I fake-dated half my college guy friends because I was on the board of the campus LGBTQ resource center and the city had a weirdly high Pentecostal population.
This didn’t happen to me but my friend is bi and her twin brother is gay but their parents are homophobic so in high school she “dated” his boyfriend and he “dated” her girlfriend. It was honestly iconic.
@@littleboyviserys7725 I'm here on this video and in the comments section to learn because I don't have TikTok or really follow online book trends (I just like Carley's videos lol) but learning about this feels maybe more entertaining than actually being in it!!!
wrt the popularization of tropes, i'll never get over the tweet that's like "it's so charming to watch people who were too mentally well to be on archive of our own at age 13 reverse engineer ao3 tags" like it's sooo true lmao
Re: right person wrong time, my aunty married the love of her life at 70, having met him when she was in her twenties. They had three marriages apiece and knew each other for DECADES, but the timing was off. They are now super happy. It wasn't easy, and there were a few broken hearts along the way but there is hope!
@@uncarleyShe didn't tell the priest about her first marriage, we were forbidden from talking about it to him because three marriages each was like henry viii meets Elizabeth Taylor levels of married but they were SO HAPPY.
Kugrash and Sofia’s dynamic is precious and the hairy baby scam is iconic (being a hairdresser on staten island is basically the same as being a dog groomer in the empire state building, right?)
“Knife to throat” and “touch her and die” really strike me as adventure themes. Like pirates and stuff like that. Places where people would routinely be killing and carrying knives in the first place lol
you know where books are even cheaper than spotify? THE LIBRARY, SHAMELESS LIBRARY PLUG GO TO UR LOCAL LIBRARY RIGHT NEOW GO SUPPORT THEM WE LOVE LIBRARIES
YES! My local library is so empty lately, it’s beside a school so the only people who are consistently there are kids who are mitching school and are just there because of the couches.
the scary part of the modern world is you never know if the degen next to you is chilling or listening to people getting their cheeks absolutely destroyed
@@uncarley Hi! New subscriber and important follow up question - Have you read Red, White and Royal Blue yet?? Or One Last Stop?? Because they are such fantastic summer romance reads and I need you to make a sequel video since you reviewed the Red White and Royal Blue movie. Plus, McQuiston has a new book about bisexual exes who start hooking up with other people to prove how "over" each other they are. (I'm guessing that they are not over each other lmao).
I commented on a post mentioning that I don't love categorizing books by trope because it kind of spoils them (I prefer to go in as blind as possible) and the responses were a wild mix of: "If I don't know exactly what's going to happen in a book my anxiety won't let me read it!" and "If it's a romance you know they'll get together anyway so who cares if it's spoiled?" And to the latter I say, y'all would not have survived the early-mid 2000s era of killing the romantic lead in the last 20 pages. Augustus Waters took us out at the KNEES!!! Bitches were sobbing on the subway!!!!
Augustus was my first bookboyfriend that I could have had a healthy relationship with (not like creepy stalker Edward Cullen). John Green nearly broke me. I still read all of his other books though.
I mean personally I agree with something I read that was basically like, if it's in the romance genre it has a happy ending. It's about a romantic relationship and they end up together. A story can be about a central romance plot and not have a happy ending but that's not a Romance novel. (clarification added for reading comprehension)
the emphasis on height difference in these books is so funny to me at this point, because whenever I read about these 5'0 women and these 6'4 men I always hear Kennie JD going “I’m supposed to get scoliosis just cause I’m trying to smash????” 😂
"women can be in stem and also get to kiss. that's activism" thank you for saying that and opening my eyes 🙏🙏as a woman in stem i'm going to kiss my gf now as an act of women and lgbtq+ rights activism ❤
The sidebar about thinking you’re a prodigy and then two years later realizing you know absolutely nothing was so real lol too close to home and I love you for it
As someone who likes to write, please suggest more types of conflict I am supposed to put in books, plz. I need it. I cannot be another Booktok book that people talk about because it was really bad😭
my hottest media take is that miscommunication, like most tropes, is a neutral device that’s only bad when done poorly/without considering the characters involved. i firmly believe that the main reason so many people hate it (including me until like a year ago), is because it suffers from frequently being misused by mediocre writers who want their main characters to fight but are too cowardly to make either of them actually do anything wrong.
@@suziemcboozieIf the story is realistic, then there can be miscommunication, not everybody is a perfect textbook communicator. And I find it hard to say what I want to say to someone, even if it would make my life easier for fear of a certain outcome. But after a while I do (mainly cause I have time to figure out the best way to phrase it), so when I write miscommunications in my fics they eventually talk it out
honestly only the triple threat of an eclipse, mercury retrograde and aries season could have unleashed the absolute chaos of this video and i LOVE that for us 🫰
for the question about fake dating, I have a real life story. when I was studying Beauty in 2019 I met a South African girl names Zjani (pronounced like Jani, soft J) and her parents had been friends back in the day, and wanted to travel, and back then it was taboo to travel with someone that you weren't married to. so they got married, and then in travelling and being married, feel in love for real and have now been happily married for over 20 years, and Zjani had siblings too. I met her dad, he works on the college campus in IT, seemed like a nice man. Cute story
i'm sixteen. pretty much my entire grade level has decided i'm a lesbian. i have a guy friend in my class. i persuade him to fake date me for the plot, because i love chaos. we hold hands a bunch and go to the school dance together. the bit's over, we move on with our lives. a whole ass yEAR later i found out via some acquaintances that he had actually liked me and had been asking people for advice, but had been too scared to ask me out. horrible. terrible. THIS SHIT HAPPENS CARLEY
“I don’t flirt, I just act strangely and arrive in places that they arrive and don’t talk to them” I have never related so hard to something in my life. The type of rizz we have is unmatched
I'm 35 and "rizz" is the first word I do not care to know. Is it swag, is it drip. Is it понты. Probably. Do not answer, I shut off all message notifications here. Also I deduced that it is charisma 🔍🤓
I thought “touch her and die” would be the trope where she has a curse or a superpower or something where if you make skin to skin contact with her you die. Like she’s electric or poisonous or has a Midas type curse or something. So you’re pining but you can’t kiss because then you’re dead
People love it or hate it (I love it) but a literal part of this would be Fallen by Lauren Kaye where MINOR SPOILERS The main love interest can’t kiss her or she’ll die.
i fake dated a friend years ago bc the same guy was quite literally harassing us and we wanted to deter him? we ended up real dating for a little while after we both realised we actually legit liked each other. it was a cute little romance, we were really young i think 14 or 15? i remember it very fondly. it was also one of my first sapphic relationships!
Contrapoints' video on Twilight is a fantastic exploration of your "why do we love pining?" question. More to the point, my objection to the "trope-ification" of fiction isn't distaste for what people choose to read and how tropes make book selection easier for readers. My objection is to the effect it's having on publishing. Because publishers are profit-seeking, they have reacted to the success of tropes as marketing tools, and many of them have begun rejecting manuscripts which aren't sufficiently "tropey." If your story doesn't fit into short, recognizable descriptors that the publisher can slap on the back of the book and use in all its marketing... or if your story doesn't lend itself to BookTok hype culture... then you now have a MUCH harder time finding a publisher than you might have before trope-ification. While I lay the blame for this with publishers, I do think there's something to be said for the buying power readers possess. If the only (or loudest) channel we use for discovering new stories is trope-centered discussion, then we're telling publishers that's what sells. Books which don't fall into tropes, whose authors don't wish to market based on tropes due to spoilers or other reasons, and books which subvert tropes all get left behind. PS: I am a big sucker for a lot of tropes, for the record. Rivals to lovers who eventually set aside their competition when they fall for each other and realize they don't have to measure their self-worth via accomplishments? Lets goooooo
omg the way you opened with "listen to smut in public it's good for your mental health" and i literally did this yesterday for the first time and felt so powerful lol
As Anne Carson said “Who is the real subject of most love poems? Not the beloved. It is that hole” (hole referring to the character pining after the other)
no because SCIENTFIC REASON WHY WE LOVE YEARNING TROPES: i study entertainment communication and we just learned about this so i got super excited when you said that! the main thing we seek from entertainment media is enjoyment. but in order to have a compelling narrative, we need several mechanisms; mainly, to (1) create an affective disposition for the portagonist(s) and (2) to create tension until the big climax of the story. and one of the best ways to create tension is to delay this enjoyment! feelings of frustration and anger about a narrative are a much better predictor of whether you will continue to follow a story than positive emotions, and tension created by delayed gratification only makes us want that enjoyment at the end of the road more (sunk cost bias!). the crux of this narrative involvement described above is that we subconsciously have to know that it will turn out alright in the end, which is why we love these tropes so much in the first place. they are like a safe space in which we can experience all that delightful tension in the story, before the big happy ending. well, how is this related to yearning? well, having someone silently yearn for the other is by far the least complex (AND most relatable) way to create narrative tension. further, it's an excellent basis for internal conflict within characters and opportunities for growth, which increases tension in the story and our affective disposition for a character, respectively. booktok tropes are really excellent examples to study basic narrative techniques on. but we should just go on and enjoy them, because they work for a reason!
thank you for this one. booktok is my roman empire, cause we could have people discussing and sharing really good books. instead we get "romance" thats mostly smut. its hard to criticize without sounding like a prude.
Unless it’s explicitly labelled erotica (which is a whole other genre), most of the smutty romance books people talk about only have like 20 pages of smut in 400 pages, which is the average length of romance books I read. It’s really not as much as people make it out to be, and I think- unless it’s YA- I prefer smut in my books because of the intimacy that it brings to a relationship. Most romance readers will agree with me.
Also, idk if being a prude is really an insult any more. Criticise it all you want. I’m a typical romance reader and most of us are considered prudes. I’m literally 18 and have never kissed someone lol
its not me, but i had a friend who fake dated a guy in high school bc their crushes were going to prom together. the goal was to (somehow) make their crushes jealous with their relationship, but they were worried that the crushes would think they were off the market so they DIDNT TELL ANYONE ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP. obviously this didnt work and they eventually caught feelings for each other
I know alot of people say "once the couple actually gets together. Its really boring". But I don't think thats true if your romance has good enough characters to support the relationship. I feel like my favorite romances are really indepth character explorations
Just fyi, the listening hours for audiobooks on spotify is capped at a monthly limit!! Found that out the hard way falling asleep to a book and letting it play night after night. Apparently, some people were warned on spotify and some werent. Hours reset monthly.
This is actually perfect because I just finished listening to Mad Honey on Spotify and there’s a hole on my audiobook heart and looking for the next thing to hear
It is so easy to see that you read contemporary 😂 “Touch her and die” and “she’s mine” are some of my favorite tropes, but I also read almost exclusively sci-fi/romance and fantasy/romance. In those extreme scenarios, it just works. Contemporary stuff usually just too boring for me… like when you go from alien abduction and vampire battles and apocalyptic wars between humans and aliens… small town romance just doesn’t cut it. But that’s why I love having so many options! There is something for everyone. You should do a video checking out the more extreme tropes from sci-fi and fantasy romance books! Dark romance too would be fun! I bet you’d learn a lot.
You know what also is a good way to get books without having to pay for them? The library. There are also ways to get ebooks and audiobooks from certain libraries with an app. I only buy books for a desire to reread, mostly, I am only so strong, but generally I read a book from the library and if I really like it and think about it it goes on my shelf. Libraries are good sign up to your local library for a membership or like, some big libraries you can also sign up to and just get audio and ebooks, like NYC or LA's libraries. there, libraries shouted out
I've been dating the love of my life for over a year now and yes, we fake dated. Friends to lovers + fake dating. Basically what happened was that we were on choir tour together, and my dumb as got my bag with my passport and phone and 300 euros stolen so I was sad. We had a free day to roam Brûge but I didn't wake up early to go shopping with my friends because I had no money and i didn't want to burden them, and she slept in because that's just what she does. We were "friends" of sorts, in the same friend group but not really close so we shared a dorm and by chance, a bunkbed too. When she woke up she cheered me up and decided that her spending money was "our" spending money so we went out for lunch and sat across from each other like it was an awkward first date. We laughed about it and she said something like "you know, I wouldn't mind being your girlfriend" and I was like O_O. Then I got jealous that my one friend had a play boyfriend and a play wife, so I made her (my now girlfriend) my play wife and we fake dated for the entire rest of the tour. There were so many magical moments in between but her asking me to be her girlfriend for real for real at the top of the Eiffel Tower takes the cake
If I had a nickel for every time I fake dated a guy without knowing and then got a text saying they were sorry they were just pretending to date me to make their ex jealous but then they realized I wasn't terrible and felt bad about it, I would have 2 nickels. Which isn't a lot but still weird it happened twice
the current popular booktok books are TERRIBLE. i swear, the authors literally just throw all the popular tropes together & don’t care if it makes sense😭
I've experienced the right person wrong time situation in real life. My highschool sweetheart and I moved it together right after school, but a year later I had to leave for university. We tried to make long distance work but grew apart. It was by far the worst breakup ever and even afterwards I always thought that he would be the person I was gonnay start a family with. A few years later we reconnected at a class reunion. End of the story he just moved to my university town and we managed to finally find the right time and the right person.
Same, but this also led me down a rabbit hole wondering if watching videos on higher speeds affects their viewer retention??? Cause does it matter more if I watch 100% of the video or that I spent less time with the video? (What I gathered from my google search is that there isn’t a solid answer so I still have no idea👍🏼)
@@dasiasaurI think speeding up or slowing down the video does affect something bc I remember a while ago someone did an experiment where they made a video and made it super sped up so you had to watch it on 0.5x speed basically to test whether the algorithm would pick up on people slowing down the video, and I think it did bc from my memory the video got very popular when it was from quite a small channel. So I think the algorithm does pick up on whether people watch things at different speeds
@@hoggi7506 that is fascinating, makes me feel a little bad for watching most videos on 1.25x (just for a little speed boost) but I can blame the ADHD for that one. Also maybe people should just learn to talk faster 🤷♀️ I don’t have to speed up carley’s videos because her talking speed works for me
I know the feelings about being told you look like you are mean! People have told me that when half the time I'm not paying attention looking out the window at a bird or something.
The audiobook feature on Spotify has been LIFE CHANGING for me! Genuinely got through so many books, just wish the hours were longer but I understand they gotta get their bag
because of the Pride and Prejudice mention i feel as tho it is my duty to tag other Jane Austen novels with book tropes. Friends to Lovers: Sense & Sensibility Second Chance: Persuasion Slow Burn: literally all of them Miscommunication: Emma (not even with the main couple but just all over the place in general. Emma is so messy we love her) Rags to Riches/Cinderella (?): Mansfield Park
"i don't know a scroll or something gets lost" i lost it bc one of my all time favorite fanfics involves a love letter getting mixed up and lost and a DECADE LATER THEY FINALLY FIGURE SHIT OUT and it's literally novel length
I feel like it's important to state during your Spotify sponsorship that you only get access to 10 hours of audiobooks per month, otherwise it costs $15 to pay for another 10 hours!
in middle school i had a friend that was(is still now) gay. i was the first person he ever told and asked me to be his fake gf. we grew up in a very religious community so it was to give him a bit of a cover. super cool dude. still platonically love him to this day 20 some years later.
Tropes are better defined as "clichés". They were coined by the film industry, which made stories more widely available to audiences and audiences started to notice patterns. Films have criticized for falling into tropes making the stories predictable and therefore not providing anything new, but giving the audience the same story again and again. It seems that books are using tropes to attract people, but if you wanted to read stories based on tropes you can do that for free through fan-fiction sites. Books should not be predictable and I believe soon enough books will have a problem where readers will be fatigued and anything that resembles a trope will be an instant 'nope' for the readers
never actually fake dated someone BUT i did get asked by my best friend’s ex to fake date him to make her jealous. that was an absolutely bonkers day and i question why he thought id be like “omg yea ofc !!!!! :D”
14:30 - I take issue with this argument. You can get away with writing to a specific prompt or trope in a creative writing class because you are learning the craft of writing. It's a problem when a professional writer who is being paid money to write is using the techniques of a student. This is why the "trope-ification" of published writing is a problem. You're supposed to have already familiarized yourself with the craft to a point where you are not using tropes as a crutch, because fun fact: tropes are tools for analysis. They're little lenses through which you can understand pieces of a story better by. They are not a great tool to write from, unless you are learning how to write.
I fake dated my first official girlfriend because the girl she liked and the girl I liked were dating, and we thought it would make them jealous. It did, and they broke up, and we fake broke up, and I ended up dating the girl I liked.
Carley I want to let you know I’ve tried watching this video 3 times and every time I’m still in your Spotify audible ad…and it made me listen to Pride and Prejudice lol every time I try to come back and watch this video it’s still in the ad so it reminds me to listen to Pride and Prejudice AND ITS SO GOOD the voice actress that reads it IS SO GOOD
Not you posting this ON THE DAY I was asked on the (so far, for me) wildest 1st date ever: This girl on hinge that I had barely written two sentences with asked me out of the blue if I wanted to be her date to a gamenight that her exboyfriend and his new girlfriend would be at. I was like what in the cliche fake dating trope is this? But sure, I'll tag along 😂
Friends to lovers slaps, very hard. I'm a huge fan of pining, the drama is unparalleled. But with this, as most of the other tropes, in real life I would never wish even for my worst enemy to have a friend who you think is there for you but who also secretly (or not so securely) wants to get in your pants 😮💨
congrats on the spotify sponsorship! if it continues for more videos, it would be cool if you did one of your "i read ___ so you don't have to" (similar to your movie reviews) but just on one of these popular booktok books, because i don't enjoy reading romance, but i very much enjoy your videos and would love to listen to you talk and joke about them :)
Need a video on fan fiction. One direction reunion fan fanfiction would make a great video *hint hint wink wink*. Would be hilarious to see you read the fan fiction on AO3 ‘how many omegas could you fit into 5 seconds of summer’ it’s like 500,000+ words long 😭😭
@@Izzywildflowerr it’s An omega/Alpha/Beta AU set during their Youngblood tour. Basically Michael and Ashton are Alphas and calum goes into heat at the beginning of the story and Michael finds them and they get ‘intimate’. So Calum and omega. Shortly after they start dating *bluh bluh bluh* Calum cheats on Michael with Ashton big drama and Luke reveals it. Everyone thinks Luke’s a beta but then he presents as an omega (he’s a late bloomer). Bunch of other drama and Luke has a boyfriend and there’s a relationship ban between members for a year. And Luke and Michael basically like each but don’t know it. This is a quick summery, there’s obviously a lot more stuff. It’s. Really interesting and it’s still not finished the author is still writing. They’ve been writing it for Luke 5 years. 100% recommend.
to add to the trope discourse as a creative writing major: tropes are so helpful to writers because it gives readers a certain idea of what to expect and writers can play off of that expectation, whether to subverse it or add to it. tropes also are so important for like fantasy genres because theyre essentially a shorthand and gives the writer more time to focus on plot over explaining what time travel means, for example. less unnecessary paragraphs dedicated soleley to world-building and more time for action/character development
I wonder if the people who are mad about Ali Hazelwood using her agent's prompt to write her book realize that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein because of a challenge another writer gave her. Good writing doesn't have to come out of thin air
honestly its really interesting how booktok has adopted fandom terminology fghvhv like tropes make sense in fandom culture but its really interesting (in a wierd but kinda curiosity-sparking way) in an actual book kinda sense. i dont really know what to think about it.
I actually was someone's fake date to a birthday dinner on Valentine's day because he wanted to bring his friend to set up with someone else in the group but then they thought he was bringing a girl so our mutual friend was like do me a solid and go to this dinner you will get free food and I was like sounds lit. Honestly the best date I went on until I met my long term partner lol I got candy, flowers, food, and a weird story.
I fake dated my friend because all of our other friends were horrified at the idea. Turns out the friend was into me the whole time, and now we’re actually together. Dont know what kind of game that is but its something.
The only books I read are Agatha Christies and non-fiction books about ships or war or sometimes both. I’m obsessed with the Titanic so I have a lot of books on it and passenger accounts and that kind of branched off into wanting to learn more about other ships like the Lusitania and then I started getting fascinated by Pearl Harbor and Midway and now I’m diving more in WWII. Completely opposite to this I also like to read fanfiction about characters from Harry Potter, Star Wars, the MCU, and other franchises that I love and I just search the characters I want and filter it out to explicit only and read those 🤷🏼♀️
Just be aware that the limit for listening to audiobooks on Spotify is only 15 hours a month and only the primary account (the person who set up the account) can listen to audiobooks. My brothers and I share a family plan and they can’t listen to any books too because I’m the primary. I also had to split up the books I was reading because all of them were like 18-19+ hours
Latest ContraPoints' video on Twilight has lots on why we like yearning (and actually some stuff on fanfiction in general), worth every minute of the 3h it takes to watch the whole thing 😅
Me: Fake dated my college boyfriend because I'm a lesbian
STOP
me: fake dated all my exes because i'm acearo (plot twist)
I fake-dated half my college guy friends because I was on the board of the campus LGBTQ resource center and the city had a weirdly high Pentecostal population.
Somehow I think these LGBTQ+ fake dating tales are not going to have that "storybook ending" though. 😊
fake dated in highschool as a running joke, ended up together and dating 7 years later lol
Stop cause I hate when authors try to make "touch her and you'll die" male characters and the book is literally in an office setting😭😭
babe im calling hr!
I cackled out loud 😂
oh dear, what if he is hr
@@drlc6051 nooo not the ned from try guys situation 😭😭
I'm sorry but i felt like that when I was reading "A million kisses in your lifetime" 😭😭
This didn’t happen to me but my friend is bi and her twin brother is gay but their parents are homophobic so in high school she “dated” his boyfriend and he “dated” her girlfriend. It was honestly iconic.
oh my GOD that's iconic
WHAT a premise for the next big BookTok romcom
@@mathildedlihtam382booktok doesn't do gay book most of time lol
@@mathildedlihtam382 there’s actually a really popular book on booktok with this trope already😭 (don’t wanna spoil anything so iykyk)
@@littleboyviserys7725 I'm here on this video and in the comments section to learn because I don't have TikTok or really follow online book trends (I just like Carley's videos lol) but learning about this feels maybe more entertaining than actually being in it!!!
wrt the popularization of tropes, i'll never get over the tweet that's like "it's so charming to watch people who were too mentally well to be on archive of our own at age 13 reverse engineer ao3 tags" like it's sooo true lmao
"reverse engineer ao3 tags" lmao
right? like tags and tropes yeah. theres a place for that alr
Re: right person wrong time, my aunty married the love of her life at 70, having met him when she was in her twenties. They had three marriages apiece and knew each other for DECADES, but the timing was off. They are now super happy. It wasn't easy, and there were a few broken hearts along the way but there is hope!
OH MY GOD
@@uncarleyShe didn't tell the priest about her first marriage, we were forbidden from talking about it to him because three marriages each was like henry viii meets Elizabeth Taylor levels of married but they were SO HAPPY.
@@llassahllassahomg. This is the stories you tell your friend who hopes to get back with her ex some day. Love it for your aunt!
When's the movie coming out?
are their names house and wilson
This is the most enthusiastic I’ve ever seen a TH-camr get over a sponsorship
im a simple girl
@@uncarley it's nothing if not a 33 mins ad
The R2D2 and C-3PO comparison for grumpy/sunshine TOOK ME OUT, that’s so accurate lmao
The og sunshine and grumpy trope tbh
“she’s a dog groomer in the Empire State Building and he’s the king of the sewer rats” may have caused me to choke from laughing so hard
This is literally the NYC campaign of Dimension 20
Kugrash and Sofia’s dynamic is precious and the hairy baby scam is iconic (being a hairdresser on staten island is basically the same as being a dog groomer in the empire state building, right?)
“Knife to throat” and “touch her and die” really strike me as adventure themes. Like pirates and stuff like that. Places where people would routinely be killing and carrying knives in the first place lol
you know where books are even cheaper than spotify? THE LIBRARY, SHAMELESS LIBRARY PLUG GO TO UR LOCAL LIBRARY RIGHT NEOW GO SUPPORT THEM WE LOVE LIBRARIES
This person is the HERO WE DESERVE 👏 👏 👏
Love the library!!!
i would lay down my life to support my local public library
I support my local library, even when they get rid of the titles I love!
YES! My local library is so empty lately, it’s beside a school so the only people who are consistently there are kids who are mitching school and are just there because of the couches.
the scary part of the modern world is you never know if the degen next to you is chilling or listening to people getting their cheeks absolutely destroyed
humans are so beautiful
I wish I could keep a straight face listening to audiobooks and this doesn't even exclusively to the smutty scenes. God's strongest soldier I am not.
@@uncarley Hi! New subscriber and important follow up question - Have you read Red, White and Royal Blue yet?? Or One Last Stop?? Because they are such fantastic summer romance reads and I need you to make a sequel video since you reviewed the Red White and Royal Blue movie. Plus, McQuiston has a new book about bisexual exes who start hooking up with other people to prove how "over" each other they are. (I'm guessing that they are not over each other lmao).
I commented on a post mentioning that I don't love categorizing books by trope because it kind of spoils them (I prefer to go in as blind as possible) and the responses were a wild mix of:
"If I don't know exactly what's going to happen in a book my anxiety won't let me read it!" and "If it's a romance you know they'll get together anyway so who cares if it's spoiled?"
And to the latter I say, y'all would not have survived the early-mid 2000s era of killing the romantic lead in the last 20 pages. Augustus Waters took us out at the KNEES!!! Bitches were sobbing on the subway!!!!
true the memory of reading the ending of TFIOS will never be forgotten
Augustus was my first bookboyfriend that I could have had a healthy relationship with (not like creepy stalker Edward Cullen). John Green nearly broke me. I still read all of his other books though.
Omg how did you know 😭 I remember reading that moment on the subway and yes, this bitch was sobbing 😂 those were the times
I mean personally I agree with something I read that was basically like, if it's in the romance genre it has a happy ending. It's about a romantic relationship and they end up together. A story can be about a central romance plot and not have a happy ending but that's not a Romance novel. (clarification added for reading comprehension)
god 😩😩 this is literally the WORST thing that ever happened to me..... i still mourn and they are not even real
the emphasis on height difference in these books is so funny to me at this point, because whenever I read about these 5'0 women and these 6'4 men I always hear Kennie JD going “I’m supposed to get scoliosis just cause I’m trying to smash????” 😂
hahahaha
Omg, I LOVE Kennie 😂😂😂
Hey, it's about as kink-based as dating vampires.
Ali Hazelwood could never NOT do this
Do you know which video?
spotify sponsorship is insane so happy for u babe!!!
thank you bestie!
Ugh, Spotify cannibals found unique you, but congrats 🎉
"women can be in stem and also get to kiss. that's activism" thank you for saying that and opening my eyes 🙏🙏as a woman in stem i'm going to kiss my gf now as an act of women and lgbtq+ rights activism ❤
had to quit out of my candy crush game for this one queen. Thank god ur back
omg the highest of compliments
The sidebar about thinking you’re a prodigy and then two years later realizing you know absolutely nothing was so real lol too close to home and I love you for it
it’s a taylor swift lyric she was referencing (Nothing New from Red (Taylor’s Version). really good song
Booktok scares me, but Carleys bravery has inspired me to go on. Truly a soldier for this one
thank you soilder
"he's a dragon slayer and she makes artisanal ice cream for dogs" Where's the book, Carly???!!
Miscommunication trope can crawl into a corner and die there 😮💨
YES. and it would do tv a whole world of good too 😭
As someone who likes to write, please suggest more types of conflict I am supposed to put in books, plz. I need it. I cannot be another Booktok book that people talk about because it was really bad😭
my LEAST favorite thing in any story telling. JUST SPEAK TO EACH OTHER
my hottest media take is that miscommunication, like most tropes, is a neutral device that’s only bad when done poorly/without considering the characters involved. i firmly believe that the main reason so many people hate it (including me until like a year ago), is because it suffers from frequently being misused by mediocre writers who want their main characters to fight but are too cowardly to make either of them actually do anything wrong.
@@suziemcboozieIf the story is realistic, then there can be miscommunication, not everybody is a perfect textbook communicator. And I find it hard to say what I want to say to someone, even if it would make my life easier for fear of a certain outcome. But after a while I do (mainly cause I have time to figure out the best way to phrase it), so when I write miscommunications in my fics they eventually talk it out
honestly only the triple threat of an eclipse, mercury retrograde and aries season could have unleashed the absolute chaos of this video and i LOVE that for us 🫰
yeesssss
Help me the alignment is killing meeee (birthday on the 11th and I truly don't know if ill make it 😅)
@@not_you_i_dont_even_know_you Happy birthday!!
none of this matters
for the question about fake dating, I have a real life story. when I was studying Beauty in 2019 I met a South African girl names Zjani (pronounced like Jani, soft J) and her parents had been friends back in the day, and wanted to travel, and back then it was taboo to travel with someone that you weren't married to. so they got married, and then in travelling and being married, feel in love for real and have now been happily married for over 20 years, and Zjani had siblings too. I met her dad, he works on the college campus in IT, seemed like a nice man. Cute story
i'm sixteen. pretty much my entire grade level has decided i'm a lesbian. i have a guy friend in my class. i persuade him to fake date me for the plot, because i love chaos. we hold hands a bunch and go to the school dance together. the bit's over, we move on with our lives. a whole ass yEAR later i found out via some acquaintances that he had actually liked me and had been asking people for advice, but had been too scared to ask me out. horrible. terrible. THIS SHIT HAPPENS CARLEY
sheesh, are you guys alright after that?
So…are you a lesbian
@@YukihoDubsright I wanna know
Yes please how are the two of you if I may
girl you ARE the main character
“I don’t flirt, I just act strangely and arrive in places that they arrive and don’t talk to them”
I have never related so hard to something in my life. The type of rizz we have is unmatched
this is me and then also i never bother telling anyone my feelings bc "im sure they know I like them its so obvious"
I'm 35 and "rizz" is the first word I do not care to know. Is it swag, is it drip. Is it понты. Probably. Do not answer, I shut off all message notifications here.
Also I deduced that it is charisma 🔍🤓
@@NoaartetcПОНТЫ😭😭 girl
I thought “touch her and die” would be the trope where she has a curse or a superpower or something where if you make skin to skin contact with her you die. Like she’s electric or poisonous or has a Midas type curse or something. So you’re pining but you can’t kiss because then you’re dead
Like in the first X-Men movie where Rogue kissed a boy and he like fell into a coma cause she took his energy accidentally or something
stop this is so funny😭
😂😂
People love it or hate it (I love it) but a literal part of this would be Fallen by Lauren Kaye where
MINOR SPOILERS
The main love interest can’t kiss her or she’ll die.
basically blue and gansey 🥲
i fake dated a friend years ago bc the same guy was quite literally harassing us and we wanted to deter him? we ended up real dating for a little while after we both realised we actually legit liked each other. it was a cute little romance, we were really young i think 14 or 15? i remember it very fondly. it was also one of my first sapphic relationships!
That was the longest sponsorship message I’ve ever watched, respectfully
Literally 15 minutes 😭🥴
new uncarley video my homework is getting DONE tonight 🔥🔥
yesss
Contrapoints' video on Twilight is a fantastic exploration of your "why do we love pining?" question.
More to the point, my objection to the "trope-ification" of fiction isn't distaste for what people choose to read and how tropes make book selection easier for readers. My objection is to the effect it's having on publishing. Because publishers are profit-seeking, they have reacted to the success of tropes as marketing tools, and many of them have begun rejecting manuscripts which aren't sufficiently "tropey." If your story doesn't fit into short, recognizable descriptors that the publisher can slap on the back of the book and use in all its marketing... or if your story doesn't lend itself to BookTok hype culture... then you now have a MUCH harder time finding a publisher than you might have before trope-ification.
While I lay the blame for this with publishers, I do think there's something to be said for the buying power readers possess. If the only (or loudest) channel we use for discovering new stories is trope-centered discussion, then we're telling publishers that's what sells. Books which don't fall into tropes, whose authors don't wish to market based on tropes due to spoilers or other reasons, and books which subvert tropes all get left behind.
PS: I am a big sucker for a lot of tropes, for the record. Rivals to lovers who eventually set aside their competition when they fall for each other and realize they don't have to measure their self-worth via accomplishments? Lets goooooo
Yesss, on point
every time you post a video i have the obligation to come here and thank you for your service maam (saving my life)
omg thank u
Exactly, we must thank our girlie for algorithm purposes and we’re happy to do so
Emily Henry books are not only romantic and sexy but so FUNNY? She does it all. Nobel Prize for Literature.
YES
she's MY GIRL I'm reading everything she ever published this year and I'm so happy
omg the way you opened with "listen to smut in public it's good for your mental health" and i literally did this yesterday for the first time and felt so powerful lol
it was Bridgerton
@@keepthechannelopen1700 thanks for the clarification, queen!
I’ve been waiting for audiobooks on Spotify to be available in Canada, and what a great way to find out from an unhinged uncarley video
yessss
"I don't flirt, I act strange and off putting to somebody ... " 😂 Girl, same. At this point, I've resignsted to my fate of dying alone.
As Anne Carson said “Who is the real subject of most love poems? Not the beloved. It is that hole” (hole referring to the character pining after the other)
The hole is the hole 😏
Carley: and I.....say it with me-
Me: eat it up everytime?
*Carley: eat it up everytime*
I hollered 😂 lmaooo
"One of the most popular terms is 'spice' and I don't mean cumin" (pronounces it coomin'). Idk if that was on purpose but it gagged me
cumin and cumin' are not to be confused
@@uncarleyor you could pronounce it cue-min ??? 😭😭😭
sponsored by SPOTIFY?! Girl get that bag omg
thank you!!
you’re risking your sanity for these videos 😭 riverdale, cats, booktok?!?! thank you carley truly 😭
no because SCIENTFIC REASON WHY WE LOVE YEARNING TROPES: i study entertainment communication and we just learned about this so i got super excited when you said that! the main thing we seek from entertainment media is enjoyment. but in order to have a compelling narrative, we need several mechanisms; mainly, to (1) create an affective disposition for the portagonist(s) and (2) to create tension until the big climax of the story. and one of the best ways to create tension is to delay this enjoyment! feelings of frustration and anger about a narrative are a much better predictor of whether you will continue to follow a story than positive emotions, and tension created by delayed gratification only makes us want that enjoyment at the end of the road more (sunk cost bias!). the crux of this narrative involvement described above is that we subconsciously have to know that it will turn out alright in the end, which is why we love these tropes so much in the first place. they are like a safe space in which we can experience all that delightful tension in the story, before the big happy ending.
well, how is this related to yearning? well, having someone silently yearn for the other is by far the least complex (AND most relatable) way to create narrative tension. further, it's an excellent basis for internal conflict within characters and opportunities for growth, which increases tension in the story and our affective disposition for a character, respectively.
booktok tropes are really excellent examples to study basic narrative techniques on. but we should just go on and enjoy them, because they work for a reason!
thank you for this one. booktok is my roman empire, cause we could have people discussing and sharing really good books. instead we get "romance" thats mostly smut. its hard to criticize without sounding like a prude.
hahahaha i feel you
Unless it’s explicitly labelled erotica (which is a whole other genre), most of the smutty romance books people talk about only have like 20 pages of smut in 400 pages, which is the average length of romance books I read. It’s really not as much as people make it out to be, and I think- unless it’s YA- I prefer smut in my books because of the intimacy that it brings to a relationship. Most romance readers will agree with me.
Also, idk if being a prude is really an insult any more. Criticise it all you want. I’m a typical romance reader and most of us are considered prudes. I’m literally 18 and have never kissed someone lol
Nope, im there and youre not being a prude. Lol its beyond
@@1989TaylorsVersiom beyond? Sorry what does that mean?
its not me, but i had a friend who fake dated a guy in high school bc their crushes were going to prom together. the goal was to (somehow) make their crushes jealous with their relationship, but they were worried that the crushes would think they were off the market so they DIDNT TELL ANYONE ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP. obviously this didnt work and they eventually caught feelings for each other
that is so funny
I know alot of people say "once the couple actually gets together. Its really boring". But I don't think thats true if your romance has good enough characters to support the relationship. I feel like my favorite romances are really indepth character explorations
Just fyi, the listening hours for audiobooks on spotify is capped at a monthly limit!! Found that out the hard way falling asleep to a book and letting it play night after night. Apparently, some people were warned on spotify and some werent. Hours reset monthly.
That's messed up!
This is actually perfect because I just finished listening to Mad Honey on Spotify and there’s a hole on my audiobook heart and looking for the next thing to hear
yesss perfect timing!
It is so easy to see that you read contemporary 😂
“Touch her and die” and “she’s mine” are some of my favorite tropes, but I also read almost exclusively sci-fi/romance and fantasy/romance. In those extreme scenarios, it just works.
Contemporary stuff usually just too boring for me… like when you go from alien abduction and vampire battles and apocalyptic wars between humans and aliens… small town romance just doesn’t cut it. But that’s why I love having so many options! There is something for everyone.
You should do a video checking out the more extreme tropes from sci-fi and fantasy romance books! Dark romance too would be fun! I bet you’d learn a lot.
also congrats on the Spotify sponsorship!! wishing us all many happy days of unhinged audiobooks in the grocery store, at work, or even in the car😌
You know what also is a good way to get books without having to pay for them? The library. There are also ways to get ebooks and audiobooks from certain libraries with an app. I only buy books for a desire to reread, mostly, I am only so strong, but generally I read a book from the library and if I really like it and think about it it goes on my shelf.
Libraries are good sign up to your local library for a membership or like, some big libraries you can also sign up to and just get audio and ebooks, like NYC or LA's libraries.
there, libraries shouted out
I literally clicked with the speed of light
okay einstein!
Same same 💯💯💯
I've been dating the love of my life for over a year now and yes, we fake dated. Friends to lovers + fake dating. Basically what happened was that we were on choir tour together, and my dumb as got my bag with my passport and phone and 300 euros stolen so I was sad. We had a free day to roam Brûge but I didn't wake up early to go shopping with my friends because I had no money and i didn't want to burden them, and she slept in because that's just what she does. We were "friends" of sorts, in the same friend group but not really close so we shared a dorm and by chance, a bunkbed too. When she woke up she cheered me up and decided that her spending money was "our" spending money so we went out for lunch and sat across from each other like it was an awkward first date. We laughed about it and she said something like "you know, I wouldn't mind being your girlfriend" and I was like O_O. Then I got jealous that my one friend had a play boyfriend and a play wife, so I made her (my now girlfriend) my play wife and we fake dated for the entire rest of the tour. There were so many magical moments in between but her asking me to be her girlfriend for real for real at the top of the Eiffel Tower takes the cake
My day is instantly better when uncarley posts
omg that is so kind
Hearing “welcome back to my channel, freak” the day I get my adhd diagnosis is exactly the affirmation I need , love u carley
If I had a nickel for every time I fake dated a guy without knowing and then got a text saying they were sorry they were just pretending to date me to make their ex jealous but then they realized I wasn't terrible and felt bad about it, I would have 2 nickels. Which isn't a lot but still weird it happened twice
the current popular booktok books are TERRIBLE. i swear, the authors literally just throw all the popular tropes together & don’t care if it makes sense😭
"books are expensive" thats why you go to libraries!!!
speaking on booktok is insane as chappell roan recently said good luck babe!
STOP THE BRIDGE FOR THAT SONG HAD ME TAP DANCING
I love chappel roan 🥰😭
that new chappell roan song will be in my spotify wrapped i just know 😭
Carley getting sponsored by Spotify feels like the end of a hero arc
END ??
random but you are glowing in this video! the blue-green screen us really your color
the dear evan hanson of youtube? babe, ben platt WISHES he had your range and radiant skin
26:30 “shes a dog groomer at the empire state building and hes king of the sewer rats” that sounds like a riverdale plot
Libby is a great app for free audiobooks
I've experienced the right person wrong time situation in real life. My highschool sweetheart and I moved it together right after school, but a year later I had to leave for university. We tried to make long distance work but grew apart. It was by far the worst breakup ever and even afterwards I always thought that he would be the person I was gonnay start a family with.
A few years later we reconnected at a class reunion. End of the story he just moved to my university town and we managed to finally find the right time and the right person.
love your book content. one of my favorite terms you’ve ever coined is “lobotomy literature”
I always watch my videos on 1.5 speed but NEVER on Carley’s because I need to savor every second
hahahah that is so kind
Same, but this also led me down a rabbit hole wondering if watching videos on higher speeds affects their viewer retention??? Cause does it matter more if I watch 100% of the video or that I spent less time with the video?
(What I gathered from my google search is that there isn’t a solid answer so I still have no idea👍🏼)
@@dasiasaurI think speeding up or slowing down the video does affect something bc I remember a while ago someone did an experiment where they made a video and made it super sped up so you had to watch it on 0.5x speed basically to test whether the algorithm would pick up on people slowing down the video, and I think it did bc from my memory the video got very popular when it was from quite a small channel. So I think the algorithm does pick up on whether people watch things at different speeds
@@hoggi7506 that is fascinating, makes me feel a little bad for watching most videos on 1.25x (just for a little speed boost) but I can blame the ADHD for that one. Also maybe people should just learn to talk faster 🤷♀️ I don’t have to speed up carley’s videos because her talking speed works for me
thank you for keeping me company in an unending shift at work 😮💨
happy to help!!
Can’t tell u how much I needed a new instalment of Uncarley today
thank you!!
I know the feelings about being told you look like you are mean! People have told me that when half the time I'm not paying attention looking out the window at a bird or something.
carly this is actually like a really well made presentation
The audiobook feature on Spotify has been LIFE CHANGING for me! Genuinely got through so many books, just wish the hours were longer but I understand they gotta get their bag
oml so excited to watch this just got home from school love you carley
omg amazing vibes
ive been stressed about life and moving lately and the future but whenever i watch your videos i feel truly calm and unworried
because of the Pride and Prejudice mention i feel as tho it is my duty to tag other Jane Austen novels with book tropes.
Friends to Lovers: Sense & Sensibility
Second Chance: Persuasion
Slow Burn: literally all of them
Miscommunication: Emma (not even with the main couple but just all over the place in general. Emma is so messy we love her)
Rags to Riches/Cinderella (?): Mansfield Park
"i don't know a scroll or something gets lost" i lost it bc one of my all time favorite fanfics involves a love letter getting mixed up and lost and a DECADE LATER THEY FINALLY FIGURE SHIT OUT and it's literally novel length
I feel like it's important to state during your Spotify sponsorship that you only get access to 10 hours of audiobooks per month, otherwise it costs $15 to pay for another 10 hours!
Oh dang, thank you. That’s good info to know
i love your videos so much carley please don't die
thank you bestie i will try
in middle school i had a friend that was(is still now) gay. i was the first person he ever told and asked me to be his fake gf. we grew up in a very religious community so it was to give him a bit of a cover. super cool dude. still platonically love him to this day 20 some years later.
Tropes are better defined as "clichés". They were coined by the film industry, which made stories more widely available to audiences and audiences started to notice patterns.
Films have criticized for falling into tropes making the stories predictable and therefore not providing anything new, but giving the audience the same story again and again.
It seems that books are using tropes to attract people, but if you wanted to read stories based on tropes you can do that for free through fan-fiction sites.
Books should not be predictable and I believe soon enough books will have a problem where readers will be fatigued and anything that resembles a trope will be an instant 'nope' for the readers
never actually fake dated someone BUT i did get asked by my best friend’s ex to fake date him to make her jealous. that was an absolutely bonkers day and i question why he thought id be like “omg yea ofc !!!!! :D”
You’re getting braver and braver with your subjects 🫡
thank you soilder
r2d2 x c3po is honestly a god tier relationship dynamic
also you definitely don't have mean girl energy!!!
14:30 - I take issue with this argument. You can get away with writing to a specific prompt or trope in a creative writing class because you are learning the craft of writing. It's a problem when a professional writer who is being paid money to write is using the techniques of a student. This is why the "trope-ification" of published writing is a problem. You're supposed to have already familiarized yourself with the craft to a point where you are not using tropes as a crutch, because fun fact: tropes are tools for analysis. They're little lenses through which you can understand pieces of a story better by. They are not a great tool to write from, unless you are learning how to write.
I fake dated my first official girlfriend because the girl she liked and the girl I liked were dating, and we thought it would make them jealous. It did, and they broke up, and we fake broke up, and I ended up dating the girl I liked.
this was in high school btw I don't condone my 15 yo self's actions but it's a crazy story
Carley I want to let you know I’ve tried watching this video 3 times and every time I’m still in your Spotify audible ad…and it made me listen to Pride and Prejudice lol every time I try to come back and watch this video it’s still in the ad so it reminds me to listen to Pride and Prejudice AND ITS SO GOOD the voice actress that reads it IS SO GOOD
Not you posting this ON THE DAY I was asked on the (so far, for me) wildest 1st date ever: This girl on hinge that I had barely written two sentences with asked me out of the blue if I wanted to be her date to a gamenight that her exboyfriend and his new girlfriend would be at. I was like what in the cliche fake dating trope is this? But sure, I'll tag along 😂
Friends to lovers slaps, very hard. I'm a huge fan of pining, the drama is unparalleled. But with this, as most of the other tropes, in real life I would never wish even for my worst enemy to have a friend who you think is there for you but who also secretly (or not so securely) wants to get in your pants 😮💨
congrats on the spotify sponsorship! if it continues for more videos, it would be cool if you did one of your "i read ___ so you don't have to" (similar to your movie reviews) but just on one of these popular booktok books, because i don't enjoy reading romance, but i very much enjoy your videos and would love to listen to you talk and joke about them :)
Need a video on fan fiction. One direction reunion fan fanfiction would make a great video *hint hint wink wink*. Would be hilarious to see you read the fan fiction on AO3 ‘how many omegas could you fit into 5 seconds of summer’ it’s like 500,000+ words long 😭😭
oh my GOD amazing idea
okay okay i’m a relatively new 5sos fan and what is that please explain. i’m not going to read it coz i’m sure it’s going to haunt me 😭
@@Izzywildflowerr it’s An omega/Alpha/Beta AU set during their Youngblood tour. Basically Michael and Ashton are Alphas and calum goes into heat at the beginning of the story and Michael finds them and they get ‘intimate’. So Calum and omega. Shortly after they start dating *bluh bluh bluh* Calum cheats on Michael with Ashton big drama and Luke reveals it. Everyone thinks Luke’s a beta but then he presents as an omega (he’s a late bloomer). Bunch of other drama and Luke has a boyfriend and there’s a relationship ban between members for a year. And Luke and Michael basically like each but don’t know it. This is a quick summery, there’s obviously a lot more stuff. It’s. Really interesting and it’s still not finished the author is still writing. They’ve been writing it for Luke 5 years. 100% recommend.
@@PZW_ what. the. actual. hell. that’s insane 😭
@@Izzywildflowerr I KNOW!!!!! But I live for the drama….😭😭😭
to add to the trope discourse as a creative writing major: tropes are so helpful to writers because it gives readers a certain idea of what to expect and writers can play off of that expectation, whether to subverse it or add to it. tropes also are so important for like fantasy genres because theyre essentially a shorthand and gives the writer more time to focus on plot over explaining what time travel means, for example. less unnecessary paragraphs dedicated soleley to world-building and more time for action/character development
as a literal aroace person who works in romance publishing and is just as confused by some of these things as you, thank you for this
I wonder if the people who are mad about Ali Hazelwood using her agent's prompt to write her book realize that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein because of a challenge another writer gave her. Good writing doesn't have to come out of thin air
honestly its really interesting how booktok has adopted fandom terminology fghvhv like tropes make sense in fandom culture but its really interesting (in a wierd but kinda curiosity-sparking way) in an actual book kinda sense. i dont really know what to think about it.
9:48 lmaoo felt bc i listened to this on audiobook last year while i was going to and from uni it was SOOO good
11:44 is when the video actually starts.
i absolutely HATE insta love, miscommunication and anything related to pregnancy. I don't vibe with that.
I actually was someone's fake date to a birthday dinner on Valentine's day because he wanted to bring his friend to set up with someone else in the group but then they thought he was bringing a girl so our mutual friend was like do me a solid and go to this dinner you will get free food and I was like sounds lit. Honestly the best date I went on until I met my long term partner lol I got candy, flowers, food, and a weird story.
was going to write my essay but this is more important
stay in school
I fake dated my friend because all of our other friends were horrified at the idea. Turns out the friend was into me the whole time, and now we’re actually together. Dont know what kind of game that is but its something.
The only books I read are Agatha Christies and non-fiction books about ships or war or sometimes both. I’m obsessed with the Titanic so I have a lot of books on it and passenger accounts and that kind of branched off into wanting to learn more about other ships like the Lusitania and then I started getting fascinated by Pearl Harbor and Midway and now I’m diving more in WWII. Completely opposite to this I also like to read fanfiction about characters from Harry Potter, Star Wars, the MCU, and other franchises that I love and I just search the characters I want and filter it out to explicit only and read those 🤷🏼♀️
Palate cleansing with some smut 😂
Just be aware that the limit for listening to audiobooks on Spotify is only 15 hours a month and only the primary account (the person who set up the account) can listen to audiobooks.
My brothers and I share a family plan and they can’t listen to any books too because I’m the primary. I also had to split up the books I was reading because all of them were like 18-19+ hours
Latest ContraPoints' video on Twilight has lots on why we like yearning (and actually some stuff on fanfiction in general), worth every minute of the 3h it takes to watch the whole thing 😅