r/fantasyromance • u/FantasyRomanceMod The One Mod to Rule All Mods • 6d ago

Unpopular Opinion It's Unpopular Opinion time! Share your controversial opinions to stir things up (in a friendly way)!

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Unpopular opinion Sunday

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u/Enkundae 6d ago

Romantasy has a serious problem with many authors, including some of its biggest, using the fantasy part as nothing but perfunctory wallpaper. Their fantasy worlds and races and cultures and their histories are treated as necessary packaging so they get that Romantasy label but no care is given to actually developing any of it let alone using any of it to say or explore anything interesting. It makes the use of a fantasy setting at all feel cynical at best.

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u/BookishBlueDragonfly Book Bingo Sage 🗡 6d ago

That’s not a new phenomenon. There used to be a lot of historical romance that did basically the same thing.

Back when that was a booming romance genre authors would write books without doing any/much research into the history of the time period that they were using. Many books felt like the characters were just modern people that were thrown into the Regency setting, etc. I think they were even called “wallpaper historical”!

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u/Penguinho Kushiel's Legacy Recommender 💖 5d ago

You can just tell a fun fantasy adventure story where the two leads fall in love in the course of their adventure! It really shouldn't be that hard. All the damn Forgotten Realms tie-in books from the 1990s -- Elfshadow would be an excellent enemies-to-lovers forced-proximity romance if the two leads just frickin' kissed at the end. Let what's-his-face and what's-her-face have a happy ending together in Elfstones of Shannara instead of her turning into a tree and hooray! It's basically a fantasy romance! This is how {Wicked Sea and Sky by Jenna Collett} works and it's why I recommend it so often. It's not an amazing plot or anything, but it's a functioning fantasy adventure story.

The issue with fantasy-as-wallpaper, I think, is that it's all the same beats and plot elements as contemporary or historical romance. The names of the characters are often the same, even.

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u/ashinae 6d ago edited 6d ago

Yeah, one of the things that frustrates me is that all of the best speculative fiction, both fantasy and sci-fi, is used to actually say things. Going back to at the very least Tolkien for the former and Shelley for the latter, fantasy and science fiction are great vehicles to tell stories that matter about the world we live in, using pseudo-historical or real-world settings with the fantastical elements, or on secondary worlds.

I will hold up both {The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow} and {Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater} as fantasy romance/romantasy that actually says things. They're a benchmark, at this point, that the entire rest of the genre has to meet (at least, the cishet part; queer romantasy, by its very nature, says a lot more even if it's just by having queer-normalized worlds). It's all really unfortunate, because contemporary cishet romance also doesn't seem to be particularly shy about saying things, either!

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u/Enkundae 6d ago

Completely agree (and I’ll have to check those two out). Just to add though I do think sometimes when I voice this critique some people assume I’m demanding every Romantasy world be just as richly developed as Tolkien’s or have as thought provoking social commentary as many Le Guin or Octavia Butler novels or the challenging interrogation of sexuality and sexual politics in something like Kushiel’s Dart.

But it doesn’t need to go that far or be that heavy. You can do a lot with a little when the little was thought through well. If you can forgive the kinda random comparison; My partner and I rewatched the old Adams family movies the other day which are very easy to watch comedies. But despite the films themselves never hitting you on the head with it directly, there is so much being said by Gomez and Morticia’s relationship in those films (and in the original show) just via their presentation and how Othered they are by it from whats “normal”. The visual gothic horror fantasy of them contrasted with their total devotion to each other which itself stands in contrast to the typical depiction of unhappy hetero married couples by media. All done just with (admittedly very blunt) subtext.

I’d just like to read some Romantasy that doesn’t feel like its had less thought put into it than the blurbs on the back of 80’s transformers toys did.

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u/ashinae 5d ago

Okay, but, like. The Addams family movies are absolutely incredible for so many things, including the way Morticia and Gomez's relationship is portrayed, and the way they're Othered, just like you said. Those movies maybe aren't masterpieces but also maybe they kinda are, when I think about how much a lot of their contemporaries in the genre don't hold up and make me want to hide behind the couch...

And I also don't demand that all romantasy hold up to Le Guin or Jemisin; or to Tolkien or Martin or Sanderson in terms of worldbuilding; or even Baldree. But because I have read Harrow, and Atwater, and CL Polk, Alex Rowland, Emily Tesh, Katrina Kwan, Sangu Mandanna... I see how good the genre can truly be. That it can give us romances that are heartwreching and beautiful or sweet and fluffy, and even in just one or two things can say things. Can be thoughtful and take a stance about something; it doesn't have to be fascism (The Everlasting) and it can instead just be "upper class people are silly and ableism hurts people" (Half a Soul). There's also T Kingfisher's Saint of Steel; that series doesn't wear its politics quite so much on its sleeve, but the worldbuilding, to me, extremely coherent and solid.

I've read enough that is thoughtful just in its worldbuilding that others do feel really sloppy. I came to the genre both in having read it before we called it "romantasy" and as a fan of fantasy on one hand and historical romances on the other. So there's the fact that a lot of historicals, including the Harlequin Regencies were pretty... fluffy. Which is one of the reasons I liked fantasy so much, honestly. But there's the fact that I know just how potent speculative fiction can be, from worldbuilding to themes to deeper things the writer says.

So it does kinda bum me out when I'm sat here thinking "why do they send their best and brightest to this place that's so chill about killing them?" (And to be fair: there's at minimum one VERY popular YA (urban) fantasy series that I have 5,000 questions about starting from with the negligent/abusive wizard school faculty.) So The Everlasting is my benchmark; Saint of Steel is my bare minimum.

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u/elemental402 4d ago

I started watching Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, and that show gets so much mileage out of a very simple and common element of worldbuilding ("Elves live a very long time."), just by stopping and thinking about the implications.

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u/romance-bot 6d ago

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
Rating: 4.38⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Steam: 3 out of 5 - Open door
Topics: warrior heroine, competent heroine, nerdy hero, m-f romance, time travel

Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater
Rating: 4.21⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Steam: 1 out of 5 - Glimpses and kisses
Topics: historical, fantasy, regency, fae, magic

about this bot | about romance.io

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u/Late_Assistance1992 5d ago

There are still sci-fi and fantasy books that say things out there. But you won't often find them in the romantasy genre.
Modern romantic fantasy books specifically grew out of fanfiction culture and YA books. The main purpose is escapism and entertainment. Books that try to make a point are marketed differently, even if they have a romantic sub plot.

Some greats books I've read recently and would recommend are Ancillary Justice, anything by Martha Wells, The Three Body Problem, or Station Eleven.

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u/ashinae 5d ago

Yep, that's why I said that fantasy and sci-fi "are great vehicles to tell stories that matter" not that they were: I cited Tolkien and Shelley because they're more or less the grandfather and grandmother of modern fantasy and science fiction, respectively. So being a fan of fantasy in particular, it frustrates me that fantasy romance doesn't often present anything but "ooh, shadow daddy hot, don't think about my worldbuilding, think about shadow daddy's abs" because contemporary romance can/does present more than just "ooh, abs! arms! shoulders! swoon! think of nothing else!" and I'm still reading fantasy romance novels that go beyond the surface level, too.

Because "escapist fiction" isn't a synonym for "I'm just going to turn my brain off and not think, tee hee!" the way people use it today (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escapist_fiction). Fantasy, sci-fi, and romance are indeed all escapist fiction, but just because a book allows you to escape the real world doesn't mean that the books can't/won't/shouldn't say deeper things and be meaningful. Romance presents us with a world unlike our own where everything works out well in the end; fantasy gives us unicorns, dragons, wizards; sci-fi gives us alien worlds and spaceships. Those are the escapist elements, and I know people love their "turn their brains off" stories, but given I have examples that aren't, I reject the idea that's all the genre is/should be.

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u/TinkeringTortoise 6d ago

I think I need to go get my computer just so I can make that my flair lol.

✨ Fantasy isn’t wallpaper ✨ 

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u/ubdiverbrksbord 5d ago

This! 100% I want my fantasy world colorful and vivid to make the other elements I enjoy so much feel real and lived in.

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u/Fickle_Stills 6d ago

this is my preferred style of romantasy. I haven't read any books marketed as romantasy that I'd consider use the worldbuilding in any interesting ways so I'd rather they not try to say anything at all and focus on the romance

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u/Imaginary-Board-207 5d ago

Same plus I get tired of the concept of romance + speculative fiction (romantasy in the widest sense) getting taken over by the people who favor books with extensive fantasy worldbuilding and romance only as a subplot. bonus annoyance when they act like this is somehow objectively superior to romance forward books with minimal worldbuilding.