#i'd do basically anything to NOT see that infiltrate western fandom | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

unforth · 10 months

Text

Sometimes I wish I could drive home just how little of Chinese fandom culture actually makes it onto Tumblr at all, much less circulates in western Tumblr circles, and I've finally got a solid example.

On this list I reblogged a not long ago, Poyun, which I started reading on Bilibili the other day, has the 93rd most popular ship on all of Lofter, with over 15,000 posts. By comparison, the 93rd most popular ship of that same year (2020) on Tumblr was from Haikyuu, and from 2021 the 93rd most popular was from Miraculous Lady Bug - which is to say, even if you're not into, it's a fandom you've almost certainly heard of if you move in fandom circles at all. Like, those are two fandoms with known, huge followings. Likewise, Yan Xie/Jiang Ting is a big deal ship on Lofter.

I started reading the manhua a few days ago, so I know I'm gonna be posting some of the manhua art to @cnovelartreblogs so I was like, I should check the main tags and queue the art (even if it means I might be exposed to spoilers), and then I won't accidentally duplicate other people's art posting efforts or anything.

Now, granted, I've seen some evidence that tag search is more broken than usual the last few days, but even so...

#po yun: there are maybe 30 posts in "most popular"

#破云: there are maybe 20 posts in "most popular," and they're basically all the same (as in, people tagged both)

#poyun: about the same number, and the only 3 pieces of fanart I can find on the whole platform (@drawulan you don't know me but you are a BLESSING to C-Novel fandoms with small followings on Tumblr. A BLESSING, YOU HEAR? I LOVE YOUR ART.)

Y'all, we have no idea how little we actually know and see about what's popular in Chinese fandom.

#unforth rambles #This is one of the hidden costs of Western fandom being...the way Western fandom is.#idk where i'm really going with this #and i will say some of what's different i wouldn't see change #like my experience with the way top/bottom stuff gets treated in east asian fandoms #while my personal experience is mostly with yaoi fandoms #regardless if chinese fandoms are anything like japanese fandoms in that regard #i'd do basically anything to NOT see that infiltrate western fandom #but we get some of that anyway #i saw a post in the mdzs tag LITERALLY TODAY complaining that people in the bottomji bang #weren't tagging their bottomji and that the poster (oh horrors)#was finding out when they opened the fic and read the a/n #and how DARE people not tag it #so yeah it's not like i can escape stupid toxic top/bottom stuff #which to be clear isn't about people having a preference but is about how people talk about those preferences #but anyway i want all the good parts and not the parts i don't like lmao #like all the art and meta #but we can't have nice things because white people #standard disclaimer i am also white people

37 notes · View notes