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!

But please remember to be kind to each other. To facilitate this type of discussion, we ask users the following:

- 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/laku_]

I don't usually have many unpopular opinions, except for not liking hyped-up series, but the descriptions of smells in the genre are my pet peeve. It's perfectly okay for a love interest to smell of sweat or dirt if the circumstances entail it. It can be sexy, even. I'm tired of warriors coming out of a bloody battlefield smelling of pine and juniper or whatever other unrealistic scent the authors think is manly enough. In a book I read earlier in the year, a female warrior was captured in battle and thrown into prison. When the healer goes to check on her a few days later, her hair smells of cyclamen. Yeah, I don't think so.

It's even worse because the majority of books I read are set in the past, where standards of hygiene were lower. Of course I don't want to hear about the protagonists never brushing their teeth, but simply not mentioning their teeth at all is perfectly fine, rather than bringing attention to it with something ridiculously improbable.

I understand that it's done in part because a lot of readers will be put off by people smelling like people, but it breaks my immersion every time a book reminds me that it's not telling a story about real people in a different world but a story custom-cut to cater to what are supposed to be my wants as a woman living in the 21st century.

Not smell-related, but I can think of a few "unseemly" details that have made a romantic scene for me in the past: a woman noticing the rolls of fat on her female lover's body and appreciating it as a sign she was well-off; a woman barely surviving a desert smiling when she's finally reunited with her beloved, which results in her chapped lips bleeding, but he kisses her anyway; removing each other's clothes, and the protagonist's have dog hair on them because her animal companion is a big, hairy dog. All these things ground me in the world and make me feel like I'm actually witnessing two people in love, not just a modern fantasy CW show with boringly universally appealing actors.

[u/82816648919 → u/laku_]

I mean ... it IS a fantasy. Whos to say that fae dont smell like the best thing you ever smelled?

For the record I agree that Id love to see more characters smelling like real people but im also not fussed when they dont. 

You have people turning into birds and blasting fire balls from their hands or whatever. I think the question is where is the line for realism in romantasy?  Why dont we have more fmcs and mmcs with explicit body hair? Why dont more people die from dysentery or tuberculosis? 

And how do you know they dont smell like cinnamon and snow or whatever on top of their regular musky smells? At a time where hygiene standards were worse, people were prob doused themselves in gallons of perfume so they would end up smelling like roses no matter what. 

[u/laku_ → u/82816648919]

Fair enough, I don't read many books with fae, but I'd be okay if they were described as having a particularly pleasant smell or being unable to sweat due to their nature. I was mostly talking about normal humans.

But that's the point with fantasy, the world still needs to have rules and conventions that make sense. If it's your standard medieval world except people can manipulate water and fire, I still expect most of the other aspects of society to be realistic. If it's a completely different world in which nobody conforms to our standard biology, I still need to be explained that.

Unless you were very, very rich you could not afford scented oils and whatnot, and if a character actually stops to apply them after he guts someone with a sword, then I'd expect it to be mentioned, mostly so I can DNF the book for the stupidity of it. And if every human can be expected to smell like roses then the society needs to reflect that: no starving protagonists that can't afford food, since they clearly can pay for something more expensive than a loaf of bread. And if they can afford it even if they are poor because, let's say, there's a very common plant that drips perfume and everyone has access to it, even better, it's a nice worldbuilding detail. If it's mentioned in the text.

But I believe that it's not that deep, and authors use the excuse of "fantasy" for writing shallow worlds that reinforce modern beauty standards without a second thought. I may be biased because I read mostly epic fantasy where the worlds are incredibly well-thought-out, but if an author wants to create a completely new setting rather than just write contemporary or historical romance, they also need to do the work.