the real romantasy fantasy

a guest post by lyta gold

Lyta Gold

is a friend of mine who writes criticism and covers important local news:

THE SOUGHT REPTILE

One of the things I like about Lyta is that she’s a writer with high standards and she approaches popular stuff that is Not Good with generous curiosity. She is interested in why the stuff has wide appeal and what it’s tapping into and she is not interested in it in the sense that she just wants to talk about how other people are stupid. For instance, she reads a lot of romantasy, something I don’t think anybody else I know even admits to doing.

Lyta wrote a book last year about moral panics and literature called Dangerous Fictions, which just came out in paperback, and when we were talking about something or another she mentioned that romantasy frequently pops up on “banned books” lists. One of the things she and I often chat about is the way “cool” has no political valence—stuff can be very, very uncool but also (for instance) singled out in ways that have nothing to do with their aesthetic qualities. If romantasy is getting banned from libraries, it’s not because of the art police, but for other reasons. I thought that was kind of interesting and asked her if she’d write a guest post for me touching on this. She did! Behold.—BDM

image from Sarah J. Maas’s website

Recently, on the deck of a ferry crossing Long Island Sound, I saw a very cool teen reading Sarah J. Maas’s romantasy novel A Court of Mist and Fury. An edgy choice, though I don’t know if she knew it: A Court of Mist and Fury is one of the most-banned books in the United States—#5 on this year’s list from PEN America. Maas is one of the country’s most-banned authors. And yet she—and romantasy—get very little respect for their provocations. Most coverage of romantasy puzzles over the supposed mystery over why this trashy stuff is so popular, not why certain political actors want so badly to get rid of them. If anything, the subtext of much romantasy coverage seems to suggest, maybe the politicians have a point—haha, these sexy fantasy novels for women and girls are wildly popular…but should they be? Can they be stopped?

Maas is the most famous name in romantasy, which is why she’s often singled out. The genre, if you’re unfamiliar, isn’t particularly new or terribly interesting as a category; it’s half a marketing gimmick and half a new phenomenon. Fantasy novels have featured relationships and sex scenes for ages, though fantasy novels that are half-romances, and rely on the rigid trope formations more commonly found in romance novels are arguably somewhat newer. As in romance novels, the most popular of these tropes are well-worn and subject to constant iteration. “Mortal girl seduces fabulously wealthy fairy lord” or “tryhard innocent wins the heart of her bad boy enemy” are simply variations on a much older theme—a good(ish) woman redeems a bad (nearly always rich and powerful) man, and also it’s fine because he was secretly never that bad to begin with. Jane Austen did it too. The romantasy novelists are in good company.

Of course the mere fact that romantasy is popular and has old roots doesn’t explain why it’s getting banned, and banned from schools especially. The presence of vivid sex scenes in Maas’s novels would seem to be the obvious culprit, and allows for what might seem like justified disapproval—isn’t there something wrong with sex in books that kids might read? I talk about this more in my book, Dangerous Fictions (paperback on sale now!), but there’s actually nothing weird or unusual about sex scenes in novels for teenagers. Judy Blume is currently getting banned alongside Maas; Blume has been banned on and off for decades. (Blume says she wrote Forever, subject to censorship efforts for over 50 years, because her daughter thought there should be a book where kids could have sex “without either of them having to die.”) Real-world teenagers have sex, or at least think about having sex; it’s reasonable for them to want to read about sex, something which is relevant to their experiences.

And real-world teens still want to read about sex, even though—supposedly—they’ve all become “puriteens.” It’s interesting that the kids these days are allegedly against witnessing sex in TV and movies, opposed to the porn that’s everywhere online—but they’re not against romantasy, or romance novels, or erotic fanfiction. Once in a while, a fragment of policing Tumblr discourse surfaces about written fiction, sometimes about “consent” (“can fictional characters consent to sexual activity?”) but otherwise the text-based realm is an erotic free-for-all where literally any pairing or kink is possible, and not just that but popular, desirable, and sometimes quite remunerative. (A sexy and enormously popular Harry Potter fanfic recently hit bookstores as a thinly revamped, bestselling romantasy novel.) If the kids are really anti-sex across the board, why do they love textual smut?

I suspect the difference largely comes down to who gets to set the terms of sex. Romantasy, romance, and fanfic are mostly written by women and queer people for an expected audience of women and queer people. This is the real, bannable discomfort; the tittering, rib-elbowing displeasure found in most romantasy coverage. Women and gay people are into this? They’re into art that’s about them, which caters directly to their interests? Of course they are. You could call it mere “consumption” and blather about capitalism and art-as-a-service, or you could acknowledge that it’s entirely reasonable to want to be centered and respected in a narrative. It’s reasonable further to be erotically invested in an image of sexually attractive men who are bad but controllable; to be narratively moved by a dream of the way relationships ought to be, not the way that they are. While many real-life men are going crazy out there in the bleak deadscape of the internet, suffering from both a loneliness and a cruelty crisis, it’s completely understandable that women and queers are increasingly drawn into fantasy stories, a fairy world where their lovers treat them right.

A Court of Mist and Fury is the single most wicked, most bannable romantasy novel because it’s specifically about demanding that your lover treats you right. Mist and Fury is the second volume in Maas’ series; the first, a Tam Lin retelling, also features a fair amount of sex. But the first one, A Court of Thorns and Roses (yeah, sorry, all the titles are like that) hasn’t been banned quite as often (#10 on PEN America’s list). Mist and Fury does have more sex scenes per capita, but it also shows our brave mortal heroine leaving Tamlin—who turns out to be controlling and abusive—for Rhysand, a kinder and sexier fairy lord. This act is, I think, what makes Mist and Fury so unacceptable to the far-right book banners, even if they’ll never admit it directly. The heroine having sex is bad enough; having enough spirit to leave her man for a better man is much worse. Romantic agency isn’t an appropriate lesson for the teens.

Now, I wouldn’t want to swing the argument too far, and say that romantasy novels or Maas’ in particular are actually politically “good” or teach consistently noble moral values or advance left-wing interests. I’m not a huge fan of romantasy/romance, though I read a fair bit of it, especially when I’m stressed and sad, and I crave the comfort of knowing where a story’s going in advance. My main objection to these genres is that the men are nearly always rich. There’s a touch of Christian Grey about Rhysand; he isn’t just rich, but fabulously wealthy and powerful in the context of their fantasy world, with infinite resources and special powers. Tamlin was a mere feudal lord; Rhysand, having helped our heroine escape Tamlin, initially acts as her employer. This is a “taming the billionaire” story, really, and a historical evolution. Our heroine grows up out of the medieval fairy-tale dream into a kind of capitalism.

There’s a natural paradox in Mist and Fury, and in just about every romance really—the heroine’s agency is only sexy and celebrated insofar as she happens to choose the safety of the richest, most powerful, biggest guy in town/magical kingdom. It’s a nice convenience that Tamlin, the politically and magically weaker of our heroine’s love interests, turns out to be the abuser, rather than the mighty and deadly Rhysand. It’s similarly convenient that the wealthy landlord Mr. Darcy turns out to be the slandered party in Pride and Prejudice, and not the impoverished Mr. Wickham. If Wickham were the one who had been unfairly abused, that wouldn’t be sexy at all, would it? It would be sad, like a Thomas Hardy novel. The romance of love is usually at least in part the romance of money. A man in possession of a fortune…a man who isn’t in possession of a fortune usually isn’t that interesting in a romance novel, is he?

By comparing Maas and Austen, I realize I run the risk of suggesting that Maas’ novels, and maybe romantasy in general, are misunderstood aesthetic masterpieces. They’re generally not. And yet, Maas’ Court books are some of the few contemporary novels that I’ve re-read multiple times, even though her sentences are sometimes so clumsy they drive me crazy. (To avoid referring to her male fairies as “men,” since a male fairy is categorically something different than a mortal Man, Maas obviously does a “find/replace” while editing, leading to phrases such as “he was a male of peace.” I could die.)

But sometimes when critics focus solely on line construction, we can miss the subtleties of plot and character construction: the rising line of emotional development, and how one moment leads into the next. When I re-read Maas, I find myself wanting to know what happens, even though I already know exactly what happens. All her characters speak like themselves; there’s never any doubt who they are when they open their mouths. This isn’t a skill that every literary novelist has, where every single character might sound over-educated, mildly bitter, and terminally online. Maas is never ironically bitter. Her characters aren’t in this world. They’re in their own world, as wells of deep feeling, masking their tenderness with wit and aggression. As in any romance novel, the heroine must break down the hero’s guarded, seemingly cruel exterior to find this brimming well of love. Though in Tamlin’s case, underneath his cruelty and ferocious desire to protect she never finds true vulnerability, only more cruelty. The bramble hides brambles, not a rose. It really is kind of brilliant when our heroine decides to leave him, and genuinely unexpected. It shocked me.

In her famous 1991 study of romance novels, cultural scholar Janice Radway located the genre’s perennial popularity mostly in the question of agency—the heroines’ agency in choosing their men, and the readers’ agency in choosing their books. Coverage of romantasy often elides or expresses discomfort with this agency—shouldn’t people be reading something else, something better? It’s reasonable to find it strange and upsetting that romantasy is so popular, to the exception or detriment of other kinds of literature. I’m not personally comfortable with the fact that so many people take comfort in the thought of winning the heart of a rich asshole. But I understand it too, the dream of that safety. “A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.” As usual, our girl Jane’s being ironic (this time in Mansfield Park), but she’s also not wrong. The fantasy checks out: the Taming of the Capitalist. Give him fairy ears, or vampire fangs, or Draco Malfoy’s face, and he isn’t so directly dangerous and disgusting; he isn’t the landlord who evicted your dad, the boss who fired your sister. And maybe when he wears a handsome, magical face, it’s safe to imagine that you can win him, love him: that you can turn him decent, and be safe in his rich embrace.

There’s an idea that novels, especially popular novels, should express good values, teach the noblest and the best ideals. This idea sometimes requires imagining that they’re written and consumed from a place of perfect safety and retreat, which isn’t this world. The cool teen girl reading A Court of Mist and Fury on the Long Island ferry that afternoon, dreaming of the other kind of fairies…what are the real boys in her classes like? Groypers, incels, assholes? Maybe some of them; others are probably fine. Maybe there’s a real well of vulnerability out there for her to find. But she’s still growing up into a world that hates her, and will treat her like a sex object who’s frigid at the same time. Why shouldn’t she run away into books that have been written for her by other women who also have to live in this world, women who have her interests and desires in mind? Thinking that she shouldn’t, that her primary focus should be on what other people consider to be good for her, for society, that she should consume a safer, tidier, healthier, less bannable eroticism—that’s a fantasy.

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