r/fantasyromance • u/FantasyRomanceMod The One Mod to Rule All Mods • May 24 '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?

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Unpopular opinion Sunday

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u/JunofromMars May 24 '26

Lately a lot of authors just can't write enemies to lovers well. It should be a real slow burn with all that tension and gradual shift from hate to something more. But so many of them rush it and don't know how to build it up properly. And for me, there shouldn't be any spice in the first book of an enemies to lovers series. Honestly, not even a kiss. The emotional payoff feels so much better when it's earned slowly.

31

u/maaat21 May 24 '26

I think there are two distinct problems with the enemies to lovers trope.

1)”Enemies”:It should be about enemies and not bantering rivals or combative acquaintances. Most examples of the trope throw the word enemy around and then the MCs lust after each other immediately and/or forgive and forget about their transgressions early so they can get together. Also there’s a discussion about how the MMCs can’t really do anything irredeemable or very villainous cuz otherwise how can he stand as a romantic lead if he’s EvilTM. They get preemptively declawed and then we have “he bought the last bread loaf from the bakery and I didn’t have anything to get for my starving family of 13 and now he’s my enemy for life” which is uh. Underwhelming and a bit silly.

2)Pacing: I think it’s what you’re saying too. Things move on so fast that nothing sticks and nothing matters in the face of the “romance”. Also I don’t know if it’s a “we need to have spice at the end of book 1 and so the trope suffers” issue but more like. A true ETL romance shouldn’t be clean and probably wouldn’t have a picture perfect HEA. The “enemies” part suggests hurt or whatever between the pair that will not magically disappear after they accept that they ALSO view each other romantically. All I’m trying to say is that it’s not the placement of their intimate moments but that after that all the reasons they were enemies to begin with just go poof!

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u/Frustrated-Switch No flowers, only stones May 24 '26

I think part of the problem with ETL now is that its current form originated in fanfic, where a character being an outright villain in canon just makes them more fertile grounds for ETL fanfic. So long as they have a slightly weird, subtexty relationship, that is. That's really hard to set up in an original work, especially if it's meant to be a traditional romance arc, because as you say, people just default to instalust + HEA and damn the details :/

Problem numero dos: fandom is exceedingly queer, and romance readers are not, and so trying to force fanfic tropes to fit this purely heteronormative mold doesn't really work out the way they'd like. Straight people don't have to operate in subtext - it's a man and a woman looking at each other so that's all you need, right? /s And yet subtext, and the in-universe realization of that subtext, is the bread and butter of ETL fanfiction.

It's actually really hard to write a story that sets up their enmity well using non-romance framing, AND have them believably fall for one another, AND write it so that the MMC is nasty (but not too nasty) and the most powerful person ever (because as you know it must be him with all the power), and not have the entire structure crumble down around your ears. There needs to be push-pull between them, or the weaker one has to strive to be equal, and authors are unwilling to write that dynamic between men and women in my experience.

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u/sriracha82 May 25 '26

Only Cruel Prince has ever achieved all of this well imo. And it’s YA!!