#booktok

The Creator of ‘Smutstep’ Wants You to ‘Let Your Freak Flag Fly’ Last week, a video came across my feed of a man saying horny lines over a dubstep beat. “On your knees,” he snarled. As the beat dropped, he growled, “Mmm, now look at me.”  “Instagram reels just showed me a guy who makes 'smutstep' for the booktok crowd and it is the funniest thing I have ever watched,” the person reposting the video on X wrote. The replies are predictably harsh: “I think this is actually the worst thing I have ever heard.” “Who the FUCK is demanding this 😭”  People demanding this is why it exists. DARQ DAGR, whose real name is James, is a dubstep musician and voice artist who’s been working in the music industry and voice acting world for years. But smutstep is what’s made his work go viral, in part thanks to the people who hate it so much – and the ones who demand more of it. Smutstep emerged as a reaction to BookTok, a subculture within TikTok built by book lovers and their various followings. Within BookTok, the romantasy book genre thrives, with series like The Fourth Wing and A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) gaining massive readerships for their blend of elven high fantasy and dragon-based erotica. The romantasy genre is not a quaint fandom. It’s a billion-dollar industry. Like so many online communities devoted to things a little horny and misunderstood, the wider world tends to scrutinize and discredit romance readers, especially when Fae fucking is involved. James, who wants people to know he does read the books too, saw a way into two niches that could compliment each other. “I think what I like about the whole culture — the BookTok culture and dubstep culture — it's just letting your freak flag fly in a way,” he told me in a call. “It’s accepting and embracing what you're into within a safe and healthy space. I think that's a really beautiful thing.”  James and I talked about modern artistry in a world where interactivity and engagement rule, why he doesn’t take all of this too seriously, and the value of escapism in a time when everything else sucks. And yes, I ask him to do the growl. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. SAM: I will admit just off the bat, I'm not in the BookTok world personally. DARQ DAGR: Uh-huh. I have nothing against BookTok. Beautiful community. But I can't get into it. I've tried like, ACOTAR. I haven't found my romantasy, I suppose. So I might ask you some dumb questions, but hopefully you can also serve as a little bit of an explainer for those of us who are not super in that world. Tell me how you got into this? Yeah. So the thing is, it wasn't like when I was a kid, I was like, when I grow up I wanna growl. You know? I've been a trained professional vocalist for a really long time. I've done metal and I've done theatre, I've done pop, I've done rock. The reason I'm in Nashville right now is because I spent eight years in a country band that was touring the world. I just kinda do everything there is to do with my voice. I've been a professional performer and vocalist for a really long time. My wife is really into the BookTok world. And so I was exposed to the community and the books through her.  The first video that went viral for me was when I had just left my country band. And all I wanted was for the way I was presenting myself and expressing myself to be true to the things that I was into, which is dubstep. I had fallen in love with dubstep. I think it's the most beautiful community in the world. And then, I've always been a huge fantasy fan. I've always been really into Lord of the Rings and The Witcher and all that stuff. So getting into romantasy was not a big step for me, because I'm already a fan of fantasy. Making that video was me kind of saying, ‘I feel like a lot of these BookTok boys are getting the growl wrong.’ And then I did a growl that I did from back in my metal days. And it just blew up and it created this whole community of people who were really into the growl. But I was not the first person to do the growl.  @darqdagr?refer=embed@www.tiktok.com What do you think, booktok? #booktok #fantasybooktok #fantasyromance #darkfantasy #romantasy #growl ♬ original sound - DARQ DAGR I didn't know that.  There's another creator who was doing it long before me. His name's Michael Ayok. I can't take credit for being the first to BookTok growl, but I definitely get a lot of recognition for it.  Obviously I wanted to be producing dubstep music, but my community all wanted me to growl, so it was like, how do I make this make sense? And so I just started growling in my dubstep and inadvertently created a subgenre of dubstep called smutstep. It's all community driven though. Honestly, even the name smutstep was a comment on one of my videos. Somebody had requested that I growl ‘sit down’ and I did a video growling it that did really well. So I was like, well, let's just make a dubstep drop out of this. It's community driven, and it's fun. I'm glad that people are liking it.  I think the biggest issue though is that... I'm having fun. I do not take this seriously. Again, it wasn't a dream of mine to grow up and growl at people. I took two very niche communities — the dark romance BookTok niche community, and the dubstep community — that are not designed to be exposed to general culture. So there's a lot of hate that comes with that and a lot of negativity. People react very strongly to what I do. And I think that that's as an artist, I think that's effective art. You want people to be moved to an extreme. You know? But you cannot control what that extreme is gonna be.  There are people that treat me like Marilyn Manson in the nineties. His art is meant to be taken seriously. He is making a social commentary where he's putting a mirror up to society and showing how ugly it is. Whether you love that or you hate it, it's meant to be taken seriously. Smutstep is not meant to be taken seriously. If you enjoy it, that's awesome. You know what I mean? I'm having fun with it. I love the community I've created around it. We're all having fun. But it's not meant to be taken as seriously as so many of the haters take it.   Yeah, it's broken containment from these specific niche communities, into the wider world. Which is the curse and blessing of social media, I guess. Something breaks out and becomes viral and then everybody's aware of it, even people who maybe are not the audience.  I sent you the link to the video that's got a million views now on X, and all the comments and replies are really rude. So just be warned. People are like, ‘I'm never gonna unmute this. I would never unmute this to save my life,’ that kind of thing. And like you said, it’s not that serious. If it's not your thing, that's okay. Move on. But what do you think about those comments? The ones that are like, ‘this is gigacringe.’ That's been a lot of what I deal with on other platforms. Facebook and TikTok are way better. On Instagram, l have my comments limited to people who follow me because it's just so much hate.   People are crazy on Instagram. People will say the most sideways shit on Instagram. Yeah, and that's that's the thing. Like obviously, as much as we're all just having fun, of course it does mentally take a big toll on you. You said this is community driven. Were people waiting to have this sort of thing enter their already-existing BookTok community, or where do you think it comes from? Why are people resonating with this? Men in BookTok is not a new thing. Making it dubstep is my brand. But for me, smutstep is like the KISS makeup. It's a gimmick. Everybody needs something that makes them stand out. So right now, smutstep is what makes me different, it's what makes me unique.  Most of my content is based off of people making requests in the comments. I think that may be why it's taken off the way it has. Obviously it has to do with me, but it has so much to do with the people who are enjoying it. This is something that I think in a lot of ways is actually a much more modern take on entertainment. From its inception, it’s community demand, and giving people what they want within what I wanna do. I'm not doing something I don't wanna do. It's like, all right, you guys want this? Well, I'm gonna make it, but I'm gonna go the dark romance route and make it super aggressive, because I want to make dubstep out of it, and people are like, ‘That's fucking dope.’ 0:00 /0:34 1× Are you familiar with like the romantasy theme park videos? No. No. Oh my god. You would get a kick out of this, and probably your wife would also, but it's part of SeaWorld. You know how around Halloween, theme parks will do like horror nights, and characters come out and chase you? It's that, but it's BookTok boys. I'll send you a link. But it has gotten a really big reaction from wider culture, where people are like, ‘this is so cringe and weird.’ The execution is really cringe and weird, but it is responding to something people wanted, which was: romantasy in a more interactive way. Is there anything that people are demanding from you more than other stuff?  There's a book series called The Fourth Wing and there's a dragon in it called Tairn. Somebody said that Tairn should be Scottish, because his name is Tairneanach, which is a Scottish name. So I did a growl, but in the Scottish accent.  I do another series with masked growls. I'm supposed to do one today, if the mask gets here in time. It’s a Scream mask 'cause we're in spooky season, and people have been wanting that for as long as I've been doing this. @darqdagr?refer=embed@www.tiktok.com 😱😱😱 #darkromance #masktok #booktok #spicybooktok #bookish ♬ HEXST0RM - Slowed - Lxzt I saw the motorcycle helmet one. People really were into that. I think what I like about the whole culture — the BookTok culture and dubstep culture — it's just letting your freak flag fly in a way. It’s accepting and embracing what you're into within a safe and healthy space. I think that's a really beautiful thing. Maybe it's just as I get older, but I'm just so disillusioned with reality and I constantly want more escapism for myself, and want to give others more escapism as well. So that's kind of my goal as an artist is just escapism. That’s a huge appeal of fantasy and romance in general. I'm also a big Lord of the Rings fan. That type of fantasy I can get with. I wonder if Lord of the Rings launched today, if we would be calling it romantasy. I guess there's not enough sex in it though. The thing about romantasy is, there does need to be pretty pretty graphic scenes in it. But Lord of the Rings has none of that. I do read the romantic stuff too. I don't wanna be somebody who just does it for the views. I do read both. Do you think people have picked up on the smutstep genre since you started? Are there new people doing it?  I haven't noticed, but that doesn't mean someone's not out there trying and just hasn't had a video hit yet. And to be honest, I'm not surprised. I think that it's one of those things... It's human nature to have an aversion to something new that they don't understand. It’s still in the phase where I think it's more ‘what the fuck’ than something that is socially acceptable. Which again, it was never meant to be broadly socially acceptable. It was meant to be niche-acceptable, which it already is. I don't think there's a lot of people trying to do it because I think people are too afraid of having to deal with the same stuff I deal with. I would be remiss in letting you go if I didn't make you do a growl. Would you be willing to offer us a growl?  I can. It's not going to be that loud, because I don't have a mic, but I can do one. Ready? [Growls] Did you hear it? Did it pick it up? It was like a growl in the distance. I'll practice mine. I'll do it on the podcast maybe and you can critique my growl.