Over the years, I’ve read some truly dreadful fanfiction written by authors with a questionable grasp on human interaction, narrative structure, and mammalian physiology. Even so, no fanfiction author deserves a year and a half of forced labor for what they write!
Well, in Russia, they do just that. 36-year-old photographer and stylist Alexandra Kuzyk has just been sentenced to 18 months of hard labor for writing fanfiction about K-Pop group Stray Kids. So, was the Russian state concerned about copyright, writing skill, or the accuracy of her portrayals of the group?
Nope, they took extreme exception to Kuzyk’s stories featuring same sex relationships. The story began when an unnamed woman discovered Kuzyk’s work on her underage daughter’s devices, apparently through her being a member of a Telegram channel that featured LGBTQ+ related posts and an excerpt from the fanfiction.
Russian woman sentenced to forced labour for writing gay K-Pop fan-fiction ➡️ https://t.co/XkMVjId2EC
— PinkNews (@PinkNews) May 13, 2026
📷 Getty pic.twitter.com/jySHzDjdS2
This was sent to Roskomnadzor, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media. As per a post from Kuzyk, the investigation proceeded swiftly:
“The first examination began [on] November 23. There were no printed versions of my fics at the time. I don’t want to scare you, but the denunciation was written against an electronic version of a ‘mediocre’ fanfic. The denunciation was reviewed and an examination was conducted. The fact that I wasn’t publishing or selling anything at the time didn’t save me.”
Kuyzk was identified, and cops raided her home in Yekaterinburg, seizing all her electronic devices and 20 CDs. They evaluated the material and prosecuted her based on Vladimir Putin’s 2014 ban on the promotion of “nontraditional sexual relationships”.
Prosecutors demanded Kuyzk face a four-year prison sentence for her “crime”, so I suppose she should be grateful to him that she’ll only be spending a year and a half of her life in some miserable penal colony.
Unfair
The “hard labor” Kuzyk will experience will likely consist of compulsory employment for the city, which, for women, generally means working as an unpaid cleaner or in other menial sanitation work. So, a far cry from breaking rocks or being sent down the salt mines, but still extremely miserable.
You probably don’t need me to tell you that Russia isn’t exactly a gay culture hub under Vladimir Putin, with anyone involved in the “LGBT movement” officially criminalized as an extremist.
For example, Orenburg bar manager Diana Kamilyanova and art director Alexander Klimov are currently facing a decade in prison for simply staging and filming drag performances – for which they have been designated as “terrorists”.
It’s unlikely Kuzyk is going to get any leniency or be able to appeal this, so we can only hope she manages to first finish her sentence, then gets out of Russia altogether.
Published: May 14, 2026 08:25 am