#the Malazan comments kill me the most

[bxriles]

I’m taking a second to rant because fantasy bros are so fucking annoying holy shit.

The amount of dudes I see on TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter being so condescending to women reading Stormlight/Sanderson, Red Rising, or (GOD FORBID) something like Malazan BOTF is downright insane. These mother fuckers really think women can’t read heavy fantasy texts.

Like bro, Sanderson’s writing style is not that fucking complicated and I would argue that most people with a 10th grade education could get through Stormlight without issue. The thing that makes Stormlight daunting is the length, not the writing. Be for real. And no, it doesn’t make you a “wEak MiNdEd ReAdEr” if you’re slightly put off by a book over 1000 pages long.

Red Rising ain’t all that lmao. And no, I don’t think that because I “didn’t understand” it. The writing is repetitive, the world building relies on telling instead of showing, and the characters are flat. There’s also a horrible misogynistic undertone in the entire book and too much violence against women. It’s low key like, “Here’s a whole new world to explore! A whole new society to learn about! Enjoy the creativity at work here! But also, I’m not creative enough to come up with a society that isn’t horrible to women. So don’t you ever forget that women fucking suck, they aren’t as SICK AND AWESOME as men are, and they deserve to be raped!” I said what I said. Argue with the wall if you’re mad about it.

And Malazan, while complex, is not a series of indecipherable tomes that only the “smartest, most driven men” can get through. Anyone who can read deliberately, carefully, and intentionally can read a fucking Malazan book and generally grasp what’s happening. And as a reminder, literally every single person reading Malazan BOTF for the first time struggles through it. If you claim you understood 90-100% of GotM on the first read, you’re actually lying LMAOOO.

And for the love of all things unholy, if I get a single response to this that says “NOT ALL MEN!! *I’M* NOT LIKE THAT” I will burn your house to the fucking ground. This clearly wasn’t about you then. (But if you feel the need to comment that, then yes. It is about you.)