But also I find it funny that adults who are apparently not frequently in direct contact with teens and young adults always have the loudest opinions about the youth these days. The platforms and communication channels might change, but the content does not.
Five minutes in the other place and I'm ready to argue with grown adults about shit they're pulling out of their ass after reading but not comprehending other grown as adults' tweets about young adults and literacy. Now I remember why I was always so exhausted after being online there, jfc.
I started my reading month with two DNFs. I am sad about it.
Idk. I get why people love these books because I get the appeal. But for me they never really work and I always end up DNFing fast. So yeah.
And it's also the root of "if they'd just get to know someone of the oppressed group better, they wouldn't do what they do" and that's such a harmful way of framing the dynamic that I usually just gag over it and move on.
I think a strategy to address that has been to make the enemy on the oppressive side "not needlessly cruel" and maybe make them question the order of things in some ways right from the start. Which... Is not enough for me to actually feel like rooting for the romance.
The break point for me is always my suspension of disbelief when it comes to a romance between someone scared for their life on the most basic level and someone who needs to see them and all people like them as something less than human in order to work in and for the oppressive system.
Putting aside the regular bioessentialism that often permeates especially fantasy/romantasy books in that category, I almost never can get behind the actual romance part. Bc I always struggle with not only the power imbalance presented, and the related questions about free will and free choices.
I think I need to not look at books anymore that are hyped as "real enemies to lovers". I too like my enemies to be actual enemies. What I don't do well with is when the source of it is systemic oppression. Case in point, I don't think witch/witch hunter books will ever really work for me.