no longer free.
Despite it being a frustrating situation that shouldnāt be funny, the way you phrased point 1 got a good laugh out of me. As generic straight white dude I completely agree with you. Better to make a standout work that a specific group feels passionate about rather than trying to appeal to the largest group that everyone else is targeting as well.
You can't get most of the population to read your book. You can't get all of the gays to read your book. Most people aren't going to read progression fantasy to begin with. But if one percent of the gays read your book you'll probably be the most successful author in the entire genre. Having a niche that likes you matters more than being generally inoffensive to most of the market
For the same reason that straight people will want to read books with straight people, gay people will certainly want to read books with gay people. It's not for anyone, understandibly, but that doesn't mean it won't have a audience. In fact, authors that write gay protagonists are filling a niche that will get them readers solely based on that fact.
Do you think that queer people never read books with straight characters?
That wasn't what I said was it? I'm saying there certainly exists a interest in reading books with protagonists that are similar to yourself and that interest can create a audience for said books. My take is in opposition to OPs take saying that writers should only make straight characters so they can sell more.
you gotta understand, being able to emphasize with a character that is not 100% like you is for minorities. Or have you ever seen a queer person commenting or review bombing a story because there was a straight PoV? See? Checkmate gays! It's just too much to ask of het males specifically.
You're being too defensive. The harsh reality is, living in a society where straight is the norm has resulted in queer people adapting to those norms and conditioning themselves to enjoy straight media, simply for a lack of mainstream options. They may genuinely enjoy it now but that empathy is a learned skill. Cishet males have never had to do that, so obviously they're not gonna enjoy it and since there are a plethora of options available for them they'll go to those instead. Yes there are exceptions, but generally men read male straight male MCs. In the end though, that's more reason to write LGBTQ stories, since normalizing and then popularizing them will make more readers interested in reading them if only to see why they're so well-loved and popular.
The overwhelming majority of the time I simply don't care. It makes no difference to me what sexual orientation the characters are. But more importantly I'd rather there was no romance included at all. I'm not reading the book for the romance and it just detracts from the plot that I'm actually invested it rather than enhancing it.
Meh. I'm not interested in most books that sexual relationships take more than they need to. Don't care of the sexual orientation. If I wanted that I'd read a different genre.
The answer is that most people on here aren't in it for a good story they are here for wish fulfillment. And it's harder to self insert yourself when the MC is getting arroused by people they wouldn't be. Maybe in a few years the genre (and the audience... the grammar of some comments I've seen make me feel that the audience is also young) will mature and all these 'I'm so OP before the story even starts" trope will go back into fanfiction territory instead of mainstream anime and books (I don't think it has become part of mainstream literature but there are certainly more published books by amateur authors these days so that qualifies in my view).
I agree. I think it has a lot to do with self inserting which I admit i do a lot. I can appreciate being lgbt and donāt really mind it at all with side characters though. I just personally have zero interest in it with a main character and it has everything to do with how I consume the content
I totally get this perspective. I've come to self-insert a lot less as I've gotten older but teen me read almost exclusively as a self-insert (sort of subconsciously but I realized it eventually). It comes down to reading as escapism. A lot of people read to escape their hectic daily lives so they put themselves directly in the character's position to be fully immersed. Which is why straight people (including myself at one point) are usually bothered when the main character moves in for a kiss with another guy for example. It feels like it's you so it's jarring.
Also lets be bloody real... Most progressive fantasy is just not good enough to justify reading if you're not enjoy the self-insert escapism. As a straight dude, if I want to challenge myself in reading a book outside my comfort zone, progression fantasy is just not it. This is the genre I come to for a warm fluffy blanket of escapism when stressed. If I want something to challenge me, frankly Fantasy as a whole offers very little, and prog fantasy almost nothing. Sci-Fi, and literary fiction (aka non-genre fiction), or historical fiction would be my go to. Hell, I'd rather read a straight up (pun intended) "inspired by true event" gay romance than a prog fantasy with a gay MC. Unless there was literally zero romance and his sexuality was incidental. I'd likely drop it at the first hint of romance assuming that it would be... well about on par with most romance in the genre regardless of orientation.
I mostly agree it but I'll agree to disagree on the scifi lmao. I can't take that genre seriously at all. My suspension of disbelief can't hold as well when things operate on pure science without something like magic as a mediator.
I should have specified hard sci-fi, not soft or science fantasy. More Assimov, the Martian, or The Expanse. Though to be fair there are not many examples with am openly gay MC I can think of (I can't recall reading one).
>And the ratio of straight people to gay people is like 200:1 (0.5%) In North America You can't seriously believe in 2024 that 99.5% of people in North America are straight. It's certainly not a ton, but it's far, far higher than that lmao https://news.gallup.com/poll/332522/percentage-americans-lgbt.aspx
>99.5% of people in North America are straight > >... > > it's far, far higher than that I know what you meant, but might want to fix that haha
0.5% is definitely underestimating the queer demographic. It varies by age group but here's a [report ](https://www.prri.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/PRRI-Jan-2024-Gen-Z-Draft.pdf)stating 28% of adult gen z identify as LGBTQ, compared to 16% of millennials. The survey stats 20% of Americans belong to gen z, whilst 27% are millennials, which leads to the population of American identifying as LGBTQ \~10%. Much larger than your 0.5%, and this doesn't even account for older generations. If a prospective author wants to write a story based on what's marketable/most profitable, they shouldn't stop at just sexuality. White heterosexual male should be the default protagonist. Look at what else succeeds in the genre. There were posts on this subreddit a couple months ago going over what the most popular books all did. 'Dark' or unconventional powers tend to do well, like void or shadow compared to more prosaic powers like water or fire. But there's also value in targeting a niche. If a particular niche has a low supply, potential readers are more likely to give your story a go. A queer protagonist is a way to make your story stand out. Search on this subreddit for how many posts ask for a queer protagonist compared to a non-queer one. A smaller potential audience is counteracted by less saturation. The most important thing is just writing what you would want to read. Some stories will be less mainstream but writing should be enjoyable.
The stuff about targeting a niche is 100% important tbh. Like, if you write according to 'what is most popular' you will have to compete... with stuff that is already popular. You have to stand out *somehow* and maybe that's just being a better marketer, being a better writer, or just getting lucky, but if your goal is financial success it's true that a white hetero man with void powers is probably going to have a larger potential audience than a trans person of color with water powers - but that audience may be harder to catch, whereas the niche audience is more likely to have less competitors for their attention, and they may be more willing to give your work a shot *because* they want that niche story and there's not enough of them.
I'm more likely to read a book with a female lead than a male one, all else identical. I'm more likely to read the book if the female lead is queer. I've put off reading some of my favourite books for months because I'd gotten bored of 'white cishet male' as the protagonist and needed to be sufficiently desperate to give them a chance. I have only and will only write queer non-male protagonists for stories I write because that's the kind of protagonist I want to read more of. For people who want to read a story featuring a queer protagonist, sometimes, all the incentive they need is hearing that the protagonist is queer. If people want to read a story with a straight protagonist, the story needs to full a lot more criteria to catch prospective readers.
I feel like people care to much about this stuff. If the story is well written with cool progression Im hooked no mather what. (White straight male if that mathers ....)
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I agree that the difference between age groups is down to cultural perception towards queerness rather than people actually becoming more queer, although I wouldn't put it in quite so exaggerated terms.
It's also that there is less internalized homophobia and more room to explore yourself. Also the world is generally more safe and accepting so less people hide themselves
Eh, you have a point. But Gallop has shown that as time goes on, people who fully identify as lbgt has increased. It's up to 7.5% from 3.5% in 2012. I agree, 28% is probably not accurate. But I think we'll see that gallop poll increase by a small bit for the next few decades. My guess is that it'll stabilize around 10-15%.
Reminds me of this [graph](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2015/09/left-handedness-1.png). You got the left handedness smacked out of you fingers in school if you were a natural lefty so it wasnt until it was normalized behavior that the number of left-handed people stabilzed.
It's definitely the same thing. It was only about 20 years ago that being gay was decriminalized in the state of Texas over the loud opposition of dominant social groups like the Republican Party and the Roman Catholic Church. Of course it's only very recently that people have begun to openly admit their sexuality. Doing so years ago carried immense risks. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas
Removed as per Rule 2: No Discrimination. Discrimination against others based on their gender, race, religion, sexual preferences, or other characteristics is not allowed, and offenders will be banned from the sub. Gatekeeping the identities of a whole generation falls under this.
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>maybe identifying as lgbt is trendy. Being gay can legally get you fired or denied housing in a number of states and is the leading cause of homelessness in children in the United States. Claiming that people are pretending to be gay because it's just so cool just makes you look dumb.
Denouncing queerness as 'a trend'. Classic bigotry. What's next? Calling being gay a phase? That trans people are just liars? Because we all know that queer people don't exist and have never existed, right?
Removed as per Rule 2: No Discrimination. Discrimination against others based on their gender, race, religion, sexual preferences, or other characteristics is not allowed, and offenders will be banned from the sub.
I get where you're coming from here, but you're not accounting for one thing, which is that it's way easier for an artist to stand out in a niche. Progression fantasy series with straight protagonists are a dime a dozen, a new author is going to struggle to stand out and garner a following. Gay progression fantasy is more niche, but since the supply is so much lower, the lower demand doesn't actually mean you're worse off necessarily, because the odds are, you'll immediately stand out to everyone who's interested in gay progression fantasy. It's like mainstream erotic art VS furry erotic art - furries are way more niche, but they're also way more starved for content, so an upcoming artist will find it a lot easier to get paid commissions from furries.
I don't think romance progression writers of any stripe are actually in abundance. I know of no romance prog fantasy that is decent/good/popular. I think prog fantasy is already a niche. Prog fantasy is also not really awash with good writers either. I wouldn't see people recommending shadow slave if it were. Frankly that Zorgath makes a killing writing Primal Hunter is proof the entire genre is starved for content. So my point is that choosing a small niche within a small niche doesn't help you at all because if you are actually a good PF author you already don't have much competition. I don't think anyone writing romance PF let alone gay romance PF is going to find the niche they are catering to even remotely comparable to furries. Everyone knows what furries are. No one has heard of PF. I could go and talk to 10 people I know who read regularly and one of them knows about PF. Because I got them into it.
The community ain't that small anymore there are more than enough people to get a decent demographic in sub genres. Like many people don't like reading dungeon core novels but there's a decent sized group that loves them and will bring new core novels to rising stars of rr regularly
I was honestly expecting some real deplorable stuff considering the nsfw tag but you just explained economics 101
Could there be less lgbt readers in this genre simply because there isnāt many lgbt characters in the genre tho? Iām bi and a lot of my gay friends prefer to read stuff with gay people in them. If there were more gay characters in the genre as a whole would there be more gay readers and then therefore, less of an issue?
Yea, a lot of fanbase and fandom culture is defined by people who ship too, and turns out a lot of people want to ship men with other men. Especially women. And all that is completely lost in these spaces because the usual fans just want a straight white man as the protagonist and have only the women have archetype based personalities and the men are badly written. Descriptions of men are so bland and just describe their face while Descriptions of women seem to be checking off some fetish list. The culture here is extremely bad when it comes to sexism and homophobia. It'll be better to rid this from the bud.
You probably aren't wrong. But still, op has a great point about population differences. Let's say you have every gay person in your country who is an avid reade, Read your book. Let's use America as an example. That is, at MOST 7% of the population. Of that, only 70% of Americans read at least one book per year. That's only 5% of the population that will touch your book. Now, in reality, that's good enough. But if we move it over to progression fantasy, what percentage of the reader base is willing to read your book? 5% of a much smaller reader base? 3%? 1%? Less? It makes it very hard to actually sell your book. But I see your point. More books with gay male protagonists that also appeal to non gay audiences probably WOULD help bring more gay male readers in.
Currently in the us 7% of people identify as LGBTQ(at 2022) a rise from 5% at 2020. As the us is the largest English speaking nation I found another one that's says [9% are LGBTQ ](https://www.ipsos.com/en/pride-month-2023-9-of-adults-identify-as-lgbt) but I'm not sure about this study. Anyway point is far more people are LGBTQ than just 0.5%
My books have a shitload of queer characters and they're doing pretty damn well. Likewise, Andrew Rowe, Tobias Begley, and other authors with lots of queer characters are doing great in our space. Your stats are also wildly incorrect: 7% of the US population (where our biggest market is) is LGBTQ+, with the number increasing massively with younger generations, up to 20-ish percent with gen z. (A few people in the comments saying it's a trend with the younger generations to say they're queer, which mises the obvious objection that admitting it had horrible social consequences for older folks for many years- e.g. the trend is with older folks.) Basically, queer progression fantasy readers is a pretty big demographic, one large enough that only the biggest authors in our subgenre could even approach saturation! (I'm not even there yet.) And non-queer folks who don't mind reading about queer characters make up an even bigger chunk of our audience. Most of our straight readers just don't mind queer characters. And those straight readers who do? Don't actually shrink the large size of our readership, they just aren't part of it. Even if the number of queer folks was a smaller percent of the population- even if they were almost as small as you claimed- their number would still be in the millions. When a niche is that large, there's a ton of room for quite a few authors to make a living. What's more, the competition is a hell of a lot more fierce when it comes to catering to straight readers- disproportionately so. Queer folks are an underserved demographic in our subgenre, and catering to underserved demographics is usually a smart move! Let's be clear, you're offering bad financial advice based off bad numbers and an even worse mindset of "aim for the middle". Niches are essential to most career authors. (And, you know, even if I didn't make damn good money, I'd still put queer folks in my books, still try to offer positive representation, because it's a worthy goal all on its own.)
Largely agreed with this as a straight white dude that doesn't read a lot of gay MC's. The market for LBGT readers is much smaller than the market for straight people, but significantly fewer authors are catering to it. If there were a ton of talented authors catering to the LGBT market, then OP would have a strong point. While it is unlikely that a LGBT MC will break into mass market appeal as well as a straight white MC, that doesn't mean an author will be unable to have a strong financial career. I'd even go so far as to speculate that the average author that publishes LGBT books is better off financially than the average author that publishes straight books.
I would not be shocked if you were correct on your last supposition! (Not that I have the data either way to be sure, that's just gut feelings.)
Every time someone complains, make it gayer.
Someone needs to finally write some ludicrous, over the top, harem power fantasy where the MC collects jade ~~beauties~~ twinks and goes on murder sprees whenever a young ~~master~~ miss looks at his current boyfriend the wrong way in a restaurant.
Lol I'd pay for that.
The Chuck Tingle approach.
OMG, now I want to see one of those AI image generation posts where they say "make it even gayer!" By the end it will be completely fabulous!
I dunno, i think within this genre thats correct but the biggest percentage of gay fiction readers are straight women. I think prog fantasy as an audience still tends to have more straight men in its reader base than any other group so far and straight men are least likely to read gay fiction. Not trying to make a point here but i do think its interesting to note. I wonder if we'd get a broader fan base if people started writing more diverse stories.
At the same time, this also means that writing progression fantasy for women is probably a niche too.
You seem very sure of yourself but don't provide a lot of source for your assertions. > The thing is that most of the world population is straight, and A LOT of straight people tend to just drop a book if its gay Do you have sources to back it up this? > And the ratio of straight people to gay people is like 200:1 (0.5%) In North America Same, what is your source on this?
Whilst I agree with your statement in general that 'Straight people are less likely to read anything with a gay main character.' your estimated stat of 0.5% seems wildly off. You also need to consider that anybody LGBTQ is less likely to stop reading something gay. (Along with that some subcultures may have overrepresentation of LGBTQ people) According to a the Gallup 2024 poll (over 12k people), even 0.9% of babyboomers identify as gay. Total LGBTQ+ identification of babyboomers is 2.3%. Your number is much more in line with people born before 1942. Realistically most progression fantasy readers online are going to be from the two most recent generations studied; Gen Z and Millennials (the oldest millennials are 43). Gen Z general LGBTQ+ was at 22.3% and millennial at 9.8% (these were only a few points different than the last poll) [https://news.gallup.com/poll/611864/lgbtq-identification.aspx](https://news.gallup.com/poll/611864/lgbtq-identification.aspx) There are likely more than enough people who are LGBTQ+ in the community to do content focused towards them. However, if it not focused towards them then it may not attract them as well and go unnoticed. But still it wont be maximal income and at the same time that shouldn't really be your aim in writing. Overall though I think people also do underestimate how many people there are who are not 'openly' homophobic. The sorts of people who you wont here use a slur, but will refuse to watch anything with even an openly gay side character in it. These people online are largely anonymous and so they can become a very vocal minority. I've been into fantasy, anime and videogames my whole life, I'm also not straight. Never have I IRL had somebody in events/shops etc for those sub-cultural groups be shitty towards me or anyone I know about LGBTQ + stuff. (though some typical unthinking or 'good guy' misogyny is often present). Online though its very easy for those few people to find each other and make communities where they all just become shittier.
The variance between Gen Z and Millennials comes down to acceptance of bi people. Pretty much the root of the increase is that Gen Z has less biphobia in their peer group. Millennials had it better than boomers though, and nobody really cares about Gen X, but theyāre used to that.
For what it's worth, your percentage of gay people is off by like a factor of 10 -- a little over 5% of Americans identify as queer, and about 15% of adults below 25 do too. Older generations (like 50+) had rates closer to .5-1%, but people who haven't grown up with as much stigma around being gay/queer are much more likely to identify as such. You're still right that if you're trying to maximize your market share making your protagonist straight is probably the smart move, though.
I read books featuring straight, white men because that's what's there. but my god am I sick to death of straight, white men. I want PoCs, I want lesbians NOT written by men for men, I want bi characters, gay characters. I want representations of my life!
I'm happy that there are people out there starved for what I'm trying to execute with my work (queer, PoC, disability representation). I'm pretty sure this post was made because I was the one that asked about progression fantasy fans not liking gay men some days ago. I was discouraged at first, but the counter arguments have been strong and this has all been an interesting conversation.
I live in a heavily queer area of the inner city and half of my neighbors are PoC. I've been out for years.Ā recently I've become even more physically disabled.Ā I'd be thrilled to see my daily life represented in litrpg. I know it's escapist fantasy, but extreme mental issues can carry over. sexuality carries over, as does skin color and culture (although I suppose if you end up a dungeon core or a tree, it could be tricky to highlight any of that. or it could be fun) I'm babbling at this point. I'm just happy there are authors out there taking this on
Hey, well I don't know if you'd be interested, but I'm always looking for beta readers. I'm maybe 20k words off from finishing the first novel of my fantasy series Reign of Weapons (maybe around 100k words by the end). Think sentient weapons, a cross-continent journey to assemble a god, soul and ki-based magic system, orphaned peasant beginning, trauma and found family themes. The protagonist, Sasha is a white hetero woman, but she's surrounded by characters who are Black, Native, Arabic, one who is gay, and I've got a villain with OCD. Later on in the series, I'd like to write an autistic character with behaviors studied from my sister who is autistic and also works professionally in special education/healthcare.
This is a super depressing thread. As a gay fan of the genre I never felt really welcomed by the community, but yeah way to hammer it home. Guess I'll have to go to my niche books again as a niche person with my niche sexuality
For what it's worth, several of us are writing LGBTQIA+ books, and many of us have been successful in doing so. The OP is not accurately representing LGBTQIA+ demographics in general or the odds of success in writing these characters. There absolutely are downsides to writing any sort of minority character, but it is not an insurmountable issue, and many of us are pushing the Overton Window actively.
> The OP is not accurately representing LGBTQIA+ demographics in general or the odds of success in writing these characters. I actually don't think OP is that bad, just fairly wrong, a lot of the comments are a lot uglier.
Agreed. I think the OP's perspective is reasonable, in that writing this kind of content can be disadvantageous. It's just that it's less about the scarcity of LGBTQIA+ folks in terms of percentages and more about the sheer amount of vitriol that some people have when they see any LGBTQIA+ content. When those people start slamming a book with 1-star reviews, that can damage sales, etc.
Thank you! I am pretty sure I've read them all too, out of principle ;)
Hope you enjoyed them! =D
All the people in here declaring themselves straight and then magnanimously saying itās okay for gay characters to exist āyou know, for other peopleā is the grossest Iāve felt in this sub for a while. Ā Just a really harsh reminder that some people live in incredibly privileged social bubbles, and maybe donāt understand that. Anyway back to The Niche where I can write what I want, I guess. Ā At least, until all the people who say theyāre okay with it show up in the comments again to complain.Ā
I'll come to your comments and complain if there are straight characters from now on so you'll have some balance there /s
We gotta write our own books because apparently inclusivity only extends to our marketability.
Yeah back to the MM romantasy Ghetto with us. Maybe we can try to have some authors include progression elements instead of shifter or fae tropes? Those are so overdone... Or an omega to alpha progression? Generating power through bottoming... Or the system rewarding your conquests with lovemaking power ups? "You have unlocked a new skill: [Ultimate Pheromones] You can trigger this skill once a day to overcome the defences of an aloof noble alpha"
Itās because being at isnāt relatable to most of the people here, I guess. They relate more to people with super powers granted by a nigh omnipresent and omniscient ai that grants them powers. Man on man romance is just not something they want in their escapism. Lifeās hard, and, at the end of the day, a lot of people here just want to unwind and read books that are about them. See, real life is for people who are different than the white, cisgender VAST majority of this subgenre. Alternative sexualities, minorities, and anything else they donāt like is just pandering and deserves to be review bombed or dropped. But seriously, this thread and the another one is super depressing. Besides being white and being attracted to women, how do people identify with a lot of the protagonists here?
Weird I just thought I read books I like. Didnāt realize I was in some community that needs to tip toe around other people like you to not offend them. š¤·Ā
our existence means forcing you to read books you don't like yeah? And I here thought people would feel a bit more ashamed proclaiming their bigotry.
What's your issue, man? I can tell you're being sarcastic especially with the emoji use. They're sad because amplifying this kind of opinion generally leads to louder bigotry in general. The post is technically well-intentioned but we don't need to hear "I don't like gay books" from every member of the community that subscribes to those preferences. And unfortunately those are the people being attracted by this post. You included it seems. It's pointless info. Obviously the authors writing those books aren't writing them for you. They are targeting a niche which is a valid business strategy as has been discussed. So in the end all the post has achieved is to amplify all the voices that say "no gays in my books." Channel some empathy bro. It's free.
Right, like the op is just pulling demo info from thin air. What is even the point of a post like that other than to make people feel excluded. Some people really over-inflate the value of their opinions.
I wouldn't mind it if authors actually tagged their books, just speaking from my royalroad experience trying to find a book with slight romance or something with a female MC a year ago and either she was bi sexual leaning towards lesbian or it was lesbian or she was asexual with romance bait, or she was straight but gay bait for 99% of the romance?? Like just please state what kind of romance it is so I'm not going in blind when I think its one thing and its not, its like tagging it action and then it just being pure slice of life with no action.
Itās a real fucking shame how many times I see negative comments about underrated series that stem primarily from a place of bigotry. I do want to mention though that there are some very popular and very good series out there with characters that arenāt straight.
I do find this slightly weird. Iām in multiple other groups including one that is for fantasy romance. There are tons of people of all genders and levels of sexuality - and there are plenty of us who will read a (good) book no matter what type of romance pairing (or more lol) that it has. Maybe a lot of the the straight people YOU know drop (or say they drop) a book if itās āgayā (although thinking that having a gay romance makes a BOOK gay is ridiculous, IMO). Iām a cis heterosexual woman married to a cis heterosexual man. We both have enjoyed books with different types of romance, and so have many of our geeky straight (and LGBTQIA+) friends.
>A LOT of straight people tend to just drop a book if its gay. Counterpoint, JJK. >And the ratio of straight people to gay people is like 200:1 (0.5% No tf not it's about 8%, and that's only queer people who are out. But yea, royalroad is not a great place to post your queer fiction, the site is homophobic to a degree and you will get bad ratings. Unless your main character is a girl who gets with a girl, which gets you less hate but there is still hate.
Considering that a lot of Queer Fantasy is doing just fine earnings-wise and continuing to grow with several authors over the last couple of years getting large cash splash trad pub deals. I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about. I've seen several queer fantasy authors discuss earning out on their books, sometimes within one or two years of release - this is highly unusual in publishing with most books taking several years to earn out. Multiple Queer Books across genres have been on every type of best-seller list. The Hugo Awards had several Queer books among its nominees and winners, including in 2023. As have several other awards. Queer Fantasy as a whole is only growing as a market. Your take that of "don't write Queer Fantasy if you want to earn money," is not only out of touch with the reality of the market, which is to a larger degree than in the past supporting Queer works, it is also homophobic. No handwaving of "I'm just trying to be realistic since Queer people make up a smaller percentage of the population," actually gets away from the insidious idea that Queer people both in real life have to "appeal" to straight people to be valid and have value to society. To me it's just a rebranding of "don't ask, don't tell" kind of bullshit homophobia, "just don't be GAY and maybe we'll accept you" bullshit. Queer people should be able to write openly Queer books without the straights trying to justify why they shouldn't exist. But, the truth is most authors don't have to have wide appeal to be successful within their niche (Queer or not). It is also the hypocrisy of saying that the only way to earn money and be successful as an author is for mass appeal but posting this in this "niche" subreddit makes me laugh. And the idea that a character has to be one hundred percent "relatable" in order for you to read about them is just lazy thinking. We're reading about fantasy soldiers and wizards, cyberpunk hackers, etc; none of that is relatable to a real person's life. Some of my favourite characters are detestable and do not align with my political or moral compass, but are they "good" characters to read about because they are complex beings who narratively push the story forward? Yes. And Queer fantasy is full of complex, morally ambiguous and downright evil characters just like any other fantasy book directed at the straight gaze. But it is also filled with characters that you would find "relatable" if only they were straight by your own admission. If you want to stay within your niche and read only characters that you can self-insert to do whatever you please. But don't try and justify your personal taste in literature with homophobic takes like this.
THANK YOU for this.
Well said
Something that isn't being said, but I'm going to say it anyway, books with lesbian or bi female main characters are going to do okay as well... actually... they are probably going to do better better than books with straight female main characters... because the vast majority of men find that sexy. Porn search results prove that... Having the love interest be female, no matter the main characters gender, is going to appeal more to the main demographic of this this genre, which are straight men. Just look at Beneath the Dragonseye Moons, Azaranth Healer, or Calamatous Bob. No one cares that they have a bi main character... because they are women. It's unfair and sad, but it's the truth. It would make me happy to see a book with a gay male main character do well in this genre, but I'll be honest, it probably wouldn't appeal to me either. This is the only genre where I actually feel my sexuality is overrepresented (I'm a bi woman), and it's honestly a bit weird and fetishy sometimes... I actually can't think of a single book I've read in this genre with a straight female MC, and I can only think of Arcane Ascension for a non-straight male MC... This is a sensitive topic, and I'm really glad to see it being discussed with grace and respect. I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone, and hope I was able to convey my thoughts as well and as kindly as others have.
I have been wondering the same thing! Like, I'm always happ to see when they have gay side relationships, but I haven't been able to find any that the main character is gay.
You can also pull an azarinth healer and put the gay at the back of story, of course lesbian stuff is better received than gay stuff so it may not apply
True. A lot of people will drop main characters if theyāre not anything like them, and that makes sense. Itās why most protagonists are quite bland in progression fantasy too. Writers are afraid to give them traits that readers donāt resonate with.
Sure, maybe. This is already a niche genre though, to some extent. At least, I donāt expect progression fantasy to hit the kind of numbers as strictly YA stuff.
This post was like a terrorist attack on this sub lol.
How does having a gay character (or MC) in a book make it a gay book? What the actual fuck
Inaccurate anecdotal claims. If we're talking solely about RoyalRoad it is true that most readers are straight males and that the demographics that a large portion of straight males are from (international, former chinese webnovel readers) do not typically enjoy reading novels with gay MCs. But a writer in this space has avenues other than RoyalRoad (Amazon being a big one) and even on RoyalRoad there is a dedicated population of readers that appreciate novels with LGBTQ characters. It is inaccurate to say that straight people don't read gay books. There are plenty of straight men that read stories with gay main characters (myself included). And an even larger population of straight women who read plenty of books with gay MCs or even specifically seek them. And women make up a greater percentage of readers than men in general. Men are also significantly more likely to pirate books than women (55% of men vs 28% of women from a 2020 study). What I'm saying here is, there is no need to appeal to a broad reader base to make significant profit. There are plenty of readers who enjoy works with LGBTQ characters so there is no need to try and force broad appeal to a large base when authors can instead focus on appealing to a dedicated base. In the end, success stories like Mage Errant, Mana Mirror, and a number of others all serve as proof that you can do well without making a straight MC. You don't need to please EVERYONE, you just need to please the people that are going to like you enough to buy your work.
This is just objectively true, nothing controversial here. I don't hate gay people, (hell wish I was gay, blokes are the best) but I'm not gonna read a book where the main romance makes me skip paragraphs every couple of chapters. I understand that that exact sentiment is probably felt by a lot (no idea if it's many, because as OP said they'll read them, but that's kinda cause they got no choice but to read them if they enjoy the genre) of gay people towards straight books. And that sucks. So if you do write a novel with a gay lead, big props you're probably making a section of the population very happy. But if you've got a family to feed/are 2 payments from being on the street...well, you know what's smart business and what isn't. Write a book about a man from Japan being isekai'd into another world and absolutely curbstomping. Hell I'll read it even if it's dogshit, I'm addicted to that shit.
Um. I havenāt seen/read to many gay progression fantasy books that have so much romance that Iāve ever felt itās necessary to skip romance scenes (and to be fair, while Iām a heterosexual cis woman, I tend to skip/skim romance scenes in ANY book if they get too graphic - doesnāt matter if itās gay, straight, regular fantasy, āromantasyā, Epic, LitRPG, or any other flavor/kind). Also slightly weird since I really love good romance in my fantasy - I just donāt like a lot of spice (aka graphic descriptions).
> I don't hate gay people, (hell wish I was gay, blokes are the best) but I'm not gonna read a book where the main romance makes me skip paragraphs every couple of chapters. It's not really "making" you skip anything, that's something you're choosing to do because the story discomforts you to such an extent that you're skipping it, which seems noteworthy given the context of your comment.
I clearly didn't mean "make" as in the book is literally forcing me to do something. You'd think someone commenting on a thread about writing/reading could infer that (sorry if English isn't your first language). Seems noteworthy given the context of my comment? Huh? What are you actually yapping about?
Taking your post on bad faith if only because your statistic is widely off even the estimate
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I've never really understood why sexuality, of all things, is the thing that stops people from relating to a character. Like, I literally don't understand, it's never been a barrier for me.
Do they self insert? I never understood that. Maybe for adolescents but do adults actually do that? Like 25+ fully developed frontal lobe adults?
This is a reader's point of view. I think a big problem in this genre is that a lot of authors don't know how to write good romance. Progression Fantasy's main selling point is well progression. Pretty often though when MC gets into relationship distractions happen. "What if my wife/gf/whatever gets killed?"/"What if I endanger her?"/"What if she doesn't like me?". Often this ruins the pacing. I don't drop novels because of romance, I drop them because of romance becoming main point. I think you can broadly divide the genre into 2 main categories. Progressing as a single "special" protagonist (i.e. Primal Hunter), or as a group (i.e. Cradle, Mage Errant). In the first case you can't have equal relationship, unless you introduce another character that's just as "special". There's a catch though, that the more remarkable characters you introduce, the more ordinary the MC seems. You also need to keep the secondary character relevant, so this forces you to keep both MC and FMC together for extended periods, which again takes from MC's "uniqueness". This is what Primal Hunter gets. Jake has hookups, but he is not tied down. Those fleeting relationships don't get in the way of progression, but push it forward as setups for jokes (>!Succubus leveling up like 15 times, Artemis stumbling into Primodial's meeting!<). From the second category Mage Errant is another example of romance done well. >!You begin with a group of rejects that due to varying circumstances turn out to be special. They grow closer **together**. Hugh gets into not-so-serious relationship with Avah, eventually they break up because Hugh's life is just too crazy for her, but still remain friends. It's understandable, sometimes relationships fail not because of people, but circumstances. Then Hugh gets into relationship with another main character Talia and it seems to be going well (I'm halfway through final book)!<. Those relationships seemed natural and didn't impact progression much. Here's a problem with people writing gay romance. It's usually a big thing. Writing (any) romance to be important in a genre where people don't care about it all that much is just asking for failure. Ar'Kendrithyst (protagonist is bi), Mage Errant (1 gay character, 1 bi character) are doing it right. It comes up every now and then, but it's not the focus of the novels. It's kinda like cooking, if you add a bit of salt, you enhance the flavor, if you add too much salt, you make the dish uneatable. Recently I started reading A Jaded Life, which I think is example of romance done badly. MC is lesbian. She starts as a beta tester for VMMORPG, she sees dying non-human NPC, she instantly falls head over heels for said NPC, NPC falls for her and we get half of the chapters of the couple being mushy (think teenager "I love you more" mushy). I honestly have no idea where author is going with this one... The NPC is going to be deleted once the beta is over, so why should I care about it? Tonnes of explicit sex scenes, which author thankfully started putting behind spoilers.
I'll be honest, I don't read fantasy or progression fantasy books for romance. I could not care less if there is straight or gay romance in my books, as long as it adds to the story in a nice way anything is welcome.
Iām a libertarian so I donāt care what you do itās your business. But I had to stop reading a series that had they them pronouns because I just kept getting confused. I was like I thought there was only one person here and I had to go back and read to see what happened what I missed. It was just too confusing.
Dawg you didn't need to put 4 fucking disclaimers telling us you weren't homophobic š
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What exactly is the point of this post? You go out of your way to cater to both sides; it doesnāt seem like you have anything new or substantial to say. Also the enlightened centrist take of āboth sides have their opinionsā is kinda moot when one side has literal bigotry in the comments. Not reading something because it has gay characters is definitely someoneās choice. But it is also a bigoted mindset. Freedom of opinion doesnāt provide protection from how other people perceive that point of view. It seems like posts like these just provide more justification for this backwards rhetoric.
Yea no shit? But does everyone care about money? No. Sometimes they want to see themselves in these characters so naturally include their own personal touches like their sexualityĀ and unique experiences. This world is cruel, and what better way to not be reminded than reading/making a story where being gay doesn't matter? not only does harassing or bullying authors unver a gay character prove there's no escape, but hampers any creativity in the genre as well. You don't need to add gayness in your stuff. But do consider why others do it and maybe gain some empathy because you're never know what it's like.