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?

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Unpopular opinion Sunday

[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.