Tamzin Ashevai Posted October 7, 2012 Report Share Posted October 7, 2012 I think I might be one woman who is a fan of Brandon Sanderson. I'm having a hard time recruiting others to my position. What the heck do I do now? I love this author and I know other fans of high fantasy will just love his systems of magic and ... OMG! Everything! But ... (and that's the key word). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaos Posted October 7, 2012 Report Share Posted October 7, 2012 You do realize there are kind of a lot of women on 17th Shard, right? For example, we have two administrators who are female, and three other staff are female, who are online regularly. I've always been pretty pleased with the amount of girls on the site. I think there are a lot more than you think. They just don't make a big deal about it. (Because why does it matter? Everyone is here because they like Brandon's works.) I'm having a hard time recruiting others to my position. Well, my mom really likes Brandon's works... I don't think there's anything about his books that make it inherently hard to market towards women. Brandon has won multiple Romantic Times awards for his books, after all... I hope you don't mind that I edited out the poll; I did not feel that it really helped the gender discussion here. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe ST Posted October 7, 2012 Report Share Posted October 7, 2012 indeed, there are far too many women on this site... we're totally breaking rule 30. Which is AWESOME!!! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RenegadeShroom Posted October 7, 2012 Report Share Posted October 7, 2012 (edited) On that note, though, watch out for rule 29! Edited October 7, 2012 by InsurrectionistFungus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady_Yasha Posted October 7, 2012 Report Share Posted October 7, 2012 OMG a girl! [insert general sexist comments and requests of marriage here]. As Chaos pointed out there's plenty of girls that read Sanderson's work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kuri Shardweaver Posted October 7, 2012 Report Share Posted October 7, 2012 I think you're placing an undue amount of emphasis on your gender, personally. Does it really matter what anyone's gender is when it comes to enjoying an author's work? You love Brandon's stuff, that's great, so do we! The fact that Comatose is Canadian, I'm psychic crystal, and Chaos is a hemalurgically spiked pandamonkey that's obsessed with math is just fluff to the fact that we're all here to share in our love of Brandon together. It reminds me of this player on an online game I enjoy, whose entire 'identity' revolves around the fact that he's black. And boy is he ever! You best not forget he's black, even for an instant! Because he's black! It's sort of frustrating talking to him, because he's apparently obsessed with something that's completely inconsequential to the enjoyment of the media. As for 'recruiting'...Just let your friends borrow a book? Let the works speak for themselves, since no amount of praising will sell someone like actually experiencing it will. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nya Ellir Posted October 7, 2012 Report Share Posted October 7, 2012 I agree with the others! There should be absolutely no reason why you couldn't enjoy the books with people no matter their gender. Of course, unless your aim is to have crushes on people like Kelsier and swoon over them all day >.> I can imagine guys getting bored by that And some women too actually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shivertongue Posted October 7, 2012 Report Share Posted October 7, 2012 I agree with the others! There should be absolutely no reason why you couldn't enjoy the books with people no matter their gender. Of course, unless your aim is to have crushes on people like Kelsier and swoon over them all day >.> I can imagine guys getting bored by that And some women too actually. So I shouldn't post my thread about how utterly dreamy Kelsier and Spook are? 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nya Ellir Posted October 7, 2012 Report Share Posted October 7, 2012 So I shouldn't post my thread about how utterly dreamy Kelsier and Spook are? Since when does anyone tell you what not to do? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe ST Posted October 7, 2012 Report Share Posted October 7, 2012 All the time, he just never listens 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EHyde Posted October 10, 2012 Report Share Posted October 10, 2012 Hey, Tamzin! Don't feel alone, I'm a woman too. I think it's often assumed online that everyone's a guy unless otherwise specified, but that's really not the case anymore (I'm not sure how true it ever was). Elsewhere, I was reading a discussion that proposed that different types of fan activity are seen as gendered--discussing character motiviations, writing fanfic, and yes, swooning over characters is seen as "fangirling" while keeping track of trivia, analyzing the worldbuilding, etc, are seen as more "fanboy" activities. I don't know that I agree with all the specifics there but I guess there does seem to be a stereotype of what female fans do vs what male fans do (which for the most part is completely wrong). I think this site as a whole is more geared towards the sort of discussion that falls into the male stereotype, so maybe that gave the impression that there were mostly guys here, but really that isn't the case! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KChan Posted October 11, 2012 Report Share Posted October 11, 2012 That's definitely a good point. It's unfortunate but true that certain activities seem to be perceived as "male" or "female" - and anyone who's heard my rant about how stupid it is that so many "Token Female" type RPG characters are archers and/or white mages knows how I feel about that. Heck, even advertising does it - Google AdSense thought for the longest time that I'm male, when I'm decidedly not. I'm not sure where you got the idea that we're all men, though. Before Zas and Comatose were made admins, the admin population was almost half female! (I couldn't find a pic of JUST the five of us, so you get a bonus appearance by Comatose too.) And there are plenty of other girls around here. We don't announce it to the heavens that we're female, but we're here. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
borborygmus Posted October 11, 2012 Report Share Posted October 11, 2012 Tamzin, I think maybe you're just hanging around the wrong girls. There are a lot of women who enjoy Brandon Sanderson's works, as well as fantasy in general. I am one of them, and I know quite a few others - in fact just at a guess I would say the population of 17S itself is at least half female. I don't know for sure, because I never really felt the need to check. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tamzin Ashevai Posted October 13, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 13, 2012 You do realize there are kind of a lot of women on 17th Shard, right? For example, we have two administrators who are female, and three other staff are female, who are online regularly. I've always been pretty pleased with the amount of girls on the site. I think there are a lot more than you think. They just don't make a big deal about it. (Because why does it matter? Everyone is here because they like Brandon's works.) Well, my mom really likes Brandon's works... I don't think there's anything about his books that make it inherently hard to market towards women. Brandon has won multiple Romantic Times awards for his books, after all... I hope you don't mind that I edited out the poll; I did not feel that it really helped the gender discussion here. I have to admit that I did not realize that there are a lot of women on 17th Shard. I wasn't aware that two administrators are female, nor that three staff are female. They don't need to make a big deal about it, I agree. And, yes, we all like Brandon's works. However, I'd like to know that I have 'sisters' here! I haven't heard a response from any of them beyond that of E.Hyde and borborygmus just recently in this thread. I haven't seen the posts of 'the other half' in any of the threads I've visited elsewhere on-site. (Sometimes I just read and don't post.) Nevertheless, I don't really care about the poll, Chaos; I just want to get to know other women here who are Brandon Sanderson fans. Unfortunately, this isn't obvious given each member's chosen avatar. This isn't to say that I don't want to get to know the men; I want to know everyone and to develop a relationship of mutual appreciation for the works of Brandon Sanderson. However, I want to know that I'm sharing dialog with women as well as with men. That hasn't been apparent until this thread. I thank you for your reply and for those of E.Hyde and borborygmus. I'm hopeful we all can continue on and move forward from here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KChan Posted October 13, 2012 Report Share Posted October 13, 2012 I haven't heard a response from any of them beyond that of E.Hyde and borborygmus just recently in this thread. I haven't seen the posts of 'the other half' in any of the threads I've visited elsewhere on-site. (Sometimes I just read and don't post.) Um, hi. I'm right here. Just saying. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moru Posted October 13, 2012 Report Share Posted October 13, 2012 Yeah, there are definitely a lot of girls. I actually know that most of the people I interact with on a lot of the forums I frequent are female. I know I'm mostly a lurker, but also female here, but I'm with Borb, I have never felt the need to check on others' genders. 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady_Yasha Posted October 13, 2012 Report Share Posted October 13, 2012 You're also making a big deal out of being a female fan, Tamzin. I don't mean to sound rude but I can't understand why knowing someone's gender affects how you think about them. If you enjoy talking to them then just do it. 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Windrunner Posted October 14, 2012 Report Share Posted October 14, 2012 I wholeheartedly agree with Lyre. Gender is never a deciding factor in whether or not I enjoy having a debate or conversation with someone whether in chat or on the forums. I'd also like to point out that there are a lot of people on the site who didn't set a gender on their profile and don't refer to it when posting. You could be interacting with a lot of female members who've decided for their own reasons to keep that information private. Another point I'd like to make is that there are a large percentage of girls who are in the chatroom who don't post as frequently. Theorizing and posting in general doesn't appeal to everyone. They're still just as active in the community as someone who posts a huge theory, but their contributions are sometimes less noticeable to someone on the site who doesn't visit the chatroom often. (Which is totally fine, I'm not trying to guilt anyone into going there.) 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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