I think it is time I become a lot clearer about what Dark Rose actually is, because lately I have realised that the picture of us as some kind of “porn shop” or a cute little dark romance bookstore is starting to become bigger than the actual work behind it.
And that bothers me.
It completely misses what I have been building, and it also takes away from the people who have found support, safety and a place to belong through both VeXa Nightbloom and Dark Rose Emporium.
Dark Rose is basically where everything I stand for ended up in one place.
Women’s autonomy, sexuality, consent, victim blaming, trauma in all its forms, childhood trauma, sexual assault, shame, boundaries, reclaiming yourself and the right to survive in whatever way you need to survive without somebody else constantly standing there telling you that you are doing it wrong.
I fight for my outsiders.
The people who have spent way too much of their lives hearing that they are too much, too sensitive, too angry, too sexual, too damaged, too difficult or just fucking wrong somehow.
And the criticism I get is honestly one of the clearest reminders I have of why I still need to do this.
The second women start talking openly about sexuality, BDSM, trauma, dark romance, fantasies, reclaiming control or simply owning their own bodies, suddenly everybody has an opinion.
What women should read.
What we should want.
What is healthy.
What is unhealthy.
What a survivor should feel.
How a survivor should heal.
How angry we are allowed to be.
How sexual we are allowed to be.
How we are supposed to behave after somebody has already crossed our boundaries.
I am fucking tired of watching other people decide what women are allowed to do with their own lives.
I do not fight for one kind of trauma either.
Dark Rose has space for people carrying childhood trauma, family trauma, abuse, neglect, rejection, sexual trauma and all the other shit people walk around carrying while the rest of the world expects them to just function normally.
You do not have to stand at the front and explain yourself every day here.
You can stand behind me for a while.
I mean that.
If you need to breathe, breathe. If you need to read, read. If you need to be angry, be angry. If you need somewhere where you do not have to explain why something affected you the way it did, then do not explain it.
I can take the fight.
I will take it for you until you are ready to stand next to me.
Dark romance is a very specific part of that fight for me, and that part is aimed especially at SA survivors.
There are women who find things in these stories that another reader may never understand.
Recognition.
Anger.
Control.
Darkness.
Reclaiming something.
Seeing something on a page that makes you realise somebody else has had thoughts or feelings you thought made you completely fucked up.
Sometimes it is simply the feeling of not being alone.
Dark romance is not therapy. Every survivor will not react to it the same way and every dark romance book will sure as hell not work for every reader.
They are not supposed to.
What pisses me off is when people pick up books that were clearly never written for them, ignore content warnings, make no effort to understand the audience and then act like their reaction is some universal truth about the book, the author and everybody who likes it.
You are allowed to hate a book.
Please do.
DNF the damn thing.
Just take some responsibility for what you read.
Read the content warnings. Look at what you are picking up. Understand what kind of story it is and ask yourself whether you are actually the reader this book was written for before you start telling everybody else what it should or should not be allowed to mean to them.
Not every book is for you.
The world will survive that.
The same goes for people.
You do not need to have lived someone else’s trauma to care about them. You do not need exactly the same experience to listen, support or learn.
Just stop walking into things you know nothing about and acting like you know more than the people actually living it.
Listen.
Learn.
Ask questions.
You can admit that something is outside your own experience.
People seriously underestimate how much damage their words can do.
Even the adult products in Dark Rose are here for a reason.
I do not want women saying yes when they mean no because they feel pressure, guilt, obligation or because they think somebody expects something from them.
Pleasure should be voluntary.
Consent should be 100%.
Period.
You can take care of your own pleasure. You do not need to give another person access to your body to get it.
Do not let anybody take something from you that you do not actually want to give.
That is women’s autonomy too.
So yes, I sell books. I sell adult products. I sell beautiful things, weird things, dark things and things that simply make people happy.
There is a reason behind a lot more of it than people probably realise.
Dark Rose was created as a safe space for other people.
For my outsiders.
For the people who need somewhere they do not have to explain their entire fucking existence before they are allowed to belong.
And that is why supporting Dark Rose means more than another order coming through my webshop.
When you shop here, you help me keep this place open.
You help me keep talking about consent, trauma, sexuality, victim blaming, shame and women’s autonomy.
You help me lift literature that is so often dismissed before people even bother understanding it.
A lot of that literature is written by women who have survived their own shit, and sometimes those books end up in the hands of another woman who is trying to survive hers.
That matters.
Sometimes a book does not need to save you or fix you.
Sometimes you just sit there reading and suddenly think:
Fuck.
It is not just me.
That is something I will keep fighting for.
I will keep pushing back against the shame. I will keep talking about the things people would rather women stayed quiet about. I will keep standing up for survivors and for the outsiders who are tired of constantly having to defend the way they exist.
I also know that not everybody has the energy to fight all the time.
You should not have to.
You are allowed to heal behind me.
You are allowed to be quiet.
You are allowed to just exist for a while without turning your trauma into a public lesson so somebody else can understand it.
I will be loud.
That is kind of the point of VeXa.
And when you support Dark Rose, you make it possible for me to keep doing that.
Dark Rose is a store.
It sells books.
It sells adult products.
It sells all kinds of things.
And that store keeps everything else alive.
The safe space.
The conversations.
The education.
The books I fight to give space to.
The survivors who realise they are not the only one.
The outsiders who finally find somewhere they do not have to make themselves smaller.
That is what you are supporting when you support Dark Rose.
And if you need to stand behind me for a while, then stand there.
I’ve got you.
When you are ready, you can come stand beside me.
Where Outsiders Belong. 🌹
Never settle for less than you deserve.