Brittany Luce

There's a YouTube video, I believe from last year, that has prompted months of discourse among authors, influencers, and fans, making the argument that popular romanticist books are filled with old school, trad wifey ideas about relationships.

Like in A Court of Thorns and Roses, the main character is powerful, but her male love interest is even more powerful and has to save her a lot of

Do these criticisms ring true for you?

And are there any examples of this that people are discussing in particular that you've seen?

Netta, I want to hear from you on this as well.

How are you interpreting these criticisms of romanticism that you've seen?

And are there any examples of this kind of discussion that you've seen out in the wild?

There is another vein of persistent commentary that I want to get into, which is the way that politics are discussed and interpreted within these books.

Some of these books, as you mentioned, Netta,

present serious challenges to fascist governments or authoritarian rule.

But there are also other books that seem to reinforce some of those politics, or at least that's the way that some readers have interpreted them.

Talk to me about how the politics

show up in these books, or rather how it seems like some of these books or series are imagining or reimagining authoritarian or fascistic or prejudicial governments?

So that kind of read could be insulting to a whole lot of women readers.

Princess, I see you nodding a lot.

I hear some mm-hmms.

Tell me what's on your mind.

I don't know, there still are some veins of criticism of romanticism that kind of hit upon a common theme, as you both have pointed out.

You know, the things that young women like, women in general like, are frivolous or escapist or cheap, you know, romanticism often gets described as a way to turn your brain off.

Like, how do we critique the books in this genre without falling into the misogynistic tropes that demean what women like?