#i read the tags on a post i wrote where i did call mxtx's portrayal of wangxian problematic

[peridot-tears]

About MXTX’s problematic m|m

There is a cultural component to this. Understand that my analysis is based off looking over Chinese and western history and interacting with both the western and Asian sides of the fandom. I’m Chinese American, so I have access -- and speak Chinese and English -- to both sides, but at the end of the day, the idea of what’s a respectful or disrespectful way to portray LGBTQ culture is made up of millions of individuals’ subjectives. My analysis is only a nibble of the entire cookie.

We talk a lot about how MXTX’s writing is fujoshi fodder. It’s literally yaoi. Whether you read it in English or Chinese, it’s literally yaoi. She got her start in reading yaoi D. Gray-Man fanfiction.

I talk more about her portrayal of gender roles and queercoding here.

So MDZS in particular -- it’s the only one I’ve read, though apparently, TGCF has the same aspects -- presents a “man” and a “woman” in a boys’ love relationship. Wei Wuxian is the wife and mother. He’s literally curvy, always fainting into Lan Wangji’s arms, has a higher voice, grew up among lotuses (which isn’t necessarily “feminine,” but from a modern lens, even in contemporary Chinese society, does have that slant), and is always the one getting penetrated. Power bottom, thy name is Wei Wuxian. 在下名叫魏无羡。

Lan Wangji, in a lot of art, is portrayed with a broader jawline, is markedly taller by the time Wei Wuxian gets Mo Xuanyu’d back into life, is jacked AF (all the better to carry wifey and one [1] dead Nie Mingjue with, YEET), and is quiet and stoic with a deep voice. And he always tops. Let’s not forget the incense burner chapters where he literally tops Wei Wuxian while demanding, “Who is the husband?”

Not to mention the copious amounts of sexual tension and unprotected sex, and WangXian’s non-con kink. This is gay porn. Not PWP, but gay porn nevertheless.

So this dichotomy between masculine husband and the feminine wife husband is clear.

I know the western fandom often is either queasy with this or HATES this. It comes off as fetishy, and really, why does a homosexual relationship HAVE to follow these traditional gender norms? Don’t force heteronormativity onto a gay couple, damn it. But there have been western fans who’ve just...jumped down MXTX’s throat for this. Way too fast, and not always deservedly.

The Asian fandom, as I’ve seen it, tends to be a little more blase about this. I talked around, and while I don’t like the few Chinese people who whine, “ERMERGERD THEY ARE HUSBAND AND WIFE THERE IS NO SWITCHING UNDERSTAND CHINESE C U L T U R E -U-” most people are very chill with it.

I think for China at least, our social relationship with homosexuality has been...very on and off. If we trace back the last couple of dynasties, there are documented periods of time where homosexuality was...fine! Absolutely normal! Confucius’s word is law when it comes to building a home with a man and wife and kids, but it’s not going to kill anyone to love who you love, even if it isn’t someone of the opposite cis gender. There are records of people casually talking about courtship between men in certain regions, and it’s...fine. When Christian missionaries came over, they were fucking horrified (GOOD, nobody ASKED for your dumb opinion).

In Europe, and eurocentric America? Well, you still hear people screaming on the street about homosexuality being a sin, and that’s been consistent in the last couple of centuries. That stigma has been much more enduring, whereas China has fluctuated. And it shows in our literature, and the media based off of it.

What I’m saying is, despite the current state of censorship and the fact that it’s a LOT harder to be openly gay in China than it is to be in most places in the west, you can’t censor or stigmatize away the fact that Chinese people still subconsciously appreciate queer romance. And if it’s kind of fetishy and there’s too much of a husband-wife dynamic? Well, so long as they’re happy, and truly in love, it doesn’t matter. Some people genuinely like that dynamic, so we’ll leave it as is.

We applaud The Untamed for being a breakthrough LGBTQ drama, and it is...because it’s made a breakthrough in the west. People all over the world can appreciate the love and care the cast and crew risked to make it a real love story between two men. But honestly, this isn’t the first major piece of LGBTQ media to make it to the Chinese mainstream. Farewell My Concubine 霸王别姬 was fucking censored when it came out in the 90s, but people still watched it, loved it, and still make media based off of it. There’s a whole fucking LGBTQ film scene in Beijing that struggles to even exist, but does indeed exist.

(There’s a whole other conversation about how censorship has prevented a lot of media from exploring more queer relationships that say FUCK YOU to the man-wife dynamic, but that’s for another day. See: Addiction [web-series].)

Whereas westerners generally had a more rigid and inflexible conception of how any relationship should work for centuries. When you rebel against homophobia, you rebel against the patriarchal, heteronormative structures that come with it.

This is a really long, nuanced conversation to have, and I don’t think I covered all the bases, but at least this opens up that discussion at least a little bit.

#mdzs #mdzs meta #cql #the untamed #chen qing ling #魔道祖师 #陈情令 #墨香铜臭 #mxtx #mo dao zu shi #wangxian #wwx #lwj #wei wuxian #lan wangji #i read the tags on a post i wrote where i did call mxtx's portrayal of wangxian problematic #they disagreed #and culturally speaking i get where they're coming from #(i'm assuming they're chinese they seemed to understand my weird culture specific references) #i think the only fallacy to my logic is that i don't know anyone who's lgbtq on the mainland for obvious reasons #so i'm still learning too