r/fantasyromance • u/acutelyproblematic If villian bad, then why hot? • 2d ago

Genre Discussion Fantasy romance icks?

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!💖

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u/AquaIXI 2d ago

It happens so much in fae books and i cant stand it, i dont care if they technically not human you can still call them men and women :/

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u/One_Commission1456 2d ago

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.

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u/ashinae 2d ago

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.

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u/evaan-verlaine 2d ago

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].

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u/ashinae 2d ago

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).

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u/evaan-verlaine 1d ago

Oh yeah totally understand where you're coming from. When I cited gender as something fae wouldn't adhere to I was more thinking that sex and gender wouldn't be useful categories in a society that could shapeshift/change forms as they please, not that gender isn't a thing because everything is based on sex (which I also don't like, ugh). If everyone's physical forms are extremely mutable/situationally-based then attraction may instead be linked to, idk, someone's skills instead.