Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9513186" data-attributes="member: 18">It's not "gatekeeping" to have an opinion on stuff, and your post here is a great example of how that word, along with "gaslighting" has been reduced to a meaningless buzzphrase that's just slathered on everyone you have the slightest disagreement with.Gatekeeping is when you are saying "X isn't really fantasy" or "If you like Y you're not a real fantasy fan" or the like. It's funny that you're getting so upset here, because Sanderson fans are some of the most aggressive gatekeepers out there, both towards other people reading Sanderson's books, where they can be quite aggressive and unpleasant towards anyone who isn't familiar with or very interested in the Cosmere stuff (I personally got called a "tourist" and sneered at a couple of years ago, because I'd "only" read like ten Sanderson books and apparently not the correct ones!), and towards anyone recommending other fantasy authors at all, particularly ones Sanderson himself hasn't recommended. This is often the way too - you have a subject that is gentle and kind (and Sanderson himself seems to be, and his books often focus on doing the right thing), and the fandom are pretty horrible and embody everything the works despise (c.f. Steven Universe's fandom - what did that poor nice show do to deserve them?).YA fantasy is an area basically patrolled by YA BookTok, and if a YA fantasy novel fails is perceived as failing to comply with their restrictions/objections, it again is very aggressively pushed against - people who like it are told they're bad people, TikTokers who recommend it get basically exiled/cancelled, and even publishers have been impacted by this at times.You're perfectly well aware I didn't suggest Sanderson or YA (both of which I read) "aren't fantasy" or "shouldn't be read" or the like, so claiming "gatekeeping" is absolutely silly. Particularly given how much of both I've read (I've given up on Stormlight, but if Sanderson started something new and cool I might be interested, despite his weak characterization - which has certainly improved a bit over the years, just really slowly!).My point is very simple, and ironically for your claim, is about real gatekeeping (yes I am gatekeeping gatekeeping!) - Sanderson Cosmere fandom and general YA fantasy fandom have become so dominant in fantasy book discussion spaces online that anything else is squeezed very hard (and as I noted, sometimes even aggressively and intentionally pushed out), and it's increasingly difficult for new authors to get any kind of traction with fantasy writing unless it's YA. The only other way that seems to be seeing much success in recent years is to emulate Sanderson and go incredibly hard on worldbuilding and lore, lore, lore, lore, even if it leads to entire books full of exposition and very little else.</blockquote>

Verification