I think one reason books are getting really trope heavy (besides laziness) is that authors have started viewing their books like internet media. They want their book to appear in as many search results as possible, and algorithms are increasingly presenting tropes. "Because you liked enemies to lovers, here are 100 other enemies to lovers books". So authors are doing the equivalent of keyword stuffing: trope stuffing. Put every trope you can think of into the book so you can list them as keywords. Algorithms don't recognize original concepts. We may soon have to look at the last page of search results for the original books.
Good points. Similar to how many companies became smart about playing the SEO ( search engine optimisation) tactic when Google was getting more use back in the day. Then everyone and their grandparents saturates the whole scene because everyone knows the tactics.
I really hate this trend of books appealing more to the algorithm and fleeting internet hype than to the interests of the reader (and frankly, the author)
Your point of characters only finding each other hot instead of actually loving each other makes me think more authors should have seen the The Swan Princess movie as a kid.
*cracking up, remembering some classic lines* 😂 Thanks for bringing up the memory, although I don’t even think I’ve seen the movie all the way through since we never owned it.
Yep, it takes me a long time to find a truly good book on audible and especially one that isn't mature. • I wish they had mature and non-mature version of the same book (with no hate/offense meant to either versions) so people that like wholesome experience and ones that prefer mature both could read too. • audibles mature isn't equal to spotifys mature content of just swears and some 18+ mentions. • it's explicit n there's no way to filter those books except scroll down to the description. • I wish they had like levels of mature like subtle/explicit/if they mean mature violence like gore/mature tropes like suicide/mature sexual content whatever so we can pick what we can stomach. i suggested them to get an ai incorporated in the app to search a book we describe because search bar just works by the search and feed is just bad.
In fantasy, I don't want the word "hot" unless it's describing temperature. Please, give me the poetry when you talk about your loved one. "Hot" is such a pedestrian concept, which is fine for modern worlds, not ancient/old worlds. That's bare minimum to me.
The Girl On The Train The Girl In The Cabin The Girl In Cabin 13 The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo The Girl With All The Gifts The Girl In White The Girl Who Played With Fire The Girl Who Got Away
Im really tired of how all the protagonists became queen in the end even though they said at beginning they hate royals and nobles but as soon they "fall in love with a prince" they change themselves. Also that trope: oh-I-was-a-lost-princess .
@@draeannxRIGHT. Because Celaena was SUPER ADAMANT that she didn’t want to become a queen and that part of her life was dead. But then the characters and the author portray her as selfish for feeling this way.
Recent polls show that many people love tropes such as a mysterious prince as the MC. It's a power trip thing. People want to be the top dog, just with underdog arcs. I hate it. Why should all protagonists be the top line, best in the world? Imagine a story about a sheep herder who learns to take up arms in a civil war, I'd root that. So ling as he doesn't take the crown in the end
@draeannx That was actually on my reading list - (Idk anything about the book, it was a suggestion that kept popping up) but now that you're saying this...I'm not reading it. Thanks for saving me from a story like that
The modern language drives me crazy in particular when everyone talks like a 14-year-old that just discovered swear words. That was part of what threw me off about Fourth Wing, was even the old generals spoke like modern teenagers.
@@blah914 'very few'?? What? Almost every good writer can do that. If you cant create individual voices for characters, which to be entirely frank is a basic element of writing, then you are a bad writer. End of. Character voices aren't the only thing you're going to be doing wrong if you can't even get THAT right. How are you going to craft in-universe cultures and religions, or write a coherent plot, or manage complex character arcs and relationships, if something so simple as 'dont make every character sound like every annoying tiktoker' is beyond you?
@@blah914 nice bait, but it's a bit obvious. Maybe next time imply that I'm on my period, at least blatant misogyny is more typical in a comment section.
@@zoerice4227 omg 🤣 I did not imply u were on ur period in any way. I'm a woman. my point still stands: few ppl are good writers, and you need to chill and not resort to victim mentality and identity politics when u are the one being a d*ck.
It sometimes feels like the authors are copying 80's action heroes with a gender change, and forgetting that people were already mocking that type of character around 1990.
Yup, their idea of a strong female is a stereotypically strong male, and even then,they're not actually strong men. Pretty much telling women they're broken and have to emulate Andrew Tate if they want to be strong.
its funny, to me, in media, when i think "strong female characters" i never think of the "crossdressing as a guy" or the "smartass" as strong. on the contrary, i think sakura, from card captor sakura, Lacus from gundam seed, or Yuna from Final Fantasy X. characters who are strong, not because they are "strong female characters" or tomboys(which is ironic in gundam seed, as i feel like it did an amazing job of showing both types against each other, and why that tomboy/"girl in pants" is actually weaker. not once, but twice, first with the archangel captain and first officer butting heads, and later by comparing Lacus who is the most feminine stereotype you can think, and Cagalli who is just "singing to animals" away from being a literal disney princess). as a side note, im NOT against the (super snarky)/(crossdressing as a guy) protagonist as one of the books i had the most fun reading(after getting over the few starting chapters), was a pratical guide to sorcery. i do think Siobhan is strong, but i dont think of her as a "strong female". she is powerful, resourceful and smart yes, but at the same time, she feels just "strong enough" to survive. and she had to sacrifice alot to get there.
"Moronically snarky MC " 😂yes! I cannot stand this type of main character, it completely ruins a book for me. It also feels like there are only two typed of girls/women that exist in fantasy romances: either a snarky badass or a quirky wallflower (who also suddenly tends to become snarky when she meets the love interest). It's so frustrating! I agree with all other points as well, especially the All Lust, No Love and constant descriptions of how hot the characters are. Our society is already so hyperfocused on appearance that seeing the same thing in books is just annoying. I don't want to read about square jaws and chiseled abs, I want to read about emotional and intellectual connections the characters develop.
The "only 2 types of women" is so true 😭 like why can't we have a MC who is literally just a normal girly girl? She can still be badass without having to be "not like other girls", edgy just for the sake of being edgy or 'quirky'... We need romance authors to have a Barbie marathon ffs...
Hear hear! As a man, I can't stand the terribly written woman characters written as love interests by mostly male writers back in the day. Typical hot girl who's only there to fulfill the obligatory sex scene/ wish fulfilment of the male protagonist. As if she has no agency or layers beyond her relationship to said male protagonist. In recent times, we have a crop of women writers who are just as terrible with their characters. 🤦
Well, I don't mind having fit, handsome male characters in books. Sure, the emotional connection between characters is important. But whats wrong woth looking at your love interest thinking "he/she is so gorgeous looking"? Like, it's the most natural thing in the world to be physically attracted to another person due to their looks. So yeah, I want both. Chiseled abs as well as emotional/intellectual connection. Both are important to me in a relationship.
The “stupid, snarky protagonist” only works for me if they actually have some consequences for being stupid and snarky, like they get fired because they rudely refuse help from a more experienced person (setting themselves up to both fail their task and burn their bridges at that workplace at the same time). It’s the stupid, snarky protagonists who somehow are always proven right and somehow always succeed that pop up all over the place though, and they drive me nuts.
I know what you mean - they start of all confident & arrogant & get beaten down a peg or ten in the book. Tho normally I prefer if the moronic snarky character is a side character 'cuz you don't have to deal with their BS for as long as it takes for them to realise they fucked up
question, if the protagonist does indeed get consequences for their actions, lets say they get humiliated and they know it, but they also get support from other characters, would that negate the kinda impact of their consequence? idk if that makes sense but thats the best i could explain it 😭
I definitely agree that the stupid and/or snarky protagonist trope does better in some situations more than others (like in SH3, it makes sense for Heather Mason to be a snarky teen since it could be a coping mechanism for all the horrors she's come across). Part of me wonders if we have a lot of protagonists that follow this trope because there's something inherently rebellious to them, and authors could project their own issues they've had against authority figures in their lives. I have some elderly family members who, when they were young kids, grew up in some variation of a "children should be seen and not heard" environment - so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people create snarky protagonists that are in the right as wish fulfilment after growing up in those kinds of environments.
What drives me away from YA Fantasy at the moment is the fact that nearly every synopsis sounds like this: random girl in a very interesting fantasy world goes on an even more interesting quest to save x from y - but of course she can not do this on her own or with the help of her friends and family, no! To do that she needs to team up with this mysterious guy who she should hate but who is also insanely hot which is why they fall in love so screw the plot and throw the world building out the window!
its funny because that's how a pratical guide to sorcery starts, which is kinda one of the reasons i almost dropped. but soon enough the author manages to free herself from the trappings. as a spoiler, currently, its book 4, and she had not an ounce of romance. and even though you just described one of the main male characters in the story, i genuinely feel like maybe he isnt "endgame".
But every year there's anew crop of girls/boys who havent read anything like that before, and eat it up, so it'll always get made You're just viewing as more jaded on the genre
Stupid enough to seek revenge, smart enough to come up with a plan that convinces others to go along with the doomed mission. haha, these can be great side characters though or bad guys
@@matthewvp8507That's disappointing. I was looking forward to reading it. Those characters are really annoying though, unless they have a good growth arc.
Enemies to Lovers has variants. My least fave is when they are supposed to be on the same side and enemies over some trivial interpersonal misunderstanding. My fave fave favorite is when they are both honorable mature people but their nations are at war, or he killed her father, or only one of them can win the elixir of eternal life to save their sick mom/dog whatever… then you don’t need Snark and Miscommunication to keep them apart. They are driven apart by real differences.
Yeah, what I don't like is snark for snark's sake and relationships based on needless and gratuitous betrayal. My best friend's mom watches a lot of Hallmark and there's about ten million movies about someone surveying a town/farm/business so they can bulldoze it/sell it out from under them/undercut their market for a big corporation, and every single time they start a romantic relationship with the person they're scheming against without telling them they are, or are planning to, destroy their life for profit. The love interest gets mad, the guy makes some grand gesture and an emotional speech about how he totally changed his mind after he ✨fell in love with her✨, she forgives him, the end. And almost every single one starts with them being needlessly, even moronically snarky to eachother. For no discernible reason. Until they either get in an argument that somehow turns into a makeout session or one if them does or says something uncharacteristically sentimental leading the other one to realise "There's more to them than I thought 🥺" The endless repetition of these 2 tropes has turned me off them completely in any context. It takes willpower to even give any kind of "enemies to lovers" story a chance because a good 80% of them are exactly that type of bs and the other 20% aren't necessarily good either. I think Pride and Prejudice and Much Ado About Nothing are the gold standards and the umpteen bazillion imitators just cannot handle it. One in a million is actually decent.
@perlapamela2023I recently read Daindreth's assassin, and it has more than one really good enemies to lovers plots. And the character are actually really clever, there is zero pettiness, zero stupidity, just circumstances that place them on different sides and they have to deal with them. But if you want a book that takes aaaages for the characters to stop viewing each others as enemies, that ain't it. They are too mature and the world is in too much peril for that. Great books though
Omg, The Ashes and the Star cursed King really did me in with that first one. The lovers started out as “enemies” in the first book, become lovers, then by the beginning of the following book they’re enemies again-over stupid petulance and miscommunication.
I'm glad you bought up the Sarah J Maas thing, actually. (I read the "Throne of Glass" series on a recommendation...) Honestly, the Fae business went beyond hot, long-lived, pointy-eared "males" and "females" for me; precisely because Maas herself didn't seem to go beyond that. Fae in her books seemed to have no discernable culture at all. Their ways of speaking were the same; their ways of scheming were the same; their cruelty seemed as on par as anybody else's in that world, if a little more bitey. Maas's world struck me as fantasy ornamentation to dress a romance. And given that just about every main- or side-character got a perfectly fitted side-piece by the end, it was pretty boring to me, too.
Maas could literally call her "faeries" elves and nothing about them would change Edit: honestly some of them could literally just be humans with magical powers. There's no reason to make them centuries old (especially not with their 19-year-old love interests)
See this is why when I was in HS, ACOTAR didn’t do it for me because I read “Iron King” which was FAE. Like King Oberon-Queen Titania- myth. Idc what people thought of the female lead, personally, it was plot over romance but the romance was dashed in and high school me LOVED it. There’s nothing like it in the Romantasy genre honestly because they don’t world build
@@CamilaWolf-c7i Julie Kagawa's world building was phenomenal and aged really well especially when you have hot garbage like Fourth Wing, Powerless, Once Upon a Broken Heart, Serpent Night something...I'm glad I was reader since forever, but in high school, I know what sucks
🤣 Know exactly what you're talking about. They're just as ubiquitous and terrible as music marketing executives back in the day. PR and marketing factories.
Another good thing to check is what the reviews on the back cover are saying. If I see a single review that says something like “This was so hot!” I immediately put it back down, because I now know what the focus of the book is, and it’s not story
As a librarian I can tell you it is not just romantasy. Nearly all genres have book cover trends. A few years ago nearly all books had women on beaches on them, in the 60s it was very prominent text, in the 70s it was graphics, and so on. Book covers aren't immune to trends. They always had trends and will always have them.
one novel that i really like, that i feel like it does the whole "tomboy snarky mc" right is a pratical guide to sorcery. even though the start of the novel i did had major issues with, the story soon becomes far more interesting. siobhan is an adult, she has major issues, but she also has a reason for those issues. she is snarky, but alot of times, that snarkiness gets her into trouble. and while she is smart and resourceful, the author isnt afraid of making her fuckup and having to deal with the consequences. she is cold and calculating, but never crossing into becoming a psycho/sociopath.
How I felt about Saeris in Quicksilver. I listened to the audiobook and I said out loud so many times "oh stfu, Saeris" 😂. I DNF'd that about 50% of the way.
I kinda feel a little bit liiiiike well..??? Women have been described the same way for an eternity, strictly to be lusted over so a little part of me like oh well lol that may also be because I love imagining a 6’5 muscle god so I’m biased but I get that across the board we need diversity in terms of body types. Short kings, fat kings, medium kings, all the kings!
Not to mention 6’5 muscle beefcake with 16 abs is probably really uncomfortable to cuddle and feels like a board. Let’s bring back celebrating blacksmith builds and dad bods bc at least they got cushion as well as being functionally strong for that fantasy ideal
@@blackvelvetsings5310 Nope. Fourth Wing really just feels like someone asked an AI to read through the popular Romantasy or young adult Fantasy books of the last 10-20 years and then make a list of all relevant tropes and plot points and then she just wrote them in one book. Like many parts of the world building look like a rip off from Game of Thrones, characters are a mix of Red Queen and ACOTAR, the whole: a disabled person's challenge is to ride a dragon plot is from Dragon School etc.
YES, thank you, agree with everything you mentioned. I think one of the issue is that a lot of new writers are mainly inspired by contemporary fantasy romance, and it's extremely limiting. If you think of the greatest writers, they were inspired by History, poetry, the classics, mythology, and not just greek mythology. They were very educated people, and/or had experienced a lot of the world, and because of that were able to create rich and unique worlds, they also had more things to say, and could write deeper stories.
Very well said. Such writers, both men and women had plenty of real world experience to draw from. I like Tolkien. I also like Mary Shelley's original Frankenstein ( not the typical abridged version). A man who was a war veteran and young woman barely out of her teens with different life experiences and standing yet capable of capturing my attention and admiration with their writing. What's the connection? Both wrote from life experience, observation, reflection, discussion with peers and being unconcerned with market segments.
Yup. Nowadays, the anti-intellectualists will come after you for being "elitist," and it's only going to get worse the more education is ruined and people waste all their time killing brain cells on social media.
I think another problem is that a lot of writers writing these books aren't actually interested in writing books, they'd rather their stories become movies or TV shows or an anime, but because they have no way of making a movie or TV show or anime, they settle for writing, and that's when they try to pile everything they "learn" from these writer crash-courses on TH-cam and elsewhere into a story without any understanding of how to actually write, or what the creative process for writing even looks like besides stringing along words one after another until they hit 300-400 pages. Writers of literature/literary fiction understand the "craft" of writing, that it's as much about the way you say something as what you actually say, but for these "Wattpad writers" they either care too much about one or the other; either they write something flowery and romantic sounding despite there being absolutely nothing worthwhile about the content of the sentence to deserve the elevated language they tried using (often completely misusing words just because they "sounded" cool), or on the other end of the spectrum they have a good idea of what they want to say but wind up saying it in boring expository chunks and start line-listing descriptions of people instead of understanding how to bring the description into the action, or how to let a character's actions provide the necessary subtext for their personality instead of just force-feeding the audience pinky promises that the character is "strong" or "brave" or "smart".
There always was, and always will be, mediocre artists doing forgettable things. Be it authors, architects or musicians. The reason we think stuff used to be better quality is that only the very best works of their time live on, are remembered and kept. The rest vanishes and is forgotten.
Enemies to lovers (or friends!) is such a trip for me. Either the author writes it too soft so the main characters aren't really enemies--more like mildly inconvenienced with one another upon first meeting--or they go in HARD and it feels too mean and personal to come back from 😅
Personally why I prefer rivals to lovers, or at least describing it as that. Some people say the ultimate enemies to lovers is Pride and Prejudice and everything else is a failed knock off. Others say a true enemies to lovers is they should be obsessively trying to kill or thwart each other and are actually enemies on opposite sides, while having a mutual respect and obsession with each other. Both are p different, and I like both if they’re done well. The former is like the first example you said, done poorly they’re just kinda mildly inconveniencing each other while annoyed they’re attracted to one another, as opposed to challenging each others biases and learning from each other. On the other hand the second is like-yikes idk if this is a believable transition to a relationship depending on how far one pairing goes during the enemies portion
Reminds me of trying to create a 'evil' version of a heroic character that was likable. So many likable villains are just..unlawful. Or you just don't see the truly evil consequences of their actions, and the writer carefully portrays the victims as not really bothered.
OMG, the "male" "female" thing has bothered me FOR YEARS. It started in romance and has migrated as romance authors have moved more towards fantasy. It's SOOOOOOOO cringe.
It was common speech when I grew up. Some women insist its an insult, and I have to state: as a female person, I prefer the word 'female' to 'girl' or 'woman'. "Woman' had connotations of motherliness and breeding sexuality that made me uncomfortable--still do. Girl was slightly better, but meant immaturity. "Female' is a bit distanced from the grotesqueries of mating expectations. Nowadays, I can skip to 'Crone'. 😆
The male/female thing drives me INSANE! It takes me so far out of the world. In my work/school background, “female” was only ever used as a derogatory term for the women, who were a tiny minority. It’s become ingrained now that when used as a noun to describe a sentient human (or human-enough, like fae or whatever), it’s inherently dismissive. Like, “Ugh, females.” When I encounter that trope in books, my brain just twitches and brings all that baggage back, so instead I replace “male” and “female” when used as nouns in my head with “man” and “woman” as I’m reading (if that makes sense).
@@Badficwriter I don’t mind woman at all but I see myself often saying male and female way more (and I think it came from saying a lot ‘male/female actors/actresses’, and ‘female/male leads’- cus I’ve learnt English by obsessing over movies and actors basically 😅)
I don't wanna sound mean, but most of the writers that get massively popular online aren't actually writing for the sake of the story. They are writing for the potential money, and use social media as a way to stitch a story together. They don't treat their characters as people with agency, and they don't allow the story to naturally progress. I call these kinds of writers as "cosplay writers" because they have the veneer of being a writer, but there's ultimately nothing there. These books are easily marketable because they hit all the popular words and phrases online, not because there is any substance. And you can like these books all you want, but at the end of the day they are made of nothing.
@@RoseBaggins Like it something I've noticed more and more over the years. It also kinda inspired my own work because I see what people want, and just put the effort, love and attention it needs. Unfortunately being broke and a single mom I don't have time to market myself lol.
Omg I am stealing the expression "cosplay writer" 😝 and you're right, because it feels really amateurish, like they just read ACOTAR and we're like "you know what? I can do that too!" Except they've never written anything in their life 😅🤦♀️
@@nessaidolslayer3426 I'm glad I'm not alone I don't wanna knock inexperienced or bad writers, since fiction writing is something everyone can do. But these books are soulless and only made to make money. I hate it.
I recently read The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time and I was expecting it to be boring, but it was such a breath of fresh air. Fantasy today feels sooooo diluted in comparison to Tolkien.
Tolkein has a way of world building that I usually dont see in may books. He will spend half a page just describing the scenery. As a teen when I read the hobbit, I didnt enjoy it as much but I love it now
I hate when the fantasy book I was so excited to read turns out to be fantasy romance with lots of these tropes. Happened to me few times this year already :/ can't wait t o see what the 'fantasy books with miniscule romance plot' is
@@zoebrugg7594 yeah, if I wanted that, I'd pick that in the first place. So many 'fantasy' books with interesting premises were ruined for me to the point I don't pick a fantasy book when it has 'romance' tag on goodreads anymore, no matter how interesting it might seem.
@@zoebrugg7594I’ve taken a long break from reading young adult and new adult fantasy because of this. I’m only in my early twenties but since I’ve always been an avid reader the smut and tropes started annoying me during my late teens. Once you read the popular series like TOG you’ve basically kind of have read it all. While there are still unique books in the genre, I think they are the minority at the moment. I’ve found that fantasy and science fiction books outside of those genre spaces have more to offer me at this point in my life.
I self published a trilogy quite a few years ago now. I purposely limited the amount of romance in it because so many books have it so much and without any logical purpose.
This is why I love the Emily Wilde’s books. She is not helpless, she is an academic, her love interest is annoying but he LIKES her actually like her as a person… the plot is smart and the fey aren’t evil “just because”
i got the first book a few months ago and i can't wait to read it soon because it's such a breath of fresh air within the popular books 🥹 it may just appeal to me personally because it's the kind of story i fall in love with but i think it's brilliant 🌟
This was one of the things I appreciated about the series! The love interest is still attractive (I meant in a way that follows tropes) but it’s not the main draw for the MC. They have charming conversations, bond over similar interests, and you can believe these people can actually love each other.
Books are like any other media in the business world. Publishers find a trend and then overwhelm us with the same thing until the market collapses. At this point, I'd like to see a return to LOTR-style fantasy.
@@melindagallegan5093 Romantasy has kinda quickly become just Harlequins with a lazy coat of paint on it. Honestly "fantasy" as a genre is kind of flawed in general because there's a LOT of different types of stories in it that are only united by a vague sense of the setting being flavored around some kind of past historical period with supernatural elements. Kinda like how sci fi initially meant speculative fiction about the future, but was quickly saturated with modern military fiction with some chrome spraypaint and blinky LEDs.
Same. As somebody who was introduced to fantasy through Harry Potter and the inheritance cycle, which I can see where they gotten there ideas from Lotr. I like high fantasy, with world building. I also enjoy cozy fantasy books too like Legends and Lattes and Bookshops and Bonedust. I just like the different races involved on a magical adventure if that makes sense
*flashbacks to the abundance of fantasy books that feature a magical school where you're sorted into school-mandated cliques based on your personality*
Exactly! Movies, TV shows, video games... it's all about algorithms and revenue following "tried and true" methods. Sadly, the 1990s were 30 years ago; back when creativity and originality was encouraged and consumed more than tropes. Then again, was a better economy with more opportunities.
Have you seen any of those videos breaking down top movie statistics over the last 20 years? It's not just in your head. The numbers show that almost all major movies starting in the 2010s were sequels or remakes, 85% or something ridiculous like that.
Try being a professional editor. 😂 I get book after book that literally has the same names of the main characters, the same settings, and of course the same template, plot point by plot point. It feels like the majority of "authors" (and I use this term very loosely anymore) don't even try to be creative at all. In many cases, the art has been eliminated from fiction writing, especially in genres like romance and mystery, but in fantasy as well. But while I can vent about the writers, it's the readers that glom onto these carbon copies that really get in my craw. Why are so many people acting like something is brilliant and groundbreaking when it's legit a stolen plot from a much better written book of the past???
So much has been written in all genres by now that it's getting extremely hard to come up with something entirely fresh. I think fiction as such, unless perhaps it deals directly with contemporary sociological issues and/or politics, is bound to grow increasingly stale with time. There are only so many plots and tropes to choose from. You can push at those boundaries to some degree, but if you push to the point where you break too many "rules" the stories stop making logical sense. For the fantasy genre I think perhaps world building is the only facet of a given novel where an author can approach true freedom of creativity. In the end you can only place a finite number of plots in hopefully novel settings.
@@christerdehlin8866 There may be only a limited numer of plot elements, but there is a nearly infinite number of ways you can put them together, and if you want to copy, pick a story so old few have read it nowadays.
the two previous comment make very good points, but I'd like to add from my experience w writers, my education work in film and tv script development: a lot of it is also anxiety as a response to cancel culture. so many writers gets put to the wall about what they write, as if the actions and statements of their characters were their own, and bc they "thought of it" therefore they must approve or subconsciously support it ect. that sort of thing is paralysing for your creativity and ability to write about deep issues, or even just write a good s*x scene. with some writers, once we have developed a good enough relationship to share A03 pen names, it is insane how much better they are at writing and storytelling when they are unencumbered by expectations, fear, and anxiety. and the crazy thing is, they all view their fanfics as their "crap writing", and are shooketh when I tell them that's it's actually pretty good. Writing like nobody is watching is *hard*, esp in this day and age when authors have to basically be their own marketing team and constantly be exposed in such a way that 30 yrs ago, only a-list rockstars were.
@@ThomasPalm-w5y How I fantasize about rewriting some things: What if this didn't use offensive words, but original non-Earth words? What if this was written so the reader had a clue what was going on? People will tell me the originals were masterpieces, but I'm not the only person to hate them..
@@AliasPhex It’ll be published some time in the next few months. Basically, spooky wolf dude pops up in this six year old kid’s bedroom and just sits there watching the door every night for six years. Then it bites him in the arm and disappears. I really hope people like it😅
When it comes to romance-and a good love story-I am a firm believer in "less is more." Attraction can be important (and in fact, UST can be a great tool in building/writing romantic relationships), but if you rely solely on physical attraction to sell your romance, the story feels more like a tale of lust rather than love. There's nothing wrong with that, and many people enjoy those stories too, but if a love story is what you're going after, then you'll have to do the work to sell it to your audience.
Yeah, same can be said of most modern media. I see this argument a lot about video games and movies, too. Too much focus on revenue and following "tried and true" methods to make more. This is why I miss the 1990s - was way more about creativity, doing something unique, taking risks, and seeing what worked. Then again, was a better economy with way more opportunities /shrug
@@sebastianashbury2478 Eh, the 90's had their share of embarrassing trend chasing and quick cash-grab sequels (Land Before Time, Police Academy, many other direct-to-video sequels that wrung every last drop of blood out of a franchise, the bajillion Power Rangers / Ninja Turtles knockoffs, etc), it's just that only the good stuff sticks around in popular memory. In 30 years, people will be rolling their eyes at the schlock coming out and remembering (the best of) the present day as a golden age of film. A part of the problem is how expensive big films / video games are. It's super easy to say "Never mind the money, follow your dream!" when you don't have your job and hundreds of millions of borrowed money riding on it.
@paulgibbon5991 That's fair; no era is without their share of embarrassing trend chasing and cash-grabs. However, to me, it feels like there was way more room for experimental creativity. These days, everything feels too similar. And yeah, also for enough that there's so much more riding on the development costs. However, that, too, has its own pitfalls. Like the more recent (and still ongoing) trend of basically "remakes" for the sake of nicer CGI quality, but very lacking substance and quality in the story. That, or the more recent trend of tokenism without quality stories. Again, nothing new, we saw that in the 90s as well. Guess there never will be a truly great and flawless era, but the flaws give us more creative ideas to spin on.
Enemies to lovers is a Pride and Prejudice remake (and often written poorly). Characters immediately falling in love solely because they are hot is Romeo and Juliet (and still just as cringe).
@@kitsune-c8j idk if I completely agree with you. Darcy actively works against the bennet family’s best interests by stepping in and preventing bingley from marrying Jane. Elizabeth is constantly trying to down play or smooth over her family’s social flubs in front of bingley to help the match go through. For at least the first half of the book they are actively working against each other for opposite interests even if they didn’t realize it at the time.
But Midsummer Night’s Dream is the ultimate basis for Fate having a sense of humor and things work out in the end after we have all had a good laugh. (It’s the only Shakespeare piece that I truly like.)
Romeo and Juliet at least is a Tragedy and knows it is 😂 A lot of people seem to forget that and are like INSTANT LOVE STAR CROSSED PASSION and put it in stories, forgetting that the whole point is that was a bad thing actually bc their families hated each other and got them both killed
Fantasy books that annoy me the most is where a character doesn’t know that he has some inner magical powers until he does and then he’s the “key” or “chosen” or something along those lines. I also don’t like female characters that are written as “badass” but they’re really not, they’re just mean to everyone for no reason. Imagine if Aragorn was an a hole to everyone, would that make him badass? But for some reason, many writers think their female character can’t be strong if she’s nice. Or she can’t be strong if she doesn’t kick some man’s butt twice her size. Like they HAVE to establish that. To me it’s extremely immature writing and I’m honestly sick of it. I just want a good story.
I love discovery of hidden powers! But not when the character ends up being the most powerful/smartest/prophecied, etc. just out of nowhere. The chosen one trope can be done well, but it has been done a lot. I have fun with it my novel, Sky of Seven Colors, where the race of giants insist their prophecy is about the main character, but she quickly realizes any human would have worked. She’s just the first one they stumble across and kidnap. In the giants’ world, her humanity is sort of a power because color is treasure to them, but she is completely ordinary.
@seductiveraven4895 that was super mean for no reason. Its really ironic how strong you think you are because your mean. Didnt we just talk about this!
@@nickoru1 Yeah because you're being misogynistic, I'm glad he or she handled your misogynistic ass. You attacked first by saying women shouldn't beat men in fights because of size difference when this is fantasy-sci-fi anything can happen weirdo.
Y'know you're the first person who's done a breakdown like this that actually not just makes sense, but takes things from a logical standpoint without being patronizing or that same kind of "over snarky" that are being used too often in books these days. Thank you!
The tan/ethnically ambiguous thing is seriously disingenuous. Authors know the meaning of words and leaving them out (I hope) so trying to get the broad appeal by being vague in books then going for the social justice points by being explicit on social media is just so UGH
The “tan” and “golden” skin tone kills me. You could have knocked me over with a feather when SJM confirmed that her FMC rom the Crescent City series was a POC? Huh?
I know. It's like did they learn nothing from jkr redconning her characters after the fact to make them nore diverse but never actually making the effort to write it in??
It just feels like the "Latino lover" stereotype where Latino or Mediterranean men are exoticized and oversexualized. With "olive" skin or some other colour where you can make them white-passing or mixed race or Latino however the current trend go. It usually happens to male characters, while female characters are more commonly blonde / readhead with alabaster complexion... Colorism is well and alive, unfortunately. Irl pale skin is associated still with being "pure & noble" and darker skin with being "wild & passionate". This is why Black and Latina women are often stereotyped as "passionate, promiscuous, easy". Making fmc pale & virginal and mmc tan and experienced / rakish reinforces that colorism association with light skin = virgin, darker skin = promiscuous.
I don't think the issue is writers not specifying skin tones in a romance novel, but readers somehow thinking that is necessary for a romance novel. Why do we care what everyone's skin color is, and why is an unspecified skin tone automatically assumed to be white? Anyone who thinks that makes a romance more interesting should probably try to figure out why they think that.
@@venalleader2909 Well then we start getting into societal issues, and it's easier for writers to be specific with their characters than it is for us as a society to all agree on when why and how we're going to address those
So many books feel the same because that's what the readers want. Readers only want to read what they've already read... just with some tweaks. As an indie author, I learned that the hard way.
The star system doesn’t help with this. Authors can be judged harshly for doing something unexpected by readers who want books that cater to their wishes.
Yeah I am the person who doesn't like the stuff that reads like fanfic, but you're right. It is what the masses want. What is your book? I'd be happy to check it out.
as a fiction/fantasy enjoyer, i feel like so many books are: 1. unexplained string of m*rders that the protag/s have to investigate 2. Normal Girl(tm) has to survive in a royal court filled with secrets and deception (and will met a hot boy and fall in love) 3. school (bonus points if it's a boarding school) 4. A Deadly Game/Competition (often combined with #2 or #3)
sure, but the 1st is less fantasy and more detective genre, like agatha christie and arthur conan doyle. as for 3rd, the whole premise of a "magical school" has the appeal of being a fantastical take on a mundane enviroment. kinda like "what if, instead of learning how to interpret a book from a guy dead so long ago, you have to stop and think if he is closer to you or the origin of mankind, you learned how to summon a kick ass pegasus or a how to shoot fire from your hands".
Yes those deadly games become popular cus of hunger games. All of them almost same. Powerless just a solid example, hunger games but with a shadow daddy and an assassin mean but sooo beautiful girl.
A lot of this is on the publishers really. POC characters: To some extent context matters. In urban fantasy set in a modern real world city, a characters race and ethnicity means a lot about how they interact with the world. In a fantasy setting with no relation to the real world, that context falls away. You can't be Mexican or African or Scandinavian in a world where these places don't exist. I'm going to use From Blood and Ash as an example here because it is has a good contrast. Kieran is black, he is described as dark skinned with tightly curled dark hair cropped close to the skull. Delano is white, pale skin ice blonde. But they're both wolven (naturally born werewolves) and that has more bearing on their place in the world then their skin color.
I am running into this with my current read - What Lies Beyond the Veil - the LF Estrella was raised as an oppressed peasant in a very strict society and says things like "Dont be a dick", and "Im not going to spread my legs for any man" ... just things that she should not be saying/are overly vulgar for what we know about her character. Also, these are things her fated mate would not be charmed to hear her say because he comes from a very formal court. The way she emasculates him and he just "chuckles" drives me crazy. You cannot have a strong alpha character who is also a dope and allows his mate to snark him all day long with an amused expression. Estrella has zero skills, has had her life saved by him multiple times and still is such an "oppressed, I don't need a man, girl boss". It's something that lets me know the author has leaked a bit too much of her modern day thinking into the story and it just doesn't flow right. . . Right now Estrella is upset because Callum is insisting they share the same sleeping quarters (and not be separated) while they figure out there new circumstances (surrounded by strangers and stuck in a dark, creepy cave system) (she is also supposed to be horribly afraid of cave monsters, but put her around a group of strangers in a cave and I guess she is fine?) ... However, IMO - Estrella shouldn't want to be separated from Callum. He is safe, strong and based on the time period and dangers around her, SHE NEEDS HIM. Again, she has no skills lol other than picking berries. She isn't even very grateful or appreciative, always got an attitude. Give these fated males a woman worthy of them! BUT it does show you that it's easy to write a male character we all swoon over but very hard for female writers to tap into writing worthy women.
I mean, that's what happens when you write with your brain turned off and just treat your characters as a checklist of traits that must be there because the market demands it. You get messy jumbles of blatant contradiction. Not in the human sense of having contrasting or incompatible desires, but in the sense of "you want me to believe that this character is both A and not A at the same time and nobody notices the contradiction". So if she's just a damsel in distress it's bad and sexist, but making her talk like she isn't while still being one in the story, and her attitude straight up does not reflect what happens in the story, somehow is supposed to make it not bad and sexist.
I get a headache just from reading this plot. "Oppressed" peasant and some sort of a knight(from what I understand) are a couple. Like, yeah. It doesn't make any sense. How did they even met if she's such an oppressed peasant? There's something that is not very politically correct and that is...most polite high society white knights would not want to marry an oppressed peasant no matter what. Sorry...
@@nogalupu5487 I mean, lovers separated by social class is an old trope. That's not the bad thing, the bad thing is the utter lack of understanding of how these class dynamics even work.
@@antonioscendrategattico2302 That is exactly what I thought. It seems like this author didn't plan the world that this story is taking place very well and just use everything that would make this book popular. Because if it wasn't like that, we would see lots of problems that comes from these types of romance. It would be a lot more complex and a lot less romantic than what the author would want.
@@nogalupu5487 Calleum is her fated mate, so when the Veil drops he is able to hone in on her location through the bond - Im reading Book 2 now but it's a struggle lol
i am not surprised that fantasy romance has copycats. i mean the romance genre is built upon this concept, i think this is where a lot of clash comes from between fantasy readers and romance readers when figuring out the right balance. i just hate that i am not into all that epic dark fantasy romance/erotica trends. give me more light hearted fantasy romance that isn't just legends and latte.
The one thing not mentioned in this video which I would add is the “chosen one” trope - almost every book I’ve picked up recently has this main character who somehow gets thrown into the story, only to learn they’re actually the chosen one and every decision they (& every other character) made was fated from the start and that’s that. It just annoys me. Sometimes it can work for me, but most of the time it’s so frustrating because it just doesn’t feel like the main character has actually earned anything or done anything special because they were always fated to do whatever feat they do in the book. And it’s almost every fantasy book I pick up nowadays
I agree with pretty much all of your points 🤪 I avoid romance-based fiction almost completely because it’s all so ridiculous and unbelievable…none of these books showcase how relationships actually work, lol.
@@AFrolicInTheTomesxx we expect them to behave like people so we can relate to them? Sure, their experience might be (and probably will be) different, they can have different worldview and personalities, and the world will shape them differently - but they can still be believable charaters. For example - a veteran of war may suffer from trauma - and it doesn´t matter if the war was fought with pistols, swords or fireballs. Or the "lust romance" - I don´t like it either - because that is crappy romance, it´s not love and "two hot people sleeping with each other" - well, lets say, I thought women were more romantic and appreciete a good romance, if that is their idea of love, they are pretty superficial
@@AFrolicInTheTomesxxPlenty of fantasy stories have well developed romances. Geralt and Yennefer from The Witcher Guts and Casca from Bezerk Faramir and Eowyn from Lord of The Rings Edward and Winry from Fullmetal Alchemist Hell even Inuyasha and Kagome are a good example despite how dragged out it was. A lot of these authors just don’t know how to write romance.
"... none of these books showcase how relationships actually work" And there I might say, Do YOU have enough experience with romantic relationships to say what is realistic and what is not? It's not meant to be a personal attack, but tbh here, the current American generations are, well, a bunch of Ioners/Ioosers that hardly can get a group of friends, what makes you think you actually know how relationships, something so diverse, "actually work"?
@@xiiir838 Ha ha, you’re funny. I am well into middle age these days and have been happily married for two decades. Romance annoys me because of all the ridiculous angst and instant undeserved devotion. I’m not saying there’s never a good relationship in fiction…but most books in the romance genre tend to highlight only the beginning of relationships, and not the years of work and compromise that actually brings two people closer together. 🤷🏼♀️ Just my opinion! I’m just old enough now to not care about the sultry longing looks and throbbing loins lol. I’m over it. No reason you can’t enjoy it.
Big reason why I don’t read modern books. I just find books written 10, 20, 30+ years ago to just be so much better. They tend to be less politically correct, less foul language, less modern ideology, etc. I read so that I can escape reality, and 90% of books published today just can’t do that for me.
I wouldn't mind so much if the protagonist would choose. But it so often gets resolved with "one of them turns into a jerk for no reason", or "one of them dies nobly, probably while giving his blessing for her to be with the other guy".
The problem often is, how am I supposed to know that it is crap? Some books get so much love everywhere. And then you pick it up and its drivel and trope. I only know a book is bs after I tried reading it. Then I already bought it. Not much to to do then, besides leaving a bad review on GR or the big A, which is completely irrelevant b/c 99% of the other reviewers seem to like drivel and trope.
romance is a genre that has existed since the starting of mass printing books. hell, its probably what pushed the publishing industry to open to works of fiction. even if its vane and just fluff. some people just enjoy that crap.
@@yas_lana unfortunately, there's not many ways to do it, specially if you care about spoilers. me and my friend will often read diferent novels, and tell each other which we liked and which we didnt. sometimes we end up all liking the same book, sometimes i like one that they hate, or the opposite. so even if a book is crap, there's only one true way of knowing if you will like it or not. since, even if its a generic waste of time, it may be presented in an interesting enough way to you to allow you to have fun with it. even if, by the book, by any other metric is something you are sure you would hate. i have a friend who loved twilight. he even tried to get me to give it a shot, i didnt like it. sometimes, even works that we do like, we either fall of love with, like for example, i read the first 4 harry potter books in a single week. back when there was 4 books, and the first movie was released, have never read any other book in the franchise since. and dont really have any interest in either. so my advice is, give it a shot, read the first couple of chapters and see if it has enough to hook you. if not, move on. even saying this, there were books that i hated the first 5 or so chapters, and ended up loving the rest, like a pratical guide to sorcery.
I agree with the modern language being a problem, and I think it’s because it messes with the immersion. We expect that, given that the characters are in an entirely separate world with different historical and cultural influences, the characters will not be speaking and thinking like a modern Earth-human, so it pulls us out of the moment.
It’s because these books are targeting modern women 17-45 and they’ve figured out the formula. You’re getting played the same way us men got played with horror movies from the 70s-90s. They figured out guys like boobs (what a revelation) and served up the same formula, for the most part, for 30 years. The male gaze was retired somewhere around 2012 but it was dying before then. The female gaze is all over these books, it’s just more complicated than the male gaze. Only issue is that it won’t go away as easily because nothing in the female gaze will be deemed “problematic.” So it’ll take more effort to get them to break the formulaic stuff. It’ll require women to really prop up originality.
To me, if you read one S.J.M. you've read all of her books, and I don't like her books. Still salty for the Assassin fantasy let down during my Assassin's Creed phase.
Yea lol, I picked them to learn creative writing, and I figured itll just make my writing worse. So I went back to dune and song of ice and fire. And caleana is so intolerable, oh god, always talking to herself and imagining about how she can kill every random person she passes
I totally agree with you about the whole male/female thing. I hate when people use male/female as nouns when talking about people. It is incorrect and generally fairly inhumanizing. When talking about people, male/female are adjectives like a male singer or a female astronaut. But the male singer is a man and the female astronaut is a woman 😂
As a non-English speaker it is even worse : even as adjective, we only use these for animals, and it was hard at first to adjust when I learned English.
Interview with the vampire is an example of great romance! There is no Fay (poor Louis), colloquial language (except French), moronically snarky main characters (Lestat is goofy, but also manipulative), enemies to lovers (it feels like everyone is each other's enemies); there is no sex ( in the books, but tv series is spicier), love is not main plot (loneliness is), i don't remember if in the books there was anything about height, i think it wasn't important; there isn't an omegaverse dynamic; the aren't massive men (Armand is 17 years old (+/- 500) and teenager in look, Louis is average, except Lestat - he is handsome, but his personality is more alluring); one true pairing still refers to each other "My love. Mon chéri'. Book was released in 1976 and it was phenomenon - > overall it is complicated relationship, but in the end... you have to see. Especially tv series. I read this book 15 years ago and I can truly say that this is fictional romance where everything fits incredibly well. Also check Good Omens, book and tv series and Witcher books only, please don't hurt your eyes with netflix abomination.
All of this is true, but why would you call it a romance then? The first 2 books are closer to existential horror than anything else, after that they seem to lose track a bit and I don't quite know what to call them, supernatural something, I only read up to book 4 I think.
Literally none of those books you mentioned are romance or were ever pitched as romances to agents/publishers. (IWAV = horror/gothic, Good Omens = fantasy/comedy, the witcher = high fantasy). None of them will have the same focus on certain tropes that romantasy does. They were also written at a completley different (trending) time in the publishing industry. Had good omens or IWAV been pitched now, by unknowns, i doubt theyd be represented/published.
Fucking thank you! I’ve been reading a lot of old pulp horror and fantasy stuff, and it just absolutely nails why modern novels suck so bad-the BLOAT is killing everything from the novel to cinema. People don’t know when enough is enough. There’s nothing more satisfying than a less-than-two-hundred-pages story that just sticks the landing perfectly. It’s a shame we have what we have, right now.
Sarah J Maas probably got the Males and Females thing from The Black Jewels series, which she apparently ripped a lot of stuff from. It’s a society with a lot of gender tensions so it makes sense in that context, I’ve never read ACOTAR but I’d have to read it to see if it makes sense there too
Yup, that's why I switched over to high fantasy and contemporary romance books now. I find that "romantasy" books have become formulaic. As if authors want to chase the fame SJM books amassed, by sticking to those same tropes/storylines.
A lot of people are like this now. No thought is original. The more plugged into media genres, identities, and cultures the more the experience in life is controlled. What your eye sees is the experience. In times when people were independently experiencing the world while consuming less all encompassing mass media, the opportunity for individual experience could flourish. People could still pick up on what they read in the newspapers or heard in Church, but most of their lives were spent living and interacting directly with the world and having unique experiences. The best artists and writers were fiercely individualistic and questioned everything. They weren't running off a gender studies text book or looking at memes.
its nothing new. this has always happened. romance genre has probably the most bottom of the barrel popcorn fluff. always had. but on the other hand, that's what some people really enjoy reading. its their escapism. not everyone need a deep philosophical discussion on the merit of mankind among super species or whatever it is, to be entertaining, at least to enough readers to make it a valid book. even if me or you have absolutely no interest inreading it.
Because many individualistic personalities are educated in the same environment as most everyone else they often miss the importance of honing their craft, or don't take the time to develop what makes them individual because they've gotten away with *just* skating by.
Good summary. I read a lot of romantasy and what booooooores me endlessly is that the male (sic!) love interest is always described as "the most beautiful man she has ever seen" is big (in every sense) ripped (but he barely needs to work out) rich (although the heroines are described as pseudo-independent they never seem to be able to support themselves much less a man) and have a lot of sexual experience yet never will look at other women again once the short curvy and rather average heroine arrives on the scene. Oh and the extreme good looks of the man may only ever be marred by battle scars... A love story against life's odds would be much more captivating in my opinion.
Man, for about 90 percent of this, I was like, yes, girl talk that talk. How can you say Sarah J Maas is kinda played out without directly calling her out. The other 10 is directly calling her out😂.
I wanna hug you right now!! Thank you SOOOO much for making this video!!! I'm an aspiring author of Fantasy novels and I'm super annoyed with every single point you are talking about! The annoyance is going so far that I'm turning to read other genres or only fantasy for MG entirely because there are just not really good books being published in the fantasy genre in YA or adult right now. What is frustrating me most is the toxic relationships happening in many YA and adult Fantasy at the moment which are considered being "romantic" by many readers and authors. What is going on there???!!! It's making me angry because authors have a responsibility to their readers, especially the young ones. Toxic relationships seem to become something that is wanted, which is worrying me a lot! Novels like this are encouraging young people, but especially girls thinking it's normal that the love interest/partner is being a stalker or jealous all the time (or worse) and it only shows how much he loves her/him. This way they are not learning what a healthy relationship looks and should be like!!! I REALLY hope that this trend is just a phase and will end soon!! Sending you good vibes and thanks again!
A lot of authors are held to strict parameters. Publishers have to sell what they know will sell. Indie authors (myself included) are not held to these standards, but those can sometimes be a hit or miss (hopefully a hit). But I think a lot of movies have this problem also. Even when I was in highschool (2010), I was noticing all YA was the same. I asked one of the associates at Barnes and Noble if they had any recommendations that weren't all the same, but he said, "try a different genre." That's when I started branching out, and I think that's important to do. 😊
That stuff you mentioned about the cute romance really intrigued me. I'm gonna need a name for that Book you were reading because I need good examples of natural romance.
If you're into historical romance, Letters From Home by Kristina Mcmorris is fairly good! It's set during WW2 so it isn't exactly low stakes, but the building romance feels genuine and believable.
1 You both deserve each other. They are not married but engaged and aren't in love anymore. It is a great book. You would absolutely hate early fmc but later her character growth would make you understand her more. Loved the writing and setting. 2.Dear Ana by iie it is not a HEA but can be if you ignore last few pages. It has a cute romance but it is also very dark that it deals with physical and mental abuse by her brother. Also after each NOW chapter, there is a THEN chapter which is her life as she was abused. 3 Where the time stand stills. This book will hit the spot with cute romance and a perfect fit for upcoming weather. Just check TW for this one. For books are fade to black except the last with one page or two.
You've just described what it's like to read really bad writing basically. And apparently there's quite a lot of it around. These kind of romantasy is basically harlequins with a dash of magic. These tropes are old as...yeah, they're old 😂 And it seems that they will keep on resurfacing in different forms cause there's always audience of people who will read it. It's so formulaic it can be mass produced in no time so perfect for our current 'instant' market of booktok etc.
to be fair, romance is probably one of the biggest industry movers that helped entice women to learn how to read. as well as popularized cheap, popcorn literature. so, on one hand, its very generic and devoid of any real weight, but on the other, its also easy to consume, and to alot of people, its their escapism.
Yes! The large man, small female trope ... just as an FYI my next door neighbor had a very painful pregnancy because of a huge stature difference - her whole last trimester the baby was to large for her frame and she was bedridden and had to have injections along her rib cage 2x a week to relax the muscles so that her ribs didn't break. Her recovery was so hard and she had a lot of tearing and no FAE abilities to heal from that lol. So now I always read that trope with some Skepticals now. I guess a case of real life changing how you read characters - I stopped reading a werewolf book when it was revealed he was 6'7'' and she was barely over 5' ... like come on! The only thing I can compare it to is when Hoopz started dating Shaquille ONeil
6:00 GOD YES. OH MY GOD. I have come to HATE the snarky main character. It's why I don't read modern young adult fantasy anymore. Every MC is more clever than the rest of the world. I'm over it. Give me an MC with some humility for once. It's not a character flaw to accept help graciously. It's not a character flaw to treat others with respect. As a raging feminist myself, _calm your tits,_ authors. Damn. Anger isn't a personality, it's an emotion you're meant to deal with and move on from.
Romantasy tropes are often well-tread because they are nifty to ideas to play with, but they can lead to predictable routes and make them dull or, worse, irritating to read. Personally, I will devour anything that is similar to the Saint of Steel series, but I have not found much that hits the same: MCs in their 30s/40s, intelligent, with their own lives and motivations, in a well-built fantasy world with intriguing conflicts.
Hmm. Maybe I need to re-check out the series… A friend suggested those a while back and I picked them up, but I got turned off at a whole conversation on periods and I’m like, “It doesn’t seem plot relevant and I’d love to not be reminded of unnecessary nitty gritty life details I’d rather forget, thanks,” but maybe I should try again. :/ Sometimes it’s nice to escape and not be reminded about real life, you know? Breaks the immersion.
I haven't read Saint of Steel, but a good character in their 30s/40s with a strong personality would be the MC in "A Natural History of Dragons" by Marie Brennan, mind you the series starts when she's a child so she's quite young in the first book, but it's written as an autobiography so you'll have snippets of the 40+ year old character as she describes her adventures. And eventually, as the series progresses, they converge into her older self. It's pretty neat. Also if you enjoy dragons, science, political intrigue and exploration of different cultures with some Indiana Jones-esq kind of adventuring you might like it.
13:17 omg THANK YOU. The “male, female” things really irks me. It’s almost as irksome as the modern language in fantastical worlds issue imo. I will say, The Shepard King Duology (One Dark Window, Two Twisted Crowns) by Rachel Gillig did romantasy very well and, for the most part, the characters were very well motivated by their circumstances and internal guidance systems which made it so easy to relate to them. The world building was also there which you can’t say for lots of books of the same ilk (basically anything SJM writes 🙄). Also, the romance was precious and done in a balanced way as opposed to taking over the whole story. Haven’t found good romantasy since 😓
"When the love interest is basically just a yes man, thats not a good love interest." I'm looking at you, Xaden Riorson. He met this girl a year ago and she spent the entire time intentionally trying to piss him off or cross boundaries and he keeps saying how he would throw away the whole rebellion (comprised of all his living friends and family) for her. His life's goal. Everything hes fought for. For a girl he barely knows.
Also, the thing that drives me crazy about fantasy romance right now is that all of the covers look the same. Mine also looks the same, but this was because everyone told me that to compete in a genre, our covers have to look like all the rest of the books in the genre. It’s frustrating.
It can be an easy shorthand if you’re looking for a type of book as a reader, but also discouraging, too, if you’re a writer because you can get lost in the aesthetic.
Honestly, everything you mentioned is why I’ve given up on most modern writers and I’ve gone back to reading more of the classics. The reason I believe so many of these tropes are overplayed is because many of this generation’s writers have neither a great understanding of the English language nor do they have the depth of character to really flesh out complex emotions and characters. Compare nearly any of today’s authors to any of the works by the Brontë sisters, Dickens, or the works of Jane Austen. And most of their works all came in their 20’s and early 30’s!
So true… as an author I think many compromise on quality and aren’t writing art but rather just to sell a product. I want people to be entertained by my stories but also can reflect on the deeper themes… and it’s not black and white, they can resonate with why different characters do certain things, even if we disagree with it for any number of reasons. I grew up reading classic sci-fi and fantasy tho and there’s a lot of soul in that… I’m really enjoying subverting tropes in my first series Blood Moon: Book 1 of the Crescent Crown Saga. If people like adult paranormal romance/urban fantasy…
As a writer, I'm glad I don't fit your notion of a modern writer. All I read are classics, and I do not conform to trends or tropes. I'm rather oblivious to them, so if I include any, it's not consciously done. I paint with my words. My work can be bizarre, fantastical, surreal, yet dark and contemplative. I want readers to be enraptured by my creations, to analyse my diction and uncover the parallels I've laced throughout, to question their preconceptions of the world around them or even their own sanity. I will never be quantity over quality, and I will never try to make a quick buck. I have also studied over 7 or 8 languages, their philology and etymology, how they are influenced by each other and cultures, and am working to structure my own. All that being said, I really need to get along and finish something instead of sitting around on my hoard of treasures. 😅
As a women Can I just say that I miss feminine women. In my opinion it seems like women are only worthy of being the main character (both books and movies) is if they are strong female Characters; Acting Traditionally masculine. I just feel like it’s a slap in the face to us women who are Feminine. Why is feminine women not a thing anymore?
??? feminine women were and are the norms in fiction. The female characters in these romance fantasy novels are very feminine, they just have swords now. They're traditionally beautiful, have more "feminine" hobbies (reading, painting, sewing, etc.), have "feminine" roles in their family, and follow trad feminine paths by settling down and having babies with huge strong men. Just because they act snarky instead of behaving like they're only there to look pretty and talk gently doesn't mean they're not feminine. None of the mainstream fantasy books have traditionally masculine women
They are still pretty much the norm. Can't read a book where a woman is not described as pretty and attractive to everyone around her bc of her feminine charms.
feminine women are still the norm???? wth are you talking about. nearly all the books references in the videos have extremely feminine FMCs with lushly described dresses galore and enforced gender roles in their relationships. what more could you possibly want lmao
6:21 me everytime Shallan speaks in a conversation: "are you not able to utter ONE SENTENCE in which you don't try to impress someone with your supposed wit?" especially in the first like 2 books her conversations feel so forced
4:20 modern dialogue: #1 offender: okay. OK didn't come into wide use until US GIs spread it during WWII. Its not just fantasy, you see it in historical fiction too. "Alright" is just as long. But I think we're stuck with, "My liege! Are you okay!?"
One my pet peeves comes from Sarah J. Maas and it’s her naming practices. I really irks me that in fairly isolationist courts, no one really has any distinct names. Her world appears to be based at least somewhat on the British Isles, so she missed a great opportunity to have some unique names for the residents of each court that sets their individual cultures apart from one another. Instead, she chose to sort of half-ass it by making up a few names and then throwing in random things like Morrigan and Valkyries and Illyrians. Add to that the confusing time period aesthetic and sometimes archaic, sometimes painfully 21st century dialogue and it just gets to be a bit of a mess.
The abusive love interest 😭 Why are we framing creepy behavior as hot??? I really want to jump on the hype train for lots of booktok famous books for the sake of the community BUT their "hot guys" are abusers and no amount of good looks will suspend reality enough for me to let that behavior pass ✋️
I LOL-ed when you mentioned amnesia trope, 'Oh I used to love you so now I have my memories back so I guess I'm in love with you again.' I just read one book that has this trope and I'm still digesting the whole thing, wondering how I really feel about the book. Lol.
You're just out here voicing all of my thoughts 🤣 (and I'm only on point 3). Since I'm working on a novel of my own atm, I've been doing a lot of "critique partner" reading of other people's works, and let me tell you, 90% of them were fae romantasies and 75% of those had modern language in them and the authors could not understand why it irked me so bad 😭 I could never explain it well to them, but you've nailed it exactly. Next time it happens, I'm saying that!
As a (hopeful) author, this video gives me hope. I’ve put off writing a book for a while because I wasn’t sure how it would be received. So nice to hear someone say they want to read a book where the characters have a true romance, not just lust, and one where characters are mature enough to accept and ask for help and realize that it takes everyone to make the world go ‘round. And yes, also having characters who aren’t surprised by the greatness (also read “chosen one”) within them, but rather, they know it’s there and they are simply waiting for the right time to show that greatness, or they are procrastinating until they have no other option but to embrace that part of themselves and thus move their own character arc forward. I feel like this comment is as clear as mud, but it was written off the cuff.
I think we don't like characters in fantasy talking like we do because why would they ? It's a different world with different features and references. It feels nonsensical that they would speak exactly the way we would.
When you were talking about a romance that was more like a subplot that was just so adorable but also separate from what the main character was going through, it sounded like you were talking about ella enchanted or the Two Princesses of Bamarre. The romances in those books were so subtle and adorable and i loved how they got to know each other throughout the course of the book, not hating each other from the beginning like so many romances now
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I don't know if this is just me, but I really dislike that 99.99% of amnesia-trope books always end with the person get thier memories back at like the 85% mark. I'd love if I could read just one where they just don't, and they have to deal with it. It feels like such a cop-out when I know going in that whatever issue this gives the MC it doesn't really matter because it going to resolve in exactly the same way as every other book with this trope.
Great video ^^ One massive thing I'd add to this list is book titles themselves! A Court of *Words* and *Words* is eeeeeverywhere and it's so unoriginal! ACOTAR being so widely beloved unfortunately had the side effect of spawning a market for this genre and there are just SO many amateur authors capitalising lazily on trope-filled word fluff that somehow sells? Every time I see a new one advertised it's "Do you like Enemies to Lovers, Forced Proximity, Lost Princess, or Chosen One tropes? then you'll love this!" The authors seem to think adding a bunch of two-dimensional OC's into a vague plot based entirely on those tropes into a pre-existing template for a somewhat magical Fae world is all they need to do. It hurts my brain :(
As a fantasy fan who likes a little bit of romance in addition, the romantacy genre is killing me. The ratio is just too skewed towards the romance conventions. All the more power to people who want that recipe, but I've been burned so many times picking up a book that looks like fantasy and finding out it doesn't care about the worldbuilding or adventure aspect and spends the whole time explaining that two people are super horny for each other. After the third or fourth time my slow ass finally learned and I just won't read anything described as romantacy anymore.
I’m sick of hearing people say “inspired by Sarah J.Maas”. Maas ripped off Anne Bishop. Maas is a bit more palatable and definitely more YA friendly, but she is most certainly NOT the mother of romantic fantasy.
One way to get away from this is to read fantasy based in other cultures. I’m currently reading Akata witch which is based in Nigerian mythology and folklore and it’s some of the freshest fantasy I’ve read in a while in terms of the world building and magic system. The poppy war series which is based in China was also super interesting and different. I want more of that more non western fantasy because as much as I love stuff based in Irish, scandinavian, Greek, and other European folklores, a lot of it has been done before so it’s harder to make something truly stand out.
I think one reason books are getting really trope heavy (besides laziness) is that authors have started viewing their books like internet media. They want their book to appear in as many search results as possible, and algorithms are increasingly presenting tropes. "Because you liked enemies to lovers, here are 100 other enemies to lovers books". So authors are doing the equivalent of keyword stuffing: trope stuffing. Put every trope you can think of into the book so you can list them as keywords. Algorithms don't recognize original concepts. We may soon have to look at the last page of search results for the original books.
makes sense
Yes and those quick hit IG images showing the tropes for the book to gain interest
Kinda the book version of how all tiktok meme edits use the same songs
Good points. Similar to how many companies became smart about playing the SEO ( search engine optimisation) tactic when Google was getting more use back in the day.
Then everyone and their grandparents saturates the whole scene because everyone knows the tactics.
I really hate this trend of books appealing more to the algorithm and fleeting internet hype than to the interests of the reader (and frankly, the author)
Your point of characters only finding each other hot instead of actually loving each other makes me think more authors should have seen the The Swan Princess movie as a kid.
*cracking up, remembering some classic lines* 😂 Thanks for bringing up the memory, although I don’t even think I’ve seen the movie all the way through since we never owned it.
"You should write a book... 'How To Offend Women In Five Syllables Or Less.'"
😂😂😂
Kind of random but me and my husband bonded cus we were obsessed with this movie as kids 😊
@kora4185 omg thank you for sharing that is adorable ❤️❤️❤️
"You should write a book: How to Offend Women in 5 Syllables or Less"
Yeah we have a quantity over quality problem right now.
Everything always has.
Yes. The nature of things when there's a low bar to entry and lower bar to what's considered quality.
Word
It started with harry potter (i love hp, dont misintepret me). They realized books were narketable
Yep, it takes me a long time to find a truly good book on audible and especially one that isn't mature.
• I wish they had mature and non-mature version of the same book (with no hate/offense meant to either versions) so people that like wholesome experience and ones that prefer mature both could read too.
• audibles mature isn't equal to spotifys mature content of just swears and some 18+ mentions.
• it's explicit n there's no way to filter those books except scroll down to the description.
• I wish they had like levels of mature like subtle/explicit/if they mean mature violence like gore/mature tropes like suicide/mature sexual content whatever so we can pick what we can stomach.
i suggested them to get an ai incorporated in the app to search a book we describe because search bar just works by the search and feed is just bad.
Gotta agree on the language. Nothing breaks immersion like characters saying something "for the win" or that someone is "hot as f$%#"
Trying to read fourth wing because it's hotshit. Alright we're in some vaguely early modern fantasy setting, great. Then I read "for the win"
In fantasy, I don't want the word "hot" unless it's describing temperature. Please, give me the poetry when you talk about your loved one. "Hot" is such a pedestrian concept, which is fine for modern worlds, not ancient/old worlds. That's bare minimum to me.
"For the win" = Fourth Wing = Wtf
@@kitsune-c8j /r/iamverysmart
'😈', said the Dark One.
The repetition in the rhythm of titles drives me nuts. A Song of Ice and Fire, A Court of Cliches and Tropes
That second title is ideal for a spoof book.
A blank of blank and blank
to be fair, A Song of Ice and Fire came out in the 90s. all the ones after are getting a bit tired tho
A Bowl Of Mac and Cheese, a thrilling fantasy trilogy set in a world inspired by Sarah J Maas about a chef fighting for fame in a cooking competition
The Girl On The Train
The Girl In The Cabin
The Girl In Cabin 13
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
The Girl With All The Gifts
The Girl In White
The Girl Who Played With Fire
The Girl Who Got Away
Im really tired of how all the protagonists became queen in the end even though they said at beginning they hate royals and nobles but as soon they "fall in love with a prince" they change themselves. Also that trope: oh-I-was-a-lost-princess .
The lost princess shitck is getting old.
Big reason why I disliked Throne of Glass. Also the protagonist is a poorly written Mary Sue and I despise her so much.
@@draeannxRIGHT. Because Celaena was SUPER ADAMANT that she didn’t want to become a queen and that part of her life was dead. But then the characters and the author portray her as selfish for feeling this way.
Recent polls show that many people love tropes such as a mysterious prince as the MC.
It's a power trip thing. People want to be the top dog, just with underdog arcs. I hate it.
Why should all protagonists be the top line, best in the world? Imagine a story about a sheep herder who learns to take up arms in a civil war, I'd root that. So ling as he doesn't take the crown in the end
@draeannx That was actually on my reading list - (Idk anything about the book, it was a suggestion that kept popping up) but now that you're saying this...I'm not reading it. Thanks for saving me from a story like that
The modern language drives me crazy in particular when everyone talks like a 14-year-old that just discovered swear words. That was part of what threw me off about Fourth Wing, was even the old generals spoke like modern teenagers.
very few ppl have the ability to code switch and create a Voice for each individual character. And editors are not harsh enough
@@blah914 'very few'?? What? Almost every good writer can do that. If you cant create individual voices for characters, which to be entirely frank is a basic element of writing, then you are a bad writer. End of.
Character voices aren't the only thing you're going to be doing wrong if you can't even get THAT right. How are you going to craft in-universe cultures and religions, or write a coherent plot, or manage complex character arcs and relationships, if something so simple as 'dont make every character sound like every annoying tiktoker' is beyond you?
@@zoerice4227 ... very few ppl are good writers 💀 have a cuppa and destress a bit. it sounds like u had a rough day.
@@blah914 nice bait, but it's a bit obvious. Maybe next time imply that I'm on my period, at least blatant misogyny is more typical in a comment section.
@@zoerice4227 omg 🤣 I did not imply u were on ur period in any way. I'm a woman. my point still stands: few ppl are good writers, and you need to chill and not resort to victim mentality and identity politics when u are the one being a d*ck.
The super snarky and aggressive girl is a very cheap shortcut to write "strong female characters", imo.
Snarky and smart would likely be an actual strong female character.
It sometimes feels like the authors are copying 80's action heroes with a gender change, and forgetting that people were already mocking that type of character around 1990.
Yup, their idea of a strong female is a stereotypically strong male, and even then,they're not actually strong men.
Pretty much telling women they're broken and have to emulate Andrew Tate if they want to be strong.
its funny, to me, in media, when i think "strong female characters" i never think of the "crossdressing as a guy" or the "smartass" as strong. on the contrary, i think sakura, from card captor sakura, Lacus from gundam seed, or Yuna from Final Fantasy X.
characters who are strong, not because they are "strong female characters" or tomboys(which is ironic in gundam seed, as i feel like it did an amazing job of showing both types against each other,
and why that tomboy/"girl in pants" is actually weaker. not once, but twice, first with the archangel captain and first officer butting heads, and later by comparing Lacus who is the most feminine stereotype you can think, and Cagalli who is just "singing to animals" away from being a literal disney princess).
as a side note, im NOT against the (super snarky)/(crossdressing as a guy) protagonist as one of the books i had the most fun reading(after getting over the few starting chapters), was a pratical guide to sorcery.
i do think Siobhan is strong, but i dont think of her as a "strong female". she is powerful, resourceful and smart yes, but at the same time, she feels just "strong enough" to survive. and she had to sacrifice alot to get there.
Nah these modern female protagonists are equivalent of male antagonists in most other books. It's unreal.
"Moronically snarky MC " 😂yes! I cannot stand this type of main character, it completely ruins a book for me.
It also feels like there are only two typed of girls/women that exist in fantasy romances: either a snarky badass or a quirky wallflower (who also suddenly tends to become snarky when she meets the love interest). It's so frustrating!
I agree with all other points as well, especially the All Lust, No Love and constant descriptions of how hot the characters are. Our society is already so hyperfocused on appearance that seeing the same thing in books is just annoying. I don't want to read about square jaws and chiseled abs, I want to read about emotional and intellectual connections the characters develop.
The "only 2 types of women" is so true 😭 like why can't we have a MC who is literally just a normal girly girl? She can still be badass without having to be "not like other girls", edgy just for the sake of being edgy or 'quirky'... We need romance authors to have a Barbie marathon ffs...
Hear hear! As a man, I can't stand the terribly written woman characters written as love interests by mostly male writers back in the day. Typical hot girl who's only there to fulfill the obligatory sex scene/ wish fulfilment of the male protagonist. As if she has no agency or layers beyond her relationship to said male protagonist.
In recent times, we have a crop of women writers who are just as terrible with their characters. 🤦
@@misamisaa4547 Where are the "not like other girls" though... I only ever see the kind of women you just wished there were more of...
Well, I don't mind having fit, handsome male characters in books. Sure, the emotional connection between characters is important. But whats wrong woth looking at your love interest thinking "he/she is so gorgeous looking"? Like, it's the most natural thing in the world to be physically attracted to another person due to their looks.
So yeah, I want both. Chiseled abs as well as emotional/intellectual connection. Both are important to me in a relationship.
This here is what I call the someone-let-a-preteen-girl-ghost-write-this technique 😂🤦🏽♀️💀
The “stupid, snarky protagonist” only works for me if they actually have some consequences for being stupid and snarky, like they get fired because they rudely refuse help from a more experienced person (setting themselves up to both fail their task and burn their bridges at that workplace at the same time). It’s the stupid, snarky protagonists who somehow are always proven right and somehow always succeed that pop up all over the place though, and they drive me nuts.
I know what you mean - they start of all confident & arrogant & get beaten down a peg or ten in the book. Tho normally I prefer if the moronic snarky character is a side character 'cuz you don't have to deal with their BS for as long as it takes for them to realise they fucked up
question, if the protagonist does indeed get consequences for their actions, lets say they get humiliated and they know it, but they also get support from other characters, would that negate the kinda impact of their consequence? idk if that makes sense but thats the best i could explain it 😭
That's applicable to pretty much all major character traits - they got tropey without carrying over any consequences.
I definitely agree that the stupid and/or snarky protagonist trope does better in some situations more than others (like in SH3, it makes sense for Heather Mason to be a snarky teen since it could be a coping mechanism for all the horrors she's come across).
Part of me wonders if we have a lot of protagonists that follow this trope because there's something inherently rebellious to them, and authors could project their own issues they've had against authority figures in their lives.
I have some elderly family members who, when they were young kids, grew up in some variation of a "children should be seen and not heard" environment - so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people create snarky protagonists that are in the right as wish fulfilment after growing up in those kinds of environments.
Harry Dresden is a good example of his mouth getting him in trouble often.
What drives me away from YA Fantasy at the moment is the fact that nearly every synopsis sounds like this: random girl in a very interesting fantasy world goes on an even more interesting quest to save x from y - but of course she can not do this on her own or with the help of her friends and family, no! To do that she needs to team up with this mysterious guy who she should hate but who is also insanely hot which is why they fall in love so screw the plot and throw the world building out the window!
So true 🤣
Lol. This one made me laugh.
its funny because that's how a pratical guide to sorcery starts, which is kinda one of the reasons i almost dropped. but soon enough the author manages to free herself from the trappings. as a spoiler, currently, its book 4, and she had not an ounce of romance. and even though you just described one of the main male characters in the story, i genuinely feel like maybe he isnt "endgame".
But every year there's anew crop of girls/boys who havent read anything like that before, and eat it up, so it'll always get made
You're just viewing as more jaded on the genre
Sounds like a great plot, can you recommend me one title that follows it?
"I can't handle the characters that have a chip on their shoulder and are also really stupid" -- YES YES YES.
Actually pretty much everything combined with idiocy doesn't work (for me). ^^
Stupid enough to seek revenge, smart enough to come up with a plan that convinces others to go along with the doomed mission. haha, these can be great side characters though or bad guys
This is literally what I felt whilst reading When the Moon Hatched
@@matthewvp8507That's disappointing. I was looking forward to reading it. Those characters are really annoying though, unless they have a good growth arc.
Most people with chips on their shoulders are pretty dumb, though.
Shrek has the best fantasy romances - there, I've said it 😄😄
🥨
Fr 💚🧅
SO TRUE!!! Not saying it as a joke, this is very true!
True.
Shrek is goated
Enemies to Lovers has variants. My least fave is when they are supposed to be on the same side and enemies over some trivial interpersonal misunderstanding. My fave fave favorite is when they are both honorable mature people but their nations are at war, or he killed her father, or only one of them can win the elixir of eternal life to save their sick mom/dog whatever… then you don’t need Snark and Miscommunication to keep them apart. They are driven apart by real differences.
Yeah, what I don't like is snark for snark's sake and relationships based on needless and gratuitous betrayal.
My best friend's mom watches a lot of Hallmark and there's about ten million movies about someone surveying a town/farm/business so they can bulldoze it/sell it out from under them/undercut their market for a big corporation, and every single time they start a romantic relationship with the person they're scheming against without telling them they are, or are planning to, destroy their life for profit. The love interest gets mad, the guy makes some grand gesture and an emotional speech about how he totally changed his mind after he ✨fell in love with her✨, she forgives him, the end.
And almost every single one starts with them being needlessly, even moronically snarky to eachother. For no discernible reason. Until they either get in an argument that somehow turns into a makeout session or one if them does or says something uncharacteristically sentimental leading the other one to realise "There's more to them than I thought 🥺"
The endless repetition of these 2 tropes has turned me off them completely in any context. It takes willpower to even give any kind of "enemies to lovers" story a chance because a good 80% of them are exactly that type of bs and the other 20% aren't necessarily good either.
I think Pride and Prejudice and Much Ado About Nothing are the gold standards and the umpteen bazillion imitators just cannot handle it. One in a million is actually decent.
@perlapamela2023I recently read Daindreth's assassin, and it has more than one really good enemies to lovers plots. And the character are actually really clever, there is zero pettiness, zero stupidity, just circumstances that place them on different sides and they have to deal with them. But if you want a book that takes aaaages for the characters to stop viewing each others as enemies, that ain't it. They are too mature and the world is in too much peril for that. Great books though
One of my most favourite examples is Lois McMaster Bujold's Shards of Honor... technically SciFi, but it's no technobabble :)
i just read Dark Shores and loved the execution of enemies to lovers for the reasons you mentioned, and its a real slow burn too :)
Omg, The Ashes and the Star cursed King really did me in with that first one. The lovers started out as “enemies” in the first book, become lovers, then by the beginning of the following book they’re enemies again-over stupid petulance and miscommunication.
I'm glad you bought up the Sarah J Maas thing, actually. (I read the "Throne of Glass" series on a recommendation...) Honestly, the Fae business went beyond hot, long-lived, pointy-eared "males" and "females" for me; precisely because Maas herself didn't seem to go beyond that. Fae in her books seemed to have no discernable culture at all. Their ways of speaking were the same; their ways of scheming were the same; their cruelty seemed as on par as anybody else's in that world, if a little more bitey. Maas's world struck me as fantasy ornamentation to dress a romance. And given that just about every main- or side-character got a perfectly fitted side-piece by the end, it was pretty boring to me, too.
Maas could literally call her "faeries" elves and nothing about them would change
Edit: honestly some of them could literally just be humans with magical powers. There's no reason to make them centuries old (especially not with their 19-year-old love interests)
The main characters sucked in TOG, but I am ride or die for Manon’s coven. That scene made me shed an actual physical tear.
See this is why when I was in HS, ACOTAR didn’t do it for me because I read “Iron King” which was FAE. Like King Oberon-Queen Titania- myth. Idc what people thought of the female lead, personally, it was plot over romance but the romance was dashed in and high school me LOVED it. There’s nothing like it in the Romantasy genre honestly because they don’t world build
@@queenb2450 I loved Iron King too! It's one of my favorite series
@@CamilaWolf-c7i Julie Kagawa's world building was phenomenal and aged really well especially when you have hot garbage like Fourth Wing, Powerless, Once Upon a Broken Heart, Serpent Night something...I'm glad I was reader since forever, but in high school, I know what sucks
A good way I spot these same old romantasy novels is by checking the book covers. The book covers also seem to follow a certain trend.
🤣 Know exactly what you're talking about.
They're just as ubiquitous and terrible as music marketing executives back in the day.
PR and marketing factories.
Another good thing to check is what the reviews on the back cover are saying. If I see a single review that says something like “This was so hot!” I immediately put it back down, because I now know what the focus of the book is, and it’s not story
Thanks.
As a librarian I can tell you it is not just romantasy. Nearly all genres have book cover trends. A few years ago nearly all books had women on beaches on them, in the 60s it was very prominent text, in the 70s it was graphics, and so on. Book covers aren't immune to trends. They always had trends and will always have them.
One of my tricks is to check the tagline. Granted they can be tricky to craft, but if it’s trite or basically a cliche, it’s a red flag for me.
I just want characters to be competent adults. Why is that such a high bar?
then don't read books written by Women
one novel that i really like, that i feel like it does the whole "tomboy snarky mc" right is a pratical guide to sorcery. even though the start of the novel i did had major issues with, the story soon becomes far more interesting.
siobhan is an adult, she has major issues, but she also has a reason for those issues. she is snarky, but alot of times, that snarkiness gets her into trouble. and while she is smart and resourceful, the author isnt afraid of making her fuckup and having to deal with the consequences.
she is cold and calculating, but never crossing into becoming a psycho/sociopath.
western world is not mature right know, it childlike beheviour maybe a sign of dementia for really old, decadent societies
Read Tress.
How I felt about Saeris in Quicksilver. I listened to the audiobook and I said out loud so many times "oh stfu, Saeris" 😂. I DNF'd that about 50% of the way.
Honestly the height thing 🤣 all these men are like 6’5” and “massive” 😂😂😂
😭😭😭 just make them 7'10 alr
I kinda feel a little bit liiiiike well..??? Women have been described the same way for an eternity, strictly to be lusted over so a little part of me like oh well lol that may also be because I love imagining a 6’5 muscle god so I’m biased but I get that across the board we need diversity in terms of body types. Short kings, fat kings, medium kings, all the kings!
I kinda like this trope because my BF is 6’5 and I’m 5’5 lmaooooo 🤭😅
As a 6’4” woman who’s not thin I like that a lot :D
Not to mention 6’5 muscle beefcake with 16 abs is probably really uncomfortable to cuddle and feels like a board. Let’s bring back celebrating blacksmith builds and dad bods bc at least they got cushion as well as being functionally strong for that fantasy ideal
I think the reason I wasn’t impressed with ACOTAR is because it’s basically a wattpad story and I read too many of those as a teenager 😂
Yes and the fact Feryre was so stupid I couldn't stand her.
Just say "Fourth Wing"
😂
😂😂😂
YEP
Am I the only one that think it’s super similar to Red queen by Victoria
@@blackvelvetsings5310 Nope. Fourth Wing really just feels like someone asked an AI to read through the popular Romantasy or young adult Fantasy books of the last 10-20 years and then make a list of all relevant tropes and plot points and then she just wrote them in one book. Like many parts of the world building look like a rip off from Game of Thrones, characters are a mix of Red Queen and ACOTAR, the whole: a disabled person's challenge is to ride a dragon plot is from Dragon School etc.
YES, thank you, agree with everything you mentioned. I think one of the issue is that a lot of new writers are mainly inspired by contemporary fantasy romance, and it's extremely limiting. If you think of the greatest writers, they were inspired by History, poetry, the classics, mythology, and not just greek mythology. They were very educated people, and/or had experienced a lot of the world, and because of that were able to create rich and unique worlds, they also had more things to say, and could write deeper stories.
One reason why Lord of the Rings works but not its copycats.
Very well said. Such writers, both men and women had plenty of real world experience to draw from.
I like Tolkien. I also like Mary Shelley's original Frankenstein ( not the typical abridged version).
A man who was a war veteran and young woman barely out of her teens with different life experiences and standing yet capable of capturing my attention and admiration with their writing.
What's the connection?
Both wrote from life experience, observation, reflection, discussion with peers and being unconcerned with market segments.
Yup. Nowadays, the anti-intellectualists will come after you for being "elitist," and it's only going to get worse the more education is ruined and people waste all their time killing brain cells on social media.
I think another problem is that a lot of writers writing these books aren't actually interested in writing books, they'd rather their stories become movies or TV shows or an anime, but because they have no way of making a movie or TV show or anime, they settle for writing, and that's when they try to pile everything they "learn" from these writer crash-courses on TH-cam and elsewhere into a story without any understanding of how to actually write, or what the creative process for writing even looks like besides stringing along words one after another until they hit 300-400 pages.
Writers of literature/literary fiction understand the "craft" of writing, that it's as much about the way you say something as what you actually say, but for these "Wattpad writers" they either care too much about one or the other; either they write something flowery and romantic sounding despite there being absolutely nothing worthwhile about the content of the sentence to deserve the elevated language they tried using (often completely misusing words just because they "sounded" cool), or on the other end of the spectrum they have a good idea of what they want to say but wind up saying it in boring expository chunks and start line-listing descriptions of people instead of understanding how to bring the description into the action, or how to let a character's actions provide the necessary subtext for their personality instead of just force-feeding the audience pinky promises that the character is "strong" or "brave" or "smart".
There always was, and always will be, mediocre artists doing forgettable things. Be it authors, architects or musicians. The reason we think stuff used to be better quality is that only the very best works of their time live on, are remembered and kept. The rest vanishes and is forgotten.
Enemies to lovers (or friends!) is such a trip for me. Either the author writes it too soft so the main characters aren't really enemies--more like mildly inconvenienced with one another upon first meeting--or they go in HARD and it feels too mean and personal to come back from 😅
Personally why I prefer rivals to lovers, or at least describing it as that. Some people say the ultimate enemies to lovers is Pride and Prejudice and everything else is a failed knock off. Others say a true enemies to lovers is they should be obsessively trying to kill or thwart each other and are actually enemies on opposite sides, while having a mutual respect and obsession with each other. Both are p different, and I like both if they’re done well.
The former is like the first example you said, done poorly they’re just kinda mildly inconveniencing each other while annoyed they’re attracted to one another, as opposed to challenging each others biases and learning from each other. On the other hand the second is like-yikes idk if this is a believable transition to a relationship depending on how far one pairing goes during the enemies portion
@@Joyride37 the second version of the trope was great in Phineas and Ferb.
@@ringinn7880for which characters
Reminds me of trying to create a 'evil' version of a heroic character that was likable. So many likable villains are just..unlawful. Or you just don't see the truly evil consequences of their actions, and the writer carefully portrays the victims as not really bothered.
@@cloudberry7241 Dr. Doofenshmirtz and Perry the Platypus
OMG, the "male" "female" thing has bothered me FOR YEARS. It started in romance and has migrated as romance authors have moved more towards fantasy. It's SOOOOOOOO cringe.
It was common speech when I grew up. Some women insist its an insult, and I have to state: as a female person, I prefer the word 'female' to 'girl' or 'woman'. "Woman' had connotations of motherliness and breeding sexuality that made me uncomfortable--still do. Girl was slightly better, but meant immaturity. "Female' is a bit distanced from the grotesqueries of mating expectations.
Nowadays, I can skip to 'Crone'. 😆
The male/female thing drives me INSANE! It takes me so far out of the world. In my work/school background, “female” was only ever used as a derogatory term for the women, who were a tiny minority. It’s become ingrained now that when used as a noun to describe a sentient human (or human-enough, like fae or whatever), it’s inherently dismissive. Like, “Ugh, females.” When I encounter that trope in books, my brain just twitches and brings all that baggage back, so instead I replace “male” and “female” when used as nouns in my head with “man” and “woman” as I’m reading (if that makes sense).
@@Badficwriter Weird, for most people the implications you mean are inverted.
I honestly just assumed it's because "man" is a human specific term so can't be applied to fae
@@Badficwriter I don’t mind woman at all but I see myself often saying male and female way more (and I think it came from saying a lot ‘male/female actors/actresses’, and ‘female/male leads’- cus I’ve learnt English by obsessing over movies and actors basically 😅)
I don't wanna sound mean, but most of the writers that get massively popular online aren't actually writing for the sake of the story. They are writing for the potential money, and use social media as a way to stitch a story together. They don't treat their characters as people with agency, and they don't allow the story to naturally progress. I call these kinds of writers as "cosplay writers" because they have the veneer of being a writer, but there's ultimately nothing there. These books are easily marketable because they hit all the popular words and phrases online, not because there is any substance. And you can like these books all you want, but at the end of the day they are made of nothing.
Good way of putting it and why I don't like most of them.
@@RoseBaggins
Like it something I've noticed more and more over the years. It also kinda inspired my own work because I see what people want, and just put the effort, love and attention it needs. Unfortunately being broke and a single mom I don't have time to market myself lol.
Omg I am stealing the expression "cosplay writer" 😝 and you're right, because it feels really amateurish, like they just read ACOTAR and we're like "you know what? I can do that too!" Except they've never written anything in their life 😅🤦♀️
@@nessaidolslayer3426
I'm glad I'm not alone I don't wanna knock inexperienced or bad writers, since fiction writing is something everyone can do. But these books are soulless and only made to make money. I hate it.
ACOTAR and Fourth Wing
I recently read The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time and I was expecting it to be boring, but it was such a breath of fresh air. Fantasy today feels sooooo diluted in comparison to Tolkien.
Tolkein has a way of world building that I usually dont see in may books. He will spend half a page just describing the scenery. As a teen when I read the hobbit, I didnt enjoy it as much but I love it now
I hate when the fantasy book I was so excited to read turns out to be fantasy romance with lots of these tropes. Happened to me few times this year already :/
can't wait t o see what the 'fantasy books with miniscule romance plot' is
Same! I hate the surprise smut fest because I love fantasy, just without the spice! ... At least not that kind of spice.
@@zoebrugg7594 yeah, if I wanted that, I'd pick that in the first place. So many 'fantasy' books with interesting premises were ruined for me to the point I don't pick a fantasy book when it has 'romance' tag on goodreads anymore, no matter how interesting it might seem.
@@zoebrugg7594I’ve taken a long break from reading young adult and new adult fantasy because of this. I’m only in my early twenties but since I’ve always been an avid reader the smut and tropes started annoying me during my late teens. Once you read the popular series like TOG you’ve basically kind of have read it all.
While there are still unique books in the genre, I think they are the minority at the moment.
I’ve found that fantasy and science fiction books outside of those genre spaces have more to offer me at this point in my life.
I self published a trilogy quite a few years ago now. I purposely limited the amount of romance in it because so many books have it so much and without any logical purpose.
@@danikajayde8577 I’m a writer too interested in self publishing one day, how’s it going for you?
This is why I love the Emily Wilde’s books. She is not helpless, she is an academic, her love interest is annoying but he LIKES her actually like her as a person… the plot is smart and the fey aren’t evil “just because”
I love those books too! So good!
i got the first book a few months ago and i can't wait to read it soon because it's such a breath of fresh air within the popular books 🥹 it may just appeal to me personally because it's the kind of story i fall in love with but i think it's brilliant 🌟
This was one of the things I appreciated about the series! The love interest is still attractive (I meant in a way that follows tropes) but it’s not the main draw for the MC. They have charming conversations, bond over similar interests, and you can believe these people can actually love each other.
They are great... The Lady Trent books are, too. They break the female character mould.
Love these books!!!!
It’s giving “A [place] of [noun] and [other noun/verb]” 😂
Reminds me of pinterest "Make Your Own Book title" stuff or...the generic book title generators
Books are like any other media in the business world. Publishers find a trend and then overwhelm us with the same thing until the market collapses. At this point, I'd like to see a return to LOTR-style fantasy.
LOTR style fantasy? Are you referring to its high fantasy setting or its Hero’s Journey set up?
@@melindagallegan5093 Really both, though I don't mind if it's one or the other.
@@darrickdean1849 So essentially less romantasy then?
@@melindagallegan5093 Romantasy has kinda quickly become just Harlequins with a lazy coat of paint on it. Honestly "fantasy" as a genre is kind of flawed in general because there's a LOT of different types of stories in it that are only united by a vague sense of the setting being flavored around some kind of past historical period with supernatural elements. Kinda like how sci fi initially meant speculative fiction about the future, but was quickly saturated with modern military fiction with some chrome spraypaint and blinky LEDs.
Same. As somebody who was introduced to fantasy through Harry Potter and the inheritance cycle, which I can see where they gotten there ideas from Lotr. I like high fantasy, with world building. I also enjoy cozy fantasy books too like Legends and Lattes and Bookshops and Bonedust. I just like the different races involved on a magical adventure if that makes sense
One book’s tropes get super popular and everyone tries to jump in the same bandwagon. Fantasy has chased this dragon for a loooong time too
*flashbacks to the abundance of fantasy books that feature a magical school where you're sorted into school-mandated cliques based on your personality*
@@jenifergarcia327 yuuuup
Or all the Hunger Games ripoffs that got big in the 2010s
This is the same in the movie industry. Nothing but remakes of the same old thing for the most part.
Exactly! Movies, TV shows, video games... it's all about algorithms and revenue following "tried and true" methods. Sadly, the 1990s were 30 years ago; back when creativity and originality was encouraged and consumed more than tropes. Then again, was a better economy with more opportunities.
Have you seen any of those videos breaking down top movie statistics over the last 20 years? It's not just in your head. The numbers show that almost all major movies starting in the 2010s were sequels or remakes, 85% or something ridiculous like that.
Try being a professional editor. 😂 I get book after book that literally has the same names of the main characters, the same settings, and of course the same template, plot point by plot point. It feels like the majority of "authors" (and I use this term very loosely anymore) don't even try to be creative at all. In many cases, the art has been eliminated from fiction writing, especially in genres like romance and mystery, but in fantasy as well. But while I can vent about the writers, it's the readers that glom onto these carbon copies that really get in my craw. Why are so many people acting like something is brilliant and groundbreaking when it's legit a stolen plot from a much better written book of the past???
So much has been written in all genres by now that it's getting extremely hard to come up with something entirely fresh. I think fiction as such, unless perhaps it deals directly with contemporary sociological issues and/or politics, is bound to grow increasingly stale with time. There are only so many plots and tropes to choose from. You can push at those boundaries to some degree, but if you push to the point where you break too many "rules" the stories stop making logical sense. For the fantasy genre I think perhaps world building is the only facet of a given novel where an author can approach true freedom of creativity. In the end you can only place a finite number of plots in hopefully novel settings.
@@christerdehlin8866 There may be only a limited numer of plot elements, but there is a nearly infinite number of ways you can put them together, and if you want to copy, pick a story so old few have read it nowadays.
the two previous comment make very good points, but I'd like to add from my experience w writers, my education work in film and tv script development: a lot of it is also anxiety as a response to cancel culture. so many writers gets put to the wall about what they write, as if the actions and statements of their characters were their own, and bc they "thought of it" therefore they must approve or subconsciously support it ect. that sort of thing is paralysing for your creativity and ability to write about deep issues, or even just write a good s*x scene. with some writers, once we have developed a good enough relationship to share A03 pen names, it is insane how much better they are at writing and storytelling when they are unencumbered by expectations, fear, and anxiety. and the crazy thing is, they all view their fanfics as their "crap writing", and are shooketh when I tell them that's it's actually pretty good. Writing like nobody is watching is *hard*, esp in this day and age when authors have to basically be their own marketing team and constantly be exposed in such a way that 30 yrs ago, only a-list rockstars were.
This applies, ironically, even to Maas as ACOTAR is just reskinned self-insert of The Black Jewels trilogy.
@@ThomasPalm-w5y How I fantasize about rewriting some things: What if this didn't use offensive words, but original non-Earth words? What if this was written so the reader had a clue what was going on? People will tell me the originals were masterpieces, but I'm not the only person to hate them..
I almost feel as though I’ve committed some kind of unspoken writerly taboo by writing a werewolf book that isn’t a romance.
Thanks for more werewolves. ❤
@@AliasPhex It’ll be published some time in the next few months. Basically, spooky wolf dude pops up in this six year old kid’s bedroom and just sits there watching the door every night for six years. Then it bites him in the arm and disappears. I really hope people like it😅
@@captainsirk1173that sounds fun, what is it called?
@@dismurrart6648 “The Wolf that Watched” by Christopher Smith. Probably. It won’t be out for another few months, and it’s with a small publisher.
@@captainsirk1173omg 😭😭 poor kid getting bit in the arm!
When it comes to romance-and a good love story-I am a firm believer in "less is more." Attraction can be important (and in fact, UST can be a great tool in building/writing romantic relationships), but if you rely solely on physical attraction to sell your romance, the story feels more like a tale of lust rather than love. There's nothing wrong with that, and many people enjoy those stories too, but if a love story is what you're going after, then you'll have to do the work to sell it to your audience.
YUP!👍
to me, there should be enough to move the characters forward and help develop them, but not enough as to steal center stage from the main story.
Readers have been commodified. Publishers are chasing revenue instead of investing in developing and promoting talented writers.
I mean, they always WERE. It's just the process is a lot faster, and the competition is more intense today.
Yeah, same can be said of most modern media. I see this argument a lot about video games and movies, too. Too much focus on revenue and following "tried and true" methods to make more. This is why I miss the 1990s - was way more about creativity, doing something unique, taking risks, and seeing what worked. Then again, was a better economy with way more opportunities /shrug
@@sebastianashbury2478 Eh, the 90's had their share of embarrassing trend chasing and quick cash-grab sequels (Land Before Time, Police Academy, many other direct-to-video sequels that wrung every last drop of blood out of a franchise, the bajillion Power Rangers / Ninja Turtles knockoffs, etc), it's just that only the good stuff sticks around in popular memory. In 30 years, people will be rolling their eyes at the schlock coming out and remembering (the best of) the present day as a golden age of film.
A part of the problem is how expensive big films / video games are. It's super easy to say "Never mind the money, follow your dream!" when you don't have your job and hundreds of millions of borrowed money riding on it.
@paulgibbon5991 That's fair; no era is without their share of embarrassing trend chasing and cash-grabs. However, to me, it feels like there was way more room for experimental creativity. These days, everything feels too similar.
And yeah, also for enough that there's so much more riding on the development costs. However, that, too, has its own pitfalls. Like the more recent (and still ongoing) trend of basically "remakes" for the sake of nicer CGI quality, but very lacking substance and quality in the story. That, or the more recent trend of tokenism without quality stories. Again, nothing new, we saw that in the 90s as well. Guess there never will be a truly great and flawless era, but the flaws give us more creative ideas to spin on.
Enemies to lovers is a Pride and Prejudice remake (and often written poorly). Characters immediately falling in love solely because they are hot is Romeo and Juliet (and still just as cringe).
Pride and Prejudice isn't even Enemies to Lovers. It's miscommunication trope 100% lol
@@kitsune-c8j idk if I completely agree with you. Darcy actively works against the bennet family’s best interests by stepping in and preventing bingley from marrying Jane. Elizabeth is constantly trying to down play or smooth over her family’s social flubs in front of bingley to help the match go through. For at least the first half of the book they are actively working against each other for opposite interests even if they didn’t realize it at the time.
Cringy, to be sure.
But Midsummer Night’s Dream is the ultimate basis for Fate having a sense of humor and things work out in the end after we have all had a good laugh. (It’s the only Shakespeare piece that I truly like.)
Romeo and Juliet at least is a Tragedy and knows it is 😂
A lot of people seem to forget that and are like INSTANT LOVE STAR CROSSED PASSION and put it in stories, forgetting that the whole point is that was a bad thing actually bc their families hated each other and got them both killed
Fantasy books that annoy me the most is where a character doesn’t know that he has some inner magical powers until he does and then he’s the “key” or “chosen” or something along those lines. I also don’t like female characters that are written as “badass” but they’re really not, they’re just mean to everyone for no reason. Imagine if Aragorn was an a hole to everyone, would that make him badass? But for some reason, many writers think their female character can’t be strong if she’s nice. Or she can’t be strong if she doesn’t kick some man’s butt twice her size. Like they HAVE to establish that. To me it’s extremely immature writing and I’m honestly sick of it. I just want a good story.
@seductiveraven4895 oh wow, there we go, a butt hurt comment. You completely missed my point and you went straight to attacking.
I love discovery of hidden powers! But not when the character ends up being the most powerful/smartest/prophecied, etc. just out of nowhere. The chosen one trope can be done well, but it has been done a lot. I have fun with it my novel, Sky of Seven Colors, where the race of giants insist their prophecy is about the main character, but she quickly realizes any human would have worked. She’s just the first one they stumble across and kidnap. In the giants’ world, her humanity is sort of a power because color is treasure to them, but she is completely ordinary.
@seductiveraven4895 that was super mean for no reason. Its really ironic how strong you think you are because your mean. Didnt we just talk about this!
Um eww why is there a misogynist here, looks like we got butt hurt men in the comments who hate women in fantasy.
@@nickoru1 Yeah because you're being misogynistic, I'm glad he or she handled your misogynistic ass. You attacked first by saying women shouldn't beat men in fights because of size difference when this is fantasy-sci-fi anything can happen weirdo.
Y'know you're the first person who's done a breakdown like this that actually not just makes sense, but takes things from a logical standpoint without being patronizing or that same kind of "over snarky" that are being used too often in books these days. Thank you!
The tan/ethnically ambiguous thing is seriously disingenuous. Authors know the meaning of words and leaving them out (I hope) so trying to get the broad appeal by being vague in books then going for the social justice points by being explicit on social media is just so UGH
The “tan” and “golden” skin tone kills me. You could have knocked me over with a feather when SJM confirmed that her FMC rom the Crescent City series was a POC? Huh?
I know. It's like did they learn nothing from jkr redconning her characters after the fact to make them nore diverse but never actually making the effort to write it in??
It just feels like the "Latino lover" stereotype where Latino or Mediterranean men are exoticized and oversexualized. With "olive" skin or some other colour where you can make them white-passing or mixed race or Latino however the current trend go. It usually happens to male characters, while female characters are more commonly blonde / readhead with alabaster complexion... Colorism is well and alive, unfortunately. Irl pale skin is associated still with being "pure & noble" and darker skin with being "wild & passionate". This is why Black and Latina women are often stereotyped as "passionate, promiscuous, easy". Making fmc pale & virginal and mmc tan and experienced / rakish reinforces that colorism association with light skin = virgin, darker skin = promiscuous.
I don't think the issue is writers not specifying skin tones in a romance novel, but readers somehow thinking that is necessary for a romance novel. Why do we care what everyone's skin color is, and why is an unspecified skin tone automatically assumed to be white? Anyone who thinks that makes a romance more interesting should probably try to figure out why they think that.
@@venalleader2909 Well then we start getting into societal issues, and it's easier for writers to be specific with their characters than it is for us as a society to all agree on when why and how we're going to address those
So many books feel the same because that's what the readers want. Readers only want to read what they've already read... just with some tweaks. As an indie author, I learned that the hard way.
The star system doesn’t help with this. Authors can be judged harshly for doing something unexpected by readers who want books that cater to their wishes.
Yeah I am the person who doesn't like the stuff that reads like fanfic, but you're right. It is what the masses want.
What is your book? I'd be happy to check it out.
@@dismurrart6648 nah, don't disrespect fanfics like that
@@Saga_Anserum ill fully disrespect the really terribly written wattpad stuff
You're right. After the story ends, fans want more of the same thing and tend to search books with the same plot.
as a fiction/fantasy enjoyer, i feel like so many books are:
1. unexplained string of m*rders that the protag/s have to investigate
2. Normal Girl(tm) has to survive in a royal court filled with secrets and deception (and will met a hot boy and fall in love)
3. school (bonus points if it's a boarding school)
4. A Deadly Game/Competition (often combined with #2 or #3)
sure, but the 1st is less fantasy and more detective genre, like agatha christie and arthur conan doyle. as for 3rd, the whole premise of a "magical school" has the appeal of being a fantastical take on a mundane enviroment. kinda like "what if, instead of learning how to interpret a book from a guy dead so long ago, you have to stop and think if he is closer to you or the origin of mankind, you learned how to summon a kick ass pegasus or a how to shoot fire from your hands".
Yes those deadly games become popular cus of hunger games. All of them almost same. Powerless just a solid example, hunger games but with a shadow daddy and an assassin mean but sooo beautiful girl.
ok but the boarding school deadly game books lowkey go hard (not in fantasy though)
so spot on
idk what it is with everyone making their main character mean af 😭😭
they saw the Hunger Games and tried to copy it, badly
Just discovered the Tairen Souls series and realized SJM took literal scenes, characters, etc... yet no one gets mad at her about it.
She did this a lot, and I never see it mentioned. I noticed she took heavy inspo and even word-for-word lines from The Last Unicorn.
You mean literal snippets from Disney cartoons? Even the magic mirror gets a scene.
She is a bad writer. Period.
I remember thinking she took ideas from Harry Potter and LOTR while reading TOG. The story eventually felt like its own
A lot of this is on the publishers really.
POC characters: To some extent context matters. In urban fantasy set in a modern real world city, a characters race and ethnicity means a lot about how they interact with the world. In a fantasy setting with no relation to the real world, that context falls away. You can't be Mexican or African or Scandinavian in a world where these places don't exist. I'm going to use From Blood and Ash as an example here because it is has a good contrast. Kieran is black, he is described as dark skinned with tightly curled dark hair cropped close to the skull. Delano is white, pale skin ice blonde. But they're both wolven (naturally born werewolves) and that has more bearing on their place in the world then their skin color.
I am running into this with my current read - What Lies Beyond the Veil - the LF Estrella was raised as an oppressed peasant in a very strict society and says things like "Dont be a dick", and "Im not going to spread my legs for any man" ... just things that she should not be saying/are overly vulgar for what we know about her character. Also, these are things her fated mate would not be charmed to hear her say because he comes from a very formal court. The way she emasculates him and he just "chuckles" drives me crazy. You cannot have a strong alpha character who is also a dope and allows his mate to snark him all day long with an amused expression. Estrella has zero skills, has had her life saved by him multiple times and still is such an "oppressed, I don't need a man, girl boss". It's something that lets me know the author has leaked a bit too much of her modern day thinking into the story and it just doesn't flow right.
.
.
Right now Estrella is upset because Callum is insisting they share the same sleeping quarters (and not be separated) while they figure out there new circumstances (surrounded by strangers and stuck in a dark, creepy cave system) (she is also supposed to be horribly afraid of cave monsters, but put her around a group of strangers in a cave and I guess she is fine?) ... However, IMO - Estrella shouldn't want to be separated from Callum. He is safe, strong and based on the time period and dangers around her, SHE NEEDS HIM. Again, she has no skills lol other than picking berries. She isn't even very grateful or appreciative, always got an attitude. Give these fated males a woman worthy of them! BUT it does show you that it's easy to write a male character we all swoon over but very hard for female writers to tap into writing worthy women.
I mean, that's what happens when you write with your brain turned off and just treat your characters as a checklist of traits that must be there because the market demands it.
You get messy jumbles of blatant contradiction. Not in the human sense of having contrasting or incompatible desires, but in the sense of "you want me to believe that this character is both A and not A at the same time and nobody notices the contradiction".
So if she's just a damsel in distress it's bad and sexist, but making her talk like she isn't while still being one in the story, and her attitude straight up does not reflect what happens in the story, somehow is supposed to make it not bad and sexist.
I get a headache just from reading this plot. "Oppressed" peasant and some sort of a knight(from what I understand) are a couple. Like, yeah. It doesn't make any sense. How did they even met if she's such an oppressed peasant? There's something that is not very politically correct and that is...most polite high society white knights would not want to marry an oppressed peasant no matter what. Sorry...
@@nogalupu5487 I mean, lovers separated by social class is an old trope. That's not the bad thing, the bad thing is the utter lack of understanding of how these class dynamics even work.
@@antonioscendrategattico2302 That is exactly what I thought. It seems like this author didn't plan the world that this story is taking place very well and just use everything that would make this book popular. Because if it wasn't like that, we would see lots of problems that comes from these types of romance. It would be a lot more complex and a lot less romantic than what the author would want.
@@nogalupu5487 Calleum is her fated mate, so when the Veil drops he is able to hone in on her location through the bond - Im reading Book 2 now but it's a struggle lol
It's because they sell. Some readers just want ACOTAR in a different font.
Haha, I'm going to have to remember "in a different font." That's perfect.
What is "ACOTAR?"
@@jasonpfeil9243 i belive its "A Court Of Thorns And Roses". which is basically the fantasy version of twilight.
You basically called out everyone on booktok lmao.
i am not surprised that fantasy romance has copycats. i mean the romance genre is built upon this concept, i think this is where a lot of clash comes from between fantasy readers and romance readers when figuring out the right balance. i just hate that i am not into all that epic dark fantasy romance/erotica trends. give me more light hearted fantasy romance that isn't just legends and latte.
My Lady Jane might work. Both the show and the book.
I'd recommend Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater and A Far Wilder Magic by Alison Saft :)
Tress of the Emerald Sea or Yumi and the Nightmare Painter might be what you're looking for.
Highly recommend the webtoon 'A Spell for a Smith'
@@CoraMaria Started reading from your recommendation and I really love it! Thank you! 💕
The one thing not mentioned in this video which I would add is the “chosen one” trope - almost every book I’ve picked up recently has this main character who somehow gets thrown into the story, only to learn they’re actually the chosen one and every decision they (& every other character) made was fated from the start and that’s that. It just annoys me.
Sometimes it can work for me, but most of the time it’s so frustrating because it just doesn’t feel like the main character has actually earned anything or done anything special because they were always fated to do whatever feat they do in the book. And it’s almost every fantasy book I pick up nowadays
I agree with pretty much all of your points 🤪 I avoid romance-based fiction almost completely because it’s all so ridiculous and unbelievable…none of these books showcase how relationships actually work, lol.
@@AFrolicInTheTomesxxyou can still have realistic relationships in fantastical worlds
@@AFrolicInTheTomesxx we expect them to behave like people so we can relate to them? Sure, their experience might be (and probably will be) different, they can have different worldview and personalities, and the world will shape them differently - but they can still be believable charaters. For example - a veteran of war may suffer from trauma - and it doesn´t matter if the war was fought with pistols, swords or fireballs. Or the "lust romance" - I don´t like it either - because that is crappy romance, it´s not love and "two hot people sleeping with each other" - well, lets say, I thought women were more romantic and appreciete a good romance, if that is their idea of love, they are pretty superficial
@@AFrolicInTheTomesxxPlenty of fantasy stories have well developed romances.
Geralt and Yennefer from The Witcher
Guts and Casca from Bezerk
Faramir and Eowyn from Lord of The Rings
Edward and Winry from Fullmetal Alchemist
Hell even Inuyasha and Kagome are a good example despite how dragged out it was.
A lot of these authors just don’t know how to write romance.
"... none of these books showcase how relationships actually work" And there I might say, Do YOU have enough experience with romantic relationships to say what is realistic and what is not?
It's not meant to be a personal attack, but tbh here, the current American generations are, well, a bunch of Ioners/Ioosers that hardly can get a group of friends, what makes you think you actually know how relationships, something so diverse, "actually work"?
@@xiiir838 Ha ha, you’re funny. I am well into middle age these days and have been happily married for two decades. Romance annoys me because of all the ridiculous angst and instant undeserved devotion. I’m not saying there’s never a good relationship in fiction…but most books in the romance genre tend to highlight only the beginning of relationships, and not the years of work and compromise that actually brings two people closer together. 🤷🏼♀️ Just my opinion! I’m just old enough now to not care about the sultry longing looks and throbbing loins lol. I’m over it. No reason you can’t enjoy it.
Big reason why I don’t read modern books. I just find books written 10, 20, 30+ years ago to just be so much better. They tend to be less politically correct, less foul language, less modern ideology, etc.
I read so that I can escape reality, and 90% of books published today just can’t do that for me.
What about the love triangles? Can we please stop with the love triangles??
I wouldn't mind so much if the protagonist would choose. But it so often gets resolved with "one of them turns into a jerk for no reason", or "one of them dies nobly, probably while giving his blessing for her to be with the other guy".
If you keep buying crap, publishers will keep putting out crap.
The problem often is, how am I supposed to know that it is crap? Some books get so much love everywhere. And then you pick it up and its drivel and trope. I only know a book is bs after I tried reading it. Then I already bought it. Not much to to do then, besides leaving a bad review on GR or the big A, which is completely irrelevant b/c 99% of the other reviewers seem to like drivel and trope.
romance is a genre that has existed since the starting of mass printing books. hell, its probably what pushed the publishing industry to open to works of fiction. even if its vane and just fluff. some people just enjoy that crap.
@@yas_lana unfortunately, there's not many ways to do it, specially if you care about spoilers. me and my friend will often read diferent novels, and tell each other which we liked and which we didnt. sometimes we end up all liking the same book, sometimes i like one that they hate, or the opposite.
so even if a book is crap, there's only one true way of knowing if you will like it or not. since, even if its a generic waste of time, it may be presented in an interesting enough way to you to allow you to have fun with it. even if, by the book, by any other metric is something you are sure you would hate.
i have a friend who loved twilight. he even tried to get me to give it a shot, i didnt like it. sometimes, even works that we do like, we either fall of love with, like for example, i read the first 4 harry potter books in a single week. back when there was 4 books, and the first movie was released, have never read any other book in the franchise since. and dont really have any interest in either.
so my advice is, give it a shot, read the first couple of chapters and see if it has enough to hook you. if not, move on.
even saying this, there were books that i hated the first 5 or so chapters, and ended up loving the rest, like a pratical guide to sorcery.
I agree with the modern language being a problem, and I think it’s because it messes with the immersion. We expect that, given that the characters are in an entirely separate world with different historical and cultural influences, the characters will not be speaking and thinking like a modern Earth-human, so it pulls us out of the moment.
I think Sarah j.maas stole the mate thing from Wattpad 😂
its such an old term and idea that i cant have people calling her an "inventor".
@@kattodoggo3868 I saw it in multiple wattpads wolves dark romances ,😅 i feel ashemed just to read this term
We should just leave that word for animal pairings and British dialogue because we honestly say it A LOT over here it's funny
She took everything from Wattpad except decent writing 💀
She was originally published on Wattpad, so that makes sense
It’s because these books are targeting modern women 17-45 and they’ve figured out the formula. You’re getting played the same way us men got played with horror movies from the 70s-90s. They figured out guys like boobs (what a revelation) and served up the same formula, for the most part, for 30 years. The male gaze was retired somewhere around 2012 but it was dying before then. The female gaze is all over these books, it’s just more complicated than the male gaze. Only issue is that it won’t go away as easily because nothing in the female gaze will be deemed “problematic.” So it’ll take more effort to get them to break the formulaic stuff. It’ll require women to really prop up originality.
The male gaze doesn't die, it adapts.
To me, if you read one S.J.M. you've read all of her books, and I don't like her books. Still salty for the Assassin fantasy let down during my Assassin's Creed phase.
You should read Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb :D
@@IVNesse it’s on my tbr, and shopping list on thrift books.
Yea lol, I picked them to learn creative writing, and I figured itll just make my writing worse. So I went back to dune and song of ice and fire. And caleana is so intolerable, oh god, always talking to herself and imagining about how she can kill every random person she passes
I totally agree with you about the whole male/female thing. I hate when people use male/female as nouns when talking about people. It is incorrect and generally fairly inhumanizing. When talking about people, male/female are adjectives like a male singer or a female astronaut. But the male singer is a man and the female astronaut is a woman 😂
Tell me you're joking, please this cannot be real
Agreed. It comes off sounding like a nature documentary. "The pale-haired male is sending signals of unease to his rival."
@@xiiir838they aren't lying, what they said is 1000% true, and 9f you have problem with that, look into yourself bud
@@baristaz8834 I'm fortunate that I don't have the same ideology as you so I'm not deIus¡xnaI
As a non-English speaker it is even worse : even as adjective, we only use these for animals, and it was hard at first to adjust when I learned English.
Interview with the vampire is an example of great romance! There is no Fay (poor Louis), colloquial language (except French), moronically snarky main characters (Lestat is goofy, but also manipulative), enemies to lovers (it feels like everyone is each other's enemies); there is no sex ( in the books, but tv series is spicier), love is not main plot (loneliness is), i don't remember if in the books there was anything about height, i think it wasn't important; there isn't an omegaverse dynamic; the aren't massive men (Armand is 17 years old (+/- 500) and teenager in look, Louis is average, except Lestat - he is handsome, but his personality is more alluring); one true pairing still refers to each other "My love. Mon chéri'. Book was released in 1976 and it was phenomenon - > overall it is complicated relationship, but in the end... you have to see. Especially tv series. I read this book 15 years ago and I can truly say that this is fictional romance where everything fits incredibly well. Also check Good Omens, book and tv series and Witcher books only, please don't hurt your eyes with netflix abomination.
All of this is true, but why would you call it a romance then? The first 2 books are closer to existential horror than anything else, after that they seem to lose track a bit and I don't quite know what to call them, supernatural something, I only read up to book 4 I think.
Literally none of those books you mentioned are romance or were ever pitched as romances to agents/publishers. (IWAV = horror/gothic, Good Omens = fantasy/comedy, the witcher = high fantasy). None of them will have the same focus on certain tropes that romantasy does. They were also written at a completley different (trending) time in the publishing industry. Had good omens or IWAV been pitched now, by unknowns, i doubt theyd be represented/published.
Also in mystery/thriller is feels like every other book is an "And Then There Were None" retelling but done oh so poorly 😅
Omg yes! There’s so many of them.
Curious, but what books are these? Do you have any examples? I might want to read one. (Since I liked And Then There Were None.)
Fiction = overwritten short stories. Non-fiction = overwritten magazine articles.
Fucking thank you! I’ve been reading a lot of old pulp horror and fantasy stuff, and it just absolutely nails why modern novels suck so bad-the BLOAT is killing everything from the novel to cinema. People don’t know when enough is enough. There’s nothing more satisfying than a less-than-two-hundred-pages story that just sticks the landing perfectly. It’s a shame we have what we have, right now.
You said it. Something I've noticed the past few years. Very off putting to me.
Sarah J Maas probably got the Males and Females thing from The Black Jewels series, which she apparently ripped a lot of stuff from. It’s a society with a lot of gender tensions so it makes sense in that context, I’ve never read ACOTAR but I’d have to read it to see if it makes sense there too
Yup, that's why I switched over to high fantasy and contemporary romance books now. I find that "romantasy" books have become formulaic. As if authors want to chase the fame SJM books amassed, by sticking to those same tropes/storylines.
A lot of people are like this now. No thought is original. The more plugged into media genres, identities, and cultures the more the experience in life is controlled. What your eye sees is the experience. In times when people were independently experiencing the world while consuming less all encompassing mass media, the opportunity for individual experience could flourish. People could still pick up on what they read in the newspapers or heard in Church, but most of their lives were spent living and interacting directly with the world and having unique experiences. The best artists and writers were fiercely individualistic and questioned everything. They weren't running off a gender studies text book or looking at memes.
I'm sure there are still plenty of individualistic authors out there, they just don't get the same attention
its nothing new. this has always happened. romance genre has probably the most bottom of the barrel popcorn fluff. always had. but on the other hand, that's what some people really enjoy reading. its their escapism. not everyone need a deep philosophical discussion on the merit of mankind among super species or whatever it is, to be entertaining, at least to enough readers to make it a valid book.
even if me or you have absolutely no interest inreading it.
Because many individualistic personalities are educated in the same environment as most everyone else they often miss the importance of honing their craft, or don't take the time to develop what makes them individual because they've gotten away with *just* skating by.
Good summary. I read a lot of romantasy and what booooooores me endlessly is that the male (sic!) love interest is always described as "the most beautiful man she has ever seen" is big (in every sense) ripped (but he barely needs to work out) rich (although the heroines are described as pseudo-independent they never seem to be able to support themselves much less a man) and have a lot of sexual experience yet never will look at other women again once the short curvy and rather average heroine arrives on the scene. Oh and the extreme good looks of the man may only ever be marred by battle scars... A love story against life's odds would be much more captivating in my opinion.
Man, for about 90 percent of this, I was like, yes, girl talk that talk. How can you say Sarah J Maas is kinda played out without directly calling her out. The other 10 is directly calling her out😂.
I wanna hug you right now!! Thank you SOOOO much for making this video!!! I'm an aspiring author of Fantasy novels and I'm super annoyed with every single point you are talking about! The annoyance is going so far that I'm turning to read other genres or only fantasy for MG entirely because there are just not really good books being published in the fantasy genre in YA or adult right now. What is frustrating me most is the toxic relationships happening in many YA and adult Fantasy at the moment which are considered being "romantic" by many readers and authors. What is going on there???!!! It's making me angry because authors have a responsibility to their readers, especially the young ones. Toxic relationships seem to become something that is wanted, which is worrying me a lot! Novels like this are encouraging young people, but especially girls thinking it's normal that the love interest/partner is being a stalker or jealous all the time (or worse) and it only shows how much he loves her/him. This way they are not learning what a healthy relationship looks and should be like!!!
I REALLY hope that this trend is just a phase and will end soon!!
Sending you good vibes and thanks again!
A lot of authors are held to strict parameters. Publishers have to sell what they know will sell.
Indie authors (myself included) are not held to these standards, but those can sometimes be a hit or miss (hopefully a hit). But I think a lot of movies have this problem also.
Even when I was in highschool (2010), I was noticing all YA was the same. I asked one of the associates at Barnes and Noble if they had any recommendations that weren't all the same, but he said, "try a different genre."
That's when I started branching out, and I think that's important to do. 😊
That stuff you mentioned about the cute romance really intrigued me. I'm gonna need a name for that Book you were reading because I need good examples of natural romance.
If you're into historical romance, Letters From Home by Kristina Mcmorris is fairly good! It's set during WW2 so it isn't exactly low stakes, but the building romance feels genuine and believable.
1 You both deserve each other. They are not married but engaged and aren't in love anymore. It is a great book. You would absolutely hate early fmc but later her character growth would make you understand her more. Loved the writing and setting.
2.Dear Ana by iie it is not a HEA but can be if you ignore last few pages. It has a cute romance but it is also very dark that it deals with physical and mental abuse by her brother. Also after each NOW chapter, there is a THEN chapter which is her life as she was abused.
3 Where the time stand stills. This book will hit the spot with cute romance and a perfect fit for upcoming weather. Just check TW for this one.
For books are fade to black except the last with one page or two.
You've just described what it's like to read really bad writing basically. And apparently there's quite a lot of it around. These kind of romantasy is basically harlequins with a dash of magic. These tropes are old as...yeah, they're old 😂 And it seems that they will keep on resurfacing in different forms cause there's always audience of people who will read it. It's so formulaic it can be mass produced in no time so perfect for our current 'instant' market of booktok etc.
to be fair, romance is probably one of the biggest industry movers that helped entice women to learn how to read. as well as popularized cheap, popcorn literature.
so, on one hand, its very generic and devoid of any real weight, but on the other, its also easy to consume, and to alot of people, its their escapism.
Unrelated but I LOVE your grays! It looks like glitter or tinsel in your hair. Gorgeous 🥰♥️
Yes! The large man, small female trope ... just as an FYI my next door neighbor had a very painful pregnancy because of a huge stature difference - her whole last trimester the baby was to large for her frame and she was bedridden and had to have injections along her rib cage 2x a week to relax the muscles so that her ribs didn't break. Her recovery was so hard and she had a lot of tearing and no FAE abilities to heal from that lol. So now I always read that trope with some Skepticals now. I guess a case of real life changing how you read characters - I stopped reading a werewolf book when it was revealed he was 6'7'' and she was barely over 5' ... like come on! The only thing I can compare it to is when Hoopz started dating Shaquille ONeil
6:00 GOD YES. OH MY GOD. I have come to HATE the snarky main character. It's why I don't read modern young adult fantasy anymore. Every MC is more clever than the rest of the world. I'm over it. Give me an MC with some humility for once. It's not a character flaw to accept help graciously. It's not a character flaw to treat others with respect. As a raging feminist myself, _calm your tits,_ authors. Damn. Anger isn't a personality, it's an emotion you're meant to deal with and move on from.
Romantasy tropes are often well-tread because they are nifty to ideas to play with, but they can lead to predictable routes and make them dull or, worse, irritating to read.
Personally, I will devour anything that is similar to the Saint of Steel series, but I have not found much that hits the same: MCs in their 30s/40s, intelligent, with their own lives and motivations, in a well-built fantasy world with intriguing conflicts.
i am checking this out right away because as 30yo i feel weird reading about 20 yo
Hmm. Maybe I need to re-check out the series… A friend suggested those a while back and I picked them up, but I got turned off at a whole conversation on periods and I’m like, “It doesn’t seem plot relevant and I’d love to not be reminded of unnecessary nitty gritty life details I’d rather forget, thanks,” but maybe I should try again. :/
Sometimes it’s nice to escape and not be reminded about real life, you know? Breaks the immersion.
I haven't read Saint of Steel, but a good character in their 30s/40s with a strong personality would be the MC in "A Natural History of Dragons" by Marie Brennan, mind you the series starts when she's a child so she's quite young in the first book, but it's written as an autobiography so you'll have snippets of the 40+ year old character as she describes her adventures. And eventually, as the series progresses, they converge into her older self. It's pretty neat. Also if you enjoy dragons, science, political intrigue and exploration of different cultures with some Indiana Jones-esq kind of adventuring you might like it.
@@Luumus Thanks! That sounds like the kind of stories I'd enjoy!
13:17 omg THANK YOU. The “male, female” things really irks me. It’s almost as irksome as the modern language in fantastical worlds issue imo. I will say, The Shepard King Duology (One Dark Window, Two Twisted Crowns) by Rachel Gillig did romantasy very well and, for the most part, the characters were very well motivated by their circumstances and internal guidance systems which made it so easy to relate to them. The world building was also there which you can’t say for lots of books of the same ilk (basically anything SJM writes 🙄). Also, the romance was precious and done in a balanced way as opposed to taking over the whole story. Haven’t found good romantasy since 😓
I'm writing a whole thesis on this concept. It goes deeper and off into many different directions but I love this video!
Currently writing a sci-fi ya romantasy and you don’t understand the SIGH OF RELIEF I breathed when none of these were applicable to my WIP!
You’ve got this, buddy! 💪 🌟
Same for me!
"When the love interest is basically just a yes man, thats not a good love interest." I'm looking at you, Xaden Riorson. He met this girl a year ago and she spent the entire time intentionally trying to piss him off or cross boundaries and he keeps saying how he would throw away the whole rebellion (comprised of all his living friends and family) for her. His life's goal. Everything hes fought for. For a girl he barely knows.
Also, the thing that drives me crazy about fantasy romance right now is that all of the covers look the same. Mine also looks the same, but this was because everyone told me that to compete in a genre, our covers have to look like all the rest of the books in the genre. It’s frustrating.
It can be an easy shorthand if you’re looking for a type of book as a reader, but also discouraging, too, if you’re a writer because you can get lost in the aesthetic.
So much of this has parallels with the music industry.
Honestly, everything you mentioned is why I’ve given up on most modern writers and I’ve gone back to reading more of the classics. The reason I believe so many of these tropes are overplayed is because many of this generation’s writers have neither a great understanding of the English language nor do they have the depth of character to really flesh out complex emotions and characters. Compare nearly any of today’s authors to any of the works by the Brontë sisters, Dickens, or the works of Jane Austen. And most of their works all came in their 20’s and early 30’s!
So true… as an author I think many compromise on quality and aren’t writing art but rather just to sell a product. I want people to be entertained by my stories but also can reflect on the deeper themes… and it’s not black and white, they can resonate with why different characters do certain things, even if we disagree with it for any number of reasons.
I grew up reading classic sci-fi and fantasy tho and there’s a lot of soul in that… I’m really enjoying subverting tropes in my first series Blood Moon: Book 1 of the Crescent Crown Saga. If people like adult paranormal romance/urban fantasy…
As a writer, I'm glad I don't fit your notion of a modern writer. All I read are classics, and I do not conform to trends or tropes. I'm rather oblivious to them, so if I include any, it's not consciously done.
I paint with my words. My work can be bizarre, fantastical, surreal, yet dark and contemplative. I want readers to be enraptured by my creations, to analyse my diction and uncover the parallels I've laced throughout, to question their preconceptions of the world around them or even their own sanity. I will never be quantity over quality, and I will never try to make a quick buck.
I have also studied over 7 or 8 languages, their philology and etymology, how they are influenced by each other and cultures, and am working to structure my own.
All that being said, I really need to get along and finish something instead of sitting around on my hoard of treasures. 😅
As a women Can I just say that I miss feminine women. In my opinion it seems like women are only worthy of being the main character (both books and movies) is if they are strong female Characters; Acting Traditionally masculine. I just feel like it’s a slap in the face to us women who are Feminine. Why is feminine women not a thing anymore?
I love your comment! So spot on!
??? feminine women were and are the norms in fiction. The female characters in these romance fantasy novels are very feminine, they just have swords now. They're traditionally beautiful, have more "feminine" hobbies (reading, painting, sewing, etc.), have "feminine" roles in their family, and follow trad feminine paths by settling down and having babies with huge strong men. Just because they act snarky instead of behaving like they're only there to look pretty and talk gently doesn't mean they're not feminine. None of the mainstream fantasy books have traditionally masculine women
They are still pretty much the norm. Can't read a book where a woman is not described as pretty and attractive to everyone around her bc of her feminine charms.
feminine women are still the norm???? wth are you talking about. nearly all the books references in the videos have extremely feminine FMCs with lushly described dresses galore and enforced gender roles in their relationships. what more could you possibly want lmao
6:21 me everytime Shallan speaks in a conversation: "are you not able to utter ONE SENTENCE in which you don't try to impress someone with your supposed wit?" especially in the first like 2 books her conversations feel so forced
4:20 modern dialogue: #1 offender: okay. OK didn't come into wide use until US GIs spread it during WWII. Its not just fantasy, you see it in historical fiction too. "Alright" is just as long. But I think we're stuck with, "My liege! Are you okay!?"
One my pet peeves comes from Sarah J. Maas and it’s her naming practices.
I really irks me that in fairly isolationist courts, no one really has any distinct names.
Her world appears to be based at least somewhat on the British Isles, so she missed a great opportunity to have some unique names for the residents of each court that sets their individual cultures apart from one another.
Instead, she chose to sort of half-ass it by making up a few names and then throwing in random things like Morrigan and Valkyries and Illyrians. Add to that the confusing time period aesthetic and sometimes archaic, sometimes painfully 21st century dialogue and it just gets to be a bit of a mess.
The abusive love interest 😭 Why are we framing creepy behavior as hot??? I really want to jump on the hype train for lots of booktok famous books for the sake of the community BUT their "hot guys" are abusers and no amount of good looks will suspend reality enough for me to let that behavior pass ✋️
The publishers went from quality to quantity. They are approving every book possible to get the most money instead of putting out quality books
I LOL-ed when you mentioned amnesia trope, 'Oh I used to love you so now I have my memories back so I guess I'm in love with you again.' I just read one book that has this trope and I'm still digesting the whole thing, wondering how I really feel about the book. Lol.
I’d actually never heard of this trope, so I’m actually intrigued. It seems novel to me.
@AliasPhex Yeah, its not a trope that's usually mentioned when recommending a book because its usually a major plot spoiler.
You're just out here voicing all of my thoughts 🤣 (and I'm only on point 3).
Since I'm working on a novel of my own atm, I've been doing a lot of "critique partner" reading of other people's works, and let me tell you, 90% of them were fae romantasies and 75% of those had modern language in them and the authors could not understand why it irked me so bad 😭 I could never explain it well to them, but you've nailed it exactly. Next time it happens, I'm saying that!
As a (hopeful) author, this video gives me hope. I’ve put off writing a book for a while because I wasn’t sure how it would be received. So nice to hear someone say they want to read a book where the characters have a true romance, not just lust, and one where characters are mature enough to accept and ask for help and realize that it takes everyone to make the world go ‘round. And yes, also having characters who aren’t surprised by the greatness (also read “chosen one”) within them, but rather, they know it’s there and they are simply waiting for the right time to show that greatness, or they are procrastinating until they have no other option but to embrace that part of themselves and thus move their own character arc forward. I feel like this comment is as clear as mud, but it was written off the cuff.
I think we don't like characters in fantasy talking like we do because why would they ? It's a different world with different features and references. It feels nonsensical that they would speak exactly the way we would.
When you were talking about a romance that was more like a subplot that was just so adorable but also separate from what the main character was going through, it sounded like you were talking about ella enchanted or the Two Princesses of Bamarre. The romances in those books were so subtle and adorable and i loved how they got to know each other throughout the course of the book, not hating each other from the beginning like so many romances now
Engaging with books has significantly elevated my perspective on investing. True wealth isn't built through mere savings; financial freedom stems from strategic investments. I've learned that accumulating wealth hinges on making prudent investment decisions|
Embarking on the investment journey at 40, I envision a triumphant testimony of significant success by the age of 55.
Books have also changed my perspective on investing. Understanding that real wealth is built through strategic investments rather than mere savings is crucial. Working with an adviser has pointed me in the right direction.
'Angela Lynn Schilling’ maintains an online presence. Just make a simple search for her name online.
I actually went to her office. But she tried to sell me meth.
The entire global economy is built on Monopoly money.
I don't know if this is just me, but I really dislike that 99.99% of amnesia-trope books always end with the person get thier memories back at like the 85% mark. I'd love if I could read just one where they just don't, and they have to deal with it. It feels like such a cop-out when I know going in that whatever issue this gives the MC it doesn't really matter because it going to resolve in exactly the same way as every other book with this trope.
1) the protagonist inherits a kingdom
2) magic books
3) magic places
4) “dark academia”
Great video ^^ One massive thing I'd add to this list is book titles themselves! A Court of *Words* and *Words* is eeeeeverywhere and it's so unoriginal! ACOTAR being so widely beloved unfortunately had the side effect of spawning a market for this genre and there are just SO many amateur authors capitalising lazily on trope-filled word fluff that somehow sells? Every time I see a new one advertised it's "Do you like Enemies to Lovers, Forced Proximity, Lost Princess, or Chosen One tropes? then you'll love this!" The authors seem to think adding a bunch of two-dimensional OC's into a vague plot based entirely on those tropes into a pre-existing template for a somewhat magical Fae world is all they need to do. It hurts my brain :(
As a fantasy fan who likes a little bit of romance in addition, the romantacy genre is killing me. The ratio is just too skewed towards the romance conventions. All the more power to people who want that recipe, but I've been burned so many times picking up a book that looks like fantasy and finding out it doesn't care about the worldbuilding or adventure aspect and spends the whole time explaining that two people are super horny for each other. After the third or fourth time my slow ass finally learned and I just won't read anything described as romantacy anymore.
I’m sick of hearing people say “inspired by Sarah J.Maas”. Maas ripped off Anne Bishop. Maas is a bit more palatable and definitely more YA friendly, but she is most certainly NOT the mother of romantic fantasy.
10:30 okay but I want to know what that book is please. It sounds so cute!
Same, how could she tbh
One way to get away from this is to read fantasy based in other cultures. I’m currently reading Akata witch which is based in Nigerian mythology and folklore and it’s some of the freshest fantasy I’ve read in a while in terms of the world building and magic system. The poppy war series which is based in China was also super interesting and different. I want more of that more non western fantasy because as much as I love stuff based in Irish, scandinavian, Greek, and other European folklores, a lot of it has been done before so it’s harder to make something truly stand out.