Okay, this post is to thwart the heavy hands of censorship and bring more publicity to the efforts to silence art. C-dramas have been on a fantasy, wuxia, and xianxia (combo of the two) novel adaptation kick for the last decade that it’s no wonder the last few years productions have start tapping into BL novels in those genres. BL (boy love) is exactly as the genre title says and has a huge following not just from the LGBT community but from straight women who love the bromance even if its actual romance. It started with BL mangas in Japan in the 90’s and has really spread out to all written genres and BL fantasy novels take Chinese fantasy history which is big on swordsman bromance anyways and crosses into romance. There have been about 50 BL novels adapted into C-dramas these last few years though every one has changed the BL aspect to male friendship, added female love interests, and kept the story line and world building.

The biggest BL novel adapted into a C-drama has to be 2019 hit The Untamed (陈情令 Chen Qing Ling) starring Sean Xiao (Xiao Zhan) and Wang Yibo. I only became a Sean Xiao fan recently from his singing side of his career so was planning to watch this soon. Fans of the source novel boycotted the drama after the core BL romance between the male leads was excised and random female pseudo love interests/supporting roles inserted, but the source story was so good and production did a great job with all else that the drama was a huge hit. Sadly The Untamed (and other BL source material dramas) may be no more as this weekend C-ent is reporting that the Chinese Broadcast agency is finally cracking down on BL adaptations even if it has no BL in it – ones submitted for approval will be denied, ones approved will need re-review, in production dramas are to be halted immediately, and finished airing dramas will be pulled from streaming. Dang someone has too much time on their hands.