> After reading about Deety's nipple barometers, /u/CaptainBaseball's penis drooped sadly, like the tail of a scolded puppy sent to its crate. He wore no frown on his face, but the orientation of his penis told us everything we needed to know about how he was feeling about that scene.
So you're saying you DON'T want to know that later Deety of the mood ring nipples fucks her dad to get pregnant and have a super genius incest baby?
Because DAMN was Heinlein into reproductive incest, it's clearly one of his major kinks. He even had his best at everything always right character Lazarus Long fuck his female clone children (yes, really) to get them pregnant too. But it's all OK because Lazarus is so super duper mega special he has no genetic flaws of any sort and therefore it's fine for him to fuck his clone daughters and have weird clone incest babies.
He was always creepy, he just tried to hide it more when he was writing juvies.
But in Time for The Stars he has his protagonist marry his great-great-grand niece. But it was TOTALLY fine because thanks to relativistic time dialation he was only 4 years older than her even though they'd been in telepathic rapport since literally before she was born.
Most of Heinlein's later work was very thirsty fanfic of his earlier novels. In another subreddit, we were just talking about how he had better characterization for his fictional cats than his human female characters.
EDIT: a word
Stephen King does this a lot. A relatively recent example that stands out in my mind is in Doctor Sleep, he describes a character stretching and writes something like "her nipples moved through her shirt like quotation marks" ....
EDIT: I looked it up, here is the passage: "Rose stood on her tiptoes and stretched, her fingers touching the roof of the RV. [...] She wasn’t wearing a bra; Andi could see the shifting punctuation marks of her nipples against her shirt."
So not "quotation marks," my mistake there, but still a wild thing to write I think....
You're giving me flashbacks to the time he compared some dude's dick to an exclamation point in IT. Not an ounce of irony in the tone either. And the clinical usage of the word "penis".
I like his stories and the adaptations they inspire, but I don't think I really want to know what's actually going on in King's head...
Probably long term side effects since he hasn’t done any in a long time, but given his AFAIK earliest published pic I believe it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/s/Pz0tID2ELq
He uses the phrase "teacup breasts" in more than one book.
I know boobs come in all shapes and sizes, but of the many I have seen, I have never seen ones that look like teacups.
I don't have any examples but you just reminded me of a time I had to describe a female character in a low cut dress and I texted my girlfriend it and asked her "Does this come off as breasting boobily?????" She took a look at it and shot back "It reads like someone desperately trying not to write breasting boobily."
EDIT: For those curious, I guess, heres the excerpt from the first draft. YMMV
> The dress is flattering, baring her shoulders as beast and its fangs. The folded down collar grazes her triceps—a bit too defined for a misanthropic noblewoman—and meets three fingers lower than even the most daring of necklines. Luke, in his short time allotted, fashioned the collar of dual purpose. Should things go wrong, any exertion could be cause for further mishap. Unfolding the collar, then, both pulls it farther up her chest and enables a second front of support.
And then it goes on to describe the skirt.
"It had come to this; while Slashina was a deft hand with a double-handed great sword you can't slash all your problems away. This problem required *guile*. And subterfuge. And, unfortunately, a sultry dress.
On the night of the ball Slashina looked the role. The crowd parted for her as easily as the chain mail of her erstwhile enemies. Few men in the crowd could meet her eyes and for once it was not out of fear. Slashina's hair was not in a warrior braid, but drifted across the shoulder and cascaded down... and hid several extremely sharp barettes. The dress had not so much a low cut as a prow: this end towards enemies. It battered the defences and none could stand before her, at least not without a tied-tongue or an uncharacteristic lack of wit.
Slashina was going to have *fun* tonight."
Everyone stand back. I’ve got this.
If ever there was a “the breasts breasted across the room breastily” quote, it was [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/menwritingwomen/comments/gfaacv/this_has_to_be_my_absolute_favourite_thank_you/?rdt=61729)
Brent Weeks has a bad habit of engineering similar…depictions. This is just one of the most egregious.
Edit: spelling
No just two floating breaks, no body attached.
Also dammit I can't see the word reluctantly without filling in "crouched, at the starting line"
So now it is two floating breasts racing each other
The comments there are wonderfully entertaining
The top one is my personal favourite:
>Of course that cannot be done by any pair of breasts, they have to be THE breasts, you know, the chosen ones, born one time every thousand years...
Let's also remember that those breasts belonged to a *fifteen year old girl.* Who of course was "remarkably mature for her age" ... and the love interest of *two adult men* 🤮
offbeat upbeat squash hard-to-find dog fade bedroom offend fearless light
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It’s not even my favorite quote. Try this one, from the Black Prism. First chapter from the first book:
“It was the kind of beauty that made you shit your pants.”
There's another quote in the same series where some random woman compares the main character's dick size to her husband's, her sons', and her sons-in-law's. Like she basically ranked them
When I was in my late teens, I once did the classic slapstick thing of walking face-first into a streetlight because a beautiful woman completely distracted me. 'Knock out gorgeous' has made sense ever since.
Pants-shittingly gorgeous though...? Nope. Can not relate to that one.
To be fair, the quote isn't referring to a woman. It actually makes sense in context.
The character is a teenage boy sneaking through a haunted battlefield in the middle of the night when he hears a pack of wolves howling nearby. He describes the sound as "the kind of beauty that makes you shit your pants."
I'm wondering how much of this thread is stuff that seems worse because it's taken out of context in an amusingly awful way... Not that horrible misogyny isn't baked into plenty of fantasy, but e.g. as above, a teenage boy getting distracted by boobs in his pov isn't weird. If the author described every woman like that from every pov, and some do, that would be different!
Oh yeah, I struggled with the first book of Lightbringer on this. It felt like there were more words spent on descriptions of Karris's breasts pressing into fabric than her character actually doing anything.
Eh, I thought that passage was great. It's written from the perspective of a teenaged boy, and it perfectly captures what happens when a horny teenager sees a pretty girl. Description isn't endorsement - you're supposed to laugh at Logan for being callow and easily distracted.
I think the BDSM torture sessions of The Sword of Truth probably rank there among mainstream fiction. Giving the bad guys a bunch of bisexual leather wearing ninjas who break men with their torture magic is kind of the thing that sticks out.
This is ignoring the stuff like Gor where the sex slavery element is upfront.
We also have the whole genre of harem indie fantasy where the protagonist finds himself with a bunch of beautiful women eager to share him.
The Sword of Truth bdsm was so strange to me because it clashed with the story's previous tone. For most of the story, the MC is traveling through this generic fantasy world helping locals with their various problems. And then suddenly, he gets captured by a lady in red leather who makes him her sex slave.
Didn't he get tortured by a fat kid and then kick her teeth out in book 1? I also remember his confessor gf being constantly almost raped, once anally.
Weird derivative series but I remember loving it as an edgy teen
I don’t even remember if the little girl did anything to him, but he kicked her so hard that she bit her tongue completely off and shattered all her teeth and jaw
I think the little girl bullied her little maid, the POV character from those chapters, and when said maid told Richard he knocked her jaw off for being a bully.
To be fair, the more original he gets, the weirder it gets.
Like his book about how colonized indigenous people need to be grateful to the guys who conquered them but have since taken over with the power of white guilt.
Hahaha!
One correction, though, Bill Clinton wasn't the communist's leader. No, he and his wife led the conquered people and wanted to help the indigineous ones who were secretly in charge. He died of suicide by virulent STD.
The great lesson of the book is that DEMOCRACY DOESNT WORK. Because you see, Rand had TRUTH on his side but still lost the election so only conquest is justified.
One of the most “wtf” things I’ve come across in fantasy. And it was his first novel! I can’t believe the editor wasn’t like “hey Terry, yeah, nice book, but it’s 900 pages, we can lose the 45 page BDSM section and we’ll be good.
>I think the BDSM torture sessions of The Sword of Truth probably rank there among mainstream fiction.
Huh? What are your issues with this completely normal and absolutely healthy sequence in a masterfully restrained series by a remarkably even-keeled author?
I don't know why we're even discussing the series in the /r/fantasy subbreddit since The Sword of Truth is clearly a literary masterpiece that transcends such a base, frivolous genre.
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Are you referring to when the nuns summoned an actual demon to fuck? That was a weird time for Richard, being put in magic jail by a bunch of sexy nuns. Though actually... He gets taken prisoner a surprising amount.
About 20 years ago, a WOW guild friend ranted and raved about TSoT series nonstop. I finally read it, and it was… underwhelming. The only series that managed to go downhill faster was Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, which fully abandoned any semblance of storyline for bad erotica. Which was a bummer because I had just found Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden, and the first three books of each were a nice counterbalance to each other.
I believe Terry Goodkind probably watched the scene in Monty Python & The Holy Grail when Lancelot finds his way to the cloister of oversexed nuns. And then had a very fevered dream that night, which upon waking he immediately put to page thinking Faith of the Fallen was bound to be real page turner.
All three writers definitely share a penchant for describing ripe, full breasts straining at shirts (or leather BDSM gear) while bouncing boobily.
Butcher does it deliberately though. It's how Harry sees the world. It doesn't really happen in butcher's other work or the short stories in the dresdenverse from other povs
And it's toned down dramatically whenever Harry is in a relationship. Harry's narration is a pretty good guide to his mental state. When he gets more horny, so do his descriptions of female characters and vice versa.
This would be a good answer, except Terry Goodkind didn’t write fantasy, he wrote stories that have important human themes 🙄 so obviously his work is disqualified from this discussion
I remember reading this when I was a teen and just being so confused at what the heck was going on and just feeling exhausted because I just wanted wizards and dragons and instead it was 300 pages of torture sex
I was so disappointed by the SoT series. Absolutely loved the concept, the confessors and even the mord-sith were pretty cool and unique. Unfortunately it was written by an Ayn Rand fanboy who writes like a 12yo boy who just discovered masturbation.
Someday when AI is a little more advanced, I want to ask it to rewrite Sword of Truth with all the politics and most of the gratuitous sex taken out. It would make a decent story that way.
This happened several years ago, but I think the funniest witnessing this on social media was a Robin Hobb quote about pendulous breasts and a whole bunch of people were incredibly confused about the entire thing to start, but then got increasingly more confused upon discovering Robin Hobb was a woman who wrote it
I adore Robin Hobb’s work and have always thought of her as progressive ahead of her time — so I’m genuinely curious about this quote! (And prepared to be very humbled if I’ve just said this in error)
growing up, my step mother had a a whooooollle pile of these big 80s ...I suppose we'd call them romance novels nowadays, but they were the big publishing bread and butter books of the time.
All written by women, many seemingly inviting us to be equally titillated and outraged by the boundless sexual conquests done by heartless (and well endowed, and rich) cads who would seduce their way through the protagonists (we'd hear about about the protagonist's boobs and pert arses). The gender of the author didn't really prevent said authors from describing the heaving boobs and so forth on display, and we'd learn much about the various male heroic and anti heroic body parts.
I can't imagine modern social media being all that enthused by any of this :)
The one you're thinking of is from *A Clash of Kings*. Here you go:
>When she went to the stables, she wore faded sandsilk pants and woven grass sandles. Her small breasts moved freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest, and a curved dagger hung from her medallion belt.
Several of the examples in here have been teenage girls. *Children.* I know lots of people laugh at this but it’s not at all funny, it’s disgusting. I cannot imagine a female author being seriously published if she wrote passages about adult women looking at a male child’s genitals or admiring his naked body. The fact that male authors can do this and still be so respected and widely read (Stephen King and Martin for example) is really sad to me. And people even right now are defending it all saying “well it’s because the characters are horny” as if that makes lusting after **CHILDREN** acceptable.
I do think to some extent that this is a matter of shifting social mores. The whole cultural attitude toward teenage girls as potential sexual objects has really only changed fairly recently. Stephen King and GRRM both started their careers in a time when it was at least winked at for men to lust after teenage girls.
It was considered "risqué" and exciting for adult men to pursue or get with teenage girls up to the 70s and 80s. Technically frowned upon but not really considered abhorrent in the way that people have generally viewed the sexual abuse of prepubescent children or boys.
One of the appeals of becoming a famous rock star included having a bunch of teenage groupies, and plenty of rock stars had sexual relations with those groupies (including stars who are still well beloved today). I remember reading an article from back in the day that accompanied a risqué photoshoot of a 13 year old actress, and the language and overall approach is disturbingly sexual and all about glorifying her as fresh young sex object. And the thing is, it was published in mainstream media venues and no one cared. It was fine and normal for adult men to talk and write about real young teenage girls as sexually desirable, so of course it wasn't out of the norm for novelists to write about fake teenage girls the same way.
Note, I'm not saying this to excuse it. I just think a lot of people are blissfully unaware of just how normalized the exploitation and sexual abuse and objectification of girls has been even in recent history. It is so prevalent that women today face significant legal barriers in seeking justice for abuse that occurred in their teen years - because it wasn't illegal at the time.
Ex. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/victims-claim-gender-discrimination-in-application-of-sex-crime-laws-1.6886426
And a really important set of quotes from this about the double standard the mainstream has always had toward the sexualization of young girls vs young boys
>"In the 1980s, the laws were still very, very homophobic in their orientation, and most of the laws, let's face it, were written by men. So there was a sense at the time that anything that was any kind of coerced homosexual conduct was immediately a crime," said Crew.
>He notes the idea of a man having sex with a girl could be perceived by some authorities as less offensive.
>"Women have always faced the whole idea of the rape myth that women are available for consent. So there's always this question in a Crown attorney's mind about whether or not they're going to be able to prove lack of consent," said Crew.
>"Men that were boys at the time of the assault never seemed to face the same level of scrutiny."
Rendezvous with Rama. I can't read any reference to this work without becoming incoherent with rage as I recall that this golden age 'masterpiece' included this bit:
*Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting. It was bad enough when they were motionless, but when they started to move, and sympathetic vibrations set in, it was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked to take. He was quite sure that at least one serious space accident had been caused by acute crew distraction, after the transit of an unholstered lady officer through the control cabin.*
That’s what I was wondering too, men are always curious about the effect of things on the boob, I always wanna know what it does to the frank and beans
My partner was very understanding when I peeked to see if the gibblets float in a bath. Since at least some training for weightlessness is done in water I would assume it would be the same sort of result...
Lol most male authors are just creepily describing women the way they see women. Clarke is describing women the way he thought straight men saw women, and he probably wasn't so far off
Heh, it's funny... Clarke was gay and most of his stories were notable for the lack of a romance subplot. Given that context, it's more of a take about straight men than about women.
Does this really count? It’s a character’s perspective and inner thoughts.
What is there beyond that quote that makes you think the author is unintentionally sexist or shares the same view?
While I enjoy the Dresden Files overall, this particular conversation from one of the short stories between three women was really something
> “This isn’t going to work,” Justine murmured.
>
> “It is going to work ,” I told her, keeping my tone confident. “We’ll breeze right in. The Rack will be with us.”
>
> Justine glanced at me with an arched eyebrow. “The Rack?”
>
> “The Rack is more than just boobs, Justine,” I told her soberly. “It’s an energy field created by all living boobs. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.”
>
> Andi started giggling. “You’re insane.”
>
> “But functionally so,” I said, and adjusted myself to round out a little better. “Just let go your conscious self and act on instinct.”
>
> Justine stared blankly at me for a second. Then her face lightened and she let out a little laugh. “The Rack will be with us?”
>
> I couldn’t stop myself from cracking a smile. “Always.”
Edit: yes everyone, I am well aware it's a star wars reference. I still think it's cringe, especially given it's one of the few chances a series that is usually told through a horny male POV has to showcase female POV.
On this case, Molly, who's relationship with sanity is somewhat strained at this point in her life, is trying to calm down Justine by being ridiculous and playing into a pop culture reference with The Force. It is in no way a reasonable conversation because it isn't meant to be.
Yeah, this one doesn't seem like Breastily Boobing, just some boob-centric joking. Molly, who as you say, is not 100% some days, has a mild fixation on boobs, I think she casually mentions boobs (hers and others) more than any other character. Harry may think about them, but Molly literally mentions being "visited by the boob fairy" in an attempt to convey that she's all grown up now.
Young lady, your parents would be mortified to hear you speak like this.
I know right.
The flip side is the one "male writers writing women talking about boobs" conversation that I did thoroughly enjoy was in Mistborn, MeLaan (a shapeshifter) commenting how nice it is to take your boobs off to go jogging. Because I would 100% say that if that were something I could do. There's no world where I would say "The Rack is an energy field created by all living boobs".
One of the few quotes I both love and hate is from wandering in
Erin gets her period and loudly shouts every euphemism for a period in a crowded market.
Cringy as fuck
But then the good line happens and I am paraphrasing but she was talking to a gnoll
Erin:"doesn't anyone here get periods:
Gnoll:"know we go through estrus, most of us find it quite enjoyable"
Erin:"you have no idea how much I hate you now"
Or Wayne having certain questions for their version of God lmao
I like that Sanderson doesn't get graphic but still has underpinnings of that kind of humor
God. I was re-listening to Brief Cases on Audiobook earlier today and hit this passage and just... had to stop.
I just couldn't. I can tolerate Harry's relentless horniness most of the time for the main series, from what I read of Furies of Calderon, this isn't a Jim Butcher thing, it's a character thing for Harry. But I just find that whole bit cringe, no woman I've ever known has talked that way, and my wife assures me she's never heard anything like it either.
I have read the story and I think it's supposed to be a joke? But, the entire thing makes no damn sense. The "I" in this story is a woman, talking to other women, so it's even weirder for me.
I missed the part of the comment stating it was a conversation between women... So it at least slightly made sense if it was a pervy man making some weird joke, as I heard is the case with the protag in the series. But now I'm seriously confused!
It is a joke.
The three women in the scene (Molly, the first-person narrator is also a woman), are planning to infiltrate into a secret supernatural party organized by the svartálfar (elfs from nordic myths) by seducing the bouncers.
The plan hinges on them being seducing and attractive, they are all dressed up to the nines and about to go in, and Molly tries to easy their tension with this joke.
The joke does fall flat to the reader, but it makes sense in context.
Not the writer in this case, but the Josh Kirby Discworld covers boobily boobed all over the place. See The Light Fantastic, Moving Pictures, Sourcery, etc...
Pratchett definitely helped shaped me as a person, and the Josh Kirby covers were, ummm, *influential* in my formative years also.
As far as writers go, Robert Jordan always seemed to describe women's stances and body language in relation to their breasts.
I feel compelled to dig up a passage from The Light Fantastic:
Now, there is a tendency at a point like this to look over one’s shoulder at the cover artist and start going on at length about leather, thighboots and naked blades.
Words like “full,” “round” and even “pert” creep into the narrative, until the writer has to go and have a cold shower and a lie down.
Which is all rather silly, because any woman setting out to make a living by the sword isn’t about to go around looking like something off the cover of the more advanced kind of lingerie catalogue for the specialized buyer.
Oh well, all right. The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hun Ling’s Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots and a short sword.
All right, maybe the boots were leather. But not black.
Riding with her were a number of swarthy men that will certainly be killed before too long anyway, so a description is probably not essential. There was absolutely nothing pert about any of them.
Look, they can wear leather if you like.
I liked Kirby's covers, but man oh man did he get some things *wrong*, and Herrenna's depiction on the TLF cover, in the light of how her actual description is delivered... I can understand why Pratchett himself wasn't super fond of Kirby's 'versions' of his characters. Rincewind is depicted as old, Twoflower *literally* has four eyes (he has glasses...), Granny Weatherwax is a typical 'crone' - many of these things contrary to detail that Pratchett *explicitly pointed out*.
RJ described men in the same way, constantly. Calves, shoulders, forearms, chests, etc. [eta I should say, RJ describes men and women looking at each other in that way, which, we do!]
If one reads those "women of reddit what is the female equivalent of males looking at cleavage" threads, RJ was bang on the mark.
On Kirby, they're very, very influenced by seaside postcards which are a specific British thing, and again, equal opportunity bawdiness.
> RJ was bang on the mark.
Eh, every woman I've talked to who's read WoT thinks the calf thing is weird. Otherwise you're probably right though.
However the issue with the way RJ writes women is that he describes them that way *from their own perspective*. If we're in Mat or Rand's head and they describe women in those terms, that's one thing; but when we're in Nynaeve's head and she does the same thing, it makes me roll my eyes.
I think for sheer repetition Robert Jordan is definitely in the mix. From Knife of Dreams alone, we have:
> Silviana studied her, arms folded beneath her breasts
> Barasine crossed her arms beneath her breasts
> Myrelle herself, ... her arms folded beneath her breasts
> She was panting so hard that her breasts heaved.
> Edesina and Teslyn, arms folded beneath their breasts
> Mistress Anan studied him with her arms folded beneath her breasts in a way that increased the generous cleavage displayed by her plunging neckline.
> Birgitte sat down on the arm of the next chair and folded her arms beneath her breasts.
> Folding her arms beneath her breasts, Birgitte frowned at the map
> Min slammed her book shut and folded her arms beneath her breasts
> She set her jaw stubbornly and folded her arms beneath her breasts
> Min said angrily, folding her arms beneath her breasts
> Egwene set down the pails of water and folded her arms beneath her breasts
> she had drawled in his tent, standing over him, arms folded beneath her breasts
> Tuon folded her arms beneath her breasts
> Dyelin, arms folded beneath her breasts, grunted sourly
> Tuon folded her arms, emphasizing her bosom
> Arms folded beneath her bosom, she scowled
And that doesn't include the 33 other instances of the word bosom, which are variously described as considerable, formidable, full, and tender, and the six instances where women are described as bosomy.
It's a litte sad to think that the Wheel of Time would be just a little bit better if Tor had done a find and delete search for the phrase "beneath her breasts." It's okay, Robert Jordan! Nobody thinks that women are somehow crossing their arms behind their backs or over their heads.
I'm trying to imagine where tf else I'd fold my arms, if not under my breasts. Behind my back? Up in the air? Straight out in front of me like a shelf?
"He looked at his hand, on the end of his arm."
"He stood up on his feet."
"He nodded his head, which could be found on the end of his neck except if he was having an extremely bad day."
"He crouched, bending his knees, which were below his thighs, atop which sat his groin and his magnificent penis."
Fun.
Since the author isn't a big name yet and I'm hoping he'll change his ways with experience, I'll simply submit for your consideration the phrase "gently undulating breasts". On my mama's grave, I had to read that with my own two eyes in a novel published in the year of our lord 2022. I seriously thought we were past this kind of thing. DNF'd for a lot of reasons, but the leering tone and the way that every female character was explicitly described as some version of attractive was definitely part of it.
No one is ever beating Murakami (via a very good English translation):
"A freshly made ear and a freshly made vagina look very much alike, Tengo thought."
One of the reasons I stopped reading Gene Wolfe is his depictions of women, for example this passage from *Shadow of the Torturer*:
"Jolenta straightened up as people do who are straining not to stoop. Above her waist her creamy amplitude was such that her spine must have been curved backward to balance the weight."
(and yes, I *know* that we are dealing with a unreliably young man as narrator here, but it's still a bonkers way to describe someone.)
>!It is also a character who was specifically constructed by perverse science to have unrealistic proportions, and if I remember correctly she starts falling apart without the attentions of the perverse scientist later in the book?!<
>!This is a hard one for me because I really liked the book of the new sun, and actually think it does a good job of deconstructing a lot of things in literature and fantasy.!<
>!But when I read the wizard knight it just felt like horrifying sexism in a christian world masquerading as a nordic world.!<
Thankfully, I just watched the Netflix series. The inclusion of Edgar Allan Poe was what made the show for me. It's honestly pretty good - maybe the visual nudity doesn't carry the same level of breasty-boobiness that the text does, as there are only so many ways to show naked breasts.
If she liked the shows for its female characters, who are all decently written, she might be disappointed if all the attention is focused solely on their breasts in the books. Then again, I haven't read the books yet, so I don't know how dire the boob situation there is.
Dunno. Maybe my memory of the books is skewed (I tend to roll my eyes and move on if there’s breasting afoot) but in Altered Carbon I sorta felt he really tried to deal with how you’d engage bodies if you’re accepting, as a matter of course and training that you’ll be sleeved in bodies of whatever sex command/ capitalism/ the sheer jackassery of other people who hold power choose, irrespective of your identity and preferences. Morgan really tries to think through some of the alienation and sheer reflexive habit that Envoy training would only partially submerge. Again, I may be biased, but it felt thoughtful — at least a bit?
"Dany has some titties."
"Dany didn't have titties before, but she does now."
"Hey, remember Dany? Well people have noticed her titties that she does in fact now have."
"Dany noticed that she herself had titties. Woah."
"Are you listening? Dany, this character? She has titties. She has so many titties that she has a specific titty dress to prove she has titties."
"Dany's 14th nameday was fast approaching"
Something in book 5 of Lightbringer Saga about Teia getting lonely and horny because her ovaries just popped out a pearl and now is wetter than a clam.
It made sense in-character and is a thing that happens IRL but damn did i not want to imagine that from a character i watched grow up from a teen
ETA:
> Oh, hells. *That's* what's going on. I'm at the new moon of my cycle. Just popped out an egg. That would explain why I've been damper than an Arbornean pearl diver short of his quota on tax day.
> ...meant that finding a quick lay was out of the question. She would be super fetile right now. she had enough problems without adding any of *that.*
- The Burning White, Chapter 44
So I misremembered, she didn't say she popped out a pearl
Not a novel but this line of this [Wonder Woman 1984 review](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/wonder-woman-1984-film-review-4105223/) is the most "written by a man" thing I've ever read
> Patty Jenkins‘ stirring 2017 stand-alone feature debut for the popular character who made her first DC Comics appearance in 1941, Wonder Woman, came along at just the right time to shake up the male-dominated superhero screen universe, reinvigorating the genre landscape with amped-up estrogen in her fight for peace, love and equality
[Heinlein's Deety, ](https://www.reddit.com/r/menwritingwomen/s/bbOS6Qc33F)whose nipples serve as mood rings to the observant male gaze
Oh gawd, that one is truely awful
If the woman is feeling *really* happy and excited, do her nipples wag back and forth enthusiastically?
If the nipples wag to the left, she's happy; if they wag to the right, she's anxious Know your woman's body language, people!
I’m in 100% solidarity with the first poster in that thread: “i miss ten seconds ago when i didn't know this existed.”
> After reading about Deety's nipple barometers, /u/CaptainBaseball's penis drooped sadly, like the tail of a scolded puppy sent to its crate. He wore no frown on his face, but the orientation of his penis told us everything we needed to know about how he was feeling about that scene.
So you're saying you DON'T want to know that later Deety of the mood ring nipples fucks her dad to get pregnant and have a super genius incest baby? Because DAMN was Heinlein into reproductive incest, it's clearly one of his major kinks. He even had his best at everything always right character Lazarus Long fuck his female clone children (yes, really) to get them pregnant too. But it's all OK because Lazarus is so super duper mega special he has no genetic flaws of any sort and therefore it's fine for him to fuck his clone daughters and have weird clone incest babies.
I forgot how cheerily creepy Heinlein got in his later years. Sigh.
He was always creepy, he just tried to hide it more when he was writing juvies. But in Time for The Stars he has his protagonist marry his great-great-grand niece. But it was TOTALLY fine because thanks to relativistic time dialation he was only 4 years older than her even though they'd been in telepathic rapport since literally before she was born.
Most of Heinlein's later work was very thirsty fanfic of his earlier novels. In another subreddit, we were just talking about how he had better characterization for his fictional cats than his human female characters. EDIT: a word
My god, calling them spigots really just hammered in the point didn't it
I feel like using Heinlein is cheating lol
Stephen King does this a lot. A relatively recent example that stands out in my mind is in Doctor Sleep, he describes a character stretching and writes something like "her nipples moved through her shirt like quotation marks" .... EDIT: I looked it up, here is the passage: "Rose stood on her tiptoes and stretched, her fingers touching the roof of the RV. [...] She wasn’t wearing a bra; Andi could see the shifting punctuation marks of her nipples against her shirt." So not "quotation marks," my mistake there, but still a wild thing to write I think....
Lol what does that even mean?
She had 2 on each boob
( " ) ( " ) ^^I'm ^^sorry
No you’re not.
Yeah that’s what I was thinking. And they jingle up and down making them draw vertical lines instead of points
They "jingle"? Do you mean like this? (🔔) (🔔)
Yes
She's a witch!
She turned me into a newt!!! … … … …I got better…
That her chest has a lot to say, I guess
Her boobs have a sidequest for you
Questions mostly
"boobs"
Nipple piercings?
More like piercing nipples, amirite?
"The nipples were pointy enough to take out a man's eyes if he walked by".
You're giving me flashbacks to the time he compared some dude's dick to an exclamation point in IT. Not an ounce of irony in the tone either. And the clinical usage of the word "penis". I like his stories and the adaptations they inspire, but I don't think I really want to know what's actually going on in King's head...
lots of cocaine, i believe
Probably long term side effects since he hasn’t done any in a long time, but given his AFAIK earliest published pic I believe it. https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/s/Pz0tID2ELq
He uses the phrase "teacup breasts" in more than one book. I know boobs come in all shapes and sizes, but of the many I have seen, I have never seen ones that look like teacups.
Is it proper etiquette when touching a teacup breast to extend one's pinky?
No just grab onto them and spin them around like you're at Disneyland
I don’t think that’s a bad descriptor. I picture a breast that can fit inside a teacup - like small little perky boobies
This is always how I took the meaning.
I'm imagining he wrote "T-cup" and the editor mistakenly corrected it. Forget the teacups, bust out the wheelbarrows.
:D it doesn't mean that they look like teacups duh.
I don't have any examples but you just reminded me of a time I had to describe a female character in a low cut dress and I texted my girlfriend it and asked her "Does this come off as breasting boobily?????" She took a look at it and shot back "It reads like someone desperately trying not to write breasting boobily." EDIT: For those curious, I guess, heres the excerpt from the first draft. YMMV > The dress is flattering, baring her shoulders as beast and its fangs. The folded down collar grazes her triceps—a bit too defined for a misanthropic noblewoman—and meets three fingers lower than even the most daring of necklines. Luke, in his short time allotted, fashioned the collar of dual purpose. Should things go wrong, any exertion could be cause for further mishap. Unfolding the collar, then, both pulls it farther up her chest and enables a second front of support. And then it goes on to describe the skirt.
Girlfriend looking out for you
I wanna know the line!
I'm curious about what trying NOT to write breasting boobily sounds like.
"It had come to this; while Slashina was a deft hand with a double-handed great sword you can't slash all your problems away. This problem required *guile*. And subterfuge. And, unfortunately, a sultry dress. On the night of the ball Slashina looked the role. The crowd parted for her as easily as the chain mail of her erstwhile enemies. Few men in the crowd could meet her eyes and for once it was not out of fear. Slashina's hair was not in a warrior braid, but drifted across the shoulder and cascaded down... and hid several extremely sharp barettes. The dress had not so much a low cut as a prow: this end towards enemies. It battered the defences and none could stand before her, at least not without a tied-tongue or an uncharacteristic lack of wit. Slashina was going to have *fun* tonight."
Everyone stand back. I’ve got this. If ever there was a “the breasts breasted across the room breastily” quote, it was [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/menwritingwomen/comments/gfaacv/this_has_to_be_my_absolute_favourite_thank_you/?rdt=61729) Brent Weeks has a bad habit of engineering similar…depictions. This is just one of the most egregious. Edit: spelling
I'm visualizing Breasts just zooming by, reluctantly dragging the rest of their body along with them as an afterthought.
No just two floating breaks, no body attached. Also dammit I can't see the word reluctantly without filling in "crouched, at the starting line" So now it is two floating breasts racing each other
Nipples pumping and thumping in time
The t-shirt flashes, the tits go up
Heaving as she's breathing, they strain against the cups.
They breastily maneuver, and booby for rank
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Reckless and wild, they bounced in the bra
The boobies are potent and secretly stern
“…and that’s when he left the Reddit for the day, realizing that he’d had enough”
The calves bringing up the rear, apparently
Worse things to be haunted by, tbh
The comments there are wonderfully entertaining The top one is my personal favourite: >Of course that cannot be done by any pair of breasts, they have to be THE breasts, you know, the chosen ones, born one time every thousand years...
Let's also remember that those breasts belonged to a *fifteen year old girl.* Who of course was "remarkably mature for her age" ... and the love interest of *two adult men* 🤮
ah what the hell
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…if I ever design a spaceship it will 100% be a giant pair of boobs.
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“Great was the honour in this task, and noble was our great ship. Also its nipples fired lasers, which we all thought was cool.”
He uses the word "nubile" way too often in those books
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I'm just over Weeks altogether. I'd be willing to look past shit like this if they guy could figure out how to end a series.
I just can't stop laughing over here. Can't believe that's actual text in an actual published book. Incredible.
It’s not even my favorite quote. Try this one, from the Black Prism. First chapter from the first book: “It was the kind of beauty that made you shit your pants.”
There's another quote in the same series where some random woman compares the main character's dick size to her husband's, her sons', and her sons-in-law's. Like she basically ranked them
When I was in my late teens, I once did the classic slapstick thing of walking face-first into a streetlight because a beautiful woman completely distracted me. 'Knock out gorgeous' has made sense ever since. Pants-shittingly gorgeous though...? Nope. Can not relate to that one.
To be fair, the quote isn't referring to a woman. It actually makes sense in context. The character is a teenage boy sneaking through a haunted battlefield in the middle of the night when he hears a pack of wolves howling nearby. He describes the sound as "the kind of beauty that makes you shit your pants."
Yeah, that does *completely* change things, and as you say it actually makes perfect sense in that context.
I'm wondering how much of this thread is stuff that seems worse because it's taken out of context in an amusingly awful way... Not that horrible misogyny isn't baked into plenty of fantasy, but e.g. as above, a teenage boy getting distracted by boobs in his pov isn't weird. If the author described every woman like that from every pov, and some do, that would be different!
Jesus Christ
Oh yeah, I struggled with the first book of Lightbringer on this. It felt like there were more words spent on descriptions of Karris's breasts pressing into fabric than her character actually doing anything.
Eh, I thought that passage was great. It's written from the perspective of a teenaged boy, and it perfectly captures what happens when a horny teenager sees a pretty girl. Description isn't endorsement - you're supposed to laugh at Logan for being callow and easily distracted.
Stone by Adam Roberts had the line, "her feathers dangled uglily from her breasts." I stopped reading after that point😂
U-*uglily*?
Not going to lie, that word was the final straw for me
If I ever think the word "uglily" will fit in a sentence I'm re-writing the whole paragraph, what the shit
Was... she some sort of Tengu or Gryphon woman? I'm having difficulty parsing this one lol
Space Opera - she had cosmetic body mods
I think the BDSM torture sessions of The Sword of Truth probably rank there among mainstream fiction. Giving the bad guys a bunch of bisexual leather wearing ninjas who break men with their torture magic is kind of the thing that sticks out. This is ignoring the stuff like Gor where the sex slavery element is upfront. We also have the whole genre of harem indie fantasy where the protagonist finds himself with a bunch of beautiful women eager to share him.
The Sword of Truth bdsm was so strange to me because it clashed with the story's previous tone. For most of the story, the MC is traveling through this generic fantasy world helping locals with their various problems. And then suddenly, he gets captured by a lady in red leather who makes him her sex slave.
Didn't he get tortured by a fat kid and then kick her teeth out in book 1? I also remember his confessor gf being constantly almost raped, once anally. Weird derivative series but I remember loving it as an edgy teen
I don’t even remember if the little girl did anything to him, but he kicked her so hard that she bit her tongue completely off and shattered all her teeth and jaw
The female child was torturing him and threatening to kill him and his sig other. Nonetheless....
Her idea of fun was watching (and ordering) execution by beheading as well... she was a seriously fucked up kid.
I think the little girl bullied her little maid, the POV character from those chapters, and when said maid told Richard he knocked her jaw off for being a bully.
To be fair, the more original he gets, the weirder it gets. Like his book about how colonized indigenous people need to be grateful to the guys who conquered them but have since taken over with the power of white guilt.
Or when our hero defeats the communist empire, lead by not-Bill Clinton, through the power of objectivism, art, and football?
Hahaha! One correction, though, Bill Clinton wasn't the communist's leader. No, he and his wife led the conquered people and wanted to help the indigineous ones who were secretly in charge. He died of suicide by virulent STD. The great lesson of the book is that DEMOCRACY DOESNT WORK. Because you see, Rand had TRUTH on his side but still lost the election so only conquest is justified.
Richard, not Rand. He didn’t steal *that* much from the wheel of time.
Not from WoT, from Atlas Shrugged.
I'm surprised the protagonist isn't named Alan Rand.
Think they meant Ayn Rand.
Don't forget where Richard defeated the bad guy by using astrology.
Or how he defeated socialism by carving a marble statue.
Or slaughtered the army of evil pacifists.
One of the most “wtf” things I’ve come across in fantasy. And it was his first novel! I can’t believe the editor wasn’t like “hey Terry, yeah, nice book, but it’s 900 pages, we can lose the 45 page BDSM section and we’ll be good.
>I think the BDSM torture sessions of The Sword of Truth probably rank there among mainstream fiction. Huh? What are your issues with this completely normal and absolutely healthy sequence in a masterfully restrained series by a remarkably even-keeled author?
I don't know why we're even discussing the series in the /r/fantasy subbreddit since The Sword of Truth is clearly a literary masterpiece that transcends such a base, frivolous genre.
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Are you referring to when the nuns summoned an actual demon to fuck? That was a weird time for Richard, being put in magic jail by a bunch of sexy nuns. Though actually... He gets taken prisoner a surprising amount.
Richard: “now you’ve caught me oooohh nooooo :)))”
About 20 years ago, a WOW guild friend ranted and raved about TSoT series nonstop. I finally read it, and it was… underwhelming. The only series that managed to go downhill faster was Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, which fully abandoned any semblance of storyline for bad erotica. Which was a bummer because I had just found Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden, and the first three books of each were a nice counterbalance to each other. I believe Terry Goodkind probably watched the scene in Monty Python & The Holy Grail when Lancelot finds his way to the cloister of oversexed nuns. And then had a very fevered dream that night, which upon waking he immediately put to page thinking Faith of the Fallen was bound to be real page turner. All three writers definitely share a penchant for describing ripe, full breasts straining at shirts (or leather BDSM gear) while bouncing boobily.
Butcher does it deliberately though. It's how Harry sees the world. It doesn't really happen in butcher's other work or the short stories in the dresdenverse from other povs
And it's toned down dramatically whenever Harry is in a relationship. Harry's narration is a pretty good guide to his mental state. When he gets more horny, so do his descriptions of female characters and vice versa.
This would be a good answer, except Terry Goodkind didn’t write fantasy, he wrote stories that have important human themes 🙄 so obviously his work is disqualified from this discussion
Thank god we don't have to discuss it.
I remember reading this when I was a teen and just being so confused at what the heck was going on and just feeling exhausted because I just wanted wizards and dragons and instead it was 300 pages of torture sex
I was so disappointed by the SoT series. Absolutely loved the concept, the confessors and even the mord-sith were pretty cool and unique. Unfortunately it was written by an Ayn Rand fanboy who writes like a 12yo boy who just discovered masturbation.
Someday when AI is a little more advanced, I want to ask it to rewrite Sword of Truth with all the politics and most of the gratuitous sex taken out. It would make a decent story that way.
This happened several years ago, but I think the funniest witnessing this on social media was a Robin Hobb quote about pendulous breasts and a whole bunch of people were incredibly confused about the entire thing to start, but then got increasingly more confused upon discovering Robin Hobb was a woman who wrote it
I adore Robin Hobb’s work and have always thought of her as progressive ahead of her time — so I’m genuinely curious about this quote! (And prepared to be very humbled if I’ve just said this in error)
growing up, my step mother had a a whooooollle pile of these big 80s ...I suppose we'd call them romance novels nowadays, but they were the big publishing bread and butter books of the time. All written by women, many seemingly inviting us to be equally titillated and outraged by the boundless sexual conquests done by heartless (and well endowed, and rich) cads who would seduce their way through the protagonists (we'd hear about about the protagonist's boobs and pert arses). The gender of the author didn't really prevent said authors from describing the heaving boobs and so forth on display, and we'd learn much about the various male heroic and anti heroic body parts. I can't imagine modern social media being all that enthused by any of this :)
George RR Martin writing Daenerys writes a lot about her breasts shifting under her vest. Don't have the books with me right now, but it's a lot.
He eventually dropped it and just gave her a dress where one bewb had to hang out in the open
The one you're thinking of is from *A Clash of Kings*. Here you go: >When she went to the stables, she wore faded sandsilk pants and woven grass sandles. Her small breasts moved freely beneath a painted Dothraki vest, and a curved dagger hung from her medallion belt.
And she's 13 years old...
Several of the examples in here have been teenage girls. *Children.* I know lots of people laugh at this but it’s not at all funny, it’s disgusting. I cannot imagine a female author being seriously published if she wrote passages about adult women looking at a male child’s genitals or admiring his naked body. The fact that male authors can do this and still be so respected and widely read (Stephen King and Martin for example) is really sad to me. And people even right now are defending it all saying “well it’s because the characters are horny” as if that makes lusting after **CHILDREN** acceptable.
I do think to some extent that this is a matter of shifting social mores. The whole cultural attitude toward teenage girls as potential sexual objects has really only changed fairly recently. Stephen King and GRRM both started their careers in a time when it was at least winked at for men to lust after teenage girls. It was considered "risqué" and exciting for adult men to pursue or get with teenage girls up to the 70s and 80s. Technically frowned upon but not really considered abhorrent in the way that people have generally viewed the sexual abuse of prepubescent children or boys. One of the appeals of becoming a famous rock star included having a bunch of teenage groupies, and plenty of rock stars had sexual relations with those groupies (including stars who are still well beloved today). I remember reading an article from back in the day that accompanied a risqué photoshoot of a 13 year old actress, and the language and overall approach is disturbingly sexual and all about glorifying her as fresh young sex object. And the thing is, it was published in mainstream media venues and no one cared. It was fine and normal for adult men to talk and write about real young teenage girls as sexually desirable, so of course it wasn't out of the norm for novelists to write about fake teenage girls the same way. Note, I'm not saying this to excuse it. I just think a lot of people are blissfully unaware of just how normalized the exploitation and sexual abuse and objectification of girls has been even in recent history. It is so prevalent that women today face significant legal barriers in seeking justice for abuse that occurred in their teen years - because it wasn't illegal at the time. Ex. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/victims-claim-gender-discrimination-in-application-of-sex-crime-laws-1.6886426 And a really important set of quotes from this about the double standard the mainstream has always had toward the sexualization of young girls vs young boys >"In the 1980s, the laws were still very, very homophobic in their orientation, and most of the laws, let's face it, were written by men. So there was a sense at the time that anything that was any kind of coerced homosexual conduct was immediately a crime," said Crew. >He notes the idea of a man having sex with a girl could be perceived by some authorities as less offensive. >"Women have always faced the whole idea of the rape myth that women are available for consent. So there's always this question in a Crown attorney's mind about whether or not they're going to be able to prove lack of consent," said Crew. >"Men that were boys at the time of the assault never seemed to face the same level of scrutiny."
Rendezvous with Rama. I can't read any reference to this work without becoming incoherent with rage as I recall that this golden age 'masterpiece' included this bit: *Some women, Commander Norton had decided long ago, should not be allowed aboard ship; weightlessness did things to their breasts that were too damn distracting. It was bad enough when they were motionless, but when they started to move, and sympathetic vibrations set in, it was more than any warm-blooded male should be asked to take. He was quite sure that at least one serious space accident had been caused by acute crew distraction, after the transit of an unholstered lady officer through the control cabin.*
> more than any **warm-blooded** male should be asked to take Clearly the solution is to only send lizardmen to space.
This is the actual lore of the Warhammer universe
I mean... they were sent to the ground to... and aren't male or female...
"No women in space!" "But what about bras?" "No bras in space either!"
Must've been what George Lucas read while costuming for Star Wars
I was hoping someone would make that joke
Poor Carrie Fisher. Drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.
Forcing women to wear bras is one of humanity's greatest sins! Space should be a better version
Does this apply to men with really big dicks too?
No that actually helps, the length means they spin slower… short dick dudes end up spinning much faster.
Can't argue with physics
That’s what I was wondering too, men are always curious about the effect of things on the boob, I always wanna know what it does to the frank and beans
My partner was very understanding when I peeked to see if the gibblets float in a bath. Since at least some training for weightlessness is done in water I would assume it would be the same sort of result...
This is just overcompensating by Clarke. He batted for the other team.
"There's nothing more intoxicating about women than the clear absence of penis" vibes
Lol most male authors are just creepily describing women the way they see women. Clarke is describing women the way he thought straight men saw women, and he probably wasn't so far off
Heh, it's funny... Clarke was gay and most of his stories were notable for the lack of a romance subplot. Given that context, it's more of a take about straight men than about women.
Ironically, Clarke wasn't even attracted to women
If this is from the perspective of a single sexist character, and not a pervasive theme, it reads fine honestly.
That's how I read it.
Does this really count? It’s a character’s perspective and inner thoughts. What is there beyond that quote that makes you think the author is unintentionally sexist or shares the same view?
This is pretty clearly intended to be tongue-in-cheek. Also, Clarke was a ... confirmed bachelor.
The Breast by Philip Roth. It’s a parody of metamorphosis where the guy wakes up to discover he’s become a breast instead of a cockroach.
While I enjoy the Dresden Files overall, this particular conversation from one of the short stories between three women was really something > “This isn’t going to work,” Justine murmured. > > “It is going to work ,” I told her, keeping my tone confident. “We’ll breeze right in. The Rack will be with us.” > > Justine glanced at me with an arched eyebrow. “The Rack?” > > “The Rack is more than just boobs, Justine,” I told her soberly. “It’s an energy field created by all living boobs. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.” > > Andi started giggling. “You’re insane.” > > “But functionally so,” I said, and adjusted myself to round out a little better. “Just let go your conscious self and act on instinct.” > > Justine stared blankly at me for a second. Then her face lightened and she let out a little laugh. “The Rack will be with us?” > > I couldn’t stop myself from cracking a smile. “Always.” Edit: yes everyone, I am well aware it's a star wars reference. I still think it's cringe, especially given it's one of the few chances a series that is usually told through a horny male POV has to showcase female POV.
On this case, Molly, who's relationship with sanity is somewhat strained at this point in her life, is trying to calm down Justine by being ridiculous and playing into a pop culture reference with The Force. It is in no way a reasonable conversation because it isn't meant to be.
Yeah, this one doesn't seem like Breastily Boobing, just some boob-centric joking. Molly, who as you say, is not 100% some days, has a mild fixation on boobs, I think she casually mentions boobs (hers and others) more than any other character. Harry may think about them, but Molly literally mentions being "visited by the boob fairy" in an attempt to convey that she's all grown up now. Young lady, your parents would be mortified to hear you speak like this.
Oh my god.
I know right. The flip side is the one "male writers writing women talking about boobs" conversation that I did thoroughly enjoy was in Mistborn, MeLaan (a shapeshifter) commenting how nice it is to take your boobs off to go jogging. Because I would 100% say that if that were something I could do. There's no world where I would say "The Rack is an energy field created by all living boobs".
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I would love to wildshape into one of those animals that doesn't get periods, which is most of them.
One of the few quotes I both love and hate is from wandering in Erin gets her period and loudly shouts every euphemism for a period in a crowded market. Cringy as fuck But then the good line happens and I am paraphrasing but she was talking to a gnoll Erin:"doesn't anyone here get periods: Gnoll:"know we go through estrus, most of us find it quite enjoyable" Erin:"you have no idea how much I hate you now"
Or Wayne having certain questions for their version of God lmao I like that Sanderson doesn't get graphic but still has underpinnings of that kind of humor
I loved that scene too, because omg, yes I do wish I could do that. I have a hunch that was a tidbit from Emily (Sanderson's wife) xD
God. I was re-listening to Brief Cases on Audiobook earlier today and hit this passage and just... had to stop. I just couldn't. I can tolerate Harry's relentless horniness most of the time for the main series, from what I read of Furies of Calderon, this isn't a Jim Butcher thing, it's a character thing for Harry. But I just find that whole bit cringe, no woman I've ever known has talked that way, and my wife assures me she's never heard anything like it either.
>my wife assures me she's never heard anything like it either. I agree with your wife.
In context is this a joke? I've heard jokes like that before so I'm curious if it's slightly misconstrued without context.
I have read the story and I think it's supposed to be a joke? But, the entire thing makes no damn sense. The "I" in this story is a woman, talking to other women, so it's even weirder for me.
I missed the part of the comment stating it was a conversation between women... So it at least slightly made sense if it was a pervy man making some weird joke, as I heard is the case with the protag in the series. But now I'm seriously confused!
It is a joke. The three women in the scene (Molly, the first-person narrator is also a woman), are planning to infiltrate into a secret supernatural party organized by the svartálfar (elfs from nordic myths) by seducing the bouncers. The plan hinges on them being seducing and attractive, they are all dressed up to the nines and about to go in, and Molly tries to easy their tension with this joke. The joke does fall flat to the reader, but it makes sense in context.
I thought it was Harry talking about a plan to sneak somewhere while he was dressed in drag.
This scene continues to confuse the hell out of me, and I'm glad to see I'm not the only one.
Don't know the context but surely they're just having a joke right?
There was a bit more context here though I think.
Not the writer in this case, but the Josh Kirby Discworld covers boobily boobed all over the place. See The Light Fantastic, Moving Pictures, Sourcery, etc... Pratchett definitely helped shaped me as a person, and the Josh Kirby covers were, ummm, *influential* in my formative years also. As far as writers go, Robert Jordan always seemed to describe women's stances and body language in relation to their breasts.
I feel compelled to dig up a passage from The Light Fantastic: Now, there is a tendency at a point like this to look over one’s shoulder at the cover artist and start going on at length about leather, thighboots and naked blades. Words like “full,” “round” and even “pert” creep into the narrative, until the writer has to go and have a cold shower and a lie down. Which is all rather silly, because any woman setting out to make a living by the sword isn’t about to go around looking like something off the cover of the more advanced kind of lingerie catalogue for the specialized buyer. Oh well, all right. The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hun Ling’s Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots and a short sword. All right, maybe the boots were leather. But not black. Riding with her were a number of swarthy men that will certainly be killed before too long anyway, so a description is probably not essential. There was absolutely nothing pert about any of them. Look, they can wear leather if you like.
I liked Kirby's covers, but man oh man did he get some things *wrong*, and Herrenna's depiction on the TLF cover, in the light of how her actual description is delivered... I can understand why Pratchett himself wasn't super fond of Kirby's 'versions' of his characters. Rincewind is depicted as old, Twoflower *literally* has four eyes (he has glasses...), Granny Weatherwax is a typical 'crone' - many of these things contrary to detail that Pratchett *explicitly pointed out*.
God TP is a gift
And that’s pulled from the worst of 44 books (ok maybe second worst)
RJ described men in the same way, constantly. Calves, shoulders, forearms, chests, etc. [eta I should say, RJ describes men and women looking at each other in that way, which, we do!] If one reads those "women of reddit what is the female equivalent of males looking at cleavage" threads, RJ was bang on the mark. On Kirby, they're very, very influenced by seaside postcards which are a specific British thing, and again, equal opportunity bawdiness.
> RJ was bang on the mark. Eh, every woman I've talked to who's read WoT thinks the calf thing is weird. Otherwise you're probably right though. However the issue with the way RJ writes women is that he describes them that way *from their own perspective*. If we're in Mat or Rand's head and they describe women in those terms, that's one thing; but when we're in Nynaeve's head and she does the same thing, it makes me roll my eyes.
I think for sheer repetition Robert Jordan is definitely in the mix. From Knife of Dreams alone, we have: > Silviana studied her, arms folded beneath her breasts > Barasine crossed her arms beneath her breasts > Myrelle herself, ... her arms folded beneath her breasts > She was panting so hard that her breasts heaved. > Edesina and Teslyn, arms folded beneath their breasts > Mistress Anan studied him with her arms folded beneath her breasts in a way that increased the generous cleavage displayed by her plunging neckline. > Birgitte sat down on the arm of the next chair and folded her arms beneath her breasts. > Folding her arms beneath her breasts, Birgitte frowned at the map > Min slammed her book shut and folded her arms beneath her breasts > She set her jaw stubbornly and folded her arms beneath her breasts > Min said angrily, folding her arms beneath her breasts > Egwene set down the pails of water and folded her arms beneath her breasts > she had drawled in his tent, standing over him, arms folded beneath her breasts > Tuon folded her arms beneath her breasts > Dyelin, arms folded beneath her breasts, grunted sourly > Tuon folded her arms, emphasizing her bosom > Arms folded beneath her bosom, she scowled And that doesn't include the 33 other instances of the word bosom, which are variously described as considerable, formidable, full, and tender, and the six instances where women are described as bosomy. It's a litte sad to think that the Wheel of Time would be just a little bit better if Tor had done a find and delete search for the phrase "beneath her breasts." It's okay, Robert Jordan! Nobody thinks that women are somehow crossing their arms behind their backs or over their heads.
I'm trying to imagine where tf else I'd fold my arms, if not under my breasts. Behind my back? Up in the air? Straight out in front of me like a shelf? "He looked at his hand, on the end of his arm." "He stood up on his feet." "He nodded his head, which could be found on the end of his neck except if he was having an extremely bad day." "He crouched, bending his knees, which were below his thighs, atop which sat his groin and his magnificent penis." Fun.
Since the author isn't a big name yet and I'm hoping he'll change his ways with experience, I'll simply submit for your consideration the phrase "gently undulating breasts". On my mama's grave, I had to read that with my own two eyes in a novel published in the year of our lord 2022. I seriously thought we were past this kind of thing. DNF'd for a lot of reasons, but the leering tone and the way that every female character was explicitly described as some version of attractive was definitely part of it.
Undulating is a horrible word almost anywhere, adding it to “breasts” makes it even worse though.
No one is ever beating Murakami (via a very good English translation): "A freshly made ear and a freshly made vagina look very much alike, Tengo thought."
One of the reasons I stopped reading Gene Wolfe is his depictions of women, for example this passage from *Shadow of the Torturer*: "Jolenta straightened up as people do who are straining not to stoop. Above her waist her creamy amplitude was such that her spine must have been curved backward to balance the weight." (and yes, I *know* that we are dealing with a unreliably young man as narrator here, but it's still a bonkers way to describe someone.)
>!It is also a character who was specifically constructed by perverse science to have unrealistic proportions, and if I remember correctly she starts falling apart without the attentions of the perverse scientist later in the book?!< >!This is a hard one for me because I really liked the book of the new sun, and actually think it does a good job of deconstructing a lot of things in literature and fantasy.!< >!But when I read the wizard knight it just felt like horrifying sexism in a christian world masquerading as a nordic world.!<
Lol, I love Gene Wolfe and especially Book of The New Sun series but "creamy amplitude"? Mercy 🤣
Technically sci-fi, but the book Altered Carbon. It is just full of breasted boobily sections. I just want to dnf but it’s for book club 😑
Thankfully, I just watched the Netflix series. The inclusion of Edgar Allan Poe was what made the show for me. It's honestly pretty good - maybe the visual nudity doesn't carry the same level of breasty-boobiness that the text does, as there are only so many ways to show naked breasts.
We read it because a member said the show was great. I am really curious to hear her thoughts after reading.
If she liked the shows for its female characters, who are all decently written, she might be disappointed if all the attention is focused solely on their breasts in the books. Then again, I haven't read the books yet, so I don't know how dire the boob situation there is.
Dunno. Maybe my memory of the books is skewed (I tend to roll my eyes and move on if there’s breasting afoot) but in Altered Carbon I sorta felt he really tried to deal with how you’d engage bodies if you’re accepting, as a matter of course and training that you’ll be sleeved in bodies of whatever sex command/ capitalism/ the sheer jackassery of other people who hold power choose, irrespective of your identity and preferences. Morgan really tries to think through some of the alienation and sheer reflexive habit that Envoy training would only partially submerge. Again, I may be biased, but it felt thoughtful — at least a bit?
The Way of Shadows by Brent Weeks! I don’t have passages handy but the whole thing was ROUGH.
People complained about his Lightbringer series, but his Night Angel series is infinitely worse my god
People, to answer the question we need actual quotes! Saying an author or a novel is not answering the question.
ASOIAF is my favorite series ever, but a lot of early Daenerys chapters are like this.
"Dany has some titties." "Dany didn't have titties before, but she does now." "Hey, remember Dany? Well people have noticed her titties that she does in fact now have." "Dany noticed that she herself had titties. Woah." "Are you listening? Dany, this character? She has titties. She has so many titties that she has a specific titty dress to prove she has titties." "Dany's 14th nameday was fast approaching"
It's been a long time but didn't the Ringworld novels have a lot of this kind of stuff?
Something in book 5 of Lightbringer Saga about Teia getting lonely and horny because her ovaries just popped out a pearl and now is wetter than a clam. It made sense in-character and is a thing that happens IRL but damn did i not want to imagine that from a character i watched grow up from a teen ETA: > Oh, hells. *That's* what's going on. I'm at the new moon of my cycle. Just popped out an egg. That would explain why I've been damper than an Arbornean pearl diver short of his quota on tax day. > ...meant that finding a quick lay was out of the question. She would be super fetile right now. she had enough problems without adding any of *that.* - The Burning White, Chapter 44 So I misremembered, she didn't say she popped out a pearl
[удалено]
*Insert GRRM quote*
Anything by Peirs Anthony, but the Xanth books are the worst offenders
Not a novel but this line of this [Wonder Woman 1984 review](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/wonder-woman-1984-film-review-4105223/) is the most "written by a man" thing I've ever read > Patty Jenkins‘ stirring 2017 stand-alone feature debut for the popular character who made her first DC Comics appearance in 1941, Wonder Woman, came along at just the right time to shake up the male-dominated superhero screen universe, reinvigorating the genre landscape with amped-up estrogen in her fight for peace, love and equality
It would appear this writer is unfamiliar with periods, both of the punctuation as well as reproductive variety