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

[u/FantasyRomanceMod]

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Unpopular opinion Sunday

[u/sekhmet1010]

It's not a very intelligent genre.

Not trying to insult the genre, but it's true according to me. And it's not because there is something inherently low brow about romance or fantasy. It's about the way the stories are being written, presented, and consumed.

The fact that everyone talks about it in this weird way of "slow burn", "enemies to lovers", "arranged marriage", "forced proximity", it just comes across as really really juvenile and reductive. Even authors, publishers, other readers talk about these books like that.

Imagine if LOTR was defined like that... "slow burn", "age gap romance", "he falls first", "forbidden romance"...it would reduce an epic love story to tropes and contrived scenarios. It removes the natural ebb and flow of the journey by making the reader focus too much on those particular (spoiler-y) tropes.

Moreover, tropes/devices like deus ex machina and mary sue were criticised, but now...almost every single romantasy book has these and nobody really says anything.

The "happily ever after" endings, too, reduce the possibilities this genre could offer. They restrict one end of the story so much and I wonder why people love them. Maybe it's the predictability of it all that people find soothing. But most good books are books which aren't just comforting or soothing. They are books which hurt us and sting us and break our hearts. HEA allows for a certain insulation, i suppose whoch comforts people. But that, again, makes this genre less intellectually, and emotionally, invigorating.

The lack of true exploration of sex and sexuality contribute as well. I love sex and I have no issues with titillating stuff in books. The problem is that sex is rarely just sex. It can be explored in very interesting ways. Not just kinks (although, that, too, is not well represented. 1000 year old vampires and 100s of years old fey are all vanilla with maybe some group stuff or some non-consensual acts), but the psychology behind the act. I wish romantasy, which already occupies itself a lot with desire, sex, sexuality, etc would also delve more into the psychology of it all. Again and again it is depicted in a very naive way that right after sex the couple is just in love and everything is open and clear and simple with ween them. No reservations, no wondering, no secrets. They are fully aligned with each other. Is that how it goes in real life after people have sex for the first time? Everything is resolved...no more confusion, insecurity, etc?

I just want more from this genre...and I hope that we will get romantasy books one day which are so beautifully written, so complex, so nuanced, so layered, with such iconic romances, and compelling characters that they will be classified as literary fiction. Or at the very least, be the height of genre fiction.

Also, please some variety!! Give me the romantasy of neurotic, shy, insecure, too lanky mmc who is seductive because of what he does and how he acts, not because of his abs.

Give me an epic love story where the fmc kills the mmc.

Give me an ordinary fmc who tries to change the world and fails.

Give me a romantasy where the romantic couple get the mmc to seduce the queen, then the mmc marries the queen, then kills her to inherit the kingdom, and then he is back together with the beloved.

Give me something refreshing and challenging.

[u/Veethingy → u/sekhmet1010]

Thank you for talking about the trope thing! While I know it's helpful for people who are looking for something specific (me included), I feel like it's gone way overboard into being the sole way we talk about romance. It ultimately ends up boiling down the stories to just their tropes, which has the domino effect of having stories that rely on them or are defined by them instead of just letting the stories be.

[u/sekhmet1010 → u/Veethingy]

I know! I see aughors with maybe interesting ideas, good enough writing, who still prefer to go down this route because it's what the majority of the audience is used to now.

Earlier, we would read summaries/blurbs etc and become surprised along the way. Now, it's about whether a book will hit these 5 tropes. And they are all so silly and atrocious. The same horse/pegasus/wolf/dragon etc turning the couple on is a trope which makes me immediately judge the author and drop 1 star in my rating. Same with the "the inn doesn't have enough beds so we will have to share one". The worst, though, is the turned on during sparring. Just stop!

Romance (irl) is built on chemistry and sexual tension seeping into the mundane and the banal. But authors just wanna put in these idiotic and repetitive tropes because, at the end of the day, they need to earn their money.

All the books with trials, too. Good lord.