I Am A(n):

Conservative paternalism is gross.

78 year-old adulterous rape culture icon and child molester rambling about fertilization is like music to the ears of MAGA.

reblog if you’ve read fanfictions that are more professional, better written than some actual novels. I’m trying to see something

the wicked movie teaches important moral lessons like "be bisexual in college" and "don't trust politicians" and "if you push someone who's in a wheelchair without their permission, someone might throw a bench at your head with their mind"

Kabosu, better known as Doge, has passed away. Pay your respects to the legend, she will be missed.

Two Women Kissing in Nature (b. 1859)

— by Georges Rochegrosse

scrambling to pack my bags now thanks

Researchers confirm an exoplanet potentially capable of sustaining life

The new planet, named HD 20794 d, has a mass six times that of Earth and orbits a star similar to our sun, located just 20 light years away. Its orbit places it within the habitable zone of the system, meaning it is at the right distance from its star to sustain liquid water on its surface, a key ingredient for life as we know it. The paper is published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

I’m gonna do a thesis on fanfiction comparison (English fics v.s simplified Chinese fics) this semester, and my title is something like “Love like warmth in winter v.s I want to kill and and eat your heart: a comparison on the depiction of BL relationship in fanfiction”

(I do know that fics in English have a fair share of non-con/gore/and stuff, but the focus is that 95% fics in Chinese are very icky.)

Thoughts on why a good portion of fics are overwhelmingly icky to the general populace?

I'm not Chinese so I cannot speak with any authority on why Chinese fic tends to lean more willingly into dark/consumptive/violent depictions of love, but I absolutely have theories concerning why lots of fic in English/American fic is so neutered and coffeeshoppy.

There are a few likely factors, but imo the biggest is capitalism and its intersection with western individualism. The west is VERY concerned to making money and being palatable. Even non profitable creative ventures like fanfiction are subject to the pressures of an anonymous audience, and creators are terrified of isolating potential readers so they try to cast the widest net possible in order to offend as few people as they can.

This ties into Western Individualism where people's identities are inextricably linked to what they create, because the west laminates the Artist onto the Art, implying anyone who enjoys dark content MUST be advocating for that content irl, or else is just an immoral person. This belief casts a cultural macarthyism on fandoms, where engaging with this sort of content (let alone creating it) results in real world consequences: social ostracization , harassment, doxxing, etc.

So, as a result creators in the west kowtow to the angry mobs by writing the most widely appealing, broadly inoffensive content they can, to avoid being attacked.

In my experience in Eastern fandoms (and also Russian fandoms, interestingly enough) there is very little social implication within those spaces that enjoying or writing dark content means anything at all about the artists morality, and so artists feel more freedom to write whatever. I assume this creates a fandom cultural norm that creates fandom conventions: in the west people are afraid of writing anything but happy ending tropey coffee shop AUs so happy ending tropey coffee shop AUs become a staple in fanon and therefore a fandom convention so everyone is expected to write one, thus saturating the fandom. The same thing is likely happening with noncon/gore as a staple in other fandoms--the freedom to write it creates more of it which creates a pressure, or at least the norm of writing it.

Lastly, I think its important to note that also China and Russia are countries where homosexuality, in practice, is criminalized. People from these countries have a different relationship to slashfic/BL/gay love stories than in the West, where LGBTQ people are protected by the law, but also are pandered to as a marketing group through the lens of capitalism. Gay love stories in countries where gay love is dangerous and fraught and unspeakable are just going to inevitably look different for cultural reasons, than gay love stories told in countries that can profit off of them.

Lastly--not sure if you're aware, but "icky" is not a very fair or accurate word to describe Chinese textual themes that seem to make you uncomfortable.

You nod and she pulls up a chair next to the bed. You watch her spellbound as she hikes up her dress so she can position the cello between her long legs, and you are left breathless when her dexterous fingers move over the chords. You half listen to the song she is bringing to life since you are transfixed by her and how stunning she looks.

- scene from @chrism02’s 6th chapter from their Larissa Weems x reader fic called “Trial and error”

indulgence

cmm <3