One criticism that I see about dark romance and that I think almost everyone can agree with is how they are marketed. A lot of these books are marketed as a cute romance with flowers designs in the cover or sometimes as YA fiction, which makes teenagers or uninformed people more susceptible to read a dark book, when they were expecting something else.
I think the main problem is the remeaning of dark romance. Dark romance should still have a romantic aspect in it. If you are calling a book dark romance because of dv then you are romanticizing it. The romance isnt there to sit there and look pretty. Its like a rom com
Colleen Hoover is adamant that it’s fine if a writer doesn’t want the reader to know about dark and abusive elements ahead of time. She sees it as a writer’s right, ignoring that she’s depriving readers of the right to decide how to spend their money. I detest her.
As someone who leads a Percy Jackson Book Club for middle schoolers, I would like to take a moment and discuss the impact that series has had on kids - specifically their understanding of Classical Greek Literature. I have two eighth graders who went in hard when we started to discuss the second book, The Sea of Monsters. Their understanding of the Odyssey was better than some of the university discussions I once had the “pleasure” to partake. At our most recent meeting, we spent at least ten minutes going over the tragedy of Achilles and Patroclus and why reading The Iliad is important in relation to fame and fortune. That students are shamed for citing Percy Jackson as their favorite is a travesty. That children’s literature is easily dismissed because it’s just for kids means dismissing amazing literature that sets the tone for how we see the world. I know I’m going off on a soap box about kids lit on a discussion about dark romance but I’m just tired of it being easily dismissed when there are some amazing titles out there.
I took Children’s lit for my English credit during my undergrad and it really opened my eyes to the important themes in children’s lit. It was cool to read things I read as a child with this new light. Great class. I agree children’s lit is not given enough credit it terms of importance and impact.
the PJO and HOO series were one of my earliest special interests (first ones probably dora the explorer and collecting stuffed animals XD). i think i started reading them in the 4th grade and was on the first HOO book at the beginning of 5th-i went through those books like crazy and they’re what made me so interested in reading back then (trying to rediscover that love now). i’ll have no shame saying that those book series are my favorites of all time even to this day :))
@@wooogie672Totally understand book burnout! For this book club, I’m reading ahead to prepare for the discussions and it has been a delight! If you’re in book burnout, reread something that made you happy and don’t ever feel the need to apologize for it. 🎉
I randomly got into PJO and HOO when i was sick and found the audio books on spotify. I was maybe 17? 28 now and i still think those are great books. I don't understand why those are handled as childish, when the HP series takes place in the same age range but is more acceptable. Let teens read teen novels. There is nothing wrong with it. In general, people should be happy if their children have fun reading books. And i still have the best greek and roman mythology knowledge out of all my friends (:
Genuinely believe that the children are just yearning for gothic fiction😭😭 There’s a surprisingly overlap of themes and trope between dark romance & gothic fiction. I mean take Wuthering Heights for example- Cathy and Heathcliff are siblings (through adoption) and have a volatile, abusive relationship despite their love for each other. Hoover has written about these exact things. The key difference between the two genres is the quality of prose, setting and of course gothic authors actually touch on politics. I haven’t read any of her books but I can’t imagine Hoover ever addressing class or patriarchy lmao. But I think that many dark romance readers would love (or probably already do) any of the Brontë sisters’ books! Bring back gothic fiction!!!!!
One thing that you are missing is that the Bronte sister were self aware enough to write realistic outcomes: In Wuthering High, Cathy and Heatcliff destroyed themselves and almost everything around them. In Jane Eyre, Chatlotte Bronte made Mr Rochester disabled and had his state burned down while Jane inherent her own money to have a more equal relationship. In the Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Hellen meets Arthur, a narcissist asshole, and he dies a narcissistic asshole. She couldn't "fix" him. He never became a perfect husband or father. The only thing she could do to protect her son and herself was to run away. Hoover doesn't have that. She still believes that a broken man can be fixed with love because she seems to idolize her own abusive father
Basically Colleen Hoover is the embodiment of the stereotype that some women don’t care about what they’re reading from a critical lens just whether it gets them off. (In actuality this is a problem across genders at the moment that they just want to turn their brains off and “just enjoy things” and will freak out if you dare to think about what you’re watching or reading for more than 5 minutes after the story is over)
My main problem with dark romance is that so many of the readers and writers refuse to acknowledge it as a k*nk thing, and when you refuse to acknowledge it as a k*nk thing, you talk about it in ways that tend to soften or normalise the behaviour rather than have that healthy separation between real life and fantasy.
honestly we owe a LOT to AO3 for providing an alternative platform for fanfiction that caters more to adult writers/readers. there are so many incredible writers publishing beautiful stories on there, and the communities forming around various fandoms are some of the most positive and supportive i've ever seen. i think we have AO3 to thank for the fact that fanfiction isn't as dirty of a word as it was 10-15 years ago. i'm a 29 year old writer who started writing/reading fanfic only 2 or 3 years ago, but my god it's been pivotal for me. i managed to stumble into a fanfic community in which the vast majority of my fellow writers/readers are around my age and have a lot in common with me. and they're wildly talented too, like, i'm constantly astounded I even get to read their work for free. i'll die on the hill that fanfiction is deeply misrepresented and misunderstood within the culture and just needs better PR, because it's quite a beautiful little hobby to have as an adult, if you know where to look. :) and shoutout to the firstprince community on AO3: a bunch of filthy, brilliant, angels who changed my life.
It's just a different type of creativity/escapism. I think the biggest problem with the PR perspective of making fan fiction viewed in a better light is that the ones that get printed and turned into "real books" are bad. If a better caliber of book was released and people were informed that it started as fan fiction I think people would start viewing fan fiction in a better light.
@@KatjeKat86 The thing is that the best fanfiction can't be turned into original books because it's far too connected to its canon and if you start filing off the serial numbers you're not left with much. All these Reylo fics turned into original fic had barely anything to do with Star Wars in the first place, for example, so just change a few names and ta-da, original fiction!
EXACTLY! Not all fanfic is bad and it annoys me when some ppl act like it is. Istg I’ve read so many fics that are way better than any say colleen hoover book 😭
This video made me feel a bit weird of liking fanfiction as a 31 year old (probably just my own insecurity). I got back into reading ff at the end of 2022, and it has been life changing for me. Not only it's a great source of entertainment, but an amazing way to learn more about myself and explore different ideas in a safe space. I think a lot of people get therapeutic effects from reading. The issue for me is that I'm quite shy and need to build some confidence at being more present in these communities. I'm currently on Wattpad, but will probably try AO3 at some point. Most of the readers/writers of my community are younger than me, and I wish to find more people who are mature.
I think the same! The book have a topics that are expected in dark romance books, for me it's like the grandma of the dark romance, the one who laid the foundations
straight up what i always thought when i read it in high school, i stood firm in class discussions that catherine and heathcliffe were in an abusive and toxic relationship, after we finished it i just assumed and have referred to it as dark romance
Speaking of true crime. Two years ago I did my first year of criminology at university as an adult learner. By the end of the year it was legit myself and one other lady left, hundreds of people had thought it was a course on true crime, which is was, only it turns out the truth about crime is that it's corporations doing most of it using numbers and not unsolved murder mystery podcasts.
that's so interesting to hear! Makes me wonder if people were misinformed, or if they genuinely thought their podcasts were covering uni level criminology.
Yes! That and the fact that your child is much more likely to be harmed by someone you know rather than a random child snatcher, or that as a woman you're infinitely more likely to be k*lled by your male partner than a serial k*ller.
@@VanTosser If you go the open university and check the 'introduction to criminology' module, you can see that there should be no illusion. BUT I have a working theory that it's the trigger warning at the end of the course description that made them delude themselves. The 'this is so horrible and there is nothing we can do about it!!!!' melt downs in the first few lectures should have been funny but they ended up frustrating. I am forever grateful that the woman who called Banksie 'woke' quit the next week.
To be fair to ao3, I've read (and still do) many seriously good fanfictions there. Written just as good, or even better, than an original source. I feel like it's hugely dependant on what an age demografic/emotional maturity of fans of the original source looks like. If the fans are early teenagers, the fanfics will be, unsurprisingly, on their level. If the fandom consists of people in their 20s, 30s and so on, the stories will be written by them, and it will show. (An example of that, which comes to my mind, are fans of Thomas Barrow from Downton Abbey. Many of them are long after their teenage years, or even their 20s, and I find the the percentage of good quality stories published to be high.)
Curious to see if the average age of users is older for AO3 than wattpad. I remember reading wattpad in middle school whereas I hadn't even heard of AO3 till college
@@Snapdragons7 I feel like it is because even for much newer shows, i'm always much more likely to find good fics on Ao3 90% of the time compared to wattpad were I have to look very hard to find even one well-written fic (which by the way I don't want this to come off as shaming just didn't know how else to phrase it but I don't mind that there aren't high quality fanfics out there because atleast people are being encouraged to actually write and be creative especially with all this A.I nonsense going around)
This. The quality on AO3 is leaps and bounds better than a lot of trad published books. There are some GEMS on that website, but yeah… the quality ultimately boils down to the average age of the fandom. Wattpad is largely for teens and the content there is by teens, and it shows. AO3 is largely frequented by adults, people who’ve been involved in fandom for a time. It’s a night and day difference in terms of writing quality depending on the fandom(s) you’re in. Wattpad is a great space for younger writers to get their footing and practice but it’s not where I would go to read content that I genuinely enjoy or feel awestruck over.
plus, it depends on what youre looking for. even in fandoms where most fans are young children or teenagers, you will find good stories. just depends on where you look.
As a creative writing student, I find the dark romance discussions to be really complicated. Everyone has a guilty pleasure & I've seen fans of this/related genre(s) face unwarranted, borderline misogynistic criticism about their intelligence & preferences. Personally, I care more about how people engage with the content rather than the content itself (kinda like in the Lolita tiktok). What I do take issue with, however, is how minors or readers that lack those literary skills could misunderstand & glamourize these works, especially if they're written by non-professionals/people who don't know how to write about these topics (*cough cough* webcomics *cough cough*). Plus, as others have pointed out, the genre has a tendency to market towards the wrong audience with all those colourful book covers.
Agreed! I made a much more long winded comment saying something similar to this lol. The content existing isn’t the problem, it’s that it’s being marketed incorrectly and finding an audience that isn’t really the target. It’s really interesting seeing that people who have more education about this-either from the literary side or psychology side-tend to skew more neutral about the existence of dark content.
@@laotaohoney it is not about topics being wrong in itself, but if the writer romanticizes things like аbuse, they will affect people with that same idea, even those who think they are capable of handling such literary topics as it will be remembered by your brain as a memory, fiction or not
@@amira4465 i’m dying for you to find _one_ peer-reviewed scholarly psych article published in a reputable journal that supports what you said. no tiktok, no twitter-actual science, because that is not how human brains or memory work, especially and specifically in adult women. even if the fiction “romanticizes” dark content/taboos/tropes, that doesn’t infer that it’s trying to normalize it, and it doesn’t mean the author condones it or that the reader in any way desires it outside of the front and back cover of the book (or the web link, if we’re talking fanfic). this is literally just a repackaging of the ‘violent video games creates school shooters’ argument. people are not dumb; women are not dumb. people are fully capable of reading a little dark content, as a treat, and still fully comprehending that these things are not okay and not desirable in real life. this whole rhetoric is infantilism and also not applicable for a large majority of dark content anyway. it’s like y’all see content that’s related to romance or sex and think people can’t possibly separate what they read from what they feel, think, and believe. that’s a right wing (if you’re american) ideology and y’all eat it right up not even realizing it. i’m not saying you shouldn’t engage critically with what you read or the communities you engage with around the content you read, but this idea that we’re mindless slaves who can’t resist believing the book is real, actually, because they’re reading dark topics and letting it influence how they walk the world. i’m sorry, most people are genuinely smarter than that. now, teenagers, different story but that’s also a different topic. content like this shouldn’t be marketed toward them anyway because they don’t have the experience or maturity to engage critically with it.
@@amira4465 [i commented but don’t see it anymore, so we’re rewriting things] I’m gonna need a peer-reviewed scholarly article to back that claim up dude. Not the university of Twitter or TikTok-actual science. Because that’s not how the brain works, especially not for adult women. This honestly sounds like the violent video games cause school shooters argument, but worse. Women aren’t dumb. We know these things wouldn’t be okay IRL. The fantasy is the fun part, because it’s not real. You can close the book. In real life, there’s a victim and a lot of the tropes that are fun in writing are, obviously, scary IRL. Young girls reading dark content is a different story; they may be reading things they aren’t developmentally ready for or mature enough to understand critically, but women? Nah, lol. It’s infantilizing as hell to assert otherwise. We aren’t so dumb that what’s happening on the page is going to completely override our entire sense of morality or desires.
@@amira4465 [i commented but don’t see it anymore, so we’re rewriting things] I’m gonna need a peer-reviewed scholarly article to back that claim up dude. Not the university of Twitter or TikTok-actual science. Because that’s not how the brain works, especially not for adult women. This honestly sounds like the violent video games cause school shooters argument, but worse. Women aren’t dumb. We know these things wouldn’t be okay IRL. The fantasy is the fun part, because it’s not real. You can close the book. In real life, there’s a victim and a lot of the tropes that are fun in writing are, obviously, scary IRL. Young girls reading dark content is a different story; they may be reading things they aren’t developmentally ready for or mature enough to understand critically, but women? Nah, lol. It’s infantilizing as hell to assert otherwise. We aren’t so dumb that what’s happening on the page is going to completely override our entire sense of morality or desires.
I HATE being asked what's my favorite book... saying your favorite book is a classic makes you seem snooty or elitist... saying your favorite book is popular makes you trite or "simple" a la mob mentality... saying your favorite book is a lesser known work opens you up for comments as a contrarian/ "not like the other girls" it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't Catch-22 let people read and enjoy what they want!!
Yes! I work in a bookstore and get asked this question SO OFTEN. One of the most annoying things and they’ll continue to harass you until you say something. 🙄
I can't even pick a favorite author, let alone a favorite book 😂 the best I can do is name one of my favorite books (this time, I'll go with "Rusalka" by CJ Cherryh).
1:40 "finally leaves him to protect their daughter" is actually incorrect and one of my biggest pet peeve about the book (I haven't watched the movie so I don't know if the ending changed, but I doubt that). She leaves the men but still leaves her daughter with him half of the time, which is just mindblowing to me.
While i don't believe subjects shouldn't be a taboo and that anything can be written, i would like that dark romance to be categorized as a genre, shown its trigger warnings and be properly rated. It worries me when i see teenagers reading dark romance and believing that it is despicting a healthy relantionship. If you are an adult reading it, you do you.
Totally agree. ❤ It’s definitely important that younger girls and women understand that dark romance is just fantasy and shouldn’t be seen as a romantic goal. 😂 Triggered warnings are very important to add. It does not take away from the story. Mental health is important.
book rating is a bit of a controversial topic from what i've seen, but in the uk at least, I often see YA books with darker themes having a little 'intended for mature readers' at the back of the book. So no specific age or anything, jus a little heads up, which i think would be ideal for these kinds of books too. That way it's still up to reader discretion and hopefully shouldn't go too far into the censorship side of things.
I know right? It didn’t show up in my feed until I was like I wonder if Mina posted I haven’t see a vid in a while and she did 2 hours ago and I was wtf TH-cam????
31:32 speaking of 12 yr olds reading extremely adult content, we need to talk about Icebreaker. I was at my bf's little sister's 14th birthday party which she did at an ice skating rink, and 4 of the girls (who were 13) started talking abt how much it reminded them of Icebreaker. These little girls being exposed to graphic sexual content at such a young age is honestly crazy and it absolutely smth we need to be discussing more.
Thiss, such content being available for younger kids definetly has its effects... given that such stories, even though fictional, are still saved in the brain as an actual memory despite the persons awareness in the matter. Which means that kids reading such stories will easily "remember" it as actual abuse (though they might not actually recall it as it takes its effect unconsciously)
@@amira4465what does "saved as an actual memory" even mean? It's a story, did watching the Lion King mean as a kid mean that we all have Mufasa being killed "saved as an actual memory" now?
As a former fanfic reader I can tell you that young girls reading explicit sexual content is nothing new. I was reading graphic smut fics as a 13 year old more than ten years ago, and so were my friends. Even without fanfic, kids can access porn online very easily. Before the Internet, they would find it in magazines. For a lot of kids, early teen years is when they're first starting to experience sexual desire. Consuming sexual content like in books is a perfectly natural and healthy way to explore those feelings. I agree that there's a Lot of things kids are exposed to these days that they really shouldn't be, but sexual content in books is (in my opinion) not one that we need to worry about. (That said, I also hate Icebreaker entirely because it's the worst written book I have ever had the misfortune of reading)
Trigger warnings are SO helpful! They allow people (with trauma especially) to engage with content in a consensual way, where they are more prepared. It allows trauma survivors a little more ease in accessing contect that they might have shied away from before.
Ok, so talking about Percy Jackson and reading hierarchy. Back when I was a high schooler, my AP Literature professor told me to stop reading Percy Jackson and Harry Potter because those were for “dumb people” and “would make my mind numb”. His statements made me upset. Most of my classmates hated reading because of all the books we had to read for class. All I wanted to do was enjoy my reading interests for myself. Middle grade and YA are just different ways people, especially young people can harness their love for reading. If everyone has their own reading interests and pace, then educators and the general reader community should let young readers explore their reading styles.
My MIL is a retired teacher who still adores Harry Potter because that was the one series her kids would read. Like even the ones who didn't want to read anything would come in early just to get their hands on it to see what happened next. Your AP English teacher sounds like a real piece of work, but maybe they never taught middle schoolers from problematic backgrounds.
penance is a MASTERPIECE i’m so pleased you’ve mentioned it. clark portrayed tumblr/fandom/2010’s social language with such skill and care. it can be so cringe when people do it wrong but as someone who went to a UK high school through the same years as the novel i was FLABBERGASTED
I love Yandere x Reader fanficiton, so I get the appeal, but I think the difference is how it is marketed/labelled. The term "yandere" is understood to mean an obsessive, violent and abusive love, whereas these published books don't use such a term and instead are simply labelled "romance."
@@Beisser76 Anything marketed as romance really needs to have some elements that can be aspirational. So much of what is now sold as romance are piles of red flags with a red flag on top.
I’d argue the term “Yandere” has by debition a loveydovey side. It means that is implicit that every deranged action is out of twisted sense of devotion, which has more often self-fulling fatansy as being on the receiving end of such love. While on dark romance it’s more like realistic(-ly) romanticed abuse.
i think the whole “ adult women can make their own choices” is, while obviously true on surface level, really playing into choice feminism - a woman being able to make her own decision does not protect that decision from criticism, and it really doesn’t make it an inherently feminist act. increasing numbers of women reaching for books that center around the romanticisation of the brutal abuse of female lead characters does reflect poorly onto our society and the way women view themselves and other women. observations like these and the fact that historically, anything liked by a majority female audience is automatically disproportionately ridiculed, can and should coexist.
you wrote this si eloquently thank you. Though I don't think dark romance is liked by majority of female audience just check the good read reviews haha
I disagree with the second half of your comment. I think most people are able to compartmentalize the things they consume from reality. It’s like the way often see people publicly engaging in feminist or race equality rhetoric just to be the most misogynistic and racist thing breathing behind closed doors. The romantisation of such dark themes have spanned centuries and are even apart of cultural stories like greek mythology. Multiple classics have romanticised atrocities like war, does not mean the people that read them are yearning for the next world war to start.
Cinema Therapy does a FANTASTIC job going into the Twilight movies and bringing attention to the themes of control and abuse that Bella experiences throughout each one. I do recommend those videos so much.
I don’t think dark romance is inherently problematic, but I feel like there are problems that exist in how it’s handled. One being trigger warnings-even if you don’t want people to accidentally spoil themselves, you could have a page toward the beginning of the book (or in the table of contents) that indicates that the trigger warnings are listed in the back. Additionally, from what I’ve seen/heard, a lot of really young people (even down to elementary schoolers) are consuming dark romance or even regular romance (but with smut). I feel like there needs to be better marketing/labeling so kids and parents can know if what they’re reading is appropriate
Agreed. I think the biggest issue with dark romance (and any genre featuring a problematic topic) is that a good portion of the audience (and sometimes the author themselves) don't seem to realize that it's bad, either due to age or a lack of literacy. An example would be like Lolita, which requires you to understand that the topics featured are bad, yet this fact often goes straight through people's head who either believe that "protagonist = good" or that the mere existence of a problematic topic is inherently problematic.
IMHO, movie ratings with essentially what are trigger warnings "strong language, sxual violnce, etc..." don't really spoil the movie so it should be on books as well. Even video games have these labels and nobody feels the game is "ruined" by them. It doesn't have to be this huge detailed outline, a small label that readers can glance at and get a general idea of what's in store.
Gah you referenced Natalie's amazing Twilight video and even though I have literally watched it twice you've got me wanting to watch it again. That video was so freaking good. I crave that kind of analysis
To defend Game of Thrones; most of the characters who perform terrible acts are the villains, not the main love interest who gets to live happily ever after.
Exactly.and characters are generally realistic, fully-formed and like real people. Maybe good, maybe horrible, but very realistic. These dark romance characters are incredibly shallow, and the quality of dialogue is utterly miserable. Game of Thrones is a masterpiece in comparison
Yes! That's what I was going to comment - like, is it heavy, reading GoT? Yes. Is there a lot of stomach-wrenching moments? Tons. But the heavy topics are there to horrify you, and when the "heroes" take questionable choices (say, Dani crucifying the slavers), it's there to portray them as flawed characters and give them nuances. Whereas in Dark Romance they're glorifying the abuse and the violence, and romanticizing them by giving it happy endings and such, which I think it's what makes it different....
@@elihinata1 I think GoT definitely still shows some of the relationships that aren’t healthy in a favorable light (e.g. Dany and Drogo before he died, Cersei and Jamie being together at the end, Rhaenyra and Daemon ending up together-despite their ups and downs, etc.) but I don’t think that’s inherently a bad thing. Just because it’s romanticized doesn’t mean it’s telling you, you have to root for them and it doesn’t mean you therefore have to apply the logic that this relationship is fine outside of fiction. We know it isn’t; that’s the point. Sometimes the fact that it’s romanticized actually adds to the grotesque aspect of it because you know how much trauma or conditioning went into the relationship seeming acceptable to the MC (usually a woman). Dany and Drogo were a cute power couple in the show, you root for Dany in her new position of power at his side. At the same time, Dany was Drogo’s victim and we know she only grew to love him because of her upbringing. Between her brother’s abuse and her status as a woman-young girl in the books-within the world, it’s not shocking she ends up loving him. She’s been conditioned to do so. Her naïveté and hunger for power makes her grasp it where she thinks it will benefit her, including with and under the thumb of less than stellar men. I feel like the issue is more so people who aren’t developmentally ready reading dark romance (i.e. young girls), or people who aren’t the target audience for it and can’t interact with it 1. in good faith, and 2. with nuance finding it and not understanding or acknowledging the nuance. Dark romance existing isn’t really the problem, it’s the wrong audience reading it and the marketing being way too cutesy for dark subject matter.
wellllll i think that's too simplistic. and also, there is no using a trope subversively - if the trope is used, you still use the trope ya know what i mean. i had huge problems with especially the 1st game of thrones season because of the soft porn quality haha. overall i did like it though but probably wouldn't watch it again
At the part where you talk about the age of fanfiction readers; centreoftheselights on ao3 did a big survey this year (over 16k participants) and the biggest age group was 25-29 at 21%, the second being 30-34 at 15,5% and the third one being 22-24 at 15,0%! While there's definitely some sample bias and such, it's pretty clear that the fanfiction community has aged with the medium lol (at least on ao3!)
ooh! i wonder how much overlap the ao3 demo has w/ the fanfiction.net demo from 2010, like if many are the same users who transferred over from fanfiction.net as they got older or if ao3 just attracted a new older base, or both?
That's why I'm on AO3 and not Wattpad. I'm 36 and find AO3 more mature and quality-wise ahead of places like Wattpad, which seems to be populated by people between the ages of 13 and 23 (so the mainstream Teen and YA audience - and it shows).
that thing Mina said at the end about fashion trends only existing online is exactly how i feel about the "indie-sleaze revival" that everyone was talking about and seemingly never happened.
You legit saved my research paper, thank you so much. I’m writing and researching about the dark romance genre and its effects on the community surrounding it, and finding articles is really stressful. I wish more people were talking about it. I myself am a romance writer as well, and even I know where the boundaries lie. Thank you for taking the time to make this video, as well as including some helpful sources.
Imo, The "50 Shades" series was always problematic because it validates unhealthy and abusive relationships. I used to work with an anti trafficking organization where I learned that a significant portion of traffickers pose as boyfriends. We call them "Romeo pimps". Recruitment is often a process that is done gradually, so that the individual is not aware that they are in fact, being recruited. With controlling and abusive relationships being branded as romantic, it can make a person more susceptible to entering this type of relationship. As the genre of BDSM/ smut and dark romances has grown in popularity, recruiters can go to online spaces and find fans of this type of fiction. This has led to both in person and online trafficking. To be clear, I am by no means stating that one thing directly leads to another. And I understand some people just want to escape into this type of story. I love that Mina posted about this because I think it's important for us to think about what we're reading/ watching and how it might be impacting ourselves or others.
If the story romanticizes abuse by not showing the actual effects of it unrealistically not making the character being abused actually feel the abuse, then it *will* negatively impact the reader, even fictional events are saved in your memories no matter how aware you are of certain issues, it's why it is of importance to be careful with what you surround yourself with when possible...
@@amira4465Do you have any academic source for this claim? You people love to pull this 19th century style misogyny, assuming women are just not smart enough to read problematic books without hurting themselves, and then provide no proof whatsoever.
@@BlueCoolOla That applies to everyone, not just women and dark romance. Fiction or not, media and entertainment affect all consumers, even adults. It's just that adults have a better chance of resisting the influence due to having more developed critical thinking and pre-existing beliefs compared to children and teens.
This brings me back to reading Draco/Hermione fanfiction only because their dynamic was such a classic enemies-to-lovers trope. I was 13. I think it is rooted our teenage anxiety of identity crisis where we are all special in our heads but obviously is so different from real life. Thankfully I learned that we are still special and we dont need to change bad boys to good boys to deserve healthy relationships
I was really on the fence on My Brilliant Friend, but by midway through the second book I was sold. It really speaks to the gifted child experience from the girlies' side: the toxicity of high potential and impossibly big expectations, coupled with the self esteem struggles of having to constantly prove yourself in intelligence and in looks and everything else. I think every woman who was a gifted child probably reads these books and alternatingly identifies with either Lila or Elena. I think they're two sides of the same person.
I agree 100% about the Atlantic article. One of the more poignant issues it raised to me was more about the educational system and how kids now (for the past 15-20 years now) have been getting taught to test rather than learn, thus leading a lot of English classes to focus more on shorter passages and poems rather than full books. Also the points about the reduction of support from school administration and parents on getting kids to challenge themselves and actually complete longer reading assignments, thus leading many teachers to give up on those assignments. All in all, making it so that the younger generations aren't being challenged as much in our schools when it comes to reading. I don't know if I fully agree, but part of it did resonate with me from my experience in school, specifically all of the practice exams with 1-2 pages excerpts from books we never read that we were supposed to "analyze"
I saw my 15 yr old cousin reading credence by Penelope Douglas (if you don’t know it GOOD) and I was like girl….. where is your adult. I get it I read smutty fan fiction as a teen but still that feels like another level
i´ve been suffering at work and finding it really hard to get motivated, but watching your videos always gives me the best boost to do what i need to do just because im so happy to hear you while doing it.. anything seems possible with you mina!!!! thank you so much!! loved the video to bits and pieces
30:52. It's me, hi. Two of my favorite books are Pride & Prejudice AND The Last Stop. We can contain multitudes and read "High Literature" and genre fiction. (Still not a CoHo fan tho, lolz) ETA: Wuthering Heights (and P&P for that matter) are both romance novels. We just THINK they are "fancy" because they were written in the past and our teachers tell us they are "important" works. It doesn't make them any more important than PJO...)
a lot of literary classics were considered popular shlock when they were first published. people put them on a pedestal even though they might have plenty of flaws common in "shlock" today. it's usually because prose/wordcraft gets treated as this holy grail, even though it's only one small aspect of writing a story, or a novel specifically. only if a spec fic work is influential enough does it become "elevated" to becoming literary as well, one of the "good" ones, as if anything with a literary tag is better by default. who cares if your story has no tension, is unengaging and poorly paced and has endless pages of needless description. if the prose is fancy, it's set in the real world and has dark themes, it's in the elite tier of literary fiction. im tired of people pretending that liking stuff with those specific qualities somehow makes you a better or smarter reader.
The point about people not having the critical analysis skills to understand other people’s critical analysis is SO true (I say this as someone on their third English literature degree…)
I think that your point about hating certain genres, because the fanbase is predominantly female is right. Since I was a kid I always read a lot and in my adolescent years I got into classical literature. Back in highschool I was worry-free and had lots of time on my hands so consuming hard, complex topics naturally filled up my days, but after going to university to pursue medicine my life became more complicated. I started reading a lot of fantasy, romance, queer fiction or just pretty cozy and familiar stuff in general. Topics you have a taste to consume, in my experience depend upon your current reality. Sometimes "respectable" stories are just not it and you need some love stories with witches and dragons to escape everyday life. I feel like women to be considered well educated need to read high literature and when a man opens a book he is suddenly an intellectual. It is important to not care about public opinion and just make yourself happy. People who judge the loudest are the ones who haven't even picked up a book in months!
I love this take, and I have had such a similar experience with my reading habits over the years. I definitely had to overcome a little guilt about reading "easy" books, but now I give myself the gift of judgement-free reading, and only whatever I have the energy and mental space for at the moment. I do wish I had the bandwidth for classics and nonfiction more often, but only because I miss the experience - not because I feel inferior reading anything different! It is frustrating that it took so much work for me to deprogram myself from that mindset.
I was talking to my dark romance friend and was like "oh I love it when a character that represents death or darkness of some kind has a romance with a wholesome character." not realising I had not explained myself well enough. Because I like it when those characters are misunderstood and feared for no reason other than what they represent and the stories reveal the light in the darkness. anyway my friend was like "oh yeah me too I just love it when I man would kill for me and he's only nice to me" .... I was like... oh no we .... are not on the same thought track XD love her but its just not a genre for me. I enjoy horror and dark books but I don't want them to be romantic in the way dark romance is.
As a librarian, my main problem with dark romance is not the violence but the sexism lots of dark romance books I encountered show. I have romances, soft and hard, at my library and I try to avoid the one that are openly sexist to their female characters. The sexism (internal misogynie most of the time) seems more recurrent in the dark romance genre.
as a 27 year old percy jackson lover i am happy to see there’s so many of us 🫡 i don’t know why anyone would assume what’s your favorite book is the same thing as what books have you liked reading recently?? even then, i still read ya books now because i like a little story that’s not always that deep the point is escapism innit. (although i will discuss how deep the hunger games is if anyone ever brings it up lmao) it’s for sure about the nostalgia and the personal importance of a book to your life in whatever stage you read it. your favorite book could be the hungry caterpillar if that’s special to you that doesn’t mean you can’t read lmfao (i think my actual favorite book is the book thief which i read when i was like 14 and im ok with that, it’s a good book 🤷🏻♀️)
👏👏Yeeeeessss! This attitude towards dark romance is akin to censorship. It’s as you said, life is not all sunshine and roses, if we start down this road of saying what can or cannot be written about in fiction we are creating a slippery slope. Fiction is an escape but its also a source through which people (both the readers and authors) are able to process or rewrite their experiences. AAAAANNNND It is a safe way to explore your fantasies without causing harm to your self or others.
I had some beta readers for a my next romance who said readers will be pissed if the main female protag doesn’t end up with her abuser and ends up with the man who is good to her. Fuck that. We have enough “romance” that idealizes abuse. Dark romance used to be “he’ll do dark things FOR her,” and is now “he’ll do dark things TO her,” which is sad.
I still love my LV reverse monogram kislux clutch! It's versatile, fits a variety of items, and is definitely a workhorse! I think seeing it everywhere (like the LV speedy) is proof that it's already a classic.
i can't buy the claim that there weren't popular works centering young women before twilight besides disney princesses? like, i don't know what level of mainstream popularity we're talking about, but tons of YA has centered girls for way longer, and like... Legally Blonde? Mean Girls? 10 Things I Hate About You, Bend It Like Beckham, Clueless, The Princess Diaries, Ella Enchanted... Hell, Buffy, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Daria, Gilmore Girls, Lizzie McGuire, the Babysitters Club series... (Also more classic books/movies like Matilda, Alice in Wonderland, the Wizard of Oz, and Anne of Green Gables. And To Kill a Mockingbird is dark subject matter! Or Carrie is straight-up horror) love the vid, just don't personally wanna overstate the role of twilight. it was huge and formative for a lot of people, but there were plenty of big female-focused works around for those of us who weren't into it, but were into reading and watching heroines as tweens/teens at the time
you're not mentioning books also the point was about a female lead in books with dark themes! not that you're fully wrong, but i think you also have to remember she's talking about her memory of what was available to her when she was 11
@@mayas3422I think female leads in books with dark themes is incredibly common in gothic fiction, and if you're looking, you can find a myriad, long before twilight.
@@mayas3422 that's not what i got from what mina said, but you may be understanding what she meant better! she mentioned disney princesses specifically, so i did not read that as specifying books with dark themes. disney princesses aren't either books or dark imo? (i don't assume that mina is going from her memory of her childhood because these videos take a lot of research!) i didn't mention many books (just some that are also movies, like Ella Enchanted and The Princess Diaries) because on the whole, the most famous books do tend to get adapted into movies, tv, etc. i read a ton of books centering young women before twilight came out, and they seemed popular to me, but it's harder for me to assess the popularity of books from that era (e.g., Tamora Pierce's Tortall books come to mind, but a lot of people may not be aware of them; the Pern and Golden Compass books probably were bigger series with female protagonists at the time, along with A Wrinkle in Time). The Babysitter's Club and Nancy Drew are good book examples of something definitely popular, but not for darkness (also Ramona Quimby, Are You There God It's Me Margaret, Walk Two Moons, Heidi, Pippi Longstocking, the American Girl books, Little Women, Little House on the Prairie...), but at the same time i didn't perceive Twilight as dark at the time because i didn't understand the problems with edward's behavior. i did think, personally, of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books for the dark themes; when i was a kid, my parents were concerned about the presence of sexual assault and suicide in some of those books, but i don't remember if the ones with female leads were as dark as some with male leads. The Lovely Bones would prob be a good example for your interpretation, very dark and a book and popular pre-Twilight. hopefully not something mina was reading at 11, though, or at least i didn't until college.
@ArtichokeHunter she was talking specifically about media (books/movies) were the lead is a young female and the work is overall romantic. Ofc there are a ton of works with romantic female leads, those are mostly about adult women. There are tons of works with adolesent female leads that are not romantic. But i kind of agree with her, i dont remember that mamy mainstream stories where the lead is a teen female and the story is about dark romance. Twilight was my introduction to that world. Hunger games, divergent, FIOS, all came after. Before twilight, the only book series i remember being the same level of mainstream were HP and LOTR. ASOIAF came later too, but none of those are in the same genre as twilight.
@RoyalReyna all the ones i listed are a max of college age and most have romance except for the little kids ones. I think she was kinda vague about what she was actually talking about. Like yes there were big ones after but there were also before. 90s and 00s teen romcoms were big. They weren't "dark," but Twilight wasn't largely considered dark at the time, at least in my tween/teen exposure Tbh i think mina and most of people in the comments are probably a little younger than me and weren't as exposed to earlier romantic works. there wasn't a "craze" like hp and twilight necessarily but there were very popular works and there are extremely few things that are a "craze" Buffy was big, dark, romantic, teenage girl lead, literally romances with vampires... I forgot all of Jane Austen and that era, very heavy on teenage girls and romance. And Jane Eyre has the dark subject matter with the wife in the attic...
Wrote down Eliza Clark’s “Penance” to my tbr list after reading Notes on an Execution (a previous Mina Le recommendation) in two days and recommending it to literally everyone I know because of how good it was
I love the feeling I get after watching one of your videos knowing that my viewpoint has expanded and I am a better person for it. It's like, hell yeah, there is actually more nuance to this issue which I formerly held strongly biased beliefs on than I thought there was.
i don’t usually comment, but i felt compelled to. i hadn’t read and actual book in YEARS and reading twilight for the first time is what got me back into reading (at 17). it sounds silly, but i picked up the entire collection of jane austen’s works (and later the brontë sisters) BECAUSE they were mentioned in twilight, then started really enjoying classics also, i was SO excited that you mentioned percy jackson because i read the entire series and every related book this summer. i feel very strongly that this series is as much for kids as it is for adults. again, it was a stepping stone that inspired me to read classics like the odyssey and the illiad. PJO is an amazing introduction to greek/roman mythology as well as a great series on its own. interesting characters, complex relationships, exciting world building, etc. young adult fiction being dismissed because it seems childish or has a fandom of teenage girls infuriates me. these same books may be someone’s introduction to reading, hold sentimental value, or may simply be quality books. “children’s literature” is not necessarily written by unskilled writers or deprived of important themes. i think we should be happy that people (kids AND adults) are even reading at all, though the books they read can- and should- still be criticized. thanks for reading all this, i will continue to rank percy jackson as one of my favorite books along with jane eyre so long as i live
Super interesting video! I liked what you said about reading male-lead character novels for girls to explore their more masculine side of themselves. It made me reflect on how not many guys I know read books from a girl’s perspective… Also, interesting what you said about how fanfics can contribute to developing literary skills, analytical and structural wise. Overall, the video is so informative, all links are clearly made, well supported and I deeply appreciate your diverse vocabulary! It’s a relief to hear someone use more than the 5 most used adjectives. Thank you:)
I appreciate the gendered double standard mentioned with game of thrones, since so much sexual violence is written off as justified simply because it's a "medieval" fantasy. However, I don't think that means that these dark romance books are above criticism simply because they are largely written/consumed by women. Rather, it's always good to interrogate the reasons why we like all kinds of books and what influences are at play (be they patriarchal, racial, etc.). It's not a bad thing to want quality, even with dark themes, and what gets rewarded by "the algorithm," at least in the mainstream, is often not that. And I have books I read just for fun too, but I think this issue is so big because it's all about what gets thrust into the spotlight of current discourse, sadly.
Yeah its how you criticise things. Like yeah if you call dark romance stupid and silly little books for women. Your issue might be women. If you criticse the way it upholds the patriachy then thats a different type of crit.
@@vainpiers The video I linked below argues that dark romance does not uphold patriarchy, but is a way of coping with it. And we're not ignorant to why and how either.
@@MorenaDeRena I love this video. I feel like a lot of people discussing these topics don’t have the level of understanding of the psyche and why people read what they do to to fully discuss this topic with the nuance it deserves. It’s easier to say the bad content is icky and it makes me uncomfortable so it shouldn’t exist. Most people who are the target audience for this content are fully aware that the relationships are toxic in a real world setting and they like it anyway, because fiction is a safe space to explore all and that doesn’t mean you’d want to interact with any of it in real life.
12:41 the whole concept of Twilight reminds me of the So Weird vampire episodes on Disney Channel. It really annoyed me because of how no one really talks about it even though the plots are similar
You may have already seen but contrapoints has a great video on twilight/romance and how these “dark” themes are ways for women to enjoy things they shouldn’t (aka sex) in a patriarchal world
Been scrolling so long to find someone who talked about this! The bodice ripper genre was a socially acceptable way for women to experience their pleasure without the connotations of being a sl*t. Ravishment fantasies/dark romance fantasies, etc.
You are the first person I have ever heard explain the Dead Dove thing. With time I learned to look for it in tags and avoid it, but never got what the name was about
As a 6’3, broad shoulder-ish, cis heterosexual masculine(-ish) presenting black man, who roleplayed simultaneously male and female characters, i completely understand your point about it allowing one to express traits or emotions designated to the other gender. The women I’d invent were potential love interests I could see myself falling for (unfortunately not the vampire ones 😔), they did allow me autonomy to exhibit “feminine” traits that I couldn’t in my real life at the time. I felt liberating to just define an aspect of myself so freeing, in the characters that I created. I had the power to forge my own identity. Thank you Mina for confessing to be a part of the role playing community because i would never reveal that 😭. (I do miss it 😔)
As a humanities student, THANK YOU, your takes on reading are spot on Also, I love reading but I DON’T HAVE TIME. I try. I hope I will get better, at least I’m happy that my major forces me to read things that I would probably not read otherwise, and in my free time I’m allowed to excersize my critical skills on whatever I want
It’s crazy because i’ve heard the big balls snippet so many times but not once did anyone add in the detail that they were STEP-SIBLINGS 😕
im so sorry to be the bearer of this news 😭
@@gremlita crazy enough the new elected governor of Puerto Rico joke about her new born baby having big balls like his father on an instagram post!
just when i thought the writing couldn't be worse 🙄 CH was apparently a social worker before writing which is horrifying
if i havent been led wrong, i hear that scene also ends in a car crash that kills their son
I'd heard it without the context of them being teenagers and ngl it almost makes more sense knowing that context too
I’ve heard it said that these books are for women who never had a fanfiction phase and from everything I’ve seen, that tracks
Trueee! I wonder if it might also apply to women (,men & non-binaries) whom didn't grew out of their fan-fiction phases 🤔🤣✍️
You mean most of BookTok recommendations
I'd rather read the fanfiction. No monetary investment if it's bad, just click the back button and pick something else to read.
this made me chuckle
Not even a good fanfic phase.
Guys, we did it. A day has come where Mina Le mentions ao3. We've won
considering the context she mentioned it in... nah we didnt
@@varvara9624 A win is a win.
but at what cost
@@varvara9624 just started the video and I'm a bit concerned lol, I'll see.
That’s not a good thing. If it becomes mainstream the crackdowns will follow very quickly
One criticism that I see about dark romance and that I think almost everyone can agree with is how they are marketed. A lot of these books are marketed as a cute romance with flowers designs in the cover or sometimes as YA fiction, which makes teenagers or uninformed people more susceptible to read a dark book, when they were expecting something else.
I've seen the twilight books placed in the children's section of the bookstore...
And not just that but also normalizing it in the books.
yeah like what's with these cutesy cartoon covers on these books? it feels disingenuous and irresponsible at best tbh
I think the main problem is the remeaning of dark romance. Dark romance should still have a romantic aspect in it. If you are calling a book dark romance because of dv then you are romanticizing it. The romance isnt there to sit there and look pretty. Its like a rom com
Colleen Hoover is adamant that it’s fine if a writer doesn’t want the reader to know about dark and abusive elements ahead of time. She sees it as a writer’s right, ignoring that she’s depriving readers of the right to decide how to spend their money. I detest her.
As someone who leads a Percy Jackson Book Club for middle schoolers, I would like to take a moment and discuss the impact that series has had on kids - specifically their understanding of Classical Greek Literature. I have two eighth graders who went in hard when we started to discuss the second book, The Sea of Monsters. Their understanding of the Odyssey was better than some of the university discussions I once had the “pleasure” to partake. At our most recent meeting, we spent at least ten minutes going over the tragedy of Achilles and Patroclus and why reading The Iliad is important in relation to fame and fortune.
That students are shamed for citing Percy Jackson as their favorite is a travesty. That children’s literature is easily dismissed because it’s just for kids means dismissing amazing literature that sets the tone for how we see the world. I know I’m going off on a soap box about kids lit on a discussion about dark romance but I’m just tired of it being easily dismissed when there are some amazing titles out there.
I took Children’s lit for my English credit during my undergrad and it really opened my eyes to the important themes in children’s lit. It was cool to read things I read as a child with this new light. Great class. I agree children’s lit is not given enough credit it terms of importance and impact.
the PJO and HOO series were one of my earliest special interests (first ones probably dora the explorer and collecting stuffed animals XD). i think i started reading them in the 4th grade and was on the first HOO book at the beginning of 5th-i went through those books like crazy and they’re what made me so interested in reading back then (trying to rediscover that love now). i’ll have no shame saying that those book series are my favorites of all time even to this day :))
Yes!! It also makes me think of how animated movies/shows aren’t given the same consideration as live action
@@wooogie672Totally understand book burnout! For this book club, I’m reading ahead to prepare for the discussions and it has been a delight! If you’re in book burnout, reread something that made you happy and don’t ever feel the need to apologize for it. 🎉
I randomly got into PJO and HOO when i was sick and found the audio books on spotify. I was maybe 17? 28 now and i still think those are great books. I don't understand why those are handled as childish, when the HP series takes place in the same age range but is more acceptable. Let teens read teen novels. There is nothing wrong with it. In general, people should be happy if their children have fun reading books. And i still have the best greek and roman mythology knowledge out of all my friends (:
Genuinely believe that the children are just yearning for gothic fiction😭😭 There’s a surprisingly overlap of themes and trope between dark romance & gothic fiction. I mean take Wuthering Heights for example- Cathy and Heathcliff are siblings (through adoption) and have a volatile, abusive relationship despite their love for each other. Hoover has written about these exact things. The key difference between the two genres is the quality of prose, setting and of course gothic authors actually touch on politics. I haven’t read any of her books but I can’t imagine Hoover ever addressing class or patriarchy lmao. But I think that many dark romance readers would love (or probably already do) any of the Brontë sisters’ books! Bring back gothic fiction!!!!!
as a fellow gothic lit lover who’s currently reading wuthering heights, I agree. BRING BACK GOTHIC LITERATURE! THE MASSES YEARN FOR IT!
Gimme that ish! It feeds my soul!
One thing that you are missing is that the Bronte sister were self aware enough to write realistic outcomes:
In Wuthering High, Cathy and Heatcliff destroyed themselves and almost everything around them.
In Jane Eyre, Chatlotte Bronte made Mr Rochester disabled and had his state burned down while Jane inherent her own money to have a more equal relationship.
In the Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Hellen meets Arthur, a narcissist asshole, and he dies a narcissistic asshole. She couldn't "fix" him. He never became a perfect husband or father. The only thing she could do to protect her son and herself was to run away.
Hoover doesn't have that. She still believes that a broken man can be fixed with love because she seems to idolize her own abusive father
Basically Colleen Hoover is the embodiment of the stereotype that some women don’t care about what they’re reading from a critical lens just whether it gets them off. (In actuality this is a problem across genders at the moment that they just want to turn their brains off and “just enjoy things” and will freak out if you dare to think about what you’re watching or reading for more than 5 minutes after the story is over)
a huge part of CH’s base is middle aged white women who probably are already somewhat familiar with that lol
My main problem with dark romance is that so many of the readers and writers refuse to acknowledge it as a k*nk thing, and when you refuse to acknowledge it as a k*nk thing, you talk about it in ways that tend to soften or normalise the behaviour rather than have that healthy separation between real life and fantasy.
Tell 'em King!
Such a good point
Speak louder
honestly we owe a LOT to AO3 for providing an alternative platform for fanfiction that caters more to adult writers/readers. there are so many incredible writers publishing beautiful stories on there, and the communities forming around various fandoms are some of the most positive and supportive i've ever seen. i think we have AO3 to thank for the fact that fanfiction isn't as dirty of a word as it was 10-15 years ago. i'm a 29 year old writer who started writing/reading fanfic only 2 or 3 years ago, but my god it's been pivotal for me. i managed to stumble into a fanfic community in which the vast majority of my fellow writers/readers are around my age and have a lot in common with me. and they're wildly talented too, like, i'm constantly astounded I even get to read their work for free. i'll die on the hill that fanfiction is deeply misrepresented and misunderstood within the culture and just needs better PR, because it's quite a beautiful little hobby to have as an adult, if you know where to look. :) and shoutout to the firstprince community on AO3: a bunch of filthy, brilliant, angels who changed my life.
It's just a different type of creativity/escapism. I think the biggest problem with the PR perspective of making fan fiction viewed in a better light is that the ones that get printed and turned into "real books" are bad. If a better caliber of book was released and people were informed that it started as fan fiction I think people would start viewing fan fiction in a better light.
@@KatjeKat86 The thing is that the best fanfiction can't be turned into original books because it's far too connected to its canon and if you start filing off the serial numbers you're not left with much. All these Reylo fics turned into original fic had barely anything to do with Star Wars in the first place, for example, so just change a few names and ta-da, original fiction!
I consider my favorite "book" of all time to be a fanfic on ao3 called Ninety One Whiskey. Absolute literary masterpiece.
EXACTLY! Not all fanfic is bad and it annoys me when some ppl act like it is. Istg I’ve read so many fics that are way better than any say colleen hoover book 😭
This video made me feel a bit weird of liking fanfiction as a 31 year old (probably just my own insecurity). I got back into reading ff at the end of 2022, and it has been life changing for me. Not only it's a great source of entertainment, but an amazing way to learn more about myself and explore different ideas in a safe space. I think a lot of people get therapeutic effects from reading.
The issue for me is that I'm quite shy and need to build some confidence at being more present in these communities. I'm currently on Wattpad, but will probably try AO3 at some point. Most of the readers/writers of my community are younger than me, and I wish to find more people who are mature.
For anyone wondering, the bird you hear at 0:30 is a Wood Thrush!
Nice
Love it!
Wow! Amazing Hearing and so lovely to know!
Thank you, I have been wondering!!
That's pretty cool, OP; thank you for sharing with us your birds knowledge.
Plot twist: Wuthering Heights is, in my opinion, dark romance.
I think the same! The book have a topics that are expected in dark romance books, for me it's like the grandma of the dark romance, the one who laid the foundations
you know what.... you might be right
straight up what i always thought when i read it in high school, i stood firm in class discussions that catherine and heathcliffe were in an abusive and toxic relationship, after we finished it i just assumed and have referred to it as dark romance
But with more realistic outcome than modern Dark Romance
I think it was about the predation of the cycles of abuse but yeah
Speaking of true crime. Two years ago I did my first year of criminology at university as an adult learner. By the end of the year it was legit myself and one other lady left, hundreds of people had thought it was a course on true crime, which is was, only it turns out the truth about crime is that it's corporations doing most of it using numbers and not unsolved murder mystery podcasts.
I love this. So much of true crime is romanticized and dramatized. They definitely didn’t get to live out their fantasy in the course.
that's so interesting to hear!
Makes me wonder if people were misinformed, or if they genuinely thought their podcasts were covering uni level criminology.
Yes! That and the fact that your child is much more likely to be harmed by someone you know rather than a random child snatcher, or that as a woman you're infinitely more likely to be k*lled by your male partner than a serial k*ller.
@@VanTosser If you go the open university and check the 'introduction to criminology' module, you can see that there should be no illusion. BUT I have a working theory that it's the trigger warning at the end of the course description that made them delude themselves. The 'this is so horrible and there is nothing we can do about it!!!!' melt downs in the first few lectures should have been funny but they ended up frustrating. I am forever grateful that the woman who called Banksie 'woke' quit the next week.
👀
To be fair to ao3, I've read (and still do) many seriously good fanfictions there. Written just as good, or even better, than an original source.
I feel like it's hugely dependant on what an age demografic/emotional maturity of fans of the original source looks like.
If the fans are early teenagers, the fanfics will be, unsurprisingly, on their level. If the fandom consists of people in their 20s, 30s and so on, the stories will be written by them, and it will show.
(An example of that, which comes to my mind, are fans of Thomas Barrow from Downton Abbey. Many of them are long after their teenage years, or even their 20s, and I find the the percentage of good quality stories published to be high.)
Curious to see if the average age of users is older for AO3 than wattpad. I remember reading wattpad in middle school whereas I hadn't even heard of AO3 till college
@@Snapdragons7 I feel like it is because even for much newer shows, i'm always much more likely to find good fics on Ao3 90% of the time compared to wattpad were I have to look very hard to find even one well-written fic (which by the way I don't want this to come off as shaming just didn't know how else to phrase it but I don't mind that there aren't high quality fanfics out there because atleast people are being encouraged to actually write and be creative especially with all this A.I nonsense going around)
This. The quality on AO3 is leaps and bounds better than a lot of trad published books. There are some GEMS on that website, but yeah… the quality ultimately boils down to the average age of the fandom. Wattpad is largely for teens and the content there is by teens, and it shows. AO3 is largely frequented by adults, people who’ve been involved in fandom for a time. It’s a night and day difference in terms of writing quality depending on the fandom(s) you’re in. Wattpad is a great space for younger writers to get their footing and practice but it’s not where I would go to read content that I genuinely enjoy or feel awestruck over.
agree. i read manacled (dramione fanfic) from ao3 and it is one of the best books i’ve ever read!
plus, it depends on what youre looking for. even in fandoms where most fans are young children or teenagers, you will find good stories. just depends on where you look.
As a creative writing student, I find the dark romance discussions to be really complicated. Everyone has a guilty pleasure & I've seen fans of this/related genre(s) face unwarranted, borderline misogynistic criticism about their intelligence & preferences. Personally, I care more about how people engage with the content rather than the content itself (kinda like in the Lolita tiktok). What I do take issue with, however, is how minors or readers that lack those literary skills could misunderstand & glamourize these works, especially if they're written by non-professionals/people who don't know how to write about these topics (*cough cough* webcomics *cough cough*). Plus, as others have pointed out, the genre has a tendency to market towards the wrong audience with all those colourful book covers.
Agreed! I made a much more long winded comment saying something similar to this lol. The content existing isn’t the problem, it’s that it’s being marketed incorrectly and finding an audience that isn’t really the target. It’s really interesting seeing that people who have more education about this-either from the literary side or psychology side-tend to skew more neutral about the existence of dark content.
@@laotaohoney it is not about topics being wrong in itself, but if the writer romanticizes things like аbuse, they will affect people with that same idea, even those who think they are capable of handling such literary topics as it will be remembered by your brain as a memory, fiction or not
@@amira4465 i’m dying for you to find _one_ peer-reviewed scholarly psych article published in a reputable journal that supports what you said. no tiktok, no twitter-actual science, because that is not how human brains or memory work, especially and specifically in adult women. even if the fiction “romanticizes” dark content/taboos/tropes, that doesn’t infer that it’s trying to normalize it, and it doesn’t mean the author condones it or that the reader in any way desires it outside of the front and back cover of the book (or the web link, if we’re talking fanfic).
this is literally just a repackaging of the ‘violent video games creates school shooters’ argument. people are not dumb; women are not dumb. people are fully capable of reading a little dark content, as a treat, and still fully comprehending that these things are not okay and not desirable in real life. this whole rhetoric is infantilism and also not applicable for a large majority of dark content anyway. it’s like y’all see content that’s related to romance or sex and think people can’t possibly separate what they read from what they feel, think, and believe.
that’s a right wing (if you’re american) ideology and y’all eat it right up not even realizing it.
i’m not saying you shouldn’t engage critically with what you read or the communities you engage with around the content you read, but this idea that we’re mindless slaves who can’t resist believing the book is real, actually, because they’re reading dark topics and letting it influence how they walk the world. i’m sorry, most people are genuinely smarter than that.
now, teenagers, different story but that’s also a different topic. content like this shouldn’t be marketed toward them anyway because they don’t have the experience or maturity to engage critically with it.
@@amira4465 [i commented but don’t see it anymore, so we’re rewriting things] I’m gonna need a peer-reviewed scholarly article to back that claim up dude. Not the university of Twitter or TikTok-actual science. Because that’s not how the brain works, especially not for adult women. This honestly sounds like the violent video games cause school shooters argument, but worse. Women aren’t dumb. We know these things wouldn’t be okay IRL. The fantasy is the fun part, because it’s not real. You can close the book. In real life, there’s a victim and a lot of the tropes that are fun in writing are, obviously, scary IRL. Young girls reading dark content is a different story; they may be reading things they aren’t developmentally ready for or mature enough to understand critically, but women? Nah, lol. It’s infantilizing as hell to assert otherwise. We aren’t so dumb that what’s happening on the page is going to completely override our entire sense of morality or desires.
@@amira4465 [i commented but don’t see it anymore, so we’re rewriting things] I’m gonna need a peer-reviewed scholarly article to back that claim up dude. Not the university of Twitter or TikTok-actual science. Because that’s not how the brain works, especially not for adult women. This honestly sounds like the violent video games cause school shooters argument, but worse. Women aren’t dumb. We know these things wouldn’t be okay IRL. The fantasy is the fun part, because it’s not real. You can close the book. In real life, there’s a victim and a lot of the tropes that are fun in writing are, obviously, scary IRL. Young girls reading dark content is a different story; they may be reading things they aren’t developmentally ready for or mature enough to understand critically, but women? Nah, lol. It’s infantilizing as hell to assert otherwise. We aren’t so dumb that what’s happening on the page is going to completely override our entire sense of morality or desires.
I HATE being asked what's my favorite book...
saying your favorite book is a classic makes you seem snooty or elitist...
saying your favorite book is popular makes you trite or "simple" a la mob mentality...
saying your favorite book is a lesser known work opens you up for comments as a contrarian/ "not like the other girls"
it's a damned if you do, damned if you don't Catch-22
let people read and enjoy what they want!!
say it louder for the people in the back!!!!
Yes! I work in a bookstore and get asked this question SO OFTEN. One of the most annoying things and they’ll continue to harass you until you say something. 🙄
"But doctor... my favorite book *_IS_* _Catch-22!"_
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I can't even pick a favorite author, let alone a favorite book 😂 the best I can do is name one of my favorite books (this time, I'll go with "Rusalka" by CJ Cherryh).
1:40 "finally leaves him to protect their daughter" is actually incorrect and one of my biggest pet peeve about the book (I haven't watched the movie so I don't know if the ending changed, but I doubt that). She leaves the men but still leaves her daughter with him half of the time, which is just mindblowing to me.
they changed it in the movie but apparently the sequel book talks about how he uses their daughter to continue his abuse
@dia.96 Oh, that's interesting, since CoHo said that the ending was inspired by her own relationship with her father
While i don't believe subjects shouldn't be a taboo and that anything can be written, i would like that dark romance to be categorized as a genre, shown its trigger warnings and be properly rated. It worries me when i see teenagers reading dark romance and believing that it is despicting a healthy relantionship. If you are an adult reading it, you do you.
Totally agree. ❤ It’s definitely important that younger girls and women understand that dark romance is just fantasy and shouldn’t be seen as a romantic goal. 😂 Triggered warnings are very important to add. It does not take away from the story. Mental health is important.
And those pretty pastel covers shouldn't be used, they clearly send the wrong message.
book rating is a bit of a controversial topic from what i've seen, but in the uk at least, I often see YA books with darker themes having a little 'intended for mature readers' at the back of the book. So no specific age or anything, jus a little heads up, which i think would be ideal for these kinds of books too. That way it's still up to reader discretion and hopefully shouldn't go too far into the censorship side of things.
100% ☝️
Fully agree!
The blush matching the lip matching the mic is not lost on me 🧡
when the world needed her most, she returned!!
I’m shaking girl this is such a good topic to cover
shaking is the appropriate reaction i agree
How dare youtube hide this from me for a whole 28 seconds
I know right? It didn’t show up in my feed until I was like I wonder if Mina posted I haven’t see a vid in a while and she did 2 hours ago and I was wtf TH-cam????
Unbelieveable they dared to do that
Babe wake up, a new Mina Le video on a niche topic dropped
31:32 speaking of 12 yr olds reading extremely adult content, we need to talk about Icebreaker. I was at my bf's little sister's 14th birthday party which she did at an ice skating rink, and 4 of the girls (who were 13) started talking abt how much it reminded them of Icebreaker. These little girls being exposed to graphic sexual content at such a young age is honestly crazy and it absolutely smth we need to be discussing more.
Thiss, such content being available for younger kids definetly has its effects... given that such stories, even though fictional, are still saved in the brain as an actual memory despite the persons awareness in the matter. Which means that kids reading such stories will easily "remember" it as actual abuse (though they might not actually recall it as it takes its effect unconsciously)
@@amira4465what does "saved as an actual memory" even mean? It's a story, did watching the Lion King mean as a kid mean that we all have Mufasa being killed "saved as an actual memory" now?
@@amira4465 this is not how memory works and you sound like a bot
@@Minilove101 maybe im a dumbass but i do think that watching mufasa being killed, is in a way, now "saved as actual memory" in our brains lol
As a former fanfic reader I can tell you that young girls reading explicit sexual content is nothing new. I was reading graphic smut fics as a 13 year old more than ten years ago, and so were my friends. Even without fanfic, kids can access porn online very easily. Before the Internet, they would find it in magazines. For a lot of kids, early teen years is when they're first starting to experience sexual desire. Consuming sexual content like in books is a perfectly natural and healthy way to explore those feelings. I agree that there's a Lot of things kids are exposed to these days that they really shouldn't be, but sexual content in books is (in my opinion) not one that we need to worry about.
(That said, I also hate Icebreaker entirely because it's the worst written book I have ever had the misfortune of reading)
Trigger warnings are SO helpful! They allow people (with trauma especially) to engage with content in a consensual way, where they are more prepared. It allows trauma survivors a little more ease in accessing contect that they might have shied away from before.
girl can we get a makeup routine video sometime or something. youre killing it both in words and in looks
you've been cooking this one omg
Your makeup and look in this video is giving major immortal vampire lady in the 1900s vibes.
Ok, so talking about Percy Jackson and reading hierarchy. Back when I was a high schooler, my AP Literature professor told me to stop reading Percy Jackson and Harry Potter because those were for “dumb people” and “would make my mind numb”. His statements made me upset. Most of my classmates hated reading because of all the books we had to read for class. All I wanted to do was enjoy my reading interests for myself. Middle grade and YA are just different ways people, especially young people can harness their love for reading. If everyone has their own reading interests and pace, then educators and the general reader community should let young readers explore their reading styles.
My MIL is a retired teacher who still adores Harry Potter because that was the one series her kids would read. Like even the ones who didn't want to read anything would come in early just to get their hands on it to see what happened next. Your AP English teacher sounds like a real piece of work, but maybe they never taught middle schoolers from problematic backgrounds.
Your AP lit teacher was a dumb person 🙄
Should not have happened to you. I will never understand why a literacy teacher would discourage reading.
penance is a MASTERPIECE i’m so pleased you’ve mentioned it. clark portrayed tumblr/fandom/2010’s social language with such skill and care. it can be so cringe when people do it wrong but as someone who went to a UK high school through the same years as the novel i was FLABBERGASTED
Yeah me and my friends never read the same books. We all read penance and we all found it deeply relatable. Even my guy friends.
not only did i just find out about the parents of the baby with big balls being STEP SIBLINGS, but also that the baby just DIES IN THE NEXT SCENE?
talk about whiplash 😭😭😭
I’m so glad that Mina and Tessa are friends. My two favorite channels are buddies
I love Yandere x Reader fanficiton, so I get the appeal, but I think the difference is how it is marketed/labelled. The term "yandere" is understood to mean an obsessive, violent and abusive love, whereas these published books don't use such a term and instead are simply labelled "romance."
Also even most books that call themselves "dark romances" are overwhelmingly abusive and toxic relationships
@@Beisser76 Anything marketed as romance really needs to have some elements that can be aspirational. So much of what is now sold as romance are piles of red flags with a red flag on top.
A lot of Yandere stuff is not even to the level that dark romance books who have abusive male leads are.
I’d argue the term “Yandere” has by debition a loveydovey side. It means that is implicit that every deranged action is out of twisted sense of devotion, which has more often self-fulling fatansy as being on the receiving end of such love. While on dark romance it’s more like realistic(-ly) romanticed abuse.
i think the whole “ adult women can make their own choices” is, while obviously true on surface level, really playing into choice feminism - a woman being able to make her own decision does not protect that decision from criticism, and it really doesn’t make it an inherently feminist act. increasing numbers of women reaching for books that center around the romanticisation of the brutal abuse of female lead characters does reflect poorly onto our society and the way women view themselves and other women.
observations like these and the fact that historically, anything liked by a majority female audience is automatically disproportionately ridiculed, can and should coexist.
you wrote this si eloquently thank you. Though I don't think dark romance is liked by majority of female audience just check the good read reviews haha
Thank u for this comment- god.
This is one of the most well-worded comments on this subject I’ve ever seen. Sums up everything I think but couldn’t word properly.
Exactly!!!
I disagree with the second half of your comment. I think most people are able to compartmentalize the things they consume from reality. It’s like the way often see people publicly engaging in feminist or race equality rhetoric just to be the most misogynistic and racist thing breathing behind closed doors. The romantisation of such dark themes have spanned centuries and are even apart of cultural stories like greek mythology. Multiple classics have romanticised atrocities like war, does not mean the people that read them are yearning for the next world war to start.
Oh! I can't wait to get into this.
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Cinema Therapy does a FANTASTIC job going into the Twilight movies and bringing attention to the themes of control and abuse that Bella experiences throughout each one. I do recommend those videos so much.
I've watched their Twilight series and I can agree with you on that.
Those dorks
yes, they're amazing!
I don’t think dark romance is inherently problematic, but I feel like there are problems that exist in how it’s handled. One being trigger warnings-even if you don’t want people to accidentally spoil themselves, you could have a page toward the beginning of the book (or in the table of contents) that indicates that the trigger warnings are listed in the back. Additionally, from what I’ve seen/heard, a lot of really young people (even down to elementary schoolers) are consuming dark romance or even regular romance (but with smut). I feel like there needs to be better marketing/labeling so kids and parents can know if what they’re reading is appropriate
Agreed. I think the biggest issue with dark romance (and any genre featuring a problematic topic) is that a good portion of the audience (and sometimes the author themselves) don't seem to realize that it's bad, either due to age or a lack of literacy. An example would be like Lolita, which requires you to understand that the topics featured are bad, yet this fact often goes straight through people's head who either believe that "protagonist = good" or that the mere existence of a problematic topic is inherently problematic.
IMHO, movie ratings with essentially what are trigger warnings "strong language, sxual violnce, etc..." don't really spoil the movie so it should be on books as well. Even video games have these labels and nobody feels the game is "ruined" by them. It doesn't have to be this huge detailed outline, a small label that readers can glance at and get a general idea of what's in store.
As an avid dark romance reader, they’re always trigger warnings in the books. Do y’all actually read the genre?
I think it has to do with the rise of social media, such as Booktok etc, that many young readers are consuming dark romance books/smutty romances.
Gah you referenced Natalie's amazing Twilight video and even though I have literally watched it twice you've got me wanting to watch it again. That video was so freaking good. I crave that kind of analysis
To defend Game of Thrones; most of the characters who perform terrible acts are the villains, not the main love interest who gets to live happily ever after.
Exactly.and characters are generally realistic, fully-formed and like real people. Maybe good, maybe horrible, but very realistic. These dark romance characters are incredibly shallow, and the quality of dialogue is utterly miserable. Game of Thrones is a masterpiece in comparison
Yes! That's what I was going to comment - like, is it heavy, reading GoT? Yes. Is there a lot of stomach-wrenching moments? Tons. But the heavy topics are there to horrify you, and when the "heroes" take questionable choices (say, Dani crucifying the slavers), it's there to portray them as flawed characters and give them nuances. Whereas in Dark Romance they're glorifying the abuse and the violence, and romanticizing them by giving it happy endings and such, which I think it's what makes it different....
@@elihinata1 I think GoT definitely still shows some of the relationships that aren’t healthy in a favorable light (e.g. Dany and Drogo before he died, Cersei and Jamie being together at the end, Rhaenyra and Daemon ending up together-despite their ups and downs, etc.) but I don’t think that’s inherently a bad thing. Just because it’s romanticized doesn’t mean it’s telling you, you have to root for them and it doesn’t mean you therefore have to apply the logic that this relationship is fine outside of fiction. We know it isn’t; that’s the point. Sometimes the fact that it’s romanticized actually adds to the grotesque aspect of it because you know how much trauma or conditioning went into the relationship seeming acceptable to the MC (usually a woman). Dany and Drogo were a cute power couple in the show, you root for Dany in her new position of power at his side. At the same time, Dany was Drogo’s victim and we know she only grew to love him because of her upbringing. Between her brother’s abuse and her status as a woman-young girl in the books-within the world, it’s not shocking she ends up loving him. She’s been conditioned to do so. Her naïveté and hunger for power makes her grasp it where she thinks it will benefit her, including with and under the thumb of less than stellar men. I feel like the issue is more so people who aren’t developmentally ready reading dark romance (i.e. young girls), or people who aren’t the target audience for it and can’t interact with it 1. in good faith, and 2. with nuance finding it and not understanding or acknowledging the nuance. Dark romance existing isn’t really the problem, it’s the wrong audience reading it and the marketing being way too cutesy for dark subject matter.
wellllll i think that's too simplistic. and also, there is no using a trope subversively - if the trope is used, you still use the trope ya know what i mean. i had huge problems with especially the 1st game of thrones season because of the soft porn quality haha. overall i did like it though but probably wouldn't watch it again
At the part where you talk about the age of fanfiction readers; centreoftheselights on ao3 did a big survey this year (over 16k participants) and the biggest age group was 25-29 at 21%, the second being 30-34 at 15,5% and the third one being 22-24 at 15,0%! While there's definitely some sample bias and such, it's pretty clear that the fanfiction community has aged with the medium lol (at least on ao3!)
ooh! i wonder how much overlap the ao3 demo has w/ the fanfiction.net demo from 2010, like if many are the same users who transferred over from fanfiction.net as they got older or if ao3 just attracted a new older base, or both?
That's why I'm on AO3 and not Wattpad. I'm 36 and find AO3 more mature and quality-wise ahead of places like Wattpad, which seems to be populated by people between the ages of 13 and 23 (so the mainstream Teen and YA audience - and it shows).
@@gremlitalikely both, i am a "ffnet transplant" who uses ao3 but a lot of my fandom friends i've made in recent years got started on ao3 🤙
I feel that Anne Rice was overlooked in this video. She is the OG of every topic you spoke of.
that thing Mina said at the end about fashion trends only existing online is exactly how i feel about the "indie-sleaze revival" that everyone was talking about and seemingly never happened.
You legit saved my research paper, thank you so much. I’m writing and researching about the dark romance genre and its effects on the community surrounding it, and finding articles is really stressful. I wish more people were talking about it. I myself am a romance writer as well, and even I know where the boundaries lie. Thank you for taking the time to make this video, as well as including some helpful sources.
I love the friend's apartment aesthetic
oh my gosh, the flower crown thing is just like how we put little bows on like Anakin Skywalker and Rafe and other villains we find hot now in 2024
Imo, The "50 Shades" series was always problematic because it validates unhealthy and abusive relationships.
I used to work with an anti trafficking organization where I learned that a significant portion of traffickers pose as boyfriends. We call them "Romeo pimps". Recruitment is often a process that is done gradually, so that the individual is not aware that they are in fact, being recruited. With controlling and abusive relationships being branded as romantic, it can make a person more susceptible to entering this type of relationship.
As the genre of BDSM/ smut and dark romances has grown in popularity, recruiters can go to online spaces and find fans of this type of fiction. This has led to both in person and online trafficking.
To be clear, I am by no means stating that one thing directly leads to another. And I understand some people just want to escape into this type of story.
I love that Mina posted about this because I think it's important for us to think about what we're reading/ watching and how it might be impacting ourselves or others.
If the story romanticizes abuse by not showing the actual effects of it unrealistically not making the character being abused actually feel the abuse, then it *will* negatively impact the reader, even fictional events are saved in your memories no matter how aware you are of certain issues, it's why it is of importance to be careful with what you surround yourself with when possible...
@@amira4465Do you have any academic source for this claim? You people love to pull this 19th century style misogyny, assuming women are just not smart enough to read problematic books without hurting themselves, and then provide no proof whatsoever.
@@amira4465 treading weirdly close to thought crimes there
@@BlueCoolOla but the poor innocent women know not what they cast thine eyes upon and we must protect them from themselves 🙄
@@BlueCoolOla That applies to everyone, not just women and dark romance.
Fiction or not, media and entertainment affect all consumers, even adults. It's just that adults have a better chance of resisting the influence due to having more developed critical thinking and pre-existing beliefs compared to children and teens.
This brings me back to reading Draco/Hermione fanfiction only because their dynamic was such a classic enemies-to-lovers trope. I was 13. I think it is rooted our teenage anxiety of identity crisis where we are all special in our heads but obviously is so different from real life. Thankfully I learned that we are still special and we dont need to change bad boys to good boys to deserve healthy relationships
Bronte sisters were writing about abuse infused romance before it was trendy lol
I was really on the fence on My Brilliant Friend, but by midway through the second book I was sold. It really speaks to the gifted child experience from the girlies' side: the toxicity of high potential and impossibly big expectations, coupled with the self esteem struggles of having to constantly prove yourself in intelligence and in looks and everything else. I think every woman who was a gifted child probably reads these books and alternatingly identifies with either Lila or Elena. I think they're two sides of the same person.
shoutout to you mina for rp-ing men. you were always in demand and we female-centric rp-ers appreciate you!!!
cannot relate more to i dont want to explain omegaverse please, i cackled when you said that
I agree 100% about the Atlantic article. One of the more poignant issues it raised to me was more about the educational system and how kids now (for the past 15-20 years now) have been getting taught to test rather than learn, thus leading a lot of English classes to focus more on shorter passages and poems rather than full books. Also the points about the reduction of support from school administration and parents on getting kids to challenge themselves and actually complete longer reading assignments, thus leading many teachers to give up on those assignments.
All in all, making it so that the younger generations aren't being challenged as much in our schools when it comes to reading.
I don't know if I fully agree, but part of it did resonate with me from my experience in school, specifically all of the practice exams with 1-2 pages excerpts from books we never read that we were supposed to "analyze"
I saw my 15 yr old cousin reading credence by Penelope Douglas (if you don’t know it GOOD) and I was like girl….. where is your adult. I get it I read smutty fan fiction as a teen but still that feels like another level
I had to look this one up, and the plot is just weird af. The fact that the main character is "still two months shy of eighteen". Yikes.
Weird p3do book
i´ve been suffering at work and finding it really hard to get motivated, but watching your videos always gives me the best boost to do what i need to do just because im so happy to hear you while doing it.. anything seems possible with you mina!!!! thank you so much!! loved the video to bits and pieces
Is the coquette trend of adorning everything with bows just a new version of the 2010s flower crown?
30:52. It's me, hi. Two of my favorite books are Pride & Prejudice AND The Last Stop. We can contain multitudes and read "High Literature" and genre fiction. (Still not a CoHo fan tho, lolz) ETA: Wuthering Heights (and P&P for that matter) are both romance novels. We just THINK they are "fancy" because they were written in the past and our teachers tell us they are "important" works. It doesn't make them any more important than PJO...)
Casey McQuinston has such a gift for writing dialogue and characters! 😊
a lot of literary classics were considered popular shlock when they were first published. people put them on a pedestal even though they might have plenty of flaws common in "shlock" today. it's usually because prose/wordcraft gets treated as this holy grail, even though it's only one small aspect of writing a story, or a novel specifically.
only if a spec fic work is influential enough does it become "elevated" to becoming literary as well, one of the "good" ones, as if anything with a literary tag is better by default. who cares if your story has no tension, is unengaging and poorly paced and has endless pages of needless description. if the prose is fancy, it's set in the real world and has dark themes, it's in the elite tier of literary fiction. im tired of people pretending that liking stuff with those specific qualities somehow makes you a better or smarter reader.
a hannibal mention in a mina video is not what i expected, but what i needed
Considering I was literally reading Hannibal fic right before opening this video...same. 😁❤
Same. I almost screamed. Did not expect that. But I love it. 😅
Minaaaa I‘ve literally manifested this video since the whole It ends with us Drama! Thank you, thank you, thank youuu
Thanks
The point about people not having the critical analysis skills to understand other people’s critical analysis is SO true (I say this as someone on their third English literature degree…)
moderngurlz and mina le collab is something the world needs desperately.
I'm pretty sure they did do a collab video on Moderngurlz's channel a few years ago I think it was restyling cartoon characters
My TH-cam won't let me edit but I was wrong the video's on Mina's channel
honestly i wish you would post more often, your commentary is so insightful and fun to listen to my heart flutters a little every time you post here
I think that your point about hating certain genres, because the fanbase is predominantly female is right. Since I was a kid I always read a lot and in my adolescent years I got into classical literature. Back in highschool I was worry-free and had lots of time on my hands so consuming hard, complex topics naturally filled up my days, but after going to university to pursue medicine my life became more complicated. I started reading a lot of fantasy, romance, queer fiction or just pretty cozy and familiar stuff in general. Topics you have a taste to consume, in my experience depend upon your current reality. Sometimes "respectable" stories are just not it and you need some love stories with witches and dragons to escape everyday life. I feel like women to be considered well educated need to read high literature and when a man opens a book he is suddenly an intellectual. It is important to not care about public opinion and just make yourself happy. People who judge the loudest are the ones who haven't even picked up a book in months!
I love this take, and I have had such a similar experience with my reading habits over the years. I definitely had to overcome a little guilt about reading "easy" books, but now I give myself the gift of judgement-free reading, and only whatever I have the energy and mental space for at the moment. I do wish I had the bandwidth for classics and nonfiction more often, but only because I miss the experience - not because I feel inferior reading anything different! It is frustrating that it took so much work for me to deprogram myself from that mindset.
I was talking to my dark romance friend and was like "oh I love it when a character that represents death or darkness of some kind has a romance with a wholesome character." not realising I had not explained myself well enough. Because I like it when those characters are misunderstood and feared for no reason other than what they represent and the stories reveal the light in the darkness.
anyway my friend was like "oh yeah me too I just love it when I man would kill for me and he's only nice to me" .... I was like... oh no we .... are not on the same thought track XD
love her but its just not a genre for me. I enjoy horror and dark books but I don't want them to be romantic in the way dark romance is.
I love how you highlight that there’s literary value in reading something you don’t agree with!!!
love the tones in the video
Same
I want to be Mina le when I grow up
don´t we all
This entire video is gold. Such great commentary all around. The "Lolita" guy is so funny. 😂
Minaaa you’re looking so good!!
I really like your perspective that women are smart enough to figure what's health and what's not
As a librarian, my main problem with dark romance is not the violence but the sexism lots of dark romance books I encountered show. I have romances, soft and hard, at my library and I try to avoid the one that are openly sexist to their female characters. The sexism (internal misogynie most of the time) seems more recurrent in the dark romance genre.
this!
I always wonder why something markered towards women is often so sexist...
as a 27 year old percy jackson lover i am happy to see there’s so many of us 🫡 i don’t know why anyone would assume what’s your favorite book is the same thing as what books have you liked reading recently?? even then, i still read ya books now because i like a little story that’s not always that deep the point is escapism innit. (although i will discuss how deep the hunger games is if anyone ever brings it up lmao)
it’s for sure about the nostalgia and the personal importance of a book to your life in whatever stage you read it. your favorite book could be the hungry caterpillar if that’s special to you that doesn’t mean you can’t read lmfao
(i think my actual favorite book is the book thief which i read when i was like 14 and im ok with that, it’s a good book 🤷🏻♀️)
👏👏Yeeeeessss! This attitude towards dark romance is akin to censorship. It’s as you said, life is not all sunshine and roses, if we start down this road of saying what can or cannot be written about in fiction we are creating a slippery slope. Fiction is an escape but its also a source through which people (both the readers and authors) are able to process or rewrite their experiences. AAAAANNNND It is a safe way to explore your fantasies without causing harm to your self or others.
I had some beta readers for a my next romance who said readers will be pissed if the main female protag doesn’t end up with her abuser and ends up with the man who is good to her. Fuck that. We have enough “romance” that idealizes abuse. Dark romance used to be “he’ll do dark things FOR her,” and is now “he’ll do dark things TO her,” which is sad.
what's the name of your book? I'm tired of searching for good romace that depicts healthy relationship
Mina what lipstick do you use?? I hung on to every word you said but also the color is just so amazing. Keep queening queen
co-leen hoover joining the ranks with grand ol oh-pree and rob ray-ner. i love you mina but how do you always do this lmao
I still love my LV reverse monogram kislux clutch! It's versatile, fits a variety of items, and is definitely a workhorse! I think seeing it everywhere (like the LV speedy) is proof that it's already a classic.
A Mina Le x Booktube Crossover 😭😭 my dreams are fulfilled
girrrrl please drop the makeup routine your makeup is impeccable in literally every video
i can't buy the claim that there weren't popular works centering young women before twilight besides disney princesses? like, i don't know what level of mainstream popularity we're talking about, but tons of YA has centered girls for way longer, and like... Legally Blonde? Mean Girls? 10 Things I Hate About You, Bend It Like Beckham, Clueless, The Princess Diaries, Ella Enchanted... Hell, Buffy, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Daria, Gilmore Girls, Lizzie McGuire, the Babysitters Club series... (Also more classic books/movies like Matilda, Alice in Wonderland, the Wizard of Oz, and Anne of Green Gables. And To Kill a Mockingbird is dark subject matter! Or Carrie is straight-up horror)
love the vid, just don't personally wanna overstate the role of twilight. it was huge and formative for a lot of people, but there were plenty of big female-focused works around for those of us who weren't into it, but were into reading and watching heroines as tweens/teens at the time
you're not mentioning books also the point was about a female lead in books with dark themes! not that you're fully wrong, but i think you also have to remember she's talking about her memory of what was available to her when she was 11
@@mayas3422I think female leads in books with dark themes is incredibly common in gothic fiction, and if you're looking, you can find a myriad, long before twilight.
@@mayas3422 that's not what i got from what mina said, but you may be understanding what she meant better! she mentioned disney princesses specifically, so i did not read that as specifying books with dark themes. disney princesses aren't either books or dark imo? (i don't assume that mina is going from her memory of her childhood because these videos take a lot of research!)
i didn't mention many books (just some that are also movies, like Ella Enchanted and The Princess Diaries) because on the whole, the most famous books do tend to get adapted into movies, tv, etc. i read a ton of books centering young women before twilight came out, and they seemed popular to me, but it's harder for me to assess the popularity of books from that era (e.g., Tamora Pierce's Tortall books come to mind, but a lot of people may not be aware of them; the Pern and Golden Compass books probably were bigger series with female protagonists at the time, along with A Wrinkle in Time). The Babysitter's Club and Nancy Drew are good book examples of something definitely popular, but not for darkness (also Ramona Quimby, Are You There God It's Me Margaret, Walk Two Moons, Heidi, Pippi Longstocking, the American Girl books, Little Women, Little House on the Prairie...), but at the same time i didn't perceive Twilight as dark at the time because i didn't understand the problems with edward's behavior. i did think, personally, of Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books for the dark themes; when i was a kid, my parents were concerned about the presence of sexual assault and suicide in some of those books, but i don't remember if the ones with female leads were as dark as some with male leads.
The Lovely Bones would prob be a good example for your interpretation, very dark and a book and popular pre-Twilight. hopefully not something mina was reading at 11, though, or at least i didn't until college.
@ArtichokeHunter she was talking specifically about media (books/movies) were the lead is a young female and the work is overall romantic. Ofc there are a ton of works with romantic female leads, those are mostly about adult women. There are tons of works with adolesent female leads that are not romantic. But i kind of agree with her, i dont remember that mamy mainstream stories where the lead is a teen female and the story is about dark romance. Twilight was my introduction to that world. Hunger games, divergent, FIOS, all came after. Before twilight, the only book series i remember being the same level of mainstream were HP and LOTR. ASOIAF came later too, but none of those are in the same genre as twilight.
@RoyalReyna all the ones i listed are a max of college age and most have romance except for the little kids ones. I think she was kinda vague about what she was actually talking about. Like yes there were big ones after but there were also before. 90s and 00s teen romcoms were big. They weren't "dark," but Twilight wasn't largely considered dark at the time, at least in my tween/teen exposure
Tbh i think mina and most of people in the comments are probably a little younger than me and weren't as exposed to earlier romantic works. there wasn't a "craze" like hp and twilight necessarily but there were very popular works and there are extremely few things that are a "craze"
Buffy was big, dark, romantic, teenage girl lead, literally romances with vampires... I forgot all of Jane Austen and that era, very heavy on teenage girls and romance. And Jane Eyre has the dark subject matter with the wife in the attic...
15:40 Don't ever throw tampons in the toilet!!! They are not meant to go in there and they will ruin your septic tank 😂
Wrote down Eliza Clark’s “Penance” to my tbr list after reading Notes on an Execution (a previous Mina Le recommendation) in two days and recommending it to literally everyone I know because of how good it was
I love the feeling I get after watching one of your videos knowing that my viewpoint has expanded and I am a better person for it. It's like, hell yeah, there is actually more nuance to this issue which I formerly held strongly biased beliefs on than I thought there was.
Time to talk about horror novels that pretends they're romances.
HD Carlton, anyone?
i don’t usually comment, but i felt compelled to. i hadn’t read and actual book in YEARS and reading twilight for the first time is what got me back into reading (at 17). it sounds silly, but i picked up the entire collection of jane austen’s works (and later the brontë sisters) BECAUSE they were mentioned in twilight, then started really enjoying classics
also, i was SO excited that you mentioned percy jackson because i read the entire series and every related book this summer. i feel very strongly that this series is as much for kids as it is for adults. again, it was a stepping stone that inspired me to read classics like the odyssey and the illiad. PJO is an amazing introduction to greek/roman mythology as well as a great series on its own. interesting characters, complex relationships, exciting world building, etc.
young adult fiction being dismissed because it seems childish or has a fandom of teenage girls infuriates me. these same books may be someone’s introduction to reading, hold sentimental value, or may simply be quality books. “children’s literature” is not necessarily written by unskilled writers or deprived of important themes. i think we should be happy that people (kids AND adults) are even reading at all, though the books they read can- and should- still be criticized. thanks for reading all this, i will continue to rank percy jackson as one of my favorite books along with jane eyre so long as i live
2:45 i’m sorry?😃
Yessss!!! Mentioning Francesca Coppa, she was one of my favorite professors in college!! She does amazing analysis of fan work!
needed this take from you
Super interesting video! I liked what you said about reading male-lead character novels for girls to explore their more masculine side of themselves. It made me reflect on how not many guys I know read books from a girl’s perspective…
Also, interesting what you said about how fanfics can contribute to developing literary skills, analytical and structural wise.
Overall, the video is so informative, all links are clearly made, well supported and I deeply appreciate your diverse vocabulary! It’s a relief to hear someone use more than the 5 most used adjectives. Thank you:)
I appreciate the gendered double standard mentioned with game of thrones, since so much sexual violence is written off as justified simply because it's a "medieval" fantasy. However, I don't think that means that these dark romance books are above criticism simply because they are largely written/consumed by women. Rather, it's always good to interrogate the reasons why we like all kinds of books and what influences are at play (be they patriarchal, racial, etc.). It's not a bad thing to want quality, even with dark themes, and what gets rewarded by "the algorithm," at least in the mainstream, is often not that. And I have books I read just for fun too, but I think this issue is so big because it's all about what gets thrust into the spotlight of current discourse, sadly.
Yeah its how you criticise things. Like yeah if you call dark romance stupid and silly little books for women. Your issue might be women. If you criticse the way it upholds the patriachy then thats a different type of crit.
th-cam.com/video/cjG2OqCKDc4/w-d-xo.html this discussion has been had, I'm quite aware of why I read what I read.
@@vainpiers The video I linked below argues that dark romance does not uphold patriarchy, but is a way of coping with it. And we're not ignorant to why and how either.
@@MorenaDeRena I love this video. I feel like a lot of people discussing these topics don’t have the level of understanding of the psyche and why people read what they do to to fully discuss this topic with the nuance it deserves. It’s easier to say the bad content is icky and it makes me uncomfortable so it shouldn’t exist. Most people who are the target audience for this content are fully aware that the relationships are toxic in a real world setting and they like it anyway, because fiction is a safe space to explore all and that doesn’t mean you’d want to interact with any of it in real life.
You're my favorite commentary/essay channel, and I love books, so I love seeing this on my page, perfect timing
12:41 the whole concept of Twilight reminds me of the So Weird vampire episodes on Disney Channel. It really annoyed me because of how no one really talks about it even though the plots are similar
it's actually so important to talk about this, thank you so much!
You may have already seen but contrapoints has a great video on twilight/romance and how these “dark” themes are ways for women to enjoy things they shouldn’t (aka sex) in a patriarchal world
she shows said natalie's essay in the video. and literally quotes her.
She references Natalie several times in the video.
Been scrolling so long to find someone who talked about this! The bodice ripper genre was a socially acceptable way for women to experience their pleasure without the connotations of being a sl*t. Ravishment fantasies/dark romance fantasies, etc.
enjoy things they shouldn't but suffering for it all the more reasons I'm against dark romance
Damn that’s what I get for listening to this while doing something else 🤦🏻♀️
The laci green throwback OOOOOOOOOOH my goodness
You are the first person I have ever heard explain the Dead Dove thing.
With time I learned to look for it in tags and avoid it, but never got what the name was about
As a 6’3, broad shoulder-ish, cis heterosexual masculine(-ish) presenting black man, who roleplayed simultaneously male and female characters, i completely understand your point about it allowing one to express traits or emotions designated to the other gender. The women I’d invent were potential love interests I could see myself falling for (unfortunately not the vampire ones 😔), they did allow me autonomy to exhibit “feminine” traits that I couldn’t in my real life at the time. I felt liberating to just define an aspect of myself so freeing, in the characters that I created. I had the power to forge my own identity. Thank you Mina for confessing to be a part of the role playing community because i would never reveal that 😭. (I do miss it 😔)
As a humanities student, THANK YOU, your takes on reading are spot on
Also, I love reading but I DON’T HAVE TIME. I try. I hope I will get better, at least I’m happy that my major forces me to read things that I would probably not read otherwise, and in my free time I’m allowed to excersize my critical skills on whatever I want
24:54 people still do this, just with 🎀s
So true
The bangs look so good!!
my GOD that lacigreen throwback??? I feel 15 again, WOW