We've all got our list of publishing trends that need to die in 2025. For me, near the top is ambiguously described men of color in fantasy romance—and the constant cycle of white women arguing about them online.

Truly, it seems that every few weeks, I get fed a video on my FYP of someone very passionately reminding readers that Xaden Riorson is "not white" or that the Bat Boys are "not white." As evidence, they point to descriptions of their skin tone, places where they've been described as "tan," "tawny," or "golden," or, perhaps, and very rarely, "tawny-brown" or "bronzed."

This all happens with no acknowledgment that the skin tones of these characters are sometimes the only indicators of their difference, and those descriptions are often vague or up for interpretation. These men are not fully fleshed out in terms of their ethnicity or cultural background, and this lack of clarity leaves too much room for readers to impose their own racial biases, often resulting in fetishization and stereotyping.

This kind of ambiguity is not new, nor does it belong explicitly to romantasy. We can find "olive-skinned" main characters in works like A Song of Ice and Fire, Dune, The Hunger Games, and The Selection, where characters like Jon Snow, Duke Atreides, Katniss Everdeen, and the royals of The Selection are described with vague skin tones that allow readers to project their own assumptions about their ethnicity—for better or worse.

We are still operating in a media and societal framework where white is the default. The assumption of whiteness is so ingrained in our stories and in our perceptions that we are conditioned to default to white unless specifically told otherwise.

This assumption of whiteness has profound consequences across media, and we see them playing out—frequently—in the sub-genre of romantasy, which has remained incredibly popular in online bookish spaces. Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros are gateway authors; Their works are often what readers find first as they enter new bookish spaces.

When these authors fail to clarify a character's ethnic background, they create space for harmful tropes to surface. When they turn their readers into Nancy Drews to get to the bottom of a character's racial identity, they open the door to stereotypes. When these men of color are reduced to their skin tone and superficial characteristics, they risk becoming exotified. When their physicality becomes their primary trait, they risk being fetishized.

Sure, these are second-world fantasy settings where race, ethnicity, and culture might not function in the same way they do in our world. These characters may not even come from societies that follow the same racial and ethnic divisions we recognize, but race and ethnicity are never truly defined within these worlds.

The issue is not necessarily that these characters don't fit into our traditional understanding of race but that the absence of a clear, thoughtful framework leaves them vulnerable to tropes that have historically been used to harm people of color in our world.

When authors don't define a character's race or ethnicity, they often reduce that character to a visual stereotype. Without specificity, these characters become less a part of a rich, diverse cultural narrative and more of an interchangeable object, subject to harmful assumptions based solely on skin tone.

Let's look at Xaden and the Bat Boys, for instance. What characteristics do we often see so neatly tied to these ambiguously described maybe men of color?

They are often violent. Indeed, the most violent in violent worlds. They are depicted as dangerous, if only somewhat misunderstood in how they wield their power. They are primal, often physically marked with tribal tattoos or scars. They are seen as being ruled by their emotions or instincts. Their people, as far as they have one, are often barbaric.

These characteristics—violence, power, and primal energy—are linked to their physicality and reinforce a sense of "otherness," which is both exoticized and feared. This portrayal plays directly into harmful stereotypes of men of color as dangerous, hot-tempered, and untamable, further perpetuating the idea that their race and ethnicity are inherently tied to these traits.

They are overly sexualized. They are often depicted as physically irresistible, with repeated descriptions of their sexual prowess inherently tied to their characterization. These are bodies built for violence and desire so that the lines between physicality and sexual energy blur. The purpose is to showcase an attraction to the other—to be allured and threatened by the brown man.

The result? A fetishization of men of color as primal, untamed forces of nature whose only purpose is to captivate, dominate, and protect the white woman at the center of the story. This dynamic often makes the white woman's attraction to these characters feel forced or antagonistic at first, with the eventual surrender seeming violent and unavoidable.

They are enslaved or rely on slavery-adjacent narratives. These men of color are often portrayed as having a tragic or violent past, frequently tied to servitude, enslavement, or oppression. This background adds a layer of complexity to their character, but it also often positions them in a subservient or oppressed role, even if temporarily.

Whether it's a literal enslavement or a form of symbolic captivity, this trope reinforces the idea that men of color are inherently tied to histories of powerlessness and subjugation. These characters are then "redeemed" by their bond with the white protagonist. Their entire arc becomes about proving their worth to a system or person who still holds the power.

The worst part of this is the sheer lack of clarity and intentionality behind these choices. It’s not that authors can’t ever write characters of color in fantastical settings. It's a problem, however, that we don’t even know if these ARE men of color, really, and our best evidence is a list of harmful stereotypes.

These men often remain tokenized at best and weaponized at worst, reduced to one-dimensional tropes for the sake of a plot that privileges the white woman’s journey.

You don’t have to take my word for it. If you are brave enough to spend any amount of time in the comment section of a fancast or of yet another video of someone bravely protecting these characters supposed non-white identity, you’ll witness the most unhinged fetishization of men of color you may ever see. The language used to speak of these characters is damning. It objectifies and dehumanizes—not the fictional characters they are salivating over, but the real people from the real backgrounds the fandoms use to paint these characters.

​

​

I’m over it. If you can’t answer whether these men are sun-tanned or of some differing race or ethnicity? I don’t want your defense of them as men of color. If you can’t answer for the harmful stereotypes their authors have written them into? I don’t want credit to those authors for writing a non-white character.

We need to see authors take real care when writing characters of color—yes, even in fantastical worlds. We need stories where race is fully considered and explored and not just sketched with broad, ambiguous terms. Readers deserve more than characters who exist solely for their physical appeal or to fulfill reductive, harmful stereotypes.

Stop fighting amongst yourselves about these characters. Instead, demand more from the stories you consume, support, and promote.

💙

Marines

If you are reading this and haven't yet followed me, please do so! It's free and takes 15 seconds to sign up . If you'd like access to my Discord and bonus content, consider spending $5 a month to support my work and my publishing journey. Either way, thanks for being here!

​