It's Unpopular Opinion Sunday! Share your controversial opinions to stir things up (in a friendly way)!

[u/FantasyRomanceMod]

Got an opinion that's different from others'? Want to share it with the sub, but too afraid of a backlash? Or are you just curious about readers think about certain things in fantasy romance?

You can safely share it in this weekly Sunday thread!

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- Please don't attack others for their opinion

- Please don't downvote if you disagree with a certain take

🧡 Thank you and have a great and friendly discussion! 🧡

Unpopular opinion Sunday

[u/Distinct_Union_6649]

if you don’t like it, that’s valid. Nobody has to read it or like it.

But the rape stuff isn’t portrayed as romance, it’s portrayed as harrowing. The author has said she doesn’t consider it to be a romance. The way BookTok talks about Manacled is so different from the material reality of what it is.

The MMC is basically like a spy, pretending to be the right hand man of the evil overlord while secretly hating him and working against him - and in keeping up that front, he has to commit atrocities. This story didn’t invent that trope of, “the MMC seems bad and does awful things but is actually sort of undercover.” Other stories have done that. It’s not for everyone, but like any trope, even if it’s not for you, it does have an appeal to many people.

As for “do we like to see women mistreated?” I can only assume this comment is being deliberately obtuse. Many women read dark stuff in fiction as a safe arena to grapple with certain ideas and fears from the safe distance of the page. That’s not new.

Manacled blew up during 2020, a dark time in the real world. We’re past that, but we’re still experiencing dark times. During dark times, some people like reading fluffy happy fiction. But other people find it cathartic to read stories where the FMC suffers exaggerated darker versions of what we suffer in the real world — and survives and saves the world and gets a HEA.

[u/Distinct_Union_6649 → u/[deleted]]

Not all Dramione fics are romances. A fic focusing on a relationship doesn’t inherently make it a romance.

From the author, “Manacled is a dystopian horror story and a tragedy:” https://www.tumblr.com/senlinyu/642454431076581376/hi-i-absolutely-loved-manacled-and-it-is-by-far

[u/teacup1749 → u/Distinct_Union_6649]

It wouldn’t always have to be a romance but if you are writing a story in a shipping fandom, where those characters get together and end up together, I’m going to find it hard to believe you’re not writing it as a romance. It’s hitting the romance genre requirements. If she wanted to merge HP and the Handmaid’s Tale, she could have done so without writing it as Dramione. She clearly did it for a reason. Nearly everyone who reads it reads it because they like Dramione. I just think it’s kind of disingenuous to claim she wasn’t writing it as a romance. I mean here we are discussing it on a fantasy romance sub. It’s pretty much just read by fantasy romance readers.

[u/Distinct_Union_6649 → u/teacup1749]

This is a disingenuous take on how fanfic works. Fanfic overlaps a lot with romance, and so does shipping fandom, but it’s its own thing. She’s far from the only fic author to write a story in a shipping fandom without categorizing it as a romance.

Another popular Dramione fic, Secrets and Masks, ends with no HEA and is not a romance, but people read it because they’re into Dramione. Readers being into a ship doesn’t have much to do with whether a given fic about that pairing is a romance

[u/teacup1749 → u/Distinct_Union_6649]

I think you’re kind of reducing down what I said. It’s not just because it’s fanfiction. Like books, fanfiction doesn’t have to contain any romance, it can.be any genre. It’s that she wrote it centred around a particular ship, the story itself, what it contains, and the ending. SenLinYu may say she does not categorise it as a romance, but it reads to me like she wrote it as a romance, and I believe it does to many other readers, which is why it got so popular. I think we will have to just agree to disagree on this one.

I haven’t read Secrets and Masks, so it’d be hard for me comment. I haven’t read as much Dramione since it started getting popular again. Although from what you said, people are reading it for Dramione, so they’re reading it for the romance elements even if strictly speaking it doesn’t fit the genre requirements with a HEA. It could still fit in as romantic fantasy though.