WORST TRENDS IN FANTASY ~ reaction

WORST TRENDS IN FANTASY ~ reaction

#worsttrends #worstfantasytrends #worstbookishtrends

[mouseholmes]

I once saw someone say that “a bowl of Mac and cheese” fits the ‘a BLANK of BLANK and BLANK’ pattern and now that’s all I can think of when I hear those titles

[conspiracypanda]

We need to separate the Fantasy-Romance subgenre as its own thing. Call that _Romantasy._

[strawberrylime]

My least favorite trend is the "I love him even tho he's kinda shady because he's just so hot." Oh, his arms, oh his shoulders....he maybe killed my sister, but, oh, his beautifully distrusting eyes...

[hazelphoenix]

The thing that bothers me, and has for awhile, is how trope-heavy YA is. The plot, the writing, the worldbuilding, the character-building, everything comes secondary to "enemies to lovers, " "grumpy vs. sunshine, " "but there was only one bed, " "love triangle" etc. YA fantasy gets a bad rap, which is a shame because there's some great stuff out there. I just wish tropes weren't quite as important as they seem to be.

[Checheyigen]

As a fifty four year old woman who's been reading fantasy since I was 14 I am way effin over having to SLOG through romance novels shelved with fantasy to find *actual* fantasy novels to read. It p!ss3s me the way off

[Dani_]

The cruel Prince is the only fae book I like because how they are actually fae-like and not just extra horny immortal people with wings.

[coyoteclockworkstudios]

This speaks to me from like ten years ago. I remember going into a bookstore and reading all the YA fantasy blurbs. It was like a Mad Lib.
"SPICY FEMALE TEEN PROTAGONIST" goes to "FANTASY LOCATION" and meets "HOT FANTASY GUY". Will blank be able to blank the blank?
I walked out without buying anything. I wasn't writing that kind of stuff and despaired for about ten years. Hearing everybody's tired of it is good to hear.

[ivorymoonwolf]

One author who writes Faeries very well is Holly Black. She makes them creepy and dark tricksters who sadistically treat humans as toys and yes eat them. Mermaids/siren stories are really cool too when they are portrayed as monsters.

[hardygal]

Me: *hoping to write a dark fae story and sweating as I wonder if that’s become overdone*
1:54 : “I don’t wanna see them fall in love, I wanna see them destroy people”
Me: *sigh of relief*

[thisisnancybot]

I think that some of the “smut in YA” books come from books that aren’t really YA being called YA because they have similar pacing and tropes to YA books. Also SMJ is everywhere.

[playsintraffic]

I feel like Fae are the new vampires. Is Sarah J Maas written as YA or marketed as YA? Sometimes it seems like the author has one view of her audience and the marketing team has another. I'm just curious.

[elisabethjmusic]

I am all for a designated “fantasy romance” genre to emerge. I am one of those girlies that needs more than just a romance, but often I get tired of just fantasy. Depending on my mood, I will verge deeper into fantasy or romance sometimes, but “fantasy romance” is definitely my comfort place/home base/happy place

[lukeperry]

I also believe the problem with smut in ya is down to stores not acknowledging that new adult is now a popular genre and just lumping these books in with young adult.

[CeCeBookworm]

I’m kind of sick of having an entirely “morally gray” cast. Believe me, books like Six Of Crows and Cruel Prince handle it wonderfully, but I’m so sick of everyone being a horrible person. That’s what I appreciated so much about Realmbreaker. Yeah you had a few morally gray character (Mainly Sorasa). But watching characters like Dom and Andrey was nice because I missed idealistic good people. We’re so obsessed with darkness and angst and I don’t entirely get the hype anymore.

[ashleyreadssometimes]

I'm just tired of fantasy romance being mixed into the regular fantasy/sci-fi section. It's like this at my favorite local bookstore, so it's hard to tell if you're going to get a fantasy book or a romance book with 10% fantasy lol.

[whiteraven]

If we're going to have really long titles in fantasy, I'd much rather they follow the Japanese Light Novel format and tell you what the book's actually about instead of being just a string of pretty but meaningless nouns

[nicoleelbin]

It's the same thing that happened with Twilight and vampires. Once that became insanely popular, a lot of copycat authors with YA vampires appeared and the industry followed suit-until it didn't anymore and the fad faded away.

[snowstrife]

I actually like fae and I hate SJM books. I feel she ruined fae for a lot of people while wildly misrepresenting them. She thinks they are just sexy elves when they suppose to be cruel and one of my favorite thing about the fae is that they can't lie so they have to be very creative and it just doesn't exist in her books.

[tomaszmazurek]

You haven't seen truly long titles until you've gone down the isekai light novel rabbit hole. "I'm a Behemoth, an S-Ranked Monster, but Mistaken for a Cat, I Live as an Elf Girl's Pet" - now that's a proper long title.

[VickiWeavil]

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett, which recently came out, is a different take on the fae that might interest you.
Also, in terms of worst trends (which actually might be changing as we speak) is the overwhelming majority of fantasy books that are so very dark and despairing and (often) full of vile characters and violence. I don't mind that these books exist, but I'd like to see more "sunny" or whimsical fantasies as well.