dori
dori

Today’s WTF in Fanfic: Hanahaki disease.

… a fictional terminal illness caused by unrequited love, where the patient throws up and coughs up flower petals.

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In reply to
smokey
smokey

@dori Laughing. Crying. That is amazing—and, really, I’m surprised we got this far through human history without such a disease appearing in literature, as there definitely needs to be something beyond “broken heart” for unrequited love. And this, this is so descriptive and visceral. My world is better for having learned of it; thank you so much for sharing :-)

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dori
dori

@smokey I adore dropping into small to medium-sized fandoms and affinity groups and seeing what they have invented amongst themselves. It's often stuff that's brilliant and beautiful and completely missed by mass media because there's no money being exchanged — just love and ideas. Some of it, like in this case, is just gobsmackingly unique. Glad you liked it too!

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smokey
smokey

@dori Oh, that’s a great idea; little communities of all kinds are great :-) I enjoyed the fact the stories with that tag all seemed to be for Asian fandoms…and then one Hawaii 5-0 story. I may have become slightly obsessed with the concept and searched further, and apparently there’s a Wikipedia-type site for fanfiction, which has more information on the origins and nature of the disease.

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dori
dori

@smokey That's a good resource, as is AO3 in general. I don't have the background to understand most of the Asian-originated works there, but there's so much cross-fandom blending on AO3 that the best stuff tends to show up everywhere eventually.

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