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antishurtugal_reborn2025-02-24 05:16 pm
My Thoughts On "Romantasy"
If you don't fancy reading this entire article, here is a short, easy to understand summary.
And yes, that is my actual hand. OMG, after all these years, the Epistler's hand is revealed! Somebody call the media post haste! This is why I hate going into bookshops now, because every time I do I'm confronted by this crap. No wonder I got crabby enough to take this quick snapshot.
TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains discussion of sexual assault.
Why do I get so viscerally angry about this new bullshit subgenre they call "romantasy", a term that makes me want to hit someone all by itself? I'll list them now, starting with the reasons you'd be most inclined to call petty, and on to the less petty reasons.
1. It's flooding the market with absolute trash, which draws attention away from the real fantasy novels (more on why this isn't "real fantasy" to follow)
2. These books use cheap sex appeal to sucker in readers who should otherwise really know better
3. The majority of them are really poorly written
4. It's nothing but the same old crap in a different package.
Those of us who write what I'd call "real fantasy" put a lot of work into building believable and interesting settings, lore, language, histories, biology, so on and so forth. We care about our craft. Romantasy doesn't.
It's just the same old lame romance cliches (brooding bad boy! Love triangle! Spunky girl protagonist who sometimes has a "disability" so she's more "relatable" but also is Super Special!) with some lazy fantasy trappings thrown in to disguise the fact that this is something you've seen a million times before. Regency manor, highschool, vampire's castle, werewolf lair, dragon rider academy - when all is said and done, it's no different from the porn movies of the 1960s which threw in some "social commentary" at the last minute in order to get the sex past the censors.
The entertainment industry is infamous for selling products telling the same basic story over and over again, and this is no exception. The sheer cynicism of it is depressing as hell.
5. ...but who cares, right? It's just harmless escapism, right? Let 'em have their fun, you envious killjoy!
6. Except it's not "harmless", because in just about every single one of these the "romance" is just fucking horrible. Underage girls being creeped on by immortal "fae" hundreds of years older than them, mind control, emotional and physical abuse, "soul bonding" and "destined mates" (read: removal of any pretence of consent, and often it's also without the victim even being informed of this little detail), memories being erased (again, without consent), kidnapping, false imprisonment, rape... the list goes on.
All of it presented as sexy and desirable.
7. But it's not real! It's just escapist fiction!
8. Oh yeah? You don't see any problem with that? Then why don't you stop and ask yourself a rather pertinent question: why do women think this crap is something to fantasise about in the first place? Why would any woman think being dominated and controlled by some creep ten times her age is "sexy"? Even the ones who aren't into BDSM? Does it not occur to you that this says something extremely worrying about the way women are conditioned from childhood to see themselves as passive objects to be owned by some man who decides he's entitled to "have" her, even now? That it's her "duty" to accept this regardless of her own wishes, and to then "redeem" the violent, moody creep with the power of her love?
(This is of course, with the natural exceptions, something that frequently applies to romance novels in general).
And if you think those attitudes are a thing of the past, think again. From as young as about six years old, I was told that when a boy bullied me that meant he "liked me" and nothing was done about it. A mere two years later I was already thinking of myself as "fat" and "ugly" and feeling self-conscious about my looks. All in order to conform to the mindlessly accepted idea that it's a girl's obligation to look pretty, so that boys will like you. A "liking" they will express by bullying you with harassment which becomes sexual as puberty hits.
In highschool I had boys making crude comments at me all the goddamn time. Aged 15 or so I was being asked "do you masturbate?" and "are you a lesbian?" (this latter was asked when I "inexplicably" refused to date any of them) in loud voices, during class. And the teachers did nothing about it. That's just how boys are, so just put up and shut up.
Us girls were also told - during an assembly, with the boys present to hear every word of it - that we mustn't wear black bras under our white uniform shirts because that was "distracting" to the male teachers. I still remember how humiliated the other girls looked, and how creeped out I felt. Once again the lesson was plain enough: men and boys cannot and should not be expected to take any responsibility for themselves. Instead, we girls must be careful to avoid "tempting" them.
That, in case I need to clarify, was unfair to everyone involved.
At my school formal (our equivalent of a "prom", to American readers, though one held two years before graduation when we were 15-16) I was having fun dancing until I found out the boys were "daring" each other to try and kiss me. I was initially flattered, or at least thought I was, because I didn't know any better. I then started to feel really uncomfortable and left early, humiliated, and my entire evening was ruined. Again, nothing was done about this. I didn't even go to the "official" Formal in year 12, because I did not want to risk a repeat incident.
Finally, the inevitable happened. I was sexually assaulted at school by an older boy. First he stalked and harassed me, and then the assault happened, while his friends watched and laughed.
The saddest part of all this? I tried to brush it off as "no big deal", even though I spent the rest of that day feeling so tainted that I kept scrubbing at myself. It was the final result of my lifelong indoctrination into thinking of myself as nothing but something to be owned and used by men, and that I should not make a fuss when a man assaulted me. And that was by no means the last time some guy treated me like a passive object to be "romanced", by force. (I won't go into the details, but the idiot had clearly taken all his cues from movies and couldn't understand why I wasn't into it)
My point being that these so-called novels are painting exactly the sort of behaviour I was subjected to as something women should want, or at least be expected to endure as is their duty as women, and women my age are eating it up, as are impressionable teenage girls. And I find that incredibly disturbing, not to mention depressing.
You just can't sit there and pretend that reading this crap isn't having a negative impact on the people reading it. Every system of oppression needs propaganda to keep it going, and that's what these horrible "novels" essentially are. Propaganda, subtly encouraging women to not just ignore but welcome abuse at the hands of men, who are in turn never expected to realise how wrong their actions are and do better. (Hence why it's always the woman/girl in these stories who has to do all the adjusting, while the man remains static).
And if you're "just reading it for the sex, teehee", lose the smug attitude and go read fucking porn instead of pretending you're "enjoying a good book". Because you're not. You're reading the glorification and romanticisation of your own continued oppression.
(I am aware, of course, that there are fantasy romances which don't have these issues, but which ones are you seeing in the picture above, displayed most prominently of all, right inside the entrance to the bookshop? Why is it the problematic as hell ones that are making the big bucks and getting all the publicity?)
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We saw it with dystopian YA, we saw it with slutty urban fantasy. I'm already seeing thinkpieces in defense of booktok romantasy.
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