Romance media, modernism, and love.

Cranberry Milk 11

I

The rom-com recession

I’ve written a lot about my relationships on this blog, to an exceedingly obnoxious point. You heard about my breakup with my ex-boyfriend, and then immediately that we were back together. Then you heard about us breaking up again, and me grieving that break-up and it’s like, “Damn, bitch! Will you ever get over this man?” So, great news! I did. Today will be my first Valentine’s Day single in two years. I spent the last two each with a different boy, and unless someone wants to take me out, I guess the boy I’ll be spending it with this year is… me? Trans joke.

But let’s say I met a guy (or girl!) and we decided to spend Love Day together. Maybe we’d go out for a nice dinner, or catch a date movie. Except, those don’t really exist anymore. Date movies, not nice dinners. There’s no shortage of over-priced restaurants where I can order a $33 duck breast. But if I wanted to see a movie, this year the Valentine’s Day movie is… Madame Web? I love my bang goddess Dakota Johnson as much as the next queer but what happened to rom-coms? I remember the force they were when I was young. Crazy, Stupid, Love. Clueless. 10 Things I Hate About You. Stories of love and connection with a will they/won’t they lead couple and a grand romantic gesture. These films sold an idea of love to my defenseless child mind that has polluted my brain’s synapses to this day.

Dakota Johnson loves limes.

Now when rom-coms come out, they’re straight to streaming (To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before) or they’re bad (Anyone But You) or they’re both bad and straight to streaming (The Kissing Booth). My most romantic date movie was Avatar 2. It was with Adam, right after we got back together after our first messy break-up (he dumped me on New Year’s) at the CMX CinéBistro in Tysons Galleria. We got a really over-priced poke bowl and sat down to watch our blue people movie. Honestly, it was kinda transformative. I tried to hate, but when Neytiri was mercing colonizers I had no choice but to stan. We made out when Lo’ak touched his whale friend’s uvula and saw into its past, and we were both fuming when Spider saved Colonel Quaritch. After the movie we agreed: You can never trust a white ally. I felt seen.

Screencap from “Avatar 2: The Way of Water”

Today’s rom-com recession makes sense to me. I love my generation, what with our silly TikTok trends, our endearing obsession with video games, and our penchant for trauma-dumping, but we’re not great at the whole “love” thing. With my break-up behind me, I’ve since entered the Richmond dating scene, and I’ve experienced firsthand how much we suck at dating.

From November to December I entered a situationship with a guy… let’s call him Morgan. Morgan was great on paper. He was a leftist fashion major who read bell hooks and drove a motorcycle. He was Asian and he was 5’11’ (which is like 6’2” for an Asian guy!!). I remember February of last year I was in an Uber ride and my Mongolian Uber driver asked me if I’d ever dated an Asian guy. He was hitting on me (he tried to talk about his butt at one point), but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel like a little bit of a race traitor for constantly dating “out.”

What with the fresh possibility brimming from my flirtation with this man, I soon became acquainted with the delicate dance of the 2020s heterosexual dating market. I’m not a seasoned veteran but I’m definitely more than mere infantry. I’ve fought in a couple battles, served a tour of duty in the trenches that are “the apps” and “the talking stage.” The war not to feel. 

Nonchalance is hard for me because I am a deeply chalant person, but I tried my absolute hardest to seem sexy and detached. Inviting and cute, but not too inviting that I was loose. Intelligent, but not a know-it-all. Delicate, but not fragile. And I fell for him. Or…at least I really wanted him to fall for me? In the end, he wasn’t feeling it. And he hit me with a thousand “I’m sorry”s and a hundred “can we still be friends”s. He’s still on read.

We are a generation of people that are afraid to feel. Afraid to give more than one another, afraid to be vulnerable. We all live with our guards up, and when you lock yourself into your walls so tightly, it’s impossible to let any real connection in.

The rom-com recession makes sense to me, because the world has changed. We don’t look for love anymore, or at least we don’t admit to it. The world of hopeful connection no longer exists. Gen Z is here to stress and angst. It’s the only thing we know how to do.

II

The romance novel resurgence

I remember as a kid the powerhouse that was the Teen Drama. The giggling and the butterflies and the kicking of feet at these iconic, multi-season tv empires that built their stories mainly around human relationships. Glee, Gossip Girl, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Gilmore Girls, Pretty Little Liars, The Fosters. As a kid, I wanted to be in love because the TV I watched modeled love for me. And sure, those relationships might not hold up to our modern gender politics sniff test, but at the time I was all in on Quinn and Puck (Pinn? Quck?). And can you blame me? Remember when they sang Papa Don’t Preach? I mean, look at the material!

Quinn and Puck from “Glee”

Interestingly, it’s not that relationships have disappeared from the media, but that the focus of it has changed. Since the beginning of the Teen Drama take-over there has always been a little raunch, a little obscenity. Let’s be honest, a little filth never hurt anybody. But in the modern era, sex on TV has boomed. Euphoria, Game of Thrones, P-Valley. I’ve written for Ink about the proliferation of sex in our media before, but it’s happening and it’s happening fast. And increasingly, the public is starting to turn away from it. When The Idol dropped there was massive backlash, and it’s seeming more and more that the public is starting to… feel a sense of post-nut clarity? We’re oversaturated.

I do think it’s interesting the way that we’re watching TV. We’re going to see a bunch of sexy, naked actors go through the most harrowing experiences and also have sex. The agonizing ordeals our leads go through, and the titillating sex scenes we get to watch blend together. For the viewer, pain and pleasure become one. We’re living in a post Fifty Shades of Grey world. Kink is mainstream now, sluts. I think it speaks to the nihilism that permeates our generation. We are the first generation to grow up with unimpeded access to the internet, and with wars occurring since the moment of our birth. In Rick & Morty S3E9 Summer tells Beth, “My generation gets traumatized for breakfast.” Which was funny, but also kind of true?

Summer explaining how her generation gets traumatized for breakfast.

A few weeks ago, I met a hot guy at a rave. He’d been in my writing class in the fall semester, and I’d always kinda sorta had a huge crush on him. A completely vain, surface-level crush brought on only by the way that he looked, but a crush nonetheless. As it turned out, he was a great writer, and when we finally ended up talking at that rave, he was lovely. We talked about our interests and our lives. I learned he was a philosophy major and when I asked him what his philosophy was, he told me that he thought people were basically bad. That’s a sentiment I hear a lot.

But I don’t think that everyone’s given up hope. I’m an English major and a writer, so, I mean, yeah, I like to read. And when it comes to the literary world, romance novels are HUGE right now. The BookTok girlies are making gains in their quest for world domination, sexually harassing hockey players and recommending smut to 16-year-old boys. All things considered, not great behavior, but I am inclined to defend the BookTok girls on feminist grounds. Not in a “supporting women’s wrongs” way, because I love calling out women’s wrongs, but in a “yeah there are bad apples in every fandom” way. 

Whether you like it or not, the feministas of BookTok have slayed, conquered, and they’re here to stay; with newfound influence over the trends and sales of the literary world. They range from teenage girls to 20-somethings and I think that the girlypops here have something to teach us. Because they adore romance novels. Whether you believe in Colleen Hoover’s literary merits or not, the BookTok girls have made her into a bestselling sensation. They devour tropey, sappy, love stories that most might dismiss as “chick flicks” or “trash.” They’re showing us that romance isn’t dead, it's just… in hibernation?

The reading of novels is an intimate, almost masturbatory act. Think about reading a book. You’re alone in your room, and you’re reading a bunch of words on the page. You’re picturing the characters. What do they look like to you? How do you imagine their faces, their bodies, the way they stand in a room when they interact? How are they moving? How do they sound? You turn the pages. You become invested, your heart is with these images you’ve created in your mind. When things happen to them, you gasp. You grab the book and hold onto it tight! You tear through pages hoping that they’re okay. You tremble. When they kiss, your eyes widen. You’re locked in. You picture every moment of it. Every little interaction, every flirtatious line that a character throws to another, you feel. Intimately. In your mind, in your face, in your chest.

I’m not saying that reading a book counts as masturbation, but I’m not not saying that. It’s like a masturbation of the mind. Your brain needs to get off too! She is a fully autonomous woman who deserves to experience the full breadth of human pleasure, no? I do think that the nature of prose lends itself to the proliferation of smutty content. I mean, just read any poetry ever. Poets are horny fucks. Even your most above-board classy novel will have one sex scene, or at least some prolonged bouts of longing. The form of the medium lends itself to sensuality and romance. And the privacy of the medium gives readers license to relish in it.

If it is no longer socially acceptable to dream of romance, of love, of relationships, then novels give the women who read them license to nurse those desires in private. Reading is a solitary act, one that forces the reader to reckon with their own mind. They build relationships with the world because they create them in their heads. There are few media experiences that demand more of the audience. Romance as a genre is no longer a movie date. It is no longer two people watching a relationship modeled on screen. It is instead a solitary act; a fantasy. One person imagining for themself what a good relationship might look like.

It is said, often misogynistically, that men are visual creatures and women are emotional. My gut reaction is to disagree, but through socialization or biology (it’s always socialization), men on average consume porn through video, and women through… other means. Romance novels and A03 smut fanfics. The thing that makes written porn unique and draws women in is its intimacy.

Since my transition, I’ve noticed my sexuality shift. I’m still just as horny, if not hornier, but my attraction is less to body parts and sex acts and more towards people. It’s an insatiable longing, begging to be fed. The detached 2020s heterosexual dating market does not speak to me; does not feed the longing in my chest and in my loins. The thing that stands out to me about the depictions of sex in writing is that they are ones of care.

Read any Wattpad fanfic ever. Tacky? Sure. But romantic? Undeniable. The man that sits across you in this Y/N fanfic is devoted to you. Cares for you. Fights for you! He prioritizes your happiness and wants you to be safe. My friend Lareina (read her writing here!) recently brought to my attention the world of audio porn. There’s a bunch of weird kinky stuff, like [🔥Hot✨] Dominant British Professor Bends You Over the Podium and Spanks You! {Audio Roleplay} but there’s also stuff like Your Loving Boyfriend Takes Care Of You While You’re Sick [M4F ver.]. Here the fantasy is just being taken care of. Feeling safe. Feeling loved. Fantasies are exciting, otherworldly, and distinctly not real. So why is this a fantasy?

III

Love like Mom and Dad

I want to tell you the story of how my parents met. My dad is an American jew, born and raised in the Jewish peoples’ true homeland: Queens, New York. My mom is a Korean woman, born and raised in Gyeonggi province, a half hour outside of Seoul. On completely different sides of the world, they both grew into people who struggled with the status quo. My dad was a hippie with white-man dreads in college and by his late 20s, when he met my Mom, matted, ugly hair down to his ass. My mom was a sharp woman who struggled from a young age with pressure from the world to conform to authority. She rocked short hair and an even shorter attitude.

Before she met my father, her family worried she’d be an old maid. She was in her late 20s and singledom at that age was at best a novelty and at worst an omen that she would lay barren her entire life. On the day that they met (and I do love telling this story), my dad was selling novelty letter openers for his sister’s at-the-time husband (they’ve since had a messy divorce and a less messy friendship). The gimmicky goods had little animal heads on them, and my mom was also selling some shit on the street; for her, jewelry. She asked my dad for some English tips and he asked her for some Korean tips and – the way I imagine it – they immediately fell for each other. Beating hearts and wind blowing and sparkles in the air. Love at first sight kind of thing.

They dated while he was in Korea, and then the two of them ran off and backpacked all across Asia. They went to Thailand, Laos, India. Eventually my Dad had to go back to the states, and my Mom back to Korea; but they met up a year or two later in Australia, where they – shocking everyone, even themselves – had an unplanned, heat-of-the-moment wedding. When they got back to Korea, my mother’s family was fuming. So they had another wedding. Then they moved to America together.

My parents at their wedding.

When I was young, my parents set the standard for love for me. A love so strong they bridged a gap nearly a globe apart to be with each other. I have a complicated relationship with my parents. They and I haven’t always gotten along, and I don’t know that we ever completely will. But by god those two are in love. The way that my dad looks at my mom, even after over 20 years of marriage (25 this year!), so full of love in his eyes. He adores that woman, and she adores him right back, though not quite as much. My mom is a bad bitch.

My dad loves this woman.

Little boys aren’t meant to dream of love. That’s something for little girls, and even still you have to be the right kind of girl. Love, relationships, devotion, aren’t ideas that were made with girls like me in mind. But ever since I was young, I’ve dreamed of love. My favorite movie is Castle in the Sky. It’s the first studio Ghibli Film, telling the story of a boy and girl in love. There’s airships and fight scenes and magical stones; but at its core, it’s about a boy, Pazu, and his devotion to this girl, Sheeta. He meets her and he throws away his life as it is to chase her and care for her and protect her. He throws away his life as it is for the chance at something greater.

What they have together is more sacred than anything they could have alone. Alone they are weak, vulnerable to the pirates and the soldiers who want to hurt them, but together they can scale fortresses, fly through the most dangerous storms, arrive at beautiful floating cities, escape near death. Together they are unstoppable. I dreamed of a love like that. Maybe I want too much. I want someone who would climb towers, fight fire-breathing dragons, travel the world to let me know that I’m loved. To be with me. If you’re in love with someone, so deeply in love with someone, there’s no beast you wouldn't fight, no distance you wouldn’t traverse, no obstacle that would be insurmountable. Nothing could keep you from them.

Pazu and Sheeta in “Castle in the Sky”

But the world moves fast. We’ve been raised on YouTube unboxings and influencer trips and  music and TV and celebrities that lambast our brains with the rot of conspicuous consumption. You’re a spectacle. You’re a badass. You’re that girl. It’s about you. You don’t feel, you’re too sexy. Everyone wants you, and you don’t care. You don’t even have to try. Men flock to you. Women chase you. Why would you do things for someone else? Are you getting enough out of it? Is it really economically viable for you to be spending that much time trying to make someone else happy? Time is money, and you need to up your assets.

I can’t do it. I can’t go through life and treat money like my God. I can’t hook-up with people and pretend like they don’t matter to me. I’m not detached, I’m not chill, I’m dedicated and devoted to the people around me. I’d do anything for my friends, and I’d do anything for my partner. I’m serious about people. I’m serious about love.

I write about love a lot because I think about it a lot. I don’t think that people are meant to go through life alone. The world is harsh and cruel and it breaks down the best of us, and we need people to prop us up. But people don’t know how to do that anymore.

I dream of softness. I dream of kindness. I dream of a love that cherishes me and enriches me. That real bell-hooksian kind of all-encompassing, world-shattering, heart-expanding, brain-melting kind of love. Maybe all I can do is dream. But I’d rather hope and be wrong than give up and be right.