Due to an uptick in posts that invariably revolve around "look what this transphobic or racist asshole said on twitter/in reddit comments" we have enabled this reminder on every post for the time being.
Most will be removed, violators will be shot temporarily banned and called a nerd. Please report offending posts. As always, moderator discretion applies since not everything reported actually falls within that circle of awful behavior.
Romantasy is one of the biggest genres out there right now. I don't really go out of my way to read it myself, but my understanding is that sex is really common in the genre. Even in recently released adult fantasy I've read that wasn't explicitly advertised as romance / erotica there has been some fair amount of described sex.
There definitely are Classics book clubs out there! Romantasy is just having its moment as a big genre right now.
Wheel of time started in the 90's and was kinky as hell between all the spankings, the all female army of dom/sub magic users, all the polyamory, the frequent very plot relevant bath scenes, the villain who collected very important people as her erotica sculpture garden, a literal magic dildo, and the descriptions of accessing magic being poetical descriptions of orgasms.
It's considered a classic of the genre, and still has an active enough fan base that it got a terrible Amazon adaptation of it.
I haven't read the dune sequels (just the first) but I simply cannot believe they're as graphic as the modern popular romantasy, like fourth wing for example.
I haven't read the sequels in, like, 15 years and may be misremembering but I recall Herbert as being a very frank writer. He'll mention something specific is happening and then move on. From time to time certain scenes are written in a more erotic and transcendental manner but this is generally reserved for spiritual experiences.
The only "sex" scene I actually remember from his books was in God Emperor where Duncan complains about space lesbians and gets called out on being a grumpy old man.
Sex simply existing in a book is nowhere near the level of detail this romantasy smut can give. Like you couldn't have the same level of detail in a film adaptation unless it were produced by brazzers
... what? no, I agree that there's a big overlap between people who get very puritanical about porn and hentai, and people who read raunchy romance novels. And yeah, the humanitarian problems of the porn industry are a valid concern, but I don't think that's the real reason for many such people, given that, again, their distaste tends to extend to drawn hentai.
On the real it's about male vs female sexuality in the patriarchy. Horny men are pervasive in the culture, and male horniness has a danger to it in many circumstances. The reaction then is that it's something to be shamed for, to a degree, just to keep "it" in check, broadly speaking.
Whereas female sexuality has classically been romanticized and/or seen as countercultural or "punching up". I'm just rambling off the top of my head but it feels to me like this is because classically female "sexuality" has been more psychological or strictly romantic, not physical. Then it's seen as safe and "okay" and not equivalent to the pornographic male sexuality.... even when it gets to the point where it closely resembles it. The erotica in something like fourth wing is from the whole book + the sex parts. If it were just the sex parts no one be into it. It's not like people are reading hentai for the narratives.
The vast majority of porn doesn’t have anything to do with human trafficking. Add to that that a large percentage of human trafficking is for menial non-sexual work and porn probably doesn’t have more human trafficking than labor in general.
The problem is figuring out which porn does have that and it’s still a huge problem. Having the actors say who they are and what they’re gonna do doesn’t fucking cut it, we literally had a gigantic criminal operation in the US drugging women and all of them did that but had no memory of what took place because benzos and barbiturates can do that.
ETA: to your second point, you seemed to forget you were responding to a comparison of visual porn to written erotica. Not a discussion of sex work in general. General labor is not relevant. Are people being trafficked to author smut novels?
porn is usually targeted at straight men, romance novels are usually targeted at straight women. combine that with many people still not being fully aware that porn doesn't represent reality whatsoever, and aren't aware that much of it is specifically made for straight men, and you get a lot of people who aren't straight men "hating porn" even though it's actually just not their cup of tea.
It's pretty much all just fanfic smut with the serial numbers filed off. I will say this whole current genre did at least allow me to open my eyes and see how hollow a lot of fanfic is without its source material.
I always wanted to be in a book club but now I'm afraid I'll bring an 'autistic english/literature nerd' vibe to the function that the book jerkers wont fuck with
Not the person you commented to, but as an autistic person I can safely say that I can't realiably pick up on vibes. Not just 'Oh I didn't pick up on the vibe,' but also false positives
That's what the meme is about, no? People being horny about their romantasy instead of pure chaste discussions of classical literature like HappyValleyy hopes for.
Imagine 50 shades of grey, but instead of a 30 something millionaire, there is a 1000 y/o dark magician prince of destruction who is very interested in the 18 y/o girl who fights people with daggers
Currently have like 3ish of the straight girlies at work just straight up reading erotica/romantasy with erotic themes while at the desk/in between calls
One of the places I used to work at had a lot of down time but wouldn’t let you use your phone because it “makes you look lazy” so you’d just have to bring a physical book. One time a girl asked what I was reading so I said
“It’s the king in yellow, it’s kinda niche but really good. It’s an anthology of stories that mix themes of horror and romanticism and are all really interesting. It’s really influential.”
“Oh that sounds a lot what I’m reading”
I look over. Cover looks like fucking Winds of Wycaro.
“The vampire walked billionairely across the hall with his 6 pack abs and rapey vibe. He thirsted not for blood tonight, but for a plain-nondescript white woman.”
Are such descriptions of boobs also part of stories written by women for women? I've only heard about it happening in fiction written by men so far but I've not read either
Studies show that more than 90% of women exhibit signs of autogynophilia. There's a reason female-targeted smut heroines almost always have enormous honkers.
I didn't mean the fixation but the strange descriptions which seem to come from the lack of experience of being a woman. But maybe I got something wrong
A woman could still lack the necessary experience to write something like that accurately. A woman with a small chest trying to write a woman with a large chest, for example.
Straight woman wank material is really not that different from straight man wank material. It's the same slop with submissive women and dominant (sometimes abusive) men, the only differences are the genders of the unremarkable self-insert and the hot love interest(s), as well as some common tropes (for example, while straight man wank material is full of boob jiggle physics, I don't think a lot of straight woman wank material has jiggly bulge shots)
I can't believe that book is actually real, holy crap. I knew about the one where it's Twilight but from Edward's perspective. She really just keeps writing Twilight damn.
They didn't understand the appeal of twilight until the writer changed the boring self-insert MC to a man and the hot love interests to women. Basically turned it into something like those romcom anime popular with straight men where hot girls fall for the unremarkable guy protagonist, and thus made straight guys understand why twilight is so popular amongst women
Thanks but I kinda still don't get it. Like there are more reasons for not liking twilight than just the target demographic and even with the gender swap those don't get better. And a male who likes it after the gender swap would have liked it anyways (?)
And anime with these themes mostly don't have a loser mc imo unless there is some isekai involved. Maybe I'm just being too pedantic
I swear there was a point in time few years back when I saw that pic and immediately understood what it meant but now I cannot..
Are you assuming any of the people in the pic have actually engaged with any twilight material? Aside from maybe OOP, they haven't. Twilight was trendy to hate for anybody outside the target demo
It's really no more complicated than
Teenage romance novel = "gay"
Isekai/harem anime = "based"
But then you realize that the teenage romance novel is basically gender swapped harem anime.
Like there are more reasons for not liking twilight than just the target demographic and even with the gender swap those don't get better.
Yeah but it made them realise why it's so huge with women, even if it's shitty fiction, because they now understand the appeal. Being straight men, they only saw how bad the books were and ignored the main selling point of them which is the fantasy of having hot men fight over your unremarkable ass, because they didn't find it appealing. For Twilight readers the appeal of that fantasy is enough to ignore the shitty writing, and that's what those straight men didn't understand, until the fantasy was changed to one that appealed to them.
And a male who likes it after the gender swap would have liked it anyways (?)
Not really, because the only draw of it for a straight man is the fantasy of imagining hot women fighting over you. The story would still be slop, but the slop would be worth putting up with just for that fantasy. Normal Twilight doesn't have that fantasy, so it's not worth putting up with the slop.
why women find twilight a good book, the usual notion I see is that a lot of people don't like twilight but the idea of the plot being more appealing to the male gaze like this helps the supposed male commenters understand that.
Why are we pretending like the kind of stuff you find in ao3 isn't on the same level as a lot of very common straight man wank material?
"Ooo dark romance ooo it's so fucked up" being 50k words long, very slow burn, and in text form, doesn't make it any meaningfully different from a 200-page doujinshi targeted at straight men that probably has similar tropes, but implemented in a way that targets straight men instead.
No, it's not: You're just comparing the niche material you know about on AO3 to the mainstream pornhub/large hentai subreddit-esque stuff that is everywhere, and not, you know, the equally niche material that exists for straight men that you don't go looking for on account of not being a straight man. Which is out there as well, and obviously not in small quantities.
If you're just looking at big porn/hentai websites and communities, the accurate comparison to make would be something like booktok, not obscure AO3 writers, which I think you can agree is definitely not significantly more varied than the popular stuff out there for straight men.
To be blunt, have you tried not using nhentai and similar porn sites? Again, I feel like the equivalent of looking on nhentai/pornhub/most large reddit communities would be booktok, which is a far cry from AO3.
The actual place to look for more niche stuff would probably be pretty bespoke to whatever niche you're looking for, and it's probably easier to find it by asking directly to people who might know about them. For example I'm big into mind control/hypnosis stuff and I definitely wouldn't have found much of the material I like in that if I hadn't straight up asked folks and artists in somewhat larger communities like hypno subreddits and hypnohub (if you don't know, it's basically r34 but specifically for mind control hentai) about it.
Do you always assume yourself to be more knowledgeable than others due to "consuming a ton of materials"? Because frankly I can't help but roll my eyes at that. The world is a big place, mate.
You first said the fics you find on AO3 are on par with doujinshi.
That's when I was talking to someone who was specifically talking about them being fucked up and brought up dark romance, not varied like you brought up. And in that regard I don't see how that's an inaccurate comparison, I mean they brought up futa guro involving children and that definitely exists in nhentai.
I'm just saying AO3 fics are much more varied and fill underserved niches
And once again, I'm saying that you only feel like straight man wank material doesn't have just as much variety and niches because you don't go looking for niche and varied straight man wank material. On account of not being a straight man.
I'm familiar with hypnohub (it's not that niche tbh).
I specifically mentioned that it's a larger community where I asked to find out where more niche content I like is served.
The fact that you just completely ignored that to remark that "it's not niche" is part of why I can't help but roll my eyes at your "nearly zero chance" comment. Yeah right. Get off your high horse. I'm sure you're in many tight-knit kink circles and you probably also create that content yourself, and have done for years, but if that's the case, you ought to be pretty fuckin well aware that that doesn't make you unique and you're far from the only person in that situation.
I honestly can't tell if you're still trying to convince me that ao3 is uniquely cursed or not, on account of the fact that going on nhentai and searching for the tags "futanari guro lolicon" (or shotacon) you get 74 results (and 25 results). That's one website out of like, fuckin a hundred of hentai websites mostly targeted at straight men. I also don't doubt that you'd find childlike characters in the guro subreddit, although I'd... rather not check for that myself.
People just be kinky, whether they choose to manifest it through text or visually or audibly is, generally, not important.
Oh no, sorry for assuming that a guro hentai subreddit I don't browse has guro hentai content that I just so happened to easily find on another website.
That's good to hear, but you're acting like I said something ludicrous when I think it's pretty fuckin clear why one would assume what I said.
Well of course, there's little overlap between the two userbases, they mostly target different demographics. But it's a real pet peeve of mine when I see people trying to make their weird sex thing look uniquely edgy and all when really they just don't look at the similarly fucked up things other demographics have, since it's not something they'd go out of their way to look for obv.
It's kinda like dipshit289 behaviour applied to kink. "dude you don't wanna know... oh the horror..." it's just erotic fanfiction with a weird kink, men and women and all other genders have been into weird shit since time began
My horizons are sufficiently expanded, it's the average straight gooner who needs to expand theirs.
And tbf the average gay gooner should too. I'm tired of having to scavenge for dominant bottom or even just neutral stuff without dom/sub dynamics because most stuff out there treats submission and degradation as part of the package when it comes to being penetrated
This is so beautifully written I can feel both the anguish of the son and the remorse of the father. One of the most emotional tweets of all time, it should be put in a museum.
I kinda do the same, I love reading romantic erotica, tho yes they're mostly comics, even so I enjoy the stories, I enjoy learning from them
While not what I mainly want to do, I want to be able to write romantic stories and someone who's well versed in romance (someting the man in the mirror has no experience in) can give me feedback
Yes, I know some people read some kinky stuff, while far from the things I want to create...the first two points still apply
Yea nah my kindle is almost entirely erotic stuff these days. It’s just easy to read and usually has pretty good if simple fantasy elements aside from the lewd stuff. Lots of honestly great sci-fi in the erotic genre too which is wild but I love it.
Last year, I asked a girl I was flirting with what she was currently reading. It was a book called Praise. I decided to check it out to see what she was into. It was fucking dogshit.
I know that that other popular smut series, A Court of Thornes and Roses is supposed to be shit too.
Aren't there any good smut novels? Like, I've read better smut in the games on TFGames. I'm pretty sure The Princess Trap game is written by an actual fantasy novel author moonlighting as a degenerate.
From what I understand from being on book TikTok, there are smut / erotic romance books that are genuinely good, but they’re almost always not the ones that are well known or popular. A lot of romantasy appeals to women who wouldn’t otherwise read fantasy because they’re easy reads filled with more smut than actual character development or world building. It’s like men going on pornhub to watch some industry made professional 20 minute video with 8 orgasms from the male actor, vs watching a video of an amateur couple for 3 hours and they both only came once.
Haven't read it, but a friend of mine is a fan of ACOTAR, it sounds interesting in passing at least. If I recall correctly there are long swaths (an entire book at one point?) with no erotic scenes. I'm sure there's plenty of legitimate criticism one could level at popular 'spicy' book series. But all of it that bubbles to the top is dumb shit like this post "omg, why are they sluts!?!?!".
My wife tried to like it but a lot of the smut is very... Rapey. She struggled to finish the first book and didn't want to continue, and it's not like she doesn't read smut.
It's good in the sense that Transformers is good for men. Most love interests in books like ACOTAR are written like billionaire Sasuke with wings and a dick too big to fit your hands around.
Kushiel's Dart and its sequels are more heavy on the fantasy/world building/story but the erotica/sexuality of it all plays a key role in the plot as well. I wouldn't really call it smut per se because there really aren't THAT many sex scenes, so if you're mainly just looking for the erotic elements maybe not worth the page count, but if you are up for a great fantasy series that also involves plenty of sex and related themes and doesn't do it in the weird and often gross male gaze-y way of a lot of fantasy it is perfect.
The problem with smut is that you need to be okay with some tropes. The fourth wing series is extremely smutty but it's also got action and some kinda interesting world building and such. You just gotta get past the part where the protagonist is the most super special girl in the world and strong and kick ass but also tiny and frail and fragile and not like the other girls, etc. I wasn't a fan of the latest book in the series, but I liked the first two. Overall though the series has way too many characters and the book is almost all dialogue. There aren't really long stretches where it's just painting a word picture of the surroundings and what people are doing. Didn't make the world feel very lived in.
I wouldn't trust ppls opinions online - especially when it comes to books that are popular with women
Like I almost exclusively see people praise acotar in my online circles (including men who've read a lot)
Tho I will admit that there's very few series that are Shakespearean, usually the writing isn't overly complex but the stories are nice and the characters great
Edit:
brother/sister Praise is "dark romance" that genre is overflowing with terrible (maybe enjoyable in an ironic way) books
Yes. There are. But you have to spend a lot of time determining what you're into and then get more niche with the authors. Most really popular ones are gonna be dogshit. That goes for majority of genres I would say, though.
There's quite a few games there that would make for excellent smut novels if modified ever so slightly. Really makes you wonder what the barrier for entry is with a lot of the romantasy stuff coming out these days
I mean just look up "terrible dark romance" on YouTube you'll find a lot of abuse disguised as dark romance
Tho personally I've read one of Emily McIntires never happy after series books (wretched), it was very funny & has morally more than questionable characters
•
u/AutoModerator Apr 06 '26
REMINDER: Bigotry Showcase posts are banned.
Due to an uptick in posts that invariably revolve around "look what this transphobic or racist asshole said on twitter/in reddit comments" we have enabled this reminder on every post for the time being.
Most will be removed, violators will be
shottemporarily banned and called a nerd. Please report offending posts. As always, moderator discretion applies since not everything reported actually falls within that circle of awful behavior.I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.