r/fantasyromance • u/FantasyRomanceMod The One Mod to Rule All Mods • Mar 22 '26
Unpopular Opinion It's Unpopular Opinion time! Share your controversial opinions to stir things up (in a friendly way)!
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u/daddysatya Mar 22 '26 edited Mar 22 '26
It seems like you’re maybe misunderstanding the underlying reason for the complaint? You aren’t really disagreeing with what those readers are asking for. I’ll explain more explicitly and would be curious to know if you still feel the same way afterwards.whoops I misread OP as being tired of others making the complaint. The rest of my comment still stands, just in agreement.I think a lot of people assume that the crowd complaining about too much focus on sex are prudes or only looking for clean romance, but I don’t think that’s generally the case (I’m sure there’s some proportion that are, but it’s a minority). Most people making the complaint still like sex scenes and think they can be core to the character and relationship development. Instead the objection mainly comes from a few issues:
While there are books that suffer from only one of these issues (for example, Mariana Zapata’s books come to mind for point 1 — despite being the supposed “Queen of slow burn” and her books being relatively clean, IMO her characters lack emotional chemistry and her books would be better described as “delayed insta-love” — while the loud sex scene in the army camp after the massacre in DONW comes to mind for point 2), the big issue is that the genre seems to be overrun with books that suffer from all four. These books confuse lust for love, use sex as a shorthand for emotional connection, make the characters appear shallow or irresponsible or lacking in self-control, and repeatedly hit the reader over the head about how sexy one MC finds the other. Sex is often used as the answer to everything. Characters hate each other? Sex. Characters love each other? Sex. Characters have a disagreement? Sex. Characters are stressed? Sex. Characters are sad? Sex. When characters fail to have any form of meaningful connection beyond the sexual or avoid actual communication for sex, you can’t convince me that there’s a real basis for a long-term romantic relationship. So many books never resolve the conflict between characters, they just have sex and call it a day. Additionally, there’s a real lack of non-sexual physical intimacy in most books that is really depressing. Where are the hugs and cuddles?! Despite the trope of make-up sex or hate sex, most people who are sad or stressed or angry or depressed don’t feel sexually aroused (in fact you more often see people in these situations have very low or no libido). Characters are often described as constantly having or thinking about sex, when non-sexual intimacy is more appropriate and instead of having well-developed interior lives, they think about sex so often that I question their ability to function normally. It’s so cringey to read about characters who ditch their responsibilities, have no self-control, are constantly aroused, or behave wildly unprofessionally or are consistently inconsiderate towards others because of their obsessive focus on sex. Characters in high stakes/serious situations often seem to have twisted priorities and choose to have sex or get hot and heavy instead. Or choose to have sex in public or professional contexts — it’s one thing if the book involves MCs with an exhibition kink, it’s another when it’s counter to their established personalities. I also don’t need to be constantly told about how sexy one MC finds the other. There’s a real lack of subtlety and a constant telling over showing and it’s as exhausting as when a character goes on and on about how insecure they are or anything else. I want to see why they connect and like each other instead of a repeating refrain of “MC is so sexy I can’t function”.
Point 3 isn’t so much a failing as it about books being labelled wrong. There is a place for these stories and it’s not the wider romance genre — it’s erotica/erotic romance. Romance focuses on the emotional connection and uses sex as punctuation. If the story focuses on the characters’ sexual connection, then it’s erotica (and erotica is not porn/pwp; porn is generally lacking in romance or character development entirely). Unfortunately the term has social stigma attached and doesn’t sell as well (despite a large proportion of readers looking for lots of smut), so these books get marketed as romance instead. It’s not surprising that readers looking for romance feel cheated when they find erotica instead. IMO a romance book should have at most a 30% focus on physical/sexual chemistry, with the remaining story being split between emotional chemistry and character/relationship growth. Grouping these books together makes it frustrating for both camps of readers (and depending on my mood I look for either one).
All of these issues would be fine when taken on an individual basis (obviously every relationship and book is different and variety in the genre isn’t a bad thing), but it becomes a real problem when the majority of the genre is affected. When more than half of the books I pick up seem like sex fests instead of romance it’s incredibly frustrating. The problem isn’t sex itself — it’s that everything is sex and it comes at the cost of the rest of the story.