if you genuinely support haunting adeline, especially the potential live action that's going to be made, block me.
i used to be a massive "dark romance" fan (back when dark rom was just "i'd kill for you" and vampires and shit. quotev yandere creepypasta x reader fanfics, anyone?) and i wasn't on tiktok during the pandemic so imagine my horror when people who weren't in fandom spaces prior to the pandemic had become part of the reading community. i am not going to harp on about fandom culture or anything because it wasn't perfect before and it's only gotten worse.
there's so much i could say about how consumerist modern literature has become - how books are marketed with repetitive tropes, the specifically white heteronormativity of them - but with dark romance specifically, it's upsetting to see how sexist these spaces have become.
do people not see how bad it is that a book about stalking and abuse and rape being romanticized is being adapted into a movie? there are people that defend bear from obsession. there are studies being done that show how we're slowly returning to outdated misogynistic beliefs. WE ARE LITERALLY GOING BACKWARDS!!!
in this era of red pill incel content, all it takes is a movie about a conventionally attractive man that women (let's be real, mostly white straight women) endorse, for them to think "oh women want to be abused. women like being raped."
let's use 50 shades of grey as an example.
do we want this back? really?
even though 50 shades made consent a relevant point, many general audiences would see it, want to participate in bdsm culture and not always find a safe and healthy partner to learn with. haunting adeline is about to make that problem so much worse.
i'm all for fighting purity culture, especially in women's spaces, but why does that need to involve male centered violence, like rape and abuse?
i recognise victims use books like this as a coping mechanism. i've been stalked. i've narrowly avoided assault, by the skin of my teeth. i've been groomed. i still read the occasional "darker" story - hell, my own ocs are crazy bad people. but guess what? a good, healthy author will make it explicitly clear that their story does not endorse or encourage this kind of behaviour. many accounts i follow right here on tumblr make it clear that they don't support topics like that.
this book, this author, this community of fans ; from what i've seen, every single one of their defenses just echoes pro rape culture rhetoric and it is disgusting.
"it's hot!" "he kills bad people!" "he knows she's going to like it" ew, actually take that nonsense away from me.
maybe MAYBE, in a better world, this movie could be adapted sensitively. but right now, with everything going on in the world? it takes a special kind of selfish audacity to think that something you find sexy deserves to be on the big screen with the potential to hurt so many people.
and in the end, it's just more women suffering. fuck you if you think that's a price worth paying to have your "stalker book boyfriend" on screen.
