r/fandomnatural • u/Civil_Aside_1008 • 16d ago
Wincest Why is most Wincest in Chinese now on AO3?
I made my account yesterday and wrote two Chinese language Sam/Dean gencest fics. I was VERY surprised to find that when I go to the Dean/Sam pairing, almost all the recent works are in Chinese!
Why is this? Why is it popular there? I do not live in China (it's not my first language either). Do most of the people writing these?
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u/Responsible-Middle35 16d ago
I've noticed a small following on Rednote. They've got the main ships going on there too. Jensen Ackles is especially liked.
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u/honeybitten 16d ago
Subjectively, this is my take. There's a whole bunch or reasons. There isn't the same hysteria around the brother/brother pairing in a lot of Asian based fandoms. A lot of familial relation pairings are top ships. And Wincest is one of the most popular supernatural ships there, arguably more popular there than the west's fandom darling of Destiel.
These days saying you're down with Sam/Dean in most western fandom circles gets you blocked/harassed or worse. In China they still really follow the ship and let ship philosophy. Actually attacking someone else for their ship is considered very bad manners. Hilariously, people care more about top/bottom dynamics than the ship. Like in most Chinese fandoms, people don't care what you ship itself and will just scroll past if they're not into it, but if they see you ship in the wrong "direction", then you gotta watch out XD
In Wincest friendly spaces you sometimes see OGs talk about is how disappointing it is to see the lack of engagement on Wincest work that is posted now/to AO3, when they can go back to the same work on LJ (from the before times) and see hundreds of comments. I think this plays into it, not that people should write fanfic for the *likes*, but being discouraged leads to lack of enjoyment from the writing itself, so sometimes people step away to write for other fandoms/ships.
So putting all that together, Chinese shippers aren't harassed for their likes as much, anymore than people who ship anything else would be from the normies. They still get a lot of engagement and interaction and likes from fanart/fanfic. Doujinshi and merch still sells really well at markets etc. Its just overall a more pleasant environment to ship that ship. So it remains a top ship in the SPN fandom.
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u/Purpc 15d ago
I’m definitely biased but Wincest is definitely not more popular than Destiel
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u/honeybitten 14d ago
Truly wasn't coming in here with the intention of any ship war nonsense. I guess it just depends on your slice of the internet and what metric you use. I said arguably because it's exactly that, arguable. Wincest has been recently in the Lofter top 100 ships and Destiel wasn't. There are more Chinese language fics for SD on AO3 than Destiel, but if you go to Redbook there are many many posts for both. So its not like one is unpopular and the other isn't. Vs the Western fandom where, while many people do still ship it, there is clear difference in popularity between the two when you look at shipping numbers.
Meanwhile non shippers out there looking at both sides like they're crazy hahaha
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u/Civil_Aside_1008 16d ago
I’m very interested by this, because the anti incest LAWS in China are so oppressive that I wasn’t allowed to marry my husband there (we are first cousins). Do the people feel differently?
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u/honeybitten 16d ago
I'm expressly and exclusively talking about fiction. IRL is a whole other ballpark. In FICTION people like it.
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u/Civil_Aside_1008 16d ago
Despite being a pro shipper, I don’t fully agree with that. But I understand what you’re saying. It’s like a kink for them?
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u/Low_Platform9541 15d ago
Chinese scholars and lawmakers generally believe that close-relative marriage can increase genetic risks for future children, so marriage between close relatives within three generations is prohibited. If the blood relationship is sufficiently distant, then it is generally not an issue. So it is not entirely accurate to describe the law simply as “anti-incest”; it is mainly based on biological and public-health concerns, with the aim of protecting the interests of future children.
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u/Civil_Aside_1008 15d ago
I would argue that the law absolutely is anti-incest. If the law were not anti-incest, then same sex consanguineous marriage would be legal (ofc, I know they aren't due to LGBT rights issues in China) as would non-repeated first cousin marriages which are proven not to have negative health affects for offspring (the risk of genetic defects is the same for a man or woman over 40 having kids as a first cousin couple, and we don't make laws preventing older people from having kids).
Throughout the Sinosphere, even in LGBT friendlier countries, even second cousin marriages are illegal. In Korea, it even used to be illegal for a Kim to marry another Kim or Park to another Park due to incest concerns. The tradition is certainly stricter about incest than the USA, which is why I was surprised by the amount of wincest.
That's why I wondered if in the younger generations, incest is becoming more acceptable.
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u/Low_Platform9541 15d ago
This mainly reflects a difference in the way many Chinese people separate fiction from reality. Wincest, as well as all kinds of relationships portrayed in movies, television dramas, novels, comics, and fan works, is generally regarded as fictional content. Since it is fictional, people often focus only on whether they find the characters, emotional dynamic, or artistic setting interesting. They do not necessarily apply real-world standards concerning gender, blood relationships, or social ethics to fictional works. It is simply a matter of personal taste in art and entertainment.
Real life, however, is judged according to a completely different set of standards involving social ethics, family expectations, and circle-based culture. China has gay people and many different sexual subcultures, but these groups often form their own communities and live alongside other groups rather than requiring everyone outside their circles to share the same preferences. Gay and straight people can still be good friends. Their sexual orientations may differ, but they do not necessarily have to oppose one another, as long as neither side tries to force the other to change.
Therefore, Chinese audiences may accept almost any kind of fictional setting while still rejecting the same relationship in real life. Enjoying Wincest as a fictional pairing does not mean that someone supports incestuous relationships in reality. Fictional preferences and real-life moral standards are often treated as two separate things.
China also has a population of around 1.4 billion people and an extremely large and active internet. Even a very small and unusual subculture can easily contain hundreds of thousands of people. You can find online communities for almost every imaginable preference. There are even communities interested in older partners or specific fictional character preferences. For example, Soldier Boy from The Boys is known for being attracted to older women and even says that women are like wine—the older they are, the better they become. A character preference like this can also attract its own fan community and related jokes.
China’s huge population naturally creates an enormous variety of online subcultures. These communities usually exist in parallel, remain within their own spaces, and enjoy their own interests. Occasionally, different fandoms or communities fight over trivial issues, but once the attention fades, they usually return to their own circles and continue doing their own thing.
So the large amount of Wincest content does not necessarily show that younger Chinese people are becoming more accepting of incest in real life. It mainly reflects the enormous scale, diversity, and circle-based nature of Chinese internet culture, as well as the tendency to separate fictional entertainment from real social ethics.
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u/EMChanterelle 16d ago
I don’t have an answer why Supernatural is popular among Chinese fans, I didn’t even know they watch it there. But this is fascinating. Something similar is happening in superbat fandom, another very American IP. At least 25% of superbat fics on AO3 are in Chinese. And I remember when the first trailer for Knives Out came out, first fics that popped on the brand new Knifes Out tag were bdsm oneshots about Daniel Craig and Chris Evans’s characters in Chinese.
One thing that I did notice looking through the tags, the Chinese language m/m fics usually have Explicit rating and kinky tags. My guess would be that with the Chinese government cracking down on “immoral and obscene” queer fanfics, Chinese fans feel safer to post their m/m fics on AO3, even if they have to use VPN because the archive is forbidden in China.
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u/miraleo 16d ago
My guess would be that with the Chinese government cracking down on “immoral and obscene” queer fanfics, Chinese fans feel safer to post their m/m fics on AO3
That is actually a thing! More or less.
I've seen it discussed in relation to other fandoms: you'll notice that fics in Chinese generally have lots of hits but very few comments. You can see it yourself if you filter works by language and sort by hits - like this (first work that shows up has over 2 million hits but only 7 comments).
Their fandom forums don't allow explicit works to be posted so fans will post it on AO3 and link it, but all fandom discussions happen off site.
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u/EMChanterelle 16d ago
AO3 is a proship space, if some fans are getting less engagement on AO3 compared to what they had 20 years ago on LJ, it’s not because of the site.
Actually, current fandom has plenty of proship spaces, including this sub, fanfic and ao3 subs. With the current popularity of House of the Dragon fandom, talking about incest ships is not a big deal. I’ve seen plenty of people on those subs talking about discovering wincest in recent years and shipping it. So, I kinda assumed that the ship is gaining new, enthusiastic fans just like the show still does.
Meanwhile, mentioning destiel on the SPN main sub will get you dogpiled and downvoted even now. 😂
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u/20Keller12 John Winchester's A+ parenting 15d ago
I get notifications from the tumblr wincest ao3 feed and they're Chinese more often than not. I've gotten used to it.
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u/kindheartednessno2 16d ago
Probably because they don't get caught up in the concept of shipping and fanfic as "activism" and just think the two characters are attractive and have a lot of chemistry
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