Romantasy fans explain why they think the genre is so maligned

Why romantasy is so popular on social media

Much of romantasy's success is thanks to social media, especially TikTok, where posts tagged as #BookTok or #Romantasy often propel titles to mainstream popularity. This deep dive into the trend interviews fans and marketers to explain why the genre's steamy content does so well online.

A scholarly analysis of romance's enduring popularity

Diane Winston, a media scholar at the University of Southern California, argues that romance novels have remained popular because they've historically offered women shame-free ways to explore their identities and sexualities. She notes that's even more true today, with contemporary romance novels, from romantasy bestsellers to "Heated Rivalry," more willingly explore social dynamics.

Listen to some of romance's leading writers discuss the genre

In this interview from 2022, romance novelists Helen Hoang (author of the "Kiss Quotient" series) and Emily Henry ("Beach Read," "People We Meet on Vacation," and more) discuss both loving and subverting the conventions of the genre.

One writer believes fantasy is a form of realism

The literary genre has become massively popular in the 2020s, turning a previously marginal form into a mainstream concern. Spufford, a literary novelist who grew up loving books that explored fantastic worlds, argues that fantasy is so popular because it so accurately reflects the real world.

A comparative analysis of the romance and horror genres' overlap

Both genres aim to make their readers' hearts pound, albeit in different ways. Romance novelist Trilina Pucci argues that the gap between the two aims is much slimmer than it may seem, with some horror tropes (like a man enraged by the abuse of his wife) and romance tropes (like the subgenre of dark romance) blurring the line.

A medievalist explains how romantic love emerged as a cultural concept

Many long-form stories written in English were originally considered "romances," a term derived from the Old French word for "the speech of the people." But changes in medieval culture, triggered by a number of 12th-century church reforms, led to a new interest in what we now consider romantic love, including a new view of marriage as a pursuit of love rather than a transaction. Those new perspectives were then reflected in the period's popular stories, including stories in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales."

A guide to the romance genre's major tropes

This guide breaks down romance's most prominent tropes, or narrative patterns, used by romance writers and adored by their fans. After you learn about "friends to lovers," "marriage of convenience," and "forced proximity," you'll start to see your favorite romance reads in an entirely new light.

Why some writers believe there's a new romanticism

Journalist and novelist Ross Barkan argues that a crushing political system and alienating technology have led people to become more interested in the offline, analog world and the beauty of nature and emotion. In this essay, he defines this as "the new romanticism," and predicts it will come to define the culture of the 2020s.

Fan fiction is now studied at universities, including Princeton and Harvard

Some professors approach the genre as a unique form of literature that expands the boundaries of art. Comparative literature courses read the source material as well as its fan fiction byproducts, asking students to analyze the conditions that might've produced such dramatic reinterpretations.

Readers discovered AI prompts in several romantasy books

In 2025, readers discovered AI prompts in three writers' texts, with one even instructing the AI bot to make a passage sound more like another romance writer. This Futurism piece digs into the scandals and how it's contributed to readers' skepticism about the genre's more prolific writers.

The unexpected rise of the global romcom

The romantic comedy has mostly fallen out of favor in the US, but it's booming in other parts of the world, including India, Nigeria, and South Korea. Rebecca Liu talks with film scholars and industry veterans to unpack why that happened and whether an American romcom renaissance is possible.

Fans of 'The Room' love it for its (many) faults

The movie has bad acting, nonsensical dialogue, and a plot that doesn't add up. Still, its fans attend midnight screenings, recite its most famous lines, and even act out scenes in the aisles. Studies have found that fans are drawn to "trash cinema" like "The Room" for the same reason they're drawn to avant-garde works: because they flout mainstream standards.

'RedZone' intentionally appealed to fantasy fans

This short documentary explains how the NFL Network show quickly became a hit for football fans, especially those looking to monitor the stats for their fantasy teams.

Understanding the Disney adult phenomenon

Disney isn’t just for kids, at least according to Disney adults, who dress up as their favorite characters and make pilgrimages to the company’s parks. They’re often considered immature, unrefined, or worse, but the members of this subculture don’t see anything wrong with their passionate devotion to Disney. This article explores the phenomenon through interviews with actual Disney adults, offering a more nuanced take on the reasons behind the much-maligned trend.

As ‘Game of Thrones’ grew more popular, its fans grew more critical

George RR Martin's “A Song of Ice and Fire” series began in 1996 as a series of fantasy novels and gained popularity in the 2010s through the TV series “Game of Thrones.” As the series gained more viewers, fans and critics grew more critical of the show, with particular vitriol reserved for the series finale.

Follow 5 attendees at Comic-Con 2010

This heartfelt documentary tracks five underdogs—from an Air Force artist and a cosplay designer, to a marriage‑proposal hopeful—revealing how Comic‑Con’s chaos, camaraderie, and celebrity encounters become transformative milestones on their quests for creative, personal, and emotional breakthroughs.

Young readers are increasingly interested in graphic novels

Sales for the form, which relies on illustration as much as text but otherwise follows the form of the novel, are up 69% among young school-aged children. The genre has many sophisticated, intellectual, and critically-acclaimed titles, though it's sometimes derided as a less serious form of literature. Still, studies find that young children who read graphic novels and comics report higher levels of affinity for reading.

Ursula K. Le Guin worked to dismantle fantasy's clichés

The author is one of the genre’s most legendary names, constructing high fantasies like “The Earthsea Cycle” that detail intricate new worlds. In 2004, she delivered a lecture criticizing books and movies that rely on a simple formula: white characters, Medieval settings, and a battle between good and evil. “Whenever I find a fantasy that is set in a genuinely imagined society and culture instead of this lazy-minded, recycled hokum,” she said, “I feel like setting off fireworks.”

Bardcore: the modern exploration of medieval music

The medieval instrumentation and lyric interpretation of modern pop, rock, metal, and hip-hop took off in April 2020, launching a new and growing genre. Bardcore is defined by its use of musical nostalgia and internet culture’s “memeification,” according to the historians in this nearly two-hour-long podcast. Listen to this episode to hear a medievalist and music historian break down the rise, relevance, and reasons behind Bardcore.

'Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.'

- Author Philip Roth (1933-2018)

Renaissance Faire's provide an escape into the late medieval world

These cultural events (roughly 300 distinct fairs in the US) stem from the original festival in Los Angeles in 1963. Long viewed as a hippie festival, the fests attract eclectic fans—historians, craftworkers, dramatists and drinkers. Listen to a quick survey of the festival's surprising origins.

Philosopher Roland Barthes loved wrestling

In his essay "The World of Wrestling," French philosopher/literary theorist Roland Barthes analyzes the "Human Comedy" of professional wrestling, arguing the form is a legitimate dramatic genre.

Music writer Paul Morley believes opera is an antidote to social media consumption

Music writer Paul Morley weighs in on the debate about the relevance of opera. While acknowledging criticisms that opera is snobbish and outdated, Morley argues the lengthy, emotive, and literary art form presents an important intellectual opposition to today’s world of fast-paced online consumption. Opera endures because it provides hope.

Critics say Burning Man pollutes and promotes elitism

Following the storms and extreme circumstances of the 2023 Burning Man, discourse has circulated about elitism, pollution, and more problems brought by the festival.

Some critics argue that Grammys favor commercially successful artists

For this two-part series of Slate’s pop music podcast "Hit Parade," pop critic Chris Malanfi looks into the relationship between commercial and critical success and how the Grammys are affected by outside influences like the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

The Dracula character, now seen as the vampire archetype, was inspired by a seafood-induced nightmare its creator experienced.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

The 1987 Nintendo video game 'Stadium Events' isn't known for being particularly fun, but its scarcity has made it a highly sought-after item that has sold for up to $35K at auction.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Researchers believe the brain consolidates memories, processes emotions, and plans for the future during dream states

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

See how fireworks are made and learn how metals like magnesium and copper are responsible for different colors.

Brian Wilson wrote the Beach Boys' 'Don't Worry Baby' for the Ronettes, but the legendary girl group rejected it.

Despite being favored by 87% of Americans, Congress does not have term limits.

Corals are themselves not coral reefs—the term refers to the tiny marine invertebrates that build the rigid reef.

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

Some researchers have labeled nomophobia, the fear of being without your phone, as 'the phobia of the 21st century.'