liquid honey

This creative piece is an excerpt from my romantasy (romantic fantasy) novel, set in a fictional desert landscape in which drovers ride wyvern to muster their cattle. This scene takes place during the novel’s climax, where the protagonists (Pym and Elias) reunite after a tragic incident and finally relent to their (abiding) love for one another. This was written in order to explore cis-het male leads in romantasy fiction and their representations of masculinity. The “cinnamon roll” hero trope is a representation of masculinity sought after by readers for being sweet, kind and emotionally intelligent, especially when juxtaposed against the “alpha male” alternative, who is stoic, sexually aggressive, and dominant. In the accompanying exegetical statement, I argue that these “cinnamon roll” men are not different to, but rather direct reflections of, the “alpha” romance hero, by adhering to patriarchal social scripts about masculinity – such as an emphasis on the (often toxic) exaggeration of the male body. Through my creative excerpt I paint a male hero who is not rough, thuggish and towering, but gentle, pleading, soft and quiet. In doing so, I hope to create blueprints for a male romance lead that subverts the patriarchal ideals reinscribed in current romantasy novels.