Smut Talks by Bothered Stories

Friends to Lovers, Grumpy Sunshine, Himbo, Black Cat. . . what are all these reading tropes and why do we love them? First Dates and Soulmates podcast hosts and verified romance reading experts Meg Casebolt and Nikki McNight join us to break down the world of tropes. Whether you’re a smut newbie or a seasoned romance reader, this episode will help you understand why you’re drawn to certain stories and what it all means.

They share:

• How tropes create language and community for readers
• The romance tropes you need to know, from the most common to the most niche
• What makes tropes interesting and compelling—and when do they not work well?
• What psychological and emotional aspects of our own selves do these tropes help us understand

Plus, we each share our favorite tropes and why we love them, including how alien sex helps Nikki get out of her own body and why Meg loves a himbo. And if you’re wondering if cozy monster romance with bull semen is a thing, why, yes, yes it is.

Show Notes

Bothered Stories

Sign up to read our smart, smutty fiction at ⁠https://www.botheredstories.com/⁠ and use code SMUTTALKS for 25% off annual membership.

First Dates and Soulmates

Website: https://firstdatesandsoulmates.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firstdatesandsoulmates/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstDatesSoulmates

Reed Amber is a trailblazing force in sex worker advocacy, sex education, and ethical porn. She’s co-creator of the multi-award winning podcast Come Curious, and she brings that same shame-free, no-holds-barred dialogue to Smut Talks. We dive into:

• Reed’s journey from porn obsession to performer to producer, and how the industry has changed since she started
• What ethical porn means, how it’s practiced, and how to look for it as a porn consumer
• How to normalize and reduce shame around kinks and fetishes—and what’s the difference between a kink and a fetish, anyway?
• Sex worker advocacy and why it’s so important

Reed is a breath of fresh, unfiltered air around topics typically treated like dirty secrets. If you want to be an educated, informed, sex-positive society member but don’t know much about ethical porn or sex work, this conversation is your starting place. Plus, we learn all about tickle fetishes.

Show Notes

Bothered Stories

Sign up to read our smart, smutty fiction at⁠https://www.botheredstories.com/⁠ and use code SMUTTALKS for 25% off annual membership.

Reed Amber

Website:https://divanations.com/https://www.reedmylips.com/

Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/divadarling/https://www.instagram.com/reedamberx/

TikTok :https://www.tiktok.com/@reedamberx

Come Curious Podcast: https://www.reedmylips.com/comecurious-podcast

Ticklethusiasm: https://www.reedmylips.com/ticklethusiasm

Sexologist Chloé Ellert joins us to talk about the nervous system, arousal, recovering from sexual trauma and how smut can play a role. Creator of the Smut-Scent Method and founder of Her By Chloe, she helps women re-connect to themselves and feel safe exploring their sexuality. In this episode, she explains:

• How cortisol and desire interact in the nervous system, and why understanding this is so important to how we experience pleasure
• Ways survivors of sexual assault can reconnect to their sexuality
• How smut creates a safe space to feel arousal, and what smut can reveal about our desires
• What romance books Chloe loves, and what she’d like to see changed in the industry

Chloé teaches us why smut can make us feel safe enough to be aroused again after trauma, what stress has to do with desire, and what paying attention to the spicy stories we love reveals about ourselves. Plus, hear why Disney’s Beauty and the Beast was Chloé’s original entrance into dark romance, and why Chloé thinks we need more male characters with green flags.

Show Notes

Bothered Stories

Sign up to read our high heat, smutty fiction at ⁠https://www.botheredstories.com/⁠ and use code SMUTTALKS for 25% off annual membership.

Chloé Ellert

Website: https://www.herbychloe.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsherbychloe/

Danielle from Openly Committed joins us to explore non-monogamy, including her own 16-year journey in an open relationship and what alternative relationship structures can offer. She unpacks the history behind monogamy, and explains how laws governing women as the property of men stand at its roots. Plus, Danielle and Allison explore why the “chosen one” is so prevalent both as a cultural obsession and a smut trope.

Topics include:

• Non-monogamy 101: the terms, how it’s practiced and what it all means
• Danielle’s open relationship journey and how it’s evolved over her 16 year marriage
• The history of monogamy and women as property, and how recent legal changes are giving women options for the first time in thousands of years
• Debunking common misconceptions about monogamy and non-monogamy

Finally, we talk smut! Danielle shares what she likes to read, plus the Bothered Story she wants commissioned—a fling with someone half your age, spending $300 at a sex shop, and a color coded spreadsheet.

Show Notes

Bothered Stories

Sign up to read our high heat, smutty fiction at⁠https://www.botheredstories.com/⁠ and use code SMUTTALKS for 25% off annual membership.

Danielle from Openly Committed

Website:https://divanations.com/https://openlycommitted.com/index.html

Instagram:⁠https://www.instagram.com/openlycommitted/?hl=en

TikTok :https://www.tiktok.com/@openlycommitted?lang=en

Why does burlesque matter? In this episode, burlesque performers and hosts Diva Darling and Mx. Eden dive deep into their craft, unpacking the ways burlesque subverts patriarchal norms about what is sexy and who gets to take up space. Diva explains how she loves to give the audience “confusion boners” and Eden leaves us with a whole new image of Winnie the Pooh.

This conversation touches on:

• What a burlesque show is like and how it’s different from stripping
• The overlap between burlesque and erotica and how burlesque must answer the important question: why is this person taking off their clothes?
• Representation in burlesque across body type and race—and why that matters
• How burlesque challenges heteronormative and white supremacist concepts of sexiness

And if all that’s not reason enough to care about burlesque? Well, it’s also just plain hot.

Show Notes

Bothered Stories

Sign up to read our high heat, smutty fiction at https://www.botheredstories.com/ and use code SMUTTALKS for 25% off annual membership.

Read Diva Darling’s story on our site: https://www.botheredstories.com/post/role-play

Diva Darling

Website: https://divanations.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/divadarling/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DivaDarlingBurlesque/

Mx. Eden

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yesmxeden/

Charm City Burlesque Variety Festival: https://www.instagram.com/charmcitybvfest/

Toni Nagy and Seraphina Supernova are touring the world with Grape Culture, a groundbreaking tragic comedy show that forces the audience to reckon with what they’ve coined our “culture of domination without consent,” aka the culture we all live in. And they make a lot of dick jokes, because comedy is a thruway to the heart.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What "grape culture" actually means–and why Toni and Seraphina call it that
• Their show, Grape Culture, and the powerful audience reactions it's inspired
• The role comedy plays in portraying and processing collective trauma
• How somatic work helps us understand the impact grape culture has and move towards healing

This episode is about understanding how pervasive our culture of domination is. But it’s also about how we can re-imagine a world where consent and embodiment become the norm.

Show Notes

Bothered Stories

Sign up to read our high heat, smutty fiction at https://www.botheredstories.com/and use code SMUTTALKS for 25% off annual membership.

Grape Culture: https://www.grapeculturehealing.com/

Gnarly Girls Podcast: https://www.grapeculturehealing.com/podcast

Toni Nagy: https://www.toninagy.com/

Seraphina Supernova: https://www.bloodboneandhoney.com/

Bees Knees Burlesque: https://beeskneesbabes.com/

As part of our Pride series, queer sex educator and journalist Gabrielle Kassel shares how sex education has evolved in the last decade, how it shapes our understanding of desire, and how to think about terms like sexuality and queer. She dives into the “Weird Girl” smut that she enjoys (spoiler: more body fluids, please) and how erotica can be a tool for language and self-discovery.

In this episode, Gabby and Allison discuss:

• What "queer" means to Gabby and why sexuality is more expansive than we think

• How smut gives us language to communicate desire and fantasy

• How algorithms, advertising, and AI are reshaping access to sex education

This episode is about access to pleasure and the role technology and capitalism play in sex education. It’s also a celebration of smut (especially the weird kind!) and a deep dive into how reading romance and erotica can translate into more empowered sex in real life.

Show Notes

Bothered Stories

Sign up to read our high heat, smutty fiction (with plenty of queer stories!) at http://botheredstories.com and use code SMUTTALKS for 25% off annual membership.

Gabrielle Kassel

Website

And find her work on Cosmopolitan, Women's Health, Men's Health, and GQ.

Why are readers obsessed with MM romance? Beloved authors Lucy Lennox and Clare London join us to explore the genre’s rising popularity and why gay romance resonates so deeply. We discuss:

• What draws women to MM stories: the gender stereotypes women shed when both protagonists are male, the appeal of seeing men portrayed as emotionally engaged partners, and the double standard inherent in scrutinizing women’s reading choices
• The evolution of MM romance over the last decade and the impact Heated Rivalry had on it becoming more mainstream
• The personal realities of building careers in a genre that wasn’t widely understood, and Lucy’s fears about her children being bullied for it
• Plus: Clare and Lucy’s response to the question MM writers hear most often: How can women write MM romance?

This episode is about readership, representation, community, and how MM romance went from niche genre to cultural conversation.

Show Notes:

Bothered Stories

Sign up to read our high heat, smutty fiction (with plenty of queer stories!) at http://botheredstories.com and use code SMUTTALKS for 25% off annual membership.

Lucy

Lucy's website

Lucy’s newsletter: subscribe to her newsletter for free stories and books!

Lucy’s facebook

Lucy’s Lair (Facebook reader’s group)

Pre-order her new stand alone book Baby Girl

New to Lucy? Start with Borrowing Blue

Clare

Clare’s website

Clare’s newsletter: subscribe for giveaways!

Clare’s facebook

Writing as Stella Shaw(rent boy romance)

What actually goes into creating great erotica?

In this behind-the-scenes episode, we sit down with the Chief Editor of Bothered Stories to unpack the full journey—from submission to final story. We get into how pieces are vetted, what separates a good story from a standout one, and the editorial decisions that shape what gets published.

We also dive into the craft itself: what makes a sex scene hot (and what makes it fall flat), how to write with both heat and substance, and why the best erotica is about far more than what body parts move where.

Beyond the writing, we talk about intention—specifically, the importance of elevating marginalized voices in this genre, and how Bothered Stories is actively working to expand who gets to be seen, heard, and desired in erotic storytelling.

Whether you’re a writer, a reader, or you're just curious about it all, this episode pulls back the curtain on how erotica—and Bothered Stories—really works.

Angelina M. Lopez, bestselling author of After Hours on Milagro Street, joins us to talk about the impact of “ferocious love stories”—her emotionally rich, deeply sexy romances that center Latina heroines, legacy, anger, and joy.

In this conversation, we explore:

• How pleasure and resistance fuel each other in politically volatile times

• What makes a sex scene actually hot (hint: it’s not the mechanics)
• How the dismissal of romance is rooted in the devaluing of women’s work
• Writing Latin American stories as an act of cultural preservation and humanization

This episode is about how smut can be deeply subversive. Angelina's writing centers the intersection of joy and anger, escapism and resistance--and we get into all of it in this conversation.

What makes Heated Rivalry work so well—and why has it resonated so deeply with audiences? In this roundtable discussion, we dig into the cultural, emotional, and narrative forces behind Heated Rivalry: what this romance offers that other stories don’t and why audiences are increasingly drawn to stories that aren’t afraid to center smut.

Joined by bestselling and award winning romance and erotica authors Sierra Simone, Julie Murphy, and Jane Boon, along with Meg Casebolt, co-host of podcast First Dates and Soulmates, we talk craft, craze, and what Heated Rivalry reveals about how romance—and what we want from it—is evolving.

Hear our founder's take on what you can expect from this podcast and Bothered Stories. We'll be bringing on leading voices to dive into smut, desire, the patriarchy--aka the cultural forces that shape this space. We'll also be elevating the artists behind all these beautifully written, hot-as-hell stories and hearing them discuss the genre, their writing process, and why these stories matter. Expect candid conversations, surprising insights, and some unhinged humor along the way.