The rentboy!Xiaoge AU we didn't know we needed

[mumblemumble]

I have been quietly losing it over at Twitter, but there is SO MUCH HAPPENING HERE, it needs to be its own post.

Okay, so Huang Junjie is the co-lead in a dangai based on horror/mystery/BL web novel Kaleidoscope of Death by Xi Zixu. The drama is called The Spirealm and was available for streaming on iQIYI for about an hour on February 2nd. It just appeared out of nowhere and then immediately vanished again. Some people managed to download all 78 (20-minute) episodes while they could, and fans have been working on making subtitled copies available.

None of this is great for the people involved in the making of the dangai, who are missing out on any money they would have made from its distribution, but the fandom around it has been thriving.

Links mostly for my own reference:
MyDramaList
Twitter
Tumblr

WITH THIS CONTEXT OUT OF THE WAY:

Huang Junjie, who's been posting the occasional update with a couple of pictures here and there, uploaded an entire photo set to his Weibo on February 4th, consisting of crazy large images (~20MB) and smaller live photos/clips. It looked like this:



His studio (I did not know he has a studio, and it looks like a reblog of this photo set is the very first thing they posted) added some additional images and live photos, and let me tell you. If the theme of this shoot wasn't 🏳️‍🌈gay rentboy fantasy🏳️‍🌈 I have absolutely zero idea what was. These look like manips? But they're real? I'm literally still gawping at them two weeks later.









In this one it looks like he's glancing up at someone whose shadow is falling on the mattress, maybe someone who likes to look before any touching happens a good friend who helped out with the shoot:



I refuse to believe a professional photographer was involved in this filth creative endeavour, given that half the pics are a blurry mess, but I guess they couldn't make it gay and polished. Or something. lunarriviera made a gif for me from the 15-second BTS clip (which only shows Huang Junjie in his cozy sweater and does not include the tank top portion of the shoot). Let's all look at it together:



Whimper.

In conclusion, someone please tell me what's happening, I honestly feel like I'm losing my mind.

All the links:
» HJJ on Weibo
» HJJ Studio on Weibo
» HJJ on Xiaohongshu

» Original post
» Studio repost
» Studio post
» BTS video
» BTS video on Xiaohongshu

Comments

[marycrawford]

Woww, thanks for sharing, I hadn't heard about this and what a crying shame that the show vanished so fast. Censorship, once again, I assume? I'm kind of amazed that anything based on BL is even getting made to begin with, alas. Once there are subbed eps available to fandom I would love to hear about them <3

[mumblemumble]

I want to say I saw somewhere that it actually passed censorship, but I could be mixing it up with something else. But yeah, no idea! Everyone jokes that some intern pressed the wrong button "by accident", but who knows. It does seem amazing that it even got made! I'll ping you when a link to the subbed eps gets shared where I can see. :-D