Jesus Christ, lady, I hope your book has paragraphs!

Let's chop this up a bit.

...it's in a fantasy setting, it also has a coming of age aspect to it and takes place over about 6 years, and they age from 12-18. im thinking hard about how to write them right in their early ages, like 12-14, and i feel like i'm doing it wrong. i'm putting more focus on their character and specific personalities but i'm wondering if, as a girl, maybe i'm accidentally making them too “girly” and “soft.”

i like to make them enjoy the simple things in life, like exploring and enjoying nature, and they also like to talk about their feelings and their hurts. but is that a thing boys do? im trying to make them realistic but sometimes i forget that i was never a boy and i'll never know what it is like to be a boy. and to top it all off, it's a gay romance (it takes awhile though, so they're just friends in the beginning). it just happened to be that way, i wanted a romance that wasn't straight and i felt my story didn't fit two girls (again, there's a difference but idk what it is!)

... i just want these characters to feel real and not how i “think” they're supposed to be. i can't decide if gender is just a construct and it doesn't matter if they're a boy or a girl, or if their outlook on life IS different and they should be written differently. both? what mistakes should i avoid in writing male leads when i'm not a male?

"Have you tried adding reason and accountability?"

Nah, it's a good question. Writing any type of romance you haven't been in is obviously challenging. Writing the opposite s*x requires observation skills, reading and engaging with their work (a bitter pill for moids), and a healthy imagination. You also have to be able to set aside your preconceptions about how people should work, and your desire to fix them. For example, in this case it's not just that men usually don't talk about our feelings, or that we feel uncomfortable doing so. Often, we don't want to. How do these sorts of things affect a developing gay relationship?

But as usual, /r/writing offers reassurance instead of seriously engaging with an OP who wants real answers. Many also get bogged down making very important points about gender.

It being a fantasy setting changes the answer. Boys/girls/men/women tend to be different but a lot of that is a result of the cultural environment in which they were raised. The jury is still out in exactly what elements are genetic vs environmental. But that largely doesn't matter because environment shapes how behavioural genetics do or do not manifest anyway.

Since this is your setting, gender roles and attitudes can realistically be whatever you want. If you even wanted to aim for realism in the first place. If you want boys to be soft in your setting then they are.

It's MY SETTING, and I get to pick the gender roles!!

If you were writing about two average adolescent boys growing up in Anywhere, USA, I'd say it's pretty unlikely they'd talk deeply about their feelings. Many of us aren't even taught to be aware of our feelings. There are exceptions, of course. But typically, they'd probably mull things over in the privacy of their own heads while doing some other shared activity, like dropping bigger and bigger rocks into a lake, throwing dirt clods at a hornet's nest, or building the coolest tree fort ever.

But this is learned behavior, and gender totally is a social construct. You get to decide what being "male" means in your fantasy world, and whether or not you want to make it analogous to modern western, Judeo-Christian culture.

Actual good advice to tell a story about boys erased in real time by genderslop.

Depends on what your fictional society expects of them and if your fictional society has gender roles they are expected to conform to.

In my fictional society, sexy women with big tits are expected to throw themselves at members of !bookworms and !writecel

Of course you can write a world with different social "rules." But the farther it diverges, the less it has to say about real people in our own world, and the more it has to say about the author's own desires and hangups. Might as well say some coomer's monster girl erotica is commentary about female gender roles.

Given your inspiration, I recommend you research homosexuality and pedecrasty in Sparta and Thebes. I'd also suggest looking at Afghan's Bacha Posh to explore the notion of gender vs construct.

This isn't actually out of nowhere because the full OP mentioned "The Song of Achilles," but lmao

... When writing either gender, it's easy to make characters unbelievably confident or strong in their emotions, knowledge, or physical abilities. Making a teen male emotionally literate stops you having a weakness to their character that would otherwise ring true.

Differentiate your characters from each other. Give them flaws. Let their differences and flaws produce tension. Two guys who are just soft and sensitive and slowly start touching peepees isn't a story. Even a hack writer would make one of them the emotional one and the other the moody, silent one or whatever.

A couple more people actually gave decent advice, like here, but of course low effort "You're perfect just the way you are!" advice is upvoted while interesting stuff is near the bottom.

As a straight man, I'll never understand this trend. If the men in your gay romance act like women, why make them men at all? Reading gay erotica should be a form of escapism where you can imagine loving relationships without having to deal with women. At least, that's why I read it.

Activision DEI Leaked! Plus:

- Your bonus and review depend on how hard you DEI.

- DEI Officers are installed on every dev team to ensure THE MESSAGE.

Of all the AAA Studios out there, my dev friends and contacts who have come forth tell me that @Ubisoft and @Activision are… pic.twitter.com/TDZqRn6v0o

— Grummz (@Grummz) May 16, 2024

So many slides to say nothing lol. Except they measure every employees sense of belonging with an "inclusion score"? That's some meaningless foid shit.

Above was first thread about the drama

Below is the second, bigger and older.

I will add separate comments soon :)

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1cuedus/rasianamerican_is_outraged_at_yasuke_being_the/?sort=controversial

''all of these threads in asianamerican were astroturfed by white people...right?"

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1cuedus/rasianamerican_is_outraged_at_yasuke_being_the/l4i988s/?context=8&sort=controversial

'im afraid that our safe space ThR SRD will be taken over by chuds, this very thread seems astroturfed'

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1cuedus/rasianamerican_is_outraged_at_yasuke_being_the/l4iajm9/?context=8&sort=controversial

'But ghost of Tsushima exists'

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1cuedus/rasianamerican_is_outraged_at_yasuke_being_the/l4i522f/?context=8&sort=controversial

'Asian subreddits on reddit are so shit, I fear to acknowledge that I as asian have a reddit account'

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1cuedus/rasianamerican_is_outraged_at_yasuke_being_the/l4im1al/?context=8&sort=controversial

'Hollywood has an issue with portraying Asian male character, however this isn't a case of that..because Yasuke is very important folk hero'

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1cuedus/rasianamerican_is_outraged_at_yasuke_being_the/l4i7r8c/?context=8&sort=controversial

' why the frick did Ubisoft make an actual historical figure a main character'

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1cuedus/rasianamerican_is_outraged_at_yasuke_being_the/l4ia3ji/?context=8&sort=controversial

'I'm an Asian American I'm and I have an issue with this game'

'shut up, it's up to Asian males to speak up and out. To White Hollywood. Just like you guys are making a stink of this. Give the same energy to Hollywood. Let them know you need representation that's positive.

Just like Black Americans.'

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1cuedus/rasianamerican_is_outraged_at_yasuke_being_the/l4ignf0/?context=8&sort=controversial

'true japanese don't care'

'Oh so theyre japanese when they agree with you and secretly white when they dont

Funny how that works'

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1cuedus/rasianamerican_is_outraged_at_yasuke_being_the/l4ilqh4/?context=8&sort=controversial

Askhistorians link about Yasuke

Totally fine yet this was written after all the evidence given

'If you've read this and all my other posts and links on Yasuke and still don't believe Yasuke was a samurai, then you either a) prefer to believe your own bias over historical research or b) should post an academic level publication from a PhD level researcher arguing Yasuke wasn't a samurai so I could read it.'

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1cusf84/im_mad_at_what_we_lost_for_the_sake_of_diversity/l4l8xua/?context=8&sort=controversial

'My assumption is that people whose culture is being put on display want the avatar experiencing their culture to be a direct representation of the average member of that culture rather than a liminal figure.'

'your assumption is wrong because japanese people don't give a shit about AC'

https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/1cusf84/im_mad_at_what_we_lost_for_the_sake_of_diversity/l4la2qq/?context=8&sort=controversial

5300 comments of seethe over the fact that none of these r-slurs know what a bird hotdog is.

This post has it all.

Seething burgers:

seething aussies:

I'm proud of myself.

Top Drama

Relative Drama (takes into account the size of the subreddit)

autodrama: returning jobs to dramautists. Ping HeyMoon if there are any problems or you have a suggestion

Today, Parliament has the chance to ban ninja swords - lethal weapons which have been used to kill on Britain's streets.

Families & communities across country face devastating knife crime. Up 80% since 2015.

I’m urging Tory Ministers to vote for our plan. No excuse not to act. pic.twitter.com/I3uObmAEqk

— Yvette Cooper (@YvetteCooperMP) May 15, 2024

So we are going to drop “A Crockett Clapback Collection.” This collection will feature various swag that includes random things I’ve said. The money will go to ensuring that we have a Democratic House! Give me a little time to really get the swag online etc., but B6 will drop… pic.twitter.com/7RnPQ4jVHs

— Jasmine Crockett (@JasmineForUS) May 18, 2024

nothing more aggravating after being on hold for 10 minutes than hearing an Indian accent proof crapitalism has failed

More romance and adventure, and not too much in the way of smut, if possible please?

>not too much in the way of smut

Poor kid. This is how are made. Just like homosexuals are made in stonetoss.jpg way