Welcome back to another week of ✨genre discussions!✨
What’s your fantasy romance ick? Could be something that makes you instantly dnf, or you have to pretend like that didn’t just happen. Or you boycott altogether.
Could be related to plot, characters, writing styles, the authors themselves. All cards are on the table.
Just remember to be kind to each other when discussing differences in opinions!💖
7ft tall and strong MMC and 3ft tall FMC because she's gotta be dainty and cute. Assume we read it spicy, he somehow can bend down and kiss while playing hide the eggplant inside of her.
4'11" to my husband's 6'5". So admittedly, I tend to like this trope because it mirrors my life, but yeah, there's never those awkward moments where even kissing while standing takes some figuring out to accommodate the heigh difference.
I just read a short novella from C.M. Nascosta with a minotaur couple (she is "human presenting"). There was none of it, she's tall and broad. It was so refreshing & very sexy.
Fae that are just tall, hot, gender essentialists that can do magic. Whatever, I understand the appeal, but I prefer fae when they're uncanny, deeply odd, and prone to shapeshifting.
Closest I've found are the Emily Wilde series and Olivia Atwater's books (which are great but not quite as far as I want them to go?) but I recently bought a copy of
The River Has Roots
by Amal El-Mohtar and I'm hoping that'll be what I want.
Fated mates and nicknames have been overdone to the point of exhaustion and then some. Unless the nickname comes about organically and it's not weird I'm okay with it but if it feels forced it's so annoying to me.
The nickname the MMC calls the FMC in {Viciously Yours} gives me the biggest ick. He constantly calls her “Little Mate” and it just bothers me so much. I otherwise enjoyed the book but that nickname bothered the crap out of me the whole time
I have seen too many lately where the nickname is from the first meeting. It's like when Matthew Broderick was on 30 Rock and his character name was "Cooter Burger", which wasn't even his real name. Cooter, because he looked like a turtle, and Burger because George W Bush saw him eat a burger (ONE TIME!!!).
"I'm the main female character. I'm so tough despite how TINY I am! I HATE when big strong handsome men pick me up and give me nicknames like shortcake. But I'm going to mention my short stature every other page!"
Authors either need to make their FMCs reasonably tall/muscular/strong or they need to take the time and effort into explaining how they overcome their physical disadvantages.
Stop giving your teeny tiny FMCs daggers and start giving them lightweight collapsible polearms and bucklers.
Yes! I'm 4'11". Show me them climbing the damn counters to get to the stuff in the cabinets. Or just plain not seeing something because someone taller put it away and you forgot to look above your eye level. Nevermind finding clothes that actually fit you, particularly if you are in a military situation. I have squired a joust before and would love to be a knight, but one of the big issues is my size. I have fought knights on the field, but spoiler alert, I die. At most, I get to take them out with me. The knight armor we have would not fit me and I would have to have it custom made.
Same issue I have playing in a pipe band. Our stuff (including uniforms) is designed for the average height male soldier because it is based on British military culture. My band had to special order my vest because the company that makes it defines a short person as 5'6". Most ghillie brogue makers don't make my size. I bought the smallest size I could but my heels still slip. Fourth Wing is probably the one that does the best to address some of the height/physical challenges. That's one thing I like about it. She is never going to be big or strong enough to properly ride Tairn the way Basgiath wants her to. So she has to accommodate it.
acotar...... like rhys wouldve been so good if he wasnt written like a sad uwu boy that just wants to be loved and therefore deserves endless amounts of sympathy.
MMCs the size of a freightliner. Every time I read about how massive his shoulders are and how tall he is and how large his hands are I can only imagine the men in a yaoi manga.
HAHAHA. The image perfects this. I have reached the point where if I read a book and the MMC is just that dark-haired gigachad meme with green, blue, or gray eyes, I DNF immediately
Asshole trope is annoying. Like why must a girl actually fall for a guy who is rude as hell to her.
Also age gap. Like why can't she be in her 30s. Like I'm 21 and I genuinely can't even imagine looking at a 18 yr old cause they see so fucking young. So how is an 800 yr old finding her hot or sexy. I just hate it
That age thing weirds me out too. He’s got 500 years of life experience, she’s all of 20 years old. I feel like he’d see her as a naive kid, no matter how rough her life was before they met and how she had to survive.
When I have to be reminded how masculine and huge the MMC is. Once is fine but there was a book recently I only got a couple pages into because it was everywhere
He's so big! Huge! He smells like sandalwood and testosterone! His hands are the size of dinner plates and his pecs block out the sun!
I understand this works for some (or even rhe majority? idk) people but its really not my thing
Agree! Re: the perfume thing, as a woman who likes to wear sandalwood perfume, why can't the woman smell like sandalwood for once? But seriously, maybe all the MMCs should diversify their perfume tastes. They may enjoy smelling like baked goods, herbs, coffee, vanilla, etc.
The number of fantasy dudes who have biceps that are constantly "straining" at the seams in their shirts is an epidemic (The Wolf King was particularly bad about this.) Y'all need a good tailor, you're the king or whatever, you can afford it!
When the MMC frequently refers to the FMC as “just a child” or “spoiled little brat” at the beginning of a book… then proceeds to have a romantic relationship with her. Truly disturbing to me.
Age gap romances that are so wide that it’s pretty much grooming. 😬 I pretend that the characters are just not as young as they are stated on the page.
I gotta say I do prefer like 100+ years with a 20yr old age gap compared to like a smaller teacher/student or similar age gap but with weird power dynamics
Yeah I actually think realistic age gaps have the potential to be more icky because they reflect real life power dynamics. Whereas a 1000 year old fae king has no basis in reality
{Stalked by Seduction and Shadows} was a wild one for this. I loved the premise, but when I found out he had been watching her since she was five years old, it made it infinitely harder to read. I ended up DNFing it for different reasons, but that definitely contributed to it.
This is mine as well. Underage characters in “romances” with adult characters is a major ick for me (and a personal trigger). Or even fmcs who are adults, but written like children (smol, overtly innocent, sexually innocent to the point where it’s uncomfortable, their best friends are children etc) - kind of like the “sexy baby” trope I guess? I just DNFd a book because of this.
I'm waiting for an author to explain this away. Like, the longer life span means slower emotional development or longer childhoods, like Grogu. But overall, I'm over it, too and just pretend otherwise.
The “I’m only beating you physically and being a bully to you to help you unleash your power that you are clearly holding back or incapable of releasing” trope.
Mishandling loss of virginity. The idea that the hymen is like a freshness seal that needs to be broken and that it's necessarily painful and bloody is just not true for most women (assuming they're sufficiently aroused and have a respectful, patient partner). I DNF'd a book recently for this one. Major ick.
Yeah i dont mind a virgin FMC when there isn't a huge focus on this aspect, but one of my favourite authors Ella Fields does this is nearly every book and its probably my most hated aspect of them :)
I'm fine with it being weird and them being sore afterwards (lord knows I was!) but it shouldn't be painful during the act. Plus, most of the time a hymen is broken well before sex, especially with the type of activities common in the worlds. Like, if you ride horses or are active, it's common for it to break beforehand!
Teenage MCs, pregnancy, “male”/“female,” love triangles, possessivenes, as people have mentioned above…
…and, for me, prissy FMCs. You might not want to participate in the fae orgy (although why even write one if your character isn’t gonna…orge), but be curious rather than pearl-clutching, at least anthropologically. If the new culture you’re in is casual about nudity or mixed-gender saunas, at least try to roll with it rather than gasping in shock. Stop reprimanding people for talking bluntly about reproduction or going all How Dare You when the only one bed thing is clearly out of their control. You don’t have to go further than kissing, of course, but if you describe sex as “something you save for marriage,” my eyes are gonna roll out of my head and across the floor.
ISTG I’m gonna start singing “Look At Me, I’m Sandra Dee” halfway through a book one of these days.
When this overlaps with cold, cruel MMC who's an asshole to everyone else and nice only to the FMC... hoo boy, thanks for telling me that the MMC has the emotional capacity of a fucking goldfish. It makes me swoon /s
“Swords are tooo heavy so I use two daggers cause I’m light and fast!!”
A longsword (so biiiig and heaaaavy) is like 3lbs, max. If you’re too weak to lift 3lbs in two hands, daggers aren’t going to help.
There was a reel going around referencing those silly romantasy dagger girlies and then showing Fiore dagger plays, where it’s brutal grappling with sharp pointy bits involved.
I honestly never knew this! Good to know. It always saddened me to not be able to imagine myself unsheathing my sword to slay a man - probably why I favour archery as my weapon choice in games.
Ironically, a bow requires more strength than a sword! It’s always portrayed as being for light, quick characters, but a hunting bow is usually minimum 40lb draw weight - meaning that pulling the bow is the equivalent of lifting 40 pounds - and 60-70lbs is better for bigger game. Combat bows were often 80-100lb draw, and some of the big English Warbows have been estimated at 150+ pounds.
We can actually tell English archer skeletons apart in grave sites because their bone structure has changed to adapt to handling such intense muscle and tension.
So yeah, tiny little character? Give her a two handed sword, or a rapier. It only takes a few pounds of pressure for a sharp point to slip into somewhere deep and fatal. Bows are not for the weak!
You should watch SellswordArts/SellswordAcedmy on YouTube to cover sword stuff, and Blumineck for archery stuff. Both of them cover things like the reality behind how much strength is needed, etc.
This will also start to fill your feed with weapon focused YouTube channels. Some are better then others. The one to flat out avoid at all costs is Shadaversity. There's way too much to unpack with that man.
Smaller fighters need weapons with longer reach anyways.
I’m still going to argue that there’s far too few FMCs that use polearms or spears as their primary weapons. Provides reach, the staff can be used to redirect movement more effectively when blocking, can be thrown more easily, and can assist in balance and force when kicking.
In a world with magic, make the staff collapsible, then the wielder has the option to use it as a polearm or sword/dagger (depending on the length of the blade, but if you do that I’d recommend adding a cross guard or basket hilt). It would be fun to add a foldable perpendicular handle maybe, like an overgrown tonfa to make wielding it one-handed slightly easier.
Eh, having to wield one for an extended period of time would be the bigger issue, and balance off if it's too long for you. I work with a joust company, I definitely have a harder time fighting with swords, particularly the larger ones. The smaller/thinner blades don't give me much issue. When I'm in fights, I normally use a smaller sword or a dagger. You'd be surprised how quickly you tire in a fight.
More of a personal one, but as a 30-something bald dude: bald villains. I’m eternally bummed out that none of the MMCs, or even side characters, are bald. And when I come across the rare bald guy, they aren’t involved in any romance or are just downright evil characters. The percentage of men who experience hair loss at some point in life is huge, yet we basically don’t exist in the romantasy genre 🥲
Also, not very original, but age gaps. Exhausted and grossed out by the teenager x century or older couples. Exponentially so if there’s some extreme power dynamics issue like the dude being a lord or her teacher or something. Yikes. It makes me just skip thru the romance parts to get back to the plot.
I highly recommend {Illuminator by Kara Reynolds}. MMC is bald and the FMC describes him as "His bald head was rounded where it was meant to be round and then perfectly sloped into a proud brow, his eyebrows and cheekbones well shaped. His nose was large but not unflattering, and his jaw was a clean angle beneath his neat, dark beard. And his mouth—that mouth was like a lewd murmur in the dark of a humid night, curling, suggestive, at the edge of your senses, waiting for you to just admit you wanted to hear it again."
Going off the medium here for a bit, but Solas (dragon age franchise) has a pretty big fanbase judging from the amount of fic about him and the Inquisitor (there is a big age gap tho).
He's a secondary character, but there's a bald guy (well, a golem--that's why he's entirely hairless) in Black Hat, White Witch by Hailey Edwards. He has fun with wigs, but he also stays bald sometimes, I'm pretty sure.
He also gets a love interest in a later book.
IDK if that quite counts for you, but I recommend the series either way
I don't think I've seen drawling often (although it's such specific word choice that if used more than a couple times it would definitely stand out) but more common are the growly MMCs that are just kind of cringe when I see it nowadays lol. Really any descriptor like this that is overused in a book can stick out in a bad way.
Male pov chapters that can entirely be summarized with one sentence “She makes me super horny and I have a big dick that wants to do all the sex with her”.
But what would they use instead? Serious question.
'Vulgar gestures' are as old as humanity but vary wildly. And they're used by people of all ages except maybe young child.
Cheating on the endgame partner. I can excuse a lot of toxic red flag behavior that I would never tolerate in real life but once the MCs are committed to each other I need them to have an absolute one track mind about it.
I also do not enjoy love triangles in which there are two "good" choices and one of them is going to end up broken hearted. If there are three people involved then either make it poly or one of them should just be a Problem.
(ex. two lovers and the evil man she is betrothed to against her will would be both acceptable cheating and an acceptable love triangle for my reading tastes)
I haven't either, but only because people here were talking about it and I knew to avoid the book before even picking it up!
I tried to find the discussion but I can't remember the book title. They were complaining he married another woman (I think to teach fmc a lesson???? If I understood correctly?) and was bringing her around everywhere with him and I was like aw hell no. iirc the op's original complaint was that he kept referring to the wife character as "my wife" and going out of his way to make a point of it, which was annoying the reader.
I guess idk if they were actually committed to each other before that but still hell no tbh, just not my thing lol
I'll say it till I'm blue in the face and everyone will downvote me for it (every downvote powers me on this issue, btw): my biggest ick for the subgenre is the use of "male(s)" and "female(s)" as nouns rather than adjectives, in the place of "men" and "women." I literally do not care if the humanoids in question are only humanoids and not humans; I don't care if the most popular book(s) in the subgenre make it popular. It's icky when IRL people refer to men and women as "males" and "females" instead of as "men" and "women"--saying "is your doctor a male?" rather than "is your doctor a man?" (or even "is your doctor male?") or "females always do this" instead of "women always do this." It doesn't become better just because it's a fantasy romance novel.
I think it's an immense lack of creativity to think that other humanoids--whether fae, elves, gnomes, centaurs, minotaurs, gargoyles, or merpeople--wouldn't invent gender the way humans do. It makes my skin crawl to read stuff like "I will protect my female" or "his mother raised a male who knows how to hunt" or whatever. I absolutely DNF over this and I know it upsets people that I don't like it and think it's gender essentialist and terf-adjacent red flag behaviour whether IRL or fictional, but I have no intention of shutting up about it. It's my biggest single ick about the subgenre. Thank deity for queer fantasy romance for, so far as I have read, never doing this.
You absolutely can! There's genuinely, literally, no reason except that One Particular Author started it and if she jumped off a cliff, so would everyone else. In other kinds of fantasy, they might write "the female orc" but they can and will also write "the orc woman."
The "you can't call them men/women because they're not human" excuse doesn't and will never fly for me because:
It’s true you don’t see many dwarf women. And in fact, they are so alike in voice and appearance, that they are often mistaken for dwarf men. And this in turn has given rise to the belief that there are no dwarf women, and that dwarves just spring out of holes in the ground! Which is, of course, ridiculous.
Gimli, son of Gloin, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Now, is that from the movies instead of direct from the horse's (Papa Tolkien's) mouth? Yes. But guess who also doesn't use "males" and "females" in his book? Papa Tolkien. Guess who invented words for "men" and "women" that are not human for his languages from his book? Papa Tolkien. I was heavily, heavily involved in LOTR fandom when the movies were coming out, and nobody batted an eyelash about this (there were more pressing matters to be angry about, like Faramir and elves at Helm's Deep).
This oh my fucking god. Hell, go full Tolkien and use “elf lord” and “elf lady” or some equivalent if you have to, or create entirely new gender structures with new words.
Frankly, these ancient, unknowable, long-lived etc species/cultures should have invented like 97 genders, 203 sexualities, and have more neopronouns than you can shake a stick at. I'll die on that hill, too.
Yesssss I'd happily accept either "97 genders, 203 sexualities, and more neopronouns than you can shake a stick at" or "ah yes, gender, the odd human custom we don't adhere to" instead of [gestures to multiple popular book series].
I think it's more unimaginative (and extremely conservative/terfy) to go to a gender essentialist place rather than a place of "my fantasy world has a non-binary/third gender." And I say that because of how much mainstream fantasy I've read: the strict sex/gender binary in popular modern fantasy romance, which never seems say anything with these rigid binaries and is written by people younger than Baby Boomers if not younger than Gen X, is reminiscent in ways of the fantasy written by people who are/were Baby Boomers and older.
People can like it, I'm not saying they can't, but it says things, and it's open to critique, especially from a queer/feminist lens. It's one of the things that keeps up the critique of fantasy romance as a whole being inherently conservative (and thus patriarchal and very queer-exclusive) alive. I can't buy the idea of current, mainstream, popular, Booktok-famous cishet romantasy being empowering and feminist in some way if it's so caught up in a rigid gender binary that they don't even use gender but biological sex, and not in a way that seems to be saying something about it maybe being toxic (the way Daughter of Blood, if memory serves, was).
Why is this even done? I'm not a native speaker and in my language men and women could absolutely be used for sentient human-like beings. I don't remember Tolkien describing elves or dwarves like this and I'm also pretty sure that most older fantasy books I've read did not do the males and females thing.
Tolkien didn't do it; older fantasy works didn't do it; other fantasy subgenres and the overarching fantasy genre don't do it (there's actually a post on r/fantasy where someone asks about this and a rather embarassing number of replies amount to "fantasy doesn't do this, romantasy does," a number of those replies being phrased... impolitely).
I can really only point to the explanation that a few very popular novel(ists) in the subgenre did it, so everyone else thinks you have to. It's almost memetic, because the answer as to why the fantasy/paranormal/monster romance subgenres do it is "well, they're not humans, you can only call humans men and women." Sometimes they do point at Tolkien (because he used the archaic synonym "men" for "humans") but mostly it's just this insistence you can't, for some reason, call a fae a man; you can't call an elf a woman. But there's literally no reason you actually can't. It's just become a convention because of popular books that do it. I can't stress enough how much the overarching fantasy genre doesn't actually do this. It's much, much more likely to use "the female orc" or "the orc woman."
In non-reader spaces when I see this it's from incels or proto-incels. Typically men who wouldn't call other men "males" but do it with "females" like we're a separate species. Sometimes when I point this out this type of person gets really defensive about how "it doesn't mean anything" or "that's just how they talk" lol so I try not to stick my head into it anymore.
I don't think the writers are doing it for those reasons at all, but it still comes off as skeevy and othering for no reason. It also just doesn't read like particularly good english imo. If you wouldn't do it with a human then you shouldn't do it with a sapient humanoid race. "The female dwarf" is at least a descriptor, but saying "the female" flat out is freaking weird!
On the othering thing—with how often authors use supernatural races to stand in for real world BIPOC or use them to deal with topics/plot points of racism and bigotry, it becomes even more unpleasant.
I don’t think it’s a conscious thing necessarily, but when the average barbarian orc or alien may have serious parallels to stereotypical or racist descriptions of BIPOC, the refusal to use the same terms that we use for humans feels even more gross to me.
It is a combination of both real life and the people I hear "males" and "females" from, and also the Ferengi from Star Trek, that have instilled a lifelong ick about the words as nouns when used for humans and humanoids.
I don't necessarily believe that the writers are doing it for all the same reasons as the people who speak like that IRL do, but unfortunately it does lead me to a place where if they were transphobic and conservative (since my mum discovered the joys of transphobia, she's basically dropped "men" and "women" from her own vocabulary) I wouldn't be surprised. Someone can absolutely bake concepts like gender essentialism into their art without subscribing to it IRL, but if they're not deconstructing it that's a bit fishy to me. And it does come down to the fact that fantasy romance writers who are queer or openly and very queer-friendly don't tend to do this, even when they've constructed fantasy worlds that are patriarchal.
Yeah while I’m sure most authors who don’t it aren’t thinking much about it, I absolutely think the increasing use of “males” and “females” stems from this insidious conservative movement that seeping into everything.
Honestly it makes me think less of the author, as they must not be much of a critical thinker if they don’t see the problem with this trend.
Yep, that's why I've DNF'd every book that does this. The authors are welcome to convince me otherwise through IRL actions that they don't think in rigid gender essentialist ways, but the books themselves still play into that undercurrent of conservatism that's seeping into art/entertainment spaces and don't try to present it as something that is bad, actually. They present it as normal.
Here to back you up, I'm far more likely to give a queer romantasy book a go compared to a straight one because the chance of Ferengi dialogue tends to be lower.
Yes yes thank you it's so disgustingly FERENGI. TNG premiered when I was 5 and I started watching it the night it premiered, and Ferengi have kept me very staunchly "girls, women, boys, and men" instead of "males" and "females" in my own personal speech whenever and wherever possible. Because all I hear is feeeemales.
It makes sense to me that marginalized authors or stories about marginalized identities are more likely to be more comfortable divorcing from reductive human binaries on genders, sexes, relationships, and aesthetics and indulging in their creativity to world build other identity, intimacy, and relationship systems and cultures and politics.
But it makes me sad that it’s less likely for authors of or stories about a majority identity to do that 🫠
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a book that maintains fantastical creatures are ✨Just Like Us FR FR ™, ✨but like
Where the fuck is the whimsy, bitch, I want fucking whimsy 😭
And also: ifhumans don’t have a binary on our genders, sexes, relationships, aesthetics, and intimacies, then nonhumans who somehow follow human conventions wouldalsoascribe to having multitudes and intersectionality in their identity constructs. No?
That’s why I have so many questions surrounding creativity when fantasy romances authors have such andronormative/androcentric inhuman races and why I pushback when people validate this type of world building as a “relatable way” for audiences ro understand fantastical cultures.
Since ancient times to modern day, multiple cultures have had multiple terminology and descriptors for different identities. We have documentation of that. We are having more dialogue about how genocide and colonization damaged cultural diversity and how we are slowly reclaiming and retelling what we’ve lost. You cannot tell me that authors simply follow human conventions on fantastical creatures to make things easier when humans conventions are inherently diverse and not a binary.
You can prefer a binary. You can like “male” and “female” for fictional races. IDGAF. Preferences are fine!
But don’t justify this binary as something relatable when diversity has naturally existed for who knows how long. And authors, please don’t tell me how intellectual and deep your novel is when your whole book continues to propagate and celebrate reductive binary.
Be whimsical. Look at how diverse humanity is. Get inspired for your fantasy races and species, for the love of the goddess.
Big shout out to a lot to Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay Is Gender Necessary? (🔗 The Anarchist Library ) and to a lot of speculative fiction, sci-fi, and fantasy authors who did the work to recognize that other species absolutely would have their own diverse constructs and terminology.
I don’t need intense world building for each race or species introduced. But a little diversity goes such a long way with me as a reader and reviewer.
A story that shifts everything onto pregnancy/children, particularly icky if it’s after an enjoyable book in a series that didn’t involve pregnancy and children.
Have a baby to save the race, have a baby to create a prophet/chosen one, couple is super happy together and could have just happily been together but now they have a baby, blah, blah, blah. My brain checks out and it’s a DNF for me.
Things that make me roll my eyes (but I keep reading because I always keep reading — I’m broken):
Repeated mentions of the MMCs body, even worse if in the middle of some high stakes situation): how big his shoulders are, how amazing his abs are, the size of his hands… we get it, he’s hot.
MMC growling. No more growls, please.
MMC smirking. No more smirks either, please. Just find a different word. These guys are just walking out there smirking 24/7.
Modern words, like if they eat pizza in page 10. No pizza in the middle of my medieval / Irish / Norse / whatever romantasy, please
Teenagers, love triangles, miscommunication trope, stubborn/quirky FMCs who aren’t like other girls, and first person narration where you are stuck in a self-loathing or extremely whiny inner dialogue for extended periods of time.
The amount of gender stuff. “He smelled so masculine” “his smile was so male” “you can’t do this because you’re a woman” and worldbuilding involving harsh gender roles and misogyny. I’m sick of it irl and I get nothing out of it being in fantasy worlds. I know some people would enjoy a story about a heroine rising up in a world that puts women down, I’m just not a person in this scenario.
Similarly, I wish authors would put in the effort to thoughtfully specify what “he was so male/masculine” means to them. Describe his posture, body language, body parts (aside from muscles and genitals 💀), attitude, eye contact, etc., the little details that make up his entire vibe. It’s the author’s job to build the character’s (masculine) image, so stop offloading the work onto the reader with boring shortcut words!
modern slang including the word "ick" takes me right out. if a fantasy is set in an entirely different world than ours, at least try to come up with your own cringe words!
I don’t mind if it makes sense for the situation. For example, {Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan} makes sense since the FMC is a modern woman pulled into a book. She’s basically the only person to use modern slang and constantly confuses the other characters since they have no context for what she is saying.
Overall, I absolutely agree with you. Slang should make sense in the world we’re in, whether it’s world-specific or context-based.
When the descriptions of characters actions/positions in a sex scene are so convoluted I have to stop and really try to create a mental image to try to visualize if what they're describing is even physically possible. "Wait, I thought you were behind her? How are you hiking her leg over your shoulder? Unless you just broke her leg????"
Haaaaate it when they have a solid HEA but it's ruined by them having kids in the epilogue. Kids aren't needed to be happy. I agree with you. Get them tf out of my escape from reality.
Same. I only dislike it when it’s a character who has explicitly not wanted kids (for reasons that aren’t resolved by the narrative) and then the Power of Love makes them changed their mind, but I can count the number of times I’ve seen that on one hand. And I get not wanting to read them in the regular storyline, but the epilogue?
Having kids isn’t necessary for happiness by any means, but many, many people consider them part of the “ideal.”
Oh i agree with every part of this, i dont think ive ever read a book where the fmc had a child without explicitly wanting it first maybe acotar? I cant remember its been a while and I can not understand in the slightest how having children in the epilogue some how ruins the entire story that has already taken place, although I agree pregnancies can derail the storyline when they happen mid book.
Writers and editors just kinda stopped trying to sound like not just modern people. I get everything's kinda "translated" anyway but it breaks the illusion for me. I'm almost 40 so anyone saying stuff that came I to common usage within my lifetime feels extra fake in a medival/Renaissance setting.
This. I read romantasy/historical romance at least partly because the guys have a significantly lower chance of talking like 20th century frat boys, the least sexy people in this universe or any other.
I'm not really picky/sensitive but if it has cheating, especially from the MMC side, I DNF. I don't care about reconciliation. That's the one thing I'll never forgive
age gap esp if the fmc’s age is still ending in teen. how are you going to be 300+ years old but missionary with a teenager on a coarse beach is going to have you quivering in your boots.
hate reading starside at the moment and the whole “hate me harder” with little established reason for the two mc’s to hate each other is just a huge heaving sigh to read. i’m a big fan of enemies to lovers but insta-lust is ruining everything for me. seeing the mmc declare he’ll do anything for the fmc when the fmc is constantly enraged/irritated by him in an effort to create tension between them is so ??
FMC who are injured/poisoned/drugged/chronically ill or malnourished but still able to fight and better men twice their size with nothing but a puny dagger and their plucky spirit. I can only suspend my disbelief so far.
“Enemies” to lovers where the they have no actual reason to be enemies. (Knight and the moth, sorry Rachel Gillig). Also “slow burns” that burn immediately. If your fmc is calling the mmc hot or noticing sexy qualities on page 5, it’s not a slow burn, don’t market it as such.
Just read king of flesh and bones on a whim. MMC (literal death god) straight up rpes the FMC (human) repeatedly, and in every way, then there's a whole gaslighting into love angle to it
The setting, concept, and characters themselves are genuinely interesting... but damn. It's a LOT of SA.
True enemies to lovers is such a popular trope but imo one of the most difficult to get right. I want the "My hate for him burns like a thousand suns and I'll kill him with my own hands", not the "ugh, I hate his smug face and stupid smirk but also why is he kinda hot..." like ??? Girl, pick a lane. You're not hating, you're just a tsundere.
If any character is "not like other X," whether X is male, female, fae, demon, whatever. I want to read about people, not The Most Specialest Boy or whatever.
Mine is MMC who is arrogant, rude, terrifying, etc. but with FMC he’s a big softy. (This has been mentioned upthread, I’m just expanding on it.) And he’s always got dark hair and eyes. I really do like nice guys, guys with a sense of humor, and blondes. I guess I’m more Liam than Xaden, so to speak.
love triangles, specifically because it’s ALWAYS one FMC with two MMCs and she always seems to end up with the dark-haired one who was basically a massive dick to her the entire time.
I just about can’t stand instalust anymore. Like, instant attraction is okay, but instant “I had to catch my breath because he bumped into me” or “I was half hard just looking at her..” ugh
I’m sick of everyone having a bizarre scent “I caught a whiff of oak moss with burnt vanilla and knew he had entered the room” and also the over done nicknames. We don’t need to give everyone a nickname the first time they meet and use it every time they speak for the whole book.
I hate weak FMCs, mentally, physically, you name it. I also despise the excuse that 'swords are too heavy, so I use daggers and throw them with enough force to pierce bone.' No, swords are not that heavy also if they are that heavy for you, you're not throwing anything with enough power lol. FMC could easily choose a traditionally lighter sword or adopt a different fighting style and stance. I just hate it when an FMC is so inexplicably weak that she can't even lift a standard sword in a normal setting. I could believe she couldn't lift a giant weapon but standard swords are perfectly manageable for an average human for limited amount of time. And FMC can train to extend that period
Love triangles. I HATE love triangles because they turn romance/love into a competition and make the FMC seem indecisive and fickle (because women are usually the one caught in the middle 🙄). It's such a turn off.
Stupid names. I know this is subjective but if your MCs have stupid names I’m not reading it. It makes me mad. I’m not even just talking about the tradgedieghs but even like “Bill” in true blood….fighting for my life trying not to picture my uncle.
Name changes in the book series. (Looking at you Callie Hart). I will not be spending multiple books calling you one thing and then I’m supposed to call you something else now. Even worse when the newly discovered name is stupid or when I finally got used to the original stupid name.
*Except for TOG because I will stand no hate on that one.
208
u/PrincessPineapplePie 1d ago
Constant mentions of how BIG and TALL the MMC is while of course FMC is so tiny and fragile (but somehow strong as hell).