Dragons in the Details
Abby and Ronnie are the hosts of Dragons in the Details, best friends, connoisseurs of the romantasy genre. They’re trying to cultivate book talk in this age of booktok.
Describe your show in 10 words or less.
Ronnie: Two nerds dissect every detail of your favorite fantasy books.
Abby: Deep Dive Romantasy Podcast. Fun banter, insane theories, always receipts.
Fill in the blanks: You’ll like Dragons in the Details if you love ____.
Ronnie: Reading the same books as your best friends and texting them freaking out when you finish at 2am and couldn’t believe the ending.
Abby: Doc Jensen’s old “Lost” recaps (but for Romantasy)
The genre of romance often gets incorrectly termed as a “lesser form of literature.” Comment.
Ronnie: Whoever terms romance that way, I would like to point them to works such as Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, Gone with the Wind, and Romeo and Juliet. Romance is and always has been incredibly influential in literature, and to minimize the significance of the genre is simply incorrect.
Abby: The entire thesis of our podcast is that this genre deserves to be taken seriously and treated with more respect than it traditionally gets. When you look at Tolkien, or Sanderson, or even the MCU, there’s thousands of hours of content dissecting the themes, theories, allusions, and motivations of those books. But when books in the same genre are written by women, or feature love stories or spice, they are shoved to the side as escapism and not treated with the seriousness that they deserve. We aim to undo that stigma and give books written by women, for women, a thoughtful analysis, while still loving the romance aspects of the story.
Even without the fantasy element to the stories we cover, though, Romance is an important genre. Women deserve to have examples of what safe, beautiful relationships look like. So much of media and content is made by men, stories of love are often told from a male perspective. Women need their stories told, too.
If you could spend 24 hours with a fictional character, who would it be?
Ronnie: The Suriel from ACOTAR. Imagine the answers you could get out of 24 hours with the Suriel. (If we’re just talking about a good hang, I’d go with Ridoc from the Empyrean series.)
Abby: : Cassian.
If your podcast was a cocktail, what cocktail would it be? Why?
Ronnie: I think we’re more like a cozy cup of tea, or maybe a glass of wine if anything? You can’t have too much to drink, or you’ll never be able to keep track of all the theories and receipts!
Your podcast is all about intense and passionate fan theories. Has there ever been a moment of self-awareness while recording the show when you’ve thought ‘wow, I’m in too deep’?
Ronnie: Almost every recording session, but isn’t that the fun of it? In all honesty, I think we did have a couple moments this Crescent City season where - not necessarily during recording, but during editing - I realized just how many theories we were layering on top of each other that we had talked about previously. And I was like, wow - we have been talking about these books for so long! But we really do make a conscious effort to avoid getting emotional about things we want to be true, characters we want to be good, etc. - at the end of the day, we have nothing but the utmost respect for these authors and what they are willing to give us.
Abby: All of it, all the time haha. We really build on our theories to the point where sometimes I’m concerned no one will be able to follow us. But our fans totally do! They follow along so closely and are always right there with us. And many of them come up with theories themselves that are just as intricate, which we totally love and try to highlight as much as we can in our “COSMS” section. But we do also focus very much on being a receipts based podcast, so any theory we bring to the table we make sure to have quotes and evidence to back it up. I think that really helps keep us grounded and makes sure that nothing we’re bringing is too far fetched or out there.
What is your dream podcast to collaborate with?
Ronnie: Content-wise, House of R. Fangirl wise, Morbid. (Alaina, one of the hosts, has written three books, so NEVER SAY NEVER guys!)
Abby: House of R or Shameless
How has community played a role in your journey in fandom and your podcast?
Ronnie: Community has been the lifeblood of this podcast. It’s a hilarious and beautiful thing that avid readers, a famously introverted cohort of people, crave a space to discuss their thoughts and interests with like-minded individuals (preferably in a format that allows for selective participation and an off-switch for when the social battery runs out, which I can relate to). The goal of our podcast is to provide readers like ourselves with thought provoking content, and then also provide them with a place to talk about it alongside others who read and listen. We have an incredibly active discord community, our comments are full of brilliant ideas, and we are constantly being called to think about things that truly never came to mind - it’s the best part of making this podcast.
Abby: Community has been absolutely everything. We love our listeners so much. We started a Discord pretty early on and watching our community grow and become friends with each other has been so heartwarming. We’re also lucky in that the content we cover is extremely discourse driven - people love sharing their own fan theories and getting reactions! We are so blessed to have such an amazing community around us and we are truly so grateful.
Thanks, Ronnie and Abby!