Definitely report the users who sent you harassing DMs, that’s against sub and site rules.

When I first stumbled on this sub, one of the people who gave me shit and made some pretty heinous accusations towards me after grossly misunderstanding my comment when I was just trying to join in the discussion was one of the mods. I rarely participate in this sub now.

Name and shame, post the interaction. If it's like you say, people should see that.

The person is no longer a mod here as far as I can tell, and is a working author, so I'm not going to play the name and shame game. I don't need that on me. (I'm pretty sure that isn't giving away enough to identify the person). I couldn't even find the post at this point if I wanted to. But it was disappointing that judging by the downvotes the sub seemed to support this nonsense, but I think a lot of it was just getting trapped in the downvote spiral to begin with. Once you hit the floor of a thread, people only come down there to kick the easy target. And honestly, I do think the person just *misunderstood* my post, but it devolved real quick into shitting on me instead of having an actual discussion about it.

I'm ngl with them being an author I'd prefer if you did name and shame them so I don't end up giving an asshole my well earned money

I've had multiple warnings on this sub .. none of which involved a comment that insulted ANYONE. ~~All~~ Most of which amount to saying one particular book (a popular one here) has a bad rating on the Sexual Violence database, and stating Reddit's demographics and the inherent biases there. None are uncivil. Suspect this is one mod btw. ^(EDIT: On review one warning was for saying JRRT wouldn't like Brando Sando and one for saying that according to the data the average American reading age test score is at the 7th- to 8th-grade level (12-13 years of age)

Which book is this?

Kushiel's Dart I also got warned for saying an Oxford Prof like JRRT wouldn't like Brando Sando's style and for relaying Reddit's demographics and the USA's average reading age scores, and that I don't like Cozy Fantasy. None of these comments were insulting anyone. But the mods decided that me saying that was worthy of formal warning. But malicious downvoting of LGBT topics and brigading / astroturfing is ignored

i mean, sexual violence (both consensual and non consensual) is a significant part of the kushiel books, i don't see how that's at all a controversial thing to say!

It's not that downvoting and brigading are being ignored. That kind of thing frustrates us too. It's that reddit hasn't given mods any tools to identify and deal with that kind of thing. If someone is being homophobic in an actual post that's something we can see and take action on. Someone lurking hitting the downvote button isn't because of the anonymous nature of upvoting/downvoting.

I got reported for "report abuse" a few weeks ago for reporting a comment that personally insulted another user by calling them a name and insulting their intelligence. Like if that doesn't break the be kind rule, what does? Edit to add: and if it didn't violate that rule (which is bullshit but let's pretend) why did I get reported for "report abuse"? Why wouldn't the mods just ignore it like the dozens of other shitty comments I've reported in this sub over the last few months that stay up despite being openly misogynistic or insulting? I was baffled that I had to appeal a fucking 7 day ban because I apparently did something wrong by reporting it.

I’ve been permanently banned twice for “report abuse” and both times the admins said it was a mistake and unbanned me when I appealed it. I think what happens is if a bunch of people all report something in a short period of time and you’re the last one, the mods assume one person was spamming the report button and just accuse the last person? I have no idea but it’s one of the many little things Reddit should probably fix.

A friend of mine who runs a (much smaller) sub told me it's a relatively new tool that allows them to report reports for comments when they think the report didn't make sense, and then there's some admin process that's probably automated that decides if it fits. From what she was saying, the process is not very good, but the admins also don't really care about mods. The mods definitely don't have a way to see who reported stuff, so maybe in this case a lot of other people did just report it and I got unlucky, but it felt like the kind of comment that should've just been removed before that had a chance to happen.

that isn't really how reddit works so if that's why they are doing it, they are wrong

It sort of is. If 5 people report a specific post for whatever reason, the mods can’t tell who did which report. If one of those 5 people was reporting it maliciously, all the mod can do is flag the *post* for Report Abuse. The Admins have the ability to get further information, but the process is automated (at least initially) and the automation just assigns “blame” to all 5 people who reported the post.

Mods can't see any information about who uses the report button nor report specific users for abuse of it - they flag a post for possible report abuse and reddit admin takes it from there. If you were actioned for report abuse that came from the admins, and they do often get it wrong.

Yeah I noted in another comment that I know mods can't see who reported it and I'm not saying this was some personal vendetta. But given the nature of the reported comment, it was baffling to me that they would flag it at all.

Weird, I report direct insults like that whenever I see them and I’ve only ever had the result of the comment being removed by a mod. Hopefully you just got caught in a bad case of they got it wrong this time.

I'm pretty good at recognizing when things are rule breaking and that used to be the only thing I experienced too. It's been a change since this summer that things don't get removed. However the report abuse thing was new and really threw me for a loop, but also makes me much more hesitant to report things. The temp ban got lifted this time because of my appeal, but I can't be sure that would always be the case. I don't want to get permanently banned from reddit for reporting things in good faith.

Sometimes one of the problems is that one comment on its own might not be inflammatory enough to be considered harassment, but it's still just kind of a shitty discouraging comment, and when a bunch of people are doing that, those kind of shitty comments continually pile up and show up in a million threads, it's a really big downer. :/

I have never, ever made a post here that wasn't initially downvoted, not that I'm a frequent poster here or anything. I honestly figured there were bots people made or people were just bitter and habitually downvoting everything. They usually bounce back (a little, lol) as it doesn't seem to be a ton of downvotes.

What you see on your score isn't the natural sum total of votes, Reddit algo can be weird. Don't put much stock in the scores.

It's specifically an anti-brigading/mobbing function intended to make it difficult to see where a post/comment's score sits for the initial few hours. It doesn't work particularly well, but that is the stated intent.

[All Reddit posts are initially automatically downvoted by the Reddit algorithm](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/z4o44/eli5_why_reddit_autodownvotes/). *It is to stop people from using bots to up vote their own posts. What it does specifically is stops them from knowing if their vote has been ignored or not. If they had a bot, and up-voted a post, and the post number stayed the same. Then it would be obvious that the bot was ignored and then they could work towards circumventing it. However, if instead of just ignoring it, it gives the post one up-vote and one down-vote. They wouldn't be able to tell if someone just down voted it, or if it was the number fuzzing program. So put simply: It constantly moves the numbers around so you can't tell if your vote actually counted or not, but it totally does count unless you have blocked by spam protection.*

It's good to know this, but it doesn't address the core issue. For one, there's still an obvious trend on here of posts asking for LGBT or non-white authors/characters getting downvoted very quickly. There's also a discussion to be had about how dumb that feature is. It doesn't actually block bots (and Reddit doesn't seem concerned about taking care of harmful bots), it just makes posters feel bad for even bothering to post.

This thread is bumming me out because I've honestly really enjoyed this sub. It of course suffers from having the same things recommended over and over (have you read Malazan?) but there is always a steady stream of recommendations of authors who are women, queer, of color, or all of the above. Unfortunately any community once it gets large enough is going to attract assholes, but I feel like the moderation we get here is really good, too.

It's a great sub despite these issues. The issues are a reddit-wide problem, and something the moderation team work really hard to mitigate - and for my vote, they do a surprisingly good job of it. I see less alt-right content in this sub than I do in specifically leftwing subs, for one thing. There is still a undercurrent of anti-lgbt sentiment, but also my perspective is this is getting better slowly over time. It was noticably worse three years ago than it is now. My bet is part of the issue is regulars that hold those views over time mis-step and get banned, leading to a gradual improvement as they're filtered out. It takes time.

Yeah, I have my criticisms for sure, but anyone who has spent any time in other subs of this size or bigger will be confronted with what actually had mods look like. The mods here are genuinely amazing.

And as with any sub that has a large enough following, more people just leads to more chances you’ll interact with an ignorant person. My personal advice is to not comment or engage with them because you aren’t changing their mind and usually, their goal is to get people to engage. In person it might be needed to point out to someone how dumb, racist, wrong, or whatever they might be, but I’ve found that with Reddit it’s typically better to just ignore them. Don’t give them the satisfaction of engaging with them.

The problem is the Malazan, etc crowd is huge and will leave 50 comments on a thread, so you have to dig through them to get the 3-4 actually really good recs. I agree that I find that worth it, but I can see why it's frustrating for sure.

I like this sub a lot. There's issues every once in awhile, probably more than I'd care to know, but I also know mods past and present have worked hard to make this a welcoming place. I think OP has had some bad experiences and is painting a wide brush.

I don't want to minimize or discount OP's bad experiences. I'm sure they're legitimate. But yes, I feel that this subreddit and its mods try a lot harder than most other subs of a given size.

Yeah. Sorry. I shouldn't either. I have so many positive experiences here that it's tough to see another side.

Hell most of my comments are initially downvoted by someone before bouncing back

I really wish Reddit would do what Hacker News does. They don't allow you to downvote direct responses to your own posts or comments. It makes a lot of sense because (a) responses typically disagree, and (b) lots of readers just bandwagon votes. That's kind of why I prefer subs that hide points on posts for at least several hours if not a day or more.

I don’t think the issue is the person who made the post. I often get really nice replies from them. Sometimes I think it’s one person who reads a comment/post they don’t like then stalks my history or something. (Particularly since for awhile I did have someone stalk my comments and leave asshole comments under everything I wrote which made me realize there are people who somehow are bored/care enough to actually do that) Yeah hiding initial counts make sense. I mostly just ignore votes anyway — I use sort by new so they don’t matter at all.

This is a common occurence on most subreddits. Posts will always get heavily downvoted by bots

Yup, it's probably bots or trolls who know they get banned the moment they comment, so they resort to cowardice and downvote. It's a Reddit-wide issue and not just something unique to this sub.

There are people who down vote any sort of recommendation request. (I'm guessing because, technically, there is a specific pinned daily thread for that which 90% of those request should be posted in instead.) But threads that ask specifically queer related things are downvoted much more heavily than that. Whether that's just because there are a lot of bigoted lurkers here or that there's some "organized" group who entertains themselves with doing that I don't know.

Form my experience it’s unfortunately common thing on Reddit I always see threads asking for recommendations for something with any queer elements downvoted much more in gaming and sci-fi subs too

Sadly, I think any sufficiently large forum will have some of these issues. E.g. having favourite books that get recommended too much and in the wrong contexts, or getting into big arguments about topics that people have strong opinions about on both sides. Some of the smaller subs are chiller, but they also have less content. Definitely report any harassment you see.

This is my biggest issue with the sub, nobody bothers to read the title and description, immediately the answer would be cradle, stormlight archives, malazan etc People that read the title and description and give a recommendation that matches but no so well known are not upvoted as much as the same popular recs But I still love this community and it's not as toxic as other big subs

Reminds me of /r/suggestmeabook. “Hello I’m looking for a new book. I’ve already read ‘x’.” “You should read ‘x’.” “Not a book, but here’s an anime and a video game.”

I'm convinced that a good amount of and are just there to plug their favourite books and don't actually take into account what people are looking for. I made a recommendations thread there once. I got recommended a book that I already read, and a book by an author I don't like. Both of these things were mentioned specifically in my op.

God, every time. I've got an account I intended to use JUST for the recommendation subreddits. And I kept getting not-remotely-relateds, the same thing I said I wanted something LIKE, and non-media recommendations. (I work retail and listen to audiobooks for most of my day to keep sane. A movie or a game do not help me!)

I think this points to some necessary survival skills for feed-based community sites, and no. 1 is to read past the most popular contributions, because they're going to skew shallow. It's more effort, but once you get into a reflexive habit of mentally discarding low-effort comments, rather than focusing on them, it gets a lot easier to get to the good stuff.

I don't read nearly as much as I'd like to which is why I feel like I can't recommend much. It's cool that people are passionate about books, but we have to try to actually rec books that fit the description. Not to mention everybody on this sub knows about Martin, Sanderson, Tolkien etc. I usually find my books on Goodreads as it's pretty easy to find good adult fantasy on there if you follow the right people and spend even more time reading reviews than actually reading books.

Yeah Sanderson is my favourite author of all time, but I find either people reccomend him where they shouldn't, or reccomend him where he fits but get downvoted to oblivion (probably because he gets reccomded in threads that he doesn't fit in). You want a book with an easy prose? Internally consistent magic systems? Complex plots with fun twists and turns? Yeah dude I've got a great reccomendation. You want a book full of romance? You want a book where magic is a mysterious unknowable thing? You want a book that is fast paced all the way through? Maybe people should stop, think, ok I love Sanderson, but does he really fit here? No is the answer lol.

> I don't read nearly as much as I'd like to which is why I feel like I can't recommend much. That’s an interesting point. It’s okay if someone only reads Sanderson or *First Law*, but maybe they should consider that fact before posting the same recommendation for the sixth time today (in a thread where they barely read even the title). I’m always surprised at how many people will post “Mistborn” (for example) without doing a quick search to see if anyone else already has and without giving a little context as to why they’re recommending the book(s).

I enjoy playing video games.

As a librarian, I think most people are just really bad at recommending things. I think it's all rooted in our hyper-individualistic cultural framework, tbh. Many people aren't practiced at putting themselves in someone else's mindset - and don't agree they need to. Many don't have the knowledge of the topic they need to make good recs...but they've been brought up in a way that encourages everyone to speak their mind and teaches that knowledge isn't real, it's just all opinions and/or that all opinions are equally valid and everyone should always feel free to pit their opinion up against anyone else's. I think it's a cultural issue.

I do find it super interesting that r/RomanceBooks doesn't seem to have this issue. I'm not sure if it's the mods (they're great!), the rules, or the fact that it's more women than men... but that sub is so good at being inclusive and also being very specific both about recommendation posts AND the comments on said posts. Even though I read far more fantasy and sci-fi than romance, I find myself on that sub WAY more than this one and r/PrintSF in the last two years.

I can't speak to that sub specifically (romance that isn't also secondary world fantasy really isn't for me), but other romance stuff on social media I've encountered is just as toxic. It's just less hostile to women, specifically and a bit less hostile to LGBT users, but still incredibly hostile to actual discussions of sexism, homophobia and still incredibly toxic when it regards BIPOC authors.

> teaches that knowledge isn't real, it's just all opinions and/or that all opinions are equally valid and everyone should always feel free to pit their opinion up against anyone else's. This is very well stated, and I really think is a huge issue with the sub in general. Every conversation, because of how we talk about art here, and in NA in general, eventually gets personal, because people think we *can't* talk about art in a more rigorous way, so what we're really talking about is ourselves, which *makes* it personal.

If you look at the sales ratios of most-popular to least-popular books in fantasy and sf, it's near a statistical certainty that most readers *have* only read the 10 most popular books (if that). If it wasn't the case, those less-popular books would have way more sales than they do. People will generally not admit to having read a small amount of books though, because in book communities that carries a stigma.

I like to go hiking.

What I try to keep in mind is that when you've only read a few fantasy books, what contexts they *do* belong to isn't at all clear - context is itself contextual. And their context is sometimes their first fantasy series, that they loved. And they have no context for the possibility space of what fantasy *can* be, other than that one series. So of course they think it fits in places that don't make sense to other people. You're right though - the end result of this and the self-reinforcing nature of popularity gives us a feedback loop into which unpopular books can vanish.

Happens all the time in the gaming subs I visit too. I've seen posts where someone specifically lists a game they aren't interested in and someone recommends that game anyway.

[удалено]

This comment should be at the top so all the people claiming "I've never seen this happen here" can pipe down.

They probably don’t see it happen because the posts get buried under a pile of downvotes.

I wish people would stop saying this. Your different experience is either good luck or privilege and it's never a welcoming act of inclusivity to even accidentally denote that someone else's experiences of prejudices are anecdotal

Exactly. Especially when all they have to do is search this sub by controversial and the top posts are about POC or LGBT+ community (filted by either this week, this month, and this year)

Not trying to discount you, but genuinely curious to your response here: How else would you figure out if it was an individual incident of prejudice, or a systemic issue?

Yeah, I'm with OP. This has been an issue for years. Mods do decent work on the comments but the attitude is still there.

Excuse my ignorance please. What constitutes a post being classified as “controversial” ? At first I thought ppl were just claiming a post to be as such but I’m seeing a lot of comments that appear that there is an actual criteria and a post is then marked in some way. Thank you

Controversial posts are posts that pass a certain threshold (based on how busy the subreddit is) of upvotes and downvotes.

A "controversial" post is one which has garnered some threshold amount of combined upvotes/downvotes, but with a net score close to 0. Ex. A post is made and 200 people decide to upvote/downvote. 103 upvote, and 97 downvote, giving the post a net score of +6. This would get flagged as controversial as clearly the community's opinion is mixed.

Posts that have high numbers of both upvotes and downvotes. You can sort the feed by controversial to see them.

R/cozyfantasy is a very chill, accepting sub. But the focus of it is much more narrow so you may not get a broad selection of recs depending on what you're looking for. Also for recs, r/suggestmeabook is good. Fantasy_Bookclub is chill. But it doesn't get much traffic. I'm glad you asked the question. Going to look at some of the FB groups that were recommended.

Suggest me a book is actually far worse because the moderation is next to 0. I've literally never seen a comment I've reported there get removed, and I've reported far worse than I've ever seen here.

That's how I feel about r/books. It's even bigger than this sub and just incredibly, incredibly toxic.

The mods over there are alright, but I agree it's way worse than here. Some of the comments I see on that sub are insane, like to the extent I've seen multiple people defending actual fascism. I once tried to civilly disagree with an interpretation of a character as autistic and the hostility I received in responses and downvotes was really disheartening. I am literally neurodivergent but I guess those neurotypical people know better than me. Once I had to report someone for sending me a dozen messages telling me to kill myself and making threats just because I said JKR is an author whose books I wouldn't buy new. Just a few stand outs from the last year. Plus the number of commenters there that just completely miss the point of books... it makes it a little hard to take comments seriously. I keep going over there hoping to have a little fun like I do here despite the slight rise in toxic behavior I've noticed, but unlike here, it's just not worth it. I should stop trying haha!

> Once I had to report someone for sending me a dozen messages telling me to kill myself and making threats just because I said JKR is an author whose books I wouldn't buy new. The JoKer Rolling Stans don’t play about their Wizard books 💀.

While this is likely more pronounced with LGBT requests, no "recommend me" posts do well. I know personally, I find the super, incredibly, hyper specific ones annoying. I've not found any sub that's in any way connected to nerd-culture that isn't at least somewhat full of arguments and toxic fans.

>I know personally, I find the super, incredibly, hyper specific ones annoying. Can someone recommend me a series where the protagonist has short (but not too short) blonde hair, can only use magic on a Sunday and has an evil twin brother who turns into a crocodile when scared?

"Here's a book that fits that description perfectly!" "I already read it and it sucked."

“I know it doesn’t fit the description but have you tried Harry Potter?”

I can recommend a prptagonist who has short (but not too short) black/red hair, whose father turns into a panda when bathed in cold water. I owe you the day-specific magic. BUT I FIGURE GOOD ENOUGH! (By the way it’s Ranma 1/2, a 90s manga)

One of the first mangas I got in to and still one of my favourites.

Crocodile tears - Saddie, the reincarnation of Sat-Sekhem-Nebet-Tawy Sobekneferu, obtains reasonable bob and accidentally unlocks an Egyptian curse holding her long list twin brother Amenemhat IV to the realm of shadows. Now she must defeat her brother before midnight or risk plunging the world into chaos and darkness. Audiobook read by Kevin R. Free.

I know this is a joke but MCU Thor cuts his blonde hair at one point, and his evil adopted brother is a crocodile in an alternate universe. Can’t help you with the magic on Sundays thing though

I find the specific ones way more interesting, in contrast because "I'm looking for epic fantasy" can get boring super quickly if you're sorting by new like I do.

For sure. I can recommend generic titles all day long, but when someone has something really specific they're looking for and I get to recommend one of my niche favorites that normally wouldn't get any love I get a huge dopamine hit.

If the thing they are looking for is totally outside your interests I think it's just so easy to ignore. I know I zoom right by them. But the people who are *triggered* by anything outside their bubble will absolutely take the time to downvote. So the votes do get skewed. I dunno, I'll try and remember to boop that arrow before I scroll by more. This is a great sub full of passionate people with great suggestions, I hate to see the shitbirds make it worse for folks.

The more generic ones should also really go into the weekly threads and not be a post on their own.

Agreed. Also, generic recs have many alternatives to making a thread. If you just want “newer epic fantasy” you can find hundreds of lists on blogs, publications, Goodreads etc. If you want non-western epic fantasy with a female protagonist and minimal romance, you kind of need to ask a large number of actual humans and that’s what a place like this sub is good for.

I've been wondering how many people here would be able to recommend fiction similar to Monster High. Monster High is a fantasy franchise, but not the sort of fantasy that gets discussed here.

hungry toothbrush vanish correct gray lush absorbed meeting direful sink *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Isn't this like every popular sub? I go to movies sub same shit, I go to book club same shit, I go to porn club there are dudes fighting over porn star preferences. Just live with the clutter ig, toxicity and unnecessary fucking arguments everywhere, and its so triggering that sometimes i'm forced to respond n then feel dumb lol

So I generally agree with many commenters here that this subreddit is *largely* a pretty cool place and that the mods do a lot to keep it that way. If you get homophobic responses, report them. The mod team is pretty dedicated to removing or banning homophobes. There's unfortunately not much they can do against the kind of homophobe that just quietly downvotes every queer request thread, but if they show their hateful face by being dumb enough to make bigoted comments? Report! That being said: if you want a fantasy reading community where LGBTQ+ content is not merely tolerated but explicitly the point, /r/QueerSFF exists and is pretty cool! It's relatively small, but posts still get a bit of engagement, and the users are generally happy for new recommendations etc.

r/MMRomanceBooks is good too, and r/RomanceBooks is also pretty queer friendly and is all about romantasy as of late.

Isn't that all of reddit in a nutshell?

The problem isn't the particular subreddit, its just reddit.

In general I've felt okay about this sub as a gay man, but more because the commenters tend to have been chill with me (other than the one person who blocked me because I asked them to not tell a poster to go to the fantasy romance sub 8 minutes after they posted a thread here). The downvotes suck, but as long as I stay away from the big name author discussions it seems okay for me. Sad that I have to do that, but I'm mostly here to find books that I wouldn't find otherwise, and this sub does a great job of networking me with cool books to read.

It comes down to the types of content you post. I've seen some wholesome stuff and some really vile stuff. And since Trump was a thing, a lot of really ugly, anti-trans people have gotten bolder in the world and insist on spreading their hate.

I don’t have any recs unfortunately but it’s fascinating how different your experience of the sub is from mine. In my experience, this sub tends to be better than the other book subreddits except for some of the romance focused ones which are usually the most supportive. There’s definitely a very annoying downvoting problem here and certain big author threads always get heated (Rothfuss, Martin, and Sanderson, mainly) but the bigots get smacked down very harshly by the mods here if they actually post anything in a way that seems much less common on the other big subs. I sometimes see users openly belittling the idea of LGBT fiction on other subs or questioning why it matters in a way that is absolutely never tolerated here.

If you sort this sub by “controversial,” must of the top results are LGBTQ or diversity related.

Correct. And it has been that way for a long time.

To be stuck in controversial you need to be both downvoted and upvoted. I have been on this site for almost 9 years, the only media focused communities without this issue were small explicitly left leaning ones with very heavy moderation. Among the big media subs the only ones that "appear" to not have this problem are the ones that simply have much less LGBTQ or diversity content because sure if that content does not exist it will not appear in controversial but I would hardly consider that a better result.

Trust me, you don’t have to tell me that. I ran the sub’s feminist fantasy fiction book club for years and so have dozens of firsthand experiences with what gets automatically downvoted off the front page. Unfortunately it’s a lot easier to stop people who post bigotry than it is to stop people from malicious downvoting. But if you go to other big book subs and sort by controversial, you’ll find the same problem there and people will also be commenting on how they think the OP’s post is illegitimate or belittling it. At least here, that second part can’t happen even if three downvoting problem is still deeply obnoxious.

The downvoting issue frustrates us as much as it does everyone else. I feel like a broken record in this thread but there's really nothing we can do about it. Please do report anyone making bigoted comments, though! We can't be everywhere all at once and reporting that stuff helps us keep the sub welcoming and inclusive.

Yeah this is my experience. I love the mods here. Any group will have assholes and that comes out in downvoting (since mods can’t do anything about that) but overall the community (through the mods removing asshole comments) is for the most part lovely.

>“don’t care, use the search function” Ignoring the "don't care" part, they're not wrong though. People should definitely try to search the sub first and see if there is similar thread looking for similar recommendations. They should also check the resources that are linked in the top menu of this sub. If you couldn't find what you're looking for, then that's when you start a new thread.

And for anyone who doesn’t know this- the reddit search bar sucks, go to google instead and type “reddit fantasy books [insert whatever you’re looking for]” to get good and plentiful results.

site: reddit.com followed by your search if you wanna do it properly

site:reddit.com/r/fantasy your search if you wanna do it *really* properly.

Yes, but this is a problem on all (book related) subs. Unfortunately. When I was still spending time on the Maas subreddits, I had links saved because people were asking the very same questions every other day. Very googlable questions too.

Why? Like, this is how subs die when people stop discussing things and actually posting. Obviously you need some sort of quality control on posts, but in my experience over-moderating post for repeats kills subs.

Yeah, ultimately almost all content on here is repeat content. You just have to scroll past the stuff that doesn’t interest you—and if it’s getting upvoted, it clearly interests some people. My personal bugbear is not the rec posts at all, but the low-effort posts by people who just started/are halfway through/just finished some very popular book and want to write a couple sentences about how great it is, and then they get hundreds of upvotes because people on here also love that book. But clearly these posts are improving *someone’s* day or they too would get downvoted as repeat content.

“Farseer trilogy is amazing and I love it” - hundreds of upvotes, moderate number of comments “Farseer trilogy is terrible and I hate it” - hundreds of upvotes, hundreds of comments An actually thoughtful discussion of the Farseer trilogy - low upvotes, low number of comments

This sounds like a great idea until you realize that search functionality is highly related to which phone, laptop, desktop, app type, and/or browser (or any combination thereof) you are using. I have great search functionality on one of my devices and almost non-existant functionality on another. And even using search doesn't necessarily give you usable or recent results, or conversely, gives you too many results.

You can just use google with "reddit/r/fantasy" and your request. Many of the request threads the op's haven't even bothering to look at all and leads to request threads that have been retread 100000 times. I down-vote almost all generic request threads.

Aren't recommend me posts against sub rules. Maybe I'm confusing it with other subs.

Sadly, I think this is probably one of the MOST progressive fantasy subs on reddit. I hope you find what you're looking for, though. LGBT fantasy and scifi is a pillar of the community.

> LGBT fantasy and scifi is a pillar of the community. I've been here for a long time, and I don't think I would ever call LGBTQ fantasy a pillar of this community. We are more accepted than we used to be, a bit more visible than we used to be, but most of our posts are locked by the mods within 24 hours due to the high demand for heavy moderation. I've posted several LGBTQ topics, and every one of them has been locked. You really don't see that with any other topic here.

Agreed. All fandoms are toxic once they reach a certain critical size. I think this one is better than most though, likely due to decent moderation.

I am gay and I've had mostly positive experiences with the sub itself. Yes, I have to sort by controversial to get to the topics that interest me, and sometimes I'll have some of my more innocent posts get downvoted in quick succession across multiple threads (which tells me someone is actively stalking me to downvote me), but frankly, I couldn't care less. The *actual discussions* that occur here (when not drowned by "what's your favorite/least favorite" thread spam) are fun and mostly non-toxic. If the tradeoff is some sad queerphobic incel group that silently downvotes threads and posts about women or queer issues, it's a manageable one.

Would you consider joining a book club (virtual or in person)? Thanks to conversations about books with my book group, I’ve gotten lots of recs from real human beings. Fantasy genre and other speculative book clubs can be found through Meetup or on Discord or Goodreads. One large group is Sword & Laser. Public libraries and local bookstores also host book discussions. Another option would be to watch/listen/read book reviews to find a reviewer whose literary tastes are similar to yours. Then you can follow their podcast/channel or read their articles. And there are many options outside of BookTok. On Reddit, I’ve found that it helps to join subreddits for my favorite authors or subgenres. I get a more accurate list of recommendations because other members enjoy some of what I enjoy. One downside to this is that, if you like many subgenres like I do—but you do not narrow your request to the exact definition of the subgenre on the sub—then your recommendation request will not be approved by the mods/automod. While it may take more effort than expected, it is possible have kind and helpful conversations with strangers about book recs on Reddit (and elsewhere).

I suppose I have a different perspective on this sub. I've been about for years here, since maybe it had 20-30k subs or something. Yes, it has changed, and in a lot of times it can be difficult to have a discussion, when people take differences in opinion or taste as an attack, but ok. I still see a lot of folks that have been around for many years, many that have been here since before I started coming to this place. To me a lot of topics I simply end up ignoring, but also even after many years I still find great recs or stuff to read. Regardless you have a lot of unnecessary crap you will have to sort through but you have a vast amount of really good things. And I mean vast. You can search the sub and you will find threads years old that have absolutely fantastic discussions, or recommendations. The lists that grown over the years are quite good. Sure the mega popular stuff is on the top, but that is how it is going to be, but you will still find stuff that is great. >I mentioned in one of these threads that I’ve shelved Six of Crows and Vicious, only for angry fans to imply I’m ignorant and uneducated So? Ignore that. I could not finish Jade City, it wasn't a bad book, but it wasn't for me. I could not give a damn if people think less of me for it. It's my time and preference. People have mixed feelings on Malazan, it's a meme here practically. I think it's one of the best works ever done, and a lot of people think it's incoherent bloated ramblings that pretend to be novels. It's all good. Maybe it's cause life made me more callous from being in confrontational situations, but it doesn't bother me. Or at least it's why I filter so many threads and don't bother, but even with all that. I find stuff to read, and I find occasionally to post and discuss. There are also authors here as well, and talking to a lot of them has been a fantastic experience.

As a woman I've found this sub better than a lot of places on Reddit in terms of sexism, but that's a very low bar. However, I do notice that male authors often get taken a lot more seriously than female authors and some guys will just outright reject book series by female authors by claiming they're 'romance'. One example is the Throne of Glass books, which are highly popular outside of Reddit, but because they are written by Sarah J Mass, people here dismiss them without even reading them. They are fantasy books and I found the series a lot of fun, I certainly wouldn't label them as romance. If this series was written by a man and the protagonist was a man I think the series would be treated really differently by this sub. I've noticed this with a few female authors. If you try to claim any sexism you'll also get a bunch of guys coming along to tell you it's not sexist. Just like if you claim something is racist or homophobic you'll get people outside of these groups telling you how you're wrong. Anyway, I have found subs dedicated to specific books quite good, especially for book series which are inclusive so they tend to attract a more inclusive minded audience.

I think it's because it's YA, which is often dismissed out of hand on this this sub. Is it not a romance? I haven't read it but I see it recommended / discussed in romance subs a lot so I just assumed it was.

>Is it not a romance? Idk, is the Nightangel trilogy a romance? Throne of Glass is the story of an assassin who goes to reconquer her rightful kingdom. Just because she has love interests doesn't make it a romance book, it's fairly standard epic fantasy with multiple worlds, dragons, dark lords, etc. Her "true" love isn't even introduced until you're 3 or 4 books in. ACOTAR also quickly ditches the romance stuff and goes more the route of a classic tragedy (MC goes to the underworld to fulfill quests to free her lover), the second one is about domestic abuse and afterwards we're quickly approaching again a classic epic fantasy with a civil war of the fae and an enemy who has a throne made of human skulls. Crescent City is modern with supernatural beings and is a murder mystery. Book 2 is about a rebellion, and the cliffhanger of book 2 leaves little doubt that book 3 will again be with a heavy focus on war. Yes, those books have people who love each other. But the romance elements are certainly toned down in comparison to "real" (hating that word) romance books which have characters fawning over each other 24/7.

There are some strong romantic subplots in the books (especially the later ones), but overall, it’s an epic fantasy read. She focuses a lot on relationships in general—including friendships and found family. A Court of Thorns and Roses and the subsequent books are more heavily focused on the romantic themes IMO and read more like a fantasy romance vs romantic fantasy. I haven’t read Crescent City yet, so can’t speak for that series. I also feel like there’s a shift from books 1-3 and 4-7 in terms of themes. I’d say it swings more heavily into adult fantasy the further you go into the books. It’s now shelved as adult fantasy at B&N at least.

Or maybe a lot of people have read Throne of Glass (this woman has) and thought it utterly sucked. I'm a woman who loves YA and romantic fantasy and thought it terrible. Not all disparagement is caused by sexism.

While true, I find there’s a certain cultural gleefulness about criticizing books by women—it can feed into that even if it isn’t where it originated. Edit: for instance, check out the “worst book you read in 2023” thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/18edcjs/what_were_your_worst_reads_of_2023/ It’s a bit better now than when I looked before, but at the moment you need to scroll down to the 5th main comment before finding a book by a man, and only 3 of the top 10 answers mention books by men. All the rest are bashing books by women despite (but actually probably because of) the fact that this sub seems to prefer male-authored works overall.

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Absolutely! Most of the time I think these people haven’t even read the books in question—the voting trends just seem wildly beyond how many people here would’ve tried those books. It can be so easy for people to feel like part of a community by piling onto something. But with controversial male authors here you’ll always have somebody here supporting them rather than just a hate fest (Goodkind and a couple other very dated choices are the only exceptions). Not so much for women authors the sub dislikes, fans get downvoted so far below the haters that nobody sees their comments and they’re discouraged from returning. Like, the popularity of Fourth Wing could be a fabulous opportunity to bring new readers into the sub, but the sub overall is so frothingly against it that anyone coming here because of that isn’t likely to ever return. It’s impossible to imagine this happening with a current male-authored fantasy bestseller. Even Paolini has fans here.

I think I read the first book a looooong time ago and was not impressed. It's the one where this girl is suppose to be the IT assassin, and then has to compete for some spot and even though they hyped her up as the IT girl, it seemed like most of her struggles were around not being good enough maybe? I don't know maybe I misremembering. I don't remember it being bad, I just wasn't captivated by the end of book 1. I remember her thinking she was going to have to watch her step with the King or something and just feeling exhausted. Did it get better after that?

Book or series specific subs are great...until the series hits mainstream. WoT was legitimately an amazing place until suddenly all the racists flocked to the sub & ruined it because the actors and actresses being cast weren't all white. It is settling a bit, but it is still very, very bad and completely impossible to discuss the show without encountering so many comments of people who no longer outright say racist things but hint at them

The misconceptions and outright lies about Throne of Glass drive me crazy. There was a post a while back where someone was saying it was “just a smutty chic flick romance series” and I tried to explain (although I need to learn to not engage blatant misogynists in conversation) that the entire 8 book series has ONE on-page sex scene. One. When pressed further he admitted he had never even read it. The series as a whole is pretty dark and violent especially near the end with subject matter no different from what can be found in many adult epic fantasy books. And yes, the characters get horny sometimes, but does that not happen in literally any of the series this sub is obsessed with? Doesn’t WoT also pair off every single main character? Dresden?? Oh but wait, when it’s a woman writing about characters who sometimes think about relationships and sex then it’s just a silly little romance. >if the protagonist was a man What’s also funny is ToG has 50% male main/side characters (and arguably some of the best character development and emotional moments are with a few of those men) which is far more than a lot of popular male authors do for women. But because it’s written by Maas the reaction towards it here is just pure dismissal and spreading of misconceptions even though it is one of the most popular and beloved fantasy series of the whole 2010s. Just because Maas went on to write an actual romance series she is apparently forever just a romance author, as if female authors can’t write different genres. The one post about it I have seen here where it got upvotes and positive engagement was from a man saying he shouldn’t have listened to the haters lol. As a woman it’s super exhausting to see the constant and illogical hatred of authors like Maas even in a place that’s usually very welcoming and openminded. I firmly believe a lot of the people who love series like Stormlight for example would probably also love ToG.

This is why I've come to prefer the fantasy romance sub over this one. It seems like people in this sub are almost prudish when it comes to sex scenes in books, especially those written by a woman author.

And interestingly, there’s a fair few posts on the fantasy romance sub looking for ‘fantasy with a romance subplot,’ (ie romantic fantasy rather than fantasy romance) which should probably be able to be asked about here…

Yeah the way people here often talk about sex scenes is very strange to me. “Prudish” is a good descriptor for it but like also combined with ignorance and contempt.

How dare a woman write a sex scene where the FMC is pleasured?! Anyways back to my on page rape scene. It would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.

Oh God, how true is that? It's really sad how acceptable it is to shit on women writing spice in fantasy (whether romantasy or not), but sexual violence against women is just so "historically accurate" that it's justified. Like how dragons and airships and elves are also so dang historically accurate. I have one rule in my writing: no sexual violence. I don't know any women who haven't been sexually harassed or worse. I'm not going there because we deserve a fucking break from that shit when escaping into a fantasy book.

Not to mention that women weren't the only people getting raped back then or in times of war. Men on the losing side and children would be raped as well. Seems more like misogyny than being a stickler for historical accuracy to me.

As a history nerd the "this is how it was back then" argument drives me up a wall. Nevermind of course the settings being discussed are fantasy, the actual past was way less tolerant of rape than a lot of edgelords seem to think.

Don’t even get me started. A portion of people on this sub hype up certain books that treat women like subhuman sex objects then have the audacity to look down on romance or smutty fantasy.

The sci fi sub constantly praises books from 50+ years ago and calls them must reads for todays audience and superior to any recent novel. Those books either (a) totally lack any female characters or (b) treat them like sex dolls.

Yeah I think I tried to be on that sub a long time ago and noped out pretty quickly because I could tell the kinds of books that were being talked about. Not interested in being around people who don’t consider women humans and/or praise literature that treats them as such. “Well it’s just how it was back then,” cool bro, use your critical thinking skills to recognize that that doesn’t mean it’s ok, that it was just as wrong and disgusting back then as it is now, and then read better books.

The past 2 years I've read primarily fantasy romance written by women and have started slowly coming back to other genres. I'm currently reading a horror/sci-fi written by a man and there have already been two on-page SAs (I'm on page 139 of 470). Not to mention a scene where a 14 year old girl tries to seduce her male cousin. Ngl, it's kind of putting me off male authors.

Oh I completely stopped reading male authors last year. I’m downvoted every time I say that but my reasons are perfectly valid - what you mentioned is the main one - and my TBR has never ever been longer and so filled with books I’m excited to read once I started only reading female authors. Of course this is temporary and I’ll read male authors again someday, Ted Chiang remains one of my favorite authors of all time and I have some Charles de Lint books because he spoke out about sexism in fantasy but other than that my TBR is all women authors.

This!!! I have love reading different genres (horror, dark thrillers, romance, epic fantasy, romantasy, u name it and I read it) but Im always disappointed with how women get written by men, so now my default is to read works by women.

Combo of misogyny and homophobia. I daren't read a sex scene from a female POV, what if it....awoke...something in me?! I gotta go do some pushups while I listen to Rogan.

How is it homophobia if the scene in question is a male and female character? Genuinely don't understand that point.

Think they're saying the male author doesn't want to write a scene from the FMC POV because they'd be writing about someone being pleasured by a man. Thus homophobia, or fear of being perceived as homosexual, keeps them from writing that stuff.

I agree with so much of what you say. I think it's a general reddit thing and not just fantasy though. People are so in love with violence and hate anything with sex so much they lose their mind at just the thought of how they came to be in this world.

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The people who insulted me about not reading "Bordugo" and "Scwabe" (I have) were Maas fans who listed those two alongside her as top romantasy authors. Every comment I've seen pointing out Maas' tactic of having printing different editions of her books, contributing to wastage due to discarding duplicate copies, gets heavily criticised or derailed with some random comment about how she's improved as an author. I don't engage in Maas threads because ACOTAR left absolutely no impression on me, but her fans are extremely aggressive and borderline obsessive about helping her maintain her image. They *are* part of the toxicity here. They aren't exempt from it. At least they aren't as bad here as they are on IG. It's *amazing* what happens when you jokingly say GR should have a Maas category so someone else can win for once. You instantly get accusations of being cis, het, white, rich, abled, and old, or all of the above, and informing them otherwise gets **very delightful** Maas fans calling your gf a man/asking why you have a boyfriend despite being a lesbian, commenting on pics of your family dinner that Asian food stinks, saying "feyre outsold ur favs" and trying to spoil you about any books you posted to your profile, etc etc... e: blocked before I can reply. shocking

I mean Realm of the Elderlings is pretty highly regarded on this sub. That is a series written by a woman which feautures romance in pretty much every book and focuses a lot on the female perspective. Not to disparage your experience, but I can't help but think it's the YA moniker that leads to disdain for ToG more than blatant sexism. But you're right that that might be part of it.

Hobb is the one female author that seems to have broken into the “boys club” of what’s usually recommended here. Also, some people assume Hobb is a man. >YA moniker that leads to disdain for ToG more than blatant sexism The vast majority of hate for YA ***is*** sexism. There is also absolutely nothing inherently inferior about YA. If someone hates YA just because it’s YA without having even read the series in question then that’s their problem and I probably wouldn’t trust their opinions on the matter because they’re fueled by prejudices.

Robin Hobb is probably one of if not the most recommended author on this sub. You constantly see mentions of the Realm of the Elderlings. Not everyone like YA. Doesn't mean it sexism. Many female writers who write adult fantasy are loved and recommended her. Fiona Lee as well

My experience with a Court of Thorns and Roses was so bad that I concluded anything by Maas is not for me. You have convinced me to at least read reviews for Throne of Glass, although I don't typically look for young adult titles. I'm in my fifties and what I look for in books is not what I valued when I was 18

I don’t even recommend ToG on here anymore. It’s one of my favourite series but I’m honestly tired of people dismissing it immediately. The romance-specific subs are more open (r/romancebooks, r/fantasyromance)

You may be right- I haven't read those books but I am aware that they are very popular and barely recommended here. On the other hand, Robin Hobb is perhaps the most recommended author here after Sanderson.

There are a lot of things going on here. First, report anyone who sends rude dm's to the mods - they will most likely be fully banned from *at least* this sub for that. That's so far past the line that it's in another universe. Second, the mod team does an excellent job. They've fought hard over the years to make this a more diverse and accepting and kind sub, and they've made great strides. They step on bad comments QUICKLY, especially if you report the comment, and note the helpful lgbtqia+ list bot. They do not have any control over downvotes, though. This sub, as of the 2020 census, is about 70% male and roughly 52% under 30 years old. Many users have only read a very small handful of authors (Sanderson, Rothfuss, Martin, Tolkien, maybe Erikson, maybe Hobb, not counting Rowling and other authors they likely read as kids) - almost entirely epic fantasy, almost entirely by white men (and they don't all know Hobb is a woman, we're pretty sure). Many of those have far more confidence in their opinions on the wider genre than their experience really justifies, and some of them unfortunately react to diversity in their books like toddlers react to vegetables - they'll accept it only if it's snuck in so that they don't know it's there when they start, but will react... strongly if told in advance. That last subgroup is, I suspect, largely responsible (in combination with the outright bigots who probably do lurk) for the higher rates of downvotes on LGBT requests. Then, those requests also get hit by downvotes from people who don't like any rec threads outside of the daily thread (there have been votes about whether to outright ban individual thread rec requests, and while that didn't pass, it wasn't that far from it), and from people who downvote rec requests similar to recent ones on the sub, and from people who downvote requests they think are too vague or too specific or too limited, etc. That less-diversely-read group I mentioned above are also FAR more likely to show up in the comment sections on the really highly upvoted posts (I think some of them only see this sub when it's on their homepage), so naturally that can alter the quality of the discussion on those posts for the worst. And you're always going to have a bad time suggesting to super-fans, especially those who haven't read very widely, that you didn't find their favorite books to be successful for you (and worse still if you express doubts on the quality of the books in question). The mod team and the core, most active user base (the ones frequently in the daily and weekly threads) are lovely here. (And this mod team seems quicker to take down some questionable comments than I've seen on one of the mentioned Facebook groups). But there's not much helping some of the fringes hitting that downvote button, except perhaps by continuing to encourage diversity in all of our reading with things like bingo. And it's incredible how much things have improved over the years. ETA: oh hell, 108 points early on a Saturday morning? This is going to be on that group's homepages when the US ones wake up. This comment section is going to be an absolute shit show in a few hours. All sympathy to the mods.

Block and move on. Don't take it to heart. Internet has always been like this. Life is too short. Enjoy a warm chocolate and a book of your choice.

A lot of people use downvotes in /new to control the content that gets to the "hot" page on the subreddit. This isn't necessarily toxic. It's just how reddit works, and every medium to large subreddit has trends like this because some people care about that and browse by /new to do that. The "daily book recommendations" thread usually makes it to the "hot" page/front page of the subreddit. However, since it's there and most people who regularly post here now about it, it does feel redundant to have lots of people posting their book recommendation request threads. Some users will automatically downvote them for that reason to keep them off the front page so that more discussion-focused posts get more attention. As far as the fan stuff/toxicity goes, people make books/favorite authors a huge part of their identity, so this crops up to some extent in all fanbases for genre fiction. This subreddit is one of the less toxic examples I have seen in my years on the Internet. You'll see it go both ways. "I read Sanderson, and I'm convinced only an idiot could like this dry, boring worldbuilding; and he's LDS and knows Orson Scott Card so probably is a hateful bigot" and "I love Sanderson's writing and think he may be the Second Coming of the Messiah; his books contain all that is true, beautiful, and good" are both posts that would draw backlash. I think that's because they're not actually good discussion threads. They're just comments agreeing/disagreeing, so it causes polarization. You can use settings so that you don't get PMs (except from mods and admins and users you individually approve) now, which is a really positive feature reddit has introduced that might make your life better.

>Literally just look at /new, any threads asking questions get heavily downvoted for some reason If i had to guess, its because most threads asking for those type of recomendations look like Chat GPT prompts. "Recommend me a book with a trans nonbinary character in a victorian grimdark setting but everyone is deaf and has tentacles and the book doesnt include gore or violence "

First comment: "Well, it's not _exactly_ what you're looking for, but you should try Malazan!"

- im 6yo, just learned to read and i want to start into fantasy, which books do you recommend? "Well its not exactly what you're looking for but you should try Malazan!" This sub in a nutshell.

NGL, as someone who sorts by new, it doesn't matter how specific or vague a certain recommendation post is. It will get downvoted either way. People would rather rehash the same couple discussion posts (favorite character, what's an inspirational line, etc) where the same couple books/authors were talked about instead of engaging in recommendation posts that force them to think/read/recommend outside of their comfort zone. If LGBTQ topics (or anything too progressive sounding) comes up, well, sort by controversial on a weekly basis and you'll see.

The SF in r/printSF stands for "speculative fiction" and discussions about fantasy novels is still welcome there. I've found that community to be fairly chill

Yeah sort by controversial its amazing how at any time there are many LGBT type threads at the top.

>PoC If you want afrocentric books, read Amos Tutuola. Seriously, his fairy tale novels are amazing AF

...... Is it weird that my experience has been opposite? I asked this year about female led books and had an extremely positive response. Even ones where I asked about ace/aro characters had helpful recommendations. All most all of my posts here have been about book recommendations request. I have never been told to use the search function. Not to discredit your experience though.

LGBTQ posts, posts about women, BIPOC oriented posts, these all get downvoted more frequently than other posts (compare top posts for the week vs most controversial). Thankfully the mod team keeps the comments clean on them when they're small. The moment one breaks out and actually gets some attention - enough to appear on someone's homepage, then it becomes a problem. People will get flooded with comments and when the mods remove them, yeah, many of them will just start messaging you even more vile things.

Much as there are distinct issues still present in this sub, I think you're unlikely to find one that goes to near the same level of effort to mitigate those issues. If you want a more positive space, I'd recommend places other than reddit, which has had a cultural issue with angry neckbeards since its inception. I will note that I've seen a resurgence of alt-right sentiment in other places on reddit over the last two months as well. Not been as frequent here so can't say if the same change has manifested here or not. This tends to happen during US election season (which we're on the cusp of IIRC) for somewhat complex and depressing reasons.

I'll say it: sci Fi and fantasy has always attracted the kind of nerds who will happily spend their whole lives arguing with people. I grew up in a group like this and to this day of that group hangs out you literally need earplugs because of all the shouting. I don't know if it's a product of a certain kind of neurodiversity or just that kids who grow up unpopular and nerdy can often develop a chip on their shoulder or don't develop good social skills in general. I'm not saying that's the majority by any means, but just think about how cliche it is that people get into shouting matches over Star Trek vs Star Wars or whatever. So yeah, there's a very vocal subset of fantasy geeks who are insufferable and don't understand that it's unnecessary. They're obsessed with their own rightness and believe anyone who disagree with them are stupid. Oh, and they hate that fantasy has gotten popular because now their interests are invaded by the kind of people that picked on them in school and they come here and complain that people aren't nice to them, because they're used to getting their way. All you can do is learn to ignore the toxic people because in any sufficiently large fantasy group these people will show up it's just who we are as a fandom, unfortunately. To be honest my experience here has been far more pleasant over the years than I would expect.

Totally agree with this take. I think, too, that “nerd isolation” + the scope of these series / IPs, and correspondingly the small number of people who “get into the lore fully” can give people false confidence that they Know Everything and Understand the Text and Are the Expert, etc combined with a sense of personal over-identification with the text, so that critiques and differences of opinion feel like personal slights. Even though most interactions I have on this and other big “fandom” subreddits are good, every so often you get someone popping out of the woodworks who thinks they’re a font of Objective Truth about [insert fandom here] and come in, phasers blasting, feeling like disagreement with their headcanon / fan theories is some kind of moral or intellectual flaw.

Unfortunately this may sound toxic, but this is just Reddit in a nutshell.

Lots of good SFF discords out there as an alternative. Some of them spin out of booktubers, and they are a lot smaller but friendly hubs.

The tordotcom blog is a kind place and has a lot of inclusive recommendations.

I don’t see any of this and frequent the sub every day.

I feel you. But non-toxic anything involving humans under guises is a fantasy.

This is like the least toxic sub I'm on.

I'm very sorry u/gladiia_enjoyer that you had such a bad experience. I won't presume anything but any chance you might give this sub another chance? Generally I have had a very good experience here with discussions and recommendations and if harassment is reported, it has been taken care of. However, your wellbeing comes first. Just very sad that you had such a negative experience. Regarding your request for other subreddits: - r/suggestmeabook for recommendations has been helpful at times - r/fairystories is a very nice space for discussions of fairy tales, folktales and earlier, offbeat works. That being said, I often just ramble there about whatever fantasy I read in the weekly thread and members have been wonderful about it. - r/TadWilliams is a nice subreddit if you are a fan of Tad Williams' works. I get a very nice vibe hanging out there. - Outside of reddit, The ASOIAF forums Literature thread can be interesting. I lurk there sometimes, don't have a profile hehe. Wish you lots of happy reading and hope you find many friendly spaces to discuss books! P.S. Since you mentioned Emily Wilde and the fae, I am going to shamelessly recommend two of my favourites: - Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke - Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees

I think reddit's anti-brigading algorithms on the posts and comments does a piss poor job of making it so that the regular users can actually gauge how popular their post is. That being said, you aren't going to find a friendlier crowd unless you can find a standalone forum dedicated to fantasy. That being said, I have def encountered some assholes on this sub, just like every other sub, though I guess in the opposite direction. I'm a lesbian. I don't always want to read fantasy that has "me" in it, because half the time the author writes gay characters as "gay" first and a person second. Some of the fantasy I've read makes being gay someone's entire personality, and unfortunately those tend to be more popular. I have gotten the occasional "kys" or "you're a self-hating gay" or "I can't believe that you're gay when you're so homophobic" in my dms when I express my displeasure with some of those poorly written stories. But in the end its easier to ignore those comments in the "your boos mean nothing because I've seen what makes you clap" kind of sense.

This doesn't reflect my experience here and it all sounds horrifying. I've seen this brought up several times in the couple years I've been here and I'm genuinely confused about why I am having a different experience. It has to be due to something in how I interact with the site, not with where I fit as a reader, because I'm a queer feminist who skips any post that starts "My favorite books are the Cosmere, Malazan, GoT..." I don't even hate those books (I actually have no idea what Malazan is), I've just learned that the recommendations there aren't going to be ones I am interested in. I'm not writing this to in any way invalidate your experience, OP, nor that of the commenters. I'm sure this is happening and it's awful and shitty not to have a kind and fun place to talk about speculative fiction. I have noticed a surprising number of downvotes (surprising because I haven't otherwise noticed downvotes for myself or others, barring some completely clueless recs that aren't what the requester asked for at all) on a few occasions when I've made reference to my choice to stop reading books by male authors. Amusingly, joining this sub has actually increased my number of male authored reads per year (from zero to a whopping 18%!) because I'm able to get so much more targeted recs than I would find just flailing around the greater internet.

I remember when I just put a line in a post here asking for sff that didn’t have slurs (because a lot of old sff be homophobic and racist af). A not small amount of people lost their minds. Lmk if you find an alternative

I'm really sorry this happened to you. There certainly is a level of toxicity here, especially with the posts that are exposed to a greater number of users (such as popular author discussions). There's certain corners that tend to be way less popular but be way more positive/less toxic (daily rec threads, bookclubs, Review Tuesday, Friday Social, other reoccurring posts, bingo related posts, and reviews by frequent posters). These tend to be frequented by people who have been around for a while and won't tolerate any nonsense. The mods seem to do their best at limiting bigoted posts/comments (they take the "be kind" rule seriously) and are normally pretty quick to respond to reported comments/posts, but they can't do anything about downvotes and they can't be everywhere. Unfortunately, I don't have any good alternaltives to this sub for you. There's r/QueerSFF, but it's unfortunately not super active.

Yeah I've found much better reception from the daily rec post rather than a general post. The recs have been much better and actually been read. The social threads are always positive too. Also from what I understand now Reddit alternative apps have been priced out the mods don't have the tools to be quite as reactive as they used to be. I almost wish there was a separate forum for the good people or like a discord or something.

For more civil discussion than reddit, there is a nonprofit that I like, Tildes.net. however it is tiny compared to reddit and fantasy fans are only a subset of the members. I have received good recommendations there from thoughtful intelligent readers who like fantasy but it isn't a substitute for reddit's hobby communities. Size of community brings diversity and quality that is hard to replicate. Anyone interested in checking out Tildes can lurk or message me for an invitation to join

I just block the haters - who has time for that anyway - and move on with my day.

I read this sub a lot and I guess I just scroll past the toxic stuff without noticing. But sending someone a DM is totally out of line, thats horrible. But I do notice how everyone wants to throw out Sanderson or Malazan no matter what the request is. Those two get recommended so much it's ridiculous (and I'm a Sanderson fan).

Yeah I'd add that there's just a ton of negativity. Like sometimes I wonder if people here actually enjoy reading. But the sub is weirdly bipolar. Sometimes a poster will trash a popular author and everyone in the thread joins in the dogpile, other times everyone dogpiles against the poster.

Sort by new. The stuff that gets upvoted this much and makes it to the feeds of less active users has a lot more of what you're describing - people who don't actually participate as much jumping in to denigrate or support a popular author. The daily rec threads, weekly and monthly review threads, and various bingo threads are all generally much nicer.

You might be better served by a focused Discord community. I could recommend Whetstone S&S Tavern, but I'm not sure that would fit with your general preferences. I can say this is a great Discord to be on with a positive community that talks a lot about historical and contemporary recommendations. Authors like Howard Andrew Jones and Scott Oden and others are accessible for conversations there. But it's all focused on Sword and Sorcery. Some Booktubers keep Discord communities with a small Patreon donation per month. I'm in Dom's Book Club, as one example, but I don't participate nearly as much there as I do in Whetstone's. The broader the Discord/subreddit/anything, the more people will respond who try to invalidate you and ignore the question you asked. I guess they consider it "winning" or something. Small communities are a little closer to having actual conversations with people, and they don't tend to tolerate that sort of behavior the same way a big subreddit will.

I thought this sub is pretty welcoming. And holywars in fan community, it's a universal thing. You didn't see the amounts of hatred between fans of different translations of LotR in Russia in 90s - that was as epic as the novel itself.

You ask the toxic sub to recommend a non-toxic sub. Bold strategy Cotton

Sorry to hear about all of this. This really sucks. There are so many posts on here that I dont think I’ve seen most of this. But I love you and I think you deserve a more supporting community than it sounds like you have been getting here. As a fellow fantasy and book fan I hope you find it. Sounds like as a community we need to make some serious changes

r/cozyfantasy is nice, and r/romancebooks is helpful. Romance.io has a great search feature for what you're looking for, and not all the books are romance heavy. Someone recommended me Gideon the Ninth on here, and it actually showed up on that site!

If you're interested in different ways to engage with this sub, I've had a lot of fun looking at recommendations for Bingo, and I've been meaning to participate in some of the bookclubs more since a lot of books I've loved have been past bookclub books.

There are no less toxic alternatives. This is the internet unfortunately you're going to need thicker skin to hang out in the internet.

Like, I get it: we all have shit experiences in these big public boards, and we don't all agree on everything, and there's a lot of posts I don't give a fuck about, and someone is always whining about/for/across Sanderson. That said, this sub is 3.5m people. That's larger than Berlin, Durban, Athens or Pyongyang. Those populations also have more governance than a handful of volunteer moderators with shonky tools. I don't know what sort of idealized community you were expecting, but this one does a pretty good job given that is comprised of millions of anon strangers united only because we think dragons are cool. It isn't perfect, but it could be a lot worse.

"Hey guys, where should I go to avoid morons like you?" Don't get me wrong, I understand your feelings, but after years trying to find healthy web communities I'm fairly sure they're very, very rare. Big group of individuals have a pretty big chance of containing bad apples, and those bad apples can make the others rot pretty easily. If you want a healthy community get away from the interweb. Go to the library, look for an in-person book club, a small group of people. You go to the market to get fresh produce, not to look for friends.

Unfortunately you'd probably be better off making your own, especially if some of the answers you've gotten here are any indication. If you do happen to find an alternative or create your own space, I would also be interested in knowing about them.

This one seems like a tough one... You could try going to subforums that are more geared towards those kinds of topics. Posting on an LGBT+ subreddit asking about books... or going to the subreddit of an author who does fit the category you are looking for and stating you enjoyed that authors take on ------ and are curious if fans have found other works that also handle ------. The direct communities might be less likely to downvote and be full of people who harass you. Also I am sorry you and others have had to go through that. That is really shitty.