No more stalling launching this curiosity-filled, fun romp on all things fluff. Served with a side dish of its why and origin story.

I’ve been sitting on the trigger to launch The Healing Power of Fluff for months since I had the idea earlier in the year. The idea hit me, much like a crush’s love arrow hits our hearts’ bull's-eye - sudden, shockingly gripping at how we didn’t see it there before.

At first, I pitched the idea of doing a podcast on romantasy* books to my sister, who's an avid reader. In hindsight, my pitching the idea to her was like when a friend tries to set us up with the object of their love, as if by pawning them on us, they escape from having to face their own attraction towards the very one they’re pitching to us. “Nah, I don’t have a crush on them. How about you go on a date with them? They’re not for me.” You know what I’m talking about, right?

Thankfully, my sister said no and pushed it back to me. A couple of nights later, I realized that this was a topic that I was very much in love with, having even written a thesis about it! (Read About page to find out more.)

Immediately, old insecurities popped up.

Would this topic love me back?
Or would it ghost me?
Go poof like a Summer hook-up?
Or could I see us becoming exclusive and even moving in together?

Did I have the stamina to start something new after the burnout of 2024?
Would this topic have staying power to keep me going?
Did I have something new to say on the subject when all around I’ve seen so many other creators doing their BookToks, Instagram posts, and writing their Substack articles on the subject?
What if I started this and my desire to read these books waned like a faded school crush? One day burning me up, and the next day over like a Summer romance.

Meanwhile, the world went topsy-turvy, and I got into a dark headspace with all the battering ram of maddening ugly headlines. As everything seemed to be going tits up, I started feeling jaded, cynical, as the allure of nihilism circled ever closer like the infamous shark in Jaws. (Picture the scene and its soundtrack.)

Throughout it all, my lifeline has been the books.

I kept on reading, writing my reviews, keeping track of the books I read, something I’ve never done before, even pestering my ‘bookclub of one’ - aka my husband- about what I was reading, the stories that gripped me, the questions and insights I was having about myself as I ate up these books. He’s not a reader, but he enjoys me telling him about the stories of all the monsters I’m learning about in my monster romances.**

I’ve also had extensive conversations with my sister, exchanging ideas about the books we’ve been reading, exploring tropes and themes. And bless her Capricorn heart, but she has even started jotting down notes from our conversations, keeping track of the ideas for this Substack, so that I can get this show on the road.

Since January, when all this started, I’ve read so much that I’ve surpassed my reading goal for this year, something I never had set for myself, by a long margin. So after 78 plus books under my reading belt, out of my 2025 challenge of 50 books, which, when I set it, felt like my private Mr. Everest, I feel my relationship with reading these novels is much more than a situationship - we’re serious enough to begin talking about moving in together.

Romantic analogies aside, I feel it’s time to get this show on the road and not worry too much if I don’t have the full roadmap in front of me.

Reading these books and thinking about the Healing Power of Fluff has been, from the beginning, an exercise in returning to joy, exploring creative pleasure, and doing something fun for myself, with the hope that it will also entice others to join me on this exploration.

It’s also about a return to an old love - reading books as I did when I was a teenager and in my early 20s - with gusto. But this old love’s passion, in the last several years, and more pronouncedly during the pandemic, has felt stale. Until earlier this year, I hadn’t realized how much I missed reading with passionate abandon. In hindsight, I realize how my relationship with reading had become a staid marriage without passion, a relationship where we were practically roommates going through the motions - with many books started but never finished.

The Healing Power of Fluff is also about giving voice to my curiosity about how what we often consider ‘fluff’, guilty - and even embarrassing - pleasures, has so much to offer us. It’s about exploring how what we culturally dismiss as escapism has healing and creative power to help us reimagine how we can relate to this world that sorely needs joy, love, and pleasure.

Sure, there’s a lot of ‘junk’ books, TV shows, and movies out there. We’re flooded with overly processed junk food for our minds, hearts, and stomachs, but there are also things that we can salvage if we know how to engage with them. Instead of being passive consumers, we can approach these ‘fluff’ pleasures with active curiosity - asking ourselves what is rising within us as we engage with them, and how we may see these themes playing out in our lives and in the world around us.

I believe everything is relational, and how we show up can determine how such an encounter can transform us. Even a quickie hookup can be as transformative as a love story played out through months and years. It’s all about how we can approach it. Sometimes a ‘Mr. Right Now’ is needed before we can give ourselves to ‘Mr. Right’.

All this to say that whatever is your flavor of fluff, don’t dismiss it too quickly or let it wither in the closet. If it’s grabbing your attention, it has something to offer. You just need to widen your perspective and stay open to the connections that may arise.

Case in point.

Many of the books I’ve read this year were stories of deep grief, loss of parents, challenging relationships with mothers, and how to open oneself to love despite all the trauma. None of these themes were described in the blurbs, which mainly sold the romantic trope. But behind the heroine falling for the hero, there was a lot about emotional growth, healing grief and trauma, and finding one’s inner resiliency and strength.

It has been a much more soothing, fun, and even spicy way to navigate my journey through grief after my mother’s passing, as I find myself accompanied by such a diverse group of heroines and monstrous and morally gray heroes. Healing comes in many packages, and it doesn’t always have to feel like ‘work’. It can be joyful and pleasurable too.

Lastly, I’d love for this corner of Substack to offer you a sideways look at how what you consider your fluff pleasures can gift you depth, joy, and even healing.

I hope you join us on this curiosity-filled, fun romp on all things Healing Power of Fluff.

*Romantasy is, simplistically put, the mesh-up of Romance + Fantasy genres. Sometimes it’s also called Romantic Fantasy. For the purposes of clarity, I’ll try to use Romance only when talking about novels that don’t have a magical/paranormal component to the story. Otherwise, I’ll try to categorize accordingly.
**Monster Romance is another subgenre of romance that has a human, often a woman, falling in love with a non-human, monstrous character. These characters can be mythic, fantastical, alien, and often incorporate elements of fantasy, paranormal, or sci-fi into the story. These books frequently explore themes of acceptance of the ‘Other’, both inner and outer.

May the Fluff be with you.
Vanessa Couto

Uncorking the Healing Power of Fluff

No more stalling launching this curiosity-filled, fun romp on all things fluff. Served with a side dish of its why and origin story.

Romancing the Threshold