#EXTREMELY NORMAL BEHAVIOR lan xichen would be proud of this one

[jinlian]

tantai jin: happy birthday! here's my mother's grave so you can tell me where you want to be buried when you die. btw are you in love with me?

[lightningthor]

Had to do a separate post for this instead of an answer, formatting was fighting me. I’m gonna try and put my thoughts under the cut. Please keep in mind that English in not my native language.

Firstly, hi! You’ve been here for a long time.

And now, it may be my view as a European but i will never, ever understand judging a celebrity or an idol by their fanbase. I immediately thought back to this ask anon asked Chaya. Why on earth should i judge a celebrity based on their fans? I’ve been on the internet long enough to know what kind of terrible people are on here. XZ has tens of thousands of fans, the idea that he can somehow control them or something is absolutely ridiculous. Should he constantly monitor them like children? It’s impossible. In his new interview he pretty much says: Don’t do anything extreme and for the love of all that is holy act normal.

He said it perfectly himself when asked about if idols should control their fans: “I don’t think the relationship i have with people who love and support me is one of superior and subordinate. The word "control", I don't think we have a superior-subordinate relationship. Rather, I think our relationship is as equals. For me, as an artist, a public figure, and as myself, what i need to do is do my job well. Act well, sing well, treat my work seriously. Do things to encourage positivity and guide the people who love me.“ And then he was like: don’t do anything extreme, don’t hurt anyone, be normal. I agree 100%. It’s not his fucking job to control a bunch of people he’s never met. He’s responsible for himself and his actions.

I’m sure that as a WB user you know that fan behavior regarding idols is completely insane. Stalking? normal. wiretapping? happens. So the notion that idols can stop their “fans” from being mean is...hmm...hilarious.

I feel like XZ was just caught in the middle of a fanbase war. It was his fans and antis who were one-upping each other and in the end he is hated for it? Sorry but I can’t understand that. And i’m pretty sure his fans were not the only ones doing the bullying. Example:

“There’s a strange exhilaration that comes from destroying a person” I’m sorry but what the actual flaming fuck.

Plus more normal things like, you know, telling XZ fans to go kill themselves. If this is the kind of accounts that were purged than i’m not surprised. Though i’m sure, like i said, that it was absolutely mutual.

Ao3 is so important, i love ao3 and will defend it to death and i’m so sorry for Chinese users. But @lan-xichens really opened my eyes that ao3 was probably already in the process of being banned because you mean to tell me that with all the works there, the Chinese government was like “Aight, we could excuse everything else, the explicit m/m and w/w works, the rpfs about countless idols, but rpfs about this one guy? no. BAN IT” like hmmmm. What was XZ supposed to do? He wakes up one day in quarantine being hated for the fact that some people wrote porn about him and his costar, other people reported that and suddenly it’s a shitshow. But what gets me the most is that he APOLOGIZED. I nearly had a stroke, why would HE apologize? Or in the words of this post “upsetting to watch a man try to simultaneously apologize for inspiring pornography and for inspiring people to report said pornography to the chinese government when he really should not have to apologize for either of those things, which he accomplished by existing in a public space.  “

He can’t be responsible for thousands of people he doesn’t know and their actions and opinions. And he still fucking apologized.  He also apologized for some comments he posted when he was 19-20 and first started using Weibo. It’s obvious he doesn’t even KNOW if he said something wrong in them, he’s just apologizing for the possibility that he may have said something inappropriate in them. That’s a whole other post though. Digging up a decade old comments and such and cancel culture... like if you go back in my tumblr a few years you will be in hell.

I can’t imagine what he could have said to stop this. Should he have just written “Stop it, I’m glad that people are writing explicit fanfics about me and my friend.”? From what i’ve seen, people hate him completely irrationally. The thing is, no matter what he says, he will be hated and cyber-bullied and slandered. It sadly comes with all the idol stuff. You will be loved AND hated pretty much no matter what you do. And the more success you have the more crazy it will be and he is one of the biggest celebrities after the Untamed. I’m just sorry that chinese fans received such a blow just because a bunch of people are complete psychopaths. Because they are not fans. No matter what these idiots call themselves they are most definitely not his fans, they think they own him and his career. Fuck them, that’s what.

I don’t think he fears losing his fans, he used to be a normal person working a normal job and said that he’s not afraid of going back to that. Now he’s told everyone to please be fucking normal for a hot sec. But the people who ARE his fans? He’s proud of them and the donations and so glad for their support and for sharing their love. He’s inspired by them, by their donations to charity in his name, he wants to live up to the love and attention they give him, wants to be better because of them. He doesn’t say: yep, i’m responsible for the donations they made, be glad you have me. He’s just touched and inspired by it.

I’m sure there’s much more to this story. When i tried to read up on it i was just feeling completely sick because what the fuck. But in the end i stand by my words. Never judge a celebrity based on their fanbase, especially the most obnoxious and loud part. I’ve been on tumblr long enough to see that even here, blogs who have a few thousand followers are dragged into shit created by their followers. HERE. ON TUMBLR. Where we’re all cringy and completely unimportant and irrelevant. I can’t imagine all the shit that goes on in the depths of idol fandom - the scariest place on earth.