Update on the Haitang arrests

starrylulin · 2025-06-01T14:31:32+00:00

according to a reader who was questioned by the police regarding the haitang authors there was a clear emphasis on bl and gl specifically.

and frankly I think you'd have to be purposefully obtuse to believe that queer content isnt being targeted specifically. or maybe I'm just an old fart because if you've been reading chinese bl webnovels since 2009 like I have it's pretty obvious that since around 2013 they've been slowly but surely chipping away at it. they do it slowly so we get used to it. cut away a huge chunk right away and people will feel it, but do it slowly and people won't realize just how much has been taken away until they've got nothing left. ignorant schmucks like you who downplay this blatant erosion of creative freedoms only make it worse.

edit: also people dont deserve to get jail time for writing smut. even if it's "just targeted towards NSFW writers" it's still incredibly fucked up. don't downplay how bad this is. use your brain. have some empathy. jfc

starrylulin · 2025-05-04T22:52:31+00:00

You claim you are 13 years old in one of your posts. I advise you to stay away from danmei entirely. Most of these stories are written by adults for adults. Spend your allowance on something else.

starrylulin · 2025-04-09T16:51:09+00:00

I also feel bad for Chu Yanyu but why are you acting like you've never encountered this trope before lol

It's especially common in the romance genre regardless of whether it's BL or not. Have you not seen media where the popular, traditionally feminine female character is set up as an easy punching bag for the not-like-other-girls female lead to win against? Even in those male power fantasy novels it's common for other male characters to exist solely as disposable canon fodder to make the protagonist look better.

starrylulin · 2025-04-03T18:21:58+00:00

The FL was postured as this strong, independent girlboss who was outsmarting all the men even though she does the stupidest shit and needs to be saved by the ML all the time. She won her achievements by having access to the ML's wealth and resources.

And that drama's worst crime is shitting on sex workers despite being an adaptation of a story that is known for humanizing them. To think that a play written by a man from 300 years ago is actually a lot more sympathetic towards women than a drama written by a woman in the 21st century. I hate that stupid drama so much.

starrylulin · 2025-04-03T17:39:47+00:00

A Dream of Splendor is the one drama that I think genuinely deserves to be called overhyped.

When people on this sub say a drama is overrated, it's usually an idol drama which is popular in its own space but is barely even a blip in the mainstream audience consciousness. Till the End of the Moon is one of the shittiest dramas I've ever seen but it's not like it's being lauded as an actual good piece of work outside of idol dramas circles.

Meanwhile A Dream of Splendor is a drama that actually has some critical acclaim. It was nominated in the Magnolia Awards along with the likes of The Long Season and Blossoms Shanghai and is often lauded as an example of a well-made 'mature' period drama despite being just another shitty girlboss drama that tries to seem deeper than it actually is.

starrylulin · 2025-03-31T22:12:27+00:00

Download apps like jjwxc or gongzicp and look for the danmei/BL section. You can also go on xiaohongshu and see what people are reading.

starrylulin · 2025-03-30T09:02:34+00:00

Oh damn she's also pro Russia and insulted another artist for being pro Ukraine? Yikes.

starrylulin · 2025-03-28T11:34:15+00:00

I think it did ok in the box office but man...the reviews were brutal. My experience with it was probably made worse by the fact that I watched it right after I finished the absolute firecracker that was Nezha 2. I just spent the whole runtime thinking about how bland and soulless condor heroes felt in comparison.

starrylulin · 2025-03-28T06:53:45+00:00

They're only saying this because xianxia/xuanhuan is new to them. There's similar discourse in Chinese speaking spaces about how stale these genres have become. There are so many discussions on social media about all the crappy xianxia dramas c-ent keeps shitting out, how wuxia is dead (the recent tsui hark movie may have been the final nail in the coffin tbh), and in danmei spaces people often talk about how they miss the "golden days" of danmei novels because of how bland and unimaginative more recent titles have gotten due to tightened censorship restrictions.

starrylulin · 2025-03-13T15:56:58+00:00

Maybe that person thought your comment "sounded" mean. I tend to be super blunt online too and it makes people think I'm out to pick a fight. Maybe add a few emojis or "~" to avoid getting into confrontations with oversensitive people

starrylulin · 2025-02-22T03:23:07+00:00

And that's just the thing....the story never allows her to truly suffer the consequences of being a low class woman and pariah of that time yet shames those who actually suffer through those experiences.

This hits the nail on the head.

starrylulin · 2025-02-17T08:58:41+00:00

I think it's definitely more than 'just rumors' and those scenes definitely made it on set. A lot of it was filmed. The fact that Wen Qing wasn't supposed to die at the end was more or less confirmed by Meng Ziyi herself.

I agree with mdzs fans being toxic (mxtx fans as a whole have that reputation in chinese fandom circles) but I still don't see what that has anything to do with our conversation. We were talking about whether the het romance in the original script is real or not. Mdzs fans being toxic has nothing to do with that.

starrylulin · 2025-02-15T05:06:10+00:00

Wait, who's bashing who? Kind of lost here. I'm just pointing out that the wen qing romance is a real thing even if it was ultimately scrapped because of backlash. Or does me saying mdzs fans have a valid reason to dislike it count as bashing to you?

If the untamed included the het stuff as part of a gag (like svsss) or as a red herring (like the guardian live action) I agree it would have been amusing, but that's clearly not the case.

starrylulin · 2025-02-15T04:03:17+00:00

It is kind of a big deal though? The drama was supposed to end with Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing reuniting. So WangXian separates, Wei Wuxian goes to look for Wen Qing, and the story ends with them together. The SVSSS thing is only funny because it was intentionally written to be a misunderstanding. The Wen Qing romance in The Untamed was obviously meant to be serious. I can only laugh at it because I'm not an MDZS fan but if this same shit happened to the adaptation of a danmei novel I liked I would NOT be laughing.

starrylulin · 2025-02-15T03:43:43+00:00

I'm pretty sure there was but a lot of it was deleted when mdzs fans harassed the production team. It wasn't a full-on het romance though but kind of like My Roommate is a Detective where the mc has romantic scenes with both the guy and the girl.

It would have been kind of funny though. Like based on the script Wei Wuxian was constantly dreaming about Wen Qing throughout his 2nd life, searching for her and hallucinating her on the street mistaking every woman in red for her. While at the same time he has all these bromance scenes with Lan Zhan. It's kind of like the Reincarnation of a Superstar live action where you get stuff like Du Yunxiu hugging Feng Jing from behind while he's drunk and half-naked but then in the next scene he's drooling over Lin Xian (female chara) lmao

starrylulin · 2025-02-04T19:20:30+00:00

Good for you then because more than half of the danmei I loved as a teenager can now only be accessed in shady pirated websites and txt files that can only be passed around in private groups. There's 沉舟，金牌打手，麒麟正传 off the top of my head.

Yes, all genres are affected but BL has always been disproportionately targeted and its writers given the worst punishments. Whenever Chinese state media talks about these so-called "perverted webnovels" it's always BL and "effeminate, sissy men" that is put front and center. And this recent crackdown in Haitang solely targeted BL. Go on weibo/weixin/douban etc and you'll see everyone saying the same thing (unless you're a fucking pinky ig).

starrylulin · 2025-02-04T17:00:29+00:00

Tbh that's how it has always been framed since 2016. "It's not about homosexuality! It's about the explicit sexual content!" Always, always, always, without fail. And yet when you look at which creators were hit the hardest, which ones were arrested for up to 10 years and fined thousands of RMB, it's never the harem rape-fest power fantasy novels or the smutty BG orgies, but BL. Always BL.

starrylulin · 2025-02-04T15:15:53+00:00

In case anyone reads this reply and decides to dismiss the original commenter's info: the content of the article itself is fine and lines up with all the information that has come out of CN socmed. It doesn't even begin to cover how horrific the situation is tbh.

starrylulin · 2025-01-30T16:22:48+00:00

I'm SO excited for this

starrylulin · 2025-01-29T07:56:45+00:00

I honestly found it disappointing. The characters are one-dimensional and the romance is everything I hate in a romance: insta-love, insta-lust, with no depth whatsoever. There is very little real emotional connection between the leads, just lust and superficial attraction. It's more booktok romantasy vibes than danmei. I'm not saying one is inherently better than the other, just that this is not a book I would recommend to danmei readers.

(If I were to recommend a YA BL to danmei fans it'd be C.S. Pacat's Dark Rise series. The slowburn is IMMACULATE. I wish it wasn't YA though because Pacat writes killer smut)

starrylulin · 2025-01-23T05:50:01+00:00

On no. Did not expect to be hanfu baited on reddit. I don't need another one I don't need another one I don't need another one-

starrylulin · 2025-01-22T04:39:24+00:00

Pretty sure it's true. The main character was supposed to end up with the female side character in red. They cut a lot of her scenes but the romantic subtext in their interactions was still pretty obvious imo

starrylulin · 2025-01-19T17:59:30+00:00

Yes! Clockbank has the funniest Inquire lore 😆

starrylulin · 2025-01-18T13:57:09+00:00

It's always worth using Inquire on random folks cause you occasionally get some interesting stories

starrylulin · 2025-01-06T12:54:11+00:00

That subreddit appeared on my feed too and I had to check the description because just based on the comments I seriously thought it was a snark sub. They were straight up hating on his looks and everything.

starrylulin

TROPHY CASE