Dark Romance, How Do You Plead?
Guilty *only* by virtue of being hot, Your Honour
It’s not everyday that BookTok and the Dark Romance community pisses me off SO much to the point that I posted an Instagram call-out on it, PLUS dedicate an entire issue of my newsletter too; if the former was not indication enough, let me make it clear now.
And if you are one of the readers who are a fan of dark romance and do not agree with me, that’s your opinion and that’s fine. “Just don’t read it if you don’t like it”.
I am not writing this to personally oust anyone; I am writing this to address Dark Romance and BookTok as a whole, as a community, for all the harm and ignorance they have been presenting, whether they know it or not. Because it seems no matter how much we have to talk about this, they just don’t get it.
If you have not already seen my recent Instagram stories (in which case, do follow me!), or if you have not been keeping up with BookTok lately (in which case, god bless you), the stitch is this:
Now, don’t overthink it, BookTok, but in your clever opinion, what is most likely the first thought that comes to mind when you see this? Is it:
“damn, THAT’s a real shame… that someone THAT hot is doing such silly little crimes!”
“Nooo don’t give him the death penalty he’s sooo sexyyy.”
“WHY are we glorifying, romanticising, and diminishing a MURDERER’s crimes instead???
Psst, I’ll give you a hint — it’s not Option 1 and it’s not Option 2.
TW: (graphic) depictions of murder, death, abuse (physical & sexual), sex, sexual assault, torture
Wade Wilson is a Florida man on trial as of last Tuesday for the brutal, careless, soulless murders of Kristine Melton (cause of death: strangulation) and Diane Ruiz (cause of death: being ran over with a car until she “looked like spaghetti”). But instead of being recognised as the cold-hearted killer who murdered two innocent women for no other reason but for sport, instead of being recognised as a dangerous man who has no inherent acknowledgement for a human life, he is now recognised by members of BookTok as their own Matty Healy, spoken of with the same gleeful challenge Taylor Swift sings of in “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)”.
And I thought that paragraph alone should have summed up why this situation has been disillusioned, warped, and wronged in every way possible.
But I’m not going to waste my breath on the same argument I posted to Instagram; instead, I want to focus today’s efforts on dismantling the long-standing controversy surrounding Dark Romance in it’s full, ugly, entirety; and why the bottom line is that it has transformed into an ugly, dirty, weapon, especially against victims.
Part 1 — “It’s Just a Genre; Don’t Read It if You Don’t Like It”
This, I believe, has been the most common defence that Dark Romance enthusiasts have thrown against people like me for a long time. And I’m standing ten toes down today to say this is not only an exhausted argument to the point of losing it’s tenacity and bite; as well as being a most egregiously stupid, tone-deaf excuse. Because that’s what it is.
If you search up the definition of dark romance, the first pop-up to appear defines it as:
“… a subgenre of romance novels with darker themes and mature content. These stories often come with content warnings, morally-gray characters and plots riddled with trauma and violence. Popular tropes that make up a chunk of these novels include mafia, stalking and kidnappings.”
— These authors are putting the dark in dark romance, WUSF
In this same article, popular steamy/dark romance writers Ana Huang and Rina Kent have been interviewed regarding a few common line of inquiries surrounding the genre, which I will be referencing throughout this section to support my sound argument (yup, they’ve got me going essay-mode on this, my god).
When asked how this genre is still romance:
Huang: “I think at the end of the day, it is a story that ends in hope. It’s about how these people survive the dark situations they were in and overcome their trauma to find their happily ever after. And I think there is a sense of great emotional catharsis that comes at the end of that, which is what I think separates dark romance from something that is, you know, either a horror or like a dark thriller, is that sense of hope.”
— These authors are putting the dark in dark romance, WUSF
… *deep breaths*
But I don’t believe that’s even partially true. Maybe in Ana Huang’s case, there is still *some* fragment of an honest, explorable, and worthwhile love depicted in her stories, as dubious as it is, but in most dark romance stories, it is not about hope. In most cases, it’s about fulfilling a depraved, twisted, toxic, and unhealthy romanticisation of depraved, twisted, toxic, and unhealthy topics/tropes/issues between two depraved, twisted, toxic, and unhealthy people, all in the name of combating “misogyny”, as Rina Kent puts it when asked about challenging the notion that the genre fetishises violence against women.
“…society in general doesn’t want women to express what they want, so whatever is not proper or morally correct is frowned upon. Whereas we don’t frown upon incest in ‘Game of Thrones’… We don’t think people who love Stephen King are going to turn into crazy killers — but if you like dark romance, you’re going to be morally incorrect. It is definitely a double standard and I hope we do better. And I am all for normalizing this”.
— These authors are putting the dark in dark romance, WUSF
It is not a double standard, Rina Kent, because George R.R. Martin did not set out to write Cersei and Jamie Lannister’s incestuous relationship as romantic; because Stephen King did not write about the Losers Club orgy in It because he wanted to sexualise children or romanticise it, nor did he characterise bloodthirsty killer-clown Pennywise as a “misunderstood antihero” because he wants you to become Pennywise . But you are, by setting out to write an abuser or killer or violator to romanticise and humanise them for no other angle but to frame them as “misunderstood anti-heroes” who were a product of terrible consequences that will be resolved and atoned for by loving the protagonist.
And if you think I’m simply being a pearl-clutching, god-fearing prude, then tell me why majority of dark romance books feature the love interest in these roles, and rarely ever the main character. Tell me why these same love interests are always hailed endlessly for being conventionally handsome men, when side characters and antagonists that share every bit the same brutal qualities as the love interest are evil and shamed by virtue of not being conventionally attractive.
Tell me why, in most cases, the man is a cruel and violent man with a monstrous past, who softens and changes by 1% because they meet a good honest woman who shows them humanity is not dead simply by being a polite human being, and angles himself to be a better man as a result because she has shown him the beauty in kindness and love.
Tell me why, in most cases, the man has to “corrupt” and “taint” and “teach” the woman the “raw wildness”, the “hungry passion”, the “virtuous depravity” of sex as part of their growth and love to develop a bark and a bite in them.
Tell me why, unless she’s also a daughter of a mob boss, unless she’s a femme fatale and is sassy and sexy and dresses in black leather, she’s waiting to change and grow at the hands of a man of questionable qualities, via violence and sex.
Tell me why, in most cases, the woman is the one who mostly changes for the man while he continues as he is, but it’s fine now, because she’s redeemed him by accepting him for it, and never the other way around.
Tell me where is the hope, Ana Huang. Tell me how misogyny has been abetted, Rina Kent.
Tell me why, if you’re NOT romanticising such violence, your stories are always tagged under “romance”, not “thriller”, or “horror” or “historical”, or any tag that does NOT insinuate this is a romanticised tale instead of a cautionary tale, because it’s “just a genre”.
You’re right, Rina Kent; this is a double standard, and we should do better.
Part 2 — “It’s Just Fiction; If You Don’t Like it Don’t Read It”
When I first read Episode and later Wattpad, the stories and themes that excited me most were mafia stories. Back then, all I wanted was to be taken (metaphorically mostly, but open to the literal) by the cold, violent, “grumpy” mafia leader husband; who in my damsel-in-distress moment would prove he truly loves me when he comes in guns-blazing to save me from his enemies, and then confess that he’s felt the same all this time but he’s just bad at showing love so he opts to just send me expensive gifts and micromanages me and isolates me because he’s just keeping me safe and I’m just a silly girl in a big bad crime world and my mafia boss husband is just always right no matter what because I am the property he paid and killed for because he’s just been in love with me from the moment he first saw me at my 18th birthday party.
If you do not think that sounds ridiculous to your ears now, then…I’m going to suggest putting yourself in rice and pray for the best.
And this is where I want to just talk about Checkmate for a bit. Because yes, it’s fiction. I wrote a fictional story about fictional people in a fictional situation so it’s not hurting anyone right? It’s not the real mafia, anyway.
H.D. Carlton also wrote a fictional story about fictional people in a fictional situation, so it’s not hurting anyone right? He’s not a real stalker or rapist, anyway.
And this is why I have a problem with Dark Romance. Your story may be fictional, but the themes, the topics, the grounds you built this story on are NOT. There are real, countless true crime episodes about women who were killed and harassed by a stalker and the police did nothing. There are real, countless documentaries about women being trafficked and women being raped and women being tortured.
Just as there are women who have suffered years of an abusive relationship with an entirely disadvantaged power balance just as Camila had experienced and WILL experience with Blayze and Jason. Just as there are women being blackmailed and threatened as Camila WILL experience with Blayze and Jason. But I didn’t consider any of this back then. I just thought, what’s so terrible about writing a story that I know is fictional and would not support in reality anyways?
If that is the case, why romanticise it then?
And even if you have been ignorant to what grounds your story has been built from, the consequence you sow as a result is the careless power words and stories hold. There is a strange power in having someone read something and be so absorbed by it that they are living in two universes, even if fictitious. You’ve now made this realm of unsuspecting danger real and alluring, and if you’re fed the same story again and again enough, at some point, you will really believe in it.
It’s why for the first 12 years of my life I thought I was going to be a princess; because my family kept feeding me that delusion that I thought, surely, I’m going to finish school and marry a prince and live in a castle, happily ever after. It’s why I’ve been so unapologetically hungry and unapologetically ignorant as to the consequences of scrounging on mafia romances and gangster romances, of feeding myself love interests that have violent urges to yell or fight anyone or love interests that spare no human decency and blame it all on his past.
For teenage me, as long as they never physically abuse the protagonist, they’re still romance-able.
But what I understand now is that if I’m writing a mafia drama or a mafia romance, I AM romanticising these men and their awful actions, I am enabling their manipulation and telling readers: “this is cute! this is acceptable! this is romance!”. I AM romanticising it because I called it a romance, because I am pitching either couple as an endgame, without considering any other issue that exists in the mafia world besides using it as a backdrop for my love interests.
And that hurts me a lot now because I wanted to write Checkmate to exactly subvert that. Yet I ended up doing the same thing. Because all those years of reading story after story of mafia romances and “falling for my kidnapper” and the like, I have come to think of it as romantic. I have come to accept it as such.
Huang: “At the end of the day, it is fiction and I think that the people who read it should be able to critically enjoy it because they know these themes are bad in real life. Fiction is a safe way to explore those fantasies and experience these visceral emotions without them actually being in danger the same way it goes for any other type of entertainment.
— These authors are putting the dark in dark romance, WUSF
So do not tell me it is just fiction. The grounds you built upon it are not fiction, and the experiences you write about are not fiction; and you are most definitely romanticising dangerously destructive men and enabling their behaviours by making them a love interest and centring the entire story on romance, instead of the larger picture.
And do not tell me it’s just the fault of impressionable teenagers not knowing better. If that was the case, I wouldn’t be writing this piece about the appalling romanticisation that the GROWN WOMEN of BookTok, some of them wives, some of them mothers, have given real life murderer of WOMEN Wade Wilson.
I don’t think they got your “it’s just fiction” memo, Ana Huang. You might wanna check with them.
Part 3 — “If You Don’t Like it Don’t Read It”
And it seems some people have really taken that advice to heart by ignoring the victims entirely to romanticise the abuser.
Let me repeat myself when I say, this is a tone-deaf, flimsy excuse that only undermines the experiences of the women you are, unknowingly or not, hurting and profiting from.
There was this 9 book series I discovered from a Booktuber as she discussed the many things that made it Haunting-Adeline-problematic, and the first book literally opens with a prologue of the protagonist (a teenager, at this point) being sexually assaulted by her stepbrother’s friends as the stepbrother in question ignores her and laughs in sadistic triumph at hurting her, and the rest of the book was about how years later (as a barely legal young adult, as BookTok likes them), to save herself from a stalker, she goes back to these men that have abused and assaulted her for protection, offering herself for their delight in exchange.
But just you wait, because the REAL icing on the cake is that this book is set on a college campus, where it’s fraternities each hold an annual competition of sorts to select their, for lack of a more accurate word, prostitute. Because that’s what she is subjected to at the hands of these men and other men from other fraternities throughout the book.
And after getting briefed about the story, as well as reading the reactions and reviews of it’s readers, it’s sadly and safely assured that the dynamic between these characters has of course been devastatingly romanticised. It’s romanticised because she narrates about how she hates them for doing what they’ve done and then switches to say how she also oddly loves it before switching back and again, because she thinks it’s better to have their “care” than their ire.
It’s romanticised because this book was co-written by TWO GROWN WOMEN who decided this is romantic and sexy and empowering when it’s really rubbing salt in the wound and spitting in the faces of any victim.
It’s astoundingly tone-deaf because you know as well as I do that college campuses have always been a breeding ground for sexual assault cases, especially if fraternities are on the scene. And to write JUST one book that is built on what so many ignorant people have long called a “horrible statistic”, is to further dismiss the atrocities victims of abuse and assault have suffered.
As someone who’s been dangerously entangled in hook-up culture, as someone who’s been sexually shamed by people for being sexually active and careless, as someone who was shoved under the banner of “assault victim” by those same people because they wanted to believe I was assaulted instead of being young and stupid and exploring my sexuality, reading books like that and such do not make me feel hope. They do not make me feel as if we have made a break in misogyny or feminism. They do not make me feel sexy or empowered or turned-on.
They only make me feel dirty, disrespected, and silenced. They make me feel for the women who have had it worse than me, who may have seen some creator’s books or some reader’s videos glorifying abuses they have suffered and continue to suffer from as you continue to profit and minimalise the violence .
So yeah, I guess if you don’t like to read it, then don’t. But just because you ignore it doesn’t mean it’s not there. It doesn’t mean you have not cut their stories from them and twist it to your liking and advantage. It only means you have glorified and romanticised and popularised what we, as victims and bystanders, women or men, have so long fought against.
It only means invalidating the trauma, the pain, and the life-long terror these victims and the families who have lost them will carry forever.
It only means you are hurting others, maybe those closest to you too.
Rina Kent: “I think I speak for at least a portion of dark romance readers, we were never really interested in the heroes [when] growing up. We really loved the anti-heroes. So we feel like these heroes are much hotter for us. They are much more interesting, I would say, because they’re different. They’re not in the norm … and it’s okay because many women love it.”
— These authors are putting the dark in dark romance, WUSF
I truly live in fear as I sit with the ticking panic that one day, the dangerous men who are already out to get us are going to finally crack open this world of Dark Romance, and use it against us. Because at the rate of how things are going where Wade Wilson is concerned, we’re well and utterly fucked.
I would like to bring the discussion back to the Wade Wilson case — a killer who showed no remorse for his killings, who admitted to killing just to kill, who admitted he would do it again, and has been romanticised and dismissed of his crimes by BookTok readers because he was simply “good-looking” (tall and tatted; never mind that one of those tats is a swastika!), instead of acknowledging the horrors the victims suffered.
So I want to take this moment to remember Kristine Melton and Diane Ruiz, the women who had suffered at the hands of this man and who were taken away too soon, too brutally. Kristine Melton was remembered as “a cat lover and a great friend”, “someone who made everyone feel safe and understood”. Her cousin, Samantha Catomer, had this to say:
“‘Kristine will never experience motherhood, a role she was born to play,’ Catomer said through tears.”
— Who are Wade Wilson’s Victims Kristine Melton and Diane Ruiz? , Newsweek
Diane Ruiz was a mother to two sons, Brandon Cuellar (29) and Zane Romero (19). Romero testified that his mother died days before she could see his debut in the school’s marching band, which she was excited for, and tearfully laments “I never got to see her in the crowd…my mom will never get to see me married.”
"Diane was the heartbeat of the bar," [Linda] Giancola [a coworker] said. "She always had everybody's back. She just had that personality that was really magnifying. She has this really loud laugh that you could hear it like a mile away."
— Who are Wade Wilson’s Victims Kristine Melton and Diane Ruiz? , Newsweek
My heart goes out to the victim’s families and friends, and may Wade Wilson be approved for the death penalty, the sentence recommended by the jury and a sentence I wholeheartedly see fitting for the man who has not shown any ounce of regret for his wrongs, who instead chose to sit smugly at trial and further hurt the people he has already done a grave degree of injustice to.
In regards to BookTok, I’m gonna be the last person to ever tell anyone what to write, even if I veer towards the side of thinking the genre itself has gotten way out of hand. All I can say is, should you write anything that is built on the suffering and crime and violence of others’ real-lived experiences, that you take the time to research, know their stories, and write a story that does not exclude the truth of it. Please do not discount the bad and the ugly that is so riddled in your stories by plastering a “FICTION” sticker on it and romanticise people and themes and topics that should be handled with great care and consideration, as anyone should, no matter what genre of story you’re writing.
As I said in my original statement: THIS is not fiction. You know it as well as I do; so please, BookTok, do better.
