Read on Twitter
I have a lot of emotions about my #CQL / #TheUntamed stan mother - a thread
First of all, she's a 60 something, chinese, conservative, boomer lady. Growing up, she was very anti-queer. She still doesn't know about me. I don't tell her. She's a lot like Madam Yu (and unfortunately I turned out somewhat like Jiang Cheng), so you can imagine my childhood.
I remember having an argument about whether being gay was inherent or a choice with her and the shouting match that ensued. She can tolerate them as a broad concept of "these are people who exist elsewhere" but in her own culture, community or family, that would be unacceptable.
So when she started watching CQL, I was shocked when she was very okay with #wangxian. She even said "it's very hard to even find a really good friend, if you can find a 知己 zhiji (soulmate) like LWJ/WWX, does it matter if they are same gender?" And y'all... my soul left my body
She even pointed out how in love #xiyao were even when I played devil's advocate for fun, and said "a-yao should just be good, don't do evil, elope with his xichen and be happy" - she insisted about the hand-touch scene, and the temple scene etc. She was adamant about it
AND THEN she jumped on the #xuexiao train and pointed out that "the crazy one (xue yang) only stayed with the daozhang for 3 years because he was in love with him"
NO MENTION of how wrong it is to be gay. No mention of how weird, or unacceptable. Just pointing out facts.
NO MENTION of how wrong it is to be gay. No mention of how weird, or unacceptable. Just pointing out facts.
I grew up on xianxia and wuxia shows like this. She watched them with me. None of them ever had a queer angle like CQL though. So I can't express enough how much this show means to me and that she accepts it too. I still probably won't ever come out to her, though.
TLDR; #CQL / #TheUntamed cured my asian boomer mother of homophobia. She knows stuff I only do from being waist-deep in fandom (like the double rooster thing, and the bowing 3x at Lotus Pier that mean LWJ/WWX are close to married) and it scares me. But also it's really good.
