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I just got out of a relationship, not even two weeks ago. I don't regret it, but I also don't regret ending it. At the core of it, we just weren't a great match, and really I think I let it go on too long despite knowing that. But in the wake of this breakup, I've been finding myself with lingering thoughts about some of her interests that I was kinda predisposed to dislike, usually because of a kind of anti-teenage-girl-misogyny that I grew up surrounded by online. Interests that fall into that bucket for me are things like boy bands, taylor swift, fanfiction, and kind of the modern analogues of that box of interests includes TikTok (generally), BookTok, True Crime podcasts, and yes, still taylor swift lol. Usually the ones that really stick with me are the interests that are in concept close to what I'm interested in, but pretty heavily miss the mark for me.

BookTok is the one that's been stuck in my craw the most since the relationship though, partially because I got back into a reading mood during it (finally finished BotNS and read The Name of the Rose) but had trouble relating my reading tastes and habits to hers because we read such different books, in particular she liked a lot of those romance booktok hits that have their own table at barnes and noble now, and especially liked the ACoTaR series.

So, as the relationship failed, ACoTaR in my head became this microcosm of everything I didn't like about "modern books". It was fantasy romance, which meant it was sucking up space in the fantasy genre that could be filled with more literary fantasy that dabbled heavier in speculation. Not only that, but it was erotica, which has always been something that half made me uncomfortable and half I just didn't understand the appeal. I'm not sure why it makes me uncomfortable, it's not like I don't watch porn, and I like movies with sex scenes, but I think my confusion about the appeal is that I think I prefer to have my media split concretely between sexual and non-sexual content? It's like that meme "I'm not playing fighting games to cum bro". I'm not reading fantasy to get off, I'm reading it to-

-And that's where I get stuck. What I want to say is something intellectual, something about high-brow art, something about using speculative fiction to explore themes like pastoralism, or to ruminate on the nature of myths. But I think that feels like posturing when I write it down, like that's what I want to want, where in reality I just enjoy literary fantasy (and sci fi) because I think the ideas and concepts are cool. They're what I grew up liking, just like someone could grow up liking romance in some fantasy media. I'm not better or worse, I am the same.

But didn't I already know that? I feel like I've been professing how all art is worthwhile art for a while now, and I've known about the misogynist tendency to put down everything teenage girls like for years at this point, so why am I still dealing with these feelings? Intellectually I know the only non-imagined issue I have with booktok is that it's on tiktok, and the issue I have with tiktok is that it's SO algorithm driven, so much that when people talk about using it they say "just trust the algorithm, after a few days you'll only get things you like". And I think what gets missed in statements like that is that the algorithm isn't just showing you things you want to see, it's showing you things that'll provoke a reaction. For example, a book that hits right in the center of opposing communities, one that many people don't like because they see it as "frivolous smut that's harming the publishing industry" while others love it because it's escapist romance in a time where people are really struggling mentally with the weight of the world.

The truth is that I haven't read ACoTaR and I probably never will. It is not for me, in the same way that the Barbie movie wasn't for me because I could neither relate to it nor learn much from it. And that's not a moral judgement. Sure I wish more contemporary authors were writing literary fantasy, but the truth is I've got literally a century and a half of literary fantasy directed towards my demographic to explore, while romantasy lovers can only really look to the last 10-15 years. I still think ACoTaR sounds kinda middling, from the snippets I've read and the 2 hour dissertation I listened through about the plot, but it obviously struck some kind of nerve with people. I mean it's not like marvel movies, which are being pushed by the most ever-present entertainment company in the world so as to be the only thing people can think about. It's a book series that got popular because people talked about it.

One last thought, and not really one I've thought through to the same extent as the rest of this, is that I don't really understand why these genres are so gendered. I mean, literary high fantasy is usually directed at men, and romantasy is usually directed at women. That's part of what I meant when I mentioned I have a century and a half of fantasy to read through, because only recently did fantasy written by women, starring women, and pointed at women become popular, outside of some exceptions. And I mean, doesn't that feel reductive? In what world are men universally uninterested in romance, and women uninterested in "high-brow" fantasy? I mean obviously I know why this kind of thing is so reinforced, but I think if you're uncritically repeating that gender division, in any art form, you should re-evaluate what the fuck you think people like to do and why.

Back to the main point though, I've always been a bit of a contrarian in my media tastes. I like to dislike the really overtly popular stuff, and really push the more underground high-brow stuff. Maybe that's a good thing to do in general, we all should be doing more to support independent art. I wouldn't even say it's necessarily something I need to work on, who cares what art I like. What I need to work on is not dismissing the popular things out of hand, and then reaching, searching for reasons to support my first reaction. Not everything needs to be or even should strive to be high brow. But also, if you're reading this, you should probably get off TikTok.