4 - Transnational Shipping Fandom and Queer Affective Community: The Case of Mirror in Hong Kong

This paper aims to contribute to current research on shipping, known as CP (官配) in Chinese, fandom, by integrating the perspective of the queer affective community. It focuses on the fandom of the popular local boyband, Mirror, as a case study of queer community formation in the aftermath of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) Movement in Hong Kong. Existing scholarship has delved into various aspects of shipping fandom, including the mechanics of CP fandom behaviors, the intricate relationship between shipping consumption and queer sexuality, as well as the gift economy within the community. This research seeks to explore the intersection of queer desire, affect, and community building and resilience by investigating the transnational shipping fandom of a famous Hong Kong soft-masculinity boyband, Mirror, on platforms AO3 and social media, such as Twitter and Instagram. This transnational consumption of the homo-erotic fanfictions of Mirror, gives rise to powerful homoerotic fantasies among queer fans on one hand. On the other, it's both structurally enabled and constrained by the despondency and emotional toll caused by the curtailment of political rights in the post-Anti-ELAB movement era, coupled with the escalating erosion of queer rights in Hong Kong. Among the shipping fandom of Mirror, I found a transnational queer affective community centering not only on the desire for homoerotic representation, and shelter for queer identity but also the feeling of emotional comfort under the depression of the sociopolitical circumstances of Hong Kong in the post-Anti-ELAB period.