Iron Man in Chinese boys' love fandom: A story untold

Abstract

Superhero fan fiction is increasingly popular in the Chinese boys' love (BL) community. An exploration of the fan fic Gangtiexia: Zhongdu Yilai (Iron Man: Overly attached) investigates how the Hollywood cultural icon Iron Man/Tony Stark is reimagined in Chinese BL culture and to what degree this kind of rendition both echoes and extends as well as challenges and deviates from our current insights into BL fandoms. Through the lenses of queerness and technological human transformation, I explore the fresh contribution of Iron Man fan fiction to both local BL cultures and global superhero fandoms.

Out on YouTube: queer youths and coming out videos in Asia and America

“…While public news media often represent the queer youths as brave heroes and role models, focusing on the potential social impact of their coming out, their fans and followers often see the disclosure as both a personal message and a reward for their support, insomuch as their "idols" have chosen to "confide" in them directly where loyalty has become mutual and positively reinforced in the celebrity economy and fandom on social media. This is also evident among the slash fans of male celebrities-known as Boys' Love or BL fans in the Chinese-speaking parts of Asia-a mainly female fandom imagining intermale romance and intimacy of both real-life and fictional characters and public figures that has a substantial online presence across the West and the East (see Wei 2014). This is especially the case for the Huang brothers, who not only acknowledge the large BL fan base they have but self-knowingly tease each other about their "intimacy" in many of their videos, while the editors in their production team also add additional intercuts, subtitles, and sound and visual effects to further tease out their "bromance" that they know will attract audiences.…”

The shackles of gender still exist: Chinese women authors’ consciousness in boys’ love fiction

“…Like sponsors, online reading communities give emotional and financial incentives to authors through comments and rewards (Tian and Adorjan, 2016). Their support even forms a “gift economy” that provides authors with the opportunity to contract with JLC and publish commercially, thus earning both popularity and commercial benefits (Wei, 2014).…”

– The Barcelona Conference on Arts, Media & Culture 2020: Official Conference Proceedings

“…Originated in the 1960s Star Trek series, slash culture has only recently become popular in China along with the import of American superhero movies and BBC Sherlock since the 2010s. The inflow of western slash culture has added diversity to China's queer fandom, which until then has followed an East-Asian tradition (Jenkins, 1992;Wei, 2014;Gu, 2017). Queer fandom in China today takes on a multi-faceted manner, in which fans not only compose fictional and/or audiovisual derivative works from both domestic and international media productions, but also produce their own original works (McLelland et al, 2015;Wei, 2014;Lavin, Yang & Zhao, 2017).…”