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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9613634" data-attributes="member: 7035894">This is basically flirting with becoming a nature/nurture debate, which is probably not going to prove super fruitful.As previously I mentioned, citing the example of assumptions that TSR made about D&D's gender appeal, relying on assumptions about who should enjoy what can be a failing strategy. Texts that stand the test of time do so because they are well written and broadly engaged with themes that are of interest to most human beings.Jane Austen has been mentioned in a lot of recent posts in this thread. I love and have read all of her published work, and I'm a cisgender dude. Why? Well, she's one of the most skilled, subtle satirists to have written in English. Her subtle skewering of social mannerisms, gendered relationships, and class assumptions remains relevant today; c.f. Bridgerton (e.g. Austen with less subtlety and more sex), or just about any good teen movie. Then, she somehow manages to pair satire with swoony romance, no easy feat - these are generally antithetical genre! And she's a helluva wordsmith; the opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice remains one of the great first lines in literature. Today, she is probably more popular with women readers than men, but has no shortage of fans among the latter, because quality wins out.Or consider Tolkien's LotR. This is a text which is almost entirely concerned with a bunch of dudes on a mission, but there are probably as many female and non-binary LotR fans as male. Everyone can relate to the plucky underdogs standing up for what's right against an omnipresent malevolence, everyone loves a story about true friendship being put to the test, and mythic journeys resonate with all human beings.You can write good books that are targeted at a particular definition of a particular audience. But I maintain that the best writers and best texts don't focus on such things. They just focus on telling good stories for all people.</blockquote>

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