“Fixing” race across the Pacific: Transcultural reinterpretations in the <i>Genshin Impact</i> fandom

In this paper, we argue that fans re-read and reinterpret international media texts to make them fit into local sets of racial and cultural hegemonies. This paper follows the reinterpretation of the Chinese online game Genshin Impact , a 2020 global smash hit based on a variety of cultures and civilizations, in Western social media spaces through to the Chinese fan responses to its Western transformation. There is a long understanding in the field of fan studies that transformative fans have often rewritten texts to fit the desires of the audience, but we expand that practice into transcultural hegemonic understandings of race and racism. In this case study, we show how the fluidity of international concepts of race allows video game fans in the US and China to reconstruct local racial hegemonies in their fan practices.