Fanfic culture bleeding into original media consumption always felt really sinister to me. Tropes in fanfic are usually descriptive, labeled after-the-fact. In the hands of for-profit publishing, fic tropes become part of prescriptive formulas for success without regard for the actual content of the story. In a way, publishers are going "so we CAN release the same stories over and over again and you'll just eat it up if we use fandom lingo?"
fr like i love fanfic and fanfic tropes, but some BELONG in fanfic. an author can use a broader trope and do it uniquely, for example enemies to loves or forced proximity or smth like that. but recently all the "tiktok" books just read like the same old fanfic over and over again because the ENTIRE romance AND characters are just tropes.
@@honestlyali27 its all spicy romance, enemies to lovers, forced proximity, and what not. all the same, people eat it up. especially when one of the love interest is controlling/abusive.
@@celia1888 Yes it's always been like this. Companies always want their magic formulas. It's just increasimgly worrying when media is now using the formulas themselves as a marketing gimmick. It's like a restaurant bragging about the grease and sugar in their food instead of trying to claim the food is actually of any quality.
i was mad to see red, white, royal blue referred as enemies to lovers when they just mildly couldn't stand each other with no other repercussions. meanwhile captive prince is the prime of this trope. a supreme example of what enemies to lovers should be. and it also does slow burn so well.
Yes, I read it in one day and felt weird because... It is so much like a light fanfic where the author didn't categorized great their creation. I'm going to read Captive Prince, sounds great!
i mean it's more of a rivals to lovers, but yeah midly. personally i don't mind it as much that it is used interchangeably. but it is definitely sad to have this more quick and faster romance story line, which i mostly blame audiences and streaming sites that produce like one season and if it is not a quick success in the first 24h or first week, ciao kakao -.-
I 100% agree with the take that fanfic-style pacing isn't good for published romance, I think even more so for enemies-to-lovers than slow burn. The nice thing about fanfic is that all the characters are already fleshed out, and you can focus entirely on romance without sacrificing character complexity. This is especially a problem for published enemies-to-lovers, because instead of having established reasons these characters hate each other you usually just get some variation of 'he was a misogynist.... she was a woman.... and they fell in love....'
i wouldn’t say that for published fiction necessarily but for f/m specifically het ships. and my favourite enemies to lovers ship is f/m! i would say it can be done in fanfiction for what you said but enemies to lovers can work in published fiction, just usually with people of the same gender. i think it can work with f/m too it’s just usually the guy is a misogynist for some reason lol and i have no idea why that’s so common but go off ig? lmao
these people (on tiktok mostly) have never read a 800k fic where the characters do not get together until after 750k words and it shows. rwrb a slowburn???? HEARTSTOPPER A SLOWBURN??? what is this world that we are living in
I'm glad more and more people seem willing to discuss the parts of fanfic that aren't good for "original" stories. When people say things like "Some fanfic is even better than canon!", more often than not the fics they're thinking of aren't better crafted, better written, or even tell the same kind of story the canon wants to be. What they usually mean is "The fanfic I love completely reorients the universe to be all about the characters/ship I am most invested in, using the tropes I like best." Which is fine! There’s nothing wrong with enjoying that. But I used to get a lot of pushback when I would say that didn’t make the fic "better than canon" or that it wasn’t an insult to fanfic to criticize a canon for "feeling like fanfic". Now that more fics are becoming "original" canons, it's become pretty obvious there's more to a good story than just ships and tropes.
Ooh definitely! I've only ever read one fic (out of many many fanfics I've read) that I actually considered was better than canon and it was because it was written about a fantasy book series and fleshed out the world and characters more than the original series did. Other than that I feel like most fics are less of a 'better than canon' and more of a 'fun thing that adds more to one specific part of canon'
@@claireattemptsatmusic7481Same. I very rarely consider fics "better than canon". So far I've only seen a few fics absolutely overhaul canon and create a new world of their own (or, if the canon world is fine but is lacking wordlbuilding, then they end up filling in all the plot holes and mysteries that the original canon pretended didn't exist) and then basically write an emotional, angsty book out of it.
I feel as if a lot of times we let our excitement over a great fic, overshadow our judgement. After a thousand fanfics on the same couple, its easy to forget that the fanfic your currently reading feels that good, because the original work had all the building blocks for these characters and because you've formed a version of this couple based on the collective of many many other fanfics.
Fanfics cannot compete with the source material because it doesn't have to do the same heavy lifting as the source material. The original story has to get the audience interested in the story, characters and relationships. It has to make a name for itself. Fanfics use that - people already love the characters, that's why they're clicking on the fanfic in the first place. If they wouldn't care for the characters in the first place, they wouldn't give the fanfic another thought. The fanfic is only interesting for them because it uses familiar names. Take the same fanfic and remove all names and descriptions that hint to the source material, and the story itself suddenly becomes a lot less interesting...
I read a great interview by Marissa Meyer an eternity ago and it stuck in my head ever since. She was talking about how to write a romantic storyline, referencing her series The Lunar Chronicles (I think only the first two books were out at that point), none of which are slowburns but all of which are fantastically written romances. I think the advice holds for slowburns fantastically though. Anyway she said that characters need an external reason why they can't be together (politics, rival families, whatever) and an internal reason why they can't be together (trauma, inability to be vulnerable, fear of rejection, etc.). Both characters should have this. And then you get amazing pining and a great will-they-won't-they with real reasons they can't be together, guaranteeing both good internal arcs and external ones as they fight racism and battle their trauma or whatever before they can be together.
Yes! This is why I have a hard time seeing standalone books as "slow burns," or "enemies to lovers" for that matter, unless they're doing an insta-love version of enemies to lovers. The amount of time it takes to build up that tension and motivations for why they can't be together and the obstacles they have to overcome to get to a point where they're finally contemplating, "is this a thing? Should we try it? Maybe not?" would NOT fit in a standalone book, unless that book is a George R.R. Martin size book: 900+ pages with tiny font. I actually love slow burns and the enemies to lovers trope, which is why it ended up in 2 of my current projects, but both stories have external motivations (politics/power dynamics and the conflicts between the supernatural groups: witches vs vampires) and internal motivations (trauma, fear, & inability to trust others). For my paranormal story with the witches and vampires, they're still in the "well, maybe we don't have to be enemies, but I still don't fully trust you 100% and I'm keeping my eye on you" phase by the end of book 1, 😂 so there's definitely NO kissing at all for them in that book. When I say slow burn, I mean slow burn. If the characters get together by the end of book 1, that's just not a slow burn to me or a good enemies to lovers. 🤷🏽♀
IMO, it’s not tiktok killing the slow burn per se, but rather the overarching issue of consumerism and insidious advertising that are the true enemy of good literature.
somewhat related i'm disturbed by the regular demand for heartstopper boys to sleep together. for the first half of season 1, charlie was fourteen years old and his actor looked it. this isn't like riverdale with 28 year olds playing high school sophomores
Even if they were adults, why would you only be concerned about that? Like yes, sex can be a huge part of a relationship. But it can also just not be. Every couple is different so there's no need for it. And yeah, considering the characters are minors I don't think I have to elaborate 💀
@@ot7biasedmashups oh it's a whole discourse. op probably addressed a lot of it in their video about heartstopper which i didn't realize they made until after i commented lol. but anyway! there's been backlash to the show because the author of the books is a woman and not a gay man, who portrayed the boys as pure cinnamon rolls or whatever.
@@BeansKneezAlice is non-binary I’m pretty sure. It really sucks that the same people who accused Ki Connor of queerbaiting and forced him to out himself also constantly invalidate a queer author because of their obsessive and creepy need to see teenagers have sex :/ There’s a big difference between sanitizing for the cishet gaze (Love Simon for example) and examples of more chill and not as sexual younger queer exploration. Agreeing with you, just pointing this out :)
@@RenaissanceRockerBoy oh, my mistake. i think rowan ellis has said this before but i forgot. what happened to kit was straight-up awful and it breaks my heart that the backlash wasn't enough to keep that type of fan from thinking they were in the right. there's definitely going to be more creatives shamed into outing themselves
I found the best slow burns being in asian media. They know how to do the pining right, so by the time they kiss in the last episode, you cannot help but squeal from joy. When it comes to queer dramas, Thai BLs are killing it recently. If you want to see what a proper slow burn should loook like, look no further than A Tale Of Thousand Stars. If you want to see enemies to lovers with a bit of slow burn in a perfect execution, The Eclipse is here for you.
@@myboinan Depends on what series and mostly, what country really. A Tale Of Thousand Stars doesn’t have unnecessary plots, all of them make sense. It’s mostly Kore ahere they love adding plot twists or weird plots. Have you seen any Thai series?
I agree with you. I am rewatching vampire diaries lately and I see now why the delena ship just blew a whole generation of teenagers away back then. It was a slow burn, but a real one. It took whole seasons for them to kiss and 4 seasons to "do it". Back then I felt we waited for aaaages for them to finally get together. When it happened, it was so rewarding. And it was because both of the characters grew. I think you nailed it. Would it be possible for a ship today? Honestly I am not sure. But I truly hope so 🥺 I miss it
Thank you! Yeah I haven't read it but I know a lot of people absolutely loved vampire diaries. You want the wait to be both long but also feel necessary! I hope the future will bring long stories to both books and TV 🙏
I never like tvd, but mine was Stydia from teen wolf. Unfortunately, I think another reason we don't have that anymore I because streaming platforms drop the entire season at once and they are shorter. In a binge-friendly way,
Yes, Delena was for sure a slow burn and it was rewarding when Elena finally picked Damon. Which makes me realize, I think I finally understand why I never cared for Stelena. It just happened so quick and immediately, there's no tension and buildup, no time for growth for either characters. Stefan just came to town one day and then the next week, him and Elena are a couple. WTF? 🤨
Okay I know this isn't slow burn by your standards, but... in Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Ari falls in love at the beginning of the book, then spends 300 pages destroying his life because he's completely unable to admit it to himself. It's devastating and beautiful, and it's what I like a slow burn to be.
Oh my I'm so happy someone is talking about that book. It was an amazing experience reading, I thing there is where I fell in love with slow burn (I consider it as such but I understand other people may not agree, which is ok). I am currently reading the second book and also love it, it's been some time since I read the first one so I can't say which one I like best. So hyped to see it in a comment, if you know similar books please let me know
I think Our Flag Means Death is an interesting case here. The show was being accused of queerbaiting right up until the 9th episode where the main couple kiss, despite it very clearly not being queerbaiting since the two characters (well at least one of them) were already shown to be queer and several side characters were queer. And it was a sort of under-the-radar show on HBO until the 9th episode when it then exploded since there was now a canon mlm ship. (I'd argue the ship was canon all along but people will require actual physical expression of sexuality or attraction now since we've gone so long being baited with writing and longing glances. Which I totally understand, I've been there and it's incredibly frustrating.) Edit to add I don't think it would have been renewed if there hadn't been a kiss. Interesting to consider.
If they're not fucking it raw then its not canon sadly. Not to sound cynical, but attention spans have dwindled to the point that if something isn't immediately shown and spoon fed to people, they just completely miss it. That's why I personally feel like a lot of romances are rushed and feel ingenuine in media. They have to immediately jump to kissing without any build up or else people will complain.
@@haveagoodday7021Well especially in queer media because if they're not rawdog fucking then the mainstream heteronormative audience will dogpile and say that we're just looking too much into it or "they're good friends." It's super frustrating that queer couples have to get physical to be considered real. I've seen people still think Good Omens isn't queer. And Will Byers. And there was another but I can't remember.... Oh! Another one is growing up I was told BrokeBack Mountain wasn't gay because my mom didn't take THE EXPLICIT SEX SCENE as gay. I asked her when I was older, "Mom they legit bang how did you not know??" She says, "They were cold! It was for survival!" Yes mom, totally not a trope of anything....(fuck or die) But seriously they did not have to bang to survive mom, come on.
Reminds me of the What We Do In The Shadows fandom. This show has so many references to its main cast being "bi until proven otherwise", the male housemates all hook up with each other, etc... but some people call it queerbaiting because ONE SHIP isn't canon. Granted, it may be shipbaiting, yes, but Nandermo is NOT queerbaiting.
i also think a lot of people who find that they love slow burn in fanfiction but don't find themselves liking it in real books, i think it's because at the end of the day they are two different types of writing that are going to have to be viewed differently. fanfiction is good because you have a prior attachment to some other media. even if the fic is completely different from canon, in the end the characters they use are from somewhere else and your attachment to those characters will determine how much you like it. And i get it because I'm the same way. I love fanfiction, even better when it's well written and long. and i find that i'm not into 'real' books because I don't have an attachment and I don't often go out of my way to find attachments to books when I prefer to do things like play games and watch anime. I just think people who expect original writing to have the same effect as fanfiction, are setting themselves up for failure. both authors and readers alike.
I will say, I’ve read plenty of fic for shows I’ve never watched and it still hit different without me having a prior connection to the original source material.
@@TheEighthAct i mean i get that bc that's also happened to me, but i think that because you know it's fanfiction, the expectation you set for it is fundamentally different from original source material. and realistically, most people don't look for every fanfiction to be extremely well written so when it is, it stands out. and i say stands out even more than if a regular book did the same
i hate how the publishing industry has latched onto fanfic tropes for regular books when i look to fanfics to provide me different stuff than a regular book/tv show. like in fanfics i’m totally fine with cheesy convenient plot lines bc i’m just here to see my fav couple fall in love but with a show or book, i really can’t get into it if the PLOT doesn’t interest me regardless of the ship or the tropes. they can advertise all my fav tropes on a book but that doesn’t guarantee i’ll enjoy it?
I haven't read it but basing on the show I think people think it's slow burn because they do not have sex... comparing it to most teenage TV shows (euphoria, skins) sex is instant, but heartstopper is more accurate teenage experience
Anne with an E is a good example of rushing a slowburn. I do love the show, and i think they ultimately jumped the gun at the end because they knew they were getting cancelled. But even so, the romance was pushed too soon roght from the start. I don't need slowburns to be rushed, especially when characters are so young. In the books Anne is not interested in Gilbert until much later, when she's had a little more life experience, and i always liked that.
Yes! I think we would have gotten a better paced Anne and Gilbert story had the show been on another network and not Netflix. I'm happy with what we got, but it was so rushed. The showrunner wanted to do 5 seasons based on the first book alone. Even by Season 2, it was clear that the show was hanging by a thread, so storylines had to wrap up quickly.
@@Ottolineification ultimately it's still an adaptation and is more rushed than the source material. In the books, Anne was at least 18 and had had one other boyfriend by the time she and Gilbert got together
Honestly I regard romances like any other plot elements. It's the most satisfying if there's proper set up, complications, and payoff. They all need to be there.
i think its odd to see fanfic bleed into mainstream media and especially side eye it when authors publish their fanfic after just changing the character names (like that one reylo fic, the after series and the mortal instruments). i see fanfic as one of the closest mediums we can get to pure art as it is made entirely without thought of profit. im personally a advid ao3 user and often cant really get into books because they dont feel right to me (even though i tolerate a lot from fanfic) and especially the romance tends to just feel flat to me. imo that could be because authors/screenwriters have a limited amount of space and timeto build up a relationship so the book/movie actually sells (because, honestly, no mainstream audience wants to read a 1000+ page book/3+ hour movie), while fanfic authors have all the freedom there is and are also working off of pre established characters. i also dont like how much commitment you have to put into buying a book but thats besides the point right now xd i hope this made sense and i didnt just repeat what is said in the video (i didnt watch all the way through yet)
You made sense! I too really think fanfic is a literary medium with such amazing qualities to do it being made completely out of love for a specific world or character, without adjusting after capitalism. But that only holds on A03. As I said in the video - when you take away the love for the characters, not much is left. Thanks for your thoughts and comment.
The moment you said a good slowburn is all about character growth I wanted to shout for joy XD I have been saying this to anyone who will listen to me rant about slowburns and story tropes for years. When I'm reading a story, I don't want to just read about two charaters being attracted to each other, kissing and living happily ever after. I want to read about how they're changed by the journey and each other and how they make each other better just by being around each other.
13:14 They don't even have to be really enemies. They can just not like each other much. It's so frustrating wanting to read an enemies to lovers and only get bland bickering! I was telling a friend that even two of my OCs would probably br categorized that way, only cause they initially don't like each other due to their opposite personalities. I would not complain if at least that was done well. Instead I have to suffer trough characters who claim to hate each other but are commenting how hot their Love Interest looks ALL. THE. FUCKING. TIME. Please give me a break😭
I love slow burn. I don't need sex scenes in books, just please build up the tension and drag the love story over hundreds of pages, or even several books in a series. Or let there really high stakes the protagonist have to overcome to be together.
as a big six of crows fan you 100% verbalized my thoughts on the treatment of kanej and wesper in the show!! though i prefer their plot in the books, i was completely fine with the change to wesper in the show. but even though kanej was technically changed much less, i felt really annoyed and dissatisfied with how they were portrayed in the show and could never really articulate why until this video! (also imo an underrated example of a slow slowburn done well is galadriel and orion from the scholomance trilogy!! they have tons of actual understandable reasons to not want/be able to be with each other, so even when they do finally do things, you almost don’t want them to because of how wrong it could go)
Yeah I actually loved Wesper in the show. But they took all the reasons for why Kanej is beloved and just… had the moments in there without any context or anything leading up to them?? It just makes me think that again, they should have just done a Six of Crows adaptation without the Shadows and Bone stuff so they could actually have a faithful adaptation with important character moments and focus on the characters that people actually care about.
I think it also didn't help that none of the cast they hired to play the crows actually look like teenagers, which to me is what makes SoC so hard-hitting. It's possible to hire people in their twenties that look young! I personally think the person they casted to play Lockwood in the Netflix Lockwood & Co adaptation would have made a great Kaz. @@RenaissanceRockerBoy
We do say "its about the journey, not the destination" in english too. If you want a very non-tiktok slow burn with good smut check out Kushiels Dart. Its a historical fantasy trilogy about a woman who's trained as a spy and courtesan and saves her country with her wits and her (literally) god given bdsm kink. Its fantastic and i don't even read erotica or romance.
@obviouslyqueer So Phedre is into anyone so there's queer sex, but her Casseline (protector/guard who swears a vow of chastity) who she endures hell with is a man and that's the slow burn relationship. I really like the society that the author builds. In this world sex work is a holy calling, and the whole religion and culture of Terre d'Ange is based on the angels who came to earth in this interestingly modified version Abrahamic mythology.
Lockwood & Co had a five book long slow burn. In the TV show they didn't change too much, just added some tension and stayed true to the characters. So of course, the show got cancelled after one season and we will never see the conclusion... But TV Shows that aren't adapted also have a lot less slowburn than they used to. I can only name very few Netflix shows where the endgame couples didn't kiss/hook up in the first few episodes or first season.
This is so well said thank youuuuuuuuuuuu. I really like slow burn because I like reading stories about complex characters growing through difficult obstacles. With (GOOD) slow burn, the conflict of the plot is literally emotional growth and interpersonal dynamics be it class, trauma, family, health, etc, but so many slow burns are just miscommunication tropes. And then we are supposed to laugh at how their friends were betting on when they’d finally realize they’re in love 🙄. Those are not the same genre of story.
This actually helped me write a scene I was just struggling with, and recontextualize a romance Ive veen writing Especially the "WHY are they being kept apart" hit me in the head cause that was something I was thinking myself but couldnt put it together enough in my mind to figure out what I should do
The Raven Cycle has the best slow burn relationship I've ever read. Those characters had me tied up in KNOTS wondering if they would actually end up together
and here i thought booktokkers were talking about books where the relationship takes a long time to get *properly established*. you're telling me it's just about sex?
As a straight man who’s talked to other straight male friends the type of romance we all seem to nearly exclusively like are slow burns. For the longest time I assumed romance as a whole just wasn’t for me until I discovered k drama rom coms. Which are almost entirely slow burns unlike a lot of western romance media. My favorite romance of all time is “Our beloved summer”. Where spoiler alert, they don’t kiss until half way into the series, and the characters are never explicitly shown having sex. But to me what made it so amazing as well as other romances I’ve really enjoyed (such as your lie in April which is an anime) is that it’s realistic in that characters have more going on in their lives than JUST the romance. And both love interest are intriguing people with their own unique struggles outside of the romance. There’s just something so wonderful and EARNED about having characters like this come together.
Part of me hates the slow burn bc shows get cancelled and they never come to fruition. Part of me loves it bc when it's done well it's great. Plus when couples get together quickly writers usually don't know what to do with them after that and ruin them anyways.
with the rise of streaming services younger and younger generations will never have to experience waiting week to week for years for a ship to get together… having an entire series drop that you can watch in one day makes it that hardly anything is really slow burn anymore. additionally, it is exceedingly rare that tv shows nowadays even get to 100 episodes…. There is such a lack of opportunity for true and fleshed out development. not to sound like a boomer but i tend to stick to late 90s-2000’s shows that existed before the tropeification of everything
Not to mention that shows that don't immediately draw in millions get axed quickly. That's why for all the shit wrong with Disney and its empire, I'll give them the tiny, tiniest thumbs up for having their episodes come out periodically and not just dump them on the platform all at once. Quality of the shows aside, getting to actually theorize episode by episode is nice.
I think the type of slow burn that ends with the couple getting together (coming clean about their feelings) after a long time of mutual pining especially between same sex pairings got ruined by tv shows in the past using that type of slow paced romance to queer bait the audience while incisting that "there is nothing romantic there, they're just platonic friends". I'm not gonna name any examples because I'm sure people will have their own examples in their head. Audiences have been burned before and therfore want the romance part as soon as possible to not feel cheated out of it like many times before.
I was thinking of that too as a fake example of slow burn. I shipped deancas from SPN for a long time and the show made it believable because they built such a strong relationship between the characters but never acknowledged it as such. In my head it's still slow burn but really it was just queerbating that made us linger...
It seems to me that the "slow" in slow burn is relative, just as any indication of speed really. If it's significantly slower than the norm in their genre or medium, it could be a slow burn. It then more depends in whether or not you could call it a "burn" still, which is more about the quality or the romantic/sensual plot.
Absolutely hate the pacing in recent books. Everything feels very tropey and fanfic-ey, which in itself isnt bad if done right but the problem is when authors fail at the execution. Glad that you mentioned Captive Prince. To me, it is the only example of an original work that started out online being published and having a good slow burn, as well as the prime example of (actual) enemies to lovers. I wish more authors werent afraid of developting their characters and couples through the span of more than one book. That is one of the reasons I love danmei.
@@obviouslyqueer it started as a fanfic in livejournal but with original characters, meaning that it wasnt based on any existing fandom/pairing. some of the characters even had other names, but pacat changed them when it got published
@@lexa4160 hmm! Is it a fanfic if it's og characters? I'm asking out of curiosity for how you define a fanfic! It's a really interesting discussion I've never thought about. For me that's a web novel, but not for you?
do you have a source on Capri being a fanfiction originally? i don't recall anything like that, even the people who followed it from the beginning on LJ have never mentioned anything of the sort
I got interested in the slow burn theme because the last two books I read were slowburns, and I didn't expect them to be mentioned at all not even tangentially, and then I heard the word danmei and I got jumpscared (in a good way) (they were danmei btw) Recently I hadn't been able to get into media with canon couples because they always feel so rushed or so slow (trying to be slow burns but have no reason for the characters to not be together) and then I read this books and tbh what I was searching for was slow burn. Kind of sad that slow burns are getting less "slow-burny" now but I still have hope. Really great video and it made me realize a lot of things about all of this subject!
This feels weird when in old fanfic circles lime = slow burn or no spice and lemon = kink, pwp stuff. Sad to see the citrus system go the way of the dodo.
I watch a lot of Korean TV Shows and it's an ongoing meme that the main couple will kiss in episode 8 of 16 (90% only have one season). And it's interesting because there are so many "slow burns" without the reason for it as you mentioned. So it's just yearning for yearnings sake. After your video I now know why I liked "a shoulder to cry on" that much but was so disappointed by the ending. in 6 episodes they layed out the slow burn really well and explored all the reasons why they want to be but can't be together. It even ended with a break up scene. but then in the last two scenes they added a time jump and just skipped all of the character development and made them a couple anyway, implying the growth but never showing it 😢 I don't care that they didn't kiss, I care that they skipped over all the traum ahealing that was necessary for them to be together.
I am a slow Slow-burn kind of girl and can't find anything that pleases me. Yes I have read the Captive Prince trilogy and absolutely loved it. But since then, absolutely nothing except a few fanfics. I have just read Six of Crows for the first time and was disappointed, i had heard about Kaz/Inej and was expecting it to be better.
I think my love of a good slow burn (that doesn’t take too long) goes with my love of friends to lovers. The journey of the two characters/friends hooks me due to seeing the progression of their friendship. For example, show and book wise, Penelope and Colin are my favorite couple of the series due to the slow burn due to their friendship blooming. The journey comes from seeing what they have in common, them wanting to protect each other, seeing who they are without the other person, and trusting in each other. All of this takes time and friendship can lead to this. I think this is why Pride and Prejudice works. They first don’t understand each other at first and the more they communicate and become fond of each other, they trust each other and want to protect each other.
I can easily say that one of my favorite slowburn show is Killing Eve. And I also love slow burn stories where we don't get to see characters like actually get together( such as Hannibal and Will Graham) I think the fact that tension constantly remains at a high level and never decreases makes the story more interesting and actually tragic in a way.
I think you make such an important point about the “climax” of the slow burn occurring when the obstacles that prevent the relationship from happening are overcome.
I just finished reading a friends to lovers slow burn fanfic and 100k words in they were not even friends yet! Just how I like it! Red white and royal blue has such awful fanfic pacing!! Have you read The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri? I think it's so underrated as a slow burn.
I am a glacial burn kind of person, maybe just because I hate romantic subplots and love plot, so if characters A and B are gonna get together its gonna have to take a WHILE
This is my first video I've watched from you and you explained exactly my love for and common complaints with slow burn (that I hadn't been able to articulate). Also, the "fake problem" noise and cuts at around the 9:30 mark just killllled me lol.
I just discovered your channel yesterday and the content is like chef's kiss. I wish there were more content creators like you who express very balanced opinions. There is always reasonable critique given where its warranted and credit given where its due. You are unapologetic while expressing your opinions and express them with suitable academic backing instead of a popular majoritarian viewpoint to cash in internet points and clout. Love that about you. The videos not only provide a deeper insight about the workings of literary medium but also doesn't appear like a lecture given in a classroom. I find them very enjoyable. Keep up the good work!
I think what many new novels and movies doesnt realize about slow burn is that its not about the time itself but about the TENSION, if you try a slowburn but they fall inlove quickly at the end but you just postponed it (which is what many movies and joung novels do this days) then its not slowburn and it feels hella forced. Its all about slowly making them catch feelings and even MORE SLOWLY making them want to be closer. Build a tension so that every little interaction and physical contact feels absolutely awesome for us readers/viewers
I have different standards for fanfiction than for published fiction. Fanfiction is meant to be a little self-indulgent. It’s supposed to be fan wish-fulfilment, and often more fast-paced. There have been fanfictions I’ve read where I’m like “I really enjoyed that,” but if I see some fanfiction-style language or tropes in published work I just inwardly cringe. It’s so obvious when fanfiction has a heavy influence on a writer’s style, and it’s sad to see bookstores and the publishing industry getting in on it
I discovered your channel yesterday and omg! Now I'm going through all your videos!! I love your content and how you explain topics and also your point of view on those topics. And as a non-native speaker of English I really get you and find those bloopers really funny 💓
omg it’s like you finally voiced what I’ve been confused about for years. I’m a reader that rarely engages in any communities and it has been confusing and frustrating to see books change so much into things I don’t like 😢
this was a really well made video and you put into words exactly the things i've been thinking lately regarding booktok, fanfiction and the trope epidemy haha
Thank you so much! And that's a very interesting idea for a video. A lot of people discussed this in the comment field of my Heartstopper video due to Alice Osemans very tasteless comment on BL. At the moment I'm not that well read on, but it's an important topic.
I think on TV the best slowburns have always been the ones from 20 (or more) episodes per season shows with multiple seasons, like the main couples from The Mentalist, Bones or Castle (cop shows are good at this for some reason lmao), also I'll add Harvey and Donna from Suits, but there aren't really shows with that many episodes anymore. Recently Abott Elementary (excellent comedy) had a 22 episode second season and the characters that (spoiler alert) seemed that were going to be a slowburn kiss, but then don't actually talk about their feelings despite being adults who clearly like each other and don't really have any obstacles to be together other than filler secondary romantic interests, and they could simply break up with them. And this leads me to secondary romantic interests because it is slowburn 101. Writers don't want their couple to get together yet but there isn't really a reason why they wouldn't be together? Just throw there a new character that we all know is not going to last because is just there to drag the slowburn couple for another season. And regarding the slowburn on the Percy Jackson TV show I think there's no way they are rushing that, Rick Riordan being involved and the pairing being children are guarantees that they will stay true to the books in that sense.
Huh, i never really thought of cop shows as slow-burns; I always felt that loooong running cop show romances were more a symptom of maintaining the status quo, rather than a deliberately paced slow burn. They keep things at "will they/won't they" for yeeears (bc its a tried and true formula) then have them get together when viewship wanes
In terms of TV shows & movies, I definitely think streaming platforms have ruined slow burns. The possibility of a show being cut too early or even after 1 season is so high, it feels like creators are forced to try to rush things to keep people interested and continue telling their stories or risk the show being canceled and them never getting to finish their stories. Either way, it's a tragedy cause there's so many stories that have the potential to be absolutely amazing if they weren't rushed and given the time to develop like they should.
I love slown burn trope, but... in fanfiction we rarely see it. Last time when I got real slown burn I was reading Elisabeth Gaskell book and I never got a kiss. In fanfiction tag slown burn is even with stories where first kiss in in second chapter. I am ff writer myself but treat it as exercises before trying writting a reeal book
1. I think you make some really good points in this video and those developments do make me a bit sad and worried, especially regarding the book market. 2. The goodreads link to your profile isn't working...? :( 3. Would you drop some recommendations outside of the ones you mentioned in this video? 4. Will you do a "best books of the year" video? 5. I love how you say "love" as a verb - you put so much heart and intensity in there! :)
1. Thank you! I think it's important to balance the negative critique of booktok by also highlighting that booktok is creating a new generation of readers that read physical books in a world with severely decreasing reading comprehension and illiteracy, which is very positive, and the popularity of booktok has saved a lot of independent bookstores - which is also positive! 2. What! I'll check that out. 3. Sure! Slow burns specifically or just books overall? 4. Probably not hehe I don't read that much and I'm mostly interested in doing deep dives of things! 5. Thank you :') never though about how I use that word!
@@obviouslyqueer 1. You're right of course. Important to see the positive as well! It's easy to fall into a boomer mindset there. :) 3. I just really enjoy books that'll have me thinking about the characters and their relationships for weeks and months after. A lot of them happen to be slow burns, but it's not a prerequisite. I read the big mlm triforce (Simon Snow - All for the Game - Captive Prince) at the beginning of the year within two months. (Can you imagine what that was like???) I'm definitely warming up to The Raven Cycle as well! I'm always a little disheartened by the absence of women in these sort of character study romances. (The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir gives me hope, though!) So sapphic or even het content is welcome as well. But yeah, any type of book serving painfully multilayered relationship portraits? Yum!
trc, aftg, and soc being in the same video on youtube is so insane to me. i forget it’s not just me and some weird people on two and tumblr who talk abt, or yk, that those tumblr users can do other things lol
Telenovela's romances used to be slowburn. There's a telenovela author that says "a telenovela is two people trying to have s*x and everyone else getting in the way" (and I like to think some times themselves getting in their way). Telenovelas are more than this, of course, but a lot of telenovela's romances goes like that. Nowdays the authors are rushing the main characters so they get together in the first 10 chapters (episodes) and the rest of the chapters they are just going back and forth. It's very boring... One of the my favorites telenovelas is The Thorn and The Rose (O Cravo e a Rosa), a retteling of The Taming of the Shrew, and there are many reasons the main characters can't get together, but mainly the girl, Catarina, promised her mother in her deathbed she would never fall in love and has a traumatizing fear/hate of men, thinking all of them are after her money. I feel fanfics and telenovelas are very alike, they both come from the feuilleton style of the 19th century, but because social media spam attention the pace of this style is changing. And this is happening only in the west. Webtoons and asian dramas are still doing slowburn very well.
I think many older romance books were mostly slow-burns and they were actually stand-alone novels built on tension. So, it's not necessary for a good slow burn to be a series. It depends on author storytelling skills. The books you have shown as example are fantasy books so they will require more space for the worldbuilding and grand plots. But I agree with you that contemporary romance is rarely satisfactory, especially from popular US authors. I think we should look outside of US market for this type of romance. Some prefer Asian literature, but I also find that Scottish, Irish, British and French authors have many good slow burns too.
I was saying something similar to my friends the other days, most series and even books just make the characters fall in love and make out so quickly, before there's even time to know them. I fucking hate it. Especially if it's supposed to be an enemies to lovers. This is why I'm more inclined to watch k-dramas these days. Tipically the relationships there are much slower. Of course not all k dramas, and they're not all perfect, but mostly it works for me.
I agree with you I the same way with good omens I waiting 4 years hope for the main characters to hold hands did not think they would kiss and that kiss made me so happy that I scream and it made the ending all the more sad now I have to wait 3 more years for season 3 I'm happy sad and mad at the same time and I love it❤
No slow burns will ever be better than those in sitcoms who are milking the "will they/won't they" dynamic for all its worth to try and stretch the plot into more seasons.
I was watching Veronica Mars and it has and enemies to lovers trope and a slow burn it them 18 episodes to have there first kiss but if the show was made today they would have been together episode 3 the 8 episodes rub is definitely killing the slow burn
I think that when it comes to the Slowburn trope in queer relationships in tv is also necessary to talk about queerbaiting and fandom. Like, is it a slowburn or is it queerbaiting? Are the creators just using the safety of the slowburn trope to keep the fandom shipping the characters on the base of that "will they, wont they" that you mention in the video? Its interesting that queerbaiting couples (or ones that were not able to be canon on tv because of the producers) are often associated with a slowburn trope either in canon or fanon timelines, despite the relationship being confirmed in the end or not. Ex: shera, legends of korra, sherlock, dastiel and even in some of the examples you pointed out in the video. (byler)(I saw that you made a video about queerbaiting in strangers things and i haven't watched it yet but i will be watching soon. I just discovered your channel and i´m loving the things you talk about)
As an aspiring writer myself, when it comes to slowburns (regardless of whatever genre), if you're aiming for a mainstream audience, I think it's best to put the slowburn as a side-plot/story. I've personally written a book (200k words) where the main plot was moving at a slowburn pace. The result? Only a few stuck to the end, while most simply dropped.
The mirror visitor series has the best (imo) will they won’t they slow-burn’s i have ever read and I’m struggling to find a series that will live up to that
great video! it was so interesting, especially the part about what makes a good slowburn, it had me reevaluating every story i've ever read lol. also i am also super invested in byler LOL. i am apart of the fandom, however i don't think it's going to happen, but something that happened just yesterday on twitter was the "Slowburn Awards" with over 800,000 votes and byler placed 18 out of 50 ships and most of twitter was PISSED because they're not even canon LOL. but i think it does really show how queer people are starved of slowburn on tv (it was mainly het couples)
i think part of the reason there aren't really queer slowburns is not only because there aren't that many slowburns anymore lmao but also because the show/films would be accussed of queerbaiting even if their intention was a slowburn, not that queerbaiting alegations have stopped the entertaintment industry before but yk
Would you be able to make a video of slow Burns kind of giving a summary of them and then how you would rate them I've been trying to find some good ones and I like the fact that you do include the rewards of slow Burns to not always be focused on sex
Like you say, good slow burns are not based on miscommunication, and a lot of authors seem to forget that. Characters who can’t be together because they can’t properly communicate their feelings to one another strike me as very immature. It’s one thing if the characters are awkward teenagers without any life experience, but when I see adult characters spend most of the story pining after one another and simply failing to communicate properly, it makes me want to pull my hair out. If an adult is that inept at communicating their feelings properly, they probably aren’t fully ready for a relationship anyway.
I'm of the opinion that yes, there can be slow burn in a single novel and it be good... But not most books that just drag on to be called a slow burn whsjsjsjjwjw It will always depend on the skill of the writer on telling the story, but (at least for me) a slow burn is not about the amount of pages passed it's about how the progression of the romance and the progression of time is portraited (sorry if this isn't the most appropriate word, english is not my first language) But, it's something more challenging to do as A standalone romance book, that's why the more liked examples tend to have to romance as a background or running parallel to the plot of the book(s). The conflict of the story can also make the reader less likely to question why they aren't together already, because there's more shit happening around than just the romantic tension.
I really dont like slow burn, or enemies to lovers, but when i thought how i wanted slow burn to become less prominent, I didnt think it would get replaced by the books written specifically to the character's threesomes
Okay, full disclosure I started writing a comment about danmei before you even brought it up lol. I can think of a few danmei novels (Chinese BL novels) that have really good slow burn. Though I'm not a huge fan of those tiktok memes that paint danmei slow burn like "It took them 200 chapters to hold hands!!" I know it's cheeky and an exaggeration, but once you generalise a genre that way, you flatten it, and let's be honest 90% of slow burn is boring and bad. The good slow burns I read are about complex, dynamic characters who meet each other in the middle.
The only TV slow burns that I liked ended up not being canon anyways lmao. But more importantly: I finished Captive Prince and AFTG, and TRC and nothing is living up to them. Someone please recommend some other long ass slow burns
Well nothing has ever done what AFTG and TRC did for me. They will always be at the top and then you just have to accept everything else will make you slightly less psychotic haha. But if one can overlook the truly awful translation of "Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation", which I mentioned on the video, that slow burn is so good. Like, the language (translation) suuuucks (all for the game is a literary masterpiece in comparison) and the story is occasionally really slow, but the relationship, the build up and the dynamic is great. But not for everyone... due to above reasons haha.
@@obviouslyqueer Thank you! Idk what it says about me, but I didn't even question the writing in AFTG hahah. So I'll see if I can handle Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation 🤞
@@ellyra412 All for the Game by Nora Sakavic and The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater! Both series have me in a chokehold. Check the trigger warnings for AFTG though :)
Yes, I agree. A slow burn isn't really slow if it's a standalone book. Even if the characters knew each other for years before acting on their feelings...it's still not slow to us readers. We just met them 250 pages ago🤣
I appreciate your video, as slow burns those days are for me normal burns if I can phrase it like that. And I love good slow-slooow burns //Also i had different understanding of the slow burn I thought its not avoit obstacles I'm general but about realisinnnnggg //Okay I remebred that my favourite slowburn is a boy realising he fell in love for a guy that he was trying to help to get anogher guy so yea there were an obstacles
For me, slow burn does not work as a main plotline in a romance book. Slow burn shines best at a sideline. You have the main storyline and then you have two characters fall in love throughout the journey. One example that always comes to mind of slow burn done well is Castle and Beckett in tv show Castle. If it's not characters developing feelings for each other throughout several seasons (in tv shows) or books (in book series) I don't want it. Overall, the thing is that readers now prefer romance plot to be resolved in book one. They don't want to wait or read several books to get to that point. They think they want slow burn but I in my opinion they just don't want insta-love and think that slow burn is the opposite of it. When it comes to "enemies to lovers" trope, it's painful to see what it has become. It's been completely butchered. What do you mean Violet and Xaden were enemies? Where? How?
I'm a big fan of slow burn, with a leaning preference on enemies to lovers or forbidden love. Give me those 800k words worth of pining, I'll eat it up! Hell, I've been known to read 1M+ words worth of (scrumptious) slow burn, I love that stuff, it's my bread and butter. But oh dear god, has the mainstream media twisted what slow burn really is and what it entails. I'm queer, so to no one's surprise, I tend to gravitate towards queer stories. On top of this, I prefer fantasy/sci-fi/historical fiction over the usual modern day settings romances. This, sadly, limits the amount of content out there for me. I've found great comfort in fanfiction and interactive novels because of this, they offer me everything I could ever want. Plus, they're straightforward with what they offer, unlike TV shows with their song and dance, where you either end up with the queerbaiting mess that was Sherlock, or with an actual romance to the likes of OFMD (though I wouldn't necessarily call this one a slowburn, but that's probably just me). In my opinion, Good Omens (the perfect slow burn, I mean, who can beat their 6000 years?) balanced this perfectly, with the only ones not realizing that they were watching a queer romance unfold being the straight, cis men, with the media literacy of an empty salad bowl (OR people so used to queerbait, they held no hope) who were not as chronically online as the rest of the fandom (but, if you were to look for it, you could rest assured you were in for a love story). The mainstream media (booktok?) has twisted the public opinion on slow burn too, or more so on how it operates, as I have noticed one of the four romances in an interactive book series I follow to be criticized for being 'too slow' when there is active conflict on why it is so. This romance route is strictly advertised as a SLOW BURN, we're in book three of seven! The other routes are much faster, I just don't understand why you'd go for the emotionally constipated one if you want to get down to business by book three. On this, I'd love to see an analysis by you on the enemies to lovers trope, and how it has been watered down to 'two people who simply dislike each other and bicker', when that would more so fall under the rivals to lovers trope. Like, if you're advertising a story as enemies to lovers, you should at LEAST make it a little toxic, jaja. My apologies for the (not so) mini rant 😅
I gotta say, you talking about the rushed slow burn romances in Shadow and Bone and bringing them up as an example for changing the story in order to be able to actually tell it is incredibly ironic given the fact that Netflix just canceled the show lmao Also, I wanted to point out that while I would absolutely LOVE a good slow burn queer romance told over several seasons, not only would it be almost impossible in the current streaming climate, but even IF it was allowed to happen a large part of the audience would riot and yell "QUEERBAITING!" Like, I'm trying to put myself in the place of the creator of that hypotethical show and it would be a nightmare. Imagine the discourse.
Yeah, not surprised about the cancellation but still disappointed. This cancellation trend is so frustrating. It would probably cause some discourse yeah haha. Which is such a shame. Multi-season build ups are the best.
I also weirdly think this works in reverse. I'm a queer guy and only read m/m and tm pairings, so not sure if this extends to other fics, but I swear in the last few years along the rise of these really... cheesy, fast paced, flanderized shows and books, it's also been strikingly harder to find fanfics that actually are slow burn and format themselves like novels. I've found a few -- as a Pathologic fan I have admittedly read some fanfics from that fanbase that pretty perfectly capture the game's spirit and know how to read like a book rather than a tropey fic. But it's increasingly rare. I feel like it's a weird cycle where the more fanfic-esque our TV and books become, the more flanderized and simplistic the fanfics themselves become, and so on. Like, what kind of fanfic comes out of fandoms surrounding shows and books that already read like fanfics? It's silly to say but even just ignoring writing style and how that's degraded a lot over the years in fanfic spaces (mine included, mind you! I am not immune to the brain rot) from romances to smut, the pacing itself has really... gotten worse in fanfic spaces, alongside shows and books like these. The more fast paced and blunt books get, the more fanfics get, and I swear even fanfics with slow burn tags end up progressing at rapid speeds with very minimal characterization. At this point slow burn seems to just mean "they don't fuck on the first chapter" because that IS comparably slow to a lot of media and fanfic right now. I feel so boomerbrained saying it but it really does feel as though fanfic AND books have been catering towards a lack of of attention span more and more. Many books feel like they're straight up written just to be adapted into graphic novels at this point. Of course as a lefty it's my obligation to say that this is in fact due to capitalism and corporations seeing that fanfic is popular and trying to just do that without understanding the context of fanfiction style writing, and then fanfiction writers having less to work with in the source material itself because of it. Once again capitalism does a whoopsie and decimates creative processes! Not to say I don't think there are amazing fics and media out there. I love (most of) TL Klune's books, and I've read fanfics that are immaculate, both pure rancid p*rn and long form fics, and it's not like we're in some alt right 'decline of art' feverdream. But we ARE in a period where kids grow up on visuals and fast pacing, and corporations are eager to feed that for money instead of, like, determining how dangerous that can be for people.
Fanfic culture bleeding into original media consumption always felt really sinister to me. Tropes in fanfic are usually descriptive, labeled after-the-fact. In the hands of for-profit publishing, fic tropes become part of prescriptive formulas for success without regard for the actual content of the story. In a way, publishers are going "so we CAN release the same stories over and over again and you'll just eat it up if we use fandom lingo?"
fr like i love fanfic and fanfic tropes, but some BELONG in fanfic. an author can use a broader trope and do it uniquely, for example enemies to loves or forced proximity or smth like that. but recently all the "tiktok" books just read like the same old fanfic over and over again because the ENTIRE romance AND characters are just tropes.
@@honestlyali27 its all spicy romance, enemies to lovers, forced proximity, and what not. all the same, people eat it up. especially when one of the love interest is controlling/abusive.
You say that as if it's not always been like this.
It's just completely assumed now.
@@celia1888 Yes it's always been like this. Companies always want their magic formulas. It's just increasimgly worrying when media is now using the formulas themselves as a marketing gimmick. It's like a restaurant bragging about the grease and sugar in their food instead of trying to claim the food is actually of any quality.
My Rats of NIMH fanfic involves scientific socialism. None of that utopian garbage.
i was mad to see red, white, royal blue referred as enemies to lovers when they just mildly couldn't stand each other with no other repercussions. meanwhile captive prince is the prime of this trope. a supreme example of what enemies to lovers should be. and it also does slow burn so well.
Yeah RWRB are not enemies to lovers... That's just two boys that don't know each other.
Yes, I read it in one day and felt weird because... It is so much like a light fanfic where the author didn't categorized great their creation. I'm going to read Captive Prince, sounds great!
i mean it's more of a rivals to lovers, but yeah midly. personally i don't mind it as much that it is used interchangeably. but it is definitely sad to have this more quick and faster romance story line, which i mostly blame audiences and streaming sites that produce like one season and if it is not a quick success in the first 24h or first week, ciao kakao -.-
@@gayhorseno, its about two enemy princes, one of which is a captive of the other. hence the title captive prince
and referred to as a slow burn / fake friends to lovers (lol) when they get together 10% of the way in!!!!!! why!!!
Honestly I've always seen it as "we need to make this Canon before our show gets Canceled"😭
I 100% agree with the take that fanfic-style pacing isn't good for published romance, I think even more so for enemies-to-lovers than slow burn. The nice thing about fanfic is that all the characters are already fleshed out, and you can focus entirely on romance without sacrificing character complexity. This is especially a problem for published enemies-to-lovers, because instead of having established reasons these characters hate each other you usually just get some variation of 'he was a misogynist.... she was a woman.... and they fell in love....'
Ghhghhhaha yeah. Your last lines? it's 100% that
💯
which is why i swear by the statement of enemies to lovers in original fiction almost never works if it's m/f
i wouldn’t say that for published fiction necessarily but for f/m specifically het ships. and my favourite enemies to lovers ship is f/m! i would say it can be done in fanfiction for what you said but enemies to lovers can work in published fiction, just usually with people of the same gender. i think it can work with f/m too it’s just usually the guy is a misogynist for some reason lol and i have no idea why that’s so common but go off ig? lmao
@@kohammygood point. spuffy being a notable exception. some would say rilo, but it never held my interest. maybe entrapdak. maybe.
I loved seeing Kanej onscreen, but if I hadn't read the books beforehand I would have had ZERO idea why they couldn't just hook up and be done with it
Exactly!
I watched the show without reading the books and I understood why. I guess I can just pick up on context clues 💀
the books are absolutely fantastic at describing their dynamic.
Huh, but there were definitely some clues, especially about Kaz.
i have always felt like the show is made for people who have already read the books
these people (on tiktok mostly) have never read a 800k fic where the characters do not get together until after 750k words and it shows. rwrb a slowburn???? HEARTSTOPPER A SLOWBURN??? what is this world that we are living in
Recently I was reading (still WIP) ff where first kiss was in 223 chapter.
or the fic is 100k but it’s slow burn jbc the author rarely updates lmaooo
kinda unrelated to your comment but any fic recommendations? I haven't read a good fanfic in ages
@@ananyasayshi if you are open to not LGBT+ story I truly recommend Dream by NeverBeyondRedemption ;)
I'm glad more and more people seem willing to discuss the parts of fanfic that aren't good for "original" stories. When people say things like "Some fanfic is even better than canon!", more often than not the fics they're thinking of aren't better crafted, better written, or even tell the same kind of story the canon wants to be. What they usually mean is "The fanfic I love completely reorients the universe to be all about the characters/ship I am most invested in, using the tropes I like best." Which is fine! There’s nothing wrong with enjoying that. But I used to get a lot of pushback when I would say that didn’t make the fic "better than canon" or that it wasn’t an insult to fanfic to criticize a canon for "feeling like fanfic". Now that more fics are becoming "original" canons, it's become pretty obvious there's more to a good story than just ships and tropes.
Ooh definitely! I've only ever read one fic (out of many many fanfics I've read) that I actually considered was better than canon and it was because it was written about a fantasy book series and fleshed out the world and characters more than the original series did. Other than that I feel like most fics are less of a 'better than canon' and more of a 'fun thing that adds more to one specific part of canon'
@@claireattemptsatmusic7481Same. I very rarely consider fics "better than canon". So far I've only seen a few fics absolutely overhaul canon and create a new world of their own (or, if the canon world is fine but is lacking wordlbuilding, then they end up filling in all the plot holes and mysteries that the original canon pretended didn't exist) and then basically write an emotional, angsty book out of it.
I feel as if a lot of times we let our excitement over a great fic, overshadow our judgement. After a thousand fanfics on the same couple, its easy to forget that the fanfic your currently reading feels that good, because the original work had all the building blocks for these characters and because you've formed a version of this couple based on the collective of many many other fanfics.
Fanfics cannot compete with the source material because it doesn't have to do the same heavy lifting as the source material. The original story has to get the audience interested in the story, characters and relationships. It has to make a name for itself.
Fanfics use that - people already love the characters, that's why they're clicking on the fanfic in the first place. If they wouldn't care for the characters in the first place, they wouldn't give the fanfic another thought. The fanfic is only interesting for them because it uses familiar names. Take the same fanfic and remove all names and descriptions that hint to the source material, and the story itself suddenly becomes a lot less interesting...
I read a great interview by Marissa Meyer an eternity ago and it stuck in my head ever since. She was talking about how to write a romantic storyline, referencing her series The Lunar Chronicles (I think only the first two books were out at that point), none of which are slowburns but all of which are fantastically written romances. I think the advice holds for slowburns fantastically though. Anyway she said that characters need an external reason why they can't be together (politics, rival families, whatever) and an internal reason why they can't be together (trauma, inability to be vulnerable, fear of rejection, etc.). Both characters should have this. And then you get amazing pining and a great will-they-won't-they with real reasons they can't be together, guaranteeing both good internal arcs and external ones as they fight racism and battle their trauma or whatever before they can be together.
Absolutely agree! That's a very good way to verbalize it/rule.
recommendations!!
Yes! This is why I have a hard time seeing standalone books as "slow burns," or "enemies to lovers" for that matter, unless they're doing an insta-love version of enemies to lovers. The amount of time it takes to build up that tension and motivations for why they can't be together and the obstacles they have to overcome to get to a point where they're finally contemplating, "is this a thing? Should we try it? Maybe not?" would NOT fit in a standalone book, unless that book is a George R.R. Martin size book: 900+ pages with tiny font. I actually love slow burns and the enemies to lovers trope, which is why it ended up in 2 of my current projects, but both stories have external motivations (politics/power dynamics and the conflicts between the supernatural groups: witches vs vampires) and internal motivations (trauma, fear, & inability to trust others). For my paranormal story with the witches and vampires, they're still in the "well, maybe we don't have to be enemies, but I still don't fully trust you 100% and I'm keeping my eye on you" phase by the end of book 1, 😂 so there's definitely NO kissing at all for them in that book. When I say slow burn, I mean slow burn. If the characters get together by the end of book 1, that's just not a slow burn to me or a good enemies to lovers. 🤷🏽♀
IMO, it’s not tiktok killing the slow burn per se, but rather the overarching issue of consumerism and insidious advertising that are the true enemy of good literature.
somewhat related i'm disturbed by the regular demand for heartstopper boys to sleep together. for the first half of season 1, charlie was fourteen years old and his actor looked it. this isn't like riverdale with 28 year olds playing high school sophomores
Even if they were adults, why would you only be concerned about that? Like yes, sex can be a huge part of a relationship. But it can also just not be. Every couple is different so there's no need for it. And yeah, considering the characters are minors I don't think I have to elaborate 💀
@@ot7biasedmashups oh it's a whole discourse. op probably addressed a lot of it in their video about heartstopper which i didn't realize they made until after i commented lol. but anyway! there's been backlash to the show because the author of the books is a woman and not a gay man, who portrayed the boys as pure cinnamon rolls or whatever.
@@BeansKneezAlice is non-binary I’m pretty sure. It really sucks that the same people who accused Ki Connor of queerbaiting and forced him to out himself also constantly invalidate a queer author because of their obsessive and creepy need to see teenagers have sex :/ There’s a big difference between sanitizing for the cishet gaze (Love Simon for example) and examples of more chill and not as sexual younger queer exploration. Agreeing with you, just pointing this out :)
@@RenaissanceRockerBoy oh, my mistake. i think rowan ellis has said this before but i forgot. what happened to kit was straight-up awful and it breaks my heart that the backlash wasn't enough to keep that type of fan from thinking they were in the right. there's definitely going to be more creatives shamed into outing themselves
Yeah I made a whole video as you said about this specific discourse. Portraying healthy and fulfilling relationships without sex is so important!
I found the best slow burns being in asian media. They know how to do the pining right, so by the time they kiss in the last episode, you cannot help but squeal from joy. When it comes to queer dramas, Thai BLs are killing it recently. If you want to see what a proper slow burn should loook like, look no further than A Tale Of Thousand Stars. If you want to see enemies to lovers with a bit of slow burn in a perfect execution, The Eclipse is here for you.
Yeah so I've heard. Thank you a lot for the tips!
But I have seen that even if they are a sliw-burn, they kind of add unnecessary plots here and there and also have the same stuffs going on in them
@@myboinan Depends on what series and mostly, what country really. A Tale Of Thousand Stars doesn’t have unnecessary plots, all of them make sense. It’s mostly Kore ahere they love adding plot twists or weird plots. Have you seen any Thai series?
@@liana388695% of thai BLs are trashy as hell.
I agree with you. I am rewatching vampire diaries lately and I see now why the delena ship just blew a whole generation of teenagers away back then. It was a slow burn, but a real one. It took whole seasons for them to kiss and 4 seasons to "do it". Back then I felt we waited for aaaages for them to finally get together. When it happened, it was so rewarding. And it was because both of the characters grew. I think you nailed it. Would it be possible for a ship today? Honestly I am not sure. But I truly hope so 🥺 I miss it
Thank you! Yeah I haven't read it but I know a lot of people absolutely loved vampire diaries. You want the wait to be both long but also feel necessary! I hope the future will bring long stories to both books and TV 🙏
I never like tvd, but mine was Stydia from teen wolf. Unfortunately, I think another reason we don't have that anymore I because streaming platforms drop the entire season at once and they are shorter. In a binge-friendly way,
Yes, Delena was for sure a slow burn and it was rewarding when Elena finally picked Damon. Which makes me realize, I think I finally understand why I never cared for Stelena. It just happened so quick and immediately, there's no tension and buildup, no time for growth for either characters. Stefan just came to town one day and then the next week, him and Elena are a couple. WTF? 🤨
Okay I know this isn't slow burn by your standards, but... in Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, Ari falls in love at the beginning of the book, then spends 300 pages destroying his life because he's completely unable to admit it to himself. It's devastating and beautiful, and it's what I like a slow burn to be.
Regardless of it being a slow burn or not it's a great book!!
Oh my I'm so happy someone is talking about that book. It was an amazing experience reading, I thing there is where I fell in love with slow burn (I consider it as such but I understand other people may not agree, which is ok). I am currently reading the second book and also love it, it's been some time since I read the first one so I can't say which one I like best. So hyped to see it in a comment, if you know similar books please let me know
I LOVE this book!!
Yeah hahaha. They kissed on ep 2, I was shocking. Everything happened so fast
I think Our Flag Means Death is an interesting case here. The show was being accused of queerbaiting right up until the 9th episode where the main couple kiss, despite it very clearly not being queerbaiting since the two characters (well at least one of them) were already shown to be queer and several side characters were queer. And it was a sort of under-the-radar show on HBO until the 9th episode when it then exploded since there was now a canon mlm ship. (I'd argue the ship was canon all along but people will require actual physical expression of sexuality or attraction now since we've gone so long being baited with writing and longing glances. Which I totally understand, I've been there and it's incredibly frustrating.) Edit to add I don't think it would have been renewed if there hadn't been a kiss. Interesting to consider.
This entire comment is also relevant to Good omens. Last episode of season 2. Definitely no queer baiting.
@@mzcyberbat Yeah, 1000%
If they're not fucking it raw then its not canon sadly. Not to sound cynical, but attention spans have dwindled to the point that if something isn't immediately shown and spoon fed to people, they just completely miss it. That's why I personally feel like a lot of romances are rushed and feel ingenuine in media. They have to immediately jump to kissing without any build up or else people will complain.
@@haveagoodday7021Well especially in queer media because if they're not rawdog fucking then the mainstream heteronormative audience will dogpile and say that we're just looking too much into it or "they're good friends." It's super frustrating that queer couples have to get physical to be considered real. I've seen people still think Good Omens isn't queer. And Will Byers. And there was another but I can't remember....
Oh! Another one is growing up I was told BrokeBack Mountain wasn't gay because my mom didn't take THE EXPLICIT SEX SCENE as gay. I asked her when I was older, "Mom they legit bang how did you not know??" She says, "They were cold! It was for survival!" Yes mom, totally not a trope of anything....(fuck or die) But seriously they did not have to bang to survive mom, come on.
Reminds me of the What We Do In The Shadows fandom. This show has so many references to its main cast being "bi until proven otherwise", the male housemates all hook up with each other, etc... but some people call it queerbaiting because ONE SHIP isn't canon.
Granted, it may be shipbaiting, yes, but Nandermo is NOT queerbaiting.
i also think a lot of people who find that they love slow burn in fanfiction but don't find themselves liking it in real books, i think it's because at the end of the day they are two different types of writing that are going to have to be viewed differently. fanfiction is good because you have a prior attachment to some other media. even if the fic is completely different from canon, in the end the characters they use are from somewhere else and your attachment to those characters will determine how much you like it. And i get it because I'm the same way. I love fanfiction, even better when it's well written and long. and i find that i'm not into 'real' books because I don't have an attachment and I don't often go out of my way to find attachments to books when I prefer to do things like play games and watch anime.
I just think people who expect original writing to have the same effect as fanfiction, are setting themselves up for failure. both authors and readers alike.
Amen!
I will say, I’ve read plenty of fic for shows I’ve never watched and it still hit different without me having a prior connection to the original source material.
@@TheEighthAct i mean i get that bc that's also happened to me, but i think that because you know it's fanfiction, the expectation you set for it is fundamentally different from original source material. and realistically, most people don't look for every fanfiction to be extremely well written so when it is, it stands out. and i say stands out even more than if a regular book did the same
i hate how the publishing industry has latched onto fanfic tropes for regular books when i look to fanfics to provide me different stuff than a regular book/tv show. like in fanfics i’m totally fine with cheesy convenient plot lines bc i’m just here to see my fav couple fall in love but with a show or book, i really can’t get into it if the PLOT doesn’t interest me regardless of the ship or the tropes. they can advertise all my fav tropes on a book but that doesn’t guarantee i’ll enjoy it?
People think Heartstopper is slow burn? I dropped the first book because I considered it fast burn. 😭
heartstopper is definitely on the quick paced side, in general and in terms of romance lol
I haven't read it but basing on the show I think people think it's slow burn because they do not have sex... comparing it to most teenage TV shows (euphoria, skins) sex is instant, but heartstopper is more accurate teenage experience
It has a fast pace. But I like the comic better than the show. Probably because the fast pacing seems more natural in the comic rather than the show.
While I agree Heartstopper isn't slow-burn, it sure felt like it reading the original webcomic lol
Anne with an E is a good example of rushing a slowburn. I do love the show, and i think they ultimately jumped the gun at the end because they knew they were getting cancelled. But even so, the romance was pushed too soon roght from the start. I don't need slowburns to be rushed, especially when characters are so young. In the books Anne is not interested in Gilbert until much later, when she's had a little more life experience, and i always liked that.
Yes! I think we would have gotten a better paced Anne and Gilbert story had the show been on another network and not Netflix. I'm happy with what we got, but it was so rushed. The showrunner wanted to do 5 seasons based on the first book alone. Even by Season 2, it was clear that the show was hanging by a thread, so storylines had to wrap up quickly.
they had 3 seasons. It is not "rushed" when they had THREE SEASONS
@@Ottolineification ultimately it's still an adaptation and is more rushed than the source material. In the books, Anne was at least 18 and had had one other boyfriend by the time she and Gilbert got together
Honestly I regard romances like any other plot elements. It's the most satisfying if there's proper set up, complications, and payoff. They all need to be there.
THE BURN ABOUT ROMANCE BOOK COVERS LOOK LIKE CANVA IS SO TRUE
🤭
she ra was the most insane slow burn to me bc i didnt expect them to even go through with it till they kissed
I've heard very good things about it!
i think its odd to see fanfic bleed into mainstream media and especially side eye it when authors publish their fanfic after just changing the character names (like that one reylo fic, the after series and the mortal instruments). i see fanfic as one of the closest mediums we can get to pure art as it is made entirely without thought of profit.
im personally a advid ao3 user and often cant really get into books because they dont feel right to me (even though i tolerate a lot from fanfic) and especially the romance tends to just feel flat to me. imo that could be because authors/screenwriters have a limited amount of space and timeto build up a relationship so the book/movie actually sells (because, honestly, no mainstream audience wants to read a 1000+ page book/3+ hour movie), while fanfic authors have all the freedom there is and are also working off of pre established characters.
i also dont like how much commitment you have to put into buying a book but thats besides the point right now xd
i hope this made sense and i didnt just repeat what is said in the video (i didnt watch all the way through yet)
You made sense! I too really think fanfic is a literary medium with such amazing qualities to do it being made completely out of love for a specific world or character, without adjusting after capitalism. But that only holds on A03. As I said in the video - when you take away the love for the characters, not much is left.
Thanks for your thoughts and comment.
The moment you said a good slowburn is all about character growth I wanted to shout for joy XD I have been saying this to anyone who will listen to me rant about slowburns and story tropes for years. When I'm reading a story, I don't want to just read about two charaters being attracted to each other, kissing and living happily ever after. I want to read about how they're changed by the journey and each other and how they make each other better just by being around each other.
Right! Thank you! 🙏
13:14 They don't even have to be really enemies. They can just not like each other much. It's so frustrating wanting to read an enemies to lovers and only get bland bickering! I was telling a friend that even two of my OCs would probably br categorized that way, only cause they initially don't like each other due to their opposite personalities. I would not complain if at least that was done well. Instead I have to suffer trough characters who claim to hate each other but are commenting how hot their Love Interest looks ALL. THE. FUCKING. TIME.
Please give me a break😭
I love slow burn. I don't need sex scenes in books, just please build up the tension and drag the love story over hundreds of pages, or even several books in a series. Or let there really high stakes the protagonist have to overcome to be together.
as a big six of crows fan you 100% verbalized my thoughts on the treatment of kanej and wesper in the show!! though i prefer their plot in the books, i was completely fine with the change to wesper in the show. but even though kanej was technically changed much less, i felt really annoyed and dissatisfied with how they were portrayed in the show and could never really articulate why until this video!
(also imo an underrated example of a slow slowburn done well is galadriel and orion from the scholomance trilogy!! they have tons of actual understandable reasons to not want/be able to be with each other, so even when they do finally do things, you almost don’t want them to because of how wrong it could go)
Right! Thanks for your comment 🙌
And ooh that sounds interesting, I've never heard about them! But it sounds like a 10/10 dynamic
Yeah I actually loved Wesper in the show. But they took all the reasons for why Kanej is beloved and just… had the moments in there without any context or anything leading up to them?? It just makes me think that again, they should have just done a Six of Crows adaptation without the Shadows and Bone stuff so they could actually have a faithful adaptation with important character moments and focus on the characters that people actually care about.
I got so mad that they didn't just do a Six of Crows series that I started writing a treatment script for a pilot. @@RenaissanceRockerBoy
I think it also didn't help that none of the cast they hired to play the crows actually look like teenagers, which to me is what makes SoC so hard-hitting. It's possible to hire people in their twenties that look young! I personally think the person they casted to play Lockwood in the Netflix Lockwood & Co adaptation would have made a great Kaz. @@RenaissanceRockerBoy
We do say "its about the journey, not the destination" in english too.
If you want a very non-tiktok slow burn with good smut check out Kushiels Dart. Its a historical fantasy trilogy about a woman who's trained as a spy and courtesan and saves her country with her wits and her (literally) god given bdsm kink. Its fantastic and i don't even read erotica or romance.
Haha thanks x2! it's a good expression 👌
Is the book F/F or F/M?
@obviouslyqueer So Phedre is into anyone so there's queer sex, but her Casseline (protector/guard who swears a vow of chastity) who she endures hell with is a man and that's the slow burn relationship.
I really like the society that the author builds. In this world sex work is a holy calling, and the whole religion and culture of Terre d'Ange is based on the angels who came to earth in this interestingly modified version Abrahamic mythology.
@@BooksRebound ooh that sounds very interesting! Thanks!
Lockwood & Co had a five book long slow burn. In the TV show they didn't change too much, just added some tension and stayed true to the characters. So of course, the show got cancelled after one season and we will never see the conclusion...
But TV Shows that aren't adapted also have a lot less slowburn than they used to. I can only name very few Netflix shows where the endgame couples didn't kiss/hook up in the first few episodes or first season.
Yeah often what happens when they stay true to the pacing it gets cancelled before getting there :'(
This is so well said thank youuuuuuuuuuuu. I really like slow burn because I like reading stories about complex characters growing through difficult obstacles. With (GOOD) slow burn, the conflict of the plot is literally emotional growth and interpersonal dynamics be it class, trauma, family, health, etc, but so many slow burns are just miscommunication tropes. And then we are supposed to laugh at how their friends were betting on when they’d finally realize they’re in love 🙄. Those are not the same genre of story.
Right! And thank you! :')
This actually helped me write a scene I was just struggling with, and recontextualize a romance Ive veen writing
Especially the "WHY are they being kept apart" hit me in the head cause that was something I was thinking myself but couldnt put it together enough in my mind to figure out what I should do
Oh that's so great! I'm glad I could help you with that. Good luck with the book/text/fanfic/writing!
pausing the video solely to comment that I am SO HAPPY to see CS Pacat mentioned, no one does slow burn like her and I eat it upppppp
No because I'm literally so invested in the Dark Rise relationships??? I thought I HATED reincarnation romances but honestly no one does it like pacat
The Raven Cycle has the best slow burn relationship I've ever read. Those characters had me tied up in KNOTS wondering if they would actually end up together
It's THE BEST ❤️
and here i thought booktokkers were talking about books where the relationship takes a long time to get *properly established*. you're telling me it's just about sex?
It's just about the sex 🙃🙃🙃
As a straight man who’s talked to other straight male friends the type of romance we all seem to nearly exclusively like are slow burns.
For the longest time I assumed romance as a whole just wasn’t for me until I discovered k drama rom coms. Which are almost entirely slow burns unlike a lot of western romance media. My favorite romance of all time is “Our beloved summer”. Where spoiler alert, they don’t kiss until half way into the series, and the characters are never explicitly shown having sex.
But to me what made it so amazing as well as other romances I’ve really enjoyed (such as your lie in April which is an anime) is that it’s realistic in that characters have more going on in their lives than JUST the romance. And both love interest are intriguing people with their own unique struggles outside of the romance. There’s just something so wonderful and EARNED about having characters like this come together.
Part of me hates the slow burn bc shows get cancelled and they never come to fruition. Part of me loves it bc when it's done well it's great. Plus when couples get together quickly writers usually don't know what to do with them after that and ruin them anyways.
with the rise of streaming services younger and younger generations will never have to experience waiting week to week for years for a ship to get together… having an entire series drop that you can watch in one day makes it that hardly anything is really slow burn anymore. additionally, it is exceedingly rare that tv shows nowadays even get to 100 episodes…. There is such a lack of opportunity for true and fleshed out development. not to sound like a boomer but i tend to stick to late 90s-2000’s shows that existed before the tropeification of everything
Yeah the loss of long run shows are a special one. Like, they sure might be shit but they still had something haha
Not to mention that shows that don't immediately draw in millions get axed quickly. That's why for all the shit wrong with Disney and its empire, I'll give them the tiny, tiniest thumbs up for having their episodes come out periodically and not just dump them on the platform all at once. Quality of the shows aside, getting to actually theorize episode by episode is nice.
I'm so happy you mentioned the slow burn gem that is Captive Prince!!
That sure is slow!!
I think the type of slow burn that ends with the couple getting together (coming clean about their feelings) after a long time of mutual pining especially between same sex pairings got ruined by tv shows in the past using that type of slow paced romance to queer bait the audience while incisting that "there is nothing romantic there, they're just platonic friends".
I'm not gonna name any examples because I'm sure people will have their own examples in their head.
Audiences have been burned before and therfore want the romance part as soon as possible to not feel cheated out of it like many times before.
I was thinking of that too as a fake example of slow burn. I shipped deancas from SPN for a long time and the show made it believable because they built such a strong relationship between the characters but never acknowledged it as such. In my head it's still slow burn but really it was just queerbating that made us linger...
It seems to me that the "slow" in slow burn is relative, just as any indication of speed really. If it's significantly slower than the norm in their genre or medium, it could be a slow burn. It then more depends in whether or not you could call it a "burn" still, which is more about the quality or the romantic/sensual plot.
That Red white blue royal green book is said to be "enemies to lovers" I just laugh.
Absolutely hate the pacing in recent books. Everything feels very tropey and fanfic-ey, which in itself isnt bad if done right but the problem is when authors fail at the execution. Glad that you mentioned Captive Prince. To me, it is the only example of an original work that started out online being published and having a good slow burn, as well as the prime example of (actual) enemies to lovers. I wish more authors werent afraid of developting their characters and couples through the span of more than one book. That is one of the reasons I love danmei.
Is Captive Prince a fanfic originally?? I didn't know haha, but when you say it... It makes sense. Which fandom/pairing??
@@obviouslyqueer it started as a fanfic in livejournal but with original characters, meaning that it wasnt based on any existing fandom/pairing. some of the characters even had other names, but pacat changed them when it got published
@@lexa4160 hmm! Is it a fanfic if it's og characters? I'm asking out of curiosity for how you define a fanfic! It's a really interesting discussion I've never thought about. For me that's a web novel, but not for you?
do you have a source on Capri being a fanfiction originally? i don't recall anything like that, even the people who followed it from the beginning on LJ have never mentioned anything of the sort
I got interested in the slow burn theme because the last two books I read were slowburns, and I didn't expect them to be mentioned at all not even tangentially, and then I heard the word danmei and I got jumpscared (in a good way) (they were danmei btw)
Recently I hadn't been able to get into media with canon couples because they always feel so rushed or so slow (trying to be slow burns but have no reason for the characters to not be together) and then I read this books and tbh what I was searching for was slow burn. Kind of sad that slow burns are getting less "slow-burny" now but I still have hope. Really great video and it made me realize a lot of things about all of this subject!
Thank you so much!
This feels weird when in old fanfic circles lime = slow burn or no spice and lemon = kink, pwp stuff. Sad to see the citrus system go the way of the dodo.
Yeah RIP the citrus-system haha
I watch a lot of Korean TV Shows and it's an ongoing meme that the main couple will kiss in episode 8 of 16 (90% only have one season).
And it's interesting because there are so many "slow burns" without the reason for it as you mentioned. So it's just yearning for yearnings sake.
After your video I now know why I liked "a shoulder to cry on" that much but was so disappointed by the ending.
in 6 episodes they layed out the slow burn really well and explored all the reasons why they want to be but can't be together. It even ended with a break up scene. but then in the last two scenes they added a time jump and just skipped all of the character development and made them a couple anyway, implying the growth but never showing it 😢 I don't care that they didn't kiss, I care that they skipped over all the traum ahealing that was necessary for them to be together.
I am a slow Slow-burn kind of girl and can't find anything that pleases me. Yes I have read the Captive Prince trilogy and absolutely loved it. But since then, absolutely nothing except a few fanfics.
I have just read Six of Crows for the first time and was disappointed, i had heard about Kaz/Inej and was expecting it to be better.
Have you read All for the Game? Recommend otherwise, it's not the best language wise but its worth it I think for the characters.
I think my love of a good slow burn (that doesn’t take too long) goes with my love of friends to lovers.
The journey of the two characters/friends hooks me due to seeing the progression of their friendship.
For example, show and book wise, Penelope and Colin are my favorite couple of the series due to the slow burn due to their friendship blooming. The journey comes from seeing what they have in common, them wanting to protect each other, seeing who they are without the other person, and trusting in each other. All of this takes time and friendship can lead to this.
I think this is why Pride and Prejudice works. They first don’t understand each other at first and the more they communicate and become fond of each other, they trust each other and want to protect each other.
I watch kdrama's. That tends to be 15 episodes of slow burn and then the last episode they did the deed and they're suddenly getting married.
Not me reading trilogies where it takes until the last book for them to get together 😂
It's the best
I can easily say that one of my favorite slowburn show is Killing Eve. And I also love slow burn stories where we don't get to see characters like actually get together( such as Hannibal and Will Graham) I think the fact that tension constantly remains at a high level and never decreases makes the story more interesting and actually tragic in a way.
I think you make such an important point about the “climax” of the slow burn occurring when the obstacles that prevent the relationship from happening are overcome.
I just finished reading a friends to lovers slow burn fanfic and 100k words in they were not even friends yet! Just how I like it!
Red white and royal blue has such awful fanfic pacing!! Have you read The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri? I think it's so underrated as a slow burn.
No not yet! But I have it on my TBR
I am a glacial burn kind of person, maybe just because I hate romantic subplots and love plot, so if characters A and B are gonna get together its gonna have to take a WHILE
This is my first video I've watched from you and you explained exactly my love for and common complaints with slow burn (that I hadn't been able to articulate). Also, the "fake problem" noise and cuts at around the 9:30 mark just killllled me lol.
Hahaha thank you!
I just discovered your channel yesterday and the content is like chef's kiss. I wish there were more content creators like you who express very balanced opinions. There is always reasonable critique given where its warranted and credit given where its due. You are unapologetic while expressing your opinions and express them with suitable academic backing instead of a popular majoritarian viewpoint to cash in internet points and clout. Love that about you. The videos not only provide a deeper insight about the workings of literary medium but also doesn't appear like a lecture given in a classroom. I find them very enjoyable. Keep up the good work!
Oh my god. Thank you so much. This really made me so happy and inspired and moved. Thank you, for this wonderful comment.
I think what many new novels and movies doesnt realize about slow burn is that its not about the time itself but about the TENSION, if you try a slowburn but they fall inlove quickly at the end but you just postponed it (which is what many movies and joung novels do this days) then its not slowburn and it feels hella forced.
Its all about slowly making them catch feelings and even MORE SLOWLY making them want to be closer. Build a tension so that every little interaction and physical contact feels absolutely awesome for us readers/viewers
I have different standards for fanfiction than for published fiction. Fanfiction is meant to be a little self-indulgent. It’s supposed to be fan wish-fulfilment, and often more fast-paced. There have been fanfictions I’ve read where I’m like “I really enjoyed that,” but if I see some fanfiction-style language or tropes in published work I just inwardly cringe. It’s so obvious when fanfiction has a heavy influence on a writer’s style, and it’s sad to see bookstores and the publishing industry getting in on it
I discovered your channel yesterday and omg! Now I'm going through all your videos!! I love your content and how you explain topics and also your point of view on those topics. And as a non-native speaker of English I really get you and find those bloopers really funny 💓
Thank you so much! 🙏❤️ I'm happy to have you here!
@@obviouslyqueer Tysm! I'm happy to be here 🫶🏽 sending love from Mexico 🩷
I love your videos so much, and you're always so well spoken and well researched! I can't believe you don't have more views
Thank you :') that's so nice of you!!
omg it’s like you finally voiced what I’ve been confused about for years. I’m a reader that rarely engages in any communities and it has been confusing and frustrating to see books change so much into things I don’t like 😢
Love your explanation! So plsss plsss recommend me some good slow burns!
this was a really well made video and you put into words exactly the things i've been thinking lately regarding booktok, fanfiction and the trope epidemy haha
Thank you so much! And that's a very interesting idea for a video. A lot of people discussed this in the comment field of my Heartstopper video due to Alice Osemans very tasteless comment on BL. At the moment I'm not that well read on, but it's an important topic.
I think on TV the best slowburns have always been the ones from 20 (or more) episodes per season shows with multiple seasons, like the main couples from The Mentalist, Bones or Castle (cop shows are good at this for some reason lmao), also I'll add Harvey and Donna from Suits, but there aren't really shows with that many episodes anymore.
Recently Abott Elementary (excellent comedy) had a 22 episode second season and the characters that (spoiler alert) seemed that were going to be a slowburn kiss, but then don't actually talk about their feelings despite being adults who clearly like each other and don't really have any obstacles to be together other than filler secondary romantic interests, and they could simply break up with them.
And this leads me to secondary romantic interests because it is slowburn 101. Writers don't want their couple to get together yet but there isn't really a reason why they wouldn't be together? Just throw there a new character that we all know is not going to last because is just there to drag the slowburn couple for another season.
And regarding the slowburn on the Percy Jackson TV show I think there's no way they are rushing that, Rick Riordan being involved and the pairing being children are guarantees that they will stay true to the books in that sense.
Huh, i never really thought of cop shows as slow-burns; I always felt that loooong running cop show romances were more a symptom of maintaining the status quo, rather than a deliberately paced slow burn. They keep things at "will they/won't they" for yeeears (bc its a tried and true formula) then have them get together when viewship wanes
In terms of TV shows & movies, I definitely think streaming platforms have ruined slow burns. The possibility of a show being cut too early or even after 1 season is so high, it feels like creators are forced to try to rush things to keep people interested and continue telling their stories or risk the show being canceled and them never getting to finish their stories. Either way, it's a tragedy cause there's so many stories that have the potential to be absolutely amazing if they weren't rushed and given the time to develop like they should.
I love slown burn trope, but... in fanfiction we rarely see it. Last time when I got real slown burn I was reading Elisabeth Gaskell book and I never got a kiss. In fanfiction tag slown burn is even with stories where first kiss in in second chapter. I am ff writer myself but treat it as exercises before trying writting a reeal book
Very well made video! I love traditional slow burns so this was an interesting watch, thank you for making :)
Thank you for watching and commenting!
1. I think you make some really good points in this video and those developments do make me a bit sad and worried, especially regarding the book market.
2. The goodreads link to your profile isn't working...? :(
3. Would you drop some recommendations outside of the ones you mentioned in this video?
4. Will you do a "best books of the year" video?
5. I love how you say "love" as a verb - you put so much heart and intensity in there! :)
1. Thank you! I think it's important to balance the negative critique of booktok by also highlighting that booktok is creating a new generation of readers that read physical books in a world with severely decreasing reading comprehension and illiteracy, which is very positive, and the popularity of booktok has saved a lot of independent bookstores - which is also positive!
2. What! I'll check that out.
3. Sure! Slow burns specifically or just books overall?
4. Probably not hehe I don't read that much and I'm mostly interested in doing deep dives of things!
5. Thank you :') never though about how I use that word!
@@obviouslyqueer 1. You're right of course. Important to see the positive as well! It's easy to fall into a boomer mindset there. :)
3. I just really enjoy books that'll have me thinking about the characters and their relationships for weeks and months after. A lot of them happen to be slow burns, but it's not a prerequisite. I read the big mlm triforce (Simon Snow - All for the Game - Captive Prince) at the beginning of the year within two months. (Can you imagine what that was like???) I'm definitely warming up to The Raven Cycle as well! I'm always a little disheartened by the absence of women in these sort of character study romances. (The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir gives me hope, though!) So sapphic or even het content is welcome as well. But yeah, any type of book serving painfully multilayered relationship portraits? Yum!
i love your content, you're amazing to listen to. Thank you for all your hard work ^^
Oh thank you so much :')
trc, aftg, and soc being in the same video on youtube is so insane to me. i forget it’s not just me and some weird people on two and tumblr who talk abt, or yk, that those tumblr users can do other things lol
Hahhaha I remember the first time I heard a RUclipsr mention AFTG, I got whiplash.
Telenovela's romances used to be slowburn. There's a telenovela author that says "a telenovela is two people trying to have s*x and everyone else getting in the way" (and I like to think some times themselves getting in their way). Telenovelas are more than this, of course, but a lot of telenovela's romances goes like that. Nowdays the authors are rushing the main characters so they get together in the first 10 chapters (episodes) and the rest of the chapters they are just going back and forth. It's very boring...
One of the my favorites telenovelas is The Thorn and The Rose (O Cravo e a Rosa), a retteling of The Taming of the Shrew, and there are many reasons the main characters can't get together, but mainly the girl, Catarina, promised her mother in her deathbed she would never fall in love and has a traumatizing fear/hate of men, thinking all of them are after her money.
I feel fanfics and telenovelas are very alike, they both come from the feuilleton style of the 19th century, but because social media spam attention the pace of this style is changing.
And this is happening only in the west. Webtoons and asian dramas are still doing slowburn very well.
As a primarily tv viewer, I think you're right. I don't think Jim and Pam would have been given seasons to get together in the modern tv landscape.
I think many older romance books were mostly slow-burns and they were actually stand-alone novels built on tension. So, it's not necessary for a good slow burn to be a series. It depends on author storytelling skills. The books you have shown as example are fantasy books so they will require more space for the worldbuilding and grand plots. But I agree with you that contemporary romance is rarely satisfactory, especially from popular US authors. I think we should look outside of US market for this type of romance. Some prefer Asian literature, but I also find that Scottish, Irish, British and French authors have many good slow burns too.
Thank you for saying my thoughts. I’m so happy I found your channel 🤝❤️❤️
Thank you so much! I'm so happy to have you here! 💞
I was saying something similar to my friends the other days, most series and even books just make the characters fall in love and make out so quickly, before there's even time to know them. I fucking hate it. Especially if it's supposed to be an enemies to lovers. This is why I'm more inclined to watch k-dramas these days. Tipically the relationships there are much slower. Of course not all k dramas, and they're not all perfect, but mostly it works for me.
I agree with you I the same way with good omens I waiting 4 years hope for the main characters to hold hands did not think they would kiss and that kiss made me so happy that I scream and it made the ending all the more sad now I have to wait 3 more years for season 3 I'm happy sad and mad at the same time and I love it❤
No slow burns will ever be better than those in sitcoms who are milking the "will they/won't they" dynamic for all its worth to try and stretch the plot into more seasons.
I was watching Veronica Mars and it has and enemies to lovers trope and a slow burn it them 18 episodes to have there first kiss but if the show was made today they would have been together episode 3 the 8 episodes rub is definitely killing the slow burn
So true!
its always a blast when you post, great video!!
Always a blast when you comment! Thank you!
I think that when it comes to the Slowburn trope in queer relationships in tv is also necessary to talk about queerbaiting and fandom. Like, is it a slowburn or is it queerbaiting? Are the creators just using the safety of the slowburn trope to keep the fandom shipping the characters on the base of that "will they, wont they" that you mention in the video?
Its interesting that queerbaiting couples (or ones that were not able to be canon on tv because of the producers) are often associated with a slowburn trope either in canon or fanon timelines, despite the relationship being confirmed in the end or not. Ex: shera, legends of korra, sherlock, dastiel and even in some of the examples you pointed out in the video. (byler)(I saw that you made a video about queerbaiting in strangers things and i haven't watched it yet but i will be watching soon. I just discovered your channel and i´m loving the things you talk about)
(also english is not my first language and i can only hope that what i wrote made any sense at all)
Why doesn't this have more views?!
Thank you! The question we are all wondering haha ❤️
As an aspiring writer myself, when it comes to slowburns (regardless of whatever genre), if you're aiming for a mainstream audience, I think it's best to put the slowburn as a side-plot/story.
I've personally written a book (200k words) where the main plot was moving at a slowburn pace.
The result? Only a few stuck to the end, while most simply dropped.
The mirror visitor series has the best (imo) will they won’t they slow-burn’s i have ever read and I’m struggling to find a series that will live up to that
Finally, someone talking about this series!
great video! it was so interesting, especially the part about what makes a good slowburn, it had me reevaluating every story i've ever read lol.
also i am also super invested in byler LOL. i am apart of the fandom, however i don't think it's going to happen, but something that happened just yesterday on twitter was the "Slowburn Awards" with over 800,000 votes and byler placed 18 out of 50 ships and most of twitter was PISSED because they're not even canon LOL. but i think it does really show how queer people are starved of slowburn on tv (it was mainly het couples)
i think part of the reason there aren't really queer slowburns is not only because there aren't that many slowburns anymore lmao but also because the show/films would be accussed of queerbaiting even if their intention was a slowburn, not that queerbaiting alegations have stopped the entertaintment industry before but yk
Thank you!! There was a SLOW BURN AWARD? can you link it haha? I tried to Google but didn't find anything.
@@obviouslyqueer here u go! x.com/nacesdaylight/status/1715908526239863132?s=46
Would you be able to make a video of slow Burns kind of giving a summary of them and then how you would rate them I've been trying to find some good ones and I like the fact that you do include the rewards of slow Burns to not always be focused on sex
Like you say, good slow burns are not based on miscommunication, and a lot of authors seem to forget that. Characters who can’t be together because they can’t properly communicate their feelings to one another strike me as very immature.
It’s one thing if the characters are awkward teenagers without any life experience, but when I see adult characters spend most of the story pining after one another and simply failing to communicate properly, it makes me want to pull my hair out. If an adult is that inept at communicating their feelings properly, they probably aren’t fully ready for a relationship anyway.
I'm of the opinion that yes, there can be slow burn in a single novel and it be good... But not most books that just drag on to be called a slow burn whsjsjsjjwjw
It will always depend on the skill of the writer on telling the story, but (at least for me) a slow burn is not about the amount of pages passed it's about how the progression of the romance and the progression of time is portraited (sorry if this isn't the most appropriate word, english is not my first language)
But, it's something more challenging to do as A standalone romance book, that's why the more liked examples tend to have to romance as a background or running parallel to the plot of the book(s). The conflict of the story can also make the reader less likely to question why they aren't together already, because there's more shit happening around than just the romantic tension.
I really dont like slow burn, or enemies to lovers, but when i thought how i wanted slow burn to become less prominent, I didnt think it would get replaced by the books written specifically to the character's threesomes
Okay, full disclosure I started writing a comment about danmei before you even brought it up lol.
I can think of a few danmei novels (Chinese BL novels) that have really good slow burn. Though I'm not a huge fan of those tiktok memes that paint danmei slow burn like "It took them 200 chapters to hold hands!!" I know it's cheeky and an exaggeration, but once you generalise a genre that way, you flatten it, and let's be honest 90% of slow burn is boring and bad. The good slow burns I read are about complex, dynamic characters who meet each other in the middle.
Preach! 🙏
That's the reason i enjoy fanfiction they are letting me to take the slow burn as it supposed to be like Inej and Kaz amazing example
32:20 100% SAME I'M VERY STRESSED FOR THOSE PEOPLE
There will be so many feelings after this last season. I both fear and am excited about it
The only TV slow burns that I liked ended up not being canon anyways lmao. But more importantly: I finished Captive Prince and AFTG, and TRC and nothing is living up to them. Someone please recommend some other long ass slow burns
Well nothing has ever done what AFTG and TRC did for me. They will always be at the top and then you just have to accept everything else will make you slightly less psychotic haha. But if one can overlook the truly awful translation of "Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation", which I mentioned on the video, that slow burn is so good. Like, the language (translation) suuuucks (all for the game is a literary masterpiece in comparison) and the story is occasionally really slow, but the relationship, the build up and the dynamic is great. But not for everyone... due to above reasons haha.
What's AFTG and TCR ? Also looking for long ass slowburn
@@obviouslyqueer Thank you! Idk what it says about me, but I didn't even question the writing in AFTG hahah. So I'll see if I can handle Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation 🤞
@@ellyra412 All for the Game by Nora Sakavic and The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater! Both series have me in a chokehold. Check the trigger warnings for AFTG though :)
Yes, I agree. A slow burn isn't really slow if it's a standalone book. Even if the characters knew each other for years before acting on their feelings...it's still not slow to us readers. We just met them 250 pages ago🤣
I appreciate your video, as slow burns those days are for me normal burns if I can phrase it like that. And I love good slow-slooow burns
//Also i had different understanding of the slow burn I thought its not avoit obstacles I'm general but about realisinnnnggg
//Okay I remebred that my favourite slowburn is a boy realising he fell in love for a guy that he was trying to help to get anogher guy so yea there were an obstacles
I was honestly so disappointed when they turned Wesper into a speed run instead of slow burn
29:35 great take!!
For me, slow burn does not work as a main plotline in a romance book. Slow burn shines best at a sideline. You have the main storyline and then you have two characters fall in love throughout the journey. One example that always comes to mind of slow burn done well is Castle and Beckett in tv show Castle. If it's not characters developing feelings for each other throughout several seasons (in tv shows) or books (in book series) I don't want it.
Overall, the thing is that readers now prefer romance plot to be resolved in book one. They don't want to wait or read several books to get to that point. They think they want slow burn but I in my opinion they just don't want insta-love and think that slow burn is the opposite of it.
When it comes to "enemies to lovers" trope, it's painful to see what it has become. It's been completely butchered. What do you mean Violet and Xaden were enemies? Where? How?
good omens being (2019-2023) hurts my heart, we better get a s3 istg
Haha omg I did write that, let's hope my subconscious isn't psychic
I'm a big fan of slow burn, with a leaning preference on enemies to lovers or forbidden love. Give me those 800k words worth of pining, I'll eat it up! Hell, I've been known to read 1M+ words worth of (scrumptious) slow burn, I love that stuff, it's my bread and butter. But oh dear god, has the mainstream media twisted what slow burn really is and what it entails. I'm queer, so to no one's surprise, I tend to gravitate towards queer stories. On top of this, I prefer fantasy/sci-fi/historical fiction over the usual modern day settings romances. This, sadly, limits the amount of content out there for me. I've found great comfort in fanfiction and interactive novels because of this, they offer me everything I could ever want. Plus, they're straightforward with what they offer, unlike TV shows with their song and dance, where you either end up with the queerbaiting mess that was Sherlock, or with an actual romance to the likes of OFMD (though I wouldn't necessarily call this one a slowburn, but that's probably just me). In my opinion, Good Omens (the perfect slow burn, I mean, who can beat their 6000 years?) balanced this perfectly, with the only ones not realizing that they were watching a queer romance unfold being the straight, cis men, with the media literacy of an empty salad bowl (OR people so used to queerbait, they held no hope) who were not as chronically online as the rest of the fandom (but, if you were to look for it, you could rest assured you were in for a love story).
The mainstream media (booktok?) has twisted the public opinion on slow burn too, or more so on how it operates, as I have noticed one of the four romances in an interactive book series I follow to be criticized for being 'too slow' when there is active conflict on why it is so. This romance route is strictly advertised as a SLOW BURN, we're in book three of seven! The other routes are much faster, I just don't understand why you'd go for the emotionally constipated one if you want to get down to business by book three.
On this, I'd love to see an analysis by you on the enemies to lovers trope, and how it has been watered down to 'two people who simply dislike each other and bicker', when that would more so fall under the rivals to lovers trope. Like, if you're advertising a story as enemies to lovers, you should at LEAST make it a little toxic, jaja.
My apologies for the (not so) mini rant 😅
drop the fanfic rec list queen 💕💕
My fanfic history is between me, god and my internet history 😈
I gotta say, you talking about the rushed slow burn romances in Shadow and Bone and bringing them up as an example for changing the story in order to be able to actually tell it is incredibly ironic given the fact that Netflix just canceled the show lmao
Also, I wanted to point out that while I would absolutely LOVE a good slow burn queer romance told over several seasons, not only would it be almost impossible in the current streaming climate, but even IF it was allowed to happen a large part of the audience would riot and yell "QUEERBAITING!" Like, I'm trying to put myself in the place of the creator of that hypotethical show and it would be a nightmare. Imagine the discourse.
Wait they CANCELED the show? God no 😭
@@priiifrg well this is an awful way to find out lmao i'm sorry
But yeah it was cancelled
Yeah, not surprised about the cancellation but still disappointed. This cancellation trend is so frustrating.
It would probably cause some discourse yeah haha. Which is such a shame. Multi-season build ups are the best.
I also weirdly think this works in reverse. I'm a queer guy and only read m/m and tm pairings, so not sure if this extends to other fics, but I swear in the last few years along the rise of these really... cheesy, fast paced, flanderized shows and books, it's also been strikingly harder to find fanfics that actually are slow burn and format themselves like novels.
I've found a few -- as a Pathologic fan I have admittedly read some fanfics from that fanbase that pretty perfectly capture the game's spirit and know how to read like a book rather than a tropey fic. But it's increasingly rare.
I feel like it's a weird cycle where the more fanfic-esque our TV and books become, the more flanderized and simplistic the fanfics themselves become, and so on. Like, what kind of fanfic comes out of fandoms surrounding shows and books that already read like fanfics?
It's silly to say but even just ignoring writing style and how that's degraded a lot over the years in fanfic spaces (mine included, mind you! I am not immune to the brain rot) from romances to smut, the pacing itself has really... gotten worse in fanfic spaces, alongside shows and books like these. The more fast paced and blunt books get, the more fanfics get, and I swear even fanfics with slow burn tags end up progressing at rapid speeds with very minimal characterization. At this point slow burn seems to just mean "they don't fuck on the first chapter" because that IS comparably slow to a lot of media and fanfic right now.
I feel so boomerbrained saying it but it really does feel as though fanfic AND books have been catering towards a lack of of attention span more and more. Many books feel like they're straight up written just to be adapted into graphic novels at this point.
Of course as a lefty it's my obligation to say that this is in fact due to capitalism and corporations seeing that fanfic is popular and trying to just do that without understanding the context of fanfiction style writing, and then fanfiction writers having less to work with in the source material itself because of it. Once again capitalism does a whoopsie and decimates creative processes!
Not to say I don't think there are amazing fics and media out there. I love (most of) TL Klune's books, and I've read fanfics that are immaculate, both pure rancid p*rn and long form fics, and it's not like we're in some alt right 'decline of art' feverdream. But we ARE in a period where kids grow up on visuals and fast pacing, and corporations are eager to feed that for money instead of, like, determining how dangerous that can be for people.