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romantasy in novel is basically the novel version of isekai: - Always the same archetype of character - Always the same growth if any - Always the same setting/world - Always the same very predictable plot and the same theme The firsts your read are okay, everything else feels rehashed harder than a triple act action movie from marvel/fast & furious/transformer/...

Bro yesss I agree with this so much

27:33 the only research SJM did for writing fantasy was ABO Wattpad fics

really liked the video! who were the characters that you showed on screen during the smut section where it said "you would never shut up about them"?

For me, the confusion comes from social media posts of girls holding up books like ACOTAR or Fourth Wing, and they have a caption that says "I cried for hours" or something along those lines and maybe they have tears in their eyes in the photo. WHY? What was the big emotional payoff aside from the smut? Thats not something I see worth getting emotional over because softcore/hardcore p*rn is not art worth crying over like the book is the greatest masterpiece of emotional storytelling in thelast hundred years. Like I know I cant control what touches people's hearts, but I feel like crying over vapid relationships, surface level fluffy plots, and more often than not, juvenile writng, devalues ACTUAL artful emotional writing that changes who you are as a person becauseof the new perspectives on life it can give you. That James Tullos video clip included here has a very harsh rant at the end of it the main video it's from, and while it is is very blunt and anger filled, I couldn't help but feel cathartic listening to him reem out romantasy. I hope I'm not the only one who feels this way. Anyway. Great video! I hope these issues encourage authors to think hard about how romantasy can be make stronger and more artful one day. Then the genre doesn't have to go away completely for those who do love it. It will just make peple love it more.

You are dead on. Men writing women badly is a joke so is women writing men badly! The incredible interchangeable nature of these men is downright comical. I had a great conversation with my oldest brother. He was obsessed with green eyed redheads. His current girlfriend was a blue-eyed blonde who otherwise was perfect. I looked at him and said, "Bill, you have found your green eyed redhead! They were married for thirty years until she unfortunately passed away. In real life you find men attracted to tall women ending up married to short women. You find women who love dark, curly hair, married to cue ball bald guys. With these books as soon as the stud appears -- the narrative stops. He's never too short, his anger is never an issue. His abusiveness is never a red flag! Abusive relationships are NOT healthy relationships.. It is that conceit that bothers me most about these books

I’m aroace so lmao it takes a lot to sell me on romance and I feel absolutely insane trying to understand enemies to lovers… that being said, I can’t quite blame some authors for how their books are marketed because ik publishers will often force them to include the booktok obsessions. and that’s a rip. some of these are just poor displays of writing overall tho

Hi! I have to disagree with your assertion on Cardan compared to Rhysand and Xaden. I do believe that the latter two are indentical, however, Cardan is fundamentally different to them. Xaden and Rhysand have powers related to the darkness, while Cardan's are related to the mere existence of Elfhame (his feelings literally affect how fairieland looks in Book 3). Moreover, Cardan is --as stated in Book One-- not a fighter. Jude is the fighter/girlboss in their relationship. That is what makes their relationship so special in the realm of fiction. She does all of the heavylifting when it comes to politics because that is what she wants. Unlike Feyre and Violet, who are portrayed somewhat submissive to their partners, Jude is not. In fact, I would argue that it is Cardan who acts submissive (see the scene in Book One where she helds him at knifepoint while tied). Also, Xaden and Rhysand are very much stereotypical big, tall, muscled, macho men. Cardan, on the other hand, is described wearing makeup and outlandish clothes, wearing jewlery and acting like a diva. I would also say that including The Cruel Prince in your list of romantasies is falling into a trap. TCP and all of the other books are fantasy about court intrigue. Romance is important, yes, but is not the main focus: Jude's power struggle is. Seeing TCP as a romantasy is a retroactive reading, influenced by how booktok treats the book by their own standards but it is not a real reflection of the content. Anyone who recommends you TCP as such is doing a great disservice and setting readers for expectations that the book is not meant to fufill.

Really enjoyed this and your humour

mild spice in fucking dune took me out bro im done. Did they just say that because of melange 😭

I haven't watched the video yet but that fma reference is DIABOLICAL.

The absolute worst type of enemies to lovers is when one of the lovers is a bully or abuser. An example of this would be any Harry Potter fan fic that ships Draco Malfoy with any of the protagonists. That kid is a bully and a massive bigot. Calling him misunderstood is incredibly problematic. Yes, he was raised to believe those vile things, but so was his father. It doesn't excuse his father's behaviour, nor does it excuse his. The best example of enemies to lovers that I can think of comes from Star Wars. No, not Reylo, though I do like that enemies to lovers story. It's Xiri A'lbaran and Phan-tu Zenn from the High Republic books. They're on opposite sides of a war being fought between their two planets, Eiram and E'ronoh. But they never try to kill each other, because while Xiri is a soldier Phan-tu is not. Their first meeting is Phan-tu rescuing Xiri from the wreckage of her starfighter when she's shot down over Eiram. On the topic of romantasy as a whole, I think it needs a few gay romances. I'm not talking about a couple of gay secondary characters, mind you. I'm talking about the main romance being gay. That's exactly what I'm doing with my series. It's not romantasy, though. It's fantasy with romantic elements. The main romance in my series will be a slow burn. They're 14 at the start of the first book, so they're not going to immediately start doing butt stuff. Although it's medieval fantasy they actually are going to get married at some point because they're both part of an order that allows same-sex marriage.

It’s become something of a running joke between me, my brother, and mother about how every boyfriend character on the Hallmark looks the exact same. Hallmark may be okay with gay characters and interracial relationships, but having their leads end up with a blond guy would be just a bridge too far. Naturally I find it hilarious how each of those leading men you showcased were all “tall dark and handsome” like they crawled out of the Hallmark channel Ring style. The entertainment industry really can’t imagine women dating any other kind of guy, can they?

When fanfiction writers create a whole new genre to live out their fantasies and even demand money for their half-baked self insert story, that has wattpad quality and feels like a 14 year old virgin wrote it. 😮‍💨 Publishers have really low standards nowadays.

I feel like the only Romantasy I see that succeeds at the romance and has good fantasy in it is the married to magic series by Elise Kova. The world building is very simple and by no means Lord of the Rings but it makes sense and isn't a jumbled mess. And that's ok that it's simple because the focus is the Romance. And the Romance is good, the men are very respectful and caring. The books do talk about serious topics like abuse but it is handled with care and does actually effect the characters and their relationships. The Dance the Fae Prince is literally what I wanted from the ACOTAR series, well rounded characters, cute romance, and not cringy smut. I do know of a small author who has a few published books on Amazon. I haven't read them but I have read her Acotar fanfiction and she is a good writer and knows how to write romance, Chelsea Starling.

Yes to the heteronormative gender essentialism. As a bisexual girl, I don't really yearn to meet my "male mate." Why can't we write people as people and not toxic gendered caricatures?

I don't know if this is weird but I would like romantasy more if there wasn't any spice. I don't dislike spice, I just think it's unnecessary most of the time. Save it for fanfictions 😅

I feel so validated by this lmao I hate most of the romantasy tropes. It really feels like a lot of writers and readers are going through their wattpad phase right now and now we have to suffer through these kinds of stories being published and marketed more than ever before. 😮‍💨

I'm reading the ACOTAR series after my wife finished and I'm enjoying it so far (on the 3rd book), but bro she was trying to read Haunting Adeline and would just start laughing and read me cringe parts... The fact that it's so popular shows how low the bar is for romantasy lmao Im A mEgAlOdOn It's also frustrating how many of these readers refuse to read non-smut books. My wife is currently reading through the Stormlight Archives after finishing mistborn (can you tell who my favorite author is? lol) and has absolutely loved them, but her friends who read romantasy have zero interest in even thinking about a story without smut. As a result we have our own little book club of two that can read romantasy AND epic fantasy

I always think the same thing when I see paranormal romance novels with bad covers (like Nalini Singh). If they had pretty covers and sprayed edges, all the BookTok girlies would love these books. And I sometimes wish I liked all the BookTok books, too. There would be so much choice in the bookstore.

This video feels so cathartic. It gives me hope to see that there are still readers out there who go against the loud majority and actually seek and support quality work. A small bit of feedback: I think you should find a way to not have so much text on screen while you are speaking over it. Maybe I am just a slow reader, but I had to keep pausing to read all the quotes and some of the jokes and memes. There is only so much I can retain and when there is stuff to read with you saying completely different things over it, I can't even consume all of it without pausing and replaying a lot. It just made it a bit of a difficult viewing experience for me. That being said, I really enjoyed the vid! Loved the commentary and the topics you covered! Stay awesome!

You say everything I am thinking. I have not yet found an enemies to lovers story that can come close to zutara if they ended up together in the end. I grew up with avatar the last airbender, and my standards are too high now. I hate not being able to enjoy so many books like other people People just don't want a story where a person is a full-on-villain who goes through a redemption arc. Eveyrthing is so black and white, and a guy can either be a female wish-fulfillment or he's a toxic abuser who can't be redeemed even if he tries. Nuanced and complex characters? What's that?

The best "friends to enemies to friends with huge difference in ideals but still care for each other in the end' is Prof X and Magneto from the X-Men series. Their chemistry and dialogue when both are in a scene together is just fantastic! I got half/way through Fourth Wing before dropping it. What juvenile dog dooky

To me a lot of it can be summed up as "the Twilightification" of the romance genre. Every publisher since then has been trying to make lightning strike twice, even if that means just blatantly lying. Like how they tried so hard to make The Hunger Games seem like "the next Twilight" to sell movie tickets, so now it wont have its proper legacy of a dystopian novel about how media distracts from and even repackages and sells tragedy. The author was inspired by how the media was behaving around the Iraq War. It's the ironic cherry on top that her book got repackaged in the exact same way she was trying to critique. Because Twilight was so successful and because they're still these sexist notions that "women are an alien species, we dont know what they want so just give them more Twilight headcanons published as other books" and "women arent intelligent so all they want is smut pretending to be a novel" we're going to keep getting this instead of more diverse novels. And this isnt the hate on those who enjoy romantasy. I also read romantasy for escapism, because nothing about it is realistic in the slightest from the plot to the love interests' dick size. I just wish these formulaic copy and pastes weren't taking up so many resources and finite budgets so books with a bit more substance could also get the platform they deserve.

Whenever I see people putting Jane Austen in the romance section I get so angry, as if her entire bibliography is not a clear critique of social class and about feminism. They are less about the romance than about the character development of the female lead. If I look at contemporary romance or romantast, they lack that and so much more. It’s not encouraging critical thinking. As a literature student, the only essay I can think about writing with these books as the case studies is one in which I criticize the genre and its terrible influence on media literacy. There is nothing, absolutely NOTHING, of substance in these books that is worthwhile of discussing.

As someone who just never stopped reading since I was a kid and kinda caught the start of the romantasy train before jumping off during my YA fantasy phase in my teens (I read acotar because bookblr told me it was better than TOG, and I just can't do SJM anymore). The 2021 "Jenlit" lesbian book boom really brought me back to fantasy in a new way and to queer fantasy, which is noticeably absent in romantasy. Probably the closest to romantasy I can recommend are the 'Crier's War' duology, which is centrally around an enemies to lovers setup in a mechanical fantasy world, with a YA style and generally spiceless if I'm remembering right. The 'Gearbreakers' duology also goes so hard as a sapphic sci-fi/dystopian, whilst 'This is How You Lose the Time War' is a hauntingly romantic enemies to lovers told entirely through letters. All the previous recommendations actually engage with ideas of propaganda, deconstruction and millitary-industrial systemically unjust states. Samantha Shannon's works, both 'The Bone Season' series and the 'Roots of Chaos' (currently made of two standalone fantasy bricks - the iconic 'Priory of the Orange Tree' and its prequel 'A Day of Fallen Night') are excellent low magic political fantasies that weave any romance into the plot without making it feel separate or like an unnecessary addition. 'The Bone Season' is also the only book I've recommended to have the classic man big/woman small or centuries long different species age gap, and it does actually wrestle with the latter.

There‘s a german book series that is at least categorised as Romantasy that I really like, Secret Elements. It has an interesting plot, I love the worlbuilding (it’s like a sci-fi setting with fantasy elements like magic and magical beings), and the romance is actually good! It’s dislike to lovers slowburn (actually slow-burn, it takes five books). The characters beyond the mc and love interests are also fleshed out and really likeable, and it does the popular light vs dark trope really well in my opinion. And the romance is so naturally woven in that I at first didn’t even think it was Romantasy, lol

Normally I am not one to look down at other people’s reading choices or gate keep what books get to be a part of a genre but the other day I saw a short titled “Must Read Fantasy Books” and it was literally just a bunch of SJM, Fourth Wing, and half a dozen Acotar knock offs and I really had to fight the urge to go off in the comments about how none of the listed books were real fantasy books. On one level I agree with the sentiment that its good that these kind of books have gotten more people into/back into reading but I cant help but question if thats really a good thing when the only books these new or returning readers ever pick up are poorly written, bad representations of their respective genres that perpetuate and normalize harmful stereotypes and toxic relationship dynamics. The fantasy genre in particular is incredibly diverse with the types of stories that can be told but the people in these booktok circles never want to venture out and explore more of the wider genres. They only seem to want steamy no plot romance with a new coat of paint, which is totally fine, but it concerns me that the public image of an entire genre is being shaped by people who refuse to engage with said genre beyond the aesthetic

the name "romantasy" gives me the ick, and the fact that it's used in a serious manner in bookstores is beyond me. in what world do we live? and like, what happened to subplots? what is wrong with fantasy that has romantic subplot? the beauty of fantasy is the worldbuilding?? but lot of these romantasy books are so lazy with it. it would be easier if the authors just accepted that they wanted to write an erotica book with a fantasy setting, because most of these books are not about romance at all, they are all about "spice"

I strongly believe that the spicy booktok readers just never had a fanfiction phase cause that's all this kind of writing is

such a superficial take actually

Divine Rivals was more rivals to lovers than enemy to lovers

My favorite romantasy is the Ember in the Ashes series by Sabaa Tahir. I usually avoid first person stories with multiple POVs, but the world building and magic in Ashes are super interesting. There are three main characters and each grow realistically in strength and reasoning over time; plus, their respective romances are all slow burn, and are thankfully not punctuated with any explicit scenes ("spicy").

My goal as a writer is to do with romance what George R.R. Martin did with fantasy when he killed the hero (Ned Stark). I'm writing about vampires, but it's science fiction. They can't be horny, because biology (the CAN have sex, but it's pointless to them). Their bloodlust is gritty, high stakes and disturbing. Humanity is the same as the soul, which once lost can never be recovered. The handsome human love interest will suffer from addiction and ED which will wreck his body/health, turning him "ugly", which will take time to recover from. The MC couple have no happily ever after because the human will be allowed to get old and die. Oh, and romance is a side plot...

Funny how They don’t even excel in the thing they get marketised for. Best example of enemies to lover is Jaime and breinne started “wench?” “You will call me Brienne. Not wench.” “My name is Ser Jaime. Not kingslayer To “Brienne caught him before he could fall. Her arm was all gooseflesh, clammy and chilled, but she was strong, and gentler than he would have thought. Gentler than Cersei, he thought To “We’re taking the wench.” “Her name is Brienne,” Jaime said. “Brienne, the maid of Tarth. You are still maiden, I hope?” Her broad homely face turned red. “Yes.” “Oh, good,” Jaime said. “I only rescue maidens.” And that’s the tip of the iceberg of the dynamic between Jaime and breinne

8:33-8:47 Thank you for that! Yes it should be! It is not done at all! I have seen no review where it starts with "man writen by a woman" 😑 It is alway "dark romance" so vampire, mafia boss, or "moraly gray" or "cinamon roll" as that one is flattering and not basicly having a man that is sooo caring that he will bring you your slipers and wake you with a breakfast aka a servant & lover boy 🤦‍♀️ I have nothing to read in romance departament 😩 . . Smut: You shown a cover of Ice Planet Barbarian book 1....I read till crash-landing than skimmed the book...that book is trash and not "gillty pleasure" because I opuld not want to be kidnapped see rape and get cunillingus in that order in 72 hours timeline ... yes I know we don't read book because we what to experience the things in RL it is excapism.. but o boy that book was 🤢 and there are 28 in the series. It is the BT that made me avare od that book. I wish it didn't.

Fourth Wing sounds like a yassified version of Dragonriders of Pern - with less nuance and plot, and more instant attraction.

Despite growing up on roncoms and genuinely enjoying them I never got it romance novels. I thought romantasy books might finally be the bridge between fantasy books (my main genre) and my desire for cozy, fun books, but they’re just toxic relationships between some giant wall of muscle and an aggressively beige, smöll, teenage girl. As so many have mentioned, the fantasy world is treated as an afterthought, it’s an excuse for lavish balls and sparkly ball gowns. Pretty much everything BookTok adores I know to stay away from cause they just disgust me, there’s nothing wrong with smut but there needs to be consent and a power balance between two (or more) MCs who have a reason to be together other than being generically “hot”.

This is why i stick to men writing fantasy bc romance is kinda off-putting... i will write my own.....

I sadly got a book that was full of *spice* and i genuinely was there for the plot skipping through so much 😂 Like why was I told this was a fantasy book when it has a sexual scene in every chapter 😭

I couldn't finish Iron Flame. I only started it because I wanted to be sure that I disliked the the story (I was on the fence with book 1), and I just couldn't be bothered to finish it. It was boring, annoying, and filled with weird angst that felt stupid in the face of everything else going on.

Wattpad, for example, is almost all yass romantasy fiction, which is too bad because that kills opportunities for other genres and leaves readers eventually feeling bored when every story turns out exactly the same. This genre swallowed all the others up (at least on Wattpad, TikTok, and Webtoons) because it was easy to market to compulsive audiences and formulaic, making it also easy to reproduce with quick turnaround times. I don't hate the genre, but like a good ecosystem, when one population outgrows all the others, it's usually a bad thing, and the ecosystem gets destroyed.

All the people complaining about this is all they can find is fascinating. Algorithms serve up the content you engage with. If romantasy is all you get I your feeds, it’s because that’s what you’ve trained it to present you with.

All the people complaining about this is all they can find is fascinating. Algorithms serve up the content you engage with. If romantasy is all you get I your feeds, it’s because that’s what you’ve trained it to present you with.

The irony of making a long video about something being the bane of your life, and then telling people who disagree with your opinion to not watch because they have free will…

Dein deutscher Akzent ist echt schlimm aber sonst gutes Video

Romantasy is like the times when all my favorite tv shows were being ruined by unnecessary shipping culture, but now with books this happens from the very start and also there's sex in it

The problem I have with romance in any medium I've seen (manga, books, shows, etc. whether its queer or not) is that I've always despised the male love interest. The brooding short haired broad always bored me or annoyed me. It doesn't help that most of their backstory / trauma are always the same or is just used to excuse away shitty behavior that the main character has to endure.

I'm not picky with books. I was hyperlexic as a kid and read actively since Kindergarten. Nowadays I still read anything from academia and literary, historical fiction, classics, modern fantasy, thrillers, etc. I even read romance sometimes, but I prefer YA/middle grade stuff that is just light-hearted and cute (I'm 30 and FT Lukens' stuff is such a great palate clesner for me lol). I don't care for smut in these settings because that's not what I read fantasy for, and also if I want smut, I can read ACTUAL well-written smut online like I have for decades. I've been in fanfiction spaces since I was 12 and I truly have no desire to read something that shows the same level of thought and skill when it comes to worldbuilding and character development. Or romanticise abuse or toxic characters with no reflection, kind of like the shit I wrote when I was 14-16 because trauma. I think it's great that kids these days are into reading, the real issue is that these publishers are underestimating kids and rather than providing them with quality reading, it's just a matter of churning out as many books as possible to keep that cash flow going. Turns out I'm opting to blame capitalism for this one as well.

Kudos to Atomic Annie for letting James Tullos cameo in this video.