Girl Gooning
gooning, romantasy, and the pursuit of being impaled by an elven cock
Two excellent pieces of cultural criticism written by Daniels in recent weeks: Daniel Kolitz in Harper’s on the phenomenon of gooning, and Daniel Yadin in the The Drift about the stickiness (perhaps literally) of the romantasy genre. I recommend reading both.
Maybe it’s simply that I read the pieces in quick succession, but they seemed to be in conversation with each other: both were about communities that flourished on the internet, media-driven means of coping with existential crisis, and more specifically, offered an antidote to the existing stew of the internet with a new form of gamified slop, one that catered to desire. Gooners can create porn supercuts, romantasy fans can look beyond the text for clues and make endless Reddit posts about it. Both authors point to the real world crumbling as an impetus for people–note, we’re all very lonely–to seek entrance into spaces where sex and desire is presented openly as the subject to be consumed, no longer subtext, pointing perhaps to deep dissatisfaction with the world as it exists and with the type of sex and romance available to many IRL.
Romantasy you may have heard of, or can likely figure out the portmanteau: it is indeed a hybrid genre between romance and fantasy, leading to a revolution in the publishing world as books like ACOTAR and Fourth Wing usher reading back into relevance, in large part because of their popularity in ever-growing communities online, like BookTok. The books are rather standard fare fantasy (good v. evil, being weak but also the chosen one, realizing you have untapped natural powers) but are unique in how they blend such traditional tropes with the type of horny fan fiction that created 50 Shades of Grey out of Twilight. It cannot be stated enough that these books are horny horny: if you’ve seen someone reading Sarah J. Maas on the train, there’s a very high percentage you’re looking at someone actively reading about rigid members being buried to “the hilt,” details about the length of said member, someone who is enjoying cock plunges and quivering pussies, all in unambiguous detail. Yadin writes, “Romantasy sex scenes function not as spicy interludes between events but as critical moments of world-building and character formation,” and later writes, “the passion that springs from all this primal desire is fierce and ferocious, and it offers a vision of a liberated female sexuality whose thrill must surely be authentically felt by readers. The ladies get on top often, literally and figuratively; they also experience a wider set of scenarios with common enough, if not entirely politically acceptable, appeal: they are kidnapped, gagged, choked, obliterated.”
If you are unaware of the gooning phenomenon, the gist is that people jerk their worthless little dicks into oblivion, seeking a higher “goon state,” or at least prolonged edging. They often do this together, in group gooning sessions that can last many hours, or during “wank battles.” Like UFO disclosures, the goon state is a horizon oft promised but eternally moving off into the distance, which funnily enough is a topic Yadin writes about in his piece on romantasy: “Here in our Primary World, the end is always coming, whether it’s climate change or chat bots or Q or a coup. The air of tragedy and paralysis that overhangs so much of American life is, perhaps more than declining rates of marriage or property ownership, the real source of strength for the particular type of fairy-tale narrative that has come to dominate our literature. Because what are you supposed to do with your time between now and the end of the world? What should you do with your one adult life? Romantasy suggests that you may as well suck off a dragon or two.”
To be clear to readers thinking here he refers to Fourth Wing, he does not. There is no interspecies fucking there, the dragons fuck separately from their riders, though there is plenty interspecies stuff to be found in other romantasy. If the romantasy reader is drawn to the smut as a salve for the Specter of The End Times, the gooner staves off the End Times by seeking a state of higher being, through jerking off incessantly.
I must note that I approach these topics as an enjoyer–both of romantasy and genre fiction generally and, I suppose, my own form(s) of gooning. I’ve written before about the ambient horniness of online interaction, specifically re: falling in love during lockdown, written ranked lists of cocks in the Wheel of Time universe, illustrated gift guides for sex toys and for how to sext better (on IG still, if you’re curious). I spent years running an Instagram account that inadvertently really, really appealed to cuckolds, and had dozens of men in my inbox weekly begging to be humiliated in public. What I’m saying is these articles were tailor made for me. And also perhaps very much not for me, as spectator observations on worlds I am tangentially familiar with.
I can’t say that what gooning and romantasy point to about The Times We Live In is necessarily good, but as far as rabbit holes go, at least these offer community, and the possibility of orgasm. Or at the very least, a comfortable place to rest your head and edge.
Gooning broke through from the nether regions of the internet primarily through the Reddit r/GoonCaves, which showcased elaborate masturbation dens people had built. The community spread out through typical means: Discord, other forums, video chatting services. While surely the “gooning” (jerking off for hours on end) of it all begs specific questions that Kolitz writes about at length, the essential formula here, a community built around an online forum that encourages the creation and dissemination of its own kind of media, language, and norms, is how most internet communities today look, at least from the outside.
It’s how BookTok looks, certainly, with “shelvies” showing painstakingly organized novels displayed for fellow Girl Gooners to observe and fawn over and hashtags denoting favorite tropes. Both communities are not simply about consuming, but about collecting digital (or material) ephemera as a means to better pinpoint, and broadcast, desires. Romantasy readers collect books and merchandise, perhaps like and share posts that explain their favorite books to them or roleplay their most beloved characters. They may go to in-person meet ups and conventions. Gooners collect GIFs, photos, videos, and tailor their spaces to display these hard-curated treasures on more and more screens. They may, too, go to in-person meet ups, as the author of the piece did. (Banned from group gooning for being an outsider.)
Kolitz’s thesis, essentially, is that the gooner addiction seems to be more about addiction to consumption–or addiction to media–than to porn. He writes, “what are these gooners actually doing? Wasting hours each day consuming short-form video content. Chasing intensities of sensation across platforms. Parasocially fixating on microcelebrities who want their money…” He makes the point that while the jerking off is specific, gooning seems to be an obsession that rather looks like what most of us engage with on a daily basis (in less overtly sexualized or purposefully humiliating means) simply by using the internet. Kolitz notes that sharing photos of goon caves flourished during lockdown–the streets were empty, the goon caves showed one possibility of the fantasy worlds people created indoors when the world outside became (more) inaccessible and most of us Logged On more than ever. In looking at the goon caves, I see less obvious traces of human desires and more an exercise in trying to visualize the impossibility of looking everywhere at once but being asked repeatedly to try. My version of a goon cave might have screens with every franchise of Real Housewives playing all at once. I can’t keep up with them all, but I can try to catch the good bits which is basically how I watch the show anyways, with one eye on a different screen, looking up the latest devastation or why this specific housewife is in jail.
Just after I read the gooning piece I saw a video online. A young woman films herself becoming so engrossed in reading that she is transported briefly to the world between the pages. The text on screen says “POV: the book is too good.” One second she’s sitting (reading romantasy), the next it’s a night scene, an open fire is roaring, and a man (her boyfriend) fiddles (sexily) with her hair and clothes while passionately kissing her. In the background, of course, was the viral sound that made it all possible, a snippet from Sabrina Carpenter’s song Tears, in which she sings “I get wet at the thought of you (uh-huh) / being a responsible guy / treating me like you’re supposed to do (uh-huh) / tears run down my thighs.” (I did not realize that Carpenter, herself a fugitive from the make-believe world of children’s entertainment, who now reminds us she’s no prude, had written a squirters rights song that lampoons low standards for men…is Sabrina an #awardsforgoodboys fan? Let’s say yes!)
Which got me thinking: good for her! And also, is this girl gooning? Both the making of the video as a response to the experience of reading romantasy, and the response to the video? If gooning is thought about in ways not as much about the jerking off, but more about the endless quest for content? But also literally about the jerking off? The comments on the video lead me to think yes. Fans remark that their reading experience feels like this. They form a new type of parasocial relationship, that to the woman on screen reading the book that they already have an existing relationship with. “I want a boyfriend so I can do this too!” one commenter wrote. And indeed, what the videos seem best at portraying is not the transportative power of reading, nor a POV of the book being too good, but the beauty of being in a relationship where you can make your partner do embarrassing stuff with you. Now that’s genuinely beautiful. Romantasy provides endless fertile ground for remixing and roleplaying because it is so malleable. The protagonists are singular and exceptional, yes, but they are vague enough that they could be us, if we just imagine, or role-play a scene making it more real.
Romantasy has thrived in large part because of how sticky it is on social media. The content it inspires, like the porn mashup videos, lends itself to endless further reiterations, reinterpretations, remixing. In his piece on romantasy, Yadin quotes notorious Mormon fantasy author Brandon Sanderson, referring to how Sanderson has long opined about how genre fiction is sidelined by the mainstream. Notably, Sanderson writes nothing remotely close to smut, but he is the king of Fan Service, to the detriment of his more recent books (his early series, like Mistborn, are incredible and fantastic, full of dense magic & world building, his later forays into the dense tomes of Fantasy badly need an editor besides his wife, and I say this with love). He’s right: genre fiction has long been sidelined, judged, peered at, looked leeringly at by academics. Romance especially has long been thought of as Women’s Terrain, while fantasy is usually relegated to the edges unless it’s to be pilfered for words to name your drone company with.
Genre fiction existing on the margins is perhaps part of why even if the newly popular romantasy books aren’t incredible literature, it’s still a club you can join, and a club that wants you. It doesn’t matter why you’re flocking to it–escape, supplement, pleasure, guilt. As part of a community of readers you become part of the story. Quoting Sanderson ironically highlights the importance of fan relationships within genre fiction communities: romantasy thrives because it is fan service. Or, because it services fans.
My qualm with both pieces is not with their content – no, they are very good, smart and detailed explorations of these communities. But you can tell both are written by outsiders, peering into niche worlds and trying to explain the formula that might make it erotic. If you can’t get hard in the goon chat, should you be allowed to write about it? If you don’t get aroused by romantasy can you articulate what makes it sexy? Of course, of course. Let smart people write things. I merely point this out to show that despite the nuanced and quite empathetic explorations from both authors, there is a missing piece, namely, a genuine curiosity regarding the sexiness that can arise in these spaces. Instead, we are given a looking glass view into the lives of Others, the gooner and the romantasy fan is, and while they are compared to us broadly in how they consume media, the sex stuff is definitively NOT us. No those freaks are over there, and the main reason these subcultures might appeal is because the world sucks. What such varying means of smut shows us is that people are horny and indeed the world isn’t a good host for such predilections. And while the internet can facilitate eroticism, it also deadens it, as a great piece by Kate Wagner on internet surveillance and sexiness shows.
But a thing becoming Hyper Visible on the internet does not make it new, only newly internet-ified. Guys have been jerking off with each other and jerking each other off since the dawn of time. Written smut is old as hell. Smut can be very sexy, even–or especially–if it’s bad. While the specific consumption habits of some gooners seems to resemble addiction more than anything else, many aspects of the trend are readily identifiable in things people do indeed find hot, even if posting a photo of their “gooncave” or recording themselves jerking off live for strangers is not on their bingo card. Voyeurism and “group play” (being generous to the gooners) are not things unique to the web or to the gooning communities, likewise re: submission, edging, and domination. (Many of these same themes show up in romantasy.) Not all gooners jerk off into the ether seeking endless reprieve from the onslaught of daily life by gamifying porn consumption and subsuming to screen addiction, some find and pay professional doms to embarrass, belittle, and humiliate them for sexual pleasure. Romantasy too, can function as erotic precisely because it’s not porn. It is, sure, but it’s narrative. Both spaces, the internet fantasy world and the fantasy fantasy world, offer (however unhealthily it is explored is another question) a space outside of the spaces available for us. They carve a new world, a proxy world, a satellite moon, in which to perch and mine for self truths about desires, sex, sexuality, gender, These are spaces that are generative, additive, not punitive like “the real world.” They offer escape from the broad dysfunction of society, and perhaps the smaller dysfunctions that would stymie someone’s embodied experiences of experimentation.
What is offered in both essays is a crucial look in part at the conditions (loneliness, too much internet, crumbling real world) that necessitate certain expressions of desire, namely ones that can be solo, or done within the home. Both are framed in large part as escapes. Certainly that’s true at least in part, but that would make it not so different from any form of consumption (as noted in the essays) and could be said of all kinds of reading. Isn’t it possible, too, that what people desire, more than dragon smut and more than jerking off into oblivion, is the community itself? And can’t that be sexy? Give me your tired, your poor, your horniest brethren. Framing romantasy and gooning, even inadvertently, as guilty pleasures unintentionally highlights the guilt and not the pleasure. That pleasure and desire might seep out through unexpected cracks in the unsexy pavement of the internet seems reasonable enough to me. There’s a naivete regarding the kind of latent horniness to be found in both spaces. Which leaves me torn: on the one hand, I agree that the rise of gooning and romantasy point to larger dysfunctions in society, namely a world that is deliberately hard to find connection (AND GOOD SEX) in. On the other hand, I feel defensive, not only about the community aspect of these communities, but about their erotic potential.
Even if these spaces aren’t sexy to you, or they fit into broader patterns of how we cope with a crumbling world, that doesn’t mean the spaces aren’t still, as Clairo would say, sexy to someone. I love the successful smut books. They serve me as the literary equivalent of the Real Housewives playing on every screen. It’s…my Girl Gooning. It’s slop. I don’t need it to be good, I need it to wash over me so that my brain can focus on more esoteric forms of media, like Below Deck. It is not simply an escape from “the world” because it sucks, the world does suck and that makes finding love and connection all the more relevant and more frustrating, as finding love online (where most attempt it) becomes even more subject to the algorithmic slop that rules the gooning forums and BookTok. Like watching my slop TV, reading romantasy is never a full-brain-affair. It can try to reel in my throttled attention span, but by design, it will only get some and yet still titillate. And that’s part of the pleasure, the feeling of completion: it may feel like an antidote to the endless scroll, but it’s simply a new extension of it, only this time you can truly put it down and walk away. (When I do want make-believe worlds to expand my thinking, not just wow me with another description of a beautiful and tumescent elven cock, I turn to genre fiction that has long served as a mirror to the broken world we live in: Angela Carter’s reworked fairy tales, Robin Hobb’s deft explorations of friendship and love, Samuel Delaney’s beautiful freaky novels, Gene Wolfe’s labyrinths. Because in my imagined better world, we all have better sex, and more importantly, better taste.)
More sex; less war.
As a certified INSIDER, I am working on a piece about gg (girl gooning.) Absolutely loved and will cite this, thank you.