deepestbluesky

i've been thinking about horror and romance a lot in the last couple days, and i just had a thought about wenzhou (i would say 'sorry this is actually a word of honor/fandom post' but i'm not sorry and i feel like anyone reading this should expect it at this point). because like, it's definitely one of those 'this is a romance but seen from a different angle or just minutely altered it would be horror' stories. and like... sometimes i think re-readings like that are interesting, but a lot of the time i'm just uninterested, because i'm not reading a romance bc it could be a horror story, you know? i'm here for what the story said it was. but it also made me think about why we (collectively. society, fandom, whatever. people who write and read stuff like this.) like romance stories that would be a nightmare if both people weren't on the same wavelength. 'this would be stalking in real life' or 'that's not actually romantic that's horrifying' or 'what the fuck, who would Do That'. and i absolutely think there needs to be room for that criticism because of how it can normalize shitty behavior and contribute to existing terrible cultural narratives around romance. but i also think there's something really nice in the idea of not just 'someone will see my gross/bad/messy pieces and accept them' but 'someone will see my gross/bad/messy pieces and appreciate them and match them'. 'it's only okay because they're both fucked up but if they did this to anyone else, it would be horrifying' yes that's the POINT! the author has created two people and put them together precisely in this way!

i'm absolutely not going anywhere with this haha i just wanted to get these thoughts out. this is both 'fictional relationships often express things that readers/writers think are romantic' and 'fictional relationships are created by authors for a particular narrative that absolutely isn't intended to be a model for real life' at the same time. also i just think wenzhou are neat.