Have you ever been the victim of gatekeeping? Gatekeeping is when someone goes to enjoy something and a person who is already involved tells you that you aren’t allowed to be here. Sometimes they say it flat out, and other times it’s more subtle. Gatekeeping in fantasy can look like a guy alienating a woman who likes to game by quizzing her on whether or not she has stats memorized, she knows all the lore, and comparing his own scores to hers. If she can’t answer all his questions to her satisfaction, or disagrees with him, then she isn’t a “real” fan. For some reason, in a genre full of people who have been marginalized, abandoned, ridiculed, and bullied, fans of the fantasy genre have a horrible track record of gatekeeping newcomers and more casual fans.

A couple weeks ago, my mom was telling me that she’d gotten into an argument with another member of her book club regarding Tress and the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson. My mom mentioned that she felt Sanderson was a bit long-winded and that he could have trimmed out a good bit of the book in order to move the story along. The book club member disagreed, saying my mom wasn’t a “real” fantasy reader and that she didn’t appreciate Sanderson’s brilliance.

I’ll admit, despite the fact that I enjoyed Tress and the Emerald Sea, there were parts where my eyes glazed over a little too. I am not alone in this sentiment. But what bothered me wasn’t that this book club member loved Tress more than me, but rather that she was gatekeeping an entire massive genre based on a single book and a single author.

As an author who has read widely across not just sci-fi and fantasy, but plenty of other genres, this mindset really bothers me every time I come across it. After all, speculative fiction comes in many forms, from cozy fantasy to grimdark fantasy, from epic space operas to laser-focused thought experiments, and none is more “valid” than another. Some are serious while others are goofy. Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series is no less critical of society for its humor. Ray Bradbury’s flowery language and short stories are worlds apart from Brandon Sanderson’s more workman-like prose and monster books, but both set out to convey a sense of wonder and strangeness that is a hallmark of speculative fiction. The Spellshop, a cozy romantasy, charmed me with beautiful worldbuilding. With such variety available to us, we should be celebrating, not demeaning each other for our tastes. To say that one person must perfectly match the tastes of another in order to have a “valid” opinion is ludicrous. You might as well wall off an entire an ocean.

I’m personally having a very difficult time writing my book review of Wind and Truth because there are a lot of parts to it that I think were executed poorly or that I think could have been done differently for better impact. Other people loved the book. I don’t think that people who loved it must not be discerning enough readers to see the flaws–instead, I recognize that I value different things in what I read than what other readers value. The mechanics of a story don’t bother other people the way they bother me because they aren’t authors, and as an author, I am eternally grateful for that. My writing is not perfect, and I benefit from my readers valuing the soul of the story and characters over the nuts and bolts.

I like to think of authors, books, and readers as tuning forks, which are metal fork-like objects that vibrate at a specific frequency when struck. When two tuning forks that vibrate at the same frequency are brought together, they resonate with each other, amplifying the sound. If one is struck while the other is not, the silent one will start to hum in response to the struck tuning fork. Authors, books, and readers are very similar: when we find an author that we like or that we can relate to, their work resonates with us. Instead of tearing each other down, it would be nice if we could all recognize that we are all tuned to different notes, and that doesn’t make us wrong, just different.

Conclusion

I challenge you, dear reader, to help us all stop gatekeeping in fantasy. After all, the more fantasy fans there are in the world, the easier it will be to take over the world!