I’m Gonna Do A Thesis On Fanfiction Comparison (English Fics V.s Simplified Chinese Fics) This Semester,

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.

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Sappho: The Art of Loving Women, 1975, J. Frederick Smith

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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”

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ffedinthehead

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I am going to say something that might piss people on this site off, and that is that the stabbing at a Taylor Swift themed event in Southport does not exist in a vacuum.

It exists in a world where a joke about bringing a nail gun to the Eras tour to shoot fans gets 400k likes on TikTok, or where a reel about crashing a plane full of Swifties gets 200k likes on Instagram. It exists in a world where, on this very website, the one that promotes itself as rational and reasonable, someone says that "Taylor Swift and her fans should all die violent horrible deaths" and people applauded it. It exists in a world where, during TTPD release week men were in Swifties' comment sections declaring they would beat their daughters and girlfriends if they ever so much as listened to one of her albums. And it exists in a world where this week, fans of a TV show (which I will not name because that is not the point) sent death threats to a girl on Twitter for daring to be a fan of both their beloved show and Taylor Swift.

I don't give a fuck what your opinion of Taylor Swift is. I don't care if you think her music is grating, I don't care if you think she is the worst thing to happen to humanity since Eve ate the god damn apple. This is the dark side of stan culture that no-one talks about; where dislike of an artist becomes so obsessive that it becomes normal, even funny, to joke about killing their fans, because "it's just online, it's just a joke". It isn't. It is rarely ever "just online".

And yes I am going to be That Person and say that you can complain about Swift's brand of feminism and debate her position as a feminist icon all day long, at the end of the day, her name is still synonymous with girls. It doesn't take a genius to work out who this event was geared at.

I am not going to sit and claim that by simply not liking Taylor Swift you directly caused this. I would encourage you to step back, look at the bigger picture of stan culture, including obsessive dislike of an artist, and ask yourself how much this culture has enabled this. If making jokes on tiktok about killing someone over a pop star is normalised, how much of a leap is it to attacking kids with a knife at a fan event?

and of course there is the fact that the british media didn't even wait until those kids were buried before using this event to spread their racist, anti-immigrant agenda despite the race of the attacker not being known. all I can say to that is I am sickened and disappointed but not shocked.

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ffedinthehead

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My medieval and ancient ancestors watching me trying to charge my laptop and connect to WiFi: Ah, yes, she must feed her magic mirror on the telluric current and summon the spirits of knowledge from the aether.

My ancestors watching me proceed to doomscroll on Twitter: Alas! She is beguiled by the cruel babblings of the demons within the mirror; soon she will descend into melancholy from the things she has witnessed.

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ffedinthehead

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Concept: A gender reveal party but AFTER the kid is born.

Like when the kid is 6 or 12 or 18 or 24. When the kid has decided what their gender is or isn’t.

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Alcina: y/n, will you-

Y/N:

Alcina: ... i was gonna say take out the trash, but sure...

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Alcina: "Am I to understand you wish to leave us?" Maid: "Yes, Madam." Alcina: "To get married?" Maid: "Yes, Madam." Alcina: "...To a man?" Maid: Maid: "Yes, Madam."

Tags

sad lesbian noises alcina: *is confused in lesbian*

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ffedinthehead

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