[grimbravado]

“花迎剑佩星初落，柳拂旌旗露未干。”

Flowers greet the gleam of sword as the last stars fade; Willows sweep the drifting banners, their dew not yet dry.

[grimbravado]

Me getting two notes on my DFGG posts: omg so much hype for DFGG rn let’s f gooooo

[grimbravado]

Once every 12 months or so one person comes along and reblogs a few of the DFGG posts. I’ve semi-given up on my DFGG agenda but this once in a year occurrence still gets me excited. 😂

[grimbravado]

Musuli released an additional chapter to MouMou/A Certain Someone, which finally brought Guo Men, a work from 2015, into the spotlight lol.

Did some Musuli fans finally realize that Guo Men, a work from 2015, couldn’t have copied MouMou, a work from 2019? If you notice similarities between the two, perhaps, just perhaps, MouMou borrowed from Guo Men?

I generally try to avoid fandom drama, but Guo Men deserves so much more recognition. If priest had chosen to publish Guo Men, I don’t think MouMou could have achieved the same level of popularity it now enjoys. But. Priest’s decision to refuse to publish Guo Men in mainland China because she doesn’t want the censors to strip her story and characters of the central struggle that made the story meaningful is such a bold and admirable move.

Happy 10 year anniversary Guo Men. 敬自由磊落光明！🍻

[grimbravado]

Priest's 'Guomen' is the seventh ‘danmei’ novel I have read and, I think, the first out of the seven that truly told a queer romance story.

[grimbravado]

Priest once vaguely explained why Guò Mén likely can’t be published as a physical book in Simplified Chinese, suggesting that certain changes (which I interpret to mean those that are bound to be made to satisfy censorship) would strip the MCs’ decade-long struggle of its meaning.

She wrote Guò Mén in 2015. It’s extremely frustrating to think that given the current circumstances, the fact that the book is still available on Jinjiang now already feels like a miracle.

And if the age listed online is accurate, she was only in her mid-twenties when she wrote Guò Mén. It's a bit rough around the edges and probably not her best work. I also have issues with an important plot development. But it was also a deeply moving story that feels very realistic. I cried. A lot. There's more I want to say, but to avoid spoilers for the two, three people who might read this book, a quote that Priest included in the book from Mencius:

“Upon self-reflection, finding righteousness within, I shall go forward undeterred, even against a multitude."

自反而缩，虽千万人，吾往矣。

[grimbravado]

Tangentially related, a random comment from a danmei reader I just read reminds me that being a danmei fan does not preclude one from being homophobic. Some danmei fans really just appreciate the danmei genre for purposes best reflected in the term’s literal meaning — indulging in beauty. B&N’s probably right to put Danmei in the fantasy section and not LGBTQ.

And Priest’s Guomen still stands out in that regard.

[grimbravado]

Ten years on, Guo Men’s finally started to get the recognition it so deserves. YES! 🍻

[grimbravado]

There’s something to be said about loving your own characters without being precious about them. Especially in danmei, where characters are practically designed to be adored, it makes sense that authors want to show them in the best light. But there are different ways to do that.

Most danmei authors create people who are either already more perfect than 97% of the male population, or “flawed” in the kind of way that’s really just a backhanded compliment. Ghost Server Legion by Yan Liang Yu might be the only danmei I’ve read that actually features normal people, like the kind you’d actually run into in China. (Some redditors call A Letter to Keanu Reeves “realistic,” which… please. Lmao.) The MC is a chub, and ACTUALLY wins by his personality. The ML was better looking but there’s barely any descriptions of his actual looks, yet he’s one of the most funny, charming deadpan snarker type of characters I’ve encountered because of what he says and does.

Priest clearly loves her characters too, but she’s not afraid to rough them up a bit first or roast them from inside the house. And she’s deliberate when it comes to how she writes about their looks or charm. She knows exactly when to lean in and when to pull back.

What I can’t stomach is when an author piles on flowery descriptions of how beautiful or special their characters are. Case in point: Fanservice Paradox by Zhi Chu. I was craving an idol/showbiz danmei after my new found Enhypen obsession, so I picked it up because of the good reviews. But by the tenth mention of the MC’s delicate pink birthmark, I tapped out. And judging by the NovelUpdates reviews, she apparently keeps going. Like, another hundred times going.

[grimbravado]

Revenged Love fascinates me. Not the show itself (I still haven’t finished it, though I’ve watched most of the BTS lol), but everything around it. Two little known straight male actors from mainland China suddenly blew up after starring in a BL drama that was released everywhere except mainland China. You could easily fill an academic paper or an industry report whichever angle you take lol

Whenever a romance drama becomes a surprise hit, it attracts several fan groups: the “CP” fans (those who ship Chi Cheng x Wu Suowei), the “RPS/真人CP” fans (those who ship Tian Xuning x Zi Yu), and the solo/career fans for each actor. These groups might overlap but they also fight constantly and as I’ve recently observed, those fights can get ugly fast… CP fans are fickle and will disappear the moment the fantasy breaks. What’s the best career move to make as the two actors themselves and their agents? I’d imagine they’d have to strategize on things like which base to focus on and for how long to serve the cp fans? Both of them could develop genuine career fans if they play it smart. Zi Yu’s made for the stage. I wouldn’t even count myself as a casual fan but I’d probably be happy to pay to see him perform. When he was on stage, he was just so radiant, graceful, and authentic? And Tian Xuning can actually act, which already sets him apart from most idol-type leads.

There’s also a big difference between blowing up from a danmei adaptation (like 2.0-4.0 did) and becoming famous through something like Revenged Love. The first can at least try to distance itself from its source material. The second leaves you with what the fans call a real 出身问题/“tainted origin of fame problem.” People in the circle might look down on them while secretly envying their new found success. And I’ve seen comments speculating that they’ll need a two year cool down period before any serious acting roles would find them(?) Once you reach that level of fame, you even have to think about how the state apparatus sees you and learn to read censorship trends and move carefully when the wind changes.

And then there’s that age old question that haunted Wu Suowei and now it haunts me too. If two straight men play lovers that convincingly, do they actually turn gay? And if they do, can they turn back? (Not that I want them to… just curious)

[grimbravado]

[grimbravado]

#Finished Danmei

I Can Do It by Jiang Zi Bei

Or as I like to call it: I Can I Up. Because the title riffs on “你行你上，不行别BB” - loosely translated as “if you can do it then just do it, if you can’t then shut the f up” or in peak Chinglish: you can you up, no can no BB.

This one was perfect. Not “top danmei of all time” perfect, but perfect in the sense that it checks every single box I want from a danmei on any normal day: a story and romance that move at just the right pace, good chemistry, zero dog blood, genuinely funny dialogue/characters/writing, and a setting that’s both interesting and well-researched (in this case, esports). There’s something so relaxing about video game–themed danmei for me whether it’s MOBAs or MMORPGs and Jiang Zi Bei clearly knows LoL inside out. Jian Rong is a roaring baby tiger in front of everyone else and a total Hello Kitty in front of Lu Boyuan. In my head, I pictured early-twenties Tian Xuning as Jian Rong and Oh Sehun as Lu Boyuan… I don’t care because that mental casting worked. I was eating good.

Two things I wasn’t a fan of: Jian Rong’s age; the very strong antagonistic tone towards SK players.

—不可抗力的分割线—

(AND here we go again. While this entry was sitting in my drafts the past few days, the Jiang Zi Bei topic on weibo has been completely flooded with posts accusing her of lifting too much from real life figures and events, like Faker’s pentakill and JackeyLove’s whole career. People are especially upset over her claim that her characters and plots were entirely original. I can’t tell yet how fair those accusations are, but they don’t seem entirely baseless either. A lot of hurt feelings all around… sigh.)

[grimbravado]

Will future historians write about how two little-known Chinese actors, whose show aired in markets everywhere except mainland China, shot to fame and went on to top the charts on Weibo, a mainland Chinese social media platform, with a combined 20 million likes on their Mid-Autumn Festival posts?

(Maybe some of it was inauthentic engagement, but still incredible all things considered. Like wtf are those numbers??)

(Shows associated with pairings 1.0 to 5.0 at least aired on mainland platforms (?))

(Equally incredible is how I don’t know anyone in real life who’s a real danmei fan, except for one person who’s watched The Untamed)

[grimbravado]

Zi Yu: You know I can’t eat cilantro, right? You’re not trying to poison me, are you?

Mysterious voice in the background: I know.

(He also glanced to the right as if a third person other than the camera man was there 🤔)

(Weibo comment be like: if that voice in the background is not Tian Xuning then Zi Yu should fire the dude because that’s unprofessional 😂)

[grimbravado]

I kept noticing mentions of “6.0” and assumed it referred to Tian Xuning and Zi Yu based on the context, but I had no clue what 1.0 to 5.0 meant. This post is a great overview lol. Just being a Chinese speaker isn’t enough to grasp Chinese fandom speak - there’s just so much coded language…

Translation:

“From Danmei adaptations 1.0 to 6.0, everyone’s shipped at least one of these pairs 🤭🤭

1.0 Huang Jingyu + Xu Weizhou — Addicted (2016)

2.0 Bai Yu + Zhu Yilong — Guardian (2018)

3.0 Xiao Zhan + Wang Yibo — The Untamed (2019)

4.0 Gong Jun + Zhang Zhehan — Word of Honor (2021)

5.0 Zhang Kangle + Ma Boquan — Gui Zhao (2024)

6.0 Tian Xuning + Zi Yu — Revenged Love (2025)”

(A not-so-important caveat here would be that Gui Zhao is not a danmei adaptation)

(And if we count non-danmei stuff, Lan Yu should be 0.0)

[grimbravado]

[grimbravado]

[grimbravado]

Chai Jidan’s writing in the first 130 or so chapters of Ni Xi (the original 2009 novel that Revenged Love is based on) was something else. I can’t recall the last time I read danmei writing and characters this fierce, earthy, clumsy, wild, and primal. Just pure, raw vitality. Some authors wrote Beijing as a decadent swirl of neon lights and nightlife, but she wrote it as old courtyards and red walls, hormones running wild as can be. And Chi Cheng’s not (just) a rich trust fund kid - his dad in the novel was the local Party secretary lmao. Absolutely loved all the (likely unintentional) social commentary.

The TV adaptation really doesn’t come close to carry the same flavor as the novel. Chai’s own taste has changed, so has the audiences’ I guess.

But the rest of it, chapter 134-ish onwards, reads like some batshit crazy fanfic. It’s a shame. But I still loved the first 30 percent unreservedly.

(I’ve seen the novel translated as Counter Attack? 逆袭’s more like Underdog Comeback)

[grimbravado]

The two big CN audio drama platforms have pulled a bunch of danmei titles, most likely under censorship pressure.

The weibo comment sections are now a mess of cryptic posts blaming Revenged Love, basically saying that its flashy promotion and sudden popularity painted a target on its back, catching the censors’ eye, and now has gotten everything else swept up as collateral.

That’s another sad thing about living under censorship for so long. Instead of raging at the censors (which is at this point useless and potentially dangerous), people start directing their anger at each other.

Where this new wave of censorship is headed, who knows. People are already pointing out that even the danmei tab on Mao’er has vanished. Which was ironic enough to begin with, since the danmei category had long been euphemistically labeled 纯爱/pure love (while 言情/romance was reserved for BG) on JJWXC thanks, I’m guessing, to earlier rounds of censorship.

[dragonsandphoenix]

Yeah, initially I just wanted to reblog and add tags but what the heck sorry OP.

This whole situation has generally sent me spiraling. I kind of get wanting to control the situation by directing blame onto a specific party even though I don't agree. Cause otherwise you'll just go insane, each new update is more depressing than the last.

But it's silly to blame revenged love which is an undeniable triumph for chinese bl media. Like it brought chinese bl back to global fandom's attention and showed that it's not all chaste bromance. Audio dramas too were genuinely pushing boundaries on what they could get away with, or at the least find loopholes if they couldn't, like uploading explicit scenes separately onto other platforms. I am an advocator for the view that erotic art is art, and in addition to their consistently high production values, danmei audio dramas had been getting bolder and bolder in terms of depicting queer eroticism, especially given that the industry had already undergone a crackdown back in 2022. 69, blowjobs, riding, rimming, heck even a flip fucking scene which I've never seen in another BL

At this point, I also don't know what's going to happen next. The danmei subculture will probably still survive, we might even still get audio dramas once the storm has passed, albeit "cleaner" (back to the older days where things were chaste af). But it has undoubtedly experienced an immense setback. I think fandom, especially international fandom don't realise just how important audio dramas are within the danmei sphere. They contribute to at least half of danmei fan content, especially for the less popular titles. For every time you go on tiktok and see a danmei edit with some audio of characters quoting lines from the novel or something, chances are that's from an audio drama. My heart just goes out to the producers and voice actors, it's such an awful waste of talent and resources and time and energy. I don't know if after all this they'll still be bold enough to keep challenging restrictions but I appreciate the joy their works have brought me for the past few years I've been actively listening to audio dramas.

[grimbravado]

The two big CN audio drama platforms have pulled a bunch of danmei titles, most likely under censorship pressure.

The weibo comment sections are now a mess of cryptic posts blaming Revenged Love, basically saying that its flashy promotion and sudden popularity painted a target on its back, catching the censors’ eye, and now has gotten everything else swept up as collateral.

That’s another sad thing about living under censorship for so long. Instead of raging at the censors (which is at this point useless and potentially dangerous), people start directing their anger at each other.

Where this new wave of censorship is headed, who knows. People are already pointing out that even the danmei tab on Mao’er has vanished. Which was ironic enough to begin with, since the danmei category had long been euphemistically labeled 纯爱/pure love (while 言情/romance was reserved for BG) on JJWXC thanks, I’m guessing, to earlier rounds of censorship.

[grimbravado]

Lmao 🤣