A Light on You

A Light on You was a planned charity zine for the Chinese webnovel Qi Ye and its sequel Tian Ya Ke by Priest that was abandoned after facing backlash from fans of Tian Ya Ke's drama adaptation, Word of Honor, on social media in July 2023. The zine mods were accused of not believing that actor Zhang Zhehan's Instagram account was controlled by an impostor. 
==The Zine==
From the project's carrd:
The zine mods were not listed by name on the carrd, but tumblr user glittercracker posted about organizing the project, 24 July 2023.. The twitter account followed four people (zappychild, glittercracker, OrchisAilsa, AJfanfic), all of whom had modded or contributed to Word of Honor zines in the past, and other fans seem to have decided these were the zine mods, 25 July 2023., though there does not appear to be any public confirmation. It is also common practice for zine projects to advertise for mods to join the team later. The identities of the mods were relevant to the ensuing controversy.
===Rules===
According to the carrd FAQ, the zine was to include fanfiction and fanart. Fanworks could "include violent, sensual, or otherwise mature themes but nothing graphic or explicit beyond the level of the novels themselves." The zine was not specifically ship-related, but would allow any ship except for "ships that would be illegal—mainly, no adults paired with underage partners or children". Fanworks were required to be "plausibly canon-compliant, and set within the canon universe". 
The zine was intended to include a digital and print version.
The zine was intended as a charity zine, with charities to be voted on by contributors.
The zine's theme was "masks". 
===Schedule===
The zine was announced in late July 2023 and was scheduled to be published in 2024.
* August 25: Applications close 
* September 9: Concept check-in
* October 8: Check-in 1 
* November 5: Check-in 2 
* December 10: Check-in 3 
* January 15, 2024: Pieces submitted
===Cancellation===
On August 14, 2023, less than a month after the zine was first announced, the tumblr and twitter accounts announced that the project was cancelled., 14 August 2023., 14 August 2023.
The carrd was updated to explain that the mods were harassed, that misinformation was spread about them, and that would-be contributors were worried about also becoming targets. The mods decided to cancel the zine because "we cannot assure contributors that they would be spared the kind of online hostility we’ve experienced in the past three weeks"., carrd. (Accessed 23 August 2023.) 
==Controversy==
===Background: Zines, Money, and Zhang Zhehan Fandom===
The Tian Ya Ke novel fandom is small compared to the Word of Honor drama fandom, and the fandom for Qi Ye, which doesn't have a drama adaptation, is even smaller. The fandoms overlap, but there are novel fans who don't like or care about the drama, and there are novel fans (and drama fans) who like the drama but don't care about actors. There are some drama fans who also like the novels, but plenty more who are not interested.
Fans had already published four English-language Word of Honor zines, and Priest fans had published a few anthologies of fanworks for all of her novels, but no one had published a zine specifically focused on Qi Ye. Some fans had been wishing for a Qi Ye zine since at least 2021., tweet by tyunadium, 21 November 2021., tweet by sennenarts, 21 February 2023., tweet by eorochy, 12 May 2023. A Light on You would not be a Qi Ye only zine, but as it excluded the drama, there was likely to be more Qi Ye related content.
The drama came out in early 2021; the first zine for the drama fandom, published in late 2021, was also modded by glittercracker. The "head mods" for the four Word of Honor zines were all different fans, but there was a lot of overlap in mods and contributors between the different projects. One allowed Qi Ye content, but the others were drama-only. The digital-only zine was free, but the others were print zines and cost money. All of the zines appear to have been completed successfully, print zines and merch were shipped, nobody ran off with the funds, and twitter discussion about the end products seemed very positive. However, the fandom environment changed between 2021 and 2023.
In August 2021, an astroturfing campaign destroyed the career of the lead actor in Word of Honor, Zhang Zhehan (ZZH). This incident upset the fandom and fueled fan speculation about who was behind the smear campaign and what their motives were. Rival fan factions with competing conspiracy theories emerged. More RPF fans who shipped him with his male costar Gong Jun (Junzhe) starting believing that they were a couple in real life. In April 2022 Zhang Zhehan resurfaced on Instagram, and his comments (among other things, denying that he was even friends with Gong Jun) further divided the fandom, with some choosing to believe that the real Zhang Zhehan would never say that and that he must be an impostor. Fans who believe the Instagram impostor theory refer to the new, fake Zhehan as "Zhang Sanjian" or "ZSJ". They call Zhang Zhehan fans who continue to support him and who don't believe the Instagram impostor theory "whalers". The theorists believe that whalers are doing damage to the "real" Zhang Zhehan by financially supporting the faker. They believe that "ZSJ" is trying to defraud the actor's loyal fanbase and that some of the so-called whaler fans are in the know and paid to pretend that he is the real Zhang Zhehan in order to convince more fans to spend money on merchandise, albums, and concert tickets.
Instagram-impostor theorists view fan projects run by "whalers" that cost money as dishonest attempts to enrich themselves off the fandom. For example, in May 2023, some international fans were outraged when a popular fanartist on weibo announced that they no longer believed Junzhe was real or the Instagram was fake., 12 May 2023., tweet by chocoholic3104, 12 May 2023. This artist had recently published an artbook of their Junzhe and Word of Honor fanart, 24 February 2023. archive.ph., and people on twitter posted pictures of themselves throwing the zine they had bought into the trash.English speaker example: , tweet by Brilcrist, 12 May 2023. archive.ph. . archive.ph.Korean speaker example: , tweet by soymilk__jj, 12 May 2023.
===Backlash===
Shortly after writer/artist applications for A Light on You were opened on twitter, July 24, 24 July 2023., Zhang Zhehan fans who believed the Instagram impostor theory started spreading warnings about the people running the zine. dillylene may have been the first to tweet: "FYI, the new qy/tyk light on you zine is created by whalers and anti-cpfs.", 25 July 2023. flora_38657's tweet may have gained the most traction: "Heads up that this zine is being organized by whalers. Spread the word, don't be fooled.", 25 July 2023. archive.ph 
bizarrequazar, also known for tumblr posts collecting evidence that a video on Zhang Zhehan's Instagram account and another video of a fanmeet were deepfakes, 5 May 2022. (last edited 2023-01-05.), 17 July 2022. (last edited 2022-07-18.)., tweeted,
Other fans on twitter spread the news:
*"please watch out and do not participate in any activities that will enable whalers to make money off our fandom.", 25 July 2023.
*"Antis across fandoms use Zines to collect informations of fans. Be careful.", 25 July 2023.
*"I see that some of my moots are following this acc. Just please know who organize this and be very careful with your personal data.", 25 July 2023.
*"As Flora noted, this is being organized by whalers; as others have noted, this is the kind of thing antis use to get information about fans.", 26 July 2023.
zhongwans, a well-known Junzhe shipper who believes they are romantically involved in real life, posted on tumblr,
===July 2022 Bullying of Amethystfiend===
Most of the public accusations against the mods were extremely vague, and the public discussion on social media was not very illuminating. It's also not clear which zine mods were accused. Apparently some of the more specific accusations or rumors were spread via private messages. 
However, there were a few references on twitter and tumblr that indicate people thought that one, some, or all of the zine mods were involved in the July 2022 incident where philologicalbat bullied amethystfiend off twitter, 26 July 2023. (see Disciples of Zhou Zishu). For example, twitter user nie_yinniang said,
Brilcrist, a popular fanartist with 34K twitter followers, tweeted "And i didnt know they bullied Amethystfiend and forced them out from the fandom..."., 26 July 2023.
Because the specifics were not shared publicly, it's difficult to confirm whether the accusations were accurate or exaggerated or false or if it was a case of mistaken identity. philologicalbat was not involved in organizing A Light on You.
===Backlash against the Backlash===
Not everyone who believed in the Instagram impostor theory was impressed by the rumors about A Light on You mods:
"liked a whaler's post one time" may refer to glittercracker; twitter user Quichie6 went through glittercracker's twitter likes and found tweets from someone else about Zhang Zhehan's May 2023 Bangkok concert., 25 July 2023.
(Note that Sebyth is a Zhang Zhehan fan, but not an RPF fan or Junzhe shipper., tweet by Sebyth, 26 July 2023.)
And fans who didn't believe the theory were likewise unimpressed by the behavior of the zine's critics:
northofallmusic, a book fan who was not interested in sharing an opinion on the Instagram theory, said:
ybyqlo, another book fan, voiced a similar frustration in their complaints about Instagram-impostor theorists quote-tweeting the zine announcement, tweet by ybyqlo, 29 July 2023.:
 
Zhang Zhehan fans who believe the Instagram-impostor theory objected to book fans characterizing their behavior as harassing. They argued that they had a right to curate their own experience to avoid content and people whose views conflicted with theirs and share information to help their fellow believers do the same. In turn, others disagreed with the believers' representation of the situation, saying that the posts being public were resulting in harassment, despite whatever the believers claimed about their intent.For example: , , 30 July 2023. (Note that "ybyqlo" is probably a reference to the character Ye Baiyi and "ZellyfishShoes" is probably a reference to Zhang Zhehan fans' nickname of Jellyfish.) bizarrequazar expressed doubt that book fans had been harassed at all, said that they were using it as "an excuse to openly mock a subset of the fandom that you find cringey" and also suggested that "if you're that upset just organize a zine yourselves".Tweet thread by bizarrequazar: , , 16 August 2023.
silks, a DZZS mod who had been away from the Internet, came back to address some general comments to Junzhe (LLD) shippers:
After the zine was cancelled, tothedeaths (yiqie) commented,
dcyiyou spoke up again:
The next day, dcyiyou was called out on twitter as a "full time whaler"., 15 August 2023., 15 August 2023. Other fans called out the call-outs:
In the notes of the zine's cancellation announcement on tumblr, a number of fans expressed disappointment about the cancellation and anger over the harassment., 14 August 2023.
Someone on fail_fandomanon commented, 
==Aftermath?==
glittercracker deleted her twitter account.
Another possible casualty was the Qi Ye Doodles & Drabbles Exchange, announced on August 1, 2023, 1 August 2023., but "postponed indefinitely" on August 5 for unstated reasons, 5 August 2023.. It restarted in 2024 with new mods. (Accessed 25 March 2024.)
As of May 2024, there appear to be no new book-focused English-language zine projects for Qi Ye or Tian Ya Ke.
==References==
Category:Word of Honor
Category:Charity Zines
Category:2023 Zines