木木

Slicing through with sharp logic.

木木: One of the ships I write about comes from Winter Begonia—a Chinese drama. It’s actually a side pairing: a noble lord and a Kunqu opera singer named Ning Jiulang, who lives in the lord’s manor. Ning Jiulang and Lord Qi. I’ve written a few mid-length fics for them, and also started a longer one…which I, uh, kind of abandoned. (laughs)

Cleo: Oh no. (laughs)

木木: So…my pairing’s dynamic is this: One of them is an opera singer. And they’re not the show’s main couple. In fact, I can’t even remember the protagonists' names anymore. (laughs) I think the main pairing does end up together, but it didn’t really stick with me.

木木: The novel the show is based on didn’t appeal to me much either. It felt a bit formulaic. Basically, it’s a love story between an opera singer and a devoted fan of opera. But the drama made some changes. One of the main character’s teachers is this Kunqu opera singer named Ning Jiulang.
When he gets older, he moves into the manor of his old friend, the noble lord. Their relationship in the drama is officially one of deep friendship, sworn brotherhood.

木木: But the way they interacted, their unspoken understanding, their quiet chemistry—it had so much pairing energy for me. Especially because the actor playing Ning Jiulang is an actual trained Kunqu opera performer. His bearing, his grace…was so real, so refined. And the actor playing the noble lord really captured that old-school aristocratic aura of a Manchu noble. These two are already what we’d call the “older generation”, probably around sixty when they filmed. But their rapport, that sense of growing old together—it just...really moved me.

木木: In the end, though, they part ways. Because of the tides of history: the Boxer Rebellion, the rise of Manchukuo. The prince moves to the Northeast, joins the puppet regime. The singer shaves his head and becomes a monk. It’s fate. It’s the era pulling them apart. So, the first thing that drew me in was their personal charisma. The second was the incredible acting. And finally, it was the backdrop of history. I mean, it’s like, how something much bigger than them forced them to separate. Even though in the story they’re not small figures, there’s a lord, after all. And Ning Jiulang is at the very top of the opera world.

木木: But in the face of a crumbling world, they’re still just dust in the wind. Two particles of dust, scattered by time. That feeling stayed with me. That’s why I kept writing for them.

Cleo: Thank you for sharing. I was wondering…was the censored story the one about this pairing?

木木: Yes. The idea I had was this: When we think about older characters, we, or at least some people, usually assume they don’t have “sexuality” anymore. It’s hard for a lot of people to imagine intimacy between two elderly figures. But I believe that if two people loved each other when they were young, that physical love doesn’t just disappear with age. I wanted to write about how intimacy might unfold at that stage in life.

木木: Also, because of the class difference between them, I thought it would be interesting to explore a kind of “redemptive sexuality.” You see it in the drama too. The opera singer has some deep-seated insecurity, especially in later years, when he can no longer perform. He had once been at the top of his craft, and losing that…It’s devastating.

木木: So I wanted to use physical intimacy, maybe even through coercion, maybe even through roughness, as a way to rebuild his sense of existence. That was my goal. But it was difficult for me to write. I was still figuring it out as I went. And eventually...well, it probably got too explicit. That’s why it got censored. This was actually the first time I had ever written an explicit scene.
I didn’t really know how far the platform’s tolerance would go. But to me, I wasn’t just “writing smut.” I was writing a story, and in that story, the physical act made narrative sense. I wasn’t inserting explicit scenes for the sake of being explicit. It was an essential part of the emotional arc. That’s the difference.

木木: So when the post got censored, of course it was frustrating. But I still wanted to post it the way it is. The story had reached a point where the characters needed to connect physically. If I didn’t write it, I would’ve damaged the integrity of the work. So at that point, I had no choice but to start "working around the rules."

Cleo: Because you felt that, narratively, it was necessary…so, does this mean you didn’t think it was explicit just for the sake of being explicit?

木木: No, no. Purely in terms of explicitness, yes, it was probably explicit enough to trigger censorship. But that’s not the point. Sometimes, a story needs explicit elements to be complete. If I had written it in a much more restrained way, it wouldn’t have delivered the emotional impact I needed. You have to look at the work as a whole. I mean…isn’t The Plum in the Golden Vase (金瓶梅) explicit?

Cleo: (laughs) It definitely is.

木木: Very explicit! But it’s also a complete, cohesive work. The explicitness serves the story. That’s different from just writing pornography for its own sake. Anyway, I knew from the start that I couldn’t simply avoid it.
If I wanted to post it on this platform, though, I had to find ways to "get around" the system.

Cleo: So once it got censored, you could immediately tell which parts were the problem?

木木: Yeah, pretty much. As soon as it got flagged, I could pinpoint the trouble paragraphs.

Cleo: And how did you work around it?

木木: I rewrote parts of it. I can't remember exactly what now. But I “softened” the language, used more symbolic imagery, more metaphors. Honestly, it hurt a little. Because what I originally wanted was directness. I couldn't achieve that anymore.

木木: But eventually, I decided: Fine. If I have to use metaphor and suggestion, maybe it can become another kind of style. It wasn’t what I originally envisioned. But it became interesting in its own way.

木木: I had to figure out how to maintain the same emotional intensity, even using more symbolic language. And that challenge became part of my craft, too.