An Unhinged Deep Dive into Booktok Tropes 

Me: Fake dated my college boyfriend because I'm a lesbian

Stop cause I hate when authors try to make "touch her and you'll die" male characters and the book is literally in an office setting😭😭

This didn’t happen to me but my friend is bi and her twin brother is gay but their parents are homophobic so in high school she “dated” his boyfriend and he “dated” her girlfriend. It was honestly iconic.

you know where books are even cheaper than spotify? THE LIBRARY, SHAMELESS LIBRARY PLUG GO TO UR LOCAL LIBRARY RIGHT NEOW GO SUPPORT THEM WE LOVE LIBRARIES

“she’s a dog groomer in the Empire State Building and he’s the king of the sewer rats” may have caused me to choke from laughing so hard

Miscommunication trope can crawl into a corner and die there 😮‍💨

wrt the popularization of tropes, i'll never get over the tweet that's like "it's so charming to watch people who were too mentally well to be on archive of our own at age 13 reverse engineer ao3 tags" like it's sooo true lmao

the scary part of the modern world is you never know if the degen next to you is chilling or listening to people getting their cheeks absolutely destroyed

the emphasis on height difference in these books is so funny to me at this point, because whenever I read about these 5'0 women and these 6'4 men I always hear Kennie JD going “I’m supposed to get scoliosis just cause I’m trying to smash????” 😂

This is the most enthusiastic I’ve ever seen a RU-vidr get over a sponsorship

The R2D2 and C-3PO comparison for grumpy/sunshine TOOK ME OUT, that’s so accurate lmao

"he's a dragon slayer and she makes artisanal ice cream for dogs" Where's the book, Carly???!!

Re: right person wrong time, my aunty married the love of her life at 70, having met him when she was in her twenties. They had three marriages apiece and knew each other for DECADES, but the timing was off. They are now super happy. It wasn't easy, and there were a few broken hearts along the way but there is hope!

I commented on a post mentioning that I don't love categorizing books by trope because it kind of spoils them (I prefer to go in as blind as possible) and the responses were a wild mix of: "If I don't know exactly what's going to happen in a book my anxiety won't let me read it!" and "If it's a romance you know they'll get together anyway so who cares if it's spoiled?" And to the latter I say, y'all would not have survived the early-mid 2000s era of killing the romantic lead in the last 20 pages. Augustus Waters took us out at the KNEES!!! Bitches were sobbing on the subway!!!!

spotify sponsorship is insane so happy for u babe!!!

had to quit out of my candy crush game for this one queen. Thank god ur back

“I don’t flirt, I just act strangely and arrive in places that they arrive and don’t talk to them” I have never related so hard to something in my life. The type of rizz we have is unmatched

The sidebar about thinking you’re a prodigy and then two years later realizing you know absolutely nothing was so real lol too close to home and I love you for it

Carley: and I.....say it with me- Me: eat it up everytime? *Carley: eat it up everytime*

honestly only the triple threat of an eclipse, mercury retrograde and aries season could have unleashed the absolute chaos of this video and i LOVE that for us 🫰

i'm sixteen. pretty much my entire grade level has decided i'm a lesbian. i have a guy friend in my class. i persuade him to fake date me for the plot, because i love chaos. we hold hands a bunch and go to the school dance together. the bit's over, we move on with our lives. a whole arse yEAR later i found out via some acquaintances that he had actually liked me and had been asking people for advice, but had been too scared to ask me out. horrible. terrible. THIS SHIT HAPPENS CARLEY

That was the longest sponsorship message I’ve ever watched, respectfully

Booktok scares me, but Carleys bravery has inspired me to go on. Truly a soldier for this one

Diving into booktok??? You’re braver than the marines

"women can be in stem and also get to kiss. that's activism" thank you for saying that and opening my eyes 🙏🙏as a woman in stem i'm going to kiss my gf now as an act of women and lgbtq+ rights activism ❤

omg the way you opened with "listen to smut in public it's good for your mental health" and i literally did this yesterday for the first time and felt so powerful lol

for the question about fake dating, I have a real life story. when I was studying Beauty in 2019 I met a South African girl names Zjani (pronounced like Jani, soft J) and her parents had been friends back in the day, and wanted to travel, and back then it was taboo to travel with someone that you weren't married to. so they got married, and then in travelling and being married, feel in love for real and have now been happily married for over 20 years, and Zjani had siblings too. I met her dad, he works on the college campus in IT, seemed like a nice man. Cute story

I thought “touch her and die” would be the trope where she has a curse or a superpower or something where if you make skin to skin contact with her you die. Like she’s electric or poisonous or has a Midas type curse or something. So you’re pining but you can’t kiss because then you’re dead

new uncarley video my homework is getting DONE tonight 🔥🔥

sponsored by SPOTIFY?! Girl get that bag omg

every time you post a video i have the obligation to come here and thank you for your service maam (saving my life)

Emily Henry books are not only romantic and sexy but so FUNNY? She does it all. Nobel Prize for Literature.

As Anne Carson said “Who is the real subject of most love poems? Not the beloved. It is that hole” (hole referring to the character pining after the other)

Contrapoints' video on Twilight is a fantastic exploration of your "why do we love pining?" question. More to the point, my objection to the "trope-ification" of fiction isn't distaste for what people choose to read and how tropes make book selection easier for readers. My objection is to the effect it's having on publishing. Because publishers are profit-seeking, they have reacted to the success of tropes as marketing tools, and many of them have begun rejecting manuscripts which aren't sufficiently "tropey." If your story doesn't fit into short, recognizable descriptors that the publisher can slap on the back of the book and use in all its marketing... or if your story doesn't lend itself to BookTok hype culture... then you now have a MUCH harder time finding a publisher than you might have before trope-ification. While I lay the blame for this with publishers, I do think there's something to be said for the buying power readers possess. If the only (or loudest) channel we use for discovering new stories is trope-centered discussion, then we're telling publishers that's what sells. Books which don't fall into tropes, whose authors don't wish to market based on tropes due to spoilers or other reasons, and books which subvert tropes all get left behind. PS: I am a big sucker for a lot of tropes, for the record. Rivals to lovers who eventually set aside their competition when they fall for each other and realize they don't have to measure their self-worth via accomplishments? Lets goooooo

you’re risking your sanity for these videos 😭 riverdale, cats, booktok?!?! thank you carley truly 😭

"I don't flirt, I act strange and off putting to somebody ... " 😂 Girl, same. At this point, I've resignsted to my fate of dying alone.

i fake dated a friend years ago bc the same guy was quite literally harassing us and we wanted to deter him? we ended up real dating for a little while after we both realised we actually legit liked each other. it was a cute little romance, we were really young i think 14 or 15? i remember it very fondly. it was also one of my first sapphic relationships!

“Knife to throat” and “touch her and die” really strike me as adventure themes. Like pirates and stuff like that. Places where people would routinely be killing and carrying knives in the first place lol

I literally clicked with the speed of light

Carley getting sponsored by Spotify feels like the end of a hero arc

I’ve been waiting for audiobooks on Spotify to be available in Canada, and what a great way to find out from an unhinged uncarley video

Not exactly fake dating but me and my bestie pretended to be a couple (on paper) bc couples flats in uni were 1) bigger 2) cheaper per person 3) had their own kitchen, bath and living room

"One of the most popular terms is 'spice' and I don't mean cumin" (pronounces it coomin'). Idk if that was on purpose but it gagged me

as a literal aroace person who works in romance publishing and is just as confused by some of these things as you, thank you for this

thank you for this one. booktok is my roman empire, cause we could have people discussing and sharing really good books. instead we get "romance" thats mostly smut. its hard to criticize without sounding like a prude.

speaking on booktok is insane as chappell roan recently said good luck babe!

If I had a nickel for every time I fake dated a guy without knowing and then got a text saying they were sorry they were just pretending to date me to make their ex jealous but then they realized I wasn't terrible and felt bad about it, I would have 2 nickels. Which isn't a lot but still weird it happened twice

the dear evan hanson of youtube? babe, ben platt WISHES he had your range and radiant skin

I always watch my videos on 1.5 speed but NEVER on Carley’s because I need to savor every second

I know alot of people say "once the couple actually gets together. Its really boring". But I don't think thats true if your romance has good enough characters to support the relationship. I feel like my favorite romances are really indepth character explorations

It is so easy to see that you read contemporary 😂 “Touch her and die” and “she’s mine” are some of my favorite tropes, but I also read almost exclusively sci-fi/romance and fantasy/romance. In those extreme scenarios, it just works. Contemporary stuff usually just too boring for me… like when you go from alien abduction and vampire battles and apocalyptic wars between humans and aliens… small town romance just doesn’t cut it. But that’s why I love having so many options! There is something for everyone. You should do a video checking out the more extreme tropes from sci-fi and fantasy romance books! Dark romance too would be fun! I bet you’d learn a lot.

My day is instantly better when uncarley posts

Libby is a great app for free audiobooks

I feel like it's important to state during your Spotify sponsorship that you only get access to 10 hours of audiobooks per month, otherwise it costs $15 to pay for another 10 hours!

Not gonna lie. I definitely thought “touch her and die” was a Rogue from X-men situation. I am choosing to continue to think that as I absolutely love that trope so much.

no because SCIENTFIC REASON WHY WE LOVE YEARNING TROPES: i study entertainment communication and we just learned about this so i got super excited when you said that! the main thing we seek from entertainment media is enjoyment. but in order to have a compelling narrative, we need several mechanisms; mainly, to (1) create an affective disposition for the portagonist(s) and (2) to create tension until the big climax of the story. and one of the best ways to create tension is to delay this enjoyment! feelings of frustration and anger about a narrative are a much better predictor of whether you will continue to follow a story than positive emotions, and tension created by delayed gratification only makes us want that enjoyment at the end of the road more (sunk cost bias!). the crux of this narrative involvement described above is that we subconsciously have to know that it will turn out alright in the end, which is why we love these tropes so much in the first place. they are like a safe space in which we can experience all that delightful tension in the story, before the big happy ending. well, how is this related to yearning? well, having someone silently yearn for the other is by far the least complex (AND most relatable) way to create narrative tension. further, it's an excellent basis for internal conflict within characters and opportunities for growth, which increases tension in the story and our affective disposition for a character, respectively. booktok tropes are really excellent examples to study basic narrative techniques on. but we should just go on and enjoy them, because they work for a reason!

"books are expensive" thats why you go to libraries!!!

the current popular booktok books are TERRIBLE. i swear, the authors literally just throw all the popular tropes together & don’t care if it makes sense😭

its not me, but i had a friend who fake dated a guy in high school bc their crushes were going to prom together. the goal was to (somehow) make their crushes jealous with their relationship, but they were worried that the crushes would think they were off the market so they DIDNT TELL ANYONE ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP. obviously this didnt work and they eventually caught feelings for each other

Just fyi, the listening hours for audiobooks on spotify is capped at a monthly limit!! Found that out the hard way falling asleep to a book and letting it play night after night. Apparently, some people were warned on spotify and some werent. Hours reset monthly.

“ Who’s been running his grandmother’s pancake farm“ has me in TEARS😂😂😂

also congrats on the Spotify sponsorship!! wishing us all many happy days of unhinged audiobooks in the grocery store, at work, or even in the car😌

This is actually perfect because I just finished listening to Mad Honey on Spotify and there’s a hole on my audiobook heart and looking for the next thing to hear

thank you for keeping me company in an unending shift at work 😮‍💨

You’re getting braver and braver with your subjects 🫡

i love your videos so much carley please don't die

ok but why would I buy spotify premium when I can get the same thing with a free library card

"i don't know a scroll or something gets lost" i lost it bc one of my all time favorite fanfics involves a love letter getting mixed up and lost and a DECADE LATER THEY FINALLY FIGURE SHIT OUT and it's literally novel length

Need a video on fan fiction. One direction reunion fan fanfiction would make a great video *hint hint wink wink*. Would be hilarious to see you read the fan fiction on AO3 ‘how many omegas could you fit into 5 seconds of summer’ it’s like 500,000+ words long 😭😭

Hearing “welcome back to my channel, freak” the day I get my adhd diagnosis is exactly the affirmation I need , love u carley

r2d2 x c3po is honestly a god tier relationship dynamic also you definitely don't have mean girl energy!!!

was going to write my essay but this is more important

oml so excited to watch this just got home from school love you carley

carly this is actually like a really well made presentation

I've been dating the love of my life for over a year now and yes, we fake dated. Friends to lovers + fake dating. Basically what happened was that we were on choir tour together, and my dumb as got my bag with my passport and phone and 300 euros stolen so I was sad. We had a free day to roam Brûge but I didn't wake up early to go shopping with my friends because I had no money and i didn't want to burden them, and she slept in because that's just what she does. We were "friends" of sorts, in the same friend group but not really close so we shared a dorm and by chance, a bunkbed too. When she woke up she cheered me up and decided that her spending money was "our" spending money so we went out for lunch and sat across from each other like it was an awkward first date. We laughed about it and she said something like "you know, I wouldn't mind being your girlfriend" and I was like O_O. Then I got jealous that my one friend had a play boyfriend and a play wife, so I made her (my now girlfriend) my play wife and we fake dated for the entire rest of the tour. There were so many magical moments in between but her asking me to be her girlfriend for real for real at the top of the Eiffel Tower takes the cake

in middle school i had a friend that was(is still now) gay. i was the first person he ever told and asked me to be his fake gf. we grew up in a very religious community so it was to give him a bit of a cover. super cool dude. still platonically love him to this day 20 some years later.

Can’t tell u how much I needed a new instalment of Uncarley today

I personally really love the "she fell first, he fell harder" trope

never actually fake dated someone BUT i did get asked by my best friend’s ex to fake date him to make her jealous. that was an absolutely bonkers day and i question why he thought id be like “omg yea ofc !!!!! :D”

Carley you are FEEDING us, thank you queen

love your book content. one of my favorite terms you’ve ever coined is “lobotomy literature”

I fake dated my first official girlfriend because the girl she liked and the girl I liked were dating, and we thought it would make them jealous. It did, and they broke up, and we fake broke up, and I ended up dating the girl I liked.

Pride and Prejudice isn't really enemies to lovers, usually that trope involves warring sides. Which P&P doesn't have. It's a higher risk situation, and usually morally at odds. I call Pride and Prejudice my own trope category, which is "Annoyed to Lovers" where two people aren't necessary actively fighting on separate sides, they may even be on the same "side," but they drive each other insane. Can't stand each other, until they do. Passionately. Other examples include Leo and Calypso in Heroes of Olympus and Natsu and Lucy in Fairy Tail. It's also my favorite trope. It needs to be its own official category.

You know what also is a good way to get books without having to pay for them? The library. There are also ways to get ebooks and audiobooks from certain libraries with an app. I only buy books for a desire to reread, mostly, I am only so strong, but generally I read a book from the library and if I really like it and think about it it goes on my shelf. Libraries are good sign up to your local library for a membership or like, some big libraries you can also sign up to and just get audio and ebooks, like NYC or LA's libraries. there, libraries shouted out

I've experienced the right person wrong time situation in real life. My highschool sweetheart and I moved it together right after school, but a year later I had to leave for university. We tried to make long distance work but grew apart. It was by far the worst breakup ever and even afterwards I always thought that he would be the person I was gonnay start a family with. A few years later we reconnected at a class reunion. End of the story he just moved to my university town and we managed to finally find the right time and the right person.

ive been stressed about life and moving lately and the future but whenever i watch your videos i feel truly calm and unworried

i absolutely HATE insta love, miscommunication and anything related to pregnancy. I don't vibe with that.

because of the Pride and Prejudice mention i feel as tho it is my duty to tag other Jane Austen novels with book tropes. Friends to Lovers: Sense & Sensibility Second Chance: Persuasion Slow Burn: literally all of them Miscommunication: Emma (not even with the main couple but just all over the place in general. Emma is so messy we love her) Rags to Riches/Cinderella (?): Mansfield Park

Is it fake dating when everyone assumes you're the one dating someone but you know you aren't and neither of you actually do anything to beat the allegations? If so I have and it was kinda fun until it wasn't... but then it was fun again!

literally just listening to you talk is soothing to my brain and you are so easy to understand in a good way i can shut my eyes and consume information easily ! thank you

I know the feelings about being told you look like you are mean! People have told me that when half the time I'm not paying attention looking out the window at a bird or something.

when you said bad boy golfer i immediately thought of richard gilmore

Friends to lovers slaps, very hard. I'm a huge fan of pining, the drama is unparalleled. But with this, as most of the other tropes, in real life I would never wish even for my worst enemy to have a friend who you think is there for you but who also secretly (or not so securely) wants to get in your pants 😮‍💨

random but you are glowing in this video! the blue-green screen us really your color

seeing there’s a new uncarley video just made my day so much better

"Normalize not being able to do basic arithmetic!" Yes! Well phones kinda have tho, right?

I thought "touch her and die" meant that there's some sort of curse or scifi disease put onto/afflicting one or both of the love interests that prevents them from having physical contact, which sounds so much more interesting than toxic, violent possessiveness, if you ask me.

I actually was someone's fake date to a birthday dinner on Valentine's day because he wanted to bring his friend to set up with someone else in the group but then they thought he was bringing a girl so our mutual friend was like do me a solid and go to this dinner you will get free food and I was like sounds lit. Honestly the best date I went on until I met my long term partner lol I got candy, flowers, food, and a weird story.

I’ve fake dated! it was back when I was a lesbian (I am no longer a lesbian, long story) in high school n there was this group of girls where were *desperate* to out me (bad, shitty), so I started a fake relationship with a friend of mine who was ace (awesome, objectively funny). we both thought people gossiping about us was hilarious so sometimes we got into choreographed fights for the bit

wanted to take a little break from doing my homework and this is the best thing to do on my break!!!! thank you Carley!!!