While swiping through Instagram stories a couple of weeks ago, I saw a post from one of my favourite bookstores. In it, a familiar shelf piled high with copies of Rebecca Yarros’ newly released Onyx Storm, and the caption, “We don’t know what ‘dragon smut’ is (as a fellow bookseller on here called it) but apparently it’s sold out pretty much everywhere. We still have plenty of copies, probably because people assume we wouldn’t carry something like that.”
They weren’t wrong—this bookstore carries the kind of obscure, erudite, esoteric shit that somehow manages to put the rest of Berkeley’s bookstores to shame. Their staff picks are legendary. This is the Socialist Manic Pixie Dream Girl of bookstores. It is not where I would race to pick up a copy of the third book in Yarros’ bestselling series. Maybe more importantly, it’s not where I would want to be seen purchasing one.
Hypocrisy aside, the post rubbed me the wrong way. Why, I argued to no one while I stared at my screen, would that be so strange when I know they carry plenty of best sellers? Fantasy even! Hell, I’ve seen A Court of Thorns and Roses on their shelves (more on that later). Because my fellow UC Berkeley Grads with the ‘I-Pirate-JSTOR-Articles-For-Fun-And-Take-Real-Milk-In-My-Lattes-Because-Oat-Milk-is-Passé energy,’ I was in that very moment, a day after it released, 124 pages into my own copy Onyx Storm.
I’ve heard both Yarros’ Empyrean and Sarah J Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series poked fun at—or just openly maligned—plenty, whether through media (even True Anon hopped on the bandwagon), at bookstores, or on the subway. It seems everyone—meaning everyone who is not reading them—can agree, these books are not art; they don’t hold cultural value, the writing is inconsequential, they’re trashy, they’re cheap. Embarrassing. “Smut” is not real reading, however absurd the page count (most SJM books clock in at around 800 pages). Granted, page count does not equal prestige once you’ve left the fourth grade, but it does carry some weight (ha) in the fantasy community, which is well stocked with guys holding obnoxiously thick copies of Game of Thrones and Dune like trophies on their 7:40 AM L-train commutes.
God forbid you see a girl on the same train reading the Dragon Smut.
“Smut,” these days, is mostly used to describe ‘romantasy,’ the subgenre that has exploded in popularity over the last few years, primarily thanks to the wild success of A Court of Thorns and Roses. “Smut” is a word that gets tossed around a lot in relation to books that both contain sex and are marketed to women in a way that doesn’t feel entirely accidental. This flavour of smut is not quite erotica—the point of these books, at least if you skim their jackets, is not sex. These books have no place on your shelf next to a slender copy of Anaïs Nin’s Delta of Venus, James Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime, or even poet and writer Melissa Broder’s mermaid/sex addiction novel The Pisces.
Despite pushback that seems to be arguing the contrary, these books are shelved in the fantasy section for a reason. Their plots are undoubtedly typical of the fantasy genre: the Chosen One is pulled from obscure, often dismal circumstances, goes on some kind of quest, does the hero’s journey thing, learns an essential truth, and saves the kingdom. The existence of sex in these books is most definitely within the bounds of the genre—Game of Thrones famously contains plenty of graphic, often violent sex. The primary difference between the Smut and Real Fantasy as far as I can tell (as a person who has consumed plenty of both) is the genders of The Chosen One and of the intended audience.
Someone might argue that George R.R. Martin is a far better writer than SJM or Rebecca Yarros. All three have crafted entire universes, complicated plot arcs, and dynamic characters. While Jon Snow struggles with his daddy issues, ACOTAR’s Fayre is recovering from an abusive romantic entanglement, learning to fight, doing art therapy, and saving multiple kingdoms (without even having to be sexually assaulted! Martin could take notes). While the Lannister twins are getting it on, The Fourth Wing’s Violet is pushing her mind and body to their limits, uncovering a massive military coverup, bonding with an unheard-of two dragons(!!), and learning to control lightning.
Maybe Martin is a better prose writer. I personally don’t have a dog (a direwolf? a dragon?) in that fight, and it’s not my point when it comes to books like Yarros’ Empyrian series and SJM’s ACOTAR or Crescent City series. I don’t need people to start venerating Yarros’ and Maas’s books as Peak Literature. But it is impossible to say that one of the three aforementioned bodies of work has some innate cultural or artistic value while the other two don’t without sounding hypocritical and maybe more than a little sexist.
Maybe none of the above have cultural value, and honestly, I’m fine with that, too. The idea that everything we read should be enriching or enlightening is tired and elitist. Reading can be fun! That’s okay. Frankly, without “fun” books pumping much-needed cash flow into the industry, even the largest publishing houses would be gone by now.
But this isn’t just about intellectualism versus the tasteless masses—it’s obviously also about gender. Perhaps I felt the need to tout my little degree and invoke my own pretentious credibility at the beginning of this piece because even as I write this, I am uncomfortable with potentially sounding dumb. I am not immune to this kind of shame. If anything, I’m primed to feel it most keenly. I am not all that different from the type of person to hop on the “what is this trash” bandwagon. I have been made very aware of my girl-ness in plenty of spaces where it oughtn’t have any business: school, work, bookstores. I developed defense mechanisms that so easily err on the side of misogyny when I was a kid, and they are hard to let go of when the reason for their existence remains very present. But girl-ness to stupidity is a false equivalent, and one that serves to undermine the universal right to enjoy things even if they aren’t high culture.
I think these books have proven so socially intolerable, not only because they’re considered low-brow, but specifically because they encroach on the fantasy genre. Even the existence of the “new” genre of romantasy points to a move to placate “real” fantasy readers. Fantasy has historically been male-coded: from Tolkien, to Dungeons and Dragons, and the stereotypes that have clung to their fandoms for decades, girls are always at the fringes, if not left out entirely.
The feminization of the genre via injection of romance is apparently an unforgivable and somehow personal offense to many. Never mind that plenty of fantasy had romantic elements long before SJM appeared on the scene, and never mind that all of the books I’ve mentioned thus far contain far more scenes of violence and gore than passionate lovemaking. It’s as if the scantily clad, curvaceous blonde picking up a book and evolving animorph-style into a nerdy brunette from the ‘debimbofication’ meme opened up to page 500 of A Court of Mist and Fury and stayed sexy. The bimbo cannot possibly be literate, and if she can read, well, fuck her for reading that. And hey! If she’s so horny, why is she reading at all when she should be having sex with me?
Sex seems to be so egregious in the context of romantasy because young women acting as agents of their own sexuality is simply more than we can bear—especially when men are removed entirely from that equation by female authors with female audiences. While, yes, it’s a bit funny to say out loud that fairies are getting railed in these books, I don’t think it means we all get to dismiss their impact because of it. I don’t think that ACOTAR is so successful because fairy sex is a specific and heretofore unknown kink that 13 million women have been secretly harbouring. I think these books are successful because they meet a demand that’s been ignored.
Women want to read books where they see themselves, they want to read engaging, inventive fantasy that centres around characters they relate to. They want to read books about romantic and sexual relationships that are empowering, books in which they are the hero instead of the trophy at the end of the quest. While all of this feels like very basic 2011 internet feminism, it’s somehow still the point. Heterosexual men, to my knowledge, have never had to actively search out any of those things, and certainly not with any shame attached. I apparently need to point out that the term “Dragon Smut” could very easily be transposed onto Game of Thrones, which Americans have happily been watching, reading, and publicly discussing ad nauseam for over a decade without the slightest twinge of embarrassment.
Beyond our discomfort with any form of open and autonomous female desire, we are afraid that if we allow girls to feminize fantasy, they might get their manicured hands on everything else. What’s next? The stock market? We watched a similar story play out in dramatic excess with Gamergate and it was exhausting. It seems to me that girls have once again made a mockery of something by virtue of their enjoyment, and the only solution we’ve found is to make a mockery of girls.