WHAT THE IS AFF DOIN' part 6: IT’S NOT IF YOU’RE STEP-SIBLINGS

Heyhey, kids!

Welcome back to another episode of What The Is AFF Doin’! I can’t believe that we’ve reached six parts of this series already, when it’s so painfully clear how much I’ve procrastinated!

Now, kids.

Good God, ya’ll.

I don’t know if I’m ready to post an episode like this again, but O Lord, though Ye hast guided me safely through the treacherous lands of AFF, Ye hast now led me to a mortal trap once more. I thank Thee not, and will say no prayers in thy name.

A quote from the story: “I deserve a round of applause for this quick update” what the did you just say

Title: Absolute generic trash

Genres: “I wish I could my characters but I’ll just write that they each other instead” [GONE WRONG] [EXPLICIT] [MISSPELLED]

The general synopsis:

Taeyeon has her, like, totally perfect life ruined by this super cute and y but also really mean girl called Jessica. And, like, she can’t believe how, like, Jessica is just, like, oh my god, so mean?? To her?? All the time??? I mean, like, why would she ever do that??

Okay, so, Taeyeon previously lived a quiet life with her father who then starts to date another woman. The woman and her daughter move in, and the daughter is Jessica. Jessica is now her annoying step-sister by decree of their parents’ marriage. Wow, totally irksome. So from day one, Taeyeon poorly hides her uality by ogling Jessica as she illogically undresses in front of her THE DAY THEY MEET, so Jessica decides to extort Taeyeon by threatening to tell Taeyeon’s dad that she is gay, despite the fact that there is a lot of leeway to lie about it for Taeyeon, but what ing ever.

Not that anybody gives a , but anyway – the extortion carries on with a frightening set of rules causing Taeyeon to be coerced into an oddly intimate relationship with Jessica who demands that Taeyeon does chores, homework and other bull tasks for her (spending money). However, while the blackmailing carries on Jessica also does some really ing creepy stuff – among other things, Jessica jokes about molesting Taeyeon after having invaded her personal space (which could also be classified as ual harassment but whatever I’m no expert on this right me man).

Anyway, the story lacks updates since the final chapter, which is very obviously a cliffhanger where we’re supposed to get that sweet, happy ending after another myriad of insane emotions and fights and who gives a .

My thoughts on the matter:

Let’s discuss the idea of immaturity on a philosophical level.

Eraldo Banovac (a Croatian engineer) once said that “continuously feeling superior is a characteristic of immaturity.” That strikes deep, because it’s what this story is about. There is a wonderfully ty dichotomy that has been built up in this story between the main character Taeyeon (whose perspective the story is written from) and Jessica. Taeyeon is just so much ing better than everyone else, especially Jessica, because Jessica parties and has boyfriends. Now, Jessica is indeed a real scumbag here and there, but due to the immaturity that this story is laden with we are not presented with any reasons to like either character.

Maturity stems from the (sometimes illogical) use of kindness in a situation where you are presented with the choice of acting selfishly or selflessly – in an unkind or kind way. Don’t misunderstand, there is definitely such a thing as malicious compliance, but that’s a blog post for another day. This is strictly regarding this story and why I can’t ing stand it.

Taeyeon is greedy and doesn’t know how to let her dad be happy. She acts with constant entitlement to be a part of or prevent entirely her father’s decisions in obtaining said happiness, which is not proof of a daughter who claims to love her father unconditionally. If your love is unconditional then you can’t place conditions on it. It’s so self-explanatory that I just god damn pass out from the idiocy. After this point, she claims to be super close to her father yet lies to him throughout the whole story, because… reasons? She’s gay and doesn’t want her father to know? Because Korea?

Okay here’s a bonus tangent, es: Yes, Korea is a homophobic place. It is slowly getting better, but isn’t good. There are elderly who believe homouality to be an urban myth and in the military, same- relations are punishable with prison-time because they qualify as ual harassment. There is an abundance of fundamentalist Christians who believe that homouality is cause for imprisonment. No same- marriage or partnership is legal. Yeah, I know. Slowly it is getting better since almost 40 % of Koreans believe that homouality should be accepted in society, but it’s not wonderful.

My point is that the author of the story has made a big mistake in not stating Taeyeon’s intentions for keeping her uality a secret from her father – is he a homophobe? Has he indicated that he will disown her or otherwise repercussions should she come out to him? Is it perhaps that Taeyeon is just straight up afraid because coming out can be a big deal to her even if it isn't to anyone else? There is no indication from the author what the reason might be, at all. 

This signals another level of immaturity to the story – and why the level of cognitive awareness where you start acting selflessly clearly isn’t obtained by any of the characters. Humans operate on base claims made at the start of any journey, be it frying some bacon, going into space or starting a new book; we know that the base claims are that heat causes the bacon to fry, gravity will be a challenge for the aircraft and in this case, Taeyeon is close to her dad and loves him more than anything in the world.

But… she doesn’t act like it. Not in the slightest. For anyone, as an author, I believe it is of grave importance to keep your consistent and maintain permanence in base claims that you have presented to the reader. I’m not gonna lie, I ing hate it when this happens. I’m really not digging the immaturity angle that is already prevalent here on AFF because its popularity does no favors to budding authors or readers. What the are you teaching your readers with that bull? That it’s good to keep secrets and it's healthy to act like a ing tsundere all the time? .

This brings us back to the point I made about acting superior – when you think you’re better than everyone else, you’re not only acting like a bag of , you’re also acting really ing immaturely. It is unkind and illogical to rely on such an assumption because there is no element of self-awareness to it. I have no reason to like a character like Taeyeon (portrayed as the protagonist) because she’s awful.

On to the next thing I want to about.

Taeyeon hates Jessica from day one, but makes no attempts at telling her father why she dislikes Jessica (refer to immaturity contra selflessness debate above). She also makes no attempts at getting to know Jessica’s mother. Now, Taeyeon doesn’t hide at all how much of a prick she can be, since as her father leaves for his honeymoon, she acts incredibly rude and conceited toward Jessica who very clearly reciprocates in kind. It doesn’t take long before Jessica is like “lol ur ghay and if you don’t clean my homework evry dae then I’m telling ur dad that ur gaye”, which leads to some nasty coercion into ual acts and violation of personal space plus hinting at ual assault. FUN ING TIMES. She also does Jessica’s homework, cooks and I don’t know what the else is supposed to be happening but it isn’t nice to read through.

Now, parallel to all the crap happening with Jessica being a predator and an absolute ing bully, there is the element of the tsundere that I mentioned before – Jessica is a tease who is very obviously ually attracted to Taeyeon, but chooses to call her names and be a ing because HA HA, YOU ARE MY SLAVE NOW. Also she’s popular with the boys which Taeyeon hates because “oh my god what a I bet she totally sleeps with all of them”. Taeyon, shut the up and let a girl live, ok. However, Taeyeon is also very obviously attracted to Jessica as well – they dance around the fact that they’re for each other during essentially the whole story, which supposedly lends legitimacy to the fact that Taeyeon acts superior and Jessica is a ually assaulting .

What makes for a fantastic ing read however is that since there are some useless sub-plots (Taeyeon crushes on a girl who is straight, Jessica has dates with dudes to make Taeyeon jealous), the story takes extra long to finish. The agony doesn’t end as soon as you thought, because petty drama needs to happen in stories in order for anyone to ever enjoy anything on here. AFF has turned into the everlasting Jersey Shore of fanfiction where nothing is entertaining enough on its own, because WHO THE DOESN'T LOVE DRAMA?!?!!?!?

 

AM

OLD

 

... Look.

I get it. I get that little girls/boys on here want to relate and be like “oh my gawrsh I’ve totally been in this situation (but not really though) and I read about the people I want to and who should each other for my satisfaction”. I GET IT. But that doesn’t make this nice. It doesn’t make for a pleasant read, because all I can see is the stunning lack of perception people have if this is what comes out of their minds.

How are we supposed to grow as a community when this is all we’re served in terms of content? Try to not remove yourself from the equation which is this website; we’re all responsible for the input and then then subsequent output. Are you surprised that you meet fans in real life who say stuff like “they’re ing and I believe it wholeheartedly”? Are you surprised that there are fans who fawn endlessly over idols to the point where they engage in self-harm on their account? Are you surprised that there are fans who call them “daddy” at airports to their ing faces? Hmm? Are you?

Because I’m not. I know that a part of the idea behind excessive fandom-participation comes from this ing fujoshi bull that AFF is teeming with. This is not a website which promotes maturity on any level, it’s the ing opposite. The culture which makes out the distinctive traits in the k-pop sphere is laced with a very problematic view on maturity; many freely surrender it just so that they can live out a fantasy which isn’t even funny to begin with.

This story embodies so much of what I get so mad at. A tsundere character for comic relief which the goodie two-shoes protagonist MUST fall for, absent parents, non-blood related , “I’m better than you because [reason]”, pointless side characters which serve as embellishment without a point… And for the ing record, this baby was featured. Oh yes.

Let me spell it out clearly:

  • Immature characters aren’t nice to read about unless your story is well written.
  • The tsundere trope is old and very tired, and it was never funny or engaging to begin with.
  • is not funny or y. I don’t care how “unrelated” your characters are to each other, find another ing way to write a story in which they live together and end up ing. It’s not that hard.
  • Lastly, ual assault isn’t funny. It’s not a tool you can use to make your characters do y stuff, because it’s not y. It’s frightening and very real, and it does you no favors in describing the made-up “” between characters.

 

I want to just go over something that I personally can find a little challenging from time to time when I write. When I start a story, I have an idea for how the characters are supposed to be, but I often face an obstacle – they end up all being a bit similar to each other. I’ve tried to work on this by reminding myself that not everyone will have the same reactions, and therefore I’ve managed to avoid that obstacle more and more. I also learn by reading, and almost any book which is on the top 50 lists on Goodreads will give you a good set of different characters.

Let’s look at Oscar Wilde. In “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, we meet three primary characters – Basil, Dorian and Lord Henry. They are so inherently different from each other, yet have some unifying traits which can be a little hard to grasp even. Something very typical of Oscar Wilde is that he injects parts of himself into his characters (as I suspect that most authors do), which in this case is most evident in the ing brutal sass that comes from Lord Henry. He just doesn’t give a a lot of times, and instead very consciously advocates for his standpoint, even though he knows that he might not succeed in swaying anyone because why the not? I love that character because he’s such a funny  to Basil who sort of… accepts it with a grumble and then goes on to be a tortured artist. Dorian is a vain and impressionable young man, the opposite of Lord Henry, but the two become acquainted without flaw despite their differences. It’s great! It’s a really great book, and I encourage you to read it if you want to learn something about how to create people for your story.

The story I’ve been ranting about encounters this obstacle and then does not progress past it. Taeyeon and Jessica are carbon copies of each other with some minor differences here and there, and it’s so tiring to read. They aren’t interesting. They don’t show any signs of character growth, and the story is somehow supposed to be about their petty love story in which nothing happens anyway?

WHY IS THIS SO POPULAR GOD DAMMIT

I mean, sure. If you like immaturity and immature characters then that’s great, isn’t it? But the same goes for . If you like eating , then you go ahead and do that, but there is no ing way that it’s gonna go mainstream. And it shouldn’t because it isn’t healthy to eat .

And another thing.

Why are we as a writing community so ing obsessed with letting everyone write whatever they want in the name of not hurting someone’s feelings? Why do we find new ways to celebrate mediocrity in writing? We create excuses to not tell someone that what they have created is awful because “WHAT IF THEY BECOME SAD”. It’s not good. Why should I lie and tell someone that yes, of course, go ahead and write more of this absolute garbage so that you can fill your own little corner of the internet with things that nobody likes? Why do I owe someone applause simply because they are starting out with a new hobby?

I would rather point some ing things out and let them know that no, this isn’t very good, but you can do better. Work harder and you will become greater. But no – no, no, no. We’re not allowed to comment on stories with negativity or constructive criticism, because then someone might become sad and stop writing altogether. Poor them, someone let them know that they have an opportunity to improve.

It is not my responsibility to cradle someone’s emotions based on an arbitrarily adjusted scale of niceness. Note how it’s completely ing fine if you shred users to pieces if they’ve done something non-fic-related in the blog section, but god for-ing-bid that you tell them something remotely critical on an actual story.

COME ON Y’ALL. WE CAN DO BETTER THAN THIS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

 

Okay I’m done. As usual, it’s late when I’m posting this and I’m hella tired.

 

 

Word count: In the neighborhood of 2,7 (?) k

 

 

Comments

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BangMind
#1
found you and your great blog posts from my subscription list because you chose to draft your story which is a pity because i didn't have the opportunity to read it anymore but hey at least you have these blogs up and mayhaps you are one of the rare people i can idollize in this community
Mishtique
#2
can i just express my disgust at the blog post bantu- ink talked about? AFF and fan fiction in general has a lot of cases which feature non-con situations which lead to a relationship that I'm not OK with. I sometimes feel like they don't take /ual assault serious.

yeah okay, you got different types of non-con (like, tentacle pwp is something different than full out multiple cases of ) and nowadays authors are so kind to tell you if the non-con is between the main couple or not (I take a breather when it's not) but still, they act as if you don't need to recover from it mentally and as of you can just act as if nothing ever happened when it comes to that person....
bohubear
#3
I hope I made sense cause I've changed my keyboard and it's slightly different from my previous one, this one being a tad bit smaller so I have yet to get used to it. MAMA has always drained me of my energy and common sense; I might not have correctly connected some of the points I was trying to make or ended up repeating myself. Bottom line is: I agree with you on your opinion of the story, wish people used they're heads a little bit more before writing about controversial subjects by trying to come up with a way to let the reader know that this isn't how a relationship is supposed to be, I think fandom culture/participation is more intense in KPOP/JPOP due to how much more tailored idols are into being sold as a product than in any other entertainment industry, there should be a balance/middle ground found between writing and improving/accepting criticism.
bohubear
#4
When you told me I should be expecting a blog from you, I wasn't thinking it was gonna be this.

No, that's totally coerced backed up by manipulation and backmail, a triple ing combo and it's disgusting. See, these is a prime example of how disgusting is in real life, because this is how it usually happens: one sibling has power over the other, either by favoritism or by age and is usually the one to initiate the relationship, thus leading to a relationship based on a power imbalance. Jessica threatening to out Taeyeon to her father is horrible, absolutely disgusting, her making Taeyeon do her homework, her cleaning chores and buy her things is even more so, but Jessica using the knowledge of Taeyeon not being straight to come onto Taeyeon fully knowing that their relationship is light years away from being one where such acts are even remotely accepted is just....how did the author think for even one second that this is something cute and romantic and perfectly acceptable. Even those who support in their community will tell you to your face that this is all shades of ed up.

If you really want to write an "" relationship and avoid having it becoming questionable and pretty much toxic, you can always go for the safe option when they aren't living together and aren't blood related, but their parents have started dating each other in secret around the same time as them and you have a philosophical story that raises moral questions and whatnot, without being absolutely nasty about it. Of course, if you plan on portraying an relationship accurately by highlight the toxicity of it, then go ahead.

You do raise a very good question about the hypocrisy of roasting the hell out of somebody for something they've said or done either outside of AFF or in a blog's comments, yet hesitating and judging those who roast/critique stories. Personally, I refrain from telling a person my thoughts about their story without them wanting to hear it explicitly from me. It's a choice of mine, though I do see where you're coming from.

I do agree that the story is one hell of a mess, and not a hot one either. If it weren't for the abusive relationship portrayed, I would've let it slide 'cause, hey, we've all written a horrible story once or twice and I sincerely believe that change only comes when you're the one to recognize, accept and understand the flaws you possess. However, the story revolves around a disgusting, manipulative, controlling and abusive relationship passed off as complicated, rocky, yet beautiful and sincere. Bull.