The craziest thing I saw on the Allie Rose fiasco was when someone else started a kickstarter to raise money to try and trademark “Allie Rose Comapny” out from underneath her. It just demonstrated such a fundamental misunderstanding of how that whole system works.
I saw that, too! I believe (if I remember correctly) they rescinded the application because it was only done to prove a point, and the point was very much proven 😅
I saw the romantasy article pop up on my feed, but as soon as I read,"The average romantasy novel revolves around the usual contrivances of every romance novel ever written," I rolled my eyes and scrolled on.
Yet another man who doesn't understand the purpose of romance, let alone romantasy.
I have an MA in English Literature, and when I first came into the romantasy space, I was fully expecting to have to deal with the same low-grade misogyny that I had dealt with throughout both my literature degrees. Classics were Serious Literature. Books with male authors were Serious Literature. Books written by women might sometimes be considered Serious Literature if the author had died tragically. Bonus points for suicide. Jane Austen died young and in poverty of a mysterious ailment, but that wasn't always tragic enough to qualify her. After all, she wrote drawing room romance, which couldn't possibly be important.
So imagine my shock when I started writing romantasy, fully expecting the male fantasy authors in the sphere to be positioning themselves as some kind of gatekeepers of fantasy's "purity" as a genre. But all I found were a bunch of really enthusiastic male authors fascinated by romantasy's success, fully supporting their female colleagues' writing of it, and engaging in discussion about it.
These men get it. Even if romance isn't their genre of choice, they understand its purpose and function, and they welcome its presence in fiction. Just as I don't especially enjoy horror as a genre, but I understand that it serves a particular function, allowing people a safe space to process their deepest fears. Just because I am not interested doesn't mean I'm about to go out and write an article called "We Need To Get Over Horror Already" about it.
Also, regarding "romantasy" as a neologism, the same debates were going on around fanfiction 10-15 years ago as online communites like A03 established themselves. Forgetting, of course, that fanfiction has also been around as long as humans have lived. Isn't that how oral tradition evolves, by stories getting passed around over generations? It's only as we've solidified the concepts of a "single author" and "intellectual property" that fanfiction became controversial. Now, though, it's so established that people don't bat an eye anymore (just look at the Dramione-fanction-to-trad-pub pipeline).
All this to say, you're right that an author who doesn't understand anything about a particular genre, especially a male author opining on a woman-dominated genre that has long resisted and subverted patriarchal norms, should maybe stay in his lane.
I didn’t have a good spot to squeeze it in, but another ✨problematic opinion✨ I’ve seen has been something like “ugh no one reads the classics anymore, it’s just contemporary commercial trash and never Shakespeare” and that’s such a Telling Statement that they don’t…actually…understand…Shakespeare…😅
The craziest thing I saw on the Allie Rose fiasco was when someone else started a kickstarter to raise money to try and trademark “Allie Rose Comapny” out from underneath her. It just demonstrated such a fundamental misunderstanding of how that whole system works.
I saw that, too! I believe (if I remember correctly) they rescinded the application because it was only done to prove a point, and the point was very much proven 😅
I saw the romantasy article pop up on my feed, but as soon as I read,"The average romantasy novel revolves around the usual contrivances of every romance novel ever written," I rolled my eyes and scrolled on.
Yet another man who doesn't understand the purpose of romance, let alone romantasy.
I have an MA in English Literature, and when I first came into the romantasy space, I was fully expecting to have to deal with the same low-grade misogyny that I had dealt with throughout both my literature degrees. Classics were Serious Literature. Books with male authors were Serious Literature. Books written by women might sometimes be considered Serious Literature if the author had died tragically. Bonus points for suicide. Jane Austen died young and in poverty of a mysterious ailment, but that wasn't always tragic enough to qualify her. After all, she wrote drawing room romance, which couldn't possibly be important.
So imagine my shock when I started writing romantasy, fully expecting the male fantasy authors in the sphere to be positioning themselves as some kind of gatekeepers of fantasy's "purity" as a genre. But all I found were a bunch of really enthusiastic male authors fascinated by romantasy's success, fully supporting their female colleagues' writing of it, and engaging in discussion about it.
These men get it. Even if romance isn't their genre of choice, they understand its purpose and function, and they welcome its presence in fiction. Just as I don't especially enjoy horror as a genre, but I understand that it serves a particular function, allowing people a safe space to process their deepest fears. Just because I am not interested doesn't mean I'm about to go out and write an article called "We Need To Get Over Horror Already" about it.
Also, regarding "romantasy" as a neologism, the same debates were going on around fanfiction 10-15 years ago as online communites like A03 established themselves. Forgetting, of course, that fanfiction has also been around as long as humans have lived. Isn't that how oral tradition evolves, by stories getting passed around over generations? It's only as we've solidified the concepts of a "single author" and "intellectual property" that fanfiction became controversial. Now, though, it's so established that people don't bat an eye anymore (just look at the Dramione-fanction-to-trad-pub pipeline).
All this to say, you're right that an author who doesn't understand anything about a particular genre, especially a male author opining on a woman-dominated genre that has long resisted and subverted patriarchal norms, should maybe stay in his lane.
I didn’t have a good spot to squeeze it in, but another ✨problematic opinion✨ I’ve seen has been something like “ugh no one reads the classics anymore, it’s just contemporary commercial trash and never Shakespeare” and that’s such a Telling Statement that they don’t…actually…understand…Shakespeare…😅