The King's Avatar

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Name: The King's Avatar

全职高手

Quánzhí Gāoshǒu
Abbreviation(s): QZGS, TKA
Creator: Butterfly Blue (蝴蝶蓝) hu die lan
Date(s): Webnovel -2014 ;Donghua - 2017 ; Live Action - 2019
Medium: Webnovel, Manhua, Donghua, Live Action, Stage Play, Audio Drama
Country of Origin: China
External Links: Manga Webnovel donghua
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

The King's Avatar (全职高手; pinyin: Quánzhí Gāoshǒu) is a webnovel by Butterfly Blue. The Donghua has two seasons and was aired on Tencent, and the Live Action adaptation is available on Netflix.

Synopsis

In the online game Glory, Ye Xiu is regarded as a textbook and a top-tier pro-player. However, due to myriad reasons, he is kicked from the team. After leaving the professional scene, he finds work in an Internet Cafe as a manager. When Glory launches its tenth Server, he who possesses ten years of gaming experience once again throws himself into the game. Bringing with him the memories of his past and an incomplete, self-made weapon, his return along the road to the summit begins!

Mediums

The King's Avatar was published as a webnovel and is complete with 1,729 chapters. The English translator credited was Nomyummi and the editor Nomyummi and GravityTales, though there were more translators who helped out.

Donghua

A donghua adaptation began airing in September 2017(?) and was uploaded to youtube in 2019. There are currently two seasons.

Manhua

The work has been adapted several times to manhua.

Prequel Movie

The prequel movie had very mixed opinions.

Many Chinese fans were vocal about their hatred, primarily disagreeing with YX's characterization. In the novel, Ye Xiu is a "god" at Glory. They felt he was not as strong in the prequel. In particular, they were upset that he was hesitant about becoming a pro glory player and hesitated in the final battle. When he overcame his hesitation by being inspired by remembering Su Muqiu's memory they did not like the framing of the quote 'Glory is not a single-person game' in Su Muqiu's notes, which they felt implied that Su Muqiu had said this sentence instead of Ye Xiu.

An opposing perspective:

A lot of early-viewer Chinese fans were complaining about Ye Xiu’s OOC-ness, I think mostly complaining that he came across as too “weak,” but honestly, I disagree. If I come across some rebuttal-worthy argument by some particularly disgruntled and well-spoken cfan, maybe I’ll elaborate on that more. But Butterfly Blue has addressed that complaint on his Weibo, and I agree with him - to paraphrase translate, you need to evaluate whether your so-called “OOC” is in reference to YOUR understanding of and hope for the character, or the character that the novel gives. I, and Butterfly Blue, think ftg!Ye Xiu was within the realm of consistent characterization, and I think that the most intense fans making a fuss about that are too blinded by their love of Ye Xiu that the version of him in their minds is warped.

syncogon (TKA fan translator), critiques of the ftg movie linked below

Furthermore, people disliked the plot-holes (Excellent Era winning the championship with 5 people, treatment of XMK), strange pacing, changing Su Muqiu's motivations, Ye Qiu, and lack of team bonding. It is possible part of their discontent is a feeling of jadedness with the endless adaptations in general.

Other fans respond that these were simply adaptations made to a different medium. Some felt particular strengths were the depiction of grief, the fleshing out of Su Muqiu's characterization, and the character designs and effects. The author, Butterfly Blue posted their response to fan accusations.

Further Reading


Live Action

Yang yang

Pairings

Despite the work having no romantic subplots, shipping the characters is popular. In 2020, there were 18 QZGS ships in the 150 top pairings on Lofter. They were:

  • 19. Jiang Botao/Zhou Zekai (148)
  • 18. Ye Xiu/Yu Wenzhou (146)
  • 17. Zhou Zekai/Huang Shaotian (125)
  • 16. Ye Xiu/Su Mucheng Yechung (叶橙) (117)
  • 15. Wang Jiexi/Ye Xiu (111)


Other popular pairings include:

The fandom was very active during the posting of the novel(early-mid 2010s), with each new adaptation bringing in more life. The donghua was especially popular.

The fandom is most active in the following languages. Different pairings and tropes are popular depending on the language. There is a TvTropes page.

Chinese-Language Fandom

Much of the fanwork and fanart is on Lofter. Some of the fanfiction is crossposted to Ao3. Due to the censorship in China, it used to be common practice to post the NSFW chapters on AO3 and include a link to those chapters in the Lofter post. Videos(such as songs, AMVs, edits, fanworks) are often posted on BiliBili and sometimes(though not commonly) cross-posted to YouTube.

Ship "dynamics" (who is the dominant one) is very important to many Chinese fans. For example, YuHuang (Yu Wenzhou(YWZ) dominant, Huang Shaotian(HST) more submissive) is the most popular QZGS pairing in 2020 and 2019 and the 3rd most popular on Lofter in 2020. YuHuang had 102079 Lofter posts, but HST/YWZ had only 9031 Lofter Posts. Non-explicit fic is usually just tagged with what the author prefers or who initially shows interest, and het ships are tagged with the man in front. The cultural emphasis on pairing order leads to loud and fervent complaints when dynamics are tagged "wrongly", including some wank about how AO3 only has one synlinked pairing tag for a pairing, preventing them from showing the dynamic in the tag.

Allye, YuHuang, and ZhouYe are the most popular pairings in cfandom, but there is substantial activity for many rarepairs as well.

Lofter Activity

There are many pairing and fan-specific blogs, which organise fan activities. One common activity for these blogs is to compile all the new fanworks (oneshots, new chapters of multi-chaptered fic, and art) which is published that day -- this is as Lofter suffers from similar problems with tag navigation as Tumblr.

Some Examples

There is a little bit of ambiguity in the pairing tags, as a pairing tag might simply indicate a close platonic or familial relationship. 双叶 (double Ye) is used to tag Ye Qiu & Ye Xiu gen fic as well as incest (which might also have 年下 or 年上 tagged, indicating who bottoms).

Merch, Conventions, and Real Life Events

Merchandise for this franchise is prolific on ecommerce-site Taobao.

To celebrate Ye Xiu's birthday, in 2023 an in-person fan event was hosted in China.

Notable Fanwork Examples

Fansongs and AMVs

Russian-Language Fandom

the first wave in the Russian fandom was in 2017, after donghua came out. Before that, if there were rare fans of the novel, then I don't know them.

The second wave began in 2018 (I came just then, God, I've been in this pit for three years now, lol)

The Russian fandom is small, there are few writers and artists. They love many pairings and characters, but since there are few authors and these authors write about their characters, one might get the impression that we only love lanhe

There is a perception in Russian fandom that LanYe is the most popular ship.

Most Russian Language fandom occurs on Diary. Registration is required, many diaries are closed from underage users. Activity has trailed off over time.

Russian Fandom also took part in the Fandom Kombat event, in which you form teams and complete "quests" which are fanworks. See the teams page here: [Аватар Короля. Визитка]

English-language Fandom

There are two King's Avatar Discords. The King's Avatar Alliance Discord is one of them.

Difference Between Cfandom and Efandom

I feel the biggest difference between cfandom and efandom is their attitude towards things outside the donghua ie the movie and the tv drama in particular hahaha, likewise for the previous reason + qzgs is on netflix - I feel that cfandom tends to be more staunch w the things they like ie weren't a fan of the free adaptation (I also feel cfandom may feel a little jaded w all the rehashing of content making it a bit of a money grab? Can't rmb where I heard that from tho) whereas we are just thirsty in efandom so more of us are like open/accepting about whatever new material is out there

rsky on The Kings Avatar Alliance Discord

English-Language Fandom Events

There are many fan-events in English fandom, despite being a small fandom.

QZGS was the fandom in which fan Gumi pioneered a Masquerade fandom event. During a masquerade, fandom authors have a time period to submit fics to an anonymous collection, after which the collection is closed and the fandom tries to guess which author wrote which fic.

Other fan events include

In 2021, the TKAFanzine (tumblr) opened for preorders from March 13-April 13.

Fan Translations

Fanworks


Fannish Resources

References

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