For romance-related content, see the section on "Fyctia’s Anglophile Romcoms". Here's the abstract:
This article examines recent technological and cultural developments that have transformed the publishing industry in the past two decades—the rise of social media platforms for writing and reading genre fiction as well as the translingual practices they enable. My focus on the digital aims to update earlier studies of translingualism in a world literary space (Stephen G. Kellman, Pascale Casanova). In particular, I examine a French-language platform (Fyctia) and a multilingual one (Wattpad) to argue that digital platforms’ affordances and constraints shape the translingual strategies of their writers and readers.
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Launched in 2015 by the Parisian publishing house Hugo & Cie, Fyctia targets a Francophone audience. Every fourteen weeks, Fyctia organizes a writing contest around genres and themes such as “thriller,” “imaginaire,” “comédie romantique,” “feel good,” “new romance” (a French category for erotic fiction) and “hors série,” among others. The participants upload their story one chapter at a time, on which readers vote. If they gathered enough “likes,” they can post the next chapter, and so on. Although the four finalists are elected entirely by readers, a Fyctia jury may select a few finalists of their choosing. These “coups de pouce” may not be the most popular stories on the platform, but they successfully meet the competition’s criteria. Out of these finalists, the jury elects a winner, whose digital text is then published by Hugo & Cie.
Despite being a French-language platform, Fyctia abounds in traces of English. Writers often adopt Anglophone pseudonyms (“AnnaShaw,” “Daisy Woods,” “Mira Perry,” “Rita Martins,” etc.) and book titles (Bluff, Love Crash, Boys in Books Are Better, Revenge, etc.). The worldwide influence of British and American popular fiction is also palpable, at least in the genre of romance fiction, where books such as E. L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey and Anna Todd’s After have become global bestsellers. In France, the romance market is dominated by translations from English. (305)
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Writers and readers’ code-switching reflects Fyctia’s demographic: primarily Millennial and Gen Z users who are clearly bilingual and steeped in Anglo-American popular culture as well as Internet and social media culture (hence their deft use of emoticons). Some Fyctia writers are also active on Wattpad, where English-language stories dominate. The translingual practices of Fyctia writers and readers are, for them, a matter of everyday communication and their connection to digital and global (primarily Anglo-American) popular culture. (305-306)
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The tropes of the romance genre are commonly borrowed from English. They are part of Fyctia writers’ cultural imaginary, as well. For example, in her preface, “MorganeRigan” informs readers of the tropes her novel will use—“slow burn,” “friends-to-lovers,” and “love triangle”—to help them identify them more easily. The other finalists have employed these as well as other tropes: fake relationship, enemies-to-lovers, roommate-to-lovers, nanny romance, and royal romance. By mixing and matching the generic conventions of Anglo-American fiction and anchoring the story in a French setting, these writers introduce some newness into a hackneyed formula. (306)
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references to global popular culture are meant to reflect Fyctia writers’ cultural capital, which they use to connect to and hook other writers and readers on the platform. (309)
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novels also reference Anglo-American food and sports that are known and consumed around the world. (309)
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translingual practices underscore Fyctia users’ linguistically hybrid everyday life. Whether seamlessly code switching or deliberately flagging foreign words in their texts, the eight Fyctia writers discussed in this case study implicitly acknowledge English as today’s language of popular culture, at least in the Global North. Writers’ practices also reflect a desire to address the prompt of the writing contest—to write a French romantic comedy that speaks to Francophone readers, while drawing on Anglo-American generic tropes. (310)
For romance-related content, see the section on "Fyctia’s Anglophile Romcoms". Here's the abstract:
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