Pages and Prejudice

Show Notes:

All tropes are innocent until poorly written.

Adrie and Stitch are joined by guests Sanj Basker and Tyler McCall — co-hosts of the Radio 831 podcast from 831 Stories — for a special Trope Court episode. Each of the four participants comes prepared to deliver a full-throated legal defense of a romance trope they believe is misunderstood. After each defense, the other three deliver a verdict: Guilty Pleasure, Misunderstood Masterpiece, or Case Dismissed. 

Topics: trope court, secret baby, category romance, contemporary romance, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, C-dramas, miscommunication, historical romance, Sherry Thomas, Emily Henry, voice-note discourse, NTR (netorare), boys love, girls love, manga, manhwa, Yotomo Min Sensei, Katee Robert, cuckolding, hot wifing, billionaire romance, chaebol romance, K-dramas, plastic surgery culture, guilty pleasure

Reading Recommendations: 

Fiction:

• Nobody’s Baby but Mine but Susan Elizabeth Phillips
• Private Arrangements by Sherry Thomas
• Under the Oak Tree by Suji
• Happy Place by Emily Henry
• Your Dad Will Do by Katee Robert
• Terms and Conditions by Lauren Asher
• Preferential Treatment by Heather Guerre
• Naachan NTR: The Person I Fell in Love With Is My Childhood Friend's Father by Yotamoi Min Sensei
• Riho NTR: Ordered by My Husband to Get Fucked by His Colleague by Yamamoto Tomomitsu

TV:

• Pursuit of Jade
• Marry My Husband
• What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim

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Hosted by:

adrie rose (@adrierising on bsky, twitter, instagram, & tiktok)

Stitch (@stitch on bsky, @stitchmediamix on instagram)

Guests:

Sanj Basker and Tyler McCall, co-hosts of Radio 831

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show Notes:

I don’t have to like her, I understand her.

Adrie and Stitch tackle the "unlikable female character" discourse head-on, tracing how fandom, publishing, and film consistently punish women and female characters for the exact same flaws that make male anti-heroes and rough heroes beloved. Drawing on academic work — from A.W. Wheaton's concept of the "rough hero" to Adriana Clavel-Vázquez's writing on rough heroines and imaginative resistance — they dig into why audiences eagerly forgive murderers, rapists, and misogynists (Quagmire, Hannibal, Cyril, Lestat) while turning on women for being confident, passive, horny, traumatized, or simply present (Rhaenyra, Skyler White, Julia from Cowboy Bebop, Shuri). The conversation ranges from Jane Austen's Emma to Tyler Perry's Acrimony, from Game of Thrones fandom's selective outrage to K-drama villainesses, landing on the same conclusion every time: "I support women's rights" often stops right where "and wrongs" begins.

Topics: unlikable female characters, rough heroes, anti-heroes, fandom double standards, protagonists, racialized double standards in fandom, Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, Hannibal, Cowboy Bebop, Marvel/MCU, K-drama, webtoons, villainesses, misogyny in pop culture, feminist media analysis, women’s wrongs

Reading Recommendations:

Fiction:

• The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson
• The Remarried Empress by Alphatart
• Shards of a Broken Glass Slipper 
• The Returned C-Rank Tank Won’t Die
• For My Derelict Favorite
• My Engagement Was Called Off Under False Accusations, but Who Ever Said My Face Was Ugly Beneath the Mask? By En Nekogawa with illustrations by Neneko Kobato
• Daughter of No Worlds by Carissa Broadbent
• Famine (The Four Horseman #3) by Laura Thalassa
• Charmed & Dangerous (Bronwyn the Witch #1) by Candace Havens

Film & TV

• Jessica Jones (MCU)
• Marry My Husband (Korean and Japanese live action on Amazon Prime Video)
• Malcolm in the Middle

Non-Fiction:

• Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You To Hate by Anna Bogutskaya
• Sugar and Spice, and Everything Nice: What Rough Heroines Tell Us about Imaginative Resistance by ADRIANA CLAVEL-VAZQUEZ
• Misanthropes and Monsters: Writing the Unlikeable by PJ MALLETT
• Rough Heroes of the New Hollywood by A. W. Eaton
• “Jessica Jones Doesn’t Care About Men of Colour”  
• Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden

Follow & Support:

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Hosted by:

adrie rose (@adrierising on bsky, twitter, instagram, & tiktok)

Stitch (@stitch on bsky, @stitchmediamix on instagram)

Music: ⁠⁠HOLY MOLY⁠⁠ by Shane Ivers

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show Notes:

You can be bisexual, but only if you’ve never touched a man. 

Adrie and Stitch tackle the endless discourse around books "mismarketed" as sapphic when their bisexual leads also sleep with men. They break down what sapphic actually means, why bi women get treated as secretly straight (or not queer enough), and how "gold star" purity tests and political lesbianism collapse into transphobia. The conversation widens into heteropessimism, fandom's discomfort with femslash, the whiteness of biphobic discourse, and a eulogy-adjacent “discussion” of Gloria Steinem — before closing out with a stacked round of bisexual-lead romance recommendations.

Topics: sapphic marketing, bisexual erasure, biphobia, gold star gays, political lesbianism, compulsory heterosexuality, heteropessimism, Achillean romance, M/M romance, WLW romance, Heated Rivalry, fandom shipping discourse, femslash, transphobia, How to Get Away With Murder, Annalise Keating, age-gap romance, white feminism, Gloria Steinem, poly romance, why choose romance, queer romance

Reading Recommendations: 

Fiction:

• Vengefully Matched by Audrey Goldberg Ruoff
• Two for Tea by CM Nascosta
• Romancing the Werewolf by Gail Carriger
• Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert
• The Art of Three by Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese
• Small Town Witch by Alex Singer (story) and Jayd Aït-Kaci (art)
• Every Kit Rocha book, basically but The Sectors specifically
• A Rational Arrangement by L Rowyn

Follow & Support:

Follow us on Instagram.

Send inquiries to [email protected].

Buy merch on Threadless or become a Patron to support the show!

Hosted by:

adrie rose (@adrierising on bsky, twitter, instagram, & tiktok)

Stitch (@stitch on bsky, @stitchmediamix on instagram)

Music: ⁠⁠HOLY MOLY⁠⁠ by Shane Ivers

Now you can grab some show merch, or become a show patron, and support the hosts. Share the show with your friends, no matter where they listen to podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show Notes:

My man, my man, my man… is trying to kill me.

Adrie and Stitch are joined by pop culture critic and video essayist Princess Weekes to dig into the enemies-to-lovers trope across anime, fanfic, and romance publishing. They trace their earliest ships (Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Dramione, SwanQueen), argue about what modern romance gets wrong when it "mismarkets" itself as enemies to lovers, and debate what actually makes the trope work — narrative overlap, ideological reconciliation, and real stakes, not just banter.

Topics: enemies to lovers, rivals to lovers, fandom shipping wars, fanfiction, omegaverse, dark romance, erotica vs. romance, historical romance, second chance romance, anti-hero tropes, Dramione, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Zutara, Kataang, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spuffy, Fuffy, fandom discourse, cancel culture, thought crimes, ASOIAF

Reading Recommendations:

Fiction:

• Broken Flames by MK Ahearn
• The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley
• XXX Buddy/Perfect Buddy by lash and daki
• Game On by Navessa Allen
• The Death Made Prince by Lisette Marshall
• The Nightborn Duet by Carissa Broadbent
• The Sweet Pea Mysteries series by Kathryn Moon
• The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

Non-Fiction:

•  The Messy Politics of Enemies to Lovers by PrincessWeekes
• Anti hero, edited by Fiona Peters and Rebecca Stewart

Previous Episodes:

• E69: Leave Room for My God Complex - Kink Panic and the New Puriteens
• E62: Ship War of Theseus
• E51: Fandom Etiquette

Follow & Support:

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Hosted by:

adrie rose (@adrierising on bsky, twitter, instagram, & tiktok)

Stitch (@stitch on bsky, @stitchmediamix on instagram)

Guests: Princess Weekes is an Assistant Editor at the Geek Girl Pop Culture Site, The Mary Sue and the co-host/co-writer of the PBS Digital Series, It's Lit. She got her Master's Degree at Brooklyn College in Literary Theory where she wrote about colorism in fairy tales and became inspired to write, The Johnson Bay Witches. A born and raised Brooklynite, when she isn't busy writing, she's busy contemplating cult-classic television shows that ended decades ago. The Johnson Bay Witches is her first novel.

Music: ⁠⁠HOLY MOLY⁠⁠ by Shane Ivers

Now you can grab some show merch, or become a show patron, and support the hosts. Share the show with your friends, no matter where they listen to podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show Notes:

If I had a nickel for every time someone reduced the entirety of the romance genre to “smut,” I’d have enough money to be my own billionaire book boyfriend.

Adrie and Stitch dig into the TikTok discourse around "smut," "fairy porn," and romantasy — a conversation that starts with why Adrie hates the word smut and ends with a rigorous taxonomy of romance, erotic romance, erotica, and pornography. Along the way, they trace the through line from Anthony Comstock's 19th-century censorship crusade to contemporary age-verification legislation, purity culture in fandom, and why women reading for pleasure has always made someone, somewhere, deeply uncomfortable.

Topics: romance, erotic romance, erotica, pornography, romantasy, fantasy romance, dark romance, smut discourse, the Comstock Act, publishing censorship, age verification, KOSA, internet regulation, fandom purity culture, religious repression, women's literacy, feminist discourse, genre fiction

Reading Recommendations: 

Fiction:

• A Touch of Taboo series by Katee Robert
• Sinner by Sierra Simone
• Father by Loki Renard
• Guarded by the Snake by Layla Fae
• Training the Receptionist by Juniper Bell
• The Bachelor Machine by M Christian
• THE GODWICKS by Tiffany Reisz
• The Scheming Crown Prince’s Wicket Consort by Subaru Kayano 
• We Can’t Do Just Plain Love by Mafuyu Fukita
• Nao-chan NTR ~The Person I Fell in Love With Is My Childhood Friend's Father~ by Yatomomin
• The Cold-Blooded Captain's Sadistic Love (audio)
• The Merciless Perfect Man I Started Dating Turned Out To Be An Infatuated Closet Pervert (audio)

Non-Fiction:

• Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the Frenzy of the Visible by Linda Williams
• Screening Sex by Linda Williams
• Reading the Romance by Janice Radway
• The History of Sexuality by Michel Foucault
• The Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde (part of Sister, Outsider)
• The Perpetual Disappointment of “If Only” Eroticism by Rien Gray

Past Episodes:

• E24: Harlequin Renaissance
• E29: Heaving Bosoms
• E33: In Defense of Smut

Follow & Support:

Follow us on Instagram.

Send inquiries to [email protected].

Buy merch on Threadless or become a Patron to support the show!

Hosted by:

adrie rose (@adrierising on bsky, twitter, instagram, & tiktok)

Stitch (@stitch on bsky, @stitchmediamix on instagram)

Music: ⁠⁠HOLY MOLY⁠⁠ by Shane Ivers

Now you can grab some show merch, or become a show patron, and support the hosts. Share the show with your friends, no matter where they listen to podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show Notes:

Enemies to lovers, fake dating, one bed – go girl, give me… the entire story.

Adrie and Stitch dive into the world of romance marketing — specifically, the increasingly common practice of selling books through exhaustive trope lists rather than traditional publishing shorthand. They trace how genre conventions evolved from Jane Austen to bodice rippers to the algorithm-driven Canva graphics flooding BookTok today, arguing that tropes are a powerful tool that authors and publishers are wielding with diminishing returns — and diminishing accuracy. Along the way, they unpack how societal shifts (birth control, women entering the workforce, divorce becoming normalized) have always driven the emergence of new romantic conventions, and why the current moment feels less like evolution and more like a race to the bottom of the SEO barrel.

Topics: romance publishing history, trope marketing, SEO and algorithms, bodice rippers, category romance, Harlequin and Mills & Boon, enemies to lovers, forced proximity, only one bed, rivals to lovers, omegaverse, reverse harem, dark romance, mob and mafia romance, paranormal romance, YA romance, urban fantasy, transmigration romance, Korean webtoons, boys love, danmei, spoilers, fandom studies

Reading Recommendations: 

Fiction:

• Be My Bad Guy by Kate Prior (enemies to lovers, billionaire boyfriend, almost too dumb to die)
• Luxuria by Colette Rhodes (primal kink, breeding kink, miscommunication, billionaire boyfriend, grumpy x sunshine, almost fated mates, marriage of convenience)
• The Death-Made Prince by Lisette Marshall (enemies to lovers, miscommunication, slow burn, he falls first)
• Marital Enemies (rivals to lovers x 2, transmigration, second chance romance, miscommunication.)
• Apocalypse Villainess: Survival of a Corporate Slave (zombie apocalypse, villainess, rivals to lovers, rewrite the narrative)
• The Husky and His White Cat Shizun by Meatbun (student-teacher, miscommunication, time travel, one-sided enemies to lovers)

Non-Fiction:

• Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz 
• Monster Theory: Reading Culture by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
• The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
• The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler 

Past Episodes:

• E24: Harlequin Renaissance
• E47: We Live in a Society
• E63: I Got a Pocket Full of Cheap Books

Follow & Support:

Follow us on Instagram.

Send inquiries to [email protected].

Buy merch on Threadless or become a Patron to support the show!

Hosted by:

adrie rose (@adrierising on bsky, twitter, instagram, & tiktok)

Stitch (@stitch on bsky, @stitchmediamix on instagram)

Music: ⁠⁠HOLY MOLY⁠⁠ by Shane Ivers

Now you can grab some show merch, or become a show patron, and support the hosts. Share the show with your friends, no matter where they listen to podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show Notes:

Everyone hates alpha-holes until the hero is a 7-foot tall, genetically modified war criminal being held captive in a secret underground lab.

Content Warning: This episode includes frank discussions of dubious consent, non-consent, and other fraught power and relationship dynamics. 

Adrie and Stitch dive into the world of prison romance — a subgenre of romance and dark erotica centered on men (and occasionally other beings) who are deprived of liberty, whether in correctional facilities, medical institutions, or otherwise controlled environments. They're joined by licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist Andrew Pari, who has pioneered work closing the gap between kink/BDSM communities and clinical psychology, and who just finished writing a book chapter on consensual non-consent. Together, all three push back on the discourse around dark romance as uniquely harmful, arguing that women's rape fantasies are neither new nor dangerous — and that curiosity, not condemnation, is the real antidote.

Topics: prison romance, institutionalization romance, dark romance, dark erotica, omegaverse, transmigration romance, Korean webtoons, boys love, dubcon, CNC, consensual non-consent, BDSM, caretaker romance, kink psychology, sexual trauma, rape fantasy, heteropessimism, feminist discourse, fandom studies

Reading Recommendations: 

Fiction:

• Cottonmouth by Naomi Lucas
• Releasing Maladek by Victoria Aveline
• The Warrior of Rozun duology by Zoey Draven
• Jax: The Boundarylands Omegaverse by Callie Rhodes
• Prison Breakfast by Ziddo
• I Met The Male Lead in Prison by Moon Sihyun and Hyeseong
• Under Grand Hotel by Sadahiro Mika
• FOG LAND by POGO
• I Failed to Oust the Villain! 

Non-Fiction:

• Women’s Erotic Rape Fantasies: An Evaluation of Theory and Research by Joseph W. Critelli & Jenny M. Bivona
• Inside the Horny Dungeon of BookTok “Dark Romance” Music by Kieran Press-Reynolds
• ‘Dogfuck rapeworld’: Omegaverse fanfiction as a critical tool in analyzing the impact of social power structures on intimate relationships and sexual consent by Milena Popova

Follow & Support:

Follow us on Instagram.

Send inquiries to [email protected].

Buy merch on Threadless or become a Patron to support the show!

Hosted by:

adrie rose (@adrierising on bsky, twitter, instagram, & tiktok)

Stitch (@stitch on bsky, @stitchmediamix on instagram)

Guests: Andrew Pari is a psychotherapist and Founder of Sexual Awakening & Awareness, dedicated to bridging the conversation between traditional psychotherapy and kink knowledge by treating sexualized trauma through a sex-positive lens.  He is the creator of the concept of Curative Kink and has developed the first therapeutic model allowing for the re-experiencing of sexual trauma to create healing in an environment of safety and trust. A nationally recognized expert in trauma and sexualized violence, he’s developed sex trade policy and hosted worldwide online discussions on rape.  He recently finished writing a chapter on Consensual Non-Consent for the first clinical textbook on Kink Psychotherapy.  He adores his Russian Blue kitty, Finley, who keeps Andrew grounded in the important things in life.

Music: ⁠⁠HOLY MOLY⁠⁠ by Shane Ivers

Now you can grab some show merch, or become a show patron, and support the hosts. Share the show with your friends, no matter where they listen to podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show Notes:

Maybe he’s hiding emotional trauma, maybe it’s Maybelline.

Stitch and Adrie dive into the world of masked man romance — a subgenre of dark romance and erotica centered on men (and occasionally other entities) who conceal their faces. Stitch, newly obsessed with the trope, breaks down its defining elements: the kinks involved (stalking, primal play, sex clubs, consensual non-consent), the recurring character archetypes, and the surprisingly vulnerable emotional cores hiding beneath all those balaclavas. Adrie brings a fresh perspective as someone less familiar with the subgenre, offering examples from adjacent tropes — including a hooded shadow creature from CM Nascosta and a masked alien king — while both hosts discuss how these fantasies connect to real cultural touchstones like Scream and Nightmare on Elm Street, and Nosferatu. They also push back on the discourse around dark romance as uniquely harmful, arguing that these fantasies are neither new nor dangerous.

Topics: masked man romance, dark romance, dark erotica, horror romance, monster romance, alien romance, romantasy, fantasy romance, omegaverse, CNC, dubcon, primal play, stalker romance, slasher romance, masked men

Reading Recommendations:

Fiction:

• BJ Alex
• Captured By The Masked Murderer: Okay, We'll Get Cozy... Just Don't Kill Me!
• Mask Danshi: This Shouldn't Lead to Love
• Ruling Sikthand by Victoria Aveline
• The Princess & the Spy series by Lisette Marshall (temporarily unpublished)
• The Viridian Priestess series by Katrina Calandra
• Two for Tea by CM Nascosta
• Slaying the Vampire Conqueror by Carissa Broadbent

Non-Fiction:

•  Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde

Follow & Support:

Follow us on Instagram.

Send inquiries to [email protected].

Buy merch on Threadless or become a Patron to support the show!

Hosted by:

adrie rose (@adrierising on bsky, twitter, instagram, & tiktok)

Stitch (@stitch on bsky, @stitchmediamix on instagram)

Music: ⁠⁠HOLY MOLY⁠⁠ by Shane Ivers

Now you can grab some show merch, or become a show patron, and support the hosts. Share the show with your friends, no matter where they listen to podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show Notes:

I am a freak and I am proud.

Why are so many fans hiding their AO3 bookmarks, running private accounts, and apologizing for what they love? In this episode of Pages & Prejudice, Stitch and Adrie Rose dig into the culture of shame, guilt, and fear that has taken over fandom spaces — and why it's making everyone miserable. Drawing on cultural anthropology, Ruth Benedict's guilt/shame/fear society framework, and years of firsthand fandom experience, they break down how anti-fandom, call-out culture, and the concept of "guilty pleasures" are pushing fans to hide, self-censor, and turn on each other.

Topics: fanfiction, AO3, guilty pleasures, anti-fandom, dark ships, slash fiction, fandom culture, kink shaming, fandom shame, fan works, pro-ship, fandom discourse, kirk/spock

Recommendations:

Fanfic:

• Alien Brothers by Helena Seabright

Podcasts:

• Searching for Soshern: The Forbidden Star Trek Fanfiction (Very Special Episodes)

Follow & Support:

Follow us on Instagram.

Send inquiries to [email protected].

Buy merch on Threadless or become a Patron to support the show!

Hosted by:

Adrie Rose (@adrierising on bsky, twitter, instagram, & tiktok)

Stitch (@stitch on bsky, @stitchmediamix on instagram)

Music: ⁠⁠HOLY MOLY⁠⁠ by Shane Ivers

Now you can grab some show merch, or become a show patron, and support the hosts. Share the show with your friends, no matter where they listen to podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Show Notes:

Go forth and live your best trope!

Adrie and Stitch sit down with Maggie North, Canadian author and anesthesiologist, to discuss her latest novel Fossil Feud — an almost second-chance, contemporary romance set against the world of citizen science and paleontology. They talk about the science and history baked into the book, why romance deserves more credit as an intellectual pursuit, what it means to write a protagonist who weaponizes her own rules to avoid being hurt again, and how a discipline built on unearthing the past became the perfect metaphor for love, grief, and the people we're always becoming.

Fossil Feud comes out July 28, 2026!

Topics: Maggie North, Fossil Feud, second chance romance, STEM, paleontology, Bone Wars, women's anger, complex female characters, heteropessimism, arrival fallacy, Jurassic Park

Reading Recommendations:

Fiction:

• Fossil Feud by Maggie North
• Cherry Baby by Rainbow Rowell
• August Lane by Regina Black
• Will They or Won’t They by Ava Wilder
• Scot & Bothered by Alexandra Kiley
• Mistakenly Saving the Villain
• A World Without You

Non-Fiction:

• Losing Gus: The Cost of Commercial Dinosaur Actions by Kristi Curry Rogers
• Bittersweet by Susan Kane

Podcasts:

• The Bone Wars | History This Week
• Paleontological Frauds | Strange Animals
• The Great Himalayan Golmaal | The Rearview Podcast

Follow & Support:

Follow us on Instagram.

Send inquiries to [email protected].

Buy merch on Threadless to support the show!

Hosted by:

adrie rose (@adrierising on bsky, twitter, instagram, & tiktok)

Stitch (@stitch on bsky, @stitchmediamix on instagram)

Guests:

Maggie North writes deeply emotional, strangely hilarious romance novels about introverts, STEM, Canada, and other overlooked, underappreciated things you’d love to discover. A doctor by day, author by night, she lives in Ottawa, Canada with the man she met in ninth grade, their kid, and a rotating cast of hypoallergenic aquarium friends. Maggie enjoys being autistic a lot more since her diagnosis as an adult. Her books include RULES FOR SECOND CHANCES, THE RIPPLE EFFECT, and FOSSIL FEUD.

Music: ⁠⁠HOLY MOLY⁠⁠ by Shane Ivers

Now you can grab some show merch, or become a show patron, and support the hosts. Share the show with your friends, no matter where they listen to podcasts.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.