Thread by @vivisextion

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.

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.