[content warnings: discussion of sex and sexually explicit works]
I have a fantasy where Childe from Genshin Impact sexily whispers into my ear that he’ll pay the tuition fee for my MFA. Then he fucks me.
Now that I have your attention, I want to take a closer look at the phenomenon that caused this fantasy. All over the planet, many Genshin Impact fans rabidly thirst for The Big Four Husbandos of the game; Diluc, Kaeya, Childe, and Zhongli. I don’t say this without basis. A quick look at the #GenshinImpact tag on Twitter will almost always show fanart of these four characters, and on fanfiction website Archive of our Own, those four are also the top four most written characters among the 14,000+ works of fanfiction there.
But I’m not just going to be talking about any kind of fan content. I’m focusing on the ones where people are, in simplest terms, horny as fuck. On Archive of our Own once again, there are 2943 fanfics tagged as explicit. The top four most written about characters within this category? You guessed it. The Genshin Impact Husbandos.
But so what? People think these characters are hot and want them to fuck, end of story, right?
Not really. I posit that the appeal of the Genshin Impact Husbandos can tell us things about how power interacts with gender and sexuality, how this can tell us more not only about the Genshin Impact fandom, but fandom in general.
Before I go any further, let me get my terms straight. What, exactly, is a husbando? According to Wiktionary (this is fandom slang, so forgive me for using Wiktionary) a husbando is “a fictional male character from non-live-action visual media (typically an anime, manga, or video game) to whom one is attracted.” With that definition in place, it’s relatively easy to categorize the The Big Four as husbandos, they are all very nice to look at, and the reason why there’s so much porn of them is because they’re the only dudes who, currently (at the time of original writing of this piece, April 2021) among the playable characters, are using the Tall Male Model. Tall Male Model is most easily synonymous to being of legal age and, well---
Legal hot men being sexy and stuff? Sign me up! It is clear that the fandom loves them and loves to put them in, er, many positions, but what I’m interested in is what this desire means. My argument is that this desire is indicative of one’s want for power in the realm of both gender performances and sexual exploration.
Power and gender: It’s time to objectify men, honey!
Fanservice, according to “Practically Naked: Fan Service in Anime as Hyper-Gendered Performances of Spectacle” by Mimosa Wittenfelt, is defined as “a form of wish-fulfilment where an idealised version of the perfect partner — the modern Galatea — is constructed through sexually charged imagery. It’s a man-made fantasy based on the social script of gender performance that govern the corporeal world.”
In Genshin Impact, fanservice is most clearly seen in the outfits of the characters. Amber has a corset around her waist that accentuates her breasts, Beidou has a window in her clothes that also accentuates her cleavage, La Signora wears skin tight dress that basically makes it impossible for anybody to look at her and not think “Uh, boobs.” These are all female examples, and this is because women are often the object of fanservice.
The reverse of this is fanservice where the men are the object. This kind of fanservice is not as common and definitely not as obscene. Free!, the swimming anime, is the first example that comes to mind, when I’m thinking about fanservice of this type, and even in that anime, while the men were certainly shirtless and glistening and hot, there was something about it that felt reserved, in comparison to the jiggling (ouch) boobs of many female anime characters.
Gender is inextricably linked to fanservice, and women (and/or queer individuals) have pulled the short stick. They are both the object of fanservice and they lack fanservice that caters to them.
So what can fans who thirst after male characters do, if the canon of their media has minimal fanservice? Kaeya has a deep vee that shows off his pecs, Childe has a slutty slit in his jacket that gives us a peek of his abs, Zhongli has That Voice, and Diluc has, uh, vigilantism, I guess. All those things are tame, in comparison to the fanservice where women are the object. So what do fans do to cope?
Make craploads of raunchy content of the dudes, that’s what.
We, the audience, take matters into our own hands. Sure, Diluc, Kaeya, Zhongli, and Childe are powerful characters in game, both in regards to their lore and their playable damage, but by making them essentially our sexy, sexy eye candy, they can be as powerful as they are but we are still the one notch above.
We are the ones looking, for once, and they are the ones being looked at. They perform and we watch.
Power is shifted somewhere where it usually isn’t, and this brings us satisfaction.
Power and sexuality: Childe fucks and if he doesn’t I will make him
Fan content has always been a special little treasure. It brings fans joy both to create and consume fan content. Beyond that, however, fan content is special because it is an active way to consume media. Instead of just absorbing media, through fan content, one is actively engaging, questioning, and exploring that media. Fan content of all kinds is the fan talking back, finally given a voice.
When it comes to explicit fan content, what are fans saying, when they are talking back? In ““And then they boned”: An Analysis of Fanfiction and its Influence on Sexual Development”, author Lindsay Mixer says ““[...] fanfiction clearly has a role in the sexual development and growth of those who read it. The fact is, fanfiction is only words; unlike mainstream porn, there is no physical performance happening, and thus no one is in physical danger. The freedom given to participants of reading or writing any gender identity, sexual orientation, or sexual act that they wish, without worrying about the real-world consequences of such actions, is a powerful draw.”
While this quote only speaks about explicit fanfiction, I think it can apply to all kinds of explicit fan content. Explicit fan content becomes a safe space for fans to explore sexual acts. Fanart of Diluc in a sexy maid outfit won’t hurt anybody, a Tweet about Zhongli getting his shit rocked won’t hurt anybody, a fanfic of Foul Legacy Childe railing Kaeya won’t hurt anybody. Not even Kaeya, despite how big Foul Legacy’s dick is. Because it’s not real.
There is where the power lies, in the fiction of it all.
This is the power to craft and consume works without that power stepping on anybody’s toes.
Overall
The Big Four Genshin Husbandos are not the first, nor will they be the last male fictional characters that will fuck forever in fan content. But the fandom’s thirst for these characters reveals, perhaps, that this fandom is hinged on very human desires; the desire to look and explore without fear, the desire to, wholly and unapologetically, enjoy.
I definitely am not afraid as I enjoy the imaginary view I get of Childe showing (sexily) me how much money he has in his bank account.
I hope you enjoy whatever view you’ve got in your head too.