Why Romantasy Sucks
Romantasy needs more haters, and here I am
Part 1: Romantasy is trash
Picking a book to read is a reminder of the inherent trade-offs in life.
Fantasy novels can take you through legendary hero journeys, so long as you don’t mind them flunking the Bechdel test. Post-Soviet authors offer enlightenment of the human condition on the provision that the reader suffer at least two business weeks of post-read depression. An incomplete series is always the most intriguing.
When I pick a romantasy book, I understand that I’m letting my ovulatory cycle take charge, not my brain. I adjust my expectations accordingly: less intrigue, more “spice.” My favourite fantasy and science fiction feature misogyny as a world-building staple, and while I don’t love that, they make me an offer I can’t refuse: in Three Body (ROEP), it's an uninhibited imagination of humanity under existential threat. In Name of the Wind, it’s prose that makes me believe I’m reading English for the first time.
But when I trade reading conventionally bearded, socially awkward male authors for horny, middle-aged female authors, I end up with the worst of all worlds – paper thin characters, inconsistent magic systems, and sex scenes that should be refiled under Tragedy in the Dewey Decimal System.
Now, I’m far from a good capitalist – but even I recognize a bad trade when I see one.
There are a few staples of the fantasy genre (or just any good genre fiction):
Involved, engaging plotlines
Complex character development
Philosophical or social insight
It’s a pleasant surprise when a romantasy novel hits any of the above, but it’s not fair to dock points when it doesn’t. We’re here for romantasy’s main selling points:
A mysterious, brooding, and morally gray main male lead
A strong, independent self-insert female lead
Good sex
And if that’s what we get, then honestly, I’m happy! Here’s the problem: romantasy never delivers.
Romantasy male leads are “mysterious” in the same way that temperatures become mysteriously hotter in the summer. I can predict each main male lead down to the internally-conflicted meltdown Rhysand Rowan Zayne he goes through as he reconciles his attraction to the main female lead with his past/duties/emotional unavailability (multiple selections accepted).
Self-insert female leads are all Mary-Sues with a “flaw” that’s actually easily fixable. Each claims they’ll do whatever it takes to save the world / save their family / overthrow the system (multiple selections accepted), but a single forced proximity shared bed trope brings them to their knees. What is she independent of? Logical decision making?
Now, the above two can be forgiven if the sex is good. If I had to be honest, I walked into romantasy with a little bit of anticipation, having heard so much about its spiciness. Instead, I was forced to repeatedly read the words “slick folds”, “sheath”, and “growled” while more than one romantasy author passionately explained to me that the main female and male characters were irresistibly and fatally attracted to each other because of their “mating bond.”
No plot, no character, no sex. If it sucks in all arenas, let’s call romantasy what it is: trash.
Call me a hater and put my name in Urban Dictionary. But hey! Don’t get me wrong – I think there’s nothing wrong with trash, and nothing wrong with consuming trash. I’m not hating on romantasy readers who devour these smut books laced with minimal plotlines. No – I’m hating on those who read romantasy and genuinely believe that they are good books when they are trash.
Part 2: How to consume trash
The consumption of trash is a sacred ritual in modern-day America. I don’t for a moment mean to belittle this routine. My junk of choice is TikTok paired with revenge bedtime procrastination, a winning combination at the peak hours of 10PM through 1AM. I consume just as much trash as the average American, and mine is just as pungent.
While mobile platforms are gaining an increasingly large share of entertainment mindspace, I believe that the queen of all trash is still reality TV. Reality TV blends the virality of social media with the star-power of the blonde pop singer and the drama of a multi-million dollar sports trade. It unites this divided country: both the political left and the political right debate the merits of this season’s Bachelor; everyone thinks they could be the winner of Survivor (they can’t); and nobody really likes the Kardashians, even if they keep up with them.
Reality TV is like the nice, humble donut of the trash world. It’s All-American. Everyone loves donuts, and everyone – even the stereotypical small-town cop – recognizes you can’t have too many in one go. It’s easy to dunk on reality TV, picturing its fans as vapid couch potatoes with nothing to do after their 9 to 5. But I think that downplays one of their greatest traits: humility.
How aware are you of the trash you’re consuming?
Quadrant I is where we are when we say “wow, I was productive today!” It’s reading the Substacks we’ve curated, watching a YouTube video essay, maybe even reorganizing our Instagram follows to prioritize friend connection. I call operating out of this quadrant being a “gardener” – attending to the garden of your mind by actively reading and engaging with thoughtful material, just like a real gardener might water their plants and cull harmful weeds.
I think it’s healthy to occasionally slip from Quadrant I to Quadrant II. We all need some useless joy in our life. This is when we scroll our Instagram feed after dinner but stop before it consumes our night, or when we watch the next episode of Love Island with our spouse as we fold laundry. We’re happy to consume entertainment while recognizing it as just that – entertainment.
Quadrant III and Quadrant IV are where we run into trouble. Nobody really wants to be in Quadrant III - that’s doom scrolling. That’s the TikTok algorithm feeding you endless influencer drama against a backdrop of divisive political videos aiming to get a rise out of you. And Quadrant IV is an interesting one: I think it’s generally good to consume thoughtful content, but if it goes in through the eyes and out the back of the head, it’s as good as wasted time. I titled this quadrant the glutton, thinking of a voracious reader inhaling book after book with little time for digestion.
Do you enjoy reality TV? If you don’t, ask a friend why they do. Answers are usually versions of the following, accompanied by a self-deprecating laugh: “I mean, everyone on the cast is stupid, and the drama’s overblown, and it’s ridiculous, but it’s nice to just turn my brain off.” Over half a decade with our favourite entertainment format leaves us with no doubt that we operate in Quadrants II and III when we watch TV. The reality TV enjoyer is genuine because he or she accepts the mediocre form of media as it is and embraces it with no further pretense. There’s a refreshing sincerity about indulging in foolishness and embracing the absurdity of manufactured drama.
But if you’re spending a lot of time in Quadrant III while thinking you’re in Quadrant IV or worse, Quadrant I, you’re in a lot of trouble.
Ask a romantasy reader why they love their books, and you’ll get a poetic defense of escapism and intricate world-building. They’re fooled by the idea that “reading is good”, forgetting that a book is nothing but – and only as good as – its ideas. The occasional cognizant few are drowned by the wave of #booktok videos that bow at the altar of flat writing. Even the sex is bad! Somehow, romantasy managed to reduce a profoundly human experience – one that can stretch anywhere from being a meeting of souls to a passionate, physical explosion – to linguistic dust.
If you spend your time thinking you’re planting seeds when you’re actually burying garbage, you’re going to be surprised come spring when you get waste water instead of flowers.
Part 3: “Girl, it’s not that deep.”
Sometimes it is, but we’ve simply stopped being able to recognize it.
With the breakneck pace of information overload in today’s society, it’s all but nearly guaranteed that the vast majority of information generated and consumed is trash. Print was once held to a higher standard due to its creation and distribution costs. That is no longer true.
Building informational taste is really important in this era, when most things are entertainment-fied. The line starts to blur - What is the difference between a conscientious and ethical business and a company with an entertaining marketing strategy? What is the difference between federal policy and a Twitter post from a president with idle thumbs? When all you’re used to is consuming viral TikTok videos from Joe Schmoe holding their framed political science degree, their opinion on international policy starts to hold equal importance to that of government officials who set policy.
In a far less important way, the same thing is happening for romantasy as compared to the general fantasy genre. Beyond all my lighthearted complaints about vaginas being described as “wet heat”, I’m actually worried that romantasy dulls our ability to perceive and contemplate complex narratives and language. When you get used to romantasy’s definition of character and world building, fantasy will appear complex, or even worse – boring. Literary fiction becomes dreadfully long and slow-paced. Explorative literature is indigestible.
Even the very language we read degrades – not just the “what”, but the “how” an idea is communicated. Romantasy books can definitely be entertaining, but they’re often a far cry from being “well written”. I’d rather get insulted by this line from The Name of the Wind: “My father’s stables have longer bloodlines than half you Aturan nobles” – than receive this compliment from Fourth Wing: “He looks scrumptious this morning.”
Of course, it’s not like your brain turns into mush the moment you pick up a Sarah J. Maas series. I have many friends who enjoy a good non-nutritious book just as much as they enjoy their more cerebral hobbies, and I don’t for a moment think they’re vapid. It really is about balance. Eat two salads for each donut, et cetera.
Me personally, I’ll stick with Literotica/AO3/Wattpad for my text pornography. And I’ll continue doing my civic duty of rating romantasy books 2 stars on Goodreads – my own little literary version of taking out the trash.
Ending comments
All illustrations here are drawn by me! If you want to see more subpar comics, my Instagram is @techadoodledo
I would like to take a moment to thank my new patron saint,
I googled for "romantasy sucks" and this was one of the top hits, lol. It looks like the Google algo is somehow doing its work today! Thanks for posting. A few thoughts below:
I think what you've written regarding romantasy can be applied to a lot of genres (and you do touch on this); consider the popularity of LitRPG, which is really just power fantasy wrapped in gamer's lexicon. The underlying desire that's tapped is, "If I learn the system enough, I can win. I can dominate." It's the genre for disenfranchised young people, particularly men, who can't see themselves going far in the broken systems of today.
Romantasy is similar: at its core, it is a power fantasy about an untouchable forever-love that does not conflict with personal and often sociocultural power as the F!MC rises. Look at the modern statistics around love and marriage and how bleak this is for women (working women still do more house work than their male partners; men are more likely to cheat on women who earn less or more than them by a much more significant margin than their female counterparts, and even with equal earners, more likely to cheat), and you see where it comes from.
I do agree with the conclusion, though not necessarily because of the literary aspect (I do not have much respect for the litcrit circle, to be perfectly honest, but that's a personal bugbear): like all things, fantasies should be indulged in moderation, and mistaking quadrants III and IV for quadrant I is, indeed, the danger zone. Again, this happens everywhere: I've heard people say Lindsey Stirling is the "greatest violinist alive." She isn't. She's a brilliant entertainer, but Hilary Hahn can Paganini circles around Stirling all day. Usually these individuals are not classical-music aficionados and Lindsey Stirling is their entry into instrumental music with what we view as classical instruments. It's the "confidence from ignorance" phenomenon in action.
I do also think there's a risk here in being derogatory towards people who are mistaken regarding their quadrant, however: it's likely these individuals are still young and speaking confidently from ignorance and an underdeveloped palate from lack of broad experience. Eventually, I suspect most of them will mature as they broaden their scope of reading material.
In the meanwhile, the strong defense is often (though not always) really not a defense of the genre per se, but an ego defense: they have picked up on the derision lobbed at their person, even if disguised as genre criticism. Not to say this is what you are doing, but scroll through Goodreads or any forum post on this topic, and it becomes quite obvious the contempt often spills over to the readers themselves. This is particularly sharp when it comes to anything romance-adjacent, which holds primarily a female readership.
Thanks for the interesting read, and please pardon the long digression.
(Note: I am not a romantasy reader myself. I do read fantasy, and even romance fantasy, but not really romantasy. Also, I think "The Name of the Wind" was and still is way overrated.)
Thoroughly enjoyed this