Male Writers of DānměiLiterature: An Analysis of Fēitiānyèxiáng

Aiqing Wang (University of Liverpool, United Kingdom)

Heritage of Nusantara: International Journal of Religious Literature and Heritage
Vol. 10 No. 1 (2021): HERITAGE OF NUSANTARA

In this paper, I investigate dānmÄ›i as a ground-breaking literary genre by means of scrutinising an illustrious male writer pseudonymed FÄ“itiānyèxiáng, and I propound that his works are exemplary as online writing. As a growing Chinese Internet literature, the female-oriented dānmÄ›i genre, aka Boys Love, has attracted legions of heterosexual fangirl producers and consumers as well as a meagre amount of their male counterparts. Among male dānmÄ›i writers, who are in an absolute minority, FÄ“itiānyèxiáng is celebrated for a wide range of innovative themes and magnificent storylines, and his fiction is replete with profound literary and historical allusions and elaborate and meticulous depictions. Furthermore, notwithstanding a non-reversible bipartite dichotomy between seme (top) and uke (bottom) roles, FÄ“itiānyèxiáng’s writing is not featured by feminisation of uke, which is clichéd characterisation in not only the dānmÄ›i subculture, but also classical and modern Chinese literature. More significantly, FÄ“itiānyèxiáng’s narratives are reality-oriented, addressing adverse circumstances in a real-world context and hence rendering characters more multi-faceted, and he does not circumvent realistic issues or create over-romanticised representation, analogous to his equivalent pseudonymed Nánkāngbáiqǐ.