While I love a good romance book with sweet kisses or little steal-away scenes, sometimes I wish authors gave us more than the occasional sex scene. Well, thanks to the rise in attention to spicy romance novels from platforms like BookTok (the book community on Tik Tok), an increase in explicit movies/shows, and romance authors leaning into more mature themes, I now have a plethora of media to choose from to read more fiery romance. But, what exactly is smut? Well smut is any material that contains sexually explicit or mature romance topics in it. While this definition is somewhat vague, it has left room for people to debate what is acceptable to put in a novel or on the screen. Is there such a thing as too much?
Take Heated Rivalry and the Off Campus tv series, for example. Both are based off of popular “smut” books and became instant media sensations as soon as they were released. While they are similar in the amount of mature content they contain, they have different narratives around them.
Heated Rivalry is a gay romance based on the 2019 novel by Rachel Reid. In the romance, Shane Hollander and Illya Rozanov, (two phenomenal hockey players) become instant rivals once they are drafted to the National Hockey League’s top two teams. As their relationship begins to blur the line between rivals and something more, we see how they navigate the pressures of their lives on and off the ice. While yes, there are a lot of sex scenes in the book and in the show, I do not consider it smut. Smut, to me, is when the sex is the only thing moving the plot forward, when the main characters lack complexity, and when there is little world building (besides what their bedroom may look like). Heated Rivalry has complex characters with complete lives and their intimate scenes help us learn more about their character as the show progresses. For example, when Shane and Illya have sex for the first time, yes it is explicit, but it is also the first time Shane felt safe in their relationship and when he began to let his guard down with Illya. It is through these hot hookups they learn more about their feelings for each other (since their relationship cannot exist in public). Then, when they hookup at Illya’s apartment instead of random hotels, it demonstrates their relationship becoming more serious and personal.
Now, Off Campus on the other hand, is a college hockey romance between Garrett Graham, the school’s star hockey player, and Hannah Wells, a talented music performance major, that starts when they take the same philosophy class one fall semester. Their relationship in the show is based on the 2015 novel The Deal by Elle Kennedy. While their paths intertwine more throughout the book, Kennedy also explores themes of mental health, drugs, abuse, and sexual assault. Again, it is not just a book where they get to third or fourth base senselessly; the characters learn more about each other through their intimate scenes. Such as when Hannah and Garret visit Garret’s dad for Thanksgiving and it does not go well. On the car ride home, they begin to talk about some of the troubling thoughts that Garret has on his relationship with his dad. To calm him down, Hannah initiates a long, slow kiss they get lost in and go to second base. I suppose Hannah’s intention is to show Garret that she feels safe with him and that she loves him for who he actually is, not who he thinks he is.
 While Off Campus, although having just as much intimacy as Heated Rivalry, was generally received more positively because their romance is considered to be a part of the heteronormative social standard. Their sex scenes were seen as steamy, not obscene (unlike the reaction to Heated Rivalry) and their love was cute, while Shane and Illya’s was “too much”. Homophobic views like these can cause people to label gay romance as smut, which gives the negative connotation that the subgenre is “dirty” or “not meant for public consumption. More so, this double meaning can also cause people to lose the real sense of the term smut. An example is when people use the term as a derogatorily and state that sex is the only thing driving the plot. These people have obviously never read a good Wattpad or A03 story (if you know you know) because smut has never been just about sex. While this may be true about some pieces, smut is a safe place for people to explore the intimate side of romance that society does not hold a place for.
Overall, I am happy that more people get to enjoy these love stories and I am excited for season 2 for both shows. However, we should be careful about the language we use around the intimate scenes in Off Campus and Heated Rivalry to avoid feeding into the people who use the term “smut” to make certain love stories one dimensional. Happy Watching!