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Escape Artists - The Drift

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T he women’s names glow like eyes in the dark, staring out at us from the ruins of myth. Feyre Archeron, Celaena Sardothien, Violet Sorrengail, Galadriel Higgins, Phèdre nó Delaunay. Penellaphe “Poppy” Da’Neer, née Balfour, of Castle Teerman. Oraya, plain and simple, like Rihanna or Madonna. These are heroic appellations drawing on a range of Irish, French, Norse, Welsh, Latin, Arthurian, Hellenic, Hebraic, and American influences, all vaguely sounding, with their air of parody and pastiche, like the kind of name a gay man would make up for a woman. Of course no gay man made up these names, nor the assemblages of adjectives and predicaments that, over the course of hundreds or thousands of pages, end up accumulating, almost incidentally, into characters. These ink-and-paper women, rather, are the enormously popular and profitable creations of a group of authors — mostly white, mostly female, mostly middle-aged, mostly straight, some recovered fan fiction writers, some devout Christians

Escape Artists - The Drift Issue 16 | November 14, 2025 Image by Emma Kumer Issue 16 | November 14, 2025 Issue 16 | November 14, 2025 Escape Artists ​ | Romantasy at the End of the World Daniel Yadin T he women’s names glow like eyes in the dark, staring out at us from the ruins of myth. Feyre Archeron, Celaena Sardothien, Violet Sorrengail, Galadriel Higgins, Phèdre nó Delaunay. Penellaphe “Poppy” Da’Neer, née Balfour, of Castle Teerman. Oraya, plain and simple, like Rihanna or Madonna. These are heroic appellations drawing on a range of Irish, French, Norse, Welsh, Latin, Arthurian, Hel

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