Untamed Emotions, Tamed Communities: Fan Tactics in Chinese Dangai Fandom after The Untamed

Wang, Leidong (2025) Untamed Emotions, Tamed Communities: Fan Tactics in Chinese Dangai Fandom after The Untamed. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This study examines the fan practices of Dangai (boys’ love adaptation) drama fandoms on Chinese social media following the conclusion of the series The Untamed (2019). Between 2018 and 2021, television dramas adapted from Danmei (homoerotic) novels reframed male–male romance as a form of brotherhood to navigate censorship and broaden their audience appeal. A key example is The Untamed, which replaced romantic love with emotionally charged friendship, achieved significant commercial success, and attracted a diverse fandom.

Fans of The Untamed engaged in extensive social media activities, especially on Weibo, to “protect the Drama.” These practices illustrate two interrelated dynamics: collaboration with commercial interests and ungovernable fan participation. Fans navigated imagined male–male intimacy through both emotional investment and self-censorship, while actively enhancing the drama and its actors’ online visibility.

Existing studies approach Dangai fandoms through gender and queer theory, highlighting subversion, or focus on censorship and commercialisation, emphasising emotional labour and compliance. While noting tensions between governance and agency, few examine how fans engage with algorithmic and regulatory dynamics on social media after dramas conclude. Chinese scholars call these fan practices “a passive form of resistance” (Hu and Wang, 2021), yet Dangai fans’ interactions with platform governance remain underexplored.

Using The Untamed Super Topic online fan community as a case study, this research employs online ethnography, combining six months of observation, questionnaire surveys, and fourteen semi-structured interviews. Adopting a fan studies perspective, it specifically contributes to the understanding of how fans negotiate algorithmic and fan regulatory constraints after a drama’s conclusion. Through this lens, the approach reveals how fans demonstrate agency across platforms, communities, and affective dimensions. It shows how they reinterpret constraints to maintain expression, emotional connection and continuity, thereby challenging portrayals of fans as “mindless affective labourers”.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Media, Language and Communication Studies
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	11 Jun 2026 08:20
Last Modified:	11 Jun 2026 08:20
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103344
DOI:

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