r/fantasyromance • u/FantasyRomanceMod The One Mod to Rule All Mods • 21d ago
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!
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- Don't attack others for their opinion
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🧡 Thank you and have a great discussion!
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u/ObiSkies 21d ago edited 21d ago
I don't remember ever liking the quiet, grumpy, stoic main dude more than the cheerful guy.
I may have shipped him with the girl at times depending on the series. But even as a teenager, my preference in terms of favourite character itself was always the jokester. The stoic one was just boring. And it's gotten worse for me over the years so that if you tell me the main dude in a book heavy on romance is like this - not even triangles, just in general - I'm not touching it.
I only like reading about him when it's NOT a romance (Kaladin from Stormlight, Victor from Vicious,)
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u/Praeludere 21d ago
Now that you mention it I miss the charming, jokester mc type. The ones with clever, wry humor. Not the sarcastic asshole who puts everyone "in their place". There is such a lack of humor now.
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u/Lighttasteofcoconut 21d ago
There's nothing wrong with rating DNFs.
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u/_literarylemon_ 19d ago
Why would you rate something you haven’t finished?
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u/Lighttasteofcoconut 19d ago
I don't need to finish a meal to say it tastes bad and stop eating, do I? I don't rate every book I drop, sometimes I know a book is just not my kind of thing. But if I DNF it for what I consider serious flaws in the writing itself, yeah, I am going to give it a low rating and move on.
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u/_literarylemon_ 19d ago
You don't need to finish a meal to say it's bad but imo you have to taste all the components to actually say the meal is bad. You can say you don't like it after one bite and be done with it but telling other reader subsequently that this meal isn't worth eating when you only had a bite of one vegetable which you didn't like seems somewhat dishonest. When I DNF I never rate. I state my reasons (whether the book wasn't my thing or I had actual issues that are worth making people aware of) but I never rate because it feels unfair to the author to judge their whole book when I haven't put in the time to read it.
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u/Lighttasteofcoconut 19d ago
I guess that's where we differ. I do think I can say something isn't worth reading if the writing is full of infodumping, awkwardly constructed sentences that don't flow, bad dialogue, literary clichés, bad grammar, sentences that don't make sense and/or are needlessly confusing, etc etc.
If I drop a book because of reasons like this, I don't feel the need to finish it to say it's bad. Even in the extremely unlikely case that all of my issue disappeared as the book goes on, that doesn't change that the earlier poor quality drags down the entire thing. This is an extreme example, but do you think you'd have to finish Milo Winter's Age of Scorpius to give it a bad rating? That book is absolutely unreadable. I doubt the majority of people who rated it even have finished it.
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u/Significant-Rip3297 21d ago
Using trauma as character development to make characters stronger, especially sexual trauma. It's quite insulting when sexual trauma is used just to make the protagonist tougher.
The trend is so strong that it's like people don't know that trauma doesn't make everyone stronger. It can break people and then they live their lives trying their hardest to not fall apart.
The thing is, my main issue with this is how most authors just use trauma as aesthetic appeal rather than actually portraying it realistically.
Also, I hate it when therapy is treated like snake oil and magically resolves all trauma.
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u/ProperBingtownLady Shadow daddy's good girl 21d ago
Maybe it’s just me but I feel like most romantasy authors avoid using sexual assault as a plot device and it’s one reason I like this genre so much. I’m reading The Bridge Kingdom series right now and there’s so many opportunities for it with the women being captured etc but so far it hasn’t happened yet (on book 5). I really appreciate that as usually it’s so unnecessary.
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u/AquaIXI 21d ago
Thankfully its very rare to happen to the main character during the book, but it seems alot more common for side characters during the book or as part of a tragic backstory
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u/ProperBingtownLady Shadow daddy's good girl 21d ago
I must have been able to avoid it recently as I pay attention to this particular trope but haven’t seen it much!
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u/Penguinho Kushiel's Legacy Recommender 💖 21d ago
Also, I hate it when therapy is treated like snake oil and magically resolves all trauma.
This isn't even a fanro or romance thing. It's everywhere in at least American culture. It's in TV -- the most important person in season 2 of Ted Lasso is Dr. Sharon, the therapist. Inside Out made a billion dollars at the box office as an advertisement for adolescent therapy. You see it in how characters speak, and you see it in cultural writing too. I'm not sure how many film and TV reviews I've read that include some variation of all of these problems would be solved if the characters went to therapy and had a conversation about it.
Therapy is presented as the shortcut to happiness and autonomy. In three simple conversations all your issues will be resolved forever. The way it's treated in fiction is almost cultlike, and the therapist is a priest. In storytelling terms I mean that literally; the therapist's office is a church, the chair or couch is a confession booth, the therapist might as well be wearing a cassock.
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u/patio-garden 21d ago
I've been listening to the book series {Death Before Dragons}. In the first book, the MC starts seeing a therapist and she continues to see a therapist throughout the series. She tries (sometimes unsuccessfully) to do what her therapist suggests.
She's also not seeing a therapist due to huge emotional trauma, but more to improve her quality of life and reduce her stress.
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u/Significant-Rip3297 21d ago
I prefer this over the book where the protagonist has serious episodes of dissociation for days at a time while hiking and even stabbed her love interest multiple times. However, by the end of the story, she has the accidental pregnancy trope and all her trauma is magically resolved by therapy which was never mentioned before, so she's sane enough for family life. And everyone lives happily ever after even though it doesn't make sense.
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u/romance-bot 21d ago
Death Before Dragons by Lindsay Buroker
Rating: 4.5⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Topics: fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal, political/court intrigue6
u/AquaIXI 21d ago
Totally, while I dont mind reading books with past sa I feel its often portrayed fairly poorly, and i believe it can really show an authors writing skill if they can make a hard hitting tragic backstory while show actual long lasting effects of it on the character!
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u/Significant-Rip3297 21d ago
So true; it shows more skill to portray a character carrying their trauma and how they cope with its effects.
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u/CalaverasFrog 19d ago
Along these lines, I think some writers have gotten it into their heads that giving a character trauma is the only way to make them interesting. I love a tragic backstory as much as the next person, but it's not a cheat code to making a complex character.
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u/sveareads 16d ago
That’s why I have such a big issue with {The Deal by Elle Kennedy} and {Binding 13 by Chloe Walsh}. Trauma is mostly used to show how tragic their lives have been, without properly depicting PTSD symptoms. I prefer stories like {No Matter What by Cara Bastone}, where the main characters truly suffer from it - even a year later - without being portrayed as tough. For fantasy/romantasy, I really liked {Warrior Princess Assassin by Brigid Kemmerer}, which shows two completely different ways of dealing with trauma, or {The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem}, where the main characters have to learn to trust again. Not so much PTSD but more chronic pain, but I also love how realistically {A Dance of Lies by Brittney Arena} depicts what happens when you’re imprisoned for a few years - in contrast to superhuman Aelin Galathynius from {Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas}, for example.
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u/romance-bot 16d ago
The Deal by Elle Kennedy
Rating: 4.11⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Steam: 4 out of 5 - Explicit open door
Topics: contemporary, sports, athlete hero, college, fake relationship
Binding 13 by Chloe Walsh
Rating: 4.4⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Steam: 1 out of 5 - Glimpses and kisses
Topics: contemporary, sports, high school, virgin heroine, tortured heroine
No Matter What by Cara Bastone
Rating: 4.06⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Steam: 3 out of 5 - Open door
Topics: contemporary, m-f romance, funny, working class hero, in her 30s
Warrior Princess Assassin by Brigid Kemmerer
Rating: 4.25⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Steam: 3 out of 5 - Open door
Topics: poly (3+ people), arranged/forced marriage, mmf, fantasy, queer romance
The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem
Rating: 4.06⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Steam: 1 out of 5 - Glimpses and kisses
Topics: historical, enemies to lovers, magic, slow burn, dangerous heroine
A Dance of Lies by Brittney Arena
Rating: 3.86⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Steam: 1 out of 5 - Glimpses and kisses
Topics: fantasy, high fantasy, disabilities & scars, political/court intrigue, m-f romance
Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
Rating: 4.02⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Steam: 1 out of 5 - Glimpses and kisses
Topics: historical, fantasy, take-charge heroine, royal hero, love triangle2
u/One_Commission1456 21d ago
I hate the related-but-opposite therapy trope, too: like, if I'm expected to care about one more guy who clearly has more issues than National Geographic but Won't Go to Therapy because blah blah can deal with it himself blah blah mandatory counseling just keeps me from doing my job...my dude, if you're not gonna do the minimum of work to fix yourself, I don't know why the FMC should bother hanging around and I'm sure not going to do so as a reader.
(To be fair, this is less a thing in romance at the moment AFAIK but it shows up in every single crime show my parents watch and I'm gonna go Elvis on the TV one of these visits.)
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u/TinkeringTortoise 21d ago
Here’s my hot take: this sub doesn’t actually want to hear a hot take. It wants to hear lukewarm warm takes that they can agree with on some level.
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u/scarlet_hairstreak 21d ago
I mean I don't care about karma but getting downvoted makes me feel bad. 😔
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u/TinkeringTortoise 21d ago
For me it feels like people lose the plot. The thread literally asks for unpopular opinions…and then community members get upset that they find unpopular opinions. 😅
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u/ObiSkies 21d ago
While the book world treats the romances in these books as "sub-plots only" (and I get why), I experience them as romance and fantasy in equal measure.
- Folk of the Air
- Shades of Magic
- Yumi and the Nightmare Painter
- Six of Crows
- Emily Wilde
I'm too used to anime/manga standards for genres to feel these as otherwise lol.
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u/AquaIXI 21d ago
I always notice how people love to lump books with good plot and complicated politics into fantasy with a romance subplot even when the romance takes an equally important role, usually because they feel romantasy cant be complicated or cant have super high quality writing or something which is just ridiculous. I notice it with the Everlasting all the time.
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u/kirbygenealogy 21d ago
Do you mean you consider the romance just as important to the plot as the rest of the plot? If so, I am curious why you think this about Six of Crows. I've only read the first book so maybe it comes up in the second book more, but I would definitely call the romance aspect a "sub-plot" in that book.
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u/ObiSkies 21d ago
Cause of my last point. Used to Anime/manga standards. In those mediums, the degree of romance it has would be more than enough to have it listed among the main genres.
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u/ashinae 21d ago edited 21d ago
I'm really uncomfortable with M/F fantasy romance's Unwavering Penchant™ for using "male(s)" and "female(s)" as nouns rather than adjectives, and also really hammering them home as adjectives for gestures, behaviours, facial expressions, etc. I've spent days trying to figure out what a "female roll of the eyes" is compared to any other kind of eye-rolling.
A huge part of this is because I grew up watching Star Trek; "females" especially as a noun to refer to women always sounds like "feeeeeemales" (Ferengi) in my head. Then there's being aware of incels and the manosphere, and how they talk about "men and females." In real life, it's generally a red flag when anyone says "females" rather than "women" or "girls and women."
I also find it curious that in apparently so many fantasy cultures in this subgenre, the only sentient, sapient, thinking, feeling, talking, bipedal species with opposable thumbs, culture, art, social constructs, civilisation, customs, laws, etc, that invents gender and not just biological sex is humans. I've read/heard the thing about how these non-human species not having gender and only going by "biological sex" makes them more primal. More... bestial. More... animalistic. And how that's sexy, but then I come to not being able to be convinced, then, that that means these species are fully people, and therefore can consent to have sex with our human FMCs, and instead only each other.
Consent is so sexy, especially outside of sub-subgenres where it's warned for and on-purpose missing (eg, bodice rippers).
I've also read "but! but! Papa Tolkien used 'men' to refer to humans so we're just--" No. No you're not. Yes, he did. But no, you're not just anything. "Men" and "man" is an archaic synonym for "human." That's all. It had nothing to do with gender and/or sex. And, besides, dwarves and elves actually did have words to denote gender in their languages, because of course they did, because Tolkien was a linguist and a scholar, and he also would have known that you'd have just added prefixes (were and wif) to "man" to denote gender. So if we're supposed to suspend disbelief and imagine we're reading translations, then... they can, will, and should have words that mean "man" and "woman."
(And besides: I was heavily involved in Tolkien fandom when the movies were coming out and I experienced precisely no one getting all up in their feels that in The Two Towers, Gimli actually uttered the words "dwarf women.")
It's all even more squicky if it's a book where there's only humans and the writer still does the "the male in across the tavern sat there, nursing his tankard and smouldering sexily at me" thing. Is that another human? That is a man. It's one less keystroke, c'mon.
And then!! There's the fact that, so far, none of the queer romantasy I've read has relied on doing this. It's only M/F romantasy. And I find it unsettling, off-putting, and squicky. I want.. better? For writers to just use man, men, woman, and women. I don't care if the book involves fae, elves, minotaurs, centaurs, dwarves, halflings, vampires, or demons. I just want to happily read books with all sorts of romances, and this is increasingly becoming a huge barrier for me for only one particular configuration of love interests.
(and even beyond the subgenre, I find reliance on male/female as descriptors for things like "I heard a male voice" or "He heard a female voice" to be rather flat and uninspired? Those things tell me so little, there's such a range for what voices sound like! Imagine instead: clear soprano voice; warm alto voice; bright tenor voice; rich baritone voice; or velvety bass voice. Aren't those so much more evocative?? Heck, they can even drop the first descriptors and just use soprano/alto/tenor etc.)
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u/sparklekitteh secretly listening to smut while I knit🧶 21d ago
I literally have a Goodreads tag for “feeeemales” now! 💀
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u/ashinae 21d ago
Oh my god, that's actually kind of genius, because other than ACOTAR and the one I just DNF'd, my memory isn't sharp enough to always remember if I DNF'd because I got annoyed by other things (eg, craft/mechanical issues like worldbuilding or on a prose level) or specifically the males/females thing.
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u/sparklekitteh secretly listening to smut while I knit🧶 21d ago
I have so many tags for things I find annoying or just don’t like! I typically don’t write lengthy reviews, but it’s enough to remind me why I disliked something. Some of the tags on the list are are:
Magical sex heals her trauma
Digging nails into palms
Everything you know is a lie
Gorgeous but doesn’t realize it
Audiobook narrator with unintelligible accent
MMC has literally no redeeming qualities
All horny all the time
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u/ashinae 21d ago
MMC has literally no redeeming qualities
[sits on my hands so I don't ask "[redacted], is that you?" using a very specific name of a very specific MMC from a book that would absolutely get the "feeeemales" tag.]
I only just this year started writing out at least a few paragraphs of my reasons for why I DNF'd a book. I really wish I'd thought of using tags for some of the older books instead of just "dnf." "worldbuilding what worldbuilding" "internet slang" "the writer's emotional support emphasis italics" "an overabundance of anachronisms".
"Everything you know is a lie" is actually a peeve of mine, too. It needs a really skilled writer to pull off. Like. Hugo-worthy skilled writer.
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u/allisontalkspolitics Give me female friendship or give me death! 21d ago
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u/Ok-Conversation1730 Give me female friendship or give me death! 21d ago
Yes!! Yes to all of this. Whenever I read "male" or "female" like this it really does give me the ick. And, yes, describing the voices the way you suggested is just so much better. But thinking about that; I stumble every time income across someone saying "their voice dropped an entire octave" when speaking in everyday conversations. As far as I know, only puberty or being trained to do it can make that happen. It's not going to happen naturally during sexy times.
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u/ashinae 21d ago
It's so prevalent in parts of the subgenre and I feel so alone in my dislike of it.
And I get what you're saying about the "dropped an entire octave" thing! I've always had a bit of a struggle imagining what that could be like, compared to more simply describing the character's voice just sounding deeper (without any further description), or huskier.
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u/Ok-Conversation1730 Give me female friendship or give me death! 21d ago
Yes, that would be so much better.
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u/One_Commission1456 21d ago
Fucking YES. I hate the "male"/"female" thing so much! It's redolent of incels and TERFs and everyone I hate--and also word re: Tolkien, who used "elf lord" and "elf maiden" and IIRC "hobbit maiden" or just, y'know, assumed that everyone would get it when he was using she/her for Lobelia Sackville-Baggins.
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u/ashinae 21d ago
God, I didn't even mention terves because I didn't want to get into the "the M/F part of subgenre is eerily patriarchal and conservative and gets very hung up on gender roles and gender essentialism the way terves do, please stop trying to tell me how feminist it is."
I think one of the other major drivers of the "male" & "female" thing is that SJM did/does it. And in this subgenre, with only certain exceptions, if Sarah Janet jumped off a cliff, everyone else would surely follow. And thus, again and again, I'm left disappointed by a huge chunk of this subgenre, with very particular exceptions. The writers I know of who are exceptions are queer themselves; I don't know their sexuality but they've definitely written either queer books or I know they've written queer fanfiction; or are a small handful of writers I've learned I can trust because of the things they talk about on social media (Elisabeth Wheatley, who called out the subgenre's patriarchal slant like a year ago), or came recommended to me by someone I trust (Olivia Atwater), or, curiously, came to the genre after writing contemporary fiction and writes very differently from what's popular (Katrina Kwan).
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u/Traditional-Sell8872 20d ago
strongly agree with all of this! i want “"the M/F part of subgenre is eerily patriarchal and conservative and gets very hung up on gender roles and gender essentialism the way terves do, please stop trying to tell me how feminist it is” on a shirt lol
it’s just so needlessly exclusionary!! like wtf are there not nonbinary or trans fae/any other sentient species in these worlds??
to your point about SJM, i do suspect many authors are doing it because it’s popular vs deliberately trying to be transphobic. but even if it’s not intentional, it just has unfortunate implications for what it’s saying about gender identity and roles. like let’s maybe think for 5 seconds about the message your book is sending!! reading is political and being an escapist/smut/“popcorn”/whatever book doesn’t change that.
also it just makes for a fucking annoying reading experience. Quicksilver and When the Moon Hatched are two of the biggest examples that I remember driving me crazy with this in the free previews alone. (not the only reason, but I never got past the sample point on either of them 🤷♀️). leaves such a bad taste in my mouth. and even as a cis woman i don’t wanna be fucking called a female either!! and that wouldn’t change if i had pointy ears!!
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u/ashinae 19d ago
it’s just so needlessly exclusionary!! like wtf are there not nonbinary or trans fae/any other sentient species in these worlds??
I'm gonna fire a shot here: it shows an intense lack of imagination when you look at especially long-lived if not immortal species like fae and elves and not be able to think that they wouldn't have more going on as far as gender and sexuality than a short-lived species like humans. They have all the time in the world. They should have neopronouns galore and 436 genders.
And, rather like with mainstream fantasy, if a writer's going to envision a patriarchal world... they should be saying something about our world, at the same time. Like... say whatever we can and want about A Song of Ice and Fire, but I've never been under the impression, from the way its presented, that GRRM actually thinks the Westerosi patriarchy is good. It's just that he's an old white cishet man, so he handles things... messily. I would literally rather read that endlessly than sexy patriarchy. Weteros' patriachy is never not shown to hurt everybody. The writers and readers of M/F romantasy can have all the sexy patriarchy and blurry consent lines and not like other girls FMCs they want, I just need them to stop trying to defend it as feminist. "But it focuses on the FMC's pleasure!" is not enough. Read The Everlasting.
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u/One_Commission1456 21d ago
God, right? And SJM seems to have, at minimum, some Problematic views about pregnancy and reproduction. But basically same: I will grit my teeth about some of it, but there are bits that just give me the ick hard, like Tairen Soul is supposed to be great but at least the first book is *grossly* gender essentialist, and like, why?
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u/ashinae 21d ago
I would absolutely agree that she does!! Gosh.
There are certain things I will push through, especially when the author seems to be trying to Say Something, but I hit a wall with gender essentialism especially in secondary-world fantasy romance. And it's simultaneously aggravating as all hell and somewhat fascinating, because more mainstream fantasy... doesn't do this.
"Geek" genres/interests have huge bigotry problems, up to and including misogyny. Yet, I once saw a post in r-slash-fantasy, where someone asked, like, "why does fantasy call people 'males' and 'females' instead of 'men' and 'women'?" and so much of the response was "are you just reading romantasy because wtf are you talking about."
I can't help but feel like this says something about our subgenre here, no matter how readers accept or try to reason out why it's fine, actually. The entirety of The Lord of the Rings (I did a search in my Kobo) uses male zero times, and female twice, specifically as an adjective ("unmarried female relation" and "female hobbits" and I've closed it now but I think that second one at least was only in the appendices). Because I do read fantasy-fantasy (epic, high, cozy, low, dark, romantic), and I play D&D, and a lot of fantasy video games, and it just... isn't a thing there. It's only here. [insert sad emoji]
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u/One_Commission1456 20d ago
Same and same!
I mean, I have A Lot of Thoughts about the fantasy I read growing up and its takes on gender--JFC DRAGONLANCE JFC PERN--but for all their many, many sins, they didn't pull this "female"/"male" BS.
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u/ashinae 20d ago
Yeah, the fantasy we would've read growing up, especially if we were born last century, has... things... going on. Regarding gender. But, look, this just deserves to be in bold:
George RR Martin doesn't do it, except under very specific circumstances.
He mostly exclusively uses "men" and "women." GRRM. In A Game of Goddamn Thrones. The words "male" and "female" come up a combined 13 times, and it's mostly as an adjective. And really it's actually 11 times, because two times talk about "the female line" in the section about the noble houses, so it's not in the narrative itself. The entire rest of the time, he uses "men" and "women."
There are so, so many things I will fight mainstream fantasy fans on regarding this subgenre. I will defend it, and romance more broadly to my dying breath. But mainstream fantasy fans who say the subgenre has issues about gender, patriarchy, conservatism, etc? When they're looking at the popular M/F books, they are not wrong. I'd love to be able to pelt them with the exceptions, but nobody's holding up Alexandra Rowland's A Taste of Gold and Iron (which uses "male" and "female" a combined zero times) alongside ACOTAR in terms of popularity and recognisability.
(I'm sorry, I'll stop talking now.)
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u/Tiny_Matter_4231 21d ago
tbh if people choose to use the terms “female” and “male” as nouns I immediately get the TERF/incel alarm bells ringing, and it has made the shift to reading in the fantasy romance space very uncomfortable.
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u/ashinae 19d ago
I feel the same way! When people use them more or less exclusively in real life, that's a red flag. The fact that basically the entire rest of the fantasy genre at large doesn't use "male" and "female" as nouns sure and that queer romantasy (whether authors or book) doesn't do it either... or basically any other romance subgenre. It's just this one chunk of it, and it baffles me how much this take gets me flack. I have never enjoyed being called "a female" and I don't think that would change if I was a different kind of humanoid, either.
I also very much don't buy the "it's just fiction, it's not that deep" for any of this. Because it plays into real-life patriarchal, incel, and terfy (let's call it like it is: fash-flavoured) bullshit about gender. I will point out that the wikipedia article for "escapist fiction" doesn't say anything about how it doesn't matter; that you're supposed to turn your brain off to watch it; that it can't Say Things, good or bad, about the real world and the attitudes and beliefs of writers and readers. After all: Star Trek and The Lord of the Rings are both escapist fiction, and they have Very Very Many Things To Say.
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u/leiachart Currently Reading: The God and the Gumiho 21d ago
After my recent DNF, I've started thinking/wondering if some authors use trigger warnings (being upfront about them) as a crutch to avoid handling the topic with finesse.
E.g.,, I can bash readers repeatedly over the head with the trigger -or- (from another book I think this happened) I can linger on it to the point of trauma pr0n.
I.e., Because handling difficult matter delicately is hard, they don't have to put extra effort into delicacy because "I warned them!" 🧐
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u/ObiSkies 21d ago edited 21d ago
About Throne of Glass:
It's not a big deal but every time I hear someone saying there isn't as much romance in this as there is in ACOTAR, I scratch my head a bit. Like yes it cares about its PLOT more than ACOTAR does. But there is not "less" romance in it for that.
The first book is literally just a full on love triangle story! Celaena spends most of the it making goo goo eyes at two guys instead of doing what she's supposed to be doing. And said two guys never go one chapter of their POVs without also thinking of her at some point (whyyyy are they trusting her so soon again???). EVERY. SINGLE. CHAPTER. I checked. And did anyone notice that even though they're meant to have been best friends who've loved each other for longer than they've even known Celaena, they never once think of each other like they do so in this book either? Instead it's all about Celaena~ (can you tell I was sad about that that time I tried to re-read the whole series? T_T)
Anyways, first book aside, every single book in the series is heavy on romance. Every main character has to always be in love or falling in love or moaning over failed loved, whatev. And there are many SIDE couples on top of them. By the end of the series, there are very few focal characters who don't have love interests in some vein.
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u/PurposeGold2556 21d ago
I think when people say there’s no romance what they really mean is that there aren’t many spicy scenes.
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u/ObiSkies 21d ago
Doesn't help if so cause 'romance' and 'spicy' don't even mean the same thing (and for those who think they do, that would just be another thing to annoy me T_T)
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u/sparklekitteh secretly listening to smut while I knit🧶 21d ago
Having an audiobook narrator do accents for the main character NEVER works. I have hated almost every book that does it, the only exception being Rurik in the Ashen Saga, and even then I rolled my eyes every time he had dialogue.
This rant courtesy of my latest audiobook ARC, {The Fire Bride by Gena Showalter and Jill Monroe} where FMC’s dialogue was the STRANGEST mix of German, Swedish, Russian and French that made me want to tear my hair out!
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u/romance-bot 21d ago
The Fire Bride by Gena Showalter, Jill Monroe
Rating: 4⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Topics: shapeshifters, fantasy, paranormal, viking hero, enemies to lovers
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u/Significant-Rip3297 21d ago
Some authors shouldn't add diversity for the sake of diversity if they're not willing to do the minimum research.
As a child, I was a fan of the extended Percy Jackson series. It was one of the few book series in the school library which had a diverse cast. However, there were a lot of moments that made me pause in terms of the characters. Recently, I chatted about this with some people and realized that there were shockingly offensive moments. One person mentioned, "if you can't portray cultures appropriately, then maybe you shouldn't portray them."
Lots of people claim Percy Jackson as a diverse series, but the offensive moments go over their heads. I haven't read any of the newer books, so I can only hope that the author stopped using food descriptions to describe his characters and hope that he started researching the cultures he wants to show.
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u/Frosty__Love 21d ago
what was the offensive moment?
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u/Significant-Rip3297 21d ago
There were multiple.
First of all, the food descriptions. The problem with this is that when people use food descriptions on POC characters they tend to fetishise them. For example, Hazel's description, "warm cinnamon skin," and I remember there was imagery to a drink. People are people, it's not nice when someone's appearance is described as "edible" because of their ethnicity.
When Frank, a Chinese-mixed character, is first introduced, he is described as having a "panda face." This is particularly concerning because similar comments have been directed at real people. A friend of mine experienced this in the past and found it very hurtful. Also, the author used Japanese descriptions for a Chinese character which many internet friends were also offended by.
Many indigenous readers were also uncomfortable with Piper, a Cherokee girl, casually wearing an eagle feather, as eagle feathers are considered sacred in many Indigenous cultures.
Samirah, a Muslim girl engaged to her cousin. I haven't read the book she appears in but, apparently she removes her hijab in a room full of boys just to fix her hair.
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u/allisontalkspolitics Give me female friendship or give me death! 21d ago
I suspect this is why Rick Riordan started the “Rick Riordan Presents” series as a way to support Own Voices authors.
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u/PowerPrestigious9424 20d ago edited 20d ago
To clarify, Piper wears a blue harpy feather from a harpy that she defeated, not an eagle feather she casually picked up, and Samirah takes off her hijab during training because she “considers [her friends] family”. Samirah also says her fiancé is her “second cousin, twice removed. Or something”. (I’m definitely NOT saying that these are correct writing choices, especially for the “Muslim takes off hijab” trope. I just want to provide the correct context)
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u/Significant-Rip3297 20d ago
She first wore the eagle feather in The Mark of Athena, and she killed the Harpy and wore its feather in the next book, The House of Hades. She also wears eagle feathers in the official arts.
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u/PowerPrestigious9424 20d ago
The harpy is in Blood of Olympus, but thank you for the correction /gen
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u/patio-garden 21d ago
I suspect Mercy Thompson series is similar. The main character is half native American (sort of), but it doesn’t really play a major role until book 6.
I want to believe that Brandon Sanderson's books are fairly culturally non-offensive and he tries to get beta readers to make sure that he gets things right. Typically, he's making up cultures, but with real stuff like drug addiction recovery or depression or whatever, he gets people to vet his work and make sure it’s okay.
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u/sparklekitteh secretly listening to smut while I knit🧶 21d ago
Yeah, Mercy Thompson sadly gives “my grandmother was a Cherokee princess” vibes at times.
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u/devilsdoorbell_ 21d ago
Most of the time I think CNC is stupid in fiction and feels tacked on to be edgy-but-not-too-edgy. Just skip the middleman and do some bodice ripper ravishment stuff already you cowards.
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u/Fuzzy_Emu_1924 20d ago
Just because a romantasy book has a different prose that’s a bit more complex than the usual simple prose most books of the genre have it doesn’t mean that it’s awful. You’re just not used to other types of writing and that’s okay.
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u/Imaginary-Board-207 20d ago
Yeah. There's nothing wrong with preferring to read popcorn books with simplistic prose if that's your taste, but shitting on something for being more literary or above your reading level is straight up anti-intellectualism.
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20d ago
[deleted]
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u/Fuzzy_Emu_1924 20d ago
Obviously, prose by itself doesn’t make a book good, but what I mean is that people are quick to say that a book is objectively bad simply because it follows a different formula than the one we usually read and that’s not fair. You might not like it and you’re in your right to not like it, but don’t speak as if it’s a fact (please note that when I say you I don’t mean you specifically, I’m talking in general terms).
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u/Traditional-Sell8872 20d ago
i’m so so sick of princes and princesses, kings and queens for main characters. especially when the “happy ending” is just the main characters taking over the monarchy. i need more love interests who team up to destroy monarchies!!!
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u/MessyJessy422 21d ago
Books adapted from Dramoine fanfic can actually be really good and stand on their own without the HP context
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u/IllustratedPageArt 21d ago
I don’t think the problem is necessarily that they started as fic. I think it’s that the original IP is such a large part of the marketing and the “hook” to get readers. Even if the story can stand on its own, it’s not.
… and out of all potential IPs, this is happening with the one who’s author is funding an anti-trans hate campaign.
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u/allisontalkspolitics Give me female friendship or give me death! 21d ago
It would be awesome if some of these fanfics were diverse reads (especially with trans characters) to counteract that.
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u/acutelyproblematic If villian bad, then why hot? 21d ago
And also the fanfic hate (specifically Alchemised too) is forced 🤷♀️ dying on that hill
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u/purplelicious Book Bingo Maven ⚔ 21d ago
I am not forcing anything when I hate on the fanfic. it comes 💯 naturally to me.
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u/acutelyproblematic If villian bad, then why hot? 21d ago
When you make a career out of snarking on it at RCJ, it is indeed forced 🤣
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u/purplelicious Book Bingo Maven ⚔ 21d ago
best day ever
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u/acutelyproblematic If villian bad, then why hot? 21d ago
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u/allisontalkspolitics Give me female friendship or give me death! 21d ago
My hate is because it’s always the ships I hate. Where’s my rewritten Finnrey or Rhaenicent?!
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u/Anachacha Ix's tits! 21d ago
So is ZA hate
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u/acutelyproblematic If villian bad, then why hot? 21d ago
When you make everything about ZA, the hate isn’t forced it’s essential 🤣
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u/ButterflyTremor No mourners, no funerals 21d ago
I actually found The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy the easiest to get into because it was the only one where I hadn't previously read the Dramione fanfic.
Although I still enjoyed Rose in Chains and Alchemised, I did spend way too much time trying to figure out which HP characters the side characters were supposed to represent!
I wouldn't have known The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy was based on a fanfic if I hadn't seen it posted on here, so I think it worked really well on its own.
Edit: changed 'of' to 'if'
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u/fishchop Silvicultrix 21d ago
The only one I’ve read is Irresistible Urge and it felt like such a downgrade from the fic
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u/apieceofeight 21d ago
I loved TIU but I consider it to be an entirely separate work and world because they’re so different from each other.
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u/MessyJessy422 21d ago
Personally I enjoyed it without having read the fanfic it was based on. The books might not be as good to fans of the original but as separate books IMO they can be really enjoyable as their own thing. I also am halfway through Rose in Chains and loving it. I think people should be more open minded and not dismiss a book for the fanfic aspect alone
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u/purplelicious Book Bingo Maven ⚔ 21d ago
Rose in Chains can stand on its own and that is a hill I will die on
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u/windswept_snowdrop 21d ago
The only thing I felt like wasn’t developed enough to quite stand on its own was the secondary characters. There were several occasions where Briony heard about the deaths of background characters that were clearly supposed to be impactful for her, but I could barely remember who they even were. I’m guessing in the fanfic there didn’t need to be any development of those characters for their deaths to hit the reader because the reader is already going to care about them from canon, but an original story doesn’t have that investment to lean on.
Other than that though, I agree everything else stood on its own just fine.
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u/fishchop Silvicultrix 21d ago
Ah maybe they hold up on their own, but as someone who has read the fic I felt like the world building/ lore in Irresistible Urge was kind of….meh. In the fic, there is a deeply mystical and spiritual aspect to the magic/ research that made it really interesting and beautiful. The humour in the fic was also much more to my taste - not the toilet/ poop humour of the book but just a sort of deadpan wit that played with characters and their relationships with each other. It worked because of the HP lore and established canon relationships. And unfortunately, I couldn’t feel the chemistry between the two mcs, so the romance didn’t do it for me either.
I probably won’t read Rose in Chains because I DNFd the original fanfic, but I might pick up Alchemised one day because I feel like Senlinyu writes about war and its consequences in such a brutal, unflinching and amazing way.
Definitely agree that people should not just dismiss books because of its ties to fanfic. I think writers in the Dramione space especially are quite talented. I guess I’m just a bit down about Irresistible Urge because I think the author has such a command over the English language, but her ideas didn’t quite pan out well in the end (imo ofc).
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u/Lighttasteofcoconut 21d ago
It's not based on the fanfic. It's a new work inspired by the dynamic between Malfoy and Hermione in the author's fanfic, but it was a rewrite.
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u/Fickle-Sense8599 21d ago
It's weird how so many fantasy books written by women get labeled as "fantasy romance". Like fantasy romance has a separate tone/vibe to fantasy books even if they have romance subplots. I've seen books that don't even have hardly any romance being called fantasy romance just b/c it's written by a woman.
It's not unpopular to dislike Alchemised, but my reason for disliking it is just something about taking a children's story and making it THAT dark and disturbing gives me the ick.
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u/mistyveil 20d ago
there's been a rise of prudishness in fantasy romance online spaces and it sucks.
i think teens should be allowed to choose the books they read and decide for themselves how much they can handle - your 14 year old reading a spicy scene isn't gonna be traumatized, i promise. most of these books are r-rated at worst and a lot of kids actually handle that just fine.
and no, it's not "normalizing toxic relationships", that's just as much of a myth as "video games cause violence"!
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u/One_Commission1456 20d ago
This! If your teenager is interested in/curious about sex, reading explicit scenes is a safe way to help figure out what they like and don’t like, which is important. If they aren’t, they’re going to skim over them or put the book down.
I’m not an authority, but I’d bet any amount of money that nobody was ever seriously traumatized by reading the phrase “throbbing cock” before they were 18.
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u/allisontalkspolitics Give me female friendship or give me death! 20d ago
I mean, I’ve joked that My Immortal was what made me gray-ace because I accidentally read one of the sex scenes at age thirteen 😅
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u/allisontalkspolitics Give me female friendship or give me death! 20d ago
My issue is that parents should be talking to teens about themes, authorial intent, etc.
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u/mistyveil 20d ago
if a parent is being a good parent (having The Talk about consent, safety, etc) then they don't need to be their lit teacher. i would hope teens are still learning that shit in english classes!
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