The rise of Chinese web novel fandom and my discomfort

[cashew]

I've been seeing a rise in Chinese-language canon fandom in English fanfic. This is very disturbing to me. For example, in AO3's end of the year summary, MDZS (魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭) slash ship ranked 35 of all time. That to me is insane. This is a Chinese-language show (based on a web novel if I got my facts right), yet the fanfic numbers has overtaken Thor/Loki of the MCU. WTF is happening?

Then I read Stitch's commentary on the racism of migratory slash fandom and...yup. This is just another case of slash fandom migrating to something that passes as white because of reasons.

I haven't actually dared to step into the fandom of MDZS and frankly have no real interest because I've seen how this goes when I was still in the Tenipuri fandom. Take something that's definitively not American and then squeeze everything American into it. I just...am not really up for dealing with it at the moment.

Anyway, that's probably why I'm feeling...not so much alarmed as much as exhausted? Tired? Annoyed? Basically discomforted by the meteoric rise of MDZS popularity. Because I know that this has nothing to do with an interest in Chinese culture, no desire to understand the intricacies of Chinese history, no care for the unique situation where Chinese language is literally the longest living language on earth right now, which means modern Chinese people are still able to read all of their archaic Chinese text without needing a translator and that kind of continuous history offers a different kind of connection to the past that simply doesn't exist in European cultures.

(Like, have you seen actual ye olde English? Old English, as in stuff written in the 600 CE — a time in Chinese writing that is considered grammatically modern. Here's the first few lines of Beowulf in Old English:

Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Here's the translation to modernized English:

LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!

Did you get the translation right? Because Chinese doesn't have this problem. Difficult to read archaic Chinese text is like...not a thing unless you're talking about ~1000 BCE pre-Shang literature.)

So yeah, what I'm trying to get across is that I am raising my eyebrows repeatedly and emphatically at the rise of the MDZS prominence in the West. All those people who are talking about "oh, but the diversity and inclusiveness" only make me more suspicious.

To put it bluntly, I don't trust you to put in effort to research my culture. I can barely trust the Japanese and Korean neighbors to research correctly. No way do I trust Americans to give half a shit.

Comments

[tanithryudo]

By anime I mean animated show with the eastern aesthetic art style, not Japanese-made cartoon, btw. Sorry, I don't think there is a term for Chinese cartoon yet I guess.

The original animated adaptation was made by a Chinese company for Chinese. And then the subbed version introduced to the West was an official sub made by a Chinese company. Given the general "rise" of China in recent years, it's not surprising they wouldn't do a lot of romanization.

So yeah, this isn't DIC getting their hands on Sailor Moon. This is more like China trying to spread its cultural influence to the world.

[cashew]

Ah, that make so much more sense and also I'm pretty sure I saw that cartoon drifting around somewhere. There hasn't been any terms for it, but I'd call it a C-toon, like C-drama, but cartoons. Or C-mation. I think I like C-toon better. There's not enough of them right now to really form a term so I guess it's getting lumped under anime. Urgh.

I really would much rather C-dramas get popular over the cartoon/animations, since I think C-dramas are, generally, better scripted and acted. I mean, if K-dramas can get a strong following, why can't C-dramas? And also it's much harder to deny the very obvious Chinese person and how it's culturally not American than animation. *flashbacks to stupid Americans arguing Goku is White*

Meh, I'm sure I'll get over it. It's just shocking to see how popular the ship is at AO3. The top non-English language ships are still from anime, unsurprisingly.