How Not to be Eroded
How Not to be Eroded
READING 3 ︎︎︎ Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses series
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POWER FANTASIES
Fantasy has long been dismissed as escapism—dragons and love triangles, lush worldbuilding for its own sake. But the best fantasy isn’t about escape. It’s about systems. And more importantly, it’s about making systems visible.
In the real world, power often hides in plain sight. Forever-lover-boy Michel Foucault argued that modern power works not through spectacle or domination, but through arrangement. Architecture. Discipline. It moves quietly, organizing who we can be, what we can desire, how we live without realizing we’re being shaped. By the time we notice it, we’ve already internalized it (”disciplined bodies”). There’s no need for a king when we’ve all become our own jailers (the panopticon).
Fantasy, paradoxically, offers clarity. In a well-built fantasy world, the rules are not hidden—they’re named, ritualized, aestheticized. Magic has laws. Courts have hierarchies. Love has contracts. You know who is powerful and why. And that knowledge isn’t just background; it becomes a site of struggle. The protagonist might not be able to break the system, but they can see it. They can strategize. They can subvert.
Donna Haraway, writing from a different discipline entirely, might call this an “ecology of meaning”—a system in which everything, from rituals to relationships, is entangled. Meaning doesn’t come from individuals alone, but from the network of forces that shape them: biology, culture, myth, gender, technology. A fantasy world like Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (which cloaks its ideological labor in romance and velvet) is full of these entanglements. The courts are not just settings. They’re machines for sorting power, kinship, beauty, and violence.
Even desire—the engine of so much fantasy—isn’t exempt. What characters want, who they choose, how they touch—it’s all shaped by the systems they inhabit. Ursula K. Le Guin understood this deeply. In her speculative worlds, the question is never simply “What is freedom?” but “What does freedom mean when the rules are embedded in your body, your language, your gods?”
Fantasy offers a strange kind of honesty. It doesn’t pretend that anything is possible. It asks, instead: What if the structure was knowable? What if you could trace the shape of the net that’s holding you? What would you do then?
The pleasure of reading fantasy isn’t in the escape. It’s in the moment of recognition—when the system reveals itself, and a character begins to test its boundaries. When power becomes legible. When rules can be negotiated, not just obeyed.
It’s no coincidence that series like A Court of Thorns and Roses, Fourth Wing, and other entries in the so-called “romantasy” genre are exploding in popularity at a moment of widespread disenchantment. Political faith is eroding. Institutions are unraveling. The rules that govern our world feel increasingly opaque—designed elsewhere, enforced everywhere, and impervious to influence. In response, readers are turning to stories where power is dramatic, visible, and personal. Where authority can be confronted directly, even seduced.
These novels offer more than escapism. They offer the fantasy of coherence. Of cause and effect. Of knowing what forces are shaping your life—and the thrill of watching someone push back. And for a generation coming of age in a world where the rules feel both invisible and inescapable, that might be the most seductive fantasy of all.
Fantasy has long been dismissed as escapism—dragons and love triangles, lush worldbuilding for its own sake. But the best fantasy isn’t about escape. It’s about systems. And more importantly, it’s about making systems visible.
In the real world, power often hides in plain sight. Forever-lover-boy Michel Foucault argued that modern power works not through spectacle or domination, but through arrangement. Architecture. Discipline. It moves quietly, organizing who we can be, what we can desire, how we live without realizing we’re being shaped. By the time we notice it, we’ve already internalized it (”disciplined bodies”). There’s no need for a king when we’ve all become our own jailers (the panopticon).
Fantasy, paradoxically, offers clarity. In a well-built fantasy world, the rules are not hidden—they’re named, ritualized, aestheticized. Magic has laws. Courts have hierarchies. Love has contracts. You know who is powerful and why. And that knowledge isn’t just background; it becomes a site of struggle. The protagonist might not be able to break the system, but they can see it. They can strategize. They can subvert.
Donna Haraway, writing from a different discipline entirely, might call this an “ecology of meaning”—a system in which everything, from rituals to relationships, is entangled. Meaning doesn’t come from individuals alone, but from the network of forces that shape them: biology, culture, myth, gender, technology. A fantasy world like Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (which cloaks its ideological labor in romance and velvet) is full of these entanglements. The courts are not just settings. They’re machines for sorting power, kinship, beauty, and violence.
Even desire—the engine of so much fantasy—isn’t exempt. What characters want, who they choose, how they touch—it’s all shaped by the systems they inhabit. Ursula K. Le Guin understood this deeply. In her speculative worlds, the question is never simply “What is freedom?” but “What does freedom mean when the rules are embedded in your body, your language, your gods?”
Fantasy offers a strange kind of honesty. It doesn’t pretend that anything is possible. It asks, instead: What if the structure was knowable? What if you could trace the shape of the net that’s holding you? What would you do then?
The pleasure of reading fantasy isn’t in the escape. It’s in the moment of recognition—when the system reveals itself, and a character begins to test its boundaries. When power becomes legible. When rules can be negotiated, not just obeyed.
It’s no coincidence that series like A Court of Thorns and Roses, Fourth Wing, and other entries in the so-called “romantasy” genre are exploding in popularity at a moment of widespread disenchantment. Political faith is eroding. Institutions are unraveling. The rules that govern our world feel increasingly opaque—designed elsewhere, enforced everywhere, and impervious to influence. In response, readers are turning to stories where power is dramatic, visible, and personal. Where authority can be confronted directly, even seduced.
These novels offer more than escapism. They offer the fantasy of coherence. Of cause and effect. Of knowing what forces are shaping your life—and the thrill of watching someone push back. And for a generation coming of age in a world where the rules feel both invisible and inescapable, that might be the most seductive fantasy of all.