Talk:Chinese Fandom

I think this turned into a bit of "English-language Perspective & glossary on Chinese-language fandom and tropes...". I don't know how to organise this page at all but I thought I should just get it started! Distracteddaydreamer (talk) 03:19, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Hi! I think if you link to a user's page on a talk page it lets them know, but luckily I am incredibly nosy and always read the editing comments.

The major problem I see about this page is that I think "fandom in China" needs to be a different page from "English-language fannish activity surrounding chinese media" because both on the same page is going to be confusing. I think this article should be split into:

• a page like German-Speaking Fandom (but with a slightly different name because "Chinese-Speaking Fandom" doesn't seem right) which would concern itself with stuff like fan conventions in China, Chinese fanworks, etc.
• a page named something like English-Speaking Chinese Media Fandom where we could give an overview of popular cnovels, donghua, cdramas, manhua, etc plus give a history of that kind of media's growing popularity, talk about fan translations, talk about how English-language fanworks deal with honorifics, etc.

This is tbh a huge task and not one I'm very well-suited to help with because most of my interaction is via exchange fandom. Still, I think the way that it should start (and maybe a way I can be helpful) is to just make stub pages with wild abandon and not worry too much if the split pages I mentioned above are extremely sparse and mostly consist of links to stubs. Gotta start somewhere! - Hoopla (talk) 18:51, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Thank you User:Hoopla! I really feel out of my depth with this, I make most of my other pages by referencing heavily what exists and I had no idea where to look. If you're okay with it, could I could get some help with overall organisation?

I think that "chinese fanworks" is so huge that it definitely can't fit as a subgrouping under Chinese Fandom Culture -- off the top of my head, there are both chinese fanworks for chinese juggernaut series' which are many, the fannish-adjacent energy of original work that is so tropey it feels like ffn for chinese novels (im reminded of the original fiction vs ffn on old ffn websites, and why original work is a category on ao3), historical chinese fan activities (like the sequel? of dream of the red chamber? or was that just a tumblr post i hallucinated), chinese fanworks and fannish activity in english fandoms (we've got some articles on that like Benedict Cumberbatch is a kinky sex god (i am definitely getting that title wrong))

I don't know much about conventions and merch but yeah, I can see that being on its own page

English-Speaking Chinese Media Fandom, with the sections I've talked about here of honorifics + language meta is definitely something I think is appropriate! We could talk about how it became more mainstream with its own international fandoms (I'm pretty sure the Untamed was a gateway cfandom for a LOT of people) and possible clashes with existing cfandom. There's also def a culture difference I think that could make an interesting section. I think if we wanted to talk about important / popular cfandoms in amongst chinese fans though it might want to be

Overview of popular cnovels, donghua, cdramas, manhua sounds like a list?

* where should slang go? like che or rou or stuff like that?

* also what about stuff like, where to host with censorship? shipping dynamics? popular tropes / perception - cfandom is way bigger on the hyper competent main protag, or the super loser becomes hyper-competent protag... - Distracteddaydreamer (talk) 03:46, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Lmao me helping with organization is going to be a lot of bumbling around but yeah I have some ideas!

Chinese Fandom Culture/Fandom in China

• re: "Chinese fanworks" being a really huge topic, yes, definitely! I think I didn't really explain myself well — the point of Chinese Fandom Culture shouldn't be to fit absolutely all possible information on the page, but to serve as a convenient jumping-off point both for creating more fanlore pages and for fanlore readers to have a starting place to start if the topic is totally unfamiliar to them! If someone were wondering "What's fannish life in China like?" and they went to Chinese Fandom Culture they'd get really basic, general answers and lots of links to other, more specific articles.
• So like a hypothetical English Language Fandom Culture page's fanworks section might mention AO3, tumblr, vidding, maybe zines or the LJ era or something, but it wouldn't try to get into any depth? Someone who's interested in learning more would click through to the AO3 page to learn more about that. A short summary about where and how works are posted and basically everything you just said would be a good starting place. I mean, no doubt it'd be rewritten and edited and streamlined and changed as the page develops, but sometimes the struggle with a totally new topic is just like...where to 'start'. A short summary filled with redlinks is, at this stage of things, an excellent start, especially because it will encourage anyone who does know about the topic to join the wiki and add more info!
• For conventions/merch, basically I was thinking the same as above -- what are the biggest conventions? is there cosplaying? are they fan-run? do fan creators sell stuff at them? It could definitely, 100% make an excellent article on its own, but with info about fandom in China being so sparse on the wiki already, it might be easier to just summarize what you can for now with a lot of red links and split it to a main page when it gets too long.
• re: slang, I think slang could go on the Chinese Fandom Culture page at least for now, or you could start making glossary pages for individual slang terms.
• where to host with censorship, shipping dynamics, popular tropes / perception for stuff in China would go on the hypothetical Fandom in China page for now, probably with some details moved to their own pages once those pages exist. Like, you could definitely absolutely do an entire page about censorship and where people post and how it impacts fandom, but the Fandom in China page would probably have a subsection for it with one of those "Main Article:" notes.

English-speaking

• First of all I want to say that in retrospect if we title the page English-Speaking Chinese Media Fandom people will think about Media Fandom so that name should be taken back to the drawing board. cfandom would probably work if that term applies to english-speaking fandom only and isn't used to refer to fandom/fannish activity in China?
• Yes absolutely to the honorifics and stuff here.
• A lot of pages start out with lists! But it could also probably be a history section or something? The Media Fandom page for example mentions Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. Shounen has a table of popular shounen because that's easy to track. This cfandom page would probably talk about MXTX, The Untamed, and of course all the other cfandom stuff that I don't know anything about. The goal would be both to give an overview of what fandoms are/have been popular! It would probably make a lot of red links, but red links at this stage are good because they just highlight things that need to be made.

Mostly I just think it's important to split up fannish things in English-langauge fandom and fannish things in China because they're related but definitely too separate to for a clear, comprehensive summary of each to share the same page. A page that compares them would be good, though. - Hoopla (talk) 05:31, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Wow, this got so long User:Hoopla ! I'm going to try to synthesise based on your thoughts but out of the indent because... hard to read. One pt before I start is cfandom refers to Chinese speaking fandom, not efandom around cmedia. Does that make sense? Proposed new organisation:

1) Chinese-Speaking Fandom, or maybe Cfandom which covers fannish things in china, (answering the question: "What's fannish life in China like?") with subheadings like

• • History of Chinese Fandom
    • Early transformative works?
  • Modern Chinese Fandoms
    • List some cfandoms as a jumping off point
      • Maybe as a subpoint under this, common tropes across cmedia?
      • BL as a trope in cmedia? Actually in general, the genres and genre names are different, like danmei for example.
    • RPF fandoms (?) think reality shows like Youth with You or Idol Producer which is the same concept as Produce 101, and actor/celebrity fandoms
    • List some efandoms with prominent chinese authors: Sherlock, Harry Potter, etc
  • Fan life in China
    • Fan conventions and norms
      • Shipping Culture
      • cp / pure fans, antis ?
      • chinglish / china specific slang. honestly this also goes into internet slang, but i think its worth discussing bc without it its just confusing.
      • Entitlement. That sounds judgey? I can't think of a better word but I mean I'm thinking of how Chinese users got so mad bc Zhongli from Genshin Impact (a game) was weak in his first iteration, that i heard the company actually apologised and made him way more powerful. I think this kind of 'must cater to fans' mentality might not be as strong in efandom?
        • (subpoint is i read a claim that chinese fans are more jaded because there are a lot of adaptations and money grabs..?)
    • Where fans hang out
      • platforms like Lofter, Webnovel, Asianfanfiction(?) etc
      • Conventions (?) / other events?
    • What fans do
      • Unique-ish event types -- Asian fandoms really like cafe type events, so merch would include like cupsleeves and coasters etc that come with your drink
      • Merch? The whole Lofter points to taobao thing (?) International PO for fans of cmedia outside of China?
    • Censorship
    • Media coverage

2) English-speaking cmedia fandom -- for the ways being a fan of a show in a language they don't speak, and all the messy translation work that goes along with it. So some subsegments:

• • History
    • I really think this is where MXTX and The Untamed should get massive credit, I think this is probably the biggest english speaking cfandom nugget?
    • but could also be useful to have a list of what was subbed earlier for english audiences
    • and i bet theres some meta on why it only became more popular now! Probably smth about chinese shows being on netflix?
  • Translation
    • Everything I put on the previous page about honorifics + terms of endearment + all the idiomatic stuff
    • poetic language / chinglish grammar? ok idk whats in this segment but Chinese as a language is rlly metaphorical at times, but the words themselves directly translated are so simple, so i am sure there is something here about the difficulty of capturing the chinese medium in English
    • Diacritics or no diacritics? And the mandarin supremacy over all other dialects? TBH not sure if this should be on the earlier page bc I'm not sure what goes in here aside from the wangxian ao3 tag wrangler drama.
    • Fan translations as fan work
      • scanalations
      • fan translations on legal platforms (webnovel)
      • subs / dubs? see if follows the same pattern as stan twitter translations?
      • Language meta (and fans doing language meta)
    • no fan translation? no problem just machine translate... and the problems that come along w/ that..?? haha idk i think it is just desperate times desperate measures.
      • related but not same is the struggle of buying merch off chinese language websites for cfandom, especially to ship to the US etc
  • Effect on fanwork
    • Reflecting cmedia in english work. WRT translations: do you translate 'gege' as Brother or Elder Brother or Bro, or just append it as Name-gege ? etc for other parts of translation work, inconsistency in names (Total Darkness vs Absent Sun as translations in The King's Avatar fandom is just one of many inconsistencies)
    • Names in efanworks for cmedia! diminuitives being used dubiously! full name convention vs just first name convention! a lot of taste and preferences going on here but i do think theres debate
    • Podficcers being concerned about mispronouncing names + related meta about that and other anti-racist work
  • culture shock / disconnect between cfandom and efandom
    • Incest drama where efans feel "sworn brothers" being shipped is incest, but the characters aren't related + sworn brothers in cfandom is often used as a romance trope for queerbaiting (is this used in the right context? BL where u can pretend its no homo) or even just in straight up romances
    • treatment of untamed as being everything when its the tip of the iceberg an eng speaker, after consuming a handful of mainstream cmedia only, assuming that means they understand c-ent industry and cfandom climate: -- a general perception of intl fans being out of touch with cfandom. i didn't realise x/z was so unpopular LOL but im not in untamed fandom so that explains why.

Whew! What do you think of this structure! idm if you just go in and edit as well! - Distracteddaydreamer (talk) 12:04, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

i think for the fandom in china page, it would definitely be worth bringing up the kind of weird thing that happened recently where Eternal Love became the most watched cdrama in china and it was blatantly plagiarized from the BL novel Wikipedia:Peach Blossom Debt. i'm under the impression that this sort of thing isn't "the norm," per se but that plagiarism in the webnovel community is a relatively common problem. Eternal Love just happens to be the most high profile case i know of. also here's an interesting "cosplay" phenomenon in china. i'm not sure how it's shifted more recently, but it was basically a synonym for roleplay a few years ago.

and then here's some random bits and bobs about "shipping sworn brothers is incest" in The Untamed which is the the only one where i'm personally aware of this conversation happening because there's unfortunately just a lot of Untamed antis for whatever reason. anyway a twitter thread. different thread with a link to another one. one with a lot of people bitching about this. i'd ABSOLUTELY forgotten "xicheng is incest" happened. someone showing a p common dni thing to see. here's someone explaining the logic. "people just call their NOTP incest". general post about racism that touches on this subject. - flyingthesky (talk) 18:53, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

what to do with this page?

Should this page be a disambiguation page or redirect now that we have Chinese-Speaking Fandom and English-speaking cmedia fandom?

Also, I don't know anything about it, but should there be a Chinese-Speaking Fandom section on Chinese-speaking fans outside of Mainland China?--aethel (talk) 23:48, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree. This page should be a redirect to Chinese-Speaking Fandom. --SecurityBreach (talk) 09:15, 30 May 2021 (UTC)