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This article uses Chinese popular narratives rooted in and circulated via the internet to investigate what effects it might have on texts that move through the internet in the process of adaptation or transformation from one cultural form to another. By juxtaposing the analysis of mainland Chinese films based on writings first published on the web, namely the 2012 films Caught in the Web (搜索 Sousuo), directed by Chen Kaige (陳凱歌), and Mystery (浮城謎事 Fucheng mishi), directed by Lou Ye (婁燁), with online fiction that expands the storyworlds of blockbuster films, such as the 2007 novel Infinite Horror (無限 恐怖 Wuxian kongbu) by zhttty, this article focuses on the discursive role intermediality plays in literature-to-film and film-to-literature adaptations. I show how all three works share a preoccupation with the "in-between," a term closely related to intermediality. In these texts, the in-between is replete with struggles between different forms of agency facilitated and limited by digital media. The connotations that the internet carries as a form of intermediality are, however, dependent on the creators' own experiences and beliefs about the impact of digital media on contemporary society. In some cases, their work suggests the normative project of digital dystopianism, a predominantly negative outlook on the dangers digital technologies pose to morality and social institutions. In others, it points to a liberating creative agency that allows cultural producers to use the internet to forge new stories and meanings out of a global archive of popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the impact of the Internet on Chinese poetry. Topics discussed include the similarities between Chinese-language literature websites and print literary journals of the nation from 1911 to 1949, the existence of modern Chinese poetry as a social form, and the gatekeeping dynamics that are shaping modern poetry in the nation. Also presented are three case studies of poetry activity on the Internet that correspond to the said dynamics of online literary gatekeeping.

This paper uses a genre of online Chinese popular fiction known as Web-Game fiction as an entry point for exploring the influence of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) on linear narrative fiction. By offering a thick description of MMORPG gameplay and of gamers' movements between online and offline worlds, Web-Game fiction narrates and "deinteractivates" the subjective experiences of players as they progress through the levels of online role-playing games. This essay proposes that the genre offers an alternative perspective on transmedia production strategies in Chinese popular culture and on the nature of immersion in online environments, often viewed in negative terms by Chinese critics who employ vocabulary such as youxihua ("gamification" or "ludification"), "YY" (yiyin, or "mental masturbation"), and chenmi (absorption or addiction) to warn of the dangers of allowing one's imagination to run wild in mediated fictional worlds. By reading one novel from the perspectives of transmedia storytelling, remediation, and affective involvement in digital games, I suggest that Web-Game fiction is emblematic of Chinese netizens' desire to take control of their own stories within a larger contemporary reality, the rules and parameters of which lie beyond any individual control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]