While we were building this site, a delightful Twitter thread on romance heat scales took place.
Cat Sebastian kicked off this winding discussion on heat scales, validating the premise of our project along the way:
may i present a proposed heat level rating system:
1. no sex either on or off page
2. off-page sex
3. on-page sex, vaguely described
4. on-page sex where you know where people's body parts are most of the time
5. minutely described on-page sex (I call it The Anatomy Lesson)— Cat Sebastian (@CatSWrites) April 20, 2022
Courtney Milan with the perfect reply:
https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/1516894142319706113
Rachel Reid, making me fall out of my chair:
https://twitter.com/akaRachelReid/status/1516817446191173632
And then Candy Tan went on a deep dive into Captive Prince and how the milieu might affect the readers’ perceptions of the overall sensuality even if the protagonists’ sex scenes are objectively lower on the proposed scale:
So I've been thinking about this rating system a normal amount and in the manner of a normal person, but I'm now thinking of how some people characterize Captive Prince as erotica, which blindsides me because book 1 has one sex scene, book 2 has 1, and book 3 has 2.
— Candy (@gleebags) April 20, 2022
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