Fantasy is a relatively young literary genre. It was pioneered by John R. R. Tolkien, followed by other male authors. In general, it was they who formed the genre in its modern form. However, towards the end of the twentieth century, a large number of women authors appeared who began to master all kinds of literary genres, including fantasy.
Female Fantasy Challenges
Modern fantasy (especially in Russian) is oversaturated with books written by female authors. Unfortunately, most of the generalizing differences between female and male fantasy characteristics are quite difficult to attribute to positive ones. It is customary to attribute to female fantasy a concentration on the emotions of the heroine, a boring first-person “diary” format and a superficial understanding of world-forming details (economics, politics, magic, and so on).
There is also universal good fantasy. With vivid plots, characters and stories. And the gender of the author in this case is completely unimportant.
One of the first Russian-speaking authors writing in the fantasy genre was the Belarusian writer Olga Gromyko. She has written a series of books about the adventures of the young witch Volha Redna. These books were, in fact, enjoyable, easy reading. Written in good language, filled with interesting plot moves, they formed a certain standard or cliché that the overwhelming majority of female authors currently adhere to.
However, if the books about Volha Rednoy present a good balance of interesting plot, vivid characters, concentration on the experienced emotions, since the author of the series has taste and literary flair, most of the books inspired by this story are significantly inferior to the original.
Female heroes versus male heroes
A typical hero of "male fantasy" is a concentration of fighting virtues, intelligence and resourcefulness, which already raises certain questions, and the heroine of "female fantasy", in addition to this bouquet of qualities, is always extremely good-looking, drives all the men she meets and is terribly lonely. Such heroes and heroines most often embody everything that the authors lack in their own lives. At the same time, a paratrooper hero or a male warrior hero looks more organic in a fantasy (usually medieval or similar) world than belligerent and beautiful Amazons with a too rich inner world. It is very difficult to take works with such heroines seriously.
Very often, female fantasy grows out of fan-made sequels of favorite books.
But even if the heroine does not represent some collective male ideal, other problems arise in “female fantasy”. For example, very often books by women authors are a diary of emotions (which readers can easily like), in which adventure, plot twists and collisions are simply not needed. Of course, it is impossible to characterize all fantasy written by women in this way, but this is one of the most problematic and general tendencies.
The problem of male fantasy is in frequent and excessive concentration exclusively on battle scenes, most often the hero of such books is engaged in the destruction of a colossal number of enemies, while the plot twists and turns remain behind the scenes. Moreover, such a male combat fantasy often suffers from the same shortcomings as the female one - the surface world, flat characters, and so on.
