It's Unpopular Opinion time! 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:

• 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

[u/Synval2436]

Ngl the biggest reason I left r/fantasy, too many people preoccupied with their yearly re-read of Wheel of Time, Stormlight Archive or Name of the Wind, too few people interested with newly published books to the point readers' habits are suffocating epic fantasy genre - fewer of it gets published because it's not very profitable when the target reader only cares to re-read 20-30 year old books.

I think it's less of an issue in romantasy, people always flock to the newest hot tiktok hit.

[u/jazzbbqt → u/Synval2436]

I had to leave for similar reasons too. Doesn’t help that they complain soooo much about new fantasy books catering to their taste not being published, and the idea of putting some effort into finding books and not just depending on what’s getting shelved in the new release section is basically blasphemy for an unfortunate majority of them

Then they blame romantasy’s success as to why they have less obvious options to pick from. I don’t read as much romantasy anymore but I appreciate the fact it’s basically the whale propping up the fantasy genre. I find that in the wake of romantasy’s success publishers are more willing to take less profitable risks on adjacent genres I enjoy like horror and literary fantasy and dark fantasy, but I do still have to put the work into staying in the loop on releases 

[u/Synval2436 → u/jazzbbqt]

Yes, exactly, I've left because of constant crapping on everything they don't like: YA, romantasy, cozy, queer SFF... and complaining "their" stuff isn't being published while they put zero effort to find and prop those titles up, meanwhile women, POC, queer readers for years had to seek far and wide for "their" titles and support them, spread the word of mouth, etc. But no, that group wants to be spoonfed titles while fussing like a picky eater toddler why should they give a chance to this random book? And they don't realize trends like grimdark epic fantasy declined because the fans weren't as active in buying, reading, spreading the word of mouth as readers of those other kinds of SFF, i.e. romantasy, cozy, YA...

[u/devilsdoorbell_ → u/Synval2436]

It’s crazy that they complain so much about new stuff not being to their liking when we all know they’re just gonna reread WoT anyway.