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Queer Masculinities in Contemporary Fantasy Web Novels after the “Popularization of Feminism”- Focusing on Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, The S-Classes That I Raised, and Becoming the Light of the Dark Sea

  • Journal of Popular Narrative
  • 2026, 32(3), pp.95~138
  • DOI : 10.18856/jpn.2026.32.3.003
  • Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research
  • Received : August 9, 2026
  • Accepted : October 18, 2026
  • Published : October 31, 2026

Jung Yoon Young 1

1서울과학기술대학교 미래 이후 연구소

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on the “queer” masculinities represented in three popular Korean contemporary fantasy web novels—Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, The S-Classes That I Raised, and Becoming the Light of the Dark Sea—and aims to identify the principles through which such masculinities are constituted. Rather than treating masculinity as a singular and universal category, this study traces how masculinities of difference are constructed, thereby demonstrating that contemporary popular web novels function as speculative spaces in which new forms of masculinity are explored and experimented with. This study draws on queer theory, which calls the binary system of gender/sex into question, while particularly building upon the theories of masculinity developed by Raewyn Connell and Jack Halberstam. From Connell, it adopts the concepts of the constructed and plural nature of masculinity, and from Halberstam, it draws on the perspective of “rewriting masculinity.” Furthermore, to account for the allosexual and heteronormative limitations of the binary system of gender/sex, which positions masculinity and femininity as each other’s exclusive counterparts, this study argues that it is necessary to posit diverse counterparts when examining the constitutive principles of masculinity. Accordingly, the main chapters examine, in turn, the relationships between the male protagonists and male supporting characters (Chapter 2), between the male protagonists and female supporting characters (Chapter 3), and between the male protagonists and the communities to which they belong(Chapter 4). Through these analyses, the study demonstrates that the protagonists’ “masculinities” exhibit a queerness that conflicts with the norms operating at each of these levels. More specifically, it examines their resistance to the structures governing the distribution of masculinity within male homosociality; their identification with women beyond the sphere of patriarchal influence; and their enactment of community-oriented practices in ways that differ from normative masculinity. In sum, this study argues that the three texts actively imagine and represent queer masculinities. It contributes to establishing the place of these texts in the histories of queer literature and web literature in Korea, while demonstrating that contemporary web literature is a particularly active site for literary imagination concerning new forms of gender and sexuality.

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This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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