#authortok

okay so hear me out: i love romantasy. i am romantasy. but also? a lot of the tropes feel like they've been in a blender set to “medium aesthetic” and we all just nod and go “yes this is fine” while our souls leave our bodies.

so i ranked some of the top romantasy tropes by how EASILY they can be made good again, not which ones are the best, not which ones are ✨dead✨, but which ones are like, 2 rewrites away from being god-tier if you’re willing to do violence to them.

⚠️ this list is subjective. take it up with your protagonist’s tragic backstory.

🥇 1. The Cursed Prince / Beast / Exiled Royalty Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆ Listen. This one is so easy to make interesting again it’s embarrassing when it’s bad. Just add one (1) real consequence. Is he cursed? Cool. Show me how that curse is actively wrecking his life. Exiled? Give me the betrayal scene in detail. Raised by wolves? Show me him eating raw meat like a weirdo. Don’t just make him Hot and Sad. Make him feral and complicated. Bonus points if he doesn’t want to be uncursed. Bonus bonus if the heroine agrees.

🥈 2. The Marriage Trial / Forced Proximity Setup Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆ You can spin this SO MANY WAYS. Make the trial political. Make the contestants unhinged. Make it morally messed up. It stops being boring the moment you stop writing it like a CW love triangle and start writing it like a dark social game. ex: Squid Game but hot. Don’t just have them accidentally touch hands. Have them make alliances and betray each other in the hallway at 3am. Be weird with it.

🥉 3. The Warrior Girl Who Has Never Known Love Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆ The trick is: don’t make her secretly soft. Make her correct. Love should feel like a threat to her survival, not a makeover montage. She doesn’t need to be taught softness, she needs to be loved as is. Give her a love interest who isn’t trying to “fix” her but sees her sharp edges and says “yeah that’ll do.” Instant slay.

👀 4. Enemies to Lovers Difficulty: ★★★☆☆ Controversial take but: most of you are doing rivals to lovers. Or “mild professional disagreement” to lovers. True enemies to lovers is hard because it requires two people to want to ruin each other, and then have to live with that. There needs to be blood on the floor. There needs to be regret. It’s not banter if they wouldn’t kill each other in Act 1. Go full feral or go home.

🔮 5. The Chosen One and the Dark Mentor Difficulty: ★★★★☆ this one is delicious BUT. the power imbalance. the age gap. the moral greyness. the betrayal baked into the bones. it needs to be handled with scary levels of intention. when it’s done right? peak feral epic gothic. when it’s not? feels like a Wattpad fic from 2012 where the teacher falls for the new girl in detention. tread wisely.

🪦 6. The Mysterious Assassin Love Interest Difficulty: ★★★★★ okay. i’m tired. i’ve seen this man too many times. he’s got a dark past, two daggers, and no personality. he exists only to appear at the edge of a ballroom and go “you shouldn’t be here.” if you want to make him interesting again, you need to get into his actual psyche. give him weird rituals. make him bad at normal things. give him a reason he’s choosing murder over healing. or better yet, retire him for a few years. we’ve earned a break.

That last chapter though... yeah she might be in danger! Dont miss out!! Please read This novel is super exciting!

Come read Honor in the House of Wolves with me!

Or enter for a chance to win access below!!

my name is sabs! i haven’t used this platform since i was a teen, which is so so crazy to me as someone who is currently in their early twenties, logging into it brought me a wave of nostalgia like something else.

i have decided to (quietly) announce that i am writing my first, debut novel. why am i doing this? to hold myself accountable !!!

i started my earliest draft in may…then i forgot about my book entirely, and grew exhausted of it. recently, however, i’ve finally got my muse back. i’ve made this blog specifically to set myself a goal - finish my second draft, and, hopefully, achieve something that i’ve wanted to achieve since being a kid.

now, i originally wanted to announce this on tiktok, as it would’ve got me further in regards to publicity and reach regarding my target audience. however, i found that booktok, specifically fantasy booktok, can be quite overwhelming, and sometimes the algorithm will decide to put my videos onto other people’s devices who are simply there to berate me.

i really want my novel to reach the right kind of people - people who are going to enjoy my writing, the characters and the story. i want it to reach people who will give me constructive criticism. i want it to reach people who, like me, are passionate about writing, and are excited to see other authors careers blossom and bloom into something beautiful.

if this sounds like you, feel free to stay! i’d love to become mutuals with like-minded individuals :)

🌙 Ivy here ✦ hey!✦ #ghostjazz #darknostalgia #ivymorrowooddiary

There’s something about the New Orleans Blues that drips through your bones like absinthe in a lace glass.

This old poster—torn at the edges of memory, humming with brass and sorrow—found me like a ghost under candlelight. Louis Prima and his orchestra, faces frozen in eternal rapture, Jo Stafford's voice echoing from another life, the Pied Pipers like shadows harmonizing with time itself. It isn’t just music—it’s soul possession.

To me, this is séance art. This is ancestral ache. This is what it feels like to haunt your own life.

I think about smoke curling in dive bars, about lipstick stains on trumpet bells, about war brides and love letters never returned. I think about the swing of a ghost’s hips in a moonlit ballroom, about jazz that doesn’t want to die but knows how.

These weren’t just songs. These were spells.

I grew up listening to voices like this through broken radios and warped vinyl, rescued from thrift stores and estate sales. I didn’t know what I was summoning then, but I felt it—those spectral harmonies that clung to my ribs, that reminded me I wasn’t alone in my sadness.

This poster reminds me: some music isn’t meant to be heard. It’s meant to be remembered.

🦴✨ If you're still romanticizing a world that never wanted you, if you're still writing poems in the margins of history, come sit with me. I’ve got a candle burning for every trumpet solo that made me cry.

The Harrowing Truth - a short story People live in a small town with shifting environments and a lurking dark figure. Read on Substack

[video ID: a TikTok from @bookshopsantacruz. yves.'s hands remove books from a stack of books in order (The Spiderwick Chronicles, A Tale Dark and Grimm, A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Graveyard Book, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Monstrous Affections, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Bradbury Stories, Carmilla, Her Body and Other Parties) to reveal a copy of their book, Something's Not Right, which they sign. /ID]

If not...

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Go and follow @crow.wingedkat97 on tiktok!!