So everybody's like wow so hard to be an author now, there's like a couple of superstars but nobody else can make a living, there's no midlist anymore etc etc
But then you go online and there are women absolutely DEVOURING endless series of every permutation of dark romance ever concocted, and some of them - a lot of them? - actually just seems straight up toxic, but be that as it may it definitely feels like publishing is alive and well in this corner of the book world. Like authors literally cannot pump this stuff out fast enough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9cMm4-EYb8
The palpable EXCITEMENT and devotion these books inspire in their readers is awesome. It's what every author aspires to surely
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Friday, 11 October 2024 09:11 (four months ago) link
sorry this should have gone on ILB!
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Friday, 11 October 2024 13:04 (four months ago) link
This has been a trend in fandom about as long as I’ve been in it. I remember being, like, distraught the first time I joined a private fic community (private because it was locked to under 18s) and like half of the writing was about incredibly dark subjects. I didn’t like it, at all, but with age I understood it more.
― gyac, Friday, 11 October 2024 13:11 (four months ago) link
That was about twenty years ago and my understanding is that it was common. The backlash against this kind of content is very recent.
I didn’t know there was a backlash!
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Friday, 11 October 2024 13:13 (four months ago) link
Is it kind of internet-incubated fic that has burst its containment chamber and is now in mainstream bookstores?
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Friday, 11 October 2024 13:15 (four months ago) link
There are like INFINITE tiktoks of women using the chili pepper emoji and going like “yall…. i was not ready” and fluttering their hands to “cool off” which is like fine obv but then you read excerpts and it’s like, here’s a secret society where men force women to be their sex slaves and the women in the books enjoy it lol i sound like a prude or something now don’t i idk it’s the kind of thing that i guess i always thought of as pretty niche and it seems like it’s not niche at all
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Friday, 11 October 2024 13:20 (four months ago) link
I assume 50 Shades of Grey was when that dam broke.
― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Friday, 11 October 2024 13:32 (four months ago) link
This is great and touches on this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqloPw5wp48
― imago, Friday, 11 October 2024 13:40 (four months ago) link
It was always online I think--the 50 Shades books coming from Twilight fan fic might have kicked off a new era. Now the "sex with monsters" stuff is in the mainstream, yeah.
xxp lol yes I got distracted by a work meeting that delayed my post
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, 11 October 2024 14:09 (four months ago) link
Okay that video is 3 hours long, I can't get that time back so I'm not watching it. Twilight is a romance novel, yes, but specifically one in which the fantasy is femicide and violence, and where that's a turn on to the woman who is constantly at risk by her intimate partner. It completely upholds & normalizes patriarchal values of domination (which is where it's relevant that Stephanie Meyers is a Mormon wife & mom who followed gendered expectations). THAT is why the "harshest critics of Twilight have always been women."
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, 11 October 2024 14:17 (four months ago) link
― gyac, Friday, 11 October 2024 14:22 (four months ago) link
(Meyer) is a total cock block, and I'll tell you something else: the fact that it is always EDWARD (the righteous white male priesthood holder) that controls the situation is so steeped in the church, I can't even begin. The male needs to be in charge and set the tone, because ladies are either unable to be turned on because of how holy they are, or need the strong, but firm and loving hand of their priesthood holder to guide them.
― gyac, Friday, 11 October 2024 14:53 (four months ago) link
this article sums up some threadshttps://www.pastemagazine.com/books/romance/what-is-dark-romance-booktok-trend
This is a subgenre that is almost entirely white and straight, exposing the ways that power dynamics are baked into race and sexuality. A mafioso who thinks “no” means “yes” can be a dark romance hero, yet men of color of any kind are shoved to the sidelines. Dark romance also has a habit of revealing a systemic ignorance, to put it kindly, that has long plagued the genre. This past month, best-selling author Tillie Cole faced backlash over one of her novels which featured a murderous Klansman as the romantic hero, with his lover being the daughter of a Mexican cartel leader. Cole eventually pulled the book from sale, claiming she hadn’t meant to offend and was always learning to do better, but it’s hard to justify the mindset that leads one to think of a KKK member being both alluring and redeemable.
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Friday, 11 October 2024 15:13 (four months ago) link
I think that one thing that makes a discussion of the objectionable content more fraught than it would be if it was just, like, talking about harmful stereotypes in crime films or YA, is that this is a genre to a large extent predicated on its erotic value, which ppl obviously get very defensive about.
So there's the question of, having identified a fantasy as bigoted or harmful, does that realisation mean that you can then work towards no longer finding it alluring? Or is it something that sticks with you despite that?
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 11 October 2024 15:55 (four months ago) link
Search: The Italian, Radcliffe
― brimstead, Friday, 11 October 2024 16:00 (four months ago) link
???? I think that's up to the individual...? And I don't think it's unique to the erotic. If you realize you have any learned and unquestioned assumptions that are based in any kind of oppression of another group of people, the ball is kinda in your court.
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, 11 October 2024 16:02 (four months ago) link
The Godfather and Goodfellas are toxic garbage but people would never even consider apologizing for liking that shit, not sure this is any different
― the absence of bikes (f. hazel), Friday, 11 October 2024 16:12 (four months ago) link
I think it's uniquely complex when it comes to the erotic. Like for instance I think it's generally accepted that consenting adults can act out sexual fantasies that would be harmful outside of that context. So that is viewef as distinct from "learned and unquestioned assumptions", it's assumed both parties are aware.
But at the same time these fantasies are not divorced from our social context.
I have no answer here, just something I don't see discussed much.
― Daniel_Rf, Friday, 11 October 2024 16:13 (four months ago) link
I fully appreciate that Mafia culture is toxic garbage and I avoid it accordingly!! (Also I just hate it.) Other people are on their own, it's life.
Yeah Daniel, I get it. And like anything else, a person can be looking for growth and progress with who they are as a person, or they can sit where they are. Growth isn't linear and it's up to everyone to do it for themselves. Idk what else to tell you?
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, 11 October 2024 16:54 (four months ago) link
it's assumed both parties are aware.
I don't think this is the case at all btw. I think lots of people entertain extremely unaware erotic interests and are widely societally supported and reinforced in them! Objectification of teenage girls is like THE FLOOR, the absolute MOST common and reinforced one that comes immediately to mind.
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, 11 October 2024 16:57 (four months ago) link
There’s a Tiktoker who highlights the most insane erotica and she’s had some doozies. One was about a giant corn man who came creamed corn. I’m never going to read it but I’m glad it exists.
― papal hotwife (milo z), Friday, 11 October 2024 17:14 (four months ago) link
I bring up the mafia movie stuff because it feels like the default assumption there is fans are perfectly capable of and allowed to appreciate narratives that are deeply contrary to their personal moral code, yet somehow genre fiction fans are not given that courtesy. And there's a thematic parallel too, in the sense of both subjects having a through-line of toxic patriarchy (but of course it's mostly dudes who love Goodfellas and the like).
― the absence of bikes (f. hazel), Friday, 11 October 2024 17:23 (four months ago) link
fans are perfectly capable of and allowed to appreciate narratives that are deeply contrary to their personal moral code
What's interesting and pertinent to me about this statement is that I don't think the power & violence elements that make mafia sycophancy appealing to people (mostly men) ARE deeply contrary to their personal morality. Ymmv. I wrote more here but deleted as being too off-topic.
But I appreciate that there's a distinction between who is allowed to have, or presumed to even be capable of having, access to their own imaginary space.
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, 11 October 2024 17:38 (four months ago) link
I'm not in the play space irl but I've heard TTers and commenters say that it's extremely hard as a straight woman to engage in D/s play because it's so prevalent that men get into that culture for all the wrong reasons and make terrible partners.
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, 11 October 2024 17:41 (four months ago) link
I see the comparison but there’s a difference of scale - you don’t have vast armies of dudes plowing through assorted 10-part series of mafia books, comparing them, making videos about them. There’s a real HUNGER for these books that I think marks them out differently. And yes of course many/most of these readers are quite self aware of this gap between what they are responding to and what they “should” respond to - in fact that gap is a lot of the point, seemingly (there is a whole subgenre of booktok vids of women with a caption saying “what you read is what you actually want” and then they kind of arch on eyebrow or put on a look of faux horror). Maybe guys who like Goodfellas are also getting off on that gap too to an extent idk.Maybe I’m just underestimating the appetite for these fantasies of being dominated and controlled - or maybe this kind of fantasy has become more common? afaict there can be an undercurrent of feeling cared for, appreciated, nurtured, via these sorts of dominating relationships. “CNC” eg “consensual nonconsensual” - requires a lot of trust! And it feels good to be able to trust someone. That said my impression is a lot of these books go beyond CNC to essentially rape, mental abuse etc (happy to be corrected here though). And it’s like okay wow okay you went beyond, 5 chili pepper emojis, chefs kiss ok. Makes me kind of depressed tbh! And don’t even get me started on that Alpha-Omega wolf shit, which feels v adjacent to this.Lol this thread started as a kind of celebration of a thriving segment of the publishing industry
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Friday, 11 October 2024 17:43 (four months ago) link
I get the issues you are raising, in orbit and f hazel, but I don't think Goodfellas is inviting you to imagine wacking or getting wacked by a mobster in the same way the dark romance stuff is inviting blurring the lines of consent, fantasy, etc.
I will agree that there is a kind of poisoned male for whom that is the draw of mobster stuff, but I don't think that is the intent of the genre even if true crime does share some elements.
xp
― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Friday, 11 October 2024 17:47 (four months ago) link
Perhaps not coincidentally, “mafia” is a big dark romance subgenre
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Friday, 11 October 2024 17:57 (four months ago) link
you don’t have vast armies of dudes plowing through assorted 10-part series of mafia books
Okay I don't want to get completely off track here but you absolutely DO have vast armies of men plowing through mafia cultural content, c'mon. Be serious for one second. The Godfather(s), Goodfellas, Scorsese's entire career, Gomorrah, Suburrah, I don't even know what else bc I hate this stuff. I agree that the fantasy is about being the one who wields the power, complete power over everyone else. The culture consumer identifies with the don, not with the underling or the rube who gets power exercised over them.
I want to say so much more but this is my work laptop lol
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, 11 October 2024 17:58 (four months ago) link
this stuff is really interesting to me. tracer's descriptions of it are great and i love reading all the thoughtful responses. i tend to be of the mind that awareness and articulation of libidinal expression is healthy. coming from the pov of kink and dom/sub in the world of men who love men, it's my experience that exploring taboo relationships in roleplay is qualitatively a completely different thing than doing the damaging thing itself irl. or that consent really does change the entire frame in a very profound way and draws the line between good and evil. i'm not totally sure how this translates into the world of erotic fiction and consuming it. a quick conjecture is that all of the obsession with absolute power / control / domination is a symptom of / byproduct of a world that materially is moving in that direction. in one sense it's kind of the same ole daddy issues arising isn't it? just sort of amplified because our desiring world has been amplified. i'm also a little depressed by it like tracer, just because absurd extremities bely the fact that people are finding it harder to feel or something. where is the ole whisper in the ear to do something? the give and take between binder and bindee. or heaven forbid the potential to flip roles... i imagine kate will find this thread at some point and i'm looking forward to reading her thoughts on this stuff.
― he/him hoo-hah (map), Friday, 11 October 2024 18:07 (four months ago) link
You’re right, but I feel like the scale of dark romance is on another level? The sheer number of authors and series, and sub-sub-sub-niches? there are FANDOMs around this stuff that kind of puts prestige movies/TV dramas in the shade in terms of endless appetite and stanning and ancillary cultural creation and video reviews etc etcxpost
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Friday, 11 October 2024 18:08 (four months ago) link
If the question is why there's currently visibility for specific female fantasy about power bottoming or topping from below, the Kushiel’s Legacy series has been out for a long time! This is where I think Twilight & 50 Shades really legitimized this content and moved the window of what women are mainstream-allowed to be seen to like. Women of different generations & backgrounds have difft perspectives on their right to access their own pleasure. IMO a lot of contemporary dark fantasy eroticism is just bodice rippers reimagined. Maybe there’s a graduate thesis here, watch this space.
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, 11 October 2024 18:09 (four months ago) link
Back to the laptop, I can't type all that with my thumbs. To pivot slightly to a less spicy place, there's a very funny thread of discussion about how the appeal of the 500-year old vampire is that he's been alive long enough to achieve hyper competence and complete adulthood. You don't have to pay his bills or make his doctor's appointments, he dresses himself (and undresses himself), he doesn't make you explain how to boil water, and so on. The fantasy is a man you don't have to mother.
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, 11 October 2024 18:14 (four months ago) link
lmao
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Friday, 11 October 2024 18:18 (four months ago) link
I get the issues you are raising, in orbit and f hazel, but I don't think Goodfellas is inviting you to imagine wacking or getting wacked by a mobster in the same way the dark romance stuff is inviting blurring the lines of consent, fantasy, etc.I will agree that there is a kind of poisoned male for whom that is the draw of mobster stuff, but I don't think that is the intent of the genre even if true crime does share some elements.xp
― gyac, Friday, 11 October 2024 18:29 (four months ago) link
i think GoodFellas and Godfather are prime examples of depiction not being endorsement, w/the latter being clearly intended as a tragic downfall and not about a meek scion of a powerful family finding strength. and Scorsese has made a few mob(ish) pics and each one is increasingly depressing in its depiction of the cost of this living. i think obviously a lot of people take the wrong message from them, of course. or from something like Breaking Bad or Mad Men or The Sopranos. i also think the nature of dark romance fandom is arguably more complex and interesting than the male fandom of badass or simply bad, evil dudes.
― omar little, Friday, 11 October 2024 18:35 (four months ago) link
absurd extremities bely the fact that people are finding it harder to feel or something.
I think the social compact of marriage and motherhood, in the mainstream, with the majority of the partners available to women to pick from at scale, is increasingly noticeably not working. It's not fulfilling, it's not everything women were promised even with the improvements of our changing moment. That has always been true, we're just in a new place, from both sides, in what I hope is a symptom of the world moving in a certain direction, like map said.
So the fantasy squishes out everywhere that the reality is weak. "I have so much responsibility now; what if I had none?" "My mundane life is unsatisfying; what if it was ripped away and replaced by a mega-intense different reality?" "I don't have power over myself, people keep having power over me and I can't seem to fix that; what if that was actually good and I liked it?" I realize this is not new territory at all. I perceive the spectrum of getting-more-extreme as moving the mark when the things you're supposed to want turn out not to be the solution to your problems after all.
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, 11 October 2024 18:40 (four months ago) link
My hypothesis is that women share some kind of fascination for male violence because they at the same time fear it and feel like they need to go through / past it. That there's some therapeutic effect about imagining such experiences and they are especially effective in conditional "what-if" scenarios (mix with fantasy / sci-fi). And that's it's predominantly a young woman audience. I guess I'm trying to rationalize it because I find the idea a little uncomfortable, though I can well imagine there's also a dose of good old entertainment from watching fiction characters suffer in caricatural situations.
I can't help remember another thing that I thought was also uncomfortable - an article and testimonies about how a significant portion of women do not find pleasure watching so-called feminist porn centered on woman's pleasure / realistic respectful sex, and go back to the hardcore stuff even though they morally object it. Most of the women argued for a kind of dissociation.
I guess I fond it uncomfortable in both cases because it sounded like being ensnared in patriarchal webs, or it played into the "women talk about tenderness but end up going for the jerk" cliché. I'm not actually worried of course, just puzzled. Just like I'm concerned about other people watching violence because I personally can't stand it and I have to resist drawing weird conclusions from it.
― Nabozo, Friday, 11 October 2024 18:49 (four months ago) link
gyac, you're totally fine and I realize now (after seeing you bold it) how my comment could be viewed as saying fans of this stuff want to be raped. Sorry, that's not good and I apologize!
I guess a better way of saying what I was trying to say (if there is one) is that the genre feels "participatory" and engages in fandom in a way I don't see with mobster stuff, at least to the same degree. Maybe it's the DIY nature of the fandom.
― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Friday, 11 October 2024 19:03 (four months ago) link
By the way, this thread is absolutely fine without men speculating on why women fantasise about male violence.
― gyac, Friday, 11 October 2024 19:06 (four months ago) link
In terms of the fantasy having an aspect of processing something and maybe healing from it or finding some kind of resolution from visiting that place... I've been listening to a lot of people on the Modern Anarchy podcast who, like the host, came from a repressive religious background and have been on long journeys of "deviance" to find their own pleasure and satisfaction in life and with their life choices. For some consumers dark romance might be a step on a journey like this, or it might just stay a fun distraction from reality.
I have to admit, as someone who has recently subjected myself to the ACOTAR trilogy and at least one book by Jennifer Armentrout, that the strictly boddice-ripper + dark romance combo is boring to me, but that just means it's not for me. The most interesting insight I've heard in relation to kink that kink is whatever you need to overcome the barriers that block you from accessing your own pleasure. Sometimes one of those barriers might be what you think you have a right to, or what seems reasonable to ask for, in the context that you think is normal or even inescapable.
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, 11 October 2024 19:26 (four months ago) link
Our tiktok metre at work is all colleen Hoover and tillie cole and the twisted lies series. One of the books 'icebreaker' actually has 18+ age restriction on the back and the amount of angry mum's who come in wanting to know why we refused to sell their daughter the book and she's going to buy it for her anyway is quite funny.
― oscar bravo, Friday, 11 October 2024 19:57 (four months ago) link
My FYP is FYPing:https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP88Ls5Ax/
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, 11 October 2024 19:57 (four months ago) link
― gyac, Friday, October 11, 2024 3:06 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink
o t m
― ivy., Friday, 11 October 2024 20:58 (four months ago) link
this isn’t quite in the realm of capital-D dark romance but i’m actually reading a monster erotica book with my girlfriend rn about working at a facility where they milk the cum from minotaurs and i think it has some pretty unexamined subconscious impulses about like… race… etc. but it is mostly very boring. good for the (mostly straight afaict) women who get something out of this, god bless em. most of the ppl who would extract moral value/judgment from people reading this or even rape fic are giving off a “we’re just concerned about how this is polluting ppl’s minds” vibe that i get from a lot of transphobes. we’re all freaks, including you. mind your own business
― ivy., Friday, 11 October 2024 21:06 (four months ago) link
honestly gyac and io have been making such great posts here and i wonder why i felt the need to contribute at all (maybe it was a man weighing in who has previously expressed noxious victim-blaming views about women and rape). i just want to hammer home that the thing this trend reflects most poorly on is the status of straight sex and partnership, which has always been bad but it feels like there is much less delusion about it when fantasies like this enter the mainstream
― ivy., Friday, 11 October 2024 22:06 (four months ago) link
Yes. If the heroes of romances past were always handsome and secretly rich, and perhaps most improbably, willing to move heaven and earth with the strength of their love--clearly an unreasonable bar--the heartthrobs of dark romance are frequently not even human. It's giving don't bother.
My question to you is, have you ever known a horse girl? (Ironically not related to the topic of this thread at all.)
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Friday, 11 October 2024 22:40 (four months ago) link
I have not (as far as I know).
My former boss has ridden horses for years. Not sure if she qualifies.
― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Saturday, 12 October 2024 00:36 (four months ago) link
maybe it was a man weighing in who has previously expressed noxious victim-blaming views about women and rape― ivy., samedi 12 octobre 2024 00:06 (twenty-one hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
I have what ? I usually let things pass, but seriously, no.
― Nabozo, Saturday, 12 October 2024 19:31 (four months ago) link
rolling #metoo thread for sexual harassment in the music industry so no one misses out when artists we don't give a fuck about like Tim Westwood and Bassnectar get caught
only two years ago you posted this
― ivy., Saturday, 12 October 2024 23:43 (four months ago) link
and your views on this subject matter seem about as evolved. imo, fuck of
― ivy., Saturday, 12 October 2024 23:50 (four months ago) link
Grim. I remembered the whole interaction but not who it was. I just thought this:
My hypothesis is that women share some kind of fascination for male violence because they at the same time fear it and feel like they need to go through / past it
― gyac, Sunday, 13 October 2024 01:11 (four months ago) link
i just want to hammer home that the thing this trend reflects most poorly on is the status of straight sex and partnership, which has always been bad but it feels like there is much less delusion about it when fantasies like this enter the mainstream
― gyac, Sunday, 13 October 2024 01:18 (four months ago) link
I'm not in the play space irl but I've heard TTers and commenters say that it's extremely hard as a straight woman to engage in D/s play because it's so prevalent that men get into that culture for all the wrong reasons and make terrible partners.― Ima Gardener (in orbit)
― Ima Gardener (in orbit)
this is true
being a trans woman who likes men if, if anything, even harder
Okay that video is 3 hours long, I can't get that time back so I'm not watching it. Twilight is a romance novel, yes, but specifically one in which the fantasy is femicide and violence, and where that's a turn on to the woman who is constantly at risk by her intimate partner. It completely upholds & normalizes patriarchal values of domination (which is where it's relevant that Stephanie Meyers is a Mormon wife & mom who followed gendered expectations). THAT is why the "harshest critics of Twilight have always been women."― Ima Gardener (in orbit)
yeah it's a lot to watch, i saw it because it's of interest to me
it's not really about twilight, due to youtube monetiztion guidelines an elaborate language of reference and subtext has evolved in youtube videos
i have observed, personally, that there is a longstanding thread of policing and shaming women's sexual desires, and i definitely see this in the reaction to "dark romance" books
one of the things that really interested me was the early history of slash
male star trek fandom was extremely vocally critical about women who wrote stories about the deep love between kirk and spock on the grounds that the people writing these fantasies weren't gay and weren't men
to me when i look at those stories i see women finding a place for the things that were important to them in a show and genre that pretty systemically excluded them
i am attracted to men. i fantasize about men, toxic men, doing things to me non-consensually. i read stories where this is one of the major themes. i am in _fan communities_ for some creators of these works.
i sometimes question whether or not this is healthy or good for me. whether or not i should be finding the toxic, abusive men in these stories, stories written chiefly by women, to be "hot". i keep sticking around, though. the people in these communities, the interests we have in common mean that i can talk with them in ways that i can't talk with most people.
a lot of us have what are called "cnc", "consensual non-consent", fantasies. that's not particularly surprising given the themes of the work in question. further, a lot of the people in one of the communities i'm in, whether they consciously know it or not when they join the community, are trans women. this, again, isn't coincidental - the work in question isn't a "trans" work in the traditional sense, but some of the creators are trans women, and their experience with gender is consciously an influence on the work. reading and following this creator's content, from arms' length, helped me come to terms with and accept my own gender identity.
late last year, frustrated about the extreme amount of shame i continue to have about my sexuality, i joined the fan community. engaging with this community gave me the ability to recognize and accept the third thing i had in common with many of the folks in this community: i am a sexual assault victim.
i had sexual assault fantasies before being sexually assaulted. i've had them all my life. i've had a lot of shame about these fantasies, even though i readily accept and affirm others' similar fantasies. i still have fantasies about having things done to me non-consensually.
it's been a lot of work for me, making sense of what happened to me, learning to accept that it's ok for me to want what i want despite what happened to me. the work, and the community of fans around the creators, has been central to this process. i've come to understand that what happened to me is not at all anything like what i want. there's a categorical difference between the fantasy of being assaulted and the reality. in the fantasy, there's this push-pull - wanting something but not wanting something, loving something but hating it at the same time.
the reality is completely different. the reality left me feeling dirty, gross, ashamed, disgusting. i blamed myself. i thought what happened to me was my fault, that i deserved it. i feel like that's one of the key differences. in my fantasies, what's done to me _is not my fault_. as a woman and a femme, i do feel a lot of shame for having sexual desires, for _wanting_ to be sexually desirable. one of the key things patriarchy says about rape is that if the victim _wanted_ it, it's _her fault_. this is pernicious and false and toxic and it's, like, almost the only thing people seem to consider in sexual assault cases. it's just. absolutely appalling. yeah, i'm really ashamed of being a woman and _wanting_ it.
engaging with stories like the ones i read, fantasies like the ones i have, has absolutely been healing for me. i can want what i want without actually being hurt. it's safe for me to want things. i can talk to people who have similar fantasies to mine, want the same things i want, and not feel like i'm sick or bad or wrong. i can recognize and affirm that i didn't deserve what happened to me, no matter _what_ i fantasize about. hell, maybe one day, i might even be able to get into a healthy relationship.
it probably won't be with a cis man, though. lol.
― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, 13 October 2024 01:59 (four months ago) link
I guess that’s what delineates your classic romance novel from straight up porn; the former makes you wade through the grim orphan backstory and the early bad relationships to get to the good stuff. I think there is also a through line in the genre to what the thread starts out discussing; if these are already genre norms for classic romance then dark romance isn’t really that far down the road, it’s just a variant. And if you’re used to reading feelbad stuff even in a genre as supposedly fluffy as romance then you’re already well conditioned to what dark romance has on offer?― gyac
― gyac
one of the things i've always experienced is that my sexual desires are fundamentally narrative
i care less about what people are doing than about how they're _feeling_ about it
so for me, the grim orphan backstory and whatnot is pretty important
of course not all women feel this way about sex, and plenty of people who _aren't_ women feel this way about sex
but it did set me at odds with the way a lot of the guys around me seemed to conceive of and relate to porn
― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, 13 October 2024 02:03 (four months ago) link
Love and grace, Kate. Thank you for your vulnerability and insight. PS I actually did skip around and watch some of that video and it did get more interesting later on! :)
I'm not going to put my details on Front Street on the internet but I will say that ime there's a kind of "no true Scotsman" quality to chasing some fantasies. For instance, let's say that, compared to your reality, the narrative of a certain fantasy is appealing. So you try it...but unfortunately the experience is still bad, or at least not as good as you wanted. Maybe you doubt yourself, you think "It's probably just because I didn't do it right." So you find a new fantasy, you try that...it still doesn't work out like you imagined. And so on. I'm going to pass over a bunch of things that happened during this process and just say, from an analytical perspective, my conclusion is that the fantasy is good, HAS to be good, because the reality is...somewhere from bad to "not great, Bob." Ultimately the fantastical part was thinking it was possible for you to get what you wanted in the first place, whether that was equality or respect or pleasure or being known and understood by your partner or being supported or healed in the way you hoped for...whatever.
This is where imo it reflects on straight relationships with men, which is my personal context and that of the dark romance phenomena. I would say "I give up," but I have a first date in less than two hours so
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Sunday, 13 October 2024 15:28 (four months ago) link
Also, funny side tangent...I worked for the publisher of Twilight during its rise to popularity and subsequent mania, and I reprinted all of those books many, MANY times. They were a complete pain in my ass and I have the commemorative flask to prove it. (I probably should have re-sold that thing 15 years ago for hundreds of dollars.)
It got discussed on these boards a fair bit but I was posting from work and pretty sure they were monitoring our keystrokes or however that works? So I would refer to it as "the book that shall not be named" and etc. Once I think I did use the actual title and a day or two later we got a company-wide caution email that explicitly said not to reveal any inside information or there would be consequences. Good times. For the record iirc Stephanie Meyer was a horrible author to work with and it was horrible to work on the production of her stupid books that I hated.
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Sunday, 13 October 2024 16:24 (four months ago) link
― ivy., Sunday, October 13, 2024 1:43 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink
And ? Cases are brought up for discussion, we are not all going to read them in the same way, we may not agree, we may be wrong, we may change our minds. It's fine to talk it up when it occurs if you care to, and imo it's better than keeping files on people. I believe I have always been civil on these boards, that I am open minded and that I welcome discussion. So pardon me if I react strongly when you say "the person who is XYZ / believes XYZ" or use reductive expressions ("a man"), and pardon me if I continue to be a poster on ILX/ILM. If my posts are insufferable to you, for any reason, there is a script to stop seeing them.
― Nabozo, Monday, 14 October 2024 08:42 (four months ago) link
yeah it goes like this10 stop posting20 goto 10
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Monday, 14 October 2024 09:09 (four months ago) link
“Keeping files on people” is such a funny way to describe remembering something that happened. Nobody cares how open minded you are when that leads you down that path of discussion btw. There’s a whole internet out there where you can ask fun leading questions about rape and say “Well what did she expect” and neither ivy nor I are wrong for not wanting to deal with it on here.
The issue of coercive control does not mean anyone should assume women are children and unable to make choicesLegal resistance to recognize abuse and award reparation is a separate issue that is not helped, IMO, by sensationalist journalism that can't resist a good monster story for today's edition and does not care much about the way the evidence is presented as long as it can pipe up a scandalSo yeah, I criticize― Nabozo, Tuesday, 16 November 2021 15:42 (two years ago) link
― gyac, Monday, 14 October 2024 09:09 (four months ago) link
listen i just never forget when someone posts something extremely fucked up about women and sexual violence, nabozo, forgive me, it also seemed pretty relevant to what you can contribute to this particular discussion, idk
― ivy., Monday, 14 October 2024 09:16 (four months ago) link
There are different ways to approach discussion spaces. One is to turn them into games of shutting each other up, calling each other names, holding rancors etc. You pick what you prefer, I'll do the same. For the record, I have nothing against you and appreciate your contributions in both forums.
― Nabozo, Monday, 14 October 2024 10:23 (four months ago) link
nabozo you can either listen or go away, how’s that as an approach? in either case please stop shitting up the thread
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Monday, 14 October 2024 13:13 (four months ago) link
idk i've been thinking about it a little more and it's just kinda complicated. with twilight, i haven't read any of the books, but i saw the first movie, and the plot is just awful. edward cullen is a toxic, abusive creep. the whole thing is incredibly patriarchal. it's the whole mormon thing... they're like the final boss of patriarchy or some shit. it's a real question, what level is the best level to address this toxic bullshit on.
it's super frustrating to me, because to me, the root cause of all this patriarchy bullshit in america today, if i had to identify one thing, i'd personally say it's christian morality and ethics. and that's a taboo subject in america, it's taboo to say that hey, maybe christianity as a set of values is bad, actually. i gotta be very careful about where i even suggest that as a possibility. i gotta pretend i don't see it. i gotta pretend i don't see the billboard out by the doctor's office that says "here's the REAL meaning of the rainbow" with some bible quote. i gotta be careful how i talk about the lady with a prominent cross necklace talking about all the problems with dark fantasy and then going off for the last half of her video talking about how christianity really supports women, blah blah, and i mean. i'm sure she believes that. you can do exegesis of the bible and come up with that as a conclusion, sure. all i can do is look at how christianity manifests itself in practice, how people who are evangelical about christianity put their values into practice. and on an institutional level, where the real power is - what i see is pretty bad.
there's this other video that's gone viral on youtube talking about the narcissist craze. how everybody who's a shitty person now gets called a "narcissist". and the person making this video traces it back, as problematic as the DSM is on "personality disorders" this craze doesn't come from there. the root cause of it is evangelicals who believe "narcissists" are literally possessed by demons. which, was i surprised to learn that? no, not really. what people learn in the churches and bible schools... that's where people get their _values_. of course that's gonna be more important to them than whatever the DSM is saying this week about "personality disorders".
and just looking at twilight, the same thing that happens with "dark fantasy". all this goes back to twilight, and from there to an incredibly patriarchal branch of christianity. i mean this "dark fantasy" stuff, this isn't _new_. certainly i had the fantasies i did before twilight. i've seen plenty of stuff in the same vein written before twilight. there's _secretary_, for instance... that movie has problems, serious ones, but at least it's not fucking mormon. like, when that movie came out the people in the kink scene seemed to fucking love it. i didn't, but it was popular in the kink scene. in contrast to _fifty shades of grey_, the BDSM fanfic version of twilight, which everyone i know who's involved with kink goes out of their way to denounce as a shitty, toxic representation of kink.
at some point, though... idk. for all that kink people denounce _fifty shades of grey_, i don't know that it's done a tremendous amount of harm to people interested in kink. it's hard to say. there's all that stigma, you know... if i'd learned about kink from fifty shades of grey, if i'd thought it was "hot", i sure as hell wouldn't admit it. i think when it comes to BDSM all this stigma and shame about liking the book... when people have learned some bullshit that's wrong, the last thing i do is make fun of them for reading some bullshit. that's what you have access to, right? and somehow you gotta make sense out of what you have access to.
and maybe there are people in "dark fantasy" taking stephenie meyer's bullshit and really doubling down on it, but at the same time what i see is a lot of people who take what they've learned and, in trying to make sense out of it, move beyond the bullshit in the twilight series, the bullshit in fifty shades of grey.
i think that process is gonna be necessary as long as you have people... i mean you can try to bury something for being morally repulsive but if the audience is there the audience is there. shit goes viral. shit becomes a breakthrough hit. so trying to bury something like _twilight_, i don't think that would be effective and i personally don't think it would be _right_ to try and do that. even though i personally think that on a moral level, that book is probably worse than some stuff that's on a surface level a lot more "extreme". that's another issue, i think, with opposing patriarchy, because not everybody has the same moral values. so i'm kinda on the side of just letting that stuff out there, as long as it's not some turner diaries bullshit, because somebody might get something good out of it.
this despite the fact that i personally have been negatively affected by these kind of toxic portrayals of transness, and particularly of trans sexuality. on a personal level it's been a real problem, these negative portrayals, these really demeaning sexualized portrayals of trans people, trans women in particular. at the same time, i do know plenty of people who discovered a lot about themselves through those venues. my problem was never that trans people were represented that way, it was that trans people were _only_ ever represented in that way. i'm honestly, i'm not against the porn with the slurs and all that. i just wish that wasn't _all_ there was.
― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, 14 October 2024 22:50 (four months ago) link
i sorta love twilight, it is almost the ultimate critique of heteropatriarchy, but then at the last possible minute it is like “no actually all this is good.” very funny
― ivy., Monday, 14 October 2024 23:39 (four months ago) link
Look, much like I feel about lots of other fantasy/sci-fi, the ideas are already out there when some later book comes along and softens them up and presents just the simplest, dumbest versions of those ideas, and then for infinite reasons, that later work happens to be the one that hits big. This is also how I feel about The Giver, which is neither here nor there, but felt like a TOTAL SOFTBALL when I read it because I had already absorbed those ideas in more complex sci-fi settings.
There's nothing in Twilight that wasn't in literature and culture already, sometimes the version that gets big is just the dumbest possible one. That doesn't mean the ideas should be buried, it just means sometimes stupid and bad things are popular. I'm sure it was a component of its success that it reified Christian patriarchal standards and felt dangerous and deviant while actually doing no change work whatsoever.
― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Tuesday, 15 October 2024 17:00 (four months ago) link
I've got Captive In The Underworld by Lianyu Tan, it's a lesbian dark romance about Hades (a woman of course) and Persephone. When I bought this a few years ago there was a small group of these, probably more now.
I've got a wishlist of bodice rippers, have no idea if I'll like them but some of them sound so demented that I really want to like them. I'm also kind of interested in romance where the woman murders her love interest (Jackie Collins does this?)
I think there is potential that this stuff could be read by a lot of men with the right subgenre inventions. I would love to see gothic books about scary and tough women (but I don't want them to be bad people).
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Monday, 21 October 2024 19:52 (four months ago) link
I sure someone has written these things but it wasn't big enough to be a category. Wouldn't surprise me if there were novel length yandere romances.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Monday, 21 October 2024 20:42 (four months ago) link
til
https://myotakuworld.com/tsundere-yandere-kuudere-yangire-dandere/
― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Monday, 21 October 2024 21:54 (four months ago) link
Something I have seen spread from anime to western prose novels is the fantasy of a girl bullying someone and not leaving them alone because the bully obviously likes the person a lot
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Monday, 21 October 2024 22:05 (four months ago) link
Not sure what that has to do with the thread topic
― gyac, Monday, 21 October 2024 23:27 (four months ago) link
It's another fantasy of toxic relationships and there will be crossovers somewhere
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 22 October 2024 17:00 (four months ago) link