Anyone else get annoyed that supernatural smut gets lumped in with sci-fi/fantasy book listings?

So since most Spaghetti Western stories aren't actually true, they should be with SFF because Fiction is Fiction is Fiction? I've read a fair few smut novels in both "historical fiction" and "fantasy," and the paranormal teen romances--Barnes and Noble have it right--are a category unto themselves.

The genres exist for a reason, and with as many paranormal fans out there it's disrespectful to them to insist that anything paranormal is fantasy (ghosts? Anyone?) but people who follow ghosts named in millenia prior get their own genre because faith.

I get that fantasy, and its readers, are often misrepresented in media and academia. Yes, it's more than just kid stuff, but it doesn't have to be all romance to appeal to adults. I mean, look to Sir Conan Doyle's great Mysteries. Sherlock Holmes is as fictitious as Harry Potter, but because his stories revolve wholly around a puzzle and encompass little beyond, they are mysteries. Like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys for grown-ups. Even Young Adult fiction has its own budding branch on which many good stories have gone, so why not? The lines define which books go where, and we as readers have the privilege and duty to use and improve on those lines as needed. Fifteen years ago, werewolves and vampires would meet only in stories with unicorns, dragons, zombies, ghosts, or other stock nonhumans as part of the "not Earth" demarcation. Now, it's secret groups of this and that having all sorts of crazy snookie-wookie-wookums womance with the poor, ordinary kid who wishes that every "Congratulations on Trying" ribbon they had carried weight.

I get it. I know why the niche is there, and I see that paranormal teen romance fills it nicely. To do that, though, it had to leave Fantasy and grow into its own little genre that will someday break away from the whole. We're just pondering when that will happen, and if there's anything we should do in the meanwhile.

/r/Fantasy Thread