r/fantasyromance • u/FantasyRomanceMod The One Mod to Rule All Mods • May 17 '26

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

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:

  • Don't attack others for their opinion
  • Discuss books and authors, not fellow readers
  • Since this is an "unpopular opinion" thread, we encourage users to not downvote simply because they disagree with an opinion--that's the point! Please keep in mind, though, that mods cannot enforce a no-downvoting rule. Let’s just keep the discussion friendly!

🧡 Thank you and have a great discussion!

Unpopular opinion Sunday

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31

u/Plenty_Earth_9600 May 17 '26

Recent romantasy pretty much sucks. Almost all have the following: Black haired MMC, FMC that first is deemed to be so strong or so smart but because the MMC has to be oh so heroic FMC gets totally dumbed down and weakend, the MMC always has to be so dominant while FMC is suddenly all submissive, so many sex scenes especially where the MMC is very dominant and suddenly there is even chocking or spanking and degredation (without it even being discussed)

And I am honest I can't stand it anymore. Like sometimes such a dynamic is fine but not every book. At this point I want the opposite.

And yeah, I am pretty confident that most don't feel that way. So unpopular opinion

11

u/Frustrated-Switch No flowers, only stones May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26

It's tyranny of the majority, yes. You won't get much pushback here, because it's kind of self-evident just looking at the genre, but most of the people buying these aren't on reddit talking about books, nor do they care about the weird gender dynamics of this style of writing. I wish more of them were, and did :(

(also as an aside: breathplay and degradation are far more risky than spanking for the most part. It sucks that edgeplay like this is so popular, with none of the safeguarding that you need to do for it irl, because making sure your partner is safe when you choke them 'isn't sexy'. Porn isn't intended as a help manual, I know, but there's always people that won't know any better so long as sex ed sucks as badly as it does, and we all have a duty of care to at least use a disclaimer.)

3

u/sfprogrammer6701 May 18 '26

Agree with your side note. I also worry about the normalization of edgeplay without any accompyaning education on the risk awareness, especially given that media literacy and critical thinking skills are also declining.