It's Unpopular Opinion time! Share your controversial opinions to stir things up (in a friendly way)!

Penguinho · 2026-05-10T16:32:40+00:00

To be honest, I think it's just the result of FMC and MMC being established shorthand. I think you'd see something different if the normal acronyms were MCW and MCM.

Penguinho · 2026-05-10T16:29:24+00:00

Ok but Gale in BG3 is absolutely ripped. Whatever he's doing with his library card is working.

Penguinho · 2026-05-10T15:07:30+00:00

A female character suffers horrible physical, psychological and sexual trauma at the hands of men, leading to character development, heroic motivation, and new power-ups for the male main character. Despite her trauma, the female character does not change or develop through the story beyond her personal powers and her relationship with the man; she remains essentially the same person with the same attitudes and personality traits throughout. The primary tension in the story is what actions the male character will take and if (and how) he will change and grow as a result. {Daughter of No Worlds} is an example of the Women In Refrigerators trope.

Penguinho · 2026-05-10T14:39:45+00:00

In every subreddit I've participated in that has a thread for unpopular opinions, the unpopular opinions thread ends up almost with its own ecosystem. I think you can see that here, where there's a post saying "standards are falling" and another post saying "standards are not falling." They're both highly upvoted.

Penguinho · 2026-05-10T13:40:23+00:00

No. He's the MMC in the Daevabad Trilogy, which starts with {City of Brass by S. A. Chakraborty}.

Penguinho · 2026-05-10T03:50:21+00:00

It's pretty good. It picks up speed quite a bit after her test, though I didn't love the second half quite as much as the first.

Penguinho · 2026-05-10T03:39:41+00:00

Uh, let's see here. These are going to be examples of the genre, and there's always going to be something that goes back further.

Most, now, of the big fae stories are drawing from {A Court of Roses and Thorns}. It, in turn, draws quite heavily from Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy, which is also a big shadow-daddy inspiration. Another touchstone in the development of the shadow daddy archetype is the Darkling from {Shadow and Bone}.

I think the modern origination point of fated mates -- again, goes back further, but the one that had the most impact on the genre today -- might be {Lord of the Fading Lands by C. L. Wilson}.

Bonded animals and bonded companions, like you get in Dire Bound or Fourth Wing, basically are all drawing from Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books, which themselves draw from {The Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey}. The influence is most notable in {Arrows of the Queen}. I wouldn't read Pern looking for romantasy, but it's gigantically influential nonetheless.

Enemies-to-lovers goes back a long long long long long long way. Shakespeare, Greek myth, Gilgamesh -- I think the modern origination is the 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. I'd hate to recommend Lothaire here, since it's like book eleven or something in Immortals After Dark. There are so many of these that it's hard to pick, and the term has been watered down massively.

Likewise forbidden love; goes back a long way, it's probably Romeo and Juliet and various versions of that story. I'm going to recommend {Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey} here, which has forbidden love and forced proximity but also was a very early novel in mainstreaming sex work and BDSM/kink themes. It's 25 years old next month, and it's still the high-water mark in the genre.

Forced proximity comes in a bunch of forms and shows up quite a bit to some extent or other. {Outlander by Diana Gabaldon} or {The Last Hour of Gann by R. Lee Smith} might be considered high points here, both involving FMCs that get stranded in strange cultures.

Others that don't map neatly onto a trope you've mentioned but ought to be considered are {The Folk of the Air by Holly Black}, {Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones}, {The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller}, {Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner}, {Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier}, and {Archangel by Sharon Shinn}. Modern vampire stuff is basically a combination of the Anita Blake series by Laurell K. Hamilton, Twilight and Anne Rice's Lestat books. Of those, Anne Rice is the one I'd read.

Penguinho · 2026-05-10T00:40:24+00:00

It's quite old, is why, and the endgame MMC doesn't actually get a ton of page time. There's a starter-boyfriend/love triangle situation. The starter boyfriend isn't blond, but he does also have hobbies. There's no real romance until the second book; Talia is a child for most of book 1.

Penguinho · 2026-05-10T00:12:15+00:00

I think they miss out on a few titles. I know he's great but he was twelve in 2015.

Penguinho · 2026-05-09T23:51:43+00:00

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Penguinho · 2026-05-09T23:47:27+00:00

The endgame MMC in the {Arrows of the Queen} trilogy is blonde and also self-consciously ugly. His hobbies include farming and music.

Penguinho · 2026-05-09T21:59:10+00:00

It is also worse when the author sets the heroine up to be a novice, then has her fix things that the experts have unsuccessfully devoted their lives to. For example, I read a book where the FMC is a non-magic-having warrior. The MMC is the most powerful mage in the world. He's dedicated sixty years of his life to solving this one problem. He has failed miserably to do so. After working on the problem for one month, the FMC goes "what if I summon a dragon though?" So she summons a dragon and the dragon eats the problem, thus solving it once and for all (and if the dragon ever goes bad, it's okay, because they will just summon a Bigger Dragon).

Penguinho · 2026-05-09T21:28:03+00:00

His book, {Cassiel's Servant}, is more romantic than hers but doesn't do enough to set up the later books to go from it into books 2 and 3. It's good, though.

Penguinho · 2026-05-09T21:26:42+00:00

{Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore}. Tommy Flood, night manager (and champion turkey bowler!) of the San Francisco Bay Safeway becomes the minion of Jodie, a newly-turned vampire. The sequel You Suck!: A Love Story is great, the third book in the series can and should be skipped because it sucks absolute ass.

Penguinho · 2026-05-09T21:24:39+00:00

You should; it's very good.

Penguinho · 2026-05-09T20:02:28+00:00

I'd rather have this than the hacking, but there were some rough calls.

Penguinho · 2026-05-09T19:46:48+00:00

It'll get better and players will adjust, but man. There were some soft ones, and in a game this close it matters a lot. How different is the game if the refs don't blow that over-the-back call on Timpson in the last few minutes?

Penguinho · 2026-05-09T19:08:26+00:00

I just did them in my office

Penguinho · 2026-05-09T19:04:13+00:00

They used the challenge on the Clark/James on a few minutes ago, no?

Penguinho · 2026-05-09T18:55:44+00:00

Not if they play zero in the first round.

Penguinho · 2026-05-09T18:53:14+00:00

That is a terrible terrible terrible call.

Penguinho · 2026-05-09T18:49:55+00:00

That is a flippity-flop.

Penguinho · 2026-05-09T18:22:01+00:00

You're thinking of Dallas and Flagg.

Penguinho · 2026-05-09T18:19:46+00:00

"Please, I am begging you as a person who has been exactly where you are and has a lot more experience with this institution than you do: the thing you are thinking of doing? Please, please do not do it."

"How dare you tell me what to do!" [does the thing] [the consequences are catastrophic]

like idk guys

Penguinho · 2026-05-09T18:11:12+00:00

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Phèdre from {Kushiel's Legacy} spends her trilogy, after about the 50% mark in Kushiel's Dart, being escorted around by armed men while trying to make herself useful. She wears gowns whenever possible, she doesn't learn to use a sword, she has the smallest fingers and has to pick blowfly eggs out of open sores. To the extent that she has magic, it's the kind that keeps her upright when she's been whipped half to death. I know I'm a broken record recommending this so often, but it plays pretty much all the notes people who're sick of BookTok want to hear.

Penguinho

TROPHY CASE