The explosive growth of microdrama apps like ReelShort highlights a tension between women’s desire for escapist romance and the unsettling power structures that shape so many of its storylines.
The first scene of Fated to My Forbidden Alpha (2024) opens with white letters in gothic script, against a black background: ‘In a world where werewolf packs survive on centuries-old fortunes, a fragile peace treaty is about to shatter…’. It sounds like it could be the prelude to a young-adult fantasy epic, or a Twilight spin-off written by an especially devoted member of Team Jacob. Fated to My Forbidden Alpha indeed borrows plenty of Twilight-reminiscent tropes. We have the clumsy female protagonist with two potential suitors, clan rivalry, and, of course, werewolves.
However, the series is neither a work of literature nor a full-on film. It is a ‘microdrama’ divided into snippets, one minute long on average, which you can watch on your phone, interspersed by adverts. This all happens on an app called ReelShort: a video streaming platform for short-form content, and the current market leader in this rapidly growing industry.
Fated to My Forbidden Alpha alone has racked up an enormous 196 million views since it came out last year. For context: the final episode of Game of Thrones, widely regarded (for better or for worse) as a canonical TV event, only drew 19.3 million viewers. ReelShort and other short-form content apps have rocketed to fame since their genesis during the COVID pandemic.
They first entered the media space in China, during the lockdowns of 2020, offering people some much-needed escapism during long months of isolation. Following its booming success with Chinese audiences, Beijing-based digital publisher COL group took ReelShort abroad, adding English micro dramas and subtitles in many other languages to their ever-expanding collection. As of this year, the financial worth of the short-form streaming industry is estimated at around 5 billion US dollars.
In short, this content is hugely popular.
Amidst the continuing expansion of short-form content, there is something interesting about ReelShort’s viewer base: around 75% of them are women. In itself, this is not exactly news. ReelShort offers its viewers temporary refuge from the struggles of life. Stories full of desire and intrigue to be swept away by. Even if you only have a minute to spare. Apparently, women just like watching micro dramas more than men; so what?
This brings us to the dark side of these romantic dramas: the relationships their storylines revolve around tend to be quite disturbing. More specifically, many female characters end up in situations which, in the real world, would be highly problematic. In Fated to My Forbidden Alpha (spoiler alert), female protagonist Selene is only 18 years old when she finds out she is the designated ‘mate’ of the alpha of an enemy clan. The alpha in question is a man who is definitely not 18 anymore. The story that unfolds from this situation is permeated by tropes of jealousy (of course, there is another man who also likes Selene), possessiveness, coercion and all-around unequal power dynamics, mostly at Selene’s expense.
Fated to My Forbidden Alpha not only portrays tropes of possessiveness and coercion, but even idealises these traits in the name of love. In Big Bad Husband, Please Wake Up! (2023), the female lead is forced to marry a rich heir who is in a coma (!). In The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband (2023), the protagonist marries a man, only to find out later on that he is a billionaire, and also went to prison for reasons that never become fully clear.
The heroines of ReelShort are married off and talked down, and more often than not, microdramas feature at least one scene containing sexual violence, either implied or explicit. The erotic tension that many microdramas aim to portray is directly derived from unequal power relationships, and very little else. And yet, women watch in huge numbers. So, what is its audience finding in these small dramas full of big issues?
I presented this question to Dr Emily Lau, who maintains the YouTube channel @Emiloid, where she analyses literature, films and popular culture. “Women have always enjoyed their own romantic and erotic content, as safe places to explore fantasies that might have a darker side”, she argues. As such, this is nothing new.
We know for a fact that cinema based on women’s fantasies has been popular at least since the early 1900s. Romantic literature has been around much longer than that. For at least as long, these stories have been structurally ridiculed and vilified by people who proclaim to have better taste, often men. The condemnation of women’s interests and the hefty dose of sexism embedded in it have never stopped fans from reading and watching or from enjoying whatever they wanted to enjoy. Think, for example, of the sheer numbers of the Twilight fandom around 2010, or the more recent success of the Bridgerton series. Can ReelShort be seen as a continuation of these stories? Lau thinks it can. Besides Bridgerton and Twilight, she sees parallels between ReelShort and the romance genre as it presents itself in Chinese TV series (C-dramas).
“The general storylines definitely feel like dumbed-down and exaggerated versions of C-dramas”, says Lau. “In C-dramas, more than in Western cinema, you see the glorification of jealousy and possessiveness, as a sign of love”. Lau explains that ReelShort takes these tropes that are common in romantic cinema, especially in C-dramas, and makes them very bite-sized and compact. Viewers can indulge in these stories while completely switching off their brains, unlike with longer TV dramas, which might have more complex storylines. Micro dramas don’t ask anything of us. Instead, you can just give in.
Lau also points out that the function of these dramas in people’s lives might be closer to that of fanfiction than of cinema or TV. “ReelShort dramas do not have the claim to quality you see in traditional films and series. They do not adhere to what we normally expect from a plot, the acting is often overly dramatic, but that is the whole idea! Because of this, they have made themselves pretty much immune to the criticism other media have to deal with. In terms of how audiences and critics interact with ReelShort, it looks a lot more like fanfiction”. The crossover between literature, film and fanfiction is something we have seen before: 50 Shades of Grey started off as a fanfiction about the Twilight saga, later gaining its own fanbase.
Contrary to actual fanfiction, though, ReelShort dramas are not explicitly based on other works of literature or cinema. The other big difference is that ReelShort content is commercialised. Fanfiction is accessible for free, written by fans for fans, creating a shared (sometimes erotic) imagination. With ReelShort, on the other hand, dreaming away comes at a cost. Of most micro dramas, only the first few episodes are offered for free. To continue watching, you need to spend ‘coins’: the virtual currency of the app. You can obtain them by watching ads, which will often be twice as long as the actual episodes, or buy them for real money. The more you get hooked on the super-short-term satisfaction microdramas have to offer, the more you are likely to spend. This feels less like a space to freely explore one’s romantic desires, and more like a clever way to capitalise on our desire to switch off and be entertained. So whose fantasy is this really?
On the one hand, the titles of many microdramas give away an important clue: they are written from the point of view of the women portrayed. It is Fated to My Forbidden Alpha, and The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband. The first-person narrative in these titles is that of the female protagonist. This again reminds us of fanfiction, where creators often give consumers the opportunity to emotionally insert themselves into their favourite characters. However, ReelShort is a space that is different from fanfiction because it commercialises features that make fanfiction so appealing, by making them super compact and easy to digest. Dr Emily Lau finds this capitalisation concerning, because it turns creativity and imagination into a money machine, taking away exploratory safe spaces as they exist in genuine fanfiction.
As for the problematic nature of the relationships portrayed, Lau argues that this is not exclusive to Reelshort or C-dramas at all. “There are very few examples of healthy relationships in cinema in general, as they tend to be inherently less dramatic. It is just more difficult to make a juicy story about healthy love”. And indeed, apart from Gomez and Morticia in The Addams Family, I could not think of many films focusing on a relationship that isn’t problematic in some way.
Whilst it is easy to vilify the sexism and the unhealthy relationships in ReelShort dramas, it would be more informative to take a critical look at where their scriptwriters get their inspiration from. At the end of the day, sexism in romantic stories is nothing new. It is the continuation of this sexism, and the way it is implemented in micro dramas, that make ReelShort into a platform to be used with caution. The super low-effort watching experience, combined with the dumbing down of already problematic tropes for financial gain, encourages viewers to shut off their brains at a time when this might be a bad idea.
How then can we still enjoy the dramas we love? This question goes far beyond microdramas. Whether we are into Twilight, Bridgerton or C-dramas, many women (and men) want romantic stories which explore unhealthy relationships. The desire for them is not going anywhere. Lau argues that viewers just need to be self-aware, conscious of why they are attracted to specific tropes or fantasies. “People shouldn’t be ashamed of what they like. Instead, they need to try and understand it. If you are not aware of what goes into your taste for romantic content, you can unconsciously normalise things you don’t want to normalise”. If you know yourself and are aware of why you find tropes like possessiveness and coercion exciting to consume, romantic content can truly be a safe space to explore fantasies, and not distort how you view relationships or yourself. To know thine taste in films and books is to know thyself.
