Women Are Not Asking for Wings on Tinder

I enjoy reading romantasy and I still have a dating life with real men. Surprise!

All of that, even though there are actually people out there suggesting that women will, over time, fall victim to porn-addiction, in the shape of winged abs. Sadly, I really don’t see any evidence for that.

What I do see is that more women read, dare to pick up previously “scary” big books, and most of the women I have observed becoming obsessed with romantasy have since read many other kinds of genres as well. So despite the fact that there are certainly people out there who might only read “fairy smut,” I doubt it is the majority.

I also want to highlight that a large female readership is nothing new historically, and neither is the dismissal of female-written books as lower quality.

But I am capable of reading critically, and thus there are some traits of romantasy books that I would like to see evolve, because literature is all about creative evolution. Honestly, since this is becoming more and more of a discussion online, I think the genre will become more experimental automatically, because publishing is also just another domain reliant on marketing and audiences.

But since everyone seems to hate romantasy to death recently, here is a little insight from a reader who refuses to pick sides. Yes, I like grey areas, and not just in 50 shades…

I have recently heard the interesting take that “romantasy will die if it doesn’t change,” and then the speaker added:

“Depending on whether it gets a movie or series adaptation, it may stick around for one or two more decades.”

And I agree with that; if there were cinematographic adaptations of these Bestseller-list ranked novels and series, that would certainly help the genre survive, even with the existing hates (not critiques, there is a difference).

Recently, Sarah J. Maas stopped her contract to produce A Court of Thorns and Roses as a series, apparently due to budgeting issues. It is funny to me, though: Why is it that a book with SUCH a large readership cannot be financed?

I get it, this is a fantasy series demanding a large production budget, not some high-school drama. But we have highly advanced CGI technologies and AI, much of which is already circulating in little snippets online by amateur AI-video-creators. You can now catch glimpses of the Basgiath War College from Fourth Wing on Instagram, so why is it so impossible to gather the money for a multi-million-engaged fanbase? Apparently, fairy wings don’t get tax incentives.

I think this is fishy, and something tells me the lack of success in securing a company to produce this series has to do with the fact that we are talking about a female writer, a mainly female fanbase, and series and movies that might, for the first time, objectify men.

Romantasy is not new, but objectified men are

The hilarious thing is that romantasy hasn’t even been around for so long, and yet people already predict its downfall, when most men who jump to conclusions online have never touched the actual books. I was personally insulted and attacked for merely commenting under another woman’s post that I also liked romantasy, by five men within 15 minutes, when I barely had 20 followers at the time.

I was called sexually frustrated and forever single in the same line of argumentation and characterised as both a slut for reading books and not enough of a reader. It was, in a way, fascinating.

The idea of paranormal romance in the 21st century (because it certainly existed before that, but couldn’t reach the mainstream) was popularized first through everyone’s second-most-hated book: Twilight. Another example of female-written books that were taken down for not being “feminist enough” or portraying “disturbing relationship dynamics.”

But let me tell you a secret: the reason behind the story is usually in the societal constructs around the author, they don’t spark magically in a woman’s brain.

Twilight was written by Stephanie Meyer, a youg mother at the time who had married at 21, right before finishing her degree in English literature, and was a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Maybe, just maybe, she wrote a story that was set in fantasy, but reflective of her own societal expectations.

Also, Twilight famously originated in one of her dreams. As someone who avidly records and works on herself through dreams and psychoanalysis, I can tell you that your dreams are maybe more fantastical, but certainly a truth-adjacent replay of your lived reality. And with her background, maybe the relationship she wrote about was realistic, despite the blood-draining being a little out of sync.

I can attest to you that if I wrote a book about any of my recent dreams, it wouldn’t be a revolutionary feminist novel. To do that, one needs to conduct a whole lot of extraordinary mental experiments and maybe some hard drugs. Unfortunately, one must set out to write a feminist book specifically and do research; it doesn’t just happen. Not in our current society.

Fantasy and romance are not new, but the audience is

So the idea of mainstream paranormal romance sparked in 2005 with the release of Twilight (though again, it existed before that), with a female lead that admittedly had questionable advocacy. I still love Twilight because when I read Bella’s story, I had zero advocacy for myself as a teenager, and thus related to her.

Stephanie Meyer couldn’t be more predatory to me than the society surrounding me, in all honesty. Now I have an interesting nostalgia around the forests of Forks, maybe because my family home in Austria is also a mini-Forks, and I have a soft spot for Vampires and blood due to frequent nosebleeds (I mean that, read the story here).

Anyways, after Twilight, the word “romantasy” first appeared in 2008, when fan communities started tossing around this new piece of jargon.

In 2015, the first book of A Court of Thorns and Roses was released, and soon after, all hell broke loose. The fame was proliferated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and especially in 2022 and 2023, the fandom around “fairy smut” soared into new heights. #BookStagram and #BookTok were all the rage, and The Fourth Wing Saga by Jessica Yarros was also published in these years.

Now we have many sagas which are, yes, all fantasies, but I don’t think they lack creativity entirely. Where Sarah J. Maas writes in a more “Lord of the Rings”-themed world in ACOTAR and A Throne of Glass, she also produces a utopian detective-murder-fantasy (yep, all of those) in Crescent City. Rebecca Yarros is the George R. R. Martin of romantasy in Fourth Wing, and there is also the somewhat funky Crave series by Tracy Wolff, with a new spin on the Twilight Saga.

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black gets really deep into fairy lore, while The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent takes vampires into the Hunger Games. Powerless by Lauren Roberts plays with the idea of forbidden love, and the Hades and Persephone series, among other Greek mythology retellings, by Scarlett St. Clair draws on ancient tales with a sexy spin.

So honestly, there is a lot of variety, and yet people criticize the tropes for being too easy, too repetitive, and sometimes they are even framed as dangerous. I will not lie: I love that these books exist now, because while I enjoyed The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Twilight, they were clearly only first steps into unchartered territory for mainstream audiences outside of the US.

However, I do admit that the 50th mating bond isn’t really my center of interest, and I also critique the “play with the protector role” that many of these novels use as the male lead character’s internal conflict.

Is it realistic that these men know exactly how to please the female main character immediately? No.

But as someone who grew up with many sex scenes (oh no, I am rotten), I can say that these book chapters are more female-centric, at least than most movie sex. And again, I don’t talk about thunder during an orgasm here, I mean the reality-applicable details.

And if I’m being honest, I think it is a good thing that these novels help remove the stigma from women engaging in pleasure.

Female pleasure in novels from a new idea, but just because it isn’t new, it doesn’t make it less important, because many new gems in literature unfortunately stay in the “literature bubble”. So I guess one could say that first there is the artistic and advocative writing, second, years, if not decades later, comes the mainstream success of that very same concept. Society moves slowly.

Sex-ed and female pleasure are still separate categories

I will give you a funny example from a young adult’s life: I grew up with high-school-centered movies, where there would be a scene or two of a boy being caught as he watches porn, or a shot where lots of tissues around his bed indicated that he had done things.

Thus, if my mum discovered condoms and tissues in my brother’s bedroom, that would’ve been a smirking matter.

Somehow, girls’ self-pleasure was never part of any movie narrative for teens, so when I discovered my body, all I had for reference were female friends around me who were in the same phase of life, utterly lacking guidance. Mind you: I am talking about a 21st-century teenagehood here.

What I got instead was an extra lesson on fertility, guidance on how to deal with periods, and, because I grew up in an already open-minded society, lots of sex-ed featuring all the ways that a woman could prevent getting pregnant.

I am not saying that sex-ed needs to feature self-pleasure, but in a weird inbalance the mechanics of male pleasure were obvious and blasted across media in movies and others. I watched Sex and the City for my sex-ed at home (genius idea by my parents, btw, thanks), but it was like a world for “real women,” leading me to understand the theory at least, but still with a label of distaste and judgment to it.

I realized, as I grew older, what these jokes of the adults were all about when they talked about bees, chickens, and whatever other animal of opposite genders with touching body parts. But I will say I wouldn’t see my mum cracking those same jokes, but rather men around me.

I was lucky because I got a lot of sex-ed when I grew up, but the point I am trying to make is more about the narrative behind it. The idea was still to primarily ensure that you don’t get pregnant, you can have your fun, though you don’t know how, and any female pleasure was also somewhere in the function of love.

Any woman I have ever watched having an orgasm was either in the presence of a man or because she was thinking about a man (usually her future boyfriend in the story). So emotional love was tied to pleasure for women in a way that it wasn’t for men, and “having sex like a man” in the way Samantha does in Sex and the City, was not really ideal.

And that is, I think, what we now characterize as the weakness of romantasy today: The stories are highlighting female pleasure, but within the constraints of a loving, lasting relationship.

I actually think that is one of the things that made the ACOTAR series so famous, because the first love interest wasn’t the eternal one. She had good sex with another man first, but somehow, the sex with the second had to be better, because female pleasure gets better with love. Supposedly. Despite a lack of evidence, I can’t help that some small part of my societally indoctrinated brain hopes that it is true.

21st century women want “the sex of true love” not the “kiss of true love”

Men writing fantasy can use sex as a marketable addition because they use sex as a plot device or character embellishment. Jamie Lannister’s ability to sleep with his sister and any number of prostitutes gives him credibility. That is also true for Tyrion, whose whole repertoire of jokes in season one circles around the idea of dick-sizes. Which is a bit primitive, but sells pretty damn well.

And look: I love Game of Thrones, but I can’t help but notice the extreme use of prostitution, sexual abuse under a shield of “historic accuracy” in these novels. I think the white walkers were as much of a choice as the prostitutes, because this is still fantasy. Yet, the turning point of most female characters in the series is abuse.

But when women write sex, it comes with love. In my eyes, romantasy and historical romance like Bridgerton, with female audiences and writers, are learning that at the moment: Using sex as a plot device.

Since Game of Thrones is not porn, then fairy smut isn’t either.

Honestly, I think at least 70% of the sex in Game of Thrones is for marketing purposes, maybe 20% are actually necessary in terms of the plot, and 10% are love scenes in the way that they would appear in a romantasy novels.

It’s actually interesting that George R.R. Martin has amazingly few sex scenes that don’t originate in assault, which drives the plot. His male characters frequently rape women or crack jokes about rape, but the magnetic type of sex, the type that is so often the literal and physical climax of a female-written romance, appears rarely in his books.

In romantasy characters can sleep with someone else besides their primary love interest, but it is rather rare. Bryce in Crescent City sleeps around and parties before she meets the male main character. Feyre in ACOTAR famously has a whole book full of intimacy with Tamlin, before finding her mate, Rhysand. The female main character of The Cruel Prince also has several other encounters before determining her attraction.

But they are usually few, at the beginning of the book, almost like a distraction to keep the reader guessing for a few more pages, who might now become the real love interest. The real “mate” (ugh, ok, I admit, I hate that word).

I love that self-pleasure is becoming a thing in BookTok novels, slowly, because it allows for another way to play with the character dynamic and gives women a little more agency. Though most of these “females” are strong characters, one thing remains true: The story wouldn’t exist without their men.

And that is the main hinge of my critique of these novels, which is a bit confusing because these are “romantasies,” meaning romance novels with fantasy. They are literally written with the relationship in mind, but I do argue that the dependency and protection ratio could be lowered.

At the same time, one thing I find eternally beautiful about romantasy is that it already marries the roughness of a hero’s arc with the softness of romance. The integration of the masculine and feminine elements, animus and anima, is what makes these books so good and is quite central to the current debate about feminism.

But more on that in Part 2 of my article series on Romantasy and Fairy Smut here…

Until then, I can only agree with this creator who perfectly summarizes what I guess are most female reader’s sentiments about wanting a “morally grey shadow daddy” in real life: