In matters of love, men are attracted to looks while women are attracted to status and personality. This is a fact borne out by innumerable psychological studies and by many frustrated suitors. This fact is the reason women accuse men of being shallow and men accuse women of only wanting bad boys. This is also the reason men rate women’s attractiveness on a bell curve while women rate most men as unattractive (not saying it’s unfair, just stating facts.)
However, this applies just as much to entertainment as it does to romance.
Truer than you realize. (R.O.D: Read or Die © Hideyuki Kurata)
It is commonly lamented that men and boys don’t read. Indeed, women read more than men, and when men do read, it’s usually nonfiction. Oftentimes, the progressive bias of the publishing industry or the high prevalence of female editors is blamed, so books of interest to men rarely made it through mainstream channels, which pushed men and boys away from the written word.
However, I think that men don’t read for the same reason that men don’t consider a woman’s social status when it comes to attraction: they’re more visually oriented in general, not just when looking for love.
In the days before television, more men read novels because that was the only form of entertainment available. However, as film, television, and especially video games became more dominant, men shifted to those due to their intensely visual nature. Hardcore gamers are typically men. Fans of action movies are usually male, as are viewers of pornography. Shonen manga (that is, manga for boys) is characterized by visually impressive fight scenes.
Against such things, novels simply cannot compare.
One can argue that women watch a lot of film and TV as well, and that reading is declining for both sexes. However, the kinds of film and TV they prefer aren’t as intensely visual as action and fantasy and the like; if appealing to women, fight scenes are optional at best. There’s also the aforementioned fact that women read more fiction than men, even in these times of less reading for pleasure.
This brings me to a rather sobering conclusion: the best way to appeal to men and boys is to make visual entertainment. Novels won’t cut it because the men aren’t there, and words on a page don’t grab their attention like pictures on a screen do.
I specifically wrote Shining Tomorrow Volume 1 to not work as a video game. Although I wasn’t thinking of it at the time, I gave it a female protagonist and centered much of the plot around things women would concern themselves with (with plenty of violence thrown in, of course.) I will continue this general woman-centric approach in Volume 2, as more women than men would likely be interested in any novel at all.
Fortunately, I’m also doing short films, and these are aimed at men. Below, you can watch my first film Defeat the Witch!
This is essentially why we need more developers in PulpRev/Superversive. Writing and comics are good and all, but we need a wider reach. We need our fingers in more of the pies.
Exactly the problem I hope to fix. Books are good and all, but PulpRev has hit a plateau. Moving pictures move people and make them feel like no other medium can.
I would like to interject.
While visual media greatly appeal to me, what keeps me from consuming more literature is actually how terrible most authors are at their craft. Reading literature from too far back in history puts me off because of the dense, archaic diction and the confusing punctuation from those eras; reading modern literature puts me off because of the flippance, the weak command of English, and the envious styles of writers who grew up with cinema and television. And with blogs like The Emperor’s Notepad that reveal to me all of the elegant ways of writing that modernists have abandoned, that alone makes it all but certain that I will never read the words of modern authors again.
There exists on Amazon.com a book called The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: The Complete First Edition, and the stories within would give you a general idea of the stories that I would prefer in the current year–stories that are easy to read, unpretentious, and short, especially when their authors aren’t weirdo fandom cultists who try to establish franchises.
Your objections are fair; there’s little to argue with. However, authors try to establish franchises so that they can profit from their work. I’m not saying you’re “wrong” or “bad” or “don’t get it” or somesuch, just that at least some creatives treat their craft as a business.
I apologize if I insinuated that you were a weirdo, because in spite of your anime consumption, I have interacted with people far weirder.
I also understand that franchises are easier to market than one-offs, but I believe that they inflict long-term damage to our culture in that they foster “popular” culture and fandoms. There are plenty of fandoms, I grant, that form around one-offs, but franchising a story with needless sequels (or fluff that expands it into multiple volumes) and merchandise is like waving bottles of booze in front of an alcoholic.
No offense taken. Also, if we don’t make franchises, someone else will — and they have.