How fast smut has inflitrated books, mostly bestsellers aimed at young girls and young adults is very concerning. Back in the day it was mostly just to be found in fanfics and doujinshis and stuff like that and frowned upon by the public.
Now the consens has shifted to being completely fine with hardcore stuff put in fantasy books and the like with no warning whatsoever on the covers. This is absolutely irresponsible from the publishers.
I don’t wanna name names, but it’s definitely the fault of booktok and how smut has infiltrated any form of mainstream media.
Booktok was a mistake.
I want you to name names? What mainstream books have smut? What is the smut? I have no idea what you are talking about
most adult fantasy books that are tagged as romance have smut. like fourth wing or ACOTAR. smut books are insanely popular, there’s an entire genre called harlequin fiction which is, well, romance and sex (hello fabio!). if you’re reading a book about a romantic adult relationship, why wouldn’t there be sex unless there are asexual characters, and even then they may still have sex.
young adult fantasy/dystopian books that are tagged romance like legend or uglies often have a very light sex scene as well. i think it’s healthy for teens to have access to examples of young intimacy in a fantasy setting.
i do think there should be a better rating system for books, esp tagging explicit ones but sex has always been in books and always will be.
booktok has done a whole lot of terrible things for the book industry as a whole, but smut isn’t one of them those books already existed, if u don’t like them, don’t read them. there r plenty of options that have zero sex whatsoever
tldr: smut wasn’t a ‘fanfic’ thing its been a part of publishing forever. people wanna read porn, it’s fine.
“Smut has infiltrated books”– what an insidious, ridiculous, puritanical and short-sighted claim to make.
Tell me you’ve never read a book published before 2001 without telling me you’ve never read a book published before 2001.
Tell me you’ve never read a book for adults without telling me you’ve never read a book for adults.
Tell me you’ve never read Heinlein, or Anne Rice, or The Godfather, or one of the harlequin novels on your grandma’s bedside table.
Anyway, here’s a passage from the first chapter of The Godfather by Mario Puzo.
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