The term “sadistic story” has only been around for a short time, but it quickly caught on with readers and became a popular subcategory of online romance novels. The popularity of this category, which is painful to read, is a question one can’t help but explore.
Some people consider sadistic stories to be a tragedy. However, a little attention will reveal that the two are not in fact the same. Tragedy is about the sadness and lamentability of the characters, in which the pain felt by the characters themselves is not necessary or even required.
What the story of abuse focuses on is the pain felt by the character. This pain can be either physical or psychological, but generally it is a combination of both. Abusive romance novels are often filled with misunderstandings born of jealousy, unnecessary suspicion, and arguments caused by lack of communication, and the two parties in love hurt each other or even hurt themselves because of these, forming the main structure of common abusive romance novels.
In this, the pain and the character relationships that bring it on become the backbone of the story, and it is from appreciating this pain and contradiction that readers get the pleasure of reading.
An inverse therapy to release psychological anxiety
Readers of sadomasochistic stories do not take pleasure in the pain of the characters. To explain the pleasure of reading sadomasochistic stories, we can make an analogy.
I’m sure we all know the fact that watching a movie can be soothing and uplifting when we’re under internal stress and feeling anxious. But interestingly enough, sometimes it is not the upbeat, bright comedies that provide the most relief from stress, but rather the heart-stopping horror stories. Some intense stress and excitement in the safety of oneself can instead lighten one up.
Similar to a horror movie, readers reading a sadistic story overlap themselves with the characters from the inside and really feel the pain depicted in the text, a pain that echoes some place of anxiety, fear, or unease in the reader’s mind, causing the reader’s inner strings to be pulled completely tight. The reader, when finished, is as if he or she has personally experienced such a pain, and the inner anxiety is naturally then relieved or eliminated.
We know from experience that what horror movies evoke is the most immediate and instinctive fear in people – killing, fierce animals, impenetrable darkness, etc. – the very thing that horror movies exaggerate to depict. As one horror author said, “Those vampires and werewolves are not exaggerated, deformed bats and big dogs? And who isn’t afraid of fire when it comes to the flames of hell?”
Following the same reasoning, we see that the audience for sadomasochistic fiction is evoked by the feelings the novel evokes: distrust and fear of romantic relationships.
When people fall in love, they entrust their lovers with everything in their emotional world and therefore form an inseparable relationship with them. Once you are hurt by a lover, it leaves deep scars in your heart. This fear of harm causes some people to distrust romantic relationships – to fear love because they do not trust that they and their lover can guarantee that they will not cause harm to each other. This fear is even seen in people who have not really been hurt. However, everyone knows that it is in our nature as human beings that we will eventually fall in love with someone, eventually become someone’s lover, and as a result, become a family and a couple. Thus, anxiety about this future lingers.
Among the abusive stories, there are all kinds of painful events brought on by misunderstandings, suspicions, and miscommunications. Such episodes depict the very bitter fruits of falling in love, and thus some readers can relate to them, although most of them do not have similar experiences.
It is these thoughts of doubt and mistrust in love relationships that make them involuntarily accept the pain in the text and use it, which does not really hurt them, to release the anxiety in their hearts.
A fairy tale of pure love behind the cruelty
The above says part of the fun of a sadistic story, but that’s not all. For if we really wanted the characters to stop suffering, we would rightly ask: Since they are suffering so much, wouldn’t it be better for the two of them to break up and never see each other again, and be at peace with each other?
However, what makes a sadistic story a sadistic story is precisely that such an easy parting doesn’t happen. In the story, the lovers hurt each other, often because of jealousy, exclusivity or suspicion between the lovers. Yet in the midst of this painful pattern of being together, the lovers will eventually be unable to leave each other – perhaps at the beginning, perhaps they react at the end of the essay, but they will eventually realize that the two of them belong to each other and cannot be separated.
“Even if I am resented by you, I will keep you with me.”
“I can’t leave you even if I’m hurt by you.”
“Although it pains me to keep you by my side, the pain of being separated from you is a thousand times greater than me.”
“If I leave you, this pain, it becomes something that you alone will have to bear.”
Characterizations like this one have become a staple of sadomasochistic fiction.
A lover who is committed to you even if you don’t trust him, and a lover who will never abandon you even if he is rude and cold. The two of them love each other after all, no matter what kind of conflicts and mutual hurts they have, no matter how painful their love is. The story of the two men’s love for each other is so deep that they want to keep it going even though it hurts so much.
If we needed to summarize the theme of a sadistic novel, leaving the details and specifics aside, we would get four words: “They love each other.”
When we are called to the pain and tears in the story as we read, making the love scars or shadows of fear in our own hearts begin to ache as well, this exact, solid, unshakeable love will undoubtedly move us deeply.
Extreme romance in confrontation and self-confrontation
Everyone has longed for the fairy tale of perfect love, but unfortunately this fairy tale as beautiful as stained glass is also as fragile and fragile as stained glass, and when we get a little older, we learn that it’s hard to read the scriptures of the East and the West, whether it’s a neighbor or an idol singer, and most of the love stories we’ve The majority of the love stories we’ve seen before eventually come to a lukewarm sequel – a sequel that depicts separation, discord, fading or tastelessness.
The sequel to the fairy tale eventually turns out to be a gray and tasteless running gag. When we think we have found this to be a truth, the love fairy tale breaks down, and we slowly move towards its opposite. This is, perhaps, where that feeling of trepidation about love and love relationships comes from.
However, the vision of the love fairy tale doesn’t necessarily leave us; it may just lurk, buried in some corner of our hearts that even we can’t find. We think we have lost it, until one day, by chance, a lock is opened, and we realize that this faint, deep-rooted longing still has the power to move us, to urge us to move and weep.
For many people nowadays, the story of abuse has become the key to unlock the lock.
For today’s young people, no external force has the power to stop the action from being strong. Whether it is the high walls of home between Romeo and Juliet, or the craggy crags of birth between Dong Yong and the Seven Fairies, to the youth of our generation it is nothing more than a fragile fence. However, as the external obstructive force slowly loses its iron grip, the barrier between us and love becomes us.
So when we read sadomasochistic literature, we see the pain we get from within ourselves – from weakness, or from not being strong enough. But we also see the power of confrontation, a rigid love that will not give in to its weaknesses, nor back down from its pain. It would be extremely painful if even we ourselves had to pave the way for the future of love. But on the other hand, to be bloodied by one’s own inner thorns and still not back down is extremely high and positive wave of slow love.
It is this that awakens in us a bit of longing for love, and as a result, it allows us to experience the beauty of romance beyond reality.
Every ordinary person is a sleeping romantic, and the success of the sadistic story is that it awakens our romantic selves.