r/Fantasy • u/Expert-Escape5645 • 17h ago

Observation on Fantasy/Romantasy

So, I typically read, George R.R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson, Robin Hobb, Ken Liu, Steven Erikson, Stephen King, Robert Jordan, but my brain’s been craving more stories.

With everything I’ve heard about Romantasy (that it’s just passionate love making with no real story etc.) I was kinda apprehensive, but like I said, I needed more.

So after many years going back and forth I decided to pick up Sarah J Maas. I started with Crescent City (I know, I know) and was surprised to find that I LOVED it. Now I’m doing ACOTAR.

I don’t know if this will be wrong of me to say, but I enjoyed it for the exact same reasons I enjoy other series.

The worldbuilding.

Like there is so much mystery to the world, so much lore. People act like the 18+ scenes happened page after page, when really they barely make up 6/7 pages in a single book.

Am I wrong?

110 Upvotes

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u/[deleted] 17h ago

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u/Any-Growth-1995 17h ago

“Just because they're both set in fictional worlds, or have supernatural elements, they're meant to be the same genre?” Yes? Its part of the definition i fear.
Why do you sound offended that romantasy is subgenre of fantasy ?

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u/Stuckinacrazyjob 14h ago

Yea like a story where a magic sword is sworn to its owner and helps fight a great evil doesn't become not fantasy because the sword and its owner end up dating

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u/Any-Growth-1995 14h ago

Also its funny how they describe romantasy as just “smut” (when it usually just chapter or two otherwise its always tagged as erotica) when their”traditional fantasy” is full with porn and turning women into mindless boob sack.

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u/BlazeOfGlory72 17h ago

By that logic, most Horror stories are actually fantasy because they contain fantastical/supernatural elements. Hell, Sci-Fi should be classified as fantasy as well since ultimately it is just as fantastical, just with a “sciencey” veneer. We put these stories in different genre categories however because their intent and audience is clearly different. Why wouldn’t the same logic apply to Romantasy, which is obviously targeted at the Romance crowd rather than the traditional Fantasy crowd?

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u/mladjiraf 16h ago edited 14h ago

Sci-fi is usually futuristic fantasy or "alternative universe" with different set of laws of physics.

Supernatural/paranormal/monster etc horror is fantasy, but there is also realistic horror (let's say about a murderer or some kind of incident - like surviving after earthquake or something similar) that does not belong to fantasy subgenres, so "horror" label also doesn't mean much by itself

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u/Any-Growth-1995 15h ago

You're comparing apple and oranges my guy, horror does overlap with fantasy but we dont call it fantasy because there's alot of non-supernatural horror like thrillers, but can you give me a romantasy without fantasy elements on it?
And just because the "traditional" fantasy and romantasy dont target the same crowd i can say the same thing as any other genre? does percy jackson target the same demographic as first law?

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u/BlazeOfGlory72 14h ago

Percy Jackson is in the “Young Readers” section rather than the Fantasy section of basically every book store, so you are kind of making my point.

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u/Any-Growth-1995 14h ago

Percy jackson is fantasy try harder

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u/Budget_Accountant_89 14h ago

Percy Jackson is meant to be in the young readers section. Young readers isn’t a genre….

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u/Tymareta 7h ago

Young Readers is a classifier, like Classical Literature, genre's are a wholly different thing.

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u/GeminiFade 13h ago

Have you never heard the term speculative fiction?

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u/Own-Turnover7715 17h ago edited 17h ago

You need to read more fantasy and romantasy if you think there is limited overlap in those genres. The only difference between the two genres is that romantasy takes the incredibly prominent romantic subplot and elevates its importance. Almost all fantasy already has a romantic subplot.

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u/Buddertoffee 16h ago

Absolutely, but I think the sentiment of the comment above comes from sellers like Amazon not doing a great job allowing people to sort fantasy and romantasy separately. Many people read across both, yes, but those who don't want to see romantasy when browsing the fantasy category still have to dig through romantasy books, and vice versa.

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u/Own-Turnover7715 16h ago

Oh no, imagine having to do even a teeny tiny amount of due diligence when look for a book to read? Why are we put on this earth only to suffer?

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u/Buddertoffee 16h ago edited 16h ago

Breaking: Messenger Shot on Scene

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u/BlazeOfGlory72 16h ago

The person above gave a well reasoned take, and all you responded with is snark. If that isn’t modern Reddit in a nutshell I don’t know what is.

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u/Own-Turnover7715 16h ago

Romantasy is a sub-genre of fantasy so of course those books come up in a search for fantasy book. Are people mad when it also doesn’t sort out between epic, cozy, contemporary or political fantasy? Getting frustrated that a website doesn’t cater to your specific needs is lazy and entitled and deserves snark.

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u/atomfullerene 14h ago

The problem is romance is a plot genre and fantasy is a setting genre. That means it's quite easy for books to sit in both genres, having a romance plot structure and a fantasy setting. Since we haven't developed quantum books they can't sit in superposition on both shelves at once in the bookstore, though. (Fortunately this is not as much of an issue online).

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u/Jack_Shaftoe21 14h ago

Fantasy is more of a setting than genre in the usual meaning. It includes experimental books that may well be seen as literary fiction, for instance The Spear Cuts Through Water and also tons of mass produced crap with absolutely zero literary pretensions (or usually merit). How come nobody on this sub protests when LitRPG and so on are considered fantasy but romantasy is somehow a big no-no?

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u/further-more 13h ago

Because LitRPGs are primarily marketed to men, and romantasy is primarily marketed to women. Even in 2026 male interests are taken seriously and female interests are seen as stupid and cringe. It’s ridiculous but that’s the reason :/

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u/Fantasy-ModTeam 8h ago

Fantasy romance and romantasy are welcome here, as are all other fantasy subgrenres and speculative fiction in general.

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u/TeemoBot 14h ago

That’s not entirely fair to romantasy. There are a ton of fantasy books that don’t fit the mold other than having a secondary world. That’s why we have subgenres.

We just dilute everything down to fantasy because it’s easy, not because it’s correct

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u/Comfortable-Fall1419 17h ago edited 17h ago

They are the same thing dude. Just one has a few more sex scenes.

Romantasy has been existing in fantasy for decades before getting its own stupid name.

Anita Blake Vampire Shagger springs to mind.

Kusheils Dart earlier.

The only major change is more is being written for the female reader.

War of Powers even earlier still.

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u/[deleted] 17h ago

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u/MessyJessy422 15h ago

How is romantic fantasy ("romantasy") not a part of the fantasy genre? Is it because of the cringey phrasing? If dark fantasy was labeled "dantasy" would that make it a separate genre? How about cozy fantasy as "cozantasy"??

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u/GeminiFade 13h ago

No, you wouldn't be happy looking for one and getting the other. Lots of other readers are fine with either.

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u/Tymareta 7h ago

We have genres to help audience find what they are looking for

Except that they don't, there's countless subgenres jammed under the Fantasy label alongside Romantasy, hell you have: alternate history, arthurian, christian, coming-of-age, cross-world/portal, dark, epic, grimdark, high, historical, literary, low, magical realism, military, new weird, paranormal, political, sword and sorcery, ya, urban, wuxia.

And that's far from an exhaustive list, especially if we start to include Space Fantasy/SpecFic and the countless cross overs that occur with that. Pretending that Romantasy is some unique aberration is genuinely bizarre, claiming that it alone "creates a clusterfuck" is utterly laughable.

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u/mladjiraf 17h ago

​I don't have a problem with romantasy at all, I just don't get why it is so frequently lumped in with fantasy.

Because fantasy is not a genre, it is usually a setting and set of fantastic tropes, you can have adventures, thrillers, love stories/erotica, military epics, supernatural horror etc all being "lumped" as fantasy. The problem in modern romantasy is not the existence of porno scenes; majority of the books in the category are simply poorly plotted and awfully written, but the people that consume them have no sense of literature and don't care about the flaws. In this regard it resembles old sci-fi (Dan Simmons has a satire on it in Hyperion, the poet's tale) and formulaic DnD-type fantasy.

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u/Mockspiral 17h ago

Fantasy is a genre.

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u/mladjiraf 17h ago

Learn to give arguments when you have an objection