This panel asks what the production and circulation of archetypes in Indonesian print culture reveals about the co-construction of gender roles, sexual norms, nationalism, and modernity. Nik Setiadarma traces the formation of the ‘sentimental man’ in domestic texts published in the 1910s–20s. Devoting attention to space and affect, they argue that male writers configured domesticity as a site of fantasy. Bronwyn Beech Jones analyses the decision to stage a theatricalised Minangkabau literary tale about retribution in 1928. She probes why writers in a women’s periodical framed the protagonist as their ‘warrior’ forebear. Ravando’s paper assesses gendered discourses about intellectualism, focusing on how journalists highlighted certain aspects of doctor Thung Sin Nio’s work from the 1920s–60s. The final paper examines constructions of modernity in 1968 to contextualise novels that centred ‘tante girang’ (cougar). Rima Febriani unpicks how these works frame sexual adventures as pedagogical fantasies for rebellious young men.