SeaWorld Wants to Make You Horny

海洋世界想让你“心猿意马”

When you think of SeaWorld, you most likely think of orcas, school trips to the aquarium, or eating chicken fingers while contemplating the ethics of marine mammal captivity. But this Halloween, the theme park franchise wants to make SeaWorld synonymous with something else entirely: BookTok smut.

当你想到海洋世界（SeaWorld）时，最先浮现在脑海里的很可能是虎鲸、学校组织的海洋馆之旅，或者是在吃着炸鸡柳的同时思考圈养海洋哺乳动物的伦理问题。但今年万圣节，这家主题公园连锁品牌希望让海洋世界与完全不同的事物挂钩：TikTok读书圈（BookTok）的色情文学。

On September 11, SeaWorld Orlando officially opened its annual Howl-O-Scream event, an after-hours Halloween-themed immersive experience featuring various “scare zones” in the park. Scattered between the more expected spooky fare, such as a haunted “Woodrot Hollow” forest and an I Know What You Did Last Summer–themed haunted house is Just One More Chapter, a BookTok-inspired zone featuring the hunky tortured bad boys of romantasy lore.

9月11日，奥兰多海洋世界正式开启了年度“尖叫万圣节”（Howl-O-Scream）活动。这是一场在闭园后举办的万圣节主题沉浸式体验，公园内设有多个“惊吓区”。在诸如闹鬼的“腐木谷”（Woodrot Hollow）森林和以《我知道你去年夏天干了什么》为主题的鬼屋等常规恐怖项目之间，穿插着一个名为“再读一章”（Just One More Chapter）的区域。这是一个受BookTok启发的展区，主角是浪漫奇幻小说中那些身材健硕、饱受折磨的“坏男孩”。

In videos posted by Orlando-based influencers who got an early look at the park, young men with masks, floppy hair, and painted-on abs gallivant around wearing black denim, loitering next to brick walls, beckoning to park attendees, and gifting them with roses. And on Instagram, influencers posed around a central set piece, an oversized book open to a chapter called “The Cathedral,” emblazoned with the slogan “Good Girls Go for the Bad Boys.”

在奥兰多当地网红发布的抢先探园视频中，戴着面具、留着凌乱发型、画着腹肌的年轻男子穿着黑色牛仔裤四处游荡，他们靠在砖墙边徘徊，向游客招手并赠送玫瑰。在Instagram上，网红们围绕着一个核心布景拍照——那是一本翻开的超大号书籍，书页上写着“大教堂”这一章节，并印有标语：“乖乖女都爱坏男孩”。

Some of the TikToks from the scare zone went viral, garnering mixed reactions. “Booktok dark ‘romantasy’ cancer is RUINING heterosexuality,” wrote one X user, “every little tasteful drop of eros has to be squeezed out of everything so it can be refined into pure concentrated fucking CRINGE.” The fact that the event took place at SeaWorld, an amusement park franchise that is perhaps most closely associated with a harrowing documentary about an orca, also lent to the absurdity.

来自该惊吓区的一些TikTok视频走红网络，引发了褒贬不一的反应。一位X（原Twitter）用户写道：“BookTok的暗黑‘浪漫奇幻’毒瘤正在毁掉异性恋，每一滴有品位的爱欲都被榨干，提炼成了纯粹、浓缩的、该死的尴尬。”而这场活动竟然发生在海洋世界——这个最常与一部关于虎鲸的悲惨纪录片联系在一起的主题公园品牌——也增添了几分荒诞感。

But I did speak to one content creator present at the scare zone who had an entirely different reaction. “I wouldn’t say it was scary,” said the creator, who declined to provide their name because they did not want to “jeopardize their relationship with SeaWorld.” “But it did leave me with a good feeling—I guess you could say a sexy feeling, in a way.”

但我采访了一位在现场的内容创作者，他有着完全不同的反应。“我不会说这很吓人，”这位创作者说道。由于不想“危及与海洋世界的关系”，他拒绝透露姓名。“但它确实给了我一种很好的感觉——我想你可以说，在某种程度上，这是一种性感的感觉。”

According to Jessie Kinsey, the art director at SeaWorld Orlando, that was precisely the point. She came up with the idea for the event last year, after seeing romantasy bestsellers like Lights Out and Haunting Adeline go viral on TikTok. She knew that a dark romance-themed scare zone was not necessarily “something that you would expect from a traditional horror event,” but she had a feeling it would resonate with the BookTok girlies. “I remember texting my production manager, saying, ‘Don’t judge me, but I have an idea,’” she tells WIRED.

奥兰多海洋世界的艺术总监杰西·金西（Jessie Kinsey）表示，这正是他们的目的所在。去年，在看到《Lights Out》和《Haunting Adeline》等浪漫奇幻畅销书在TikTok上走红后，她萌生了这个想法。她知道，一个暗黑浪漫主题的惊吓区未必是“人们对传统恐怖活动所期待的”，但她预感这会引起BookTok女孩们的共鸣。“我记得当时给我的制作经理发短信说：‘别评判我，但我有个点子，’”她告诉《连线》（WIRED）杂志。

A fiction writer in her spare time (she actually wrote the text for the oversized book set piece at SeaWorld), Kinsey came up with the narrative for the zone: It would be set in a crumbling Gothic cathedral, built in a town run by a wealthy family called the Blackthorns. “These roses grew up around it, and created this beauty out of destruction,” Kinsey puts it. “Which I thought was kind of fitting for the themes of these books.”

金西业余时间也是一位小说作家（海洋世界那个超大号书籍布景上的文字其实就是她写的）。她为该区域构思了叙事背景：故事发生在一座摇摇欲坠的哥特式大教堂里，这座教堂位于一个由富有的布莱克索恩（Blackthorn）家族统治的小镇。“玫瑰在教堂周围生长，在毁灭中创造了这种美，”金西解释道，“我觉得这与这些书的主题非常契合。”

Romantasy, or romance and fantasy, fuses mythology and supernatural figures such as faeries or demons with explicit sex scenes, exemplified by books like Rebecca Yarros’ Onyx Storm and Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses series. The genre has exploded in popularity thanks to BookTok, with Bloomberg reporting that romantasy pulled in an estimated $610 million in 2024 alone. The male antiheroes of the genre, such as the “shadow-daddy” Rhysand in Maas’ A Court of Mist and Fury and dragon rider Xaden Riorson from Yarros’ Fourth Wing, are tortured, dangerous, (at best) morally complex, and egregiously hot.

浪漫奇幻（Romantasy，即Romance与Fantasy的结合）将神话、精灵或恶魔等超自然元素与露骨的性爱场景融合在一起，丽贝卡·雅罗斯（Rebecca Yarros）的《Onyx Storm》和莎拉·J·马斯（Sarah J. Maas）的《荆棘与玫瑰之庭》（A Court of Thorns and Roses）系列就是典型代表。得益于BookTok，这一类型文学人气爆棚。据彭博社报道，仅2024年，浪漫奇幻类书籍的收入就估计达到了6.1亿美元。该类型中的男性反英雄角色，如马斯《迷雾与愤怒之庭》中的“暗影老爹”里斯安（Rhysand），以及雅罗斯《第四翼》中的龙骑士赛登·里奥森（Xaden Riorson），他们饱受折磨、危险、（往好了说）道德复杂，而且极其性感。

The MMC—“male main character,” in fandom terms—is an amalgam of different romantasy tropes, a mysterious, vaguely threatening masked man represented by the eight scare actors employed in the zone. (In one video, one of them inexplicably wears KneeBlades and skids toward a prostrate guest and jumps over them.) For both narrative and legal reasons, they’re not based on any one specific character.

MMC——粉丝圈术语中的“男性主角”——是各种浪漫奇幻套路的集合体，由该区域雇佣的八名惊吓演员扮演，表现为一个神秘、带有隐约威胁感的蒙面男子。（在一段视频中，其中一人莫名其妙地戴着护膝，滑向一名趴在地上的游客并从其身上跳过。）出于叙事和法律层面的考虑，他们并非基于任何特定的角色。

The infusion of the romance genre with themes of psychological manipulation, violence, or nonconsensual sex has led to criticism of the dark romantasy genre in general, and of the Just One More Chapter scare zone. But “the threatening nature” of the romantasy bad boys is why it works in a horror context, says Kinsey: “It’s a love story, but it’s not all sunshine. This is someone who is morally gray, who is potentially violent, who is obsessive, and that part of it is threatening. But that also plays into the appeal of it.”

浪漫文学中融入心理操纵、暴力或非自愿性行为等主题，导致人们对暗黑浪漫奇幻这一类型以及“再读一章”惊吓区提出了批评。但金西认为，浪漫奇幻坏男孩的“威胁性”正是其在恐怖语境下奏效的原因：“这是一个爱情故事，但并不全是阳光。这是一个道德灰色、可能具有暴力倾向、且有强迫症的人，这种特质本身就是一种威胁。但这恰恰构成了它的吸引力。”

On social media, some pointed out the potential for fans sexually harassing scare actors, a not-uncommon issue at Halloween theme park events. “Being a scare actor, it does come with risks regardless of what area of the park you’re working in, because not everyone reacts the same way to being startled or surprised when alcohol is involved,” Kinsey says. “But our actors’ safety is first and foremost.” She says the actors receive extensive training for how to deal with harassment, and that security and stage managers are always present to intervene if necessary.

在社交媒体上，一些人指出粉丝可能会对惊吓演员进行性骚扰，这在万圣节主题公园活动中并不罕见。“作为一名惊吓演员，无论你在公园的哪个区域工作，都存在风险，因为当涉及酒精时，并非每个人在受到惊吓或惊喜时的反应都一样，”金西说，“但我们演员的安全是第一位的。”她表示，演员们接受了如何应对骚扰的全面培训，安保人员和舞台经理也会随时在场，以便在必要时进行干预。

So far, however, SeaWorld Orlando says that horny millennial ACOTAR fans haven’t posed too much of a problem—in fact, quite the opposite. Kinsey says the viral attention has translated into an explosion in ticket sales, with Howl-O-Scream enjoying its biggest month in the history of its six-year run. “I knew that it was going to get people talking, and I know that the genre isn’t for everyone, so it was going to be a bit controversial,” says Kinsey. “I did not expect the size of the reaction, but it’s kind of fun.” It is, dare we call it, a Howl-O-Scream.

然而到目前为止，奥兰多海洋世界表示，那些“心猿意马”的千禧一代《荆棘与玫瑰之庭》粉丝并没有造成太大麻烦——事实上，情况恰恰相反。金西表示，病毒式的关注转化为了门票销量的激增，“尖叫万圣节”迎来了其六年历史上最火爆的一个月。“我知道这会引起人们的讨论，也知道这种类型并非适合所有人，所以它会引发一些争议，”金西说，“我没想到反应会这么大，但这挺有趣的。”这确实是一场名副其实的“尖叫万圣节”。