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Niebling, Laura

Consent capital: From Romantasy’s “Alpha male archetypes” toward a new cultural theory in post-digital storytelling

Niebling, Laura (2025) Consent capital: From Romantasy’s “Alpha male archetypes” toward a new cultural theory in post-digital storytelling. New Media & Society.

Date of publication of this fulltext: 07 Nov 2025 15:45
Article
DOI to cite this document: 10.5283/epub.78113


Abstract

The article introduces the concept of “consent capital” to analyze how writing and reading romantasy, a leading book genre on contemporary bookish platforms often criticized for its young female communities and “trivial” nature, has become a site for political discourse. Drawing on feminist research on romance since the 1980s, and theories on consent culture and cultural capital, the analysis ...

The article introduces the concept of “consent capital” to analyze how writing and reading romantasy, a leading book genre on contemporary bookish platforms often criticized for its young female communities and “trivial” nature, has become a site for political discourse. Drawing on feminist research on romance since the 1980s, and theories on consent culture and cultural capital, the analysis traces romantasy’s role in the post-digital storytelling of body politics, particularly after 2016. Through a comparative analysis of contemporary romantasy series, exemplified by a case study on Rebecca Yarros’s Empyrean series and a focus on “alpha male archetypes,” the article argues that notions of consent, bodily autonomy, and trauma have been transformed into a form of cultural capital, which is actively practiced, but also discussed and aesthetically reflected upon on social media platforms. In post-digital storytelling, it informs cultural value debates and commodification strategies on “sides” like BookTok, where romantasy’s fictional renegotiations of consent capital intersect with the current political, legal and cultural debates on “consent” in countries in the “Global North”.



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    Details

    Item typeArticle
    Journal or Publication TitleNew Media & Society
    Publisher:Sage
    Open Access Type:SAGE (Hybrid)
    Date27 September 2025
    InstitutionsUNSPECIFIED
    Identification Number
    ValueType
    10.1177/14614448251375107DOI
    KeywordsArchetype, Bookish Platforms, BookTok, consent capital, memes, reading industry, romantasy
    Dewey Decimal Classification900 History & geography > 990 General history of other areas
    StatusPublished
    RefereedYes, this version has been refereed
    Created at the University of RegensburgYes
    URN of the UB Regensburgurn:nbn:de:bvb:355-epub-781137
    Item ID78113

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