r/romantasycirclejerk

What did you just read that blew your mind. Plot holes. Terrible world building. Cringe worthy dialogue. Rules: be specific, screen shots or examples. Not just the usual "the writing was bad"

Why are books so ugly now? Every new book looks exactly the same. Shiny lifeless covers with overwrought titles. I don’t care whether you’re reading Maas or Sanderson or Yarros or the dungeon crawler guy, the carefully curated bookshelf you’ve been showing off is hideous.

Personally, I cannot read. All I know is all books are ugly now and there’s no point even pretending to be literate. The 21st century has seen the fall of the humble cover artist. Gone are the Margaret Brundages and Michael Whelans and Alicia Austins and Frank Frazettas of the world. I don’t know if Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell are dead yet but they might as well be.

Once upon a time you could show off your array of smutty fantasy without needing to crack open the spine. Everyone knew just from the cover exactly how perverted your tastes were. Now, no one can tell you are into naked alien ladies or ripped fantasy men just from a cursory glance at the book you left out on the coffee table. Not unless they’ve actually read the heinous tome, and what kind of nerd would admit to being literate?

I have no idea what the world is coming to. It’s pretty dark out there. All I want is for people to know that sapphic harems and MFM threesomes make for elite literature, but those books don’t even exist anymore.

As a faithful patron of this sub, and as a weird girl sloopie myself, I think a lot about sloopy romantacy literature and american American-demographic reading listening trends. I listened [the irony] to an episode of [redacted to protect our precious baby girl brains] today about the idea that we’re becoming a “post literate” society. This idea is pretty popular on book social media, often referred to as becoming an illiterate society—though that’s quite the misnomer because one means that you can’t read and one means that you read posts good. The struggle isn’t that people can’t read [wait what?] it’s that people are reading fewer books [fuckin’ audiobooks, man], we’re losing the ability/desire to sustain attention through long-form text [because we keep listening to fucking podcasts and now we can’t even finish a sentence properly], etc. Startling statistics point to less than 30% of adult americans Americans finishing just one book in 2024….[I can’t with the pronoun inconsistency here. And yes, a grown woman used a four-dot ellipsis to end her sentence rather than leading us to the conclusion she is painstakingly attempting to reiterate. Moving on….]

This got me thinking about this subreddit, where we are so invested in the project of weird girl sloopy romantacy literature and frankly, creating a non male mail male dominated [I, Dr. A. Mail, hereby prescribe CMOS 7.96 to this sloopie before they be allowed to write any further] space to discuss themes central to women’s experience through the romantacy smut literary art form. How is it that the pod cast [*claws eyes*] bro consensus is that “no one reads anymore” when communities like this are stronger than ever?

So I’m curious what you all think. My lovely, fascinating, girl power compatriots- get into the weeds of this with me:

Do you think people are genuinely becoming less interested in reading, or are we just reading differently- remote in one hand, headphones moaning erotic asmr audio, our left hand free to sin at will?

Why do you think weird girl romantacy lit inspires such intense engagement compared with a lot of other contemporary fiction? Is it that our porn brains are different from other readers?

Has being part of an online reading community made you read posts more? Or are you like me, and you skipped ahead to this part, only to realize, damn, that’s a lot of words and I aint readin’ alla dat. But then you feel like you’re missing out, so you scroll back and try again. And again. Until your eyes cross and you think that you may actually be illiterate after all.

Does the internet ultimately compete with reading, or has it instead created new kinds of readers and reading communities? Are we post literate now?

And perhaps most importantly: **what does this subreddit tell us about the future of reading?**

[today is my third cake day. enjoy.]

I’ve tried to get 3 different women in my life to read this series but none of them made it past the first novel. And only one of the three actually finished the first one. Strangely enough all of them said basically the same thing. “It’s just not a woman’s kind of book” I’m curious to get the perspective of a woman who has read this series. Did you find anything about these books that would cause a female reader to feel that way??

uj/ sloopies this was edit free.

That the mee mee's were only plot devices for moo moo. The mee mee's are so much more than that, and to say that they only matter for moo moo's character arc is fucking blasphemy.

Weewuh J Wizz crushed hella beers and wrote a book

And damnit, im gonna READ IT. And it will SURELY. Be about the mee mee's. Not just moo moo.

uj/ im sorry

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Hey everyone!

I’m desperately trying to find some amazing romantasy-inspired shows to get me out of a reading watching slump! I’ve been stuck in one for the past few months and, no matter how much I want to read watch, I just haven’t been able to commit to an episode for very long. 😭

I’m especially looking for those “I couldn’t pause it,” “stayed up way too late watching,” “I’m still thinking about it” kind of series.

So please, give me your best recommendations! I’m open to anything with great romance, drama, fantasy, morally grey characters, angst, addictive plots… honestly, if you think it’ll pull me straight out of this slump, I NEED IT. Bonus points for books shows that had you completely obsessed! Thank you in advance — I can’t wait to add approximately 500 books shows to my TBR and pretend I’ll actually get through them all. 😂❤️

Here are some of the series I’ve read and absolutely LOVED:

LOG

Sharter Me Series

Once Upon a Broken Butt Series

Crossliar Series

Brutal Sharts Series

In Her Shampoos

Empire of Foils

Maple Gills Series

The Folk of the Cuck ChAir

Red Queef

Lancaster Prep My Butthole

Obstetricians

Dark Murse

Naughtice

The Fook of Azrael, innit

Knockemoutwithenemas Series

Chestnut Sacks

Piles Nigh / The Right Moove

Swelladonna Series

And a few shows by Makimi Horny, Almi Morningwood & Wanna Wang

The crazy obsessive fans need to chill it’s making me embarrassed to be a part of this fandom because of these hoards of nit-picky fans. I get you love this story but touch grass. The criticism over characters personalities, book titles, using tropes, ETC. is too much!! Even Evil Stepsister vs Hot Shadowdaddy, for example, they’ve both done good and bad things for different reasons and I like them both. So many main characters in this book series and her others have done good and bad things. And if you hate certain characters or her writing so much stop writing huge rants about them in comment sections just don’t read the fucking book.