Unwritten gay Sci-Fi/Fantasy subgenres- Where are they?

[W_L]

Just a thought, but writers rarely seem to explore subgenres within Sci-Fi and Fantasy. 

I know I am an Otaku and a geek, but it's weird that there are so few people interested in writing popular subgenres for gay fiction.

Here's a few I can name off the top of my head:

1. Progressive Power (Classics like Dragonball to modern Korean Manhwa like Solo Levelling),

2. Isekai/"Another World" (There's a ton of them now, Shonen-ai (Homoromantic) God Save the King to Reincarnated as a Slime),

3. Tower/Simulated reality/Game (Late 2000s VRMMORPG origins in Sword Art Online to modern titles like "SSS-Suicide Hunter"),

4. Regressor (in mid-2000s, DKstories "Do-Over" series was a precursor representation of the Regressor story, a person dies then goes back in time to fix what went wrong in their lives, to post-modern (and Homoromantic) Korean Omniscient Readers' Viewpoint)

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One thing I have noticed from one of the story sites I read with these subgenres is that it's readership is skewed 75% male to 25% female, just as a statistic for reference.

Spoiler

(It's Royal Road, which has a bad track-record for its LGBT+ authors, but it has some of the best fantasy stories out there with over a million readers. Like LGBT fantasy The Daily Grind series with nearly 1.7 million views and published books/audiobook; though other fantasy series of similar length like Ajax Ascension (Formerly Gamer Reborn) got 9 million views despite poor quality in plot.)

I am wondering what everyone's thoughts on these subgeres are as fellow writers and why few people have adapted them with LGBT perspectives? 

[LJCC]

was editing my post, accidentally deleted it, and then clicked saved and now I don't know what I replied. I thought I was clicking a shortcut to back. 

I'm an idiot.

Edited August 26, 2024 by LJCC

[lawfulneutralmage]

On 8/24/2024 at 6:44 PM, W_L said:

  Hide contents

 am wondering what everyone's thoughts on these subgeres are as fellow writers and why few people have adapted them with LGBT perspectives? 

Writing from a mobile, sorry.

I would think that is because the readership would be very small.

[W_L]

On 8/27/2024 at 3:59 PM, lawfulneutralmage said:

Writing from a mobile, sorry.

I would think that is because the readership would be very small.

True, GA's readership is smaller and limited in terms of interest areas, Cross-platform authors do exist, including LGBT authors, but I don't see many of them migrating over here or referencing to other story sites, unless they're patreon-based authors, but it commercializes the story to a pay-as-you-go model. 

Just thought I'd share some observations about the readership trends I am noticing elsewhere in context to GA.

Edited September 1, 2024 by W_L

[Jason Rimbaud]

Since I really have no frame of reference for the type of story you are speaking of, can you point me in the direction of one of your favorites, I am intrigued enough by your story to check out this genre. 

J

[W_L]

5 hours ago, Jason Rimbaud said:

Since I really have no frame of reference for the type of story you are speaking of, can you point me in the direction of one of your favorites, I am intrigued enough by your story to check out this genre. 

J

Personally, my favorite in the modern fantasy subgenre is the Korean novel/manhwa "Omniscient Readers' Viewpoint", but I warn folks that it's 551 chapters long. It mixes the regressor (Dying and coming back in time to fix things), Progressive power (basically Dragonball style powerups), and Simulated game (A "Squid Game"-scenario orchestrated by God/gods) genre.

Here's a link: https://boxnovel.com/novel/omniscient-readers-viewpoint-boxnovel/chapter-1/

As for my favorite in the alternate history genre: the Chinese webnovel "Release that Witch", which puts a modern Chinese engineering student in the body of a medieval prince, who embarked on a massive struggle to enlighten humanity and defeat the evil Church (Modelled after Catholic Church with a a Pope) that persecutes Witches, women with extraordinary powers. Warning its 1,501 chapters long and after around chapter 1,000 and neared the peak of its popularity in China, there are some pretty heavy-handed Communist propagenda (The CCP censors had pushed the author to add favorable language on collectivism, class theory, and marxist concepts). It was kick-ass before that point and had several secondary openly lesbian characters, rare in Chinese novels with such a large readership.

Here's a link: https://www.webnovel.com/book/release-that-witch_7931338406001705

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While those are my recommendations, I must caution folks on some popular stories in the modern fantasy genre as well. 

Tyranny of Steel, also known as Iron Savior, is a story about a US army engineer with German heritage, who died in Afghanistan and went back in time to 1417 as the eldest son of a Baron in the Holy Roman Empire. The story chronicles his epic life of creating a German Reich. It's a popular story with several million readers and has a lot of historical details (Similar in some ways to my own Of Pride and Power), but it emphasizes "German" racial superiority (Yes, the author went full on Nazi). Not gonna lie, I appreciate the historical detail the author held in terms of his vision, despite his views and values like arguing for ethnic cleansing, executing and raping civilians, and the pseudo-occult ideology of "Germanic" pagan gods helping his main character wipe out the adherents of Abrahamic God (Christian, Jews, and Muslim).

It's been pulled off several websites, but it still has a strong fanbase. Probably popular for folks who identify with Far-Right views, but unless you appreciate or know German history, I wouldn't advise reading it.

Edited September 2, 2024 by W_L

[Jason Rimbaud]

Thank you, I've bookmarked the links and can't wait to jump in and see what this is all about. 

 

J 

[W_L]

On 9/1/2024 at 9:44 PM, Jason Rimbaud said:

Thank you, I've bookmarked the links and can't wait to jump in and see what this is all about. 

 

J 

Personally, I love Omniscient Readers Viewpoint for the meta-commentary on various narratives, writing, and dreams. In the first few chapters, you would think it's a simple post-apocalyptic story like Biblical Armageddon/Mythical Ragnarok, then it adds elements like modern Walking Dead and cosmic horror Lovecraftian themes, until you get the point of meta-commentary between man, God/gods, and universal perspective. There is no true genre, but it is very human. 

A fun point within the story: the goal of various characters toward the middle and end is to seek the end of their neverending story/hell, some of them want to terminate their narrative creator aka the Author.

Imagine if our characters ever achieved sentience and wanted revenge for all the horrible things we ever done to them from ruining relationships to killing loved ones (not just once, but over and over again due to rewrites, creating a living hell for sentient characters), it's a believable case of Nietzsche nihilism that is a meta commentary on our ties as readers and writers to the characters we enjoy. Science fiction have done this with AI and Robots, but if parallel realities exist, wouldn't exceptionally powerful characters from various universes not be driven to such goals.

 

[Talo Segura]

On 9/1/2024 at 7:28 PM, W_L said:

Cross-platform authors do exist

I don't write the story genre you are talking about, but I did publish on RoyalRoad even if it's totally (almost) fantasy... The reaction I got was, I thought, not bad, even pretty good: This story is very much not the typical story for this site... or, a typical story anywhere. (3.5 stars), The first thing to note about this fiction is that it really does not fit the mould for this website. Personally, I'm pleased to see some variation, and hope that Royal Road does expand to become a forum for fictions of all types and genres, but we're not there yet (3.5 stars).

It's good to expand people's horizons. I don't know the number of views and this was four years ago, but I do like the cross-platform idea and that goes for gay authors publishing on non-gay sites. RoyalRoad is only one such site, I've used others and with equal success. It depends on your story having a gay theme but at the same time a broad appeal. After all, readers do need to be able to relate, like Romeo and Juillet can be Romeo and Romeo, if you want!