Description
Boys’ Love (BL), the genre of male-male romance created by and for women and sexual minorities, has been prevalent in China during the past two decades. Originated from Japanese comics appeared in the 1970s, the BL subculture in China has now developed in its track and successfully merged with “a diverse range of local and global media and celebrity cultures, and developed into a transnational, all-inclusive, and female-dominated meta-fan culture” (Yang and Xu 2017, 3). Chinese BL stories currently come along with a wide range of formats including fiction, manga, anime, games, audio drama, MV, songs, and cosplay, while the BL adapted web-drama has been the format achieving the greatest grossing success (e.g., Guardian, 2018; The Untamed, 2019; Word of Honor, 2021).Against this backdrop, BL fans do not only seek all kinds of drama/character/actor-related materials across platforms (e.g., interviews, reality shows, promotional events etc.) but also produce their own extensively relevant stories (e.g., fanfictions, fanart, slash videos etc.) to gain a full experience. This project adopts a transmedia perspective to investigate
1. how fans engage with the transmedia extensions of BL adapted web-dramas across multiple media platforms.
2. how they empower the producer-initiated and fan-strengthened counterculture violating the hegemonic mainstream culture and heteronormativity.
| Period | Nov 2021 → … |
|---|---|
| Visiting | University of Nottingham Ningbo China |
| Degree of Recognition | National |