#leipeng

Whenever a romance drama becomes a surprise hit, it attracts several fan groups: the “CP” fans (those who ship Chi Cheng x Wu Suowei), the “RPS/真人CP” fans (those who ship Tian Xuning x Zi Yu), and the solo/career fans for each actor. These groups might overlap but they also fight constantly and as I’ve recently observed, those fights can get ugly fast… CP fans are fickle and will disappear the moment the fantasy breaks. What’s the best career move to make as the two actors themselves and their agents? I’d imagine they’d have to strategize on things like which base to focus on and for how long to serve the cp fans? Both of them could develop genuine career fans if they play it smart. Zi Yu’s made for the stage. I wouldn’t even count myself as a casual fan but I’d probably be happy to pay to see him perform. When he was on stage, he was just so radiant, graceful, and authentic? And Tian Xuning can actually act, which already sets him apart from most idol-type leads.

There’s also a big difference between blowing up from a danmei adaptation (like 2.0-4.0 did) and becoming famous through something like Revenged Love. The first can at least try to distance itself from its source material. The second leaves you with what the fans call a real 出身问题/“tainted origin of fame problem.” People in the circle might look down on them while secretly envying their new found success. And I’ve seen comments speculating that they’ll need a two year cool down period before any serious acting roles would find them(?) Once you reach that level of fame, you even have to think about how the state apparatus sees you and learn to read censorship trends and move carefully when the wind changes.

I mean like

tian xuning & ziyu - reluctant 'BL' actors AU

tian xuning and ziyu are actors that belong to the same company but because of a (silly) misunderstanding in the past, they can't stand each other. unfortunately, their company, seeing how bromance and bl dramas are all the rage in the market, decide to take their top two actors and make some more money by putting them to work along side each other in a new bromance drama that's bordering on BL.

tian xuning is a well-established actor in the company, while ziyu is their up and coming new star. their 'feud' started when ziyu was still a trainee/nobody in the company and he'd overheard some shady conversation between more established actors amongst whom tian xuning was present. through a misunderstanding of the conversation, ziyu thinks that tian xuning is a pompous jerk that looks down on newbie actors, so he acts rude and cold to him, despite tian xuning being his senior. seeing that kind of attitude from a mere newbie, tian xuning also finds him rude and conceited -- and thus begins their constant clashing.

pressured by their company, the two reluctantly agree to act along side each other in the new bromance. despite their clashing, the two have surprisingly insane chemistry on set, which causes the director and scriptwriter to start making changes to the script - adding more fanservice-y situations for their characters and dangerously getting closer and closer to changing the genre to fully-BL.