Talk:Romantic fantasy

Uncited work
Half of the page appears to have been stolen from the Blue Rose's developer's journal and the other half from Luna's submission Guidelines. I'm trying to rectify this... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Theotherjetso (talk • contribs) 13:44, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Romantic Fantasy vs. Fantasy Romance
There are two separate subgenres (that are arguably merging) being described here:

Fantasy Romance: a romance novel that takes place in a fantasy setting (like Historical romance, contemporary romance... etc...). This focuses on the romantic relationship between two characters. It adheres absolutely to to the romance novel's formula of a hero and a heroine falling in love and the focus is almost always firmly on their relationship. It has a happy ending in which the hero and the heroine marry and usually produce children. The virginity/purity of the heroine and the virility of the hero are often important (as in romance novels). The characters tend to be more superlatively described.

Romantic Fantasy: a subgenre of fantasy (like "Gothic fantasy, High fantasy... etc...). Improtantly it does not centre upon the romantic relationship between two characters. It's use of the word romantic pertains to the meaning "romanticised" (ie. idealised) as opposed to "love." It is relatively ungritty, has usually a whole cast of characters and focuses on the growth of them. It is often at heart a coming of age story where the character has to deal their emerging identity. There are underlying themes of acceptance and openmindedness. Often main characters will be able to achieve things using their set of limited skills. The search for self-definition often includes a love interest, but this does not take over the story to the same extent as in Fantasy Romance and is often just a subplot. There isn't always a happy ending.

There is some crossover between these two subgenres, especially with Harlequin's launch of Luna which is trying to emulate the Romantic fantasy subgenre. Romantic fantasy doesn't need a romantic subplot. Fantasy romance does. I don't think I'm splitting hairs since it's still fairly easy to decide which side of the divide any given book falls into. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Theotherjetso (talk • contribs) 13:15, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Adding the Elizabeth Kerner series
I've added Elizabeth Kerner's three books, Song in the Silence, The Lesser Kindred, and Redeeming the Lost to the list of examples. I think they fit the romantic fantasy subgenre to a tee, and deserve recognition.

List
It's getting long. I may split it off soon. Goldfritha 01:30, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Issues
Is anyone still working on this page? Without even reading it really, I notice it has gendered text issues and cites a single author a half dozen times, in addition to (as the tag says) not citing any sources at all. What is the normal practice for an abandoned article with no sources cited? Reduce to a stub and archive the previous version until someone has the chance to rewrite it? Avruch 20:04, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Some reworking
I think this article needs some reworking.
 * 1) The external link is actually the same as the first (and most important) reference on this page. Therefore I think it's redundant.
 * 2) The paragraph about Romantic Fantasy vs. Fantasy Romance should be removed from the lead and made into a separate section of the article.

All this receives additional urgency in view of the creation of a new subsection dedicated to Fantasy Romance in the Romance novel article, while the Fantasy romance page still redirects here. Debresser (talk) 21:23, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, things are worse. The first reference, where we would expect to find the definition of "Romantic Fantasy" as given in the article, simply does not include anything like it. As a matter of fact, it is saddening to read an article called "What is Romantic Fantasy?" in which no definition or description of that term is even suggested.

Another part of the lead, about what 'these commentators often ignore' is completely unresourced and seems to be original research by the same Wikipedian who wrote the "Romantic Fantasy vs. Fantasy Romanc" on this Talk page. The argument with the 'happy ending' seems to be another example of the same, by the same.

Not to mention the extensive referencing (4 references) that Romance novels have happy endings, which seems to have found it's way here from that article, because here it's definitely out of place. Debresser (talk) 22:37, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * LOL - Welcome to Wikipedia! Unfortunately, this article is typical in that once someone starts digging into the citations you'll find the entire structure is based on thin air (and a hint of fantasy romance or maybe it's pure fantasy). I don't think what's in the article is "wrong" otherwise I'd challenge or delete it but it'll take some work to get it up to the WP:FA gold standard.

I'm also considering replacing the existing disambiguation hat "For the subgenre that focuses on romantic relationship in a fantasy setting, see" by simply "See also". In view of the various opinions on the difference between Fantasy Romance and Romantic Fantasy - or the lack thereof - this seems more appropriate. Debresser (talk) 23:08, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Just edit away doing what seems best. If you do something awful someone will eventually pop in. FWIW, I can see from the article history that this is is not getting the same passinate attention as Israel–Gaza for example.


 * I did see the hat and wondered at it as most main articles don't see-also a summary of themselves. There is one thing that should be clearer to this entire subject is we have Romance (genre), Romance novel, etc. Each has a purpose but a new person surfing in will get confused. I need to run. --Marc Kupper|talk 03:08, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

What does that notice Fantasy on top of the article do? Debresser (talk) 23:17, 17 January 2009 (UTC) Ok. I got the answer to that one. Debresser (talk) 23:19, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

I think the list of examples should be seriously curtailed. Your opinion? Debresser (talk) 00:20, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, I had exactly the same thought but I did not inspect the list in detail to see what could be weeded out. I don't know the genre well enough to know which authors could be considered prototype examples of the genre or one that would automatically come to mind if someone says "fantasy romance" or "romance fantasy." --Marc Kupper|talk 03:08, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Neither do I. Good idea to make it more compact. Debresser (talk) 09:58, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

You may notice that the two opinions about the difference between Fantasy Romance and Romantic Fantasy - or the lack thereof - are still part of the lead. This is because that subject has been severly changed in quality and quantity, in a way that made it appropriate for the lead. Debresser (talk) 00:50, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

I noticed you changed the "See also" from the subsection to the whole article. Why not refer people right away to the subsection in case? And why the second article? Do you think it is so much related it should be mentioned? Debresser (talk) 10:01, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I changed the See also as the sub-section that was referenced is a summary of what's on the romantic fantasy article. There's no additional information in the summary and hence no need to "see also" to it. Also, the article body never mentions that Romantic fantasy is a subset of the romance novel field which in turn is a subset of the Romance (genre). Rather than thinking hard about how to work those two articles into the article text while keeping its focus on Romantic fantasy I took the easy way out and solved all three problems by changing the See also.


 * I also found that when I started looking at these articles, (there's also contemporary romance which claims to have as a subset of it a number of the same items as the romance novel), that I was getting confused. Ideally the See also, or the first sentence of each of the sub-genre articles, has something like:
 *  is a sub-genre of the modern romance novel. Please see romance (genre) for a historical overview.
 * That way if someone clicks down or into one of the romance related articles they will immediately see where in tree of articles they are at and how they relate to each other. If we end up with many stand alone sub-genre articles then we can also add something like Template:Romance sub-genre that includes a navbox. Each of the sub-genre articles would have Romance sub-genre added to it and the navbox would show and allow people to click to the other sub-genre. --Marc Kupper|talk 19:47, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

The "third option" for Romance Fantasy vs. Fantasy Romance
On Talk:Romance novel Debresser asked about a source/citation for something I had used at Romance_novel.


 * It was from the this version of Romantic fantasy (immediately before you started your edits). I just read the citation on that page and I see I misinterpreted a sentence which is "Romantic fantasy doesn't always have to have a happy ending for the main romantic couple, such as in Mercedes Lackey's Brightly Burning, which is the defining feature of romance novels". In reading the cite I see they were trying to say "Romance novels nearly always have a "Happily Every After" ending and many state "must-have" for the genre.


 * I had gotten confused as the paragraph started out contrasting Romantic Fantasy vs. Fantasy Romance and then jumped into the happily ever after bit. I thought they were still contrasting. I'll delete the third option from the summary or maybe I should ask you to take whack at editing it. I really don't like that I wrote "Some use the two phrases interchangeably ..." as "Some" could be "some novels" and it's not clear until one reads further that "some" is "some people". I was really trying to avoid using "Some people" as it smacks directly into WP:AWW and WP:CITE meaning I'm trying to outweasel a weasel and bit myself in the tail.

Since you so courteously suggested to "whack at it" a little, so I did, making a nice synthesis of your wording and the quotes on that page. Hope you like it.


 * Even the line "Some publishers distinguish between 'romantic fantasy' where the romance is most important and 'fantasy romance' where the fantasy elements are most important." is a violation of WP:AWW as it's not citing which publishers employ this distinction. As it is, the sentence is lifted directly from the cited web page meaning it's also a copyvio. That line is in the current version of this article. Hopefully someone will show up that can point the article to a publisher that states they make this distinction. It's something I've heard many times but I've never tried to locate a publisher that uses both. --Marc Kupper|talk 02:39, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

We wouldn't want to say it's less than fair use to quote a line or two from an article, now, is it? Debresser (talk) 09:32, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Fair use is still one of the topics I have some emotional investment in. :-) I take an interpretation that it's only allowed if I'm making commentary on the text quoted. If you wrote "Mary has a little lamb" as part of a 500 page book then I see copy/pasting that line as copyvio but if I were to write an article about what you wrote and cite the line along with full attribution as it's what I'm commenting on then that's fair use. See FAIR_USE.


 * In this case the text was sourced but not attributed. My understanding is the intent of the word "attributed" in fair-use is that the article would have said something along the lines of "William C. Robinson writes &lsquo;the stuff he wrote verbatim&rsquo;[citelink]" to make it clear that the line of text is something written by another and that I also link to the original source via a citenote. As it's not essential/necessary to use Robinson's text verbatim in the romantic fantasy article it should either have been rewritten or he gets full attribution and the copied text is highlighted in some form. I agree that it's usually very hard to rewrite a single sentence and still have it read well. Most people change a word here and there and say that's different enough. Technically that's a copyvio too but that argument is for another day... Going back to the initial comment, it's both weasel word and a copyvio link but not something that's significant enough that it warrants decorating the article itself with tags. --Marc Kupper|talk 21:14, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

List of examples
As quite a few have already agreed, the list of examples of Romantic Fantasy is too long.

For determining which names to keep I used the following criteria:
 * whether or not they have an article on Wikipedia;
 * whether or not that article (if existent) contains the word "romance";
 * the number of finds for the name of the author in Google;
 * the number of occurences of the word "romance" in direct connection with the name of the author in the first 10 finds on Google.

I turned out with Mercedes Lackey scoring best, and Catherine Asaro, Tamora Pierce and Wen Spencer doing reasonably well. The others were found more lacking.

So I'll reduce the list of 10 to 4. All fans of whoever got cut out, please do not return the name of your favorite author. These are just examples. If you would like to make a list of all authors of Romantic Fantasy/Fantasy Romance - go ahead, in a separate article. See Debresser (talk) 17:24, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

p.s. Of the two trilogies of Mercedes Lackey from the previous version of this article I choose just one: the original trilogy of the Valdemar books. Likewise I fixed a few 'redlinks' that could easily have been avoided. Debresser (talk) 17:45, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Marc, you might want to return the list to it's original styling. :) Debresser (talk) 17:47, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Debresser, cutting the list down is great though I found it handy last night as I used it to tag all of the books in the original list as romantic fantasy on ISFDB. I also have no problem with you, or anyone, editing, rewriting, undoing, deleting, etc. stuff that I add to articles. I used to get emotionally invested in the stuff but these days I operate on the assumption that all of the editors are trying to improve things to the best of their knowledge and ability. --Marc Kupper|talk 20:07, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I took a look at the original styling of the list and prefer the new format as it's more compact and does not repeat the author names. The mix of red, black, blue, and purple was disconcerting. While I've never seen it done before I edited the list to date the series rather than the individual books. I also removed the links to the series as all of them were red. Please edit away if you see an improvement. --Marc Kupper|talk 20:21, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Taking away links to series was The Right Thing To Do. Changing that redlink to "Tinker (novel)" was a great idea too. I am uneasy with your innovation of dating series, but frankly my opinion is that dating either books or series is not relevant information in the context of this article at all. Debresser (talk) 01:23, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I took the dates out and am happy. I had tried them out as it would help people see older vs. newer series but all of them are in the same ballpark. It was pretty non-standard to date a series and would be clearer if I has spelled it out "written from 1887 to 1992" but, as you noted, the dates are not relevant to the topic. One thing that's bothering me is this section is not cited. In whose opinion are these prototype examples of the genre? --Marc Kupper|talk 10:07, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Looks good.
 * Would you believe that in the Wikipedia article of all four of them none is called a Romantic Fantasy or Fantasy Romance author? And isn't that funny... Debresser (talk) 10:53, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep, that's part of what prompted me into thinking the examples needed cites as they were supported by the author articles. --Marc Kupper|talk 00:44, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I added references. The references for Asaro and Lackey are good ones, supported by numerous other finds on Google. The references for Pierce are not as well supported. For Wen neither, but that bothers me less since she is a new writer. Debresser (talk) 15:34, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The Asaro ref. looks good but the Lackey ref. is for a series called "Five Hundred Kingdoms" which is not one of the examples we had for her. I don't have time to hunt down on if that should be the Lackey example and/or if Lackey qualifies at all. I've read some of her books (quite recently Reserved for the Cat) and would not call any of the ones I've read to date "Romance" books.
 * That one should be reasonably ok. Debresser (talk) 00:54, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
 * One problem I have with all of the references other than Green Ronin Publishing (for Pierce) they don't go back to a source. Who created those lists and how? You cited Amazon.com for Tinker and I see in the right sidebar "I finished reading Tinker relatively quickly for a non-romance." Worse for Tinker is that the author and publisher don't seem to be calling it a romantic fantasy (Baen's links after http://www.baen.com/author_catalog.asp?author=wspencer are down at the moment and so I can't see the full blurb) but the author's page on the book looks like it's fantasy, science fiction, a couple of pecking kisses, and then foreplay that turns out to be a dream. She does have a quote from SF Site where they call it a "light, clever, sexy SF-fantasy-romance" so it still qualifies as an example.
 * Yeah, I also noticed that. Sigh. But it does look like genuine romance to me, whatever that remark may say. Debresser (talk) 00:54, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you for digging the up the references. At minimum I'll mine them for additions to the romantic fantasy tagging I was doing on ISFDB. --Marc Kupper|talk 00:44, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
 * There's probably better examples to be gotten of those lists. Debresser (talk) 00:54, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) I was looking at the http://www.fantasyromancewriters.com/ that you added a link to and they don't list Tamora Pierce nor Wen Spencer. In looking at their series drop-down list the top authors in terms of # of series are: Using the All-titles list the top authors are listed here. The ones in bold are also top series authors. I see that Keri Arthur has three series each with only one book. I'll give good hunting to see if numbers of fantasy romance titles can be figured out as some of these may have titles in other genre. It's not clear from the site when I select Fantasy Romance if the title list is restricted. Catherine Asaro is currently an example author. She did not get on the lists above as she only has one series and with the three books in that series and two short stories in anthologies.
 * 4 - Kurland, Lynn
 * 4 - Roberts, Nora
 * 3 - Arthur, Keri
 * 3 - Hamilton, Laurell K.
 * 3 - Lackey, Mercedes
 * 3 - Marillier, Juliet
 * 3 - Rogers, Marylyle
 * 20 - Nora Roberts
 * 19 - J.D. Robb
 * 11 - Robin D. Owens
 * 11 - Debbie Macomber
 * 11 - Ann Maxwell
 * 10 - Melanie Jackson
 * 9 - Susan Kearney
 * 9 - Marylyle Rogers
 * 9 - Linnea Sinclair
 * 9 - Linda Jones
 * 8 - Sharon Shinn
 * 8 - Roberta Gellis
 * 8 - Kathleen Nance
 * 8 - Angela Knight
 * 7 - Mercedes Lackey
 * 7 - Maura Seger
 * 7 - Lynn Kurland
 * 7 - Juliet Marillier
 * 7 - Judi McCoy
 * 7 - Jayne Ann Krentz
 * 7 - Emma Craig
 * 5 - Laurell K. Hamilton
 * 3 - Keri Arthur

I ran across http://www.romance-ffp.com/ but need to look more to see if it can be used as an external reference. --Marc Kupper|talk 10:01, 20 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think it's gonna come down to changing Pierce and Wen. I'd be obliged if you'd take care of it. Debresser (talk) 10:48, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

The link to this reference ends with a 404 File not found: http://web.utk.edu/~wrobinso/590_lec_fan.html

1. ^ a b William C. Robinson (October 2004). "A Few Thoughts on the Fantasy Genre". University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Retrieved 18 January 2009. — Preceding unsigned

Empty reference links
These two links are dead ends:

1. ^ a b William C. Robinson (October 2004). "A Few Thoughts on the Fantasy Genre". University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Retrieved 18 January 2009. http://web.utk.edu/~wrobinso/590_lec_fan.html

5. ^ Auburn Hills Public Library - Booklist http://auburn-hills.lib.mi.us/Adult/Booklist/FantasyRomance.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by Meghan elizondo (talk • contribs) 20:39, 14 April 2012 (UTC)