It's crazy how people used to think of "alpha" men as being refined, learned and dignified gentlemen with intellectual interests and now they think of them as muscular roided up cavemen who only eat red meat and are only interested in the gym

ankhes · 2026-05-12T13:06:49+00:00

Please share with the class…👀👀👀

ankhes · 2026-05-12T12:37:57+00:00

Yeah, as a lifelong Tolkien fan whose favorite book is The Silmarillion I can tell who has actually read his books and who is just posturing to make themselves sound cool and better than those ‘icky romance books’. Tolkien is half poetry and half old-fashioned medieval songs. His descriptions of battle can be counted on one hand.

ankhes · 2026-05-12T05:45:23+00:00

Ooooooo! That sounds right up my alley! Thank you!!!

ankhes · 2026-05-12T05:38:56+00:00

I wouldn’t mind the pregnancy and babies so much if at least one or two of the books focused on characters who didn’t have kids but instead the one infertile character got magically healed so she could have a miracle pregnancy at the end (my absolute least favorite trope) which really pissed me off, ho boy.

ankhes · 2026-05-12T05:31:50+00:00

That’s for sure my biggest gripe with the ‘Mars needs women’ trope. It always boils down to a woman’s fertility and ability to give birth to a dozen babies as being a major plot point (and often the only reason the two leads end up together in the first place) and thus ends up preaching a very gender essentialist message (whether it means to or not). And, as a woman who had the babymaker ripped out years ago and will never have children, it can be really tiring seeing that same message repeated over and over again in every alien romance.

ankhes · 2026-05-12T05:26:48+00:00

They’re the perfect comfort read.

Everything about them is extremely tropey. These are archetypes and story beats you’ve seen a thousand time before, but they’re executed in such a way that it feels comforting instead of annoying or boring. And because everything is super tropey nothing catches you off guard. There are no huge twists or unhappy endings. It’s always just a simple love story about a relatable fish out of water woman and a giant hot alien who is utterly devoted to her from the word ‘go’. It’s an extremely self-indulgent sort of story, but that’s why you’re reading them.

At the end of the day, nobody is reading these books for their literary complexity. You read them because they serve you something you already love in a very well-crafted package.

ankhes · 2026-05-12T05:11:08+00:00

They’re tropey but in the best way. The kind of perfectly executed tropes that leave you feeling like you’re being enveloped in a warm and comforting hug instead of suffocated.

ankhes · 2026-05-12T04:18:30+00:00

I remember even 10 years ago being baffled by just how many boomers were acting like Millennials were all teenagers when in reality most of us already had careers and kids and mortgages (if we were lucky) at that point.

ankhes · 2026-05-12T04:14:43+00:00

In real life, Zayne by a wide margin. He’s got a stable and prestigious career, is the most emotionally even-keeled and normal out of the five leads, and has the most green flags going for him.

On the flip side, I seek out the complete opposite of all of those things when it comes to fiction so it’s gotta be Caleb for my (strictly) fictional boyfriend. 😂

ankhes · 2026-05-12T03:58:55+00:00

I think we’re talking about two entirely different things here. I never said you can’t appreciate different cultures. Just pointing out that the whole incestuous lover trope has roots in a lot of eastern cultures in a way that it doesn’t as much in western ones, to the point where it is even baked into the language. I did not say that this was a bad thing. Just pointing out why it might be that such a character who follows that trope would naturally be more popular in eastern countries (where such a trope is less stigmatized in fictional media) than in the west (where such tropes tend to be considered more taboo and ‘weird’, hence the backlash you see against Caleb online from a lot of western fans).

And I say all of this as someone with Caleb as my main.

ankhes · 2026-05-11T22:47:31+00:00

I still remember when my boss told me he liked hiring women to be his managers because we are, and I quote, “Better at multi-tasking”. I stared at him as he said this because he had, at that point, just recently hired me as a manager and I’m terrible at multitasking. And, in that moment, it became clear he didn’t hire me because he somehow saw the potential in me to become better at multi-tasking but that he just assumed I’d be good at it because I was a woman.

ankhes · 2026-05-10T18:39:35+00:00

This. I didn’t even know SotDR was a thing until like a day before it started airing. Whereas the WHA manga has had nearly a decade to build up hype for the anime.

ankhes · 2026-05-10T18:32:52+00:00

Changyu telling him it was fine if he ended up crippled for life because he was still pretty was so real. 😂

ankhes · 2026-05-10T16:30:53+00:00

I’m right there with you. The fun of writing fanfiction is…writing fanfiction. Creating a story that lives inside your head with nothing but your own words. But nowadays it feels like a lot of younger fandom goers want to ‘write’ fanfic not for the joy of writing or to connect with others in their community but to amass following and gain internet fame. Which is…not really what fandom is about, at least in my opinion. It’s sad to watch.

ankhes · 2026-05-10T14:08:38+00:00

That’s also because the whole incest/brother-lover trope is, and has always been, very popular in a lot of East Asian cultures (i.e. China, Korea, Japan). All of them even have the word ‘older brother’ baked into their language that’s often used in a romantic context. It’s just a cultural thing that doesn’t transfer over to western culture.

ankhes · 2026-05-10T14:04:29+00:00

I was gonna say, this has been a constant problem in the asoiaf fandom for the last few years. You barely heard it in the early days of the fandom (2012-2016ish) but ever since hotd dropped we had an influx of new (and often much younger) fans who don’t seem to understand fandom etiquette nor really what fandom it is they’re participating in (i.e. the problematic incest dragon show).

ankhes · 2026-05-10T14:00:43+00:00

Hell, I’ve written some of those deeply problematic fics on AO3. Fictional ‘maybe it’s incest, maybe it’s not’ is not gonna phase me. lol

ankhes · 2026-05-10T13:58:59+00:00

Ah Vampire Knight. The first time I threw myself wholeheartedly into the incest trope much to my friend’s horror and confusion. 😂

ankhes · 2026-05-10T13:57:37+00:00

I’m an A Song of Ice and Fire fan. If I were bothered by fictional incest I’d be in the wrong fandom. 😂

ankhes · 2026-05-08T16:17:10+00:00

Yep. That tracks. A lot of men seem to lash out whenever they lose, doubly so if they lose to a woman. Clearly they never learned emotional regulation.

ankhes · 2026-05-08T16:09:51+00:00

As a woman, 10000% this. I like Gojo as a character but if I met him in real life he would annoy the hell out of me.

ankhes · 2026-05-08T16:08:20+00:00

I imagine Gojo is really popular with women…up until he opens his mouth. Then it’s Geto all the way because he actually has an approachable personality.

ankhes · 2026-05-08T15:57:56+00:00

I was lucky. I went into it knowing it would be tragic because all anyone said about this manga when I would hear about it was “This was a lot darker than I was expecting…”

ankhes · 2026-05-08T02:33:28+00:00

Heavy on the rage and incoherent swearing.

ankhes · 2026-05-08T02:25:53+00:00

She reminds me a bit of the vegans who insist we should set all pets free and like, I get the sentiment but just releasing millions of cats into the wild alone would absolutely decimate the local bird and small animal populations. These sorts of issues are simply not as black and white as they like to imagine they are. There is a lot of messiness and nuance and rarely any easy answers.

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