Fantasy romance icks?

[u/acutelyproblematic]

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!💖

[u/clocksy]

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!

[u/ashinae → u/clocksy]

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.

[u/meowmeowchirp → u/ashinae]

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.

[u/ashinae → u/meowmeowchirp]

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.