Satisfying 2 Of My Fandoms Then

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.

someone: what inspires you?

me: lesbians. woman. wet pussy noises. having sex with a woman. yearning. being horny. masturbating. horny thoughts

it's actually so funny how challenging it is to write bona fide graphic, horny smut. like people don't give smut writers enough credit. you are constantly running out of words to describe the same 2-4 body parts and same 4-6 motions. you are constantly attempting to do interesting and dynamic things in the prose with this extremely limited set of words. you are looking at your prose for the nastier bits and wondering if it actually sounds hot or if it just sounds goofy. you are then toning down your prose and then wondering if it now sounds tasteful or if it's just boring. you do ctrl+F for the word "cock" and there are 37 instances of it in the doc but you hate the 1-2 acceptable synonyms so there's nothing much you can do about it

😍👅mommy Larissa Weems 😍👅

💀💄🦇

"What if" / Fanfiction Video

🍷🖤 !! For our Queen ALCINA !! 🖤🍷

//SOUND ON//

Reblog if you honestly have NEVER sent anon hate.

It pains me that only 14,000 people can honestly reblog this

With all the whacking she did, I think Glinda would love this as a weapon (and it's cute!!)

Alex, helping Noah with homework: English is a difficult language. It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.

Olivia: Alex-

Every single fic update there is an author trying frantically to find the right balance between a nonchalant aside of "leave a comment if you enjoyed =)" and clinging desperately to the coat tails of a random stranger, dragging along behind them on the street wailing "Please, please! I have to know what you thought! I'm desperate to talk to people about this! Ask me about the alliterative repetition! Ask me about the symbolism!"