I need to get romantasy out of my head.

The problem is I now have to hear about it often at work.

I ended up going back and trying to read ACOTAR; it's surprisingly readable after Fourth Wing in the sense that it's better written. Still, I wouldn't recommend it unless you are actively into that genre.

More importantly, I am now firmly of the opinion this genre is isekai for adult western women. It is the exact same formula: Normal person, who is nonetheless ~special~, is taken elsewhere, given immense powers, and has a love interest completely devoted to them with little effort on their behalf. 100% wish-fulfillment fast food media.

The thing is, people never talk about Sword Art Online as if it's actually good literature. A portion of the fans of romantasy are aware that this is junk food and will say as such, but then I personally get to hear raving about Fourth Wing while I'm trying to not bury my face in my hands because I have lab gloves on and that would be a safety violation.

Although I'm perma-banned from the bookclub, they talk about it enough that I've picked up a lot of that.

For it's part, isekai quickly ended up devolving into parody, deconstruction, and absurd niche situations. I'm curious how something similar would look for romantasy, but the cravat there is the opposite gender roles make it more complicated.

As such-- It's fascinating to me how these two genres mirror each other in how they apply the gendered archetypes with the roles flipped. These roles are ancient: They go back not just to Beauty and the Beast, but ancient Greek mythology, with Cupid and Psyche, but particularly the story of Persephone and Hades which this crowd is particularly obsessed with. When I was a child, I was shown 7 brides for 7 brothers as fun, harmless movie, and that one is based of the rape of the Sabine Women, a Roman mythos repackaged for the 1950s.

I suspect this is this is not innate, but more like an Ouroboros eating it's own tail. These stories can be see as a reclamation by rewriting the emotional stakes and focusing on female desire rather than only her subjugation. These are often stories which are strictly patriarchal, with Beauty and the Beast being written to prepare women for arranged marriages.

I fear it could almost reinforce the idea some regressionists have that women want to be controlled and will automatically fall for many with a chiseled jawline and a dominant aura. There seems to be little actual evidence that is what women desire in reality; for one, numerous people do not find these stories appealing at all. My assumption is this is due to the lifetime, if not centuries, of romanticization of captivity media. Often in these, the heroine holds his heart hostage in return, being the only individual he confides in. Sometimes, she can even be his "weakness," as having bonds wcan be framed as something for an antagonist to exploit if she gets captured again and used against him. This gives her an intimate power on top of her active powers she's usually granted magically. Still, this is always done within the context of script written by her captor, or more accurately, these ancient archetypes.

And none of that is inherently wrong. It’s fantasy, and honestly, partially just porn. It's a medium that allows for the exploration of these themes in a safe place, and what is embraced in fiction can be vastly different from real life. Presumably, most readers can separate these two concepts.

Still, these are often written poorly while being promoted in every bookstore and library out there. I went to check out a book from the library, and a pile of Maas books were stacked next to the self-checkout machines for people to grab on their way out. Many of the non-Maas romantasy stories seem to be inspired of the men ACOTAR, and thus, the Ouroboros continues to devour itself.

This makes me hungry for a deconstruction, but at the same time, it would be need to strike at the heart of these concepts.


And so, just an attempt to try to map it onto what isekai has done:



First, the tropes almost every single one of these stories has:

Heroine: Vaguely defined, not-like-other-girls, becomes ultra powerful due, not to any work of her own, but magic nonsense. Clearly meant to be a self-insert for the target audience.
Main male lead: Brooding, chiseled jaw, occasionally shirtless, always tall. He is threatening, but not really. Most likely kidnapped the heroine in some way.
Other male lead: Often not as intense, and... it's not even implied, so much as outright stated, in at least one of these that her ex was "not good in bed." This one isn't consistent, as in one it was a nicer Twilight Jacob-esque male friend while in another it was a broody guy who just wasn't as broody as the true broody guy.

But the important thing is broody + someone took Marvel Loki's head and put it on Thor's body. Will 100% say "I can't be with you, I'm dangerous" at some point.

I'll use the two noticeable sledgehammers of isekai for this in comparison:

Parody/satire: Konosuba.

This one is greatly exaggerated and resembles something akin to an Adult Swim cartoon mocking a sitcom. For example, one of the girls he's teamed with is a tank who is a complete masochist and gets aroused by getting attacked. I personally don't enjoy it much since isekai's tropes can be so unpalatable that, exaggerated, it's less funny so much as annoying to me. For example, the main heroine often has her ass in the camera, and she doesn't wear underwear because she is a goddess and above such silly human concepts. I can respect how it's mocking panty shots, but it's also somewhat playing it straight.

This could easily be hilarious as romantasy, though. Give a male lead who keeps on insisting he can't be with the heroine because he's overly neurotic and superstitious while always being cryptic about it. "I long for your embrace, but fear I can not be with you, ere a black cat crossed my path. Ill fortune awaits, and you will only be harmed once it comes for me!" He proceeds to brood in the corner for an hour.

And then the heroine meets that with the most modern, harsh speech - as that's how they all talk - and the disconnect is played for comedy instead of the legitimate way it is. "The fuck are you talking about? That's Beyonce, he's the barkeep's cat, you need therapy! Touch grass!"

Deconstruction: Re:Zero

Now, here's where it gets significantly more complicated as this requires taking where those archetypes come from and inserting them in a more realistic or subversive manner.

I don't want to ramble too much about Re: Zero here - I do that enough - but Subaru is a masterclass of a main character. While it takes him awhile to even gain any ability aside from dying and respawning repeatedly, when he does, over a year after the start of the series, he typically gains support skills to help keep everyone else alive. He seriously gets an ability similar to Rise/Fuuka/Futaba's scanner abilities in Persona instead of "main character energy."

And the reason for that is he starts out believing he's now the chosen main character - after all, he knows anime and video games, so that is how this goes - only to be emotionally ground down into nothing.

A romantasy heroine would have to be much the same, as these are ordinary women put into situations far beyond them. There can be no magical cauldron nor a sudden dragon bond to grant her powers without doing anything, she must contend with her own powerlessness first, and that is trickier when this genre is sometimes presented as empowering to women. That is automatically flipping the script, but I believe it can still be done if the main focus is on how these tropes are also reinforcing negative values or toxic relationships.

Best side-by-side example: this genre's version of Julius, the fake male rival who isn't really a male rival outside of Subaru's own mind would have to be the "other girls" that this type is posturing itself against. This appears to be a hyper-feminine archetype, the type of woman who wears skirts and spends an hour on hair. The thing is, I would wager there's more women who are the "listing to true crime podcasts reading romantasy instead of spending an hour on my hair" types than the reverse.

So, a woman who is radiant with constantly flawless hair, most likely blonde to contrast with the main character's always-brown hair. The main character would 100% judge her at first and view her as a rival due to her own insecurity, but would eventually become friends and slowly learn that, hey, she's a complex human
who doesn't spend all day on her nails! Maybe she has a secret love of frogs, enjoys mountain climbing, or, if we want to go full Julius, is highly implied to just be so incredibly femme because that's a certain type of lesbian niche. I would personally base her off of someone like Michiru from Sailor Moon.

That's taking the immediately hostile towards other women connotation it has and flipping it.

I can't see the love interest being done as linearly, however. The lead girl in isekai is always some pure, innocent woman who is endlessly devoted to the protagonist. In Re: Zero, this gets split between two characters with major cravats on the other half:

Emilia: Pure and innocent due to being separated from the world and traumatized. Despite this, effectively tells Subaru to get lost fairly early on and only accepts his reappearance after he grows as a person. Also can't cook or sing to save her life.
Rem: endlessly devoted and supportive, but only after she killed Subaru out of suspicion the first time she met him. Devotion is caused by co-dependency. Literally a maid who cooks and cleans, although, also an oni who can go berserker mode.

This still works because there's nothing inherently wrong with these traits, so instead it gives extensive backstory and reasoning for those traits which also presents challenges for the characters involves.

For an example of how these traits play out in a normal isekai: Someone like racoon girl from Shield Hero has all of the innocent, naive, endlessly devoted traits, and the reasoning is... the main character bought her as a slave child, she magically turned into an adult as she leveled up, and he err "saved" her by being a somewhat kind master instead of abusing her. All signs of past abuse are completely gone. Yay?

Yet, romantasy is the reverse. It would be from the perspective of the racoon girl. While not usually a literal slave, they're normally captured or forced to live with the man in some manner. That is difficult to portray as positive in any respect if you're going the "how would this work in reality manner." You would almost have to have the heroine being the one to leave the relationship entirely-- maybe he, like Subaru, can come back if he ever finally learns, but these are rich, ancient, proud beings, not NEETs without much else going for them. Why would they even care to learn because of a human woman leaving them? Just for the fated mate prophecy, where he could easily just recapture her again anyway?

Curiously, ACOTAR sort of plays with this as Tamlin, who is basically the beast from Beauty and the Beast but more controlling and stupid. He's the man who captures her, but not her "fated mate," as that ends up being a misdirect and it's another broody fae man entirely. Still, this feels less like a deconstruction and more like an opportunity to focus on a different man per novel, especially as the other broody fae man is all of the stereotypes played as straight as you can get. She even still ends up going with him out of a deal rather than out of her own desire and freewill, and it's devised by him because he suspects she's his fated mate. In retrospect, Tamlin not being the main love interest should've been obvious because he has blonde instead of black hair.

While I would personally want to write her leaving him for the kind gardener who is an inch shorter than her and went pre-maturely white, as these guys always have jet black hair, that would be going too far off the scripted rails presented in this genre.

Still, maybe each day have her walk through the garden for some fresh air and time away from Broody Mcbroodface. After awhile, she begins talking to the gardener when he's there. He has issues with Broody Mcbroodface too, but it's a job that let's him put food on the table and lets him live in the safety of the fae estate were he won't be immediately killed by whatever malevolent spirits are wandering around outside there. He would just have to be taller than her and maybe only dirty blonde hair.

It's difficult to see a route that keeps stereotypes in play, especially since the genre enjoys the "he's like this because trauma!" path already. It's just never as deep as that actually sounds. If you take the controlling, domineering, emotionally unavailable traits of these men and involve them in a story where the heroine is a captive, it quickly becomes a horror story if you're being realistic. It would technically be possible, he would just have to go through a ton of development and learning in a way which is completely detached from the main heroine. Most importantly, he has to be allowed to fail, something that shatters the image many of these present entirely.

Otherwise, for horror, Broody Mcbroodface could be trying desperately to fulfill the One True Mate prophecy, and be so consumed with that goal, that he's blind to who the heroine even is as a real person. He loves her, or so he says, spoils her, but... doesn't see her and controls her. Again, ick.

... and somehow that basically makes him Roswaal in this comparison. New rule: every live-action adaption of a romantasy book needs to have the male leads wearing clown make-up.

(It's at this point I should probably mention that ACOTAR has a magic soup cauldron of destiny that people can fall into and pop out as fae, and also it assigns everyone a true love mate or something. I don't know, I certainly didn't write it!)

Of course, romance is core to these books, it's in the name, but there should be some attempt at a plot. The kingdom is always plotting something-- vaguely! Hidden behind abs! The heroine can be give some type of power, but if following this playbook, it would be something that also ends up tormenting her in the plot. Just to keep it with powers within this comparison: Crusch's divine ability would be brutal here: The ability to tell when someone is lying. A seemingly benign power that isn't going to win any battles - Crusch is an accomplished swordswoman due to her own hard work - but will make you a paranoid wreck if you're stuck in a castle with a man who keeps on withholding information and lying to you. More amusingly, you could initially make her seem like a Disney Princess by giving her Otto's divine ability to talk to animals: She effectively becomes Cinderella using mice to learn what Broody is truly up to, but this time, it's somehow the prince she wants to escape from. That one would likely lead to too many Disney comparison which were unintentional given what I was actually pulling from, though it would be fun to go "I was promised the romance of a lifetime, instead I got mice telling me you're plotting an invasion."

She would also need actual friends (i.e. Otto and Garfiel after arc 4 in this comparison), something they never have because of course they don't. ACOTAR actually has lore about how the fae court is sexist and doesn't allow women to be high fae in order to erase having to write female high fae. The heroine does have sisters, but they're almost played like annoying step sisters in fairy tales. Seriously, the main heroine had to learn to hunt to put food on the table after their dad became crippled, but her sisters just went "hmph, we used to be rich, and we are incapable of recognizing our current situation!" The main character of Fourth Wing has a sister who... exists sometimes.

The main love interest also needs friends (i.e. Ram... again after arc 4), as that's the opposite side of things often overlooked. "I am going to confide in you and only you" gets... intense. One small detail I appreciate is it's mostly Ram and Otto who teach Emilia things on the side, so her love interest isn't the one controlling information towards her. What a novel thought!




For it's own part, ACOTAR deserves it's own section here:
The plot of the first book is seriously Beauty and the Beast with more masks and less fur, there's even a curse Tamlin is under that he must fall in love with a human woman or be doomed.

However, the execution is maddening. Instead of telling her any of this, they devise a whole plot involving making her think she's being held for a crime she committed against fae kind. She's a bit of a dumbass, so she never questions why she's getting better treatment than the lower fae servants despite being a prisoner. Or way, for her crimes, she's living in a luxury suit and eating dinner with the high fae.

The hilarious part is the twist is that it's not true love magic in the fairytale sense, so all of that was pointless! It's instead literal trials of love, administrated by a malevolent fae queen. For some reason, whenever the heroine fails one of them, it's Tamlin's emissary Lucien, not Tamlin himself, who gets tortured. By that I mean he's literally physically tortured, because sure, why not!

As there's no magic love involved, they could've devised a plan where they didn't even need her to actually fall in love. Lucien - as he's the only standout character in this and deserves better - could've been teaching her how to act so they could pull off fooling the whole thing. The plot could've been sabotage and gathering information on how to pass the trials considering the stakes are "or else the whole Spring Court is doomed to be my slaves for eternity." There's a different type of subversion!

Honestly would've been hilarious if, in the core plot, she feel in love with Lucien since he's normally the one actually helping her and literally bleeding here anyway. All of that plotting and withholding information, and so she falls for the assistant! It's kind of crazy that didn't happen to begin with, but then, Lucien is allowed to be funny, something forbidden by these love interests for whatever reason.

Also, guess how many female fae of note there are in this book? Just the main antagonist!

Sure, there's a random servant woman, but she has no real role in the plot. Hm. Empowerment!

All that aside, I will say Fourth Wing is the tamest of all of these I've read, as Xaden (Xader? Xmen? Xanax? I can't be bothered) still has that controlling edge, but it's far less severe in comparison. Also, she's not kidnapped by him.