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Wife Explains Romantasy Books: Women, We Need to Talk
In this episode, the hosts dive into the spicy topic of contemporary female-focused romance literature. They dissect several popular fantasy books like 'A Court of Thorns and Roses,' 'Trial of the Sun Queen,' and others, revealing recurring themes of 'mate bonds,' dominantly possessive men, and the normalization of toxic female behavior. Through detailed analysis, they uncover how these stories reflect modern women's struggles with dating, promiscuity, and the evolving norms of relationships. The hosts question the psychological impact of these narratives and critique their perpetuation of unhealthy relational dynamics and unrealistic romantic fantasies.
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone.
I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we here are going to be discussing a spicy topic. In a recent episode we were talking about the de botched things that women read in their fantasy literature. And I was talking to you this morning about it and you were going over them and you were like, no, that is like.
You listen to this and, and when I heard about the stuff, it's bad. No, were listening to when it is explained to me by my quote unquote trad wife, I guess is what the media calls you. What is in these fantasy books? I, I am like
In one hour on six Ed World?
Malcolm Collins: I I, yeah. But then it got worse.
Mm-hmm. Because I start doing like, I wanna understand if this stuff that you're telling me is accurate, I want to go into this so I start, right?
'cause I'm
Simone Collins: sure you thought I was crazy. It couldn't possibly be that, no, that these are bestselling very popular
Malcolm Collins: books than what you said. Because I start going into all of this and I get summaries of the books, and I get summaries of all these plot points. And it keeps, and there's this, this phrase that keeps coming up.
I mean, and I'm talking across books here. It was like, well, X was mated to X or X was bound to y. And I was like,
what the hell is wrong with you people?
Malcolm Collins: what is this?
She's mated thing I haven't heard. And I go to my wife about this. Okay. And you're like. I don't, I Wait, what? I haven't read anything about this weird kinky mated thing, so I ask because the first one that you talked about was the court of thorns and roses.
Yeah. And here's what AI had to say about that. Okay. It said, yes, the mate Mont Trope is 100% in a Court of Thorns and Roses series. It is, and it's arguably the series, is it mainstream to kink into modern Romantic. So you are like, I don't even remember it from my, in my
Simone Collins: defense, I use these as pregnancy sage, Xanax.
The reason I listen to romantic books is they are so bad and so poorly written that they literally put me to sleep. Like I used to listen to really dry history books to fall asleep. And now I'm like, oh, but I need to know what happened.
Malcolm Collins: No, I, I read it for the plot. That's why I have, you know, you know, I I completely agree with you.
I do not engage in any of this for, for, for anything other than just the articles. Is that your version of, I read it for the, for the articles, the play, you know, that's what they used to say about Playboy, right?
Simone Collins: No, no, because the plot's not good. The and, and here, like my problem is I really hate the female characters and I really hate what they normalize in terms of like, this is normal relationship behavior.
If you're a woman, and I can get into this too,
Malcolm Collins: because there's, oh, we're gonna get into this, we're gonna get into each of these, but I wanted to start with this mate bonding trope, because I found this really interesting. Okay. And I think it's important to note here because and we're gon
Published on 6 months ago