Jing Boran (井柏然) and Song Weilong’s (宋威龙) detective sleuth drama, “A League of Nobleman” (君子盟), suddenly aired 10 episodes on Tencent and WeTV on January 30 without prior notice. It has been over two years since the drama finished filming in December 2020. The news brought a lot of hope for many BL drama fans that a lot of Chinese BL drama adaptations such as “Immortality”, “Chasing the Light”, “Eternal Faith”, and more, will finally be able to air after the government’s ban on BL adaptations.
Despite “A League of Nobleman” starring two male leads and being labeled as a BL drama adaptation, there was some debate about the drama being a BL adaptation. However, the author of the original novel stated the genre of the work is suspense and not a romance novel. Despite this confirmation, some fans argued that the leads are a couple and it is canon, it’s just that the novel is not romance based.
Credit: Weibo (1)
What a pity.. Since I just read there is no open BL in it, i aint gonna watch that. Although it caught my eye at first. You can consider me a Gay Fascist but Im sick of the mainstream hetero-normative bullshit. Thank god I now have plenty of series and movies to choose from and identify myself with. Although I kinda miss more profound lead characters still in general..By those I mean trans, gender-fluid or intersex. Luckily, there is one quite interesting Korean series from the similar historical background, where one of the crown princes is secretly trance. “Under the Queens Umbrella” Quite nice move forward.. yet Im afraid its not enough.
The drama is NOT a BL drama, it’s more thriller and suspense than anything else. Not to give away spoilers, but there is even the possibility that the leads could be related. In this day and age, can’t we have a drama about men without it being labeled as BL? Close, non-sexual friendships do exist between men. It’s fortunate that female centric dramas are not prejudiced like male centric ones, thankfully.
I still find it weird that people are arguing about whether it’s a BL drama/novel when the author has personally stated it’s not. Even if the readers interpret it that way, if that’s not what the author had in mind when writing the novel, who are we to say it is?