oh no i accidentally started watching the gay exorcists for journalism and i've never seen a fool flirt so hard for so little reward oh my god ahaha

please stop there are 45 more episodes of this lololol

on the other hand i've also never seen so much gay panic in one human ahaha

This whole clan is about to break into a round of "How do you solve a problem like Wei Wuxian"

Lan Zhan: only significant others can touch the headband

Lan Zhan, 5 minutes later:
...
...
...
what if we bind our hands with the headband like we're in a wedding ceremony

My struggle not to liveblog MDZS vs MDZS

oh no Wei Ying does not want to leave summer school yet because he does not want to leave his BOYFRIEND *whispers* this is so pure #mdzs

oh my god lan zhan just just told the rabbits goodbye because he could not speak the words to wei ying himself i'm going to eat this entire pillow #MDZS

Lan Zhan: Wei Ying hasn't said a word for the last 10 seconds, SOMETHING MUST BE WRONG #MDZS

THE FACE OF PANICKED CONCERN, I CANNOT #mdzs

i can't keep livetweeting this you guys every tweet i'm just like, this is it, this is the one that's going to make all the theatre critics unfollow me sob #MDZS

Oh my god we have ZOMBIES? okay that's it i'm done i just, ZOMBIES? AHAHA #MDZS

last thing FOR REAL but i love how lan zhan has gone from complete refusal to look at wei ying to glancing at him every few seconds for reassurance, ahaha yes good carry on #mdzs

okay this is for real the very last #mdzs thing: that cave scene was legit everything i've ever wanted in a love scene ahaha oh my god how did this show make it past the censors, what an absolute joy this is

#MDZS this show really just took a several-episode plot detour just to have an excuse to trap its otp alone together in a cave, hand fans a *canonical ship montage*, and score it with a *canonical love song* that half of the pairing CANONICALLY TITLES WITH THEIR SHIP NAME. i'm

Lan Zhan: refuses to call Wei Ying "Wuxian" or respond when Wei tries to call him "Wangji"

Also Lan Zhan: writes a love song for them and titles it "Wangxian"

#mdzs

tfw the show separates its lovers for 5 eps and many months straight and then one of them shows up suddenly razing everything in his path to find the other one, nbd #mdzs

i love that literally everyone knows these kids are in love and just accepts it lol

Jiang Cheng: When Wei didn't show up in Yiling I just assumed he ditched me to GO FIND LAN ZHAN, HIS BOYFRIEND

Servants: We found Wei's sword, so IT OBVIOUSLY BELONGS TO LAN ZHAN NOW #mdzs

and then OF COURSE Lan Zhan just walks around carrying their two swords together in the same baldric like they're the two flannel shirts in brokeback mountain lolol h e l p #MDZS

has any person ever hated his life as much as Wan Zhuliu #MDZS

Also I love Wen Qing so much she had better survive this cursed show

When you finally see your boyfriend again after like 5 months but he's accidentally become a vengeful demonic goth metal flautist #MDZS

this is the tensest reunion scene in the world and i am quietly losing all my faculties over it and also hitting "back" every 10 seconds so i can really soak up all this intense tortured soulmate staring lol #mdzs

Please mute the #MDZS tag, or just mute me for a few days, if you don't want to see these tweets about the epic saga of queer feudal exorcists in love!

When your guest of honor is just pining for his boyfriend who he pushed away out of guilt, and that's just like, a Monday

"If you're so upset because of your fight with your boyfriend, why did you follow him here just to be more upset?" asks Jiang Cheng, answering his own question #MDZS

it's extremely predictable that i've progressed completely from deep ambivalence about the stoic love interest to 'let me treasure every second of this tortured face' #MDZS

incidentally i really appreciate the lan clan high-level meetings because i find the blue and white aesthetic so calming and soothing and pretty in the middle of all this tension #MDZS

When the boyfriends reunite during their fight and both of your brothers immediately turn it into a Whole Thing lolol #MDZS

Xichen, or as i think of him, the Legolas, has literally been trying to get his little brother to deal with his feelings for Wei for 20 episodes straight and he NEVER GIVES UP lol what a champ #MDZS

I have to say if I were Nie Mingjue and I were trying to plot war stratagems but literally every one of my guests was more focused on trying to fix Lan Zhan and Wei Ying's relationship, I, too, would be exasperated lolol #MDZS

okay, sure, just keep straight up destroying me, it's fine #MDZS

oh my god i was all for shipping the Lee Pace hobbit with Yanli because those two had the world's most epic misunderstanding and i was down with it, but now after what he did to her over the soup!!!!!!!! now I'm just like NO WHO ARE YOU, YOU DON'T DESERVE JOY sob #MDZS

I do think it's hilarious that everyone in this alliance thinks it's a Level Orange threat to the common good whenever Lan and Wei have any disagreement, and meanwhile no one has even registered that Jin and Jiang Yanli are still clearly in love and not coping well lol #mdzs

Has there ever been a bastard taken into a royal family who grew up constantly being mocked and reminded of his illegitimate status who *didn't* ultimately go on to betray his whole house? #mdzs

The moves on this obsessed protective fucker #mdzs

Granted he needs those moves because his idiot boyfriend is fighting by straight-up thwacking people WITH A FLUTE instead of his sword, sigh #mdzs

honestly this is legit 'oh shit' territory and i give all props to The Untamed for making that work #mdzs

dragon con cosplay challenge 2020 #mdzs

When you're gravely concerned because your boyfriend has become a demon whisperer but also very turned on because your boyfriend has become a demon whisperer #mdzs

is there anyone who doesn't talk about their crush exactly like this, with this exact face #mdzs

WHAT okay that's it i've coped with these two and their nonsense enough for one day goodnight #mdzs

#mdzs NO WAIT I LIED I just

Yanli: "That must be Lan now"

Wei Ying:

just let me have a small breakdown over this i'll be okay #mdzs

One of the things that is deeply fascinating to me about #MDZS so far is that these characters are canonically queer and in love, but onscreen that textual relationship now looks identical to so much subtext-heavy media.

And this one show, (no) thanks to Chinese censorship, ironically singlehandedly undermines decades of queer fans being told that our coded queer readings of characters was wrong and it was all platonic / just subtext / wishful thinking etc. #mdzs

The Untamed/ #mdzs is a perfect example of a legitimately queer relationship coming through loud and clear thanks to an assumed common language of coded subtext between creators and audience, in exactly the way that creators have done through decades of the Celluloid Closet.

I'm just thinking of, like, the countless times I as a fan have seen creators trying to distance themselves after inserting this same exact kind of coding into Merlin and Teen Wolf and Sherlock and Supernatural and Hawaii 5-O and freaking Sesame Street and on and on #mdzs

This show is so pure and so obviously an effort to put a queer love story into the world, whereas so often the other shows were titillation at the expense of queer representation. It's fascinating to try to figure out where the line is, and frustrating to still have to try. #MDZS

Me thinking ep 24 of this cursed show would be a filler ep now that there's a plot break instead of an episode where EVERY SCENE WAS FULL OF INTENSE FEELINGS AND INTENSE QUEERNESS AND INTENSE FAMILY BONDING #mdzs

shout-out to the Jin clan stylist, I love these fabrics and these patterns and these colors so much, brb converting my whole closet to decadent robes #mdzs

now that i am apparently actually threading reactions to this show i want to go back and talk about episode 13-14 and the cave because i am completely obsessed with all of it, and everything in my previous tweet LITERALLY HAPPENED what the hell #mdzs https://twitter.com/ajaromano/status/1220101668597047296

I didn't properly emphasize that the events in the #mdzs cave unfolded like:
A) We get this amazing love scene that is a beautifully intense silent confession of feelings through complete plausible deniability, it's really...
B) After this they telepathically bond bc of course

C) Then we get this ridiculous shipper fanvid mid-scene which is literally a sepia-toned montage of all the best shipper moments from the series thus far, including this moment from LZ's best day ever ie when WWX drew him a rabbit lantern and he fell in love through prayer #mdzs

(Oh hell here is the rabbit gif too #mdzs)

So yeah this intense shipper montage is accompanied by:

D) A SONG LAN ZHAN WROTE FOR THEM BOTH, and when Wei asks him what the title of the song is, LZ mouths "Wangxian" i.e. their literal ship name through a blurry filter. #mdzs

It's just astonishing to me that the censors greenlit any of this?! and the way #mdzs made it clearly canonical under the veil of plausible deniability just blows me away. IDK if any of you have further insight into this subject of censors+queer Chinese media but plz DM me if so!

Update please enjoy all the academic work out there that's being done on this topic, bless you acafen https://series.unibo.it/article/view/9156

it has come to my attention that this thread cuts off / the second half of it disappears ??? after the previous tweet so if it's helpful here's the next tweet in the thread! https://twitter.com/ajaromano/status/1220432130905341954