Romanticized narrative in Chinese 12-episode web series: a multidimensional cultural-narrative analysis

This study examines Chinese 12-episode web series by conceptualizing Romanticized Narrative (RN) as a compensatory narrative configuration produced by platform-conditioned structural compression rather than a purely stylistic preference. While existing scholarship on web series has largely focused on platform governance, regulation and industrial transformation, less attention has been paid to how platform-driven short-season formats reorganize narrative form to generate affective engagement and ideological meaning. Drawing on Todorov’s three-level narrative model and multimodal narratology, the study conducts qualitative content analysis of two representative suspense dramas, The Long Night (2020) and The Long Season (2023), coding narrative time, mode, style and characterization. The findings indicate that under the constraints of the 12-episode, platform-optimized seasonal structure, RN coordinates intensified characterization, non-linear temporal organization and stylistic saturation to secure rapid affective attachment and moral legibility within a finite narrative arc. While this compensatory configuration enhances emotional resonance and binge-oriented engagement, it also tends to translate systemic tensions (such as institutional failure or socio-economic transformation) into individualized trajectories of sacrifice, perseverance, or revenge, thereby narrowing the space for structural critique. By linking platform-conditioned structural compression, romanticized affect and ideological closure, this study extends narratological analysis to web-native seriality and offers a transferable framework for comparative research on contemporary platform-based storytelling.