#gonna start posting this absolute lie every time i brainrot like this

[scatterpatter]

im normal

[bao3bei4]

i have basically covered the material in this post several times on my twitter. but this is, in my opinion, the only s*xy t*mes with w*ngxian take you need. 

(cw transphobia, transphobic slurs, antiblack racism, mentions of csa and bestiality in fiction)

edit 6/10/21: hi! i’m realizing people are still reading this! this was written in response to aja romano’s vox article on the fic that was published in late february of this year. i had been frustrated with how their article seemed to miss the point in many ways, because they never talked about the substance of the fic. which, i mean, fair. i wouldn’t want to read a 1million word fic either.

but i already had, so i thought i’d write about some things that i believed needed to be part of the conversation. namely, that its author wasn’t a harmless troll, but a person i genuinely disliked who i believed should be deplatformed.

i think virtual1979 is a bad person. 

i think a lot of people mainly know about sexy times the phenomenon more than they do sexy times the fic itself. i have the dubious honor of being one of the few people who has actually read large portions of the million word fic, and that’s why i wanted to write this meanspirited hit piece. 

the fic is down right now and the author’s notes and comments have both been deleted, which is why i cannot provide screenshots. however, these are all quotes i have saved from when the fic was online, and i’m happy to talk with anyone if you feel any of these quotes are mischaracterizations of the fic. 

i also want to be clear this is not a “callout post” and i’m not trying to “cancel” them or whatever. i am just explaining why i don’t like them, why i don’t feel bad they’re being harassed, and why i do not find them sympathetic at all, and perhaps why you should also adopt these stances. 

let’s start with transphobia. 

sexy times with wangxian is transphobic. this much is apparent from the tags. virtual1979 tagged the following: F*tanari, d*ckgirl, Sh*male. they use this language in the chapters that include a character with both a vagina and a penis. 

they refer to this character (wei wuxian) with the pronouns “he-she.” the following excerpt is a fair representation of how this wei wuxian is referred to in the chapters where wei wuxian has a vagina and a penis. 

[Lan Zhan] would never be turned on by a female, and he would actually be turned off by a drag queen - but this… this Wei Ying, it’s Wei Ying, and he-she looks [...]

i know these words are common in porn categories, but they are also slurs. virtual1979 also uses hermaphrodite to refer to this set of anatomy, which is not strictly a slur, but definitely a stigmatizing choice of language. 

they have repeatedly made clear they are not open to criticism. they have also since removed the comment section. making an intersex character for the express purpose of using transmisogynistic language towards them in your million word porn fic isn’t annoying the way their tags are, it’s actively fucked up. 

fanfiction has a transphobia problem, and if we’re talking about sexy times with wangxian in any capacity, we must be clear: sexy times with wangxian is part of that problem too. 

secondly, virtual1979 is also complicit in ao3’s racism problem.

i think the way they write about chinese characters and settings is annoying and racist, but they are a malaysian chinese person, so i do have some sympathy for them. i am committed to having some patience for people who are annoying if they themselves are working through the prejudice they have faced. 

they’ve commented as much: 

Not gonna lie, this fic has been a steep learning curve for me despite my roots being Chinese as well, but I have absolutely zero knowledge in some of these aspects!

and i’m happy on some level they can get in touch with their roots. who among us has not been cringe and diaspora. any criticisms i have of their portrayal of chinese people will stay private and be made to other people of color.

i’m going to be clear here i don’t think the actual comment they made makes them super evil or anything. but this essay IS clearly in response to That Article, which did mention racism in fandom. so.

i think we have all seen the infamous karen comment they made, in which they compared people who criticized their tagging with “Karens,” equating antiblack state violence to... mean comments on ao3? and “SJWs,” which, eye roll. no ageism but you’re 41 why the hell are you complaining about sjws

anyway. i am deeply frustrated by the co-option of the word karen. a stand-in for a particular type of racist violence white women specifically can and do inflict has become fused with that reddit-type mommy issue “can i speak to the manager” internecine white resentment. 

so their trivialization of antiblack racism is another reason i don’t like them. again i KNOW it’s petty to point this out here, but this to me shows that virtual is afflicted with the same kind of fandom brainrot that aja is, where everything comes back to that same sort of self-centered bullshit. 

sorry for that jab. julian told me that aja thought that cql was about callout culture and all i could think was “wow! just like virtual thinking that--” because i also have spent too much time on twitter this week. 

this is just like. part of this ongoing pattern i’ve noticed with virtual, where they’re aware enough of real problems to acknowledge they exist (police violence, accessibility issues caused by their tagging) but are determined to double down on their minor relative persecution as king, shittily drawing parallels between like... real problems and fandom problems. equating the two or allowing the second to take priority over the former is like... par for the course for this type of person! 

third, this is just another clarification on more parallels between ao3 discourse and sexy times that went completely unremarked on by That Article. 

i would rather DIE than get into discourse. but why did they write this sentence: 

Lan Zhan’s rational mind finally broke with a tsunami of pedophilic lusts [...]

by the way that is the start of a 430 word sentence. and yes this fic does contain hundreds of thousands of words of aged down wei wuxian. make of that what you will. 

also why would you make wei wuxian teach baby chickens how to sexually pleasure him. do you hate these characters. what’s going on. i think mxtx should be able to sue virtual for that one. 

there’s a very obvious connection between mainstream ao3 discourse and sexy times that went completely unremarked on in That Article. sexy times contains multitudes and some of those multitudes are bestiality and explicit childfucking. 

this is not unrelated to fannish culture, they are not unfamiliar with fannish norms, blah blah blah. this is just normal fandom. they’re not subverting shit, they’re just a normal fan who unlike 99% of fanfiction writers on twitter, spends more time writing than posting. this has taken their fannish tendencies to cartoonish heights. 

finally, they don’t care about mdzs or wangxian. they’re literally just horny and spiteful that’s it. this isn’t a question of like... “ohh they were a good faith participant in fandom until they went joker mode” and the REAL villain is society/ao3. like no they wanted to write shitty porn, and when they found out they were annoying people, they decided to double down because they could be the main character of the mdzs ao3 tag every time they found a spare hour to write. 

here are some select receipts on that topic:

they do not care about canon: 

MDZS has quite a complicated and expansive plot and history, and enough content that one can choose to tune out certain parts and still get to the end of the story in one piece. Also, because of its source, some fans may not fully realize the nuances, cultural aspects (ooh, cultural appropriation is another triggering topic) or the full breadth and depth of the source material, such as a person like me, who is half-baked in terms of knowing what the canon universe is all about. So I end up playing with characters and settings technically borrowed from the story, and make them do things that would otherwise run counter to the original source material - and that draws quite some flak from those opinionated people I mentioned just now. It's part of what makes the fandom toxic. It's like they're the self-appointed guardians of the source material and they act like they own the rights to question such questionble fanworks, and dare I say, try to take down those that cross certain lines too.

they are just horny: 

After that giddines of extra drunken Lan Wang Ji scenes at the beginning, I'm blessed with Lan Wang Ji (Wang Yibo's, actually) fuzzy nips! Bless Bless Bless, and Amen! muahs the nips on the screen

anyway they did get nuked over wishing covid on people. 

so yeah. i want to be really clear. this is my thesis: i do not feel bad for them. you should not either. i do not like them. you should not either. that’s ALL!!!!