#favorite cdrama

[dream-thief-forever-amen]

I’m rewatching the Legend of Shen Li… cause I’m feeling conflicted over what my top drama of 2024 is. It’s between this and Fangs of Fortune.

They’re honestly too different to even compare, though. And they are both deeply satisfying to me, especially in rewatches. I’ve already rewatched Shen Li about four times this year, in sections, like a comfort food you go back to without thinking. And I could stare at the visual sexy feast of Fangs of Fortune all day.

Got a few more weeks to ruminate on it before the eoy wrap up.

Favorite Character, though… Zhu Yan. Without question. No contest. I love him.

[subbwoofer]

Yang Mi Weibo 2022 Night

[mostlyfate]

Xu Zhen Xuan as Ying Lei FANGS OF FORTUNE 大梦归离 (2024) dir. Edward Guo, Luo Luo, Wei Nan  

[clairedaring]

FANGS OF FORTUNE 大梦归离 — 2024, dir. Edward Guo, Luo Luo, Wei Nan

[movielosophy]

Moonlight Mystique | Be quiet.

[dramashii]

I'll take her to the best place with abundant sunshine in the Shuiyuntian to enjoy the sunshine.

LOVE BETWEEN FAIRY AND DEVIL (2022) | Ep 5

[stayuntilthefoglifts]

Kaleidoscope of death

"This is?" asked the newcomers, watching Ruan Nanzhu,

"My lover," Lin Qiushi said, "Nanzhu, come eat something?" sitting at the table.

Guardian

Shen Wei froze, momentarily sure that Zhao Yunlan was about to reveal his identity. But instead, Zhao Yunlan lowered his voice so that he sounded like an annoying brat."He's not an outsider-- he's my partner."

Silent Reading

Tao Ran said, “Going, we’re just going. He was worried, that patient in there is…”

Luo Wenzhou said, “He’s my lover.”

Faraway Wanderers

Zhou Zishu turned to him, the tip of his Baiyi sword slightly hanging, voice slightly harsh."You dare act against who’s mine?”

He's mine 🤝 Lin Qiushi 🤝 Zhao Yunlan 🤝 Luo Wenzhou 🤝 Zhou Zishu

[renshengs]

hmm i do think that danmei and dangai (censored danmei cdrama adaptations) being many non-chinese fandom people's first impression of chinese media has given them some misconceptions about mainstream chinese media, and it shows in a way that i find very frustrating when seeing discussions about cdramas on here. dangai dramas aside, even if government censorship didn't exist, the chances of your favorite cdrama gay ship becoming canon is about as high as the chances of any of those iconic homoerotic male friendships in a western TV show becoming canon. which is to say: extremely low.

what i think is that internationally huge danmei fandoms like mdzs and tgcf and drama adaptations like cql and shl have really fucked with people's conceptualization of danmei, in that they're using it as this reference point when analyzing relationships in all other forms of cn media, including cdramas and chinese games, which then manifests into people making very bold, very dubious claims about "queercoding" because 2 characters from a random cdrama reminds them of the one or two danmeis they'd encountered that shaped their entire perception of chinese media. basically it's this meme:

many people here need to understand that cdramas and chinese films are obviously mainstream forms of fictional media in china, just like how the mcu or the doctor who franchise is mainstream in the US and UK, or like shonen is mainstream in japan. not to burst your bubble of happy ignorance, but homoromantic relationships such as qingming/boya from the ying yang master are—for lack of a better term—fujobait. they are fujobait. bromances, because those sell well and everyone knows it. popular ships like bakudeku were not actually made canon in mha because shonen is mainstream, and in most industries geared toward maximizing capital, having full-on gay people front and center is considered a monetarily risky move. which sucks, of course, but china is absolutely no different. i promise you that if the govt removed their censorship laws for TV broadcasts, your favorite gay ship from mysterious lotus casebook or the blood of youth or fangs of fortune still wouldn't be canon. they might be allowed a bit more intimacy due to the lack of restrictive filtering, but they are not going to be sucking face for the same reason that gojo and geto from jjk didn't suck face.

danmei is still widely considered niche and risky in china, and if you haven't seen the recent news, authors are still getting arrested for writing it. assuming that chinese fiction, mainstream chinese fiction in particular, operate like dangais where the two guys with the most gay tension would be made explicitly canon were the censors to be lifted, is frankly pretty ridiculous. dangai dramas are adapted from danmeis, which are stories centered on a gay romance and narratively depend on the two guys falling in love. non-dangai dramas are very much... not that, hence why people shouldn't watch them expecting a censored danmei and then forcing assumptions of "my ship would be canon if only it weren't for censorship" on them.

it's very clear when someone who knows absolutely nothing about the actual situation with danmei and queer existence and mainstream TV censorship in china is trying to push their, if i put it crudely, "boss baby meme" perspective onto cmedia. fandom is all about poking at interactions between your favorite characters and giggling and speculating, but i think lots of fandom people (many of them safe in the pockets of their more progressive areas) view govt censorship as this big abstract dam that, if broken, would result in the canonization of all their favorite ships, which is not only an incredibly naive belief but also one that shows how much they view TV censorship as more of a personal inconvenience that's preventing their favorite ships from kissing on screen instead of the looming, deep-rooted issue depriving mainland chinese people of creative freedom it actually is. with cmedia fandoms there's a specific widely popularized "they're so gay omg how did censorship not notice" gag when there's any perceived homoromantic undertones in a story that's both rather insensitive and also ignorant, and many dangai and cdrama fandoms in particular (donghua fans too, link click shippers i'm looking directly at you) could really use some more education and sensitivity regarding this.

i've been in danmei & cdrama fandom spaces for years and post-pandemic this kind of nonsense has definitely gotten worse, especially when you compare shipping discussions here to shipping discussions in cn fandoms. here every 2 seconds someone makes an off-color censorship joke about tgcf donghua and over on douyin they are straight up commenting under the nezha sequel announcement post if there's going to be an oubing kissing scene. granted i obviously cannot see or know everything going on in cn fandom spaces because they are incomprehensibly enormous, but in all the spaces i've been in i've never seen a single censorship joke from anyone. why do people here absolutely insist on making them?

anyway. fandom be normal about chinese media challenge!

[justplaggin]

me: why does this guy remind me of a c- no i must be seeing things

filmography: tiger (2020), cat demon lord (2023), werecat (2024)

tumblr:

further evidence:

the guy himself irl:

general consensus: pspspspspspsps

me: oh

[xiaolanhua]

Meng Ziyi as Dou Zhao Blossom 九重紫 (2024) – Ep. 31

[diamantdog]

me when people make fun of the qin exam scene in episode 11 of the double: sorry you don't get transported to the altai mountains to chill with flying geese or into a xianxia setting to defeat the devil whenever you see and hear beautiful women shredding on a qin.

[clj-art-blog]

Commission for «TRAITOR» Written By @beatrixacs

[subbwoofer]

Qin Lan always 🔥

[mostlyfate]

Stop chasing. You’ll be discovered.

Ziqi. Let me put it on you.

[clairedaring]

How old are you? You already understand this kind of thing? I remember I first knew what love is only when I was 370 years old. Zhao Yuan Zhou, go to jail.

FANGS OF FORTUNE 大梦归离 (2024) Dir. Edward Guo, Luo Luo, Wei Nan – Ep. 12

[movielosophy]

Moonlight Mystique | How come?