i keep seeing people complaining about wei wuxian being referred to as "mom" or "lan wangji's wife" and stuff and "HE'S A MAN. STOP TREATING THEM LIKE THEY'RE NOT MEN! THEY'RE MEN!" and i keep squinting like... is this terfs? are you terfs? because what's wrong with interpreting their genders however the fuck you want oh my god. (i read wwx as genderqueer/fluid and lwj as agender. but i read lwj as wtfsexual and wtfromantic too (gay, but, he doesnt have a clue))
Yeah...yeah. So it’s part of the Big Fandom Discourse about Untamed versus the novel and the repeated arguments from show-only fans that the novel is Problematic because______________ insert reason. This one, about the one time when in the novel Wangxian are referred to as “man and wife” by WWX. He’s literally saying they are equivalent to married. But, from my understanding, the Chinese term for “married couple” is just “man and wife” so that’s what’s used. That was blown up into a huge THING about Evil Asian Fujoshis trying to turn gay men into women.
In addition, WWX expresses a desire to give birth, that he wishes he could give LWJ a baby, and makes comparisons of himself to his own mother from his childhood memories. I mean, it’s a longing for family more than anything else, and is ultimately resolved when he discovers Lan Sizhui is actually, you know, his son.
Taking all of that and twisting it into a negative, taking a happy canon gay couple who are married and share an adopted son and making it about how evil the author is for using heteronormative terms IN A LANGUAGE THESE PEOPLE DON’T SPEAK....yeah I think it’s an incredibly ungenerous interpretation that smacks of both racist bias and suspiciously TERF-Y attitudes towards gender and sexual essentialism.
These same people have a problem with the novel because of Wangxian’s canon kinky sex life. Which...again the overlap between people who have a problem with consensual kink between adults, anti-fujoshis, and TERFs is...definitely a thing.
And I mean, I love CQL. That should be clear. I don’t have a problem with people who just love the drama or love the drama best or don’t want to read the novel. But understand MDZS has been a fandom for a lot longer than CQL has existed, you’re coming into an established fandom space and then calling people names for the decorating scheme. And the show that people love is based, EXTREMELY CLOSELY on the novel by the author that they malign. Which is just such an ungenerous way to behave towards a creator. A creator who has been heavily censored for writing queer fiction, and would be in danger of arrest if her identity was revealed. (Not to mention who is subject to a contract that limits the rewards she gets from all these adaptations of her work. I’m not an expect on JJWXC contracts but she doesn’t own the rights to her work right now and certainly hasn’t been compensated to the extent an author normally would.)
And as far as character interpretations, I mean, as always, that’s up to individual fans. I could certainly see a very valid interpretation of WWX as genderqueer, though I personally tend to think of them both as male. Also because they live in a world where gender concepts are quite different to our own. But absolutely go nuts. I mean I have written a story in which they are both ace, because I can see that version of the story, even while mostly being someone all about the smut and the kinky canon, very sexual couple from the novel.
That’s great, that’s fun, that’s what fandom is All About! It’s about playing with characters and events and worlds and seeing what you can DO with them while still having them be recognizably themselves. And yet, for some UNKNOWN AND INCOMPREHENSIBLE reason to me, a vocal minority of fandom wants to spend all their time telling other people what they are Doing Wrong and What Not To Do.
Fandom is all about possibilities. People who want to limit those possibilities have Missed The Point. Only this approved form of relationship is allowed because we have scientifically measured what a Healthy Relationship looks like and we don’t want anything too messy or complicated. The Correct Way to be Gay is This Way and anyone who disagrees is actually homophobic.
And what’s happening is that instead fandom being a place where everyone is accepted for who they are, regardless of their tastes and opinions, where people can just BE themselves to the fullest extent, people are being shamed and either chased away or reshaped if they don’t fit the Ideal Fan with Correct Opinions. And as someone who has been around for over 20 years, it makes me very sad.
(Oh, and to actually address your last point, I see WWX as bi-attracted demisexual. I don’t have hard and fast opinions on LWJ’s a-spec placement except that I see him as gay.)
Sorry for the rant, but, yeah, it Keeps Coming Up and I keep having less and less patience with it.
