Is there an overlap between 'epic fantasy fan' and 'people interested in healthy masculine virtue'?

[Zachary Holbrook]

I'm an author-in-training with the Author Conservatory, and as part of my schooling, I'm working on my ideal reader research-- trying to find out what kind of market exists for the books I want to write.

I'm interested in writing epic fantasy novels that explore virtue in a masculine way. I want stories about what it means to be a good man, which I believe encompasses both traditionally masculine expressions of virtue such as grit and physical resilience, as well as compassion, gentleness, honor, and self-sacrifice. 

The question I'm asking here is, is there overlap between fantasy readers and people interested in thinking deeply about what it means to express traditionally masculine virtue in a healthy and self-sacrificial way?

If I find readers who fit this description, I'll keep developing these ideas in both my stories and the way I talk about my stories; if not, I'll probably modify my writing slightly to serve a different audience.

I'm asking the question here because a) everyone on this forum is (presumably) an epic fantasy fan and b) Sanderson's male characters (particularly Kaladin, Dalinar, Raoden, and Wax) have served as inspirations for me and as role models of the virtues I want to write about.

And while virtues such as compassion, gentleness, honor, and self-sacrifice are universal human virtues and thus applicable to anyone who's not a man, I... well, I'm a man. And so I'm most interested in what it looks like to live out virtue in my manly way.

If these kinds of books sound like the kind you'd like to read, I'd love to have a conversation with you to go deeper into what you love about a good story.

-Zachary Holbrook

P.S: Moderators, if you want me to move this to 'general discussion' because I'm asking for feedback on marketing and author brand rather than on my writing itself, let me know.

[Frustration]

Well I can't say I actively think about it, but I find healthy masculine characters to be all sorts of necessary.

 

So, I guess that's a yes to that question, there is an overlap.

[Robinski he/him]

Interesting proposition, and not something that I think about actively in that way, I believe.

I think the fiction I enjoy the most tends to incorporate characters with flaws that drive their ambition and motivations, and seeing how they confront those flaws. I think I might struggle to be convinced nowadays by any character that was portrayed as being flawless, in the way that the old style 'white hats' like Tarzan, Buck Rogers, etc. were.

But, setting that theory aside, and assuming I'm following a purely good character, I'd be waiting for him (you asked about male characters specifically) to encounter a morale dilemma, something along the lines of the 'trolley (car) problem'; i.e. do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or even the one)?

I suppose what I'm saying is, if someone presents me with a purely good man, I want that author to put him through the wringer, test him to (near) destruction. I figure one thing will break, either the hero's crystal clear conscience, or my suspension of disbelief. UNLESS, the author can find a way to keep both of those intact - I think that is where it could get really interesting.

Not sure I even answered the question 

[Paul SB]

Are you familiar with the variation on the trolley problem where instead of just turning a switch, you have to push a fat guy onto the track? That version completely changed the results, even though the net effect is exactly the same. The visceral action of having to push someone to their death overpowers the frontal lobes that say there's no actual difference. You see the same phenomenon with fighting a war face-to-face versus by remote control.

But getting to the original question, I've study gender and sex as an anthropologist and what people usually think is almost always the local, cultural norms rather than actual biology. There are plenty of books on the subject, but there's a couple things I think are worth thinking about before you write a story that is intended to deal with gendered behavior. For one, most of what people think testosterone does is dead wrong. The effect T has on the brain is to make ego. Ego, in turn, often makes people very competitive, but even that is very culturally expressed. One of the best neuroscientists out there, Dr. Robert Sapolsky, once wrote that if you inject a bunch of monks with testosterone they will suddenly become very competitive over who can do the most random acts of kindness. The old "Man the Hunter" ideas that were popular in the 1950s were largely myth. We have been taught to think that men are "naturally" strong and gritty and resilient, but then we ignore the same qualities in women and end up valuing men more because of it.

I like to point out the Dani people of New Guinea, where the women do all the hard farming labor and the men sit around doing their hair. There's a classic old 35mm film of them at war, which men participate in, but it looks more like a dance than a battle. When it started raining they called it off because the rain was ruining the feathers in their hair. Only one person out of dozens of warriors actually got hurt. The whole thing is just a way for the men to show off their physical prowess.