#THE YEAR OF WEREWOLVES AWOO!!!!

[ask-the-totally-real-peppino]

drop the artfight profile!!! /Not forced

(Oh no, I have stumbled and all this profile has fallen out my pocket!!! (silly!!!)

Do not mind the fact I have no characters at the moment, I was updating them and hid them, but I have not been able to actually upload anything bc af is always crashy for the first few days kjfdk

But I am gonna upload Pep bc he is basically an OC at this point, hehehe, and some of my clones, and maybe a Bean too)

[therhythmafterthesummer]

Hi. Long time reader. Big fan! Hi!

I have a question. Would you ever consider doing a "7 days" drabble or something? I've always wondered how Mr and almost not quite Mrs Pack Leader both handled the 7 days from when Pretty found out about the awoo awoo, to when she returned home with more knowledge and acceptance?

Can I have your autograph? Big fan! Much respect! Wow!

you sent this ask on may 2023. it's been over a year. OVER A YEAR... i told you i'd consider it and i did ☝☝☝

it's probably not exactly the same as what you'd imagined and it's also been the first thing i wrote in a long while, but i hope it's entertaining and that you like it and that it doesn't suck~

Pairing: Werewolf!Chan x Human!F.Reader (one of the main pairings of my WereRoomies series. reading Alpha Dog before this one is highly recommended as it’s something that happens within that story). | Word Count: ~1.8k | Themes & Warnings: fantasy/supernatural AU · roomies idiots to ??? · there's like a smidge of angst but probably not enough for it to be taken into consideration · pre-relationship situations · this was barely proof-read oops

minors do not interact.

‘I’m a werewolf… We’re all werewolves’

‘We’re all werewolves…’

‘We’re all werewolves…’

Werewolves.

Everything you thought you knew about the world around you was completely obliterated a week ago. It wasn’t every day that one learnt that supernatural creatures lived among humans, so it was–quite understandably, in your opinion–an absolute shock when your roommate revealed to you that he and the rest of his friends were, in fact, werewolves.

Werewolves. As in, a half man, half wolf creature… You’d been unknowingly living among werewolves for four whole months and you’d convinced yourself that they wouldn’t have told you if you hadn’t literally seen one of them shift from his wolf form into his human one with your own two eyes.

You’d been trying to process this knowledge for a whole week. The first couple of days, you told yourself you had just imagined the whole thing, up to the conversation you had with your roommate right after the fact…

But then, the text messages started coming in.

> Yang Jeongin (neighbour): im sorry > i know i probably spooked you when i shifted > i couldnt control it honestly > i was too shocked > i shouldve done better > sorry

> Lee Minho (neighbour): hiya > just wanted to check in on you… > hope you’re well

> Bang Chris (roomie): hey… how’re you

You weren’t imagining those. They were very real. They stared at you from within your phone’s screen whenever you opened your messaging app, reminding you that the whole thing had actually happened.

When you started digesting the situation and accepted it had happened, you felt angry. 

They lied to you. Every single one of them had lied to you. They lied by omission, at least… It wasn’t like they ever said they were human, but you’d never really considered the fact that people needed to specify something like that.

You’d found yourself laying on your childhood bed, fuming at the thought of these people possibly laughing at your expense, maybe toying with you like you were somehow less than them. Like you were prey.

But after the initial fire of anger subsided, you just grew… confused.

Going online to research something could either go really well or really bad. The higher the number of the page in your search engine became, the more you started to wonder if these dark corners of the internet held any truth about the topic at all.

A website with ten year old graphics drawn in 8-bits exposed how werewolves lived among humans. It went in detail on their super-strength, their enhanced senses, and their innate desire to live in communes. All of which just sounded like someone was detailing lore for their next fantasy story.

There was no way for you to fact-check any of the articles and forums you found, no way of knowing what was real and what was simply made up by someone’s hyperactive imagination.

So it was towards day four of being away from your usual residence that you remembered a key detail. 

There was a person that was close with your neighbours, the childhood friend of one of them who you could now vividly recall telling you how ‘Being human kinda sucks sometimes. We can’t do shit’.

At the time, you thought she was just hyperbolising. There was no way you would’ve thought she was actually confirming to you that she was human and that she somehow knew of beings with greater abilities than her own. There was no way she didn’t know.

So you went to your recent chats and clicked on the one with the phone number that was still saved with the same name it had when your neighbour Minho had shared it with you. You really needed to update it, but that was seemingly insignificant at this time. With trembling fingers, you sent a message.

< You: you knew didn’t you?

It didn’t take long for the reply to come, signalled by the gentle vibration of your phone, bringing with it a knot that made its home in your throat.

> kittenkittykat🐱: Hi, how are you? I’m fine, thanks for asking LOL. > I’m gonna need you to elaborate on that, babes.

< You: about the guys and their… condition

You saw the ‘typing…’ message appear and disappear for a long minute, until the person on the other side finally replied.

> kittenkittykat🐱: What condition?

It annoyed you, you’d admit. She was acting aloof, there was no way she wasn’t. So you ignored the heavy feeling in your chest and decided to get to the point.

< You: the… furry one < c’mon, don’t act like you don’t know < there’s no way minho didn’t tell you about what happened the other day < hell, there’s no way you don’t know what the boys are < you’ve known minho for years

> kittenkittykat🐱: He did tell me. > I just wanted you to tell me you knew yourself. > And yes. I’ve always known. > I’ve known Minho since before he contracted lycanthropy.

< You: contracted? < are you saying he wasn’t always like this?

> kittenkittykat🐱: …Yes > You’re either born a werewolf or turned into one. > To be honest, I don’t think I’m comfortable disclosing Minho’s past in much detail without asking him first. > In any case, please don’t be mad at them. > Or me, for that matter… > It’s not just something you go around telling people that have no connection with the supernatural, you know?

You knew she was right. Deep within you, you knew. You kinda… understood. 

Before you could reply to that last message, she sent more.

> kittenkittykat🐱: Know that any questions you’ve got, you can ask me. > After so many years I think I might know a thing or two about the furry men… > And women. And, uh… people. > Furry people. Yes. > Anyway, I know of some resources online, too…

And resources online she shared…

Some of the dodgy websites you’d found hadn’t been too far off. Apparently werewolves did live in communes, more accurately referred to as packs, which aligned perfectly with the whole living situation your roommate and your neighbours had. When you moved in with Chris, you were surprised to see how close he was with his friends, you brushed it off as their apparent lack of toxic masculinity, but now you knew.

Now you knew…

But did you, really?

You figured the only way to get proper answers was to actually speak to them–to him, more specifically. After all, you lived with Chris. In the same flat. You were missing it terribly, your flat… and maybe you were even missing Chris.

But you weren’t ready to face him.

What would you tell him? How could you even approach the situation? 

Especially considering… Well, the very inconvenient crush you’d developed on your roommate… Your roommate that you now knew was a werewolf.

You hadn’t really entertained the thought of doing anything about said crush… You were convinced that it’d probably just complicate things, but all it took was a charming smile and the sight of dimples to make you want to risk it all.

It was a reaction that you now questioned.

He wasn’t human. On the off chance that you did risk it all, would you even want to be with someone like him? Or, more importantly, could his supernatural condition be somehow influencing you into believing you liked him? Was he literally charming you?

You figured you needed to know…

One of the forums your neighbour’s friend shared with you had this whole section dedicated to romancing a werewolf, explaining how their designation affected the whole process most of the time. This led you to another section where you learnt about those designations, about what an alpha, a beta, and an omega were. 

Alphas were usually the leaders of a pack, according to this site. Very protective, territorial, particularly stubborn… It definitely sounded like Chris to you. His friends looked up to him, and it took only one word said in a serious tone for them to do anything he asked them to do. 

This knowledge led you to many threads. ‘How to deal with a violent alpha?’ ‘Our alpha is forcing us to do things for her, how can we stop her?’ ‘Tips to take an alpha [in a fight] pt3’ ‘Tips to take an alpha [in every hole possible] pt5’

Some conversations were a bit too explicit for you to comfortably read them. Not because you were a prude, by any means, but because anything too explicit would make you think about your roommate a bit too much… You weren’t in the most appropriate mood to think about ‘An alpha’s preference in bed’ or ‘How to stretch for an alpha’s knot’ –whatever that was.

You were more in the mood to dig into all these threads related to violent, overly possessive and controlling alphas. You felt like you needed to know about this supposed inherent nature of your roommate’s.

These people didn’t particularly sound like Chris. Yeah, he wasn’t perfect, and anyone could tell he wanted to be the one in charge at all times, but he’d never given you the feeling that he was forcing anyone around him to do anything at all. 

Admittedly, you might’ve gotten a bit too invested in the topic. It started to worry you when all you could read was these horrible experiences people had with alphas–both in platonic and romantic settings. But eventually, you started seeing the opposite side. 

‘Our pack’s alpha is honestly great. They always make sure we’re okay with any decisions taken…’ ‘As an alpha, I can tell you that any alpha that tries to force you into anything is just toxic and abusive. We aren’t all like that…’ ‘I feel very cared for when I’m with my alpha…’ 

Those testimonials gave you a bit more hope. They reminded you that in this short time you’d spent living with Chris, he’d done nothing but made you feel comfortable. He was that type of person, it didn’t matter if he was a werewolf.

Crush aside, you liked Chris. He was a guy you felt you could trust; yes, he’d lied by omission, but if you thought about it with a clear mind, it was pretty obvious that he wouldn’t just outright tell you he wasn’t entirely human. He seemed genuine, but you needed to hear his side of the story with your own two ears, without the panic of suddenly seeing your younger neighbour’s body twist and turn in ways you never knew were possible.

So with that in mind, on day seven of you being away from the place you considered your home, and after reading many articles and comments from people online, you left the comfort of your childhood bed, gathered your belongings, and left your mother’s house.

You were determined to get answers. You needed the truth, directly from the wolf’s mouth. If knowing Chris was a werewolf meant he’d kick you out, then you wanted him to tell you. If knowing he was a werewolf meant you’d be able to perceive malice in Chris, you wanted to see it.

In all honesty, if Chris was as genuine as he seemed and if he wanted you around, you genuinely wanted to stay, lycanthropy and all.

© therhythmafterthesummer 2024. all rights reserved. do not repost or translate my stories.

General Masterlist | WereRoomies Masterlist

[lightthemaskedone]

You werewolf AU for Eden’s Garden has certainly piqued my interest. Looking forward to seeing who is what and whay comes next.

Although for the record I think it’d be funny if Jett, the dude with a canine (albeit coyote) motif, was just a regular guy.

(1/9/25)

Thank you!! I'm not exactly in the mood to draw right now so here's everyone who's a werewolf and who isn't (the werewolves split between WolfTurned (a werewolf turned after birth) and WolfBorn (a werewolf born a werewolf))

Also I thought it would be funny and ironic to make Jett a human too so I did exactly that

Here's how everyone in the WolfTurned section was infected

Wenona: Scratched twice on her chest. I haven't worked out the exact scenario yet. Has been a werewolf for four years

Grace: Did a late-night golf session for funsies and was attacked. She was slashed across the back and fought back against the werewolf. Has been a werewolf for six months.

Eva: Was taking a walk and was attacked by a werewolf wowza. She was bitten across her legs and covers up the scars with her long socks. Has been a werewolf for a year and a half.

Cassidy: Decided to explore this spooky forest with her friends when she was younger since she thought it would be cool and was attacked (her friends went unscathed since the wolf focussed on her). She has bite and scratch marks on her body, a bite on her shoulder and a scratch on her leg. She has been a werewolf for nine years, making her the longest infected werewolf of the wolfturned bunch!

I'll share more info later today, but this is all I'm gonna share for now 🤯 Awoo!!

[squirrellyshorrorreviews]

Werewolves (2024)

Two scientists try to stop a mutation that turns people into werewolves after being touched by a super-moon the year before.

Writer/Director: Stephen C Miller (director) Matthew Kennedy (writer)

Runtime: 94 mins

Production House: Monty the Dog

Score: awoo/10 (2/10 as true horror, 8/10 as campy horror)

CAUTION: if you are sensitive to flashing lights/strobe effects maybe don’t go see this movie.

Holy fuck I had a blast though. Aside from the strobe being too much for even me at points, this movie was a delightful homage to classic campy horror. From its costumes, to its one liners, to its complete and utter disregard for internal logic.

I gave myself a cramp trying not to laugh like a loon in the theater and I mean that in the best possible way. This movie was a goddamn motherfucking delight.

It never took itself too seriously. It never tried too hard to make you believe it. It was just “supermoon makes werewolves. Stop asking questions.”

It also took a nice slightly subtle dig at being anti-gun which was not on my bingo card for this movie but I’m into it. More apocalypse/monster movies need their gun weirdos getting their shit rocked in the first act. It’s fantastic.

If you aren’t photo sensitive GO SEE THIS MOVIE. I NEED a werewolves 2: wolves in space. Because I have a pet theory that it isn’t the moonlight but some shit aliens put on the moon and I NEED SPACE WEREWOLVES.

If you are photo sensitive: proceed with caution/maybe wait til it hits streaming services then watch in a well lit place.

[spacerangersam]

It's probably kinda lame that the only 'wow I feel so represented' moment I've ever had is when I was a kid watching wolf.blood (a kid/teen show about werewolves that I desperately wanna rewatch), because I was so pumped to see the main character wasn't being played by some supermodel or whatever, she looked like a average brunette kid I'd see in my school or at the park, she looked a lot like me and idk. That really did something for ten year old me, seeing a average fem kid getting to be the main character, getting to go on cool adventures- and be a werewolf. Awoo

[see-arcane]

undead enjoyers are getting abigail nosferatu lisa frankenstein but werewolf enjoyers are getting the mess than mid werewolves movie this year. awoos sadly

My condolences to you, my lycanthropic friend <:c

[fireinmywoods]

💝

💝 what is a fic that got a different response than you were expecting?

I would never in a million years have predicted that smoke in every lane would be, like, talked about. It was primarily a matter of timing, I think: it was winter of 2021, a lonely and difficult and (I imagine, if you didn't work in healthcare) fairly boring cooped-up time, and a lot of folks were more involved than usual in various fandom spaces, and in retrospect I guess I can see how the weekly updates and ~~mystery~~ aspect could have contributed to a "water cooler talk" sort of deal.

In any case, I was legit shocked when I realized that a subset of readers were actually talking about the fic outside of their AO3 comments or Tumblr reblog tags or whatever. Talking with each other! About something I wrote! It was such a crazy feeling. Good crazy, of course - and also still, to this day, something of a mystery, as I was not actually privy to any of those conversations. I guess all I can hope is that my favorite theory got a little airtime at least once. (That being, of course, that the plot would somehow involve werewolves because of the moniker "monster fic" and the quote-unquote "awoos" in Hindenburg. God bless that reader, sincerely; I hope they're having the BEST day.)

fic writer asks

[mushpuppies]

OH, by the way, I'm participating in Art Fight this year!! Go team werewolves!! AWOO!! 🐺

[wolfusimagius]

We doing artfight this year, Team Werewolves AWOO

I got them all new icons for this year, plus needed a warm up after so long haha

Quick link: https://artfight.net/~WolfusImagius

[blvejays-art]

Are you joining the fight? Square up buttercup ❤

Got sorted into Team Werewolf, AF heard my awoos and saw through my vampy vibes hahah I've added some featured OCs aside from Moss this year, including my werewolf boy, Boz!

My AF Link; https://artfight.net/~BlveJay While the sites still f*cky from opening traffic, you can view my OCs here to make attacks; https://toyhou.se/BlveJay/characters/folder:478809

Art that is not mine was made by Kaisunomi, DOKTA and plantgay Blank Template; https://www.deviantart.com/artyfight/art/Art-Fight-2023-Werewolves-968551729

[xsilversugar]

Got called a "bougie bitch" a few years ago for literally just preferring Raley's as a grocery store. I'm painfully northern Californian, and grew up middle-class (I would argue lower-middle but I got filet mignon on several occasions--so what can I say besides "I'm sorry for being born and raised as I was";) so fucking sue me. But yanno what...if that's all it takes to align with the werewolves--honestly I'm perfectly fine with that. Awoo.

Eugene Thacker, "Nine Disputations on Theology and Horror", Collapse: Philosophical Research and Development, Vol. IV

[joemerl]

OC-Tober 2023, Day 15: "Flashback"

Summary: Two brothers turn into werewolves. Alone. Word count: 1,289 Author's notes: October 15 is the date when my story begins, so enjoy the first of my two OC-tober entries. The story includes actual flashbacks, but here I'm interpreting it just to mean backstory.

Randall checked his phone again. He wasn't sure why. His dad had broken his cell phone weeks ago and still hadn't bought a new one. Somehow, he was still expecting a text.

His mom made occasional grumbles under her breath as she drove. His eleven-year-old brother Curtis was sitting in the backseat with his arms crossed and his expression stony. Con was the only one who didn't seem tense, babbling his typical four-year-old babble.

"We should just go home," Mom muttered, yet again.

"Mom—"

"I don't like the idea of y'all being out here alone! For three days! Without a responsible adult!"

So you admit Dad's a responsible adult, Randall almost said. "We won't be alone. He'll be here."

Curtis and their mom scoffed in almost perfect unison.

Randall pointed to the edge of the forest. "Here's the path we take."

"Where do I even park?"

"Anywhere. Curt and I'll just hop out."

She pulled up on the side of the road. Randall climbed out of the car. Curtis remained frozen for a second, following him with a glare, but reluctantly followed. Randall was already at the back, taking out their camping gear.

"Think you can get all that?" Randall asked. Without Dad, they each had to carry more than usual.

"Sure," Curtis said, in a tone that implied he was greatly offended by the extra weight.

"Bye!" Con called, waving from his car seat. Then, "Where you going?"

"Camping," their mom said distractedly.

"Camping! AWOO!" Con giggled. Then, "Is Dad taking you camping too?"

"Not this week," Curtis sneered.

Randall gave him a sour look.

***

As they trudged through the trees, Randall turned the possibilities over in his mind. "He might be there already. Maybe something came up and he didn't have time to come to the house. Hell, maybe he just wanted to avoid another fight with Mom."

Curtis didn't answer, but Randall ruminated on this so much that his stomach sank when they reached the empty clearing.

Curtis let his load fall to the ground. "Oh, look. He's not here."

"Can it," Randall said dully. He looked around, as though expecting their father to emerge from the trees any moment. "Maybe he couldn't bum a ride this week. Or they had car trouble. Or—"

"Or maybe he doesn't give a crap. Like he ever did."

"Curt."

Curtis scowled. The shadows were starting to crawl across his face. "What do we do?" he asked petulantly.

Randall shrugged. "We can set up the tent without Dad, right? Sun's going down, whether we're all here or..."

He trailed off. Curtis hesitated for a moment, then started to unpack their camping supplies.

Randall's mind was going in circles as they assembled the tent. It was easy, he and Curtis did it every week, but...they had never done it without Dad before.

"He's gonna show up," Randall said, half to himself. "Ain't like he won't change himself."

Curtis didn't answer, just secured his side of the tent and went to lay blankets at the bottom.

They both hesitated when they were done setting things up.

"Almost time," Randall said finally, looking at the sky through the treetops.

"Yup." Curtis almost made it sound like a threat.

"Let's do the prayer." Dad always led a short prayer before they changed, but from the looks of it, he wouldn't show up in time to do it this week.

Curtis gave a withering look before bowing his head. Randall took a deep breath, closed his eyes and tried to think.

"Dear Lord...thank You for everything good that's happened to us this week, and for whatever we get after we change. Please keep us safe...and Mom and Con at home. And help Dad get here quickly—"

Curtis snorted. Loudly.

Something in Randall snapped. "He's gonna be here!"

"Then where is he?!"

"I dunno, Curt! Maybe he's been in a car accident or something! Ever think of that?!"

"That why he couldn't take me to the book fair, either?"

"Are you still on that?! He's got no car, no phone—"

"He keeps promising to do things—"

"—and you and Mom ain't cutting him any—"

"—only time he shows up is for—stupid—THIS!" Curtis threw his arms out to indicate the clearing, the camp, and their family curse. "And now he' ain't showing up for that because's given that up because he don't care!"

Randall opened his mouth to answer, only for the two of them to flinch at the same moment.

Silence fell. The sun was fully set now. Randall's skin was starting to itch. Dimly he realized that their father was feeling the same thing, wherever he was.

A long moment passed. The itching was getting worse, and a dull ache started to form as Randall's bones and muscles waited for permission to rearrange themselves.

"Look. He's gotta change, too. Might already be in the woods, and even if he ain't..."

Even as he said it, Randall was plagued by doubts. After all, if Dad was stuck at his place, it would be smarter for him to stay there than sneak all the way to the forest in wolf form. But then, why wouldn't he be on his way? He was living on the couch of some friend who didn't know that he was a werewolf. He didn't have anywhere else to change.

More to the point, he wouldn't make them do this alone.

It was a stupid, childish thought. Randall was fifteen, and had been changing for more than half of his life. Four years before Curtis started, and four years after. But Dad had always done it with them. And even since Mom had kicked him out...and he'd stopped visiting or calling as much...he had never missed this before.

"Even if he shows up tomorrow or something, he'll be here. You'll see."

Curtis stared at him darkly. Randall couldn't quite meet his gaze.

The strain of the change was getting painful. Without another word, Randall began to take off his clothes. Curtis turned away and did the same.

For the first time in their lives, the brothers changed into wolves without their father.

***

He didn't show up the next morning. Or Saturday, or Sunday. Randall kept expecting him, even after the more rational part of his brain had given up hope.

They tried to hunt. Randall was bad at it, and Curtis' spirit didn't seem to be in the task, but he did catch a rabbit for each of them to eat. They curled up to sleep in their tent, which suddenly seemed too big and empty. They whiled away the weekend, which was even less eventful than usual.

And Randall waited and worried and wondered, until Sunday night came and it was time to turn back.

The pair wrestled back into their clothes, as fur retracted and bones reshaped. Soon Curtis was sitting on the ground, human again, and spoke a single word without looking at his brother.

"Liar."

Randall finished putting on his shoes, very slowly, feeling miserable.

"Probably couldn't get a ride," he murmured. "Hope it wasn't anything more serious than that. Maybe he—"

"SHUT UP! Just SHUT UP!"

Randall flinched. Curtis was on his feet now. He was panting, and Randall could hear the shudder in each breath, just as he had heard the way his voice broke when he screamed.

A long silence followed. Randall knew that he should say something, but...

"Come on. Mom'll he waiting for us."

He rose to begin packing. Curtis practically tore the tent down in his anger.

***

That night, Randall learned that their mom had managed to contact Dad's friend over the weekend. Apparently their father had left town almost a week ago. The friend couldn't say where he had gone.

[sailorchips]

STOPPP THE NEW ART FIGHT TEAMS ARE VAMPIRE VS WEREWOLF PLEASEEE 😂😂 I prefer to be randomly assigned but HOO boy the amount of cringe AWOO jokes I’m going to make if I get werewolf

I wish it was more unique but I rlly just missed the more unique ones in previous years ig :’)

Like don’t get me wrong vamp/wolf is fun but city werewolves vs country vampires or vice versa would be very funny I’ll just make those my team sonas

OOOH unrelated but could u imagine a theme like snow/sea/etc mythologies(?) where everyone’s team sonas are like. Snow-related characters from their own cultures/childhoods etc

Kind of like how different countries have their own mythology which is their own interpretation of the world around us

Anyway my Art Fight @ is sailorchips if anyone wants to start a chain! I always return attacks ^^

[marmarbeans]

Idk why, but the moon is still full. Must be a sign for a good new year! But anyways, make sure everything is clean, take things easy, and stay safe!

[bao3bei4]

kpop music videos that gave their fans sexual brainworms

OR accidental fetish pop and its fringe fanbase: meditations on gendered desire 

large warning here: i am someone who has been into kpop for the past 10 years. however, i have always been an extremely casual fan. i do write fic, but not rpf. if any of that makes you not want to hear me talk about kpop rpf (or you don’t want to hear about it in general), please keep moving.

anyway, obviously pop is corporate, soulless, and manufactured. but sometimes some truly bizarre shit gets past the committees and destroys a generation. these are their stories.

the video that started this is all is got7’s just right, released july 10th, 2015.

yes that’s all 7 members of got7 (one is out of frame) shrunken down for your viewing pleasure. they live in your room and tell you you’re just right. 

this sheer fetish power of this video is nerfed only by how utterly sexless it is.

they’re styled like and dance like this. it’s a totally unironic sendup of the seminal work that preceded it by four years, “what makes you beautiful” by the white kpop group “one direction.” the chaste energy of the whole thing makes you legitimately wonder if the good people at jyp have just never heard of microphilia. (during a dramatic reading of this piece, here a friend interjected seriously, “i think it’s korean culture not to talk about things like this, fetishes in the workplace.”)

it’s for the best, honestly, though because the actress in the music video is lee ja in, who was 11 when the video was shot. considering that the members themselves ranged in age from 18-23 at the time, i think it’s actually very impressive that we only have to cancel one. 

you receive absolutely no prizes for guessing that it’s jackson wang we’re sending to social justice prison. why’d he do this? no one asked. 

at any rate, got7 fans, or “gans” (they actually call themselves igot7s which is too twee for me), have much to think about here: all 7 very small members of got7 sneaking into their room, possibly weird age play, and jackson wang eating a very large cake.

let’s see what they actually did. 

twitter was actually very tame. the most charged thing i found was (unsurprisingly) from a bts fan (“ban”). i don’t actually know what it means, but i think it means something.

so, of course, i turned to the internet’s last bastion of free speech, where you can say whatever the fuck you want and receive cheers, or as the kids say, “kudos.” that is, i read fanfiction. 

for those of you who don’t know your herstory, i started my journey at Asianfanfics.com, where, at the time of writing, there were 12,067 got7 stories. i want to start this by saying that i think feminism won, because someone was paying real human dollars to advertise their irene/wendy fanfiction on a banner ad, which is quite possibly a win for women for everywhere. 

anyway, Asianfanfics.com’s search engine sucks ass (i kept on finding stories about different combinations of bts members worrying about their weight and being reassured by another member that were entitled “just right”), so i decided to look through all got7 stories written between july 2015 and december 2015. 

but, alas, not a single got7 microphilia fic to be found. 

also, some genre commentary while i’m here: i think the stories i respect the most are the “[y/n] is a ordinary girl who’s assigned to be got7’s manager! can she make them into superstars? as sparks begin to fly, can she keep it professional?” like fuck yeah that sounds like a kickass dating sim. it almost definitely already is one. i salute all the teens around the world for buying into the fantasy of dating a boy band member that they themselves sell you. 

however, i don’t think i respect the “[member a] and [member b] are mafia/jocks and nerds/college students/high schoolers” concepts. in my opinion, the whole fantasy of boy band member is their personas, their hidden real personalities, their celebrity, and the show business setting. find a different intellectual property if you wanna write about school. i even respect the “yugyeom drank girl juice [not estrogen] and turned into a sexy girl” story more, because at least it knows exactly what it wants, and also because they’re all still boy band members. well, band members. shout out to yugyeom. 

so, anyway, i looked elsewhere. at the time of writing, archive of our own only had 11,645 got7 stories, but it does have a better search, so it effectively has more. as an aside, i think it’s so funny, and mildly disorienting at first, that archive of our own separates the “music & bands” section from the “celebrities & real people” section. boy band members aren’t real people. 

the first problem i encountered is that only 20 or so stories were written within a year of just right’s release. absolute cringe gans. don’t you care about your boys? there were zero stories tagged “vore” or “microphilia” either. stories containing the word “tiny” that were rated either “explicit” or “mature” were all normal (“normal”) size fetishization rather than, you know, just right. 

however, i learned my lesson from twitter. i realized that what had happened was that watching this video had created sleeper agents, just waiting for their activation phrase. that activation phrase? bangtan boys. and yeah, lo and behold, there was one! unfortunately (fortunately?) it had nothing to do with got7, let alone just right, so i’m not going to talk about it.  

basically what i learned is that this video may have actually been very normal, and my brain has just been destroyed by being too online at a young age. 

however, there are plenty more videos in this genre. i present to you exo wolf, a banger from may 30th, 2013. i say banger, because in a comedic inversion, it’s actually fucking terrible. 

this video is pretty self-explanatory in terms of why it might induce certain responses. 

let’s get the formalities out of the way. this video, the member who’s getting cancelled is kai. he has braids in this video :/

also skating on thin ice: xiumin and chen. guys what was up with the whole exo-m thing? like, we’re gonna have a cpop subgroup, but it’s going to be part chinese members and part korean members that we’ll give a chinese name? unsurprisingly, the three exo members who have departed from the group are all chinese. they weren’t able to stand the microaggressions probably. but xiumin and chen remain uncancelled as an official chinese apology for five thousand of years of on-and-off invasions of korea. sorry guys that was kinda fucked up. our bad! 

anyway, there are basically three avenues for exo fans to take: 1) humans with wolfish characters (usually wolf pack dynamics, which even wolves themselves don’t fucking use so i think all of you should shut up. the real omega here is your brain), 2) werewolves (duh), and 3) wolves with human characteristics (i.e. standard furry fare). 

exo themselves let all these possibilities exist at the same time, superimposing them over each other, which is very woke and egalitarian of them. let’s see what the people decided. awoo.

Asianfanfics dot com had many stories in this vein. i feel very validated that this time i was able to correctly predict a fetish. that said, briefly returning to my earlier comment regarding alternate universes: it’s intense psychic whiplash reading about these vampires and werewolves, and going okay okay luhan is a vampire this that whatever, and then seeing the actual real performance photos the author attaches at the bottom of each chapter. bro i forgot these were actual people.... it breaks immersion so bad... i’m sorry, i just can’t believe that any of these dancing boys are having weird vampire sex with wings or whatever. 

archive of our own also had many stories in this vein. and i think there are some important difference between the two sites worth talking about. 

first of all, i think the higher engagement rate of archive of our own really enables some of the authors to get super bold. it makes Asianfanfics.com seem a little quaint, actually. like the wordcounts are waaay longer, for one. it’s uncommon for a story hosted on Asianfanfics.com to be more than a few thousand words long (most of them could easily be published in the new yorker), whereas some of these archive of our own people have written full length novels about if the members of exo were werewolves. i guess it’s just intensely demoralizing for the aff.com crew to get, like, three comments per story. 

the second big difference is that i’m noticing more common themes between the ao3 crew’s writing. like stan intertextuality, or plagiarism, or whatever, but they seem to be implicitly engaging with each other’s characterizations, storylines, and tropes. i think it is because they probably all follow each other on twitter. (i have been active on twitter for three weeks now so i am an expert on fanfiction twitter.) 

anyway, like not that i am a particularly big gan (cannot even list all the members), but these people seem to have reached a very specific consensus on how jackson wang, for instance, would react in a variety of situations that really surprises me? if i were to sit down and write a got7 story, i think the fuckboitude, the douchebaggery is a big part of his charm. not to be nationalist or anything, but for god’s sake, he’s from hong kong. but these people have him as very sensitive, lots of protective instincts. not that i understood what anyone on aff.com was doing with his character either, but they did all seem to be doing different things. “kudos” to that, i guess.

but: exo. wolf. i searched the “wolves” tag. this filtered the list down from 33459 stories to 52 stories. and the “wolves” tag was very different from the aff.com “wolf” tag. for the most part, aff.com liked stories where a member was a wolf (usually shapeshifting), feral boy, lots of y/n, lots of y/n dating a feral boy who is secretly a wolf. 

ao3 really, really, really likes alpha/beta/omega stories. sorting by the most popular stories, only five on the first page weren’t a/b/o. and one of them was a cis f!baekhyun story, so i think the intended effect was communicated. anyway, let’s talk about some of the themes. 

first of all, i’m disappointed. today’s bonus cancellation is of ao3 “wolves” writers. why the fuck are you drawing so heavily from european wolves?? there are wolves in asia!! you don’t need to keep giving their packs and ranks weird latin names. i will kill you. i hate italy. korea literally has a native wolf. i hate all of you!!! if you want to write caucasian wolves go watch that dumbass cw show!!!! my god. 

the second theme (the first one was white supremacy) is that no one wants to be a wolf who fucks. i think that we need a sex positivity movement, or something, for omega rights. like, are all of you doing okay? you’re queering misogyny by inventing new genders to oppress. another level to “no one wants to be a wolf...” is the “who fucks” part. there are so many consent issues. and not even in like, a sexy intentional way? in a “i genuinely do not think this author understands how their writing comes off” way. unfortunately i am sensitive to untagged sexual coercion, and there was a lot of that.

at any rate, the aff.com wolves were at peace with being wolves, very self-actualized. the ao3 wolves know that every minute they spend alive on this bitch of an earth is suffering, and also sex.

the third theme is the evolution of y/n. y/n, who, in a startlingly woke move for aff.com, is almost always korean, is a girl main character stumbling into love, boy bands, and wolves (i think it’s because aff.com is oldschool kpop fandom, so therefore heavily asian itself in userbase). but y/n is not the main character in ao3 stories. she is the straight best friend. in what i think is a hilarious move, ao3 authors invert the gay best friend paradigm to give the gay main character a straight girl as best friend. she usually calls him “a gay,” she has lots of thoughts on boys, and she knows his sexuality better than he does and before he does. (sidebar: if all the men are gay, and all the women are straight...)

there’s a really fun twist to this, though, because the main character is always a self-insert in fanfiction. but where older fanfiction like aff.com was at peace with this and literalize it via y/n shenanigans, modern fic writers who haven’t finished distangling their complicated relationship with wanting to be a man who loves other men instead simply imbue their main character with their essence. a little voodoo doll sehun, with a lock of y/n hair. 

this creates a deeply ambivalent relationship with gender in these stories. the main character is usually an omega, but one who resents being an omega. their body and its parts is usually described, if at all, as ostensibly intersex (except more offensively), but in practice, these discourses inscribe a trans body. (nb: i think cis writers approach this in a really fucked up fetishizing way, but i hope by this point we know that that goes without saying) it’s incredibly straightforward to read this, and see the underlying desires and fears in a heady cocktail of unfiltered writing that’s deeply confessional. you know when freud had people say whatever the fuck they wanted and figured they’d eventually free associate into releasing their subconscious into reality? yeah. 

okay, and while we’re on the topic, let’s talk f(x) nu abo, released on may 4th, 2010. 

this is a blitzy, maximalist, amped up dance hit that even has its own applause and cheers built in. it’s so fucking annoying, and i love it. 

this song is on here because the second most popular kpop a/b/o story on ao3 is called “nu abo” except it’s about bts. that’s offensive enough in its own right. write something about f(x) (702 works). when will women win the right to have their own self-lubricating holes.

anyway, even though f(x) is probably innocent in all of this, i’m still cancelling amber liu. 

for queerbaiting. who told her to look like ruby rose but hot? and for what? i’m also cancelling her for racism, but that wasn’t in this video. 

moving on to a double feature: vixx voodoo doll and vixx chained up, released november 19, 2013 and november 9, 2015 respectively. this is because while voodoo doll is more formative, i think the fans who write fanfiction today got into kpop more recently, so we are casting a wide net.

anyway, voodoo doll is jam packed with weird pseudo-medical imagery, blood, vivisection, bondage, puppet shit, femdom, sharps, piercings, asphyxiation, dollification, stabbing/penetration metaphors, and a really sick and catchy dance. god that looks like the list of tags on the a/b/o wolf stories. 

for this song, we’re cancelling you, for being way too into this song when you were 13.

vixx voodoo doll made me goth i guess! insert that pic of the your music saved me sign, except it saved me from getting into emo or pop punk probably. 

chained up, comparatively, is much more tame. the only thing of note about it is that there are around 10 completely different chokers and choker looks the members wear in this music video. also they’re singing about being chained up, but that seemed a bit obvious. 

we could argue that voodoo doll is gay while chained up is gay (derogatory); that voodoo doll is queer while chained up is gay; that chained up is a sensitive masterpiece of omega4omega sexuality. but we’re not going to. 

we’re going to talk about what voodoo doll fanfiction was and was not. first, Aff.com had plenty of it. however, i was extremely disappointed to see that much of it did not hew to the spirit of vixx voodoo doll. my god, the voodoo doll becoming the one preying upon you disgusts me. the fantasy of the voodoo doll is that of absolute power. the idea that the doll itself has agency? instantly breaks the fantasy. i’m even not into voodoo dolls and i’m offended. 

i also don’t think it’s part of the voodoo doll fantasy to release the doll. the only story on there that involved Y/N kidnapping vixx members like in the music video was unavailable because the author deactivated their account. come back qxeen what did you see. 

i think this got off track, actually, in that i was mostly wondering why these people imprinted differently onto vixx voodoo doll than i did. like i don’t think you’re supposed to actually like straightforwardly absorb the morals and aesthetics of music videos like it’s propaganda. however, it’s more entertaining if you do. i hope ao3 doesn’t let me down. 

out of the then 5932 works in the vixx fandom (the least out of every group so far, excluding f(x) because they’re women), 59 of them included the word “voodoo” somewhere. that’s 1%. i legitimately can’t tell if that’s high or not. 

after some more cursory reading through the first page of popular results, my big takeaway is that people watched that video and wanted to be tortured and enslaved? but not, like, in a sexy way where the torturing is the point, the way where the point is to suffer bravely and beautifully, to endure the world’s harms like jesus on the cross, and then to fall into the arms of a beautiful boy who may or may not be the one hurting you in the first place. 

there’s a certain predictability to these fantasies. like it’s not even masochism, which would be fun at least, it’s literally just like the desire to be beautiful, even as you suffer. and i do find that a little boring. (but, i mean, you can’t help being a woman!)

sidebar: on chained up. what’s interesting about chained up, is that most of the then 38 “chained up” works (likely because the video has no storyline) are about the members fucking during chained up promotions. no one’s ever actually chained up, but whatever. it’s fine. it’s fine! 

anyway, here, more than ever, the nature of desire is stripped bare. i’ve written before [elsewhere in the unreleased tshirt cinematic universe] on how kpop boys are, through fandom, re-formed as white, or more strongly, i guess, blank slates. it’s really interesting to me how so much of this dynamic of projection is enabled by the fact that they’re asian men. they’re infantilized, feminized vessels; they’re seductive, but childlike, oblivious to their own charms, so nonthreatening; they have uncontrollable desires for sex, they’re scared of sex. and above all else, white women submit themselves to them, insert themselves into them. basically kpop fans tend to rework old school yellow peril and emasculation fantasies to reenact their own desires, often white, often cishet on them. 

what i am saying is that there’s another thesis about forced feminization and its racialized subtext in here. obviously gender is a racialized construct to begin with, but like it’s fascinating to argue that when white women remake asian men according to their own desires, that is, into themselves, they (hopefully) unintentionally echo these old fears about the sexual order.

it illuminates, it seems, the underlying dynamic in the denigration of asian men, which is of course the fear of miscegenation. now, my breathtaking ability to make everything about me aside, miscegenation is interesting because it presents a racial synthesis, beginning to collapse and trouble the artificial designations of purity. so we make asian men into white women, and end up with an unsettling hybrid. i’m sure this has deep implications for me personally.

but i think we already knew that quite a few of these people had yellow fever, so let’s talk about the gender dialectic at play. basically, the above dynamic, of making men into women (whether literally, in body; or subjectively, in mind; or even relationally, as they are objectified into passive vessels for your desire) coexists with the ostensibly converse dynamic, in which the straight women desires to be a gay man. these aren’t necessarily in conflict: it could easily be that these are different writers writing different stories, that both are ways of expressing discontent with existing in a raced, gendered body, or even that the end product of both is the same.

it’s been a while without a picture. all of you now have the legal right to hunt and kill me for making a d&g joke.

anyway, what i want to talk about is how these two fantasies can coexist. that by making a man into yourself, you can speak on your own desire in a passive way. my normal interest is analyzing forced masc fantasies (albeit in chinese opera lol), and they bear little to no resemblance to this kind of fantasy. this kind offers plausible deniability, of course, because wanting things is embarrassing. but also the fantasy isn’t about wanting to be a man, it’s about having no choice but to be a failed one. the gender pessimism running through these stories is palpable. basically andrea long chu wants what wolf fanfiction writers know: everyone is an omega, and everyone hates it.

at any rate, this racialized dynamic is one that i wasn’t sure how to bring up throughout this piece, mainly because there is no definitive way for me to tell the race of any individual writer, beyond just like the clear and present vibes that i receive. but i think it structures a lot of the fantasies contained in this essay. (i felt more comfortable bringing up the gendered dynamic, because it was fairly trivial to find out the current gender of the person writing each story i was reading.) 

obviously we should return to the specter haunting this conversation: the very much alive david eng. i think this sort of argument is familiar to readers of racial castration, especially his chapter on m. butterfly. btw sorry for mentioning that play 2 out of 3 posts on this blog. i have problems.

let’s talk about the parallel imagery between the depiction of gallimard’s final speech and the fanfiction i’ve described above. in it, gallimard makes himself into his own dream woman, dressing in yellowface and robes, the costume of puccini’s original madame butterfly. and he laments his lost love:

there is a vision of the orient that i have. of slender women in chong sams and kimonos who die for the love of unworthy foreign devils. who are born and raised to be the perfect women. who take whatever punishment we give them, and bounce back, strengthened by love, unconditionally.

in that, i see the self insert, and i see the sufferer of vixx voodoo fic. the fantasy that gallimard has about asian women is repeated, this time about asian men and a helpless identification with them. and on some level, gallimard’s women do have something very compelling to identify with: they suggest that there’s a way to endure white male violence without sacrifice, and even more potently, to enjoy it on some level.

but onward to the titular racial castration. eng argues that gallimard’s wilful ignorance of song’s true gender is a psychic castration -- song’s masculinity is diminished so that his own can be enhanced within their relationship. this, eng believes, acts out “richard fung’s contention that in western imaginary ‘asian and anus are conflated.’” this process stabilizes the relationship between the asian man and the white woman: they occupy the same place within the sexual dyad. 

this is, i think, why some people are addicted to writing from the bottom’s perspective. again -- not implying that irl bottoms don’t exist or that bottoms are psychically castrated lol -- but rather that you can fantasize about this ideal asian man that you can come to embody. in kpop rpf, rather than it being between a white man and an asian man (unless someone’s started writing chad future fic), it’s between two asian men. so this transformation is performed. whiteness is always intruding and so i think eng is helpful here to making it visible again. 

this essay isn’t a callout or actual cancellation or anything like that, i do wanna be clear. i guess i just like talking about fantasies, even the embarrassing ones, and where they come from. i think oftentimes in fandom spaces, we write a lot of stories off as idfic, and i think virtually every single one of the stories i referenced to write this fairly uncontroversially fall into that category. but i think calling something an “id” something or the other naturalizes the satisfaction it gives as purely instinctual and unconscious, when i do think there are deeper narratives at play. while i didn’t ever actually reference the base here (sorry), i do think it’s worth talking about how real world power shapes & maintains the superstructure, and thereby our fantasies. 

anyway in conclusion, maybe i was the one with sexual brainworms the whole time.

[dobodleaday]

11.03.21 AWOO. Halloween may be over, but werewolves are year-round. 🐺