Oh, bloody hell. The fiat maximalists are nominating vitalik for a Nobel Prize.

America is not a Democracy. America is a Constitutional Republic.

That is a good thing because our Constitution exists to protect individual rights from the whims of would-be totalitarians and the easily-sway-able masses.

"Our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to hammer [disinformation] out of existence. What we need is to win...the right to govern by hopefully winning enough votes that you’re free to be able to implement change." - John Kerry

When the Constitution stands in the way of would-be totalitarians, they naturally suggest we disregard it… After all, freedom of speech can be quite dangerous (to the would-be totalitarians trying to centralize power), so perhaps it’s better to just get rid of that pesky First Amendment…

“To fight disinformation.”

“For your safety.”

“For the greater good.”

“To save democracy.”

Of course, the greatest spreaders of disinformation are the totalitarians themselves. They fear free speech because free speech removes the State’s ability to monopolize “The Truth.”

When speaking the truth becomes a crime, dissent itself is criminalized.

This is their goal.

When you read fiction of any genre, do you tend to gravitate toward authors and/or main characters of your own gender, or not really and it’s fine either way?

In my reading, it seems about 50/50. Plenty of male and female authors I like, and usually there are a lot of major characters of both genders.

Statistically, women read novels more than men, but it varies by genre, eg romance vs military fiction. I guess part of why my reading is somewhere in the middle is I don’t read pure romance books or pure military books and the like, but rather read adventure/fantasy/sci-fi books that often have one or more romantic arcs, one or more action scenes including sometimes military scenes, heists, crimes, etc.

I listened to this podcast on how to write novels that men would like out of curiosity, and it was interesting. Basically, their thesis is that too much current writing advice is geared to writing for women, so male readers kind of get left out, but then authors pick up on that and write for men, and they do a lot of volume. I think that’s largely correct. However, I also found the advice a bit black and white, like that most women want character development and details of feelings while most men want achievement and details of things.

My assumption is that the majority of men and women readers want both of those things.

So what are your thoughts? Do you tend to gravitate toward authors and characters of your gender or not really?