Romantasy, fantasy and in between

I always liked fantasy, and specially sword and sorcery. I always read fantasy novels, watched fantasy films, and played and mainly was the game master for my RPG party. I designed my own system and players loved it. I enjoyed every step of worldbuilding: spells, monsters, making a map of the world, and so on. 

I did my own system and world, because I never liked the ones in RPG books. Dungeon and Dragons was probably my favorite, but wizards were too weak. As a system, I loved Runequest, but I was not convinced about the playable races and the world that it described. 

But I always found that both in books and games, there was an ingredient missing: romance. 

How we define this story with fantasy and romance? We need to know how much romance it has, and the way it is depicted.

THE PROBLEM: HOW MUCH ROMANCE?

How much romance a story has maybe defines its genre in the minds of some people. I have seen that some make this distinction:

• A fantasy story with romance: if you remove the romance part, the story still is there. If you remove the fantasy elements, the story is absurd. 
• A romance with fantasy: if you remove the romance, you break the story. If you remove the fantasy elements, the story is still there.

But I think it's very rigid. I don't think my story fits in any of these, or maybe fits both.

In classical stories, you can't remove romance without breaking it all:

• If Conan doesn't go with women, he becomes a very boring character.
• Elric loved his true love and the fact of losing her defines all his story.
• Corum may throw the towel if it was not for Ralina.
• Aragorn may have little motivation to become king without Arwen.
• Ivanhoe without romance becomes worse story.
• And so on...

The story of Tamzyn and Sioul is a fantasy and romance story, that describes a world with its own mythology, folklore and fantastic elements. Then there is a romance between them.

If you remove the romance, the story dies. But if you remove the fantasy element, then you have these questions:

• If he's not a wizard, then what?
• If she's a normal woman, then what?
• What if they were two normal human people? The story may be completely different and impossible to be written as is.

So I think we are missing a third genre: a story in which fantasy and romance have equal weight or need each other to have sense.

HOW IS ROMANCE DESCRIBED IN THE STORY?

Now we usually find these two ways of handling romance in books and games out there:

• You see two characters that say they love each other, they may kiss one or two times, and they usually stay 1 meter away from each other. Typical in traditional fantasy stories. Think Aragorn and Arwen. 
• They engage in explicit physical mating activities, with full descriptions of each step. Typical in most romantic fantasy out there.

Again, we need a third way or more to handle this. If you point a gun to my head and ask me, I would prefer the second way. But I don't like it because:

• Many people feel ashamed reading those things. It cheapens the story.
• We really don't need them. We can already know they do those things.
• I think I could actually write them tastefully and engaging. Probably I may get something really exciting and deep. Birth rate may increase. But it feels like it takes people out of focus of what is beyond that: love.

This last reason is the most important. It takes the focus to what is external, and you don't feel the emotion beyond that. Your story turns into another genre that is not romantic but another thing.

In my story, the female protagonist is a nymph, a symbol of femininity, beauty and nature. We already know she's beautiful, and Sioul also is, as a male. We don't need explicit descriptions of how it would look like when they do their things. It will look great, and will be awesome, but that's not the main point.

I want to focus on the feelings, value and motivation that true love gives you. 

I want to honor their good kind of love, without toxicity, and femininity as a force of nature and transformation.
I don't want them, the nymphs, to be "fanservice", but a sign of love for nature, of protection.  And by extension, make a story that pleases men and women, and that improves our world, not makes it worse.

THE THIRD WAY

So we need a third way of handling romantic relationships in noblebright fantasy:

• Describe their feelings, what they feel when they are together.
• Describe how their relationship works in small gestures, daily signs of care and love.
• Describe their couple games that are fun and suggestive, but without all the detail. 
• Describe the intimate acts, if needed, with poetic, emotional language, and not explicit descriptions.

Example: one character whispers in the ear of the other. We don't know what he said but we see she blushes and laughs. Or taking someone by the waist and kissing her shoulder. We see  care and love there, and even some suggestive language. But we don't need to hear and see everything to feel empathy.

Example of intimate acts: We can describe "He was lost into her until daybreak. She fed on his passion until they fell asleep. They were two lost souls in another world of sweat, flesh and need". You already imagined it all. It gives you the emotion. I don't need to say "he took her by the hips and..." ok? why would you like that? That way you may focus on the act and not the feeling.

AND HOW DO WE CALL THIS?

So I asked some people. Some told me my story was fantasy, others romantasy. But romantasy fans usually expect explicit content + fantasy background. Many fans of romantasy are also tired of so much explicit content and simplistic stories. I hope to reach those.

I would maybe just describe my story as the game: a fantasy story of fight, magic and romance. 

I don't know how to name this. Actually romantic fantasy is the way to describe it. We are forced to find new words when we ruin the old ones. Or maybe we just need to recover the meaning of those words.

Fantaromance? Sword and romance? Emotional fantasy?

How would you call it? Do you agree with what I said? Tell in comments! :)