#ragless

and as much as i love a previously underappreciated and unloved character finally being someones #1, here i’m interested in a... subversion? not exactly, of that. there’s no big romance, they don’t even gradually fall in love after getting married, slowly discovering that the other one is a good, sensitive person! no, they’re primarily partners. the wife is here to get out of the parents’ house and finally have her own place, he is here to establish a sect and also have his own place. they’re both black sheeps of the society, more or less, either because her husband didn’t like her or because he was scared and wanted to live, and they’re shitty reason to look down on someone, so they end up bonding anyway. once they’re a bit more established, they even have a daughter and i already love her, because she has her father’s narrow lips and her mother’s narrow eyes, essentially becoming the most suspicious-looking child ever devised. and she’s a frog girl, because frogs are cool.

now, about their situation post canon -- did sms even think to leave a letter, saying his wife and child and disciples didn’t know about his Schemes, and thus shouldn’t be judged for what he’s done? or maybe he knew no one would care about that anyway -- you don’t need to punish or be violent towards someone to ruin them, just not paying attention is enough? who are his disciples and what do they think? there has to be a reason why they’re in moling su and not, say, somewhere else, even if that reason is ‘well, they’re locals, so’. do they abandon the sect and try to join one that’s... not even more powerful or richer, just ‘less looked down upon by everyone and their grandma’s dog’?

the daughter, who’s like 5-7, is simply missing her father. what about the wife? does she have a too-late realization that she was in love with her husband, actually? or maybe she wasn’t, but loved him in her own way, and she’s both furious at this asshole for leaving her alone with all this mess (he didn’t even survive! he didn’t even go to fucking dongying with lianfang-zun, they both died! what’s the fucking point! how can you fuck up that badly, minshan!!!) and sad because there used to be someone living with her, sharing her bed and dinner table, and now he’s gone?

and now, the teleportation talismans, the masking spell etc? and here i will allow myself a digression, because: people say he’s a bad cultivator, but like, he’s unremarkable next to hanguang-jun, and who isn’t! wwx says in the novel himself that his cultivation is high. he knows his sword forms and guqin tunes, and i will never be not in awe of the guqin trick in burial mounds went. do you even just fucking play Evil Music in front of Music Masters Clan -- LAN QIREN, BABEY!!! -- and they don’t notice a thing because they think you’re just Bad? poetic cinema. poetic cinema. also, about that: in the drama, he uses a mask instead of a masking spell, but i’m really into the concept of someone who’s been ignored, feels unnoticed and invisible next to hanguang-jun™, dabbling in cultivation methods that use exactly that. i think i’ve mentioned somewhere at some point eloped xiyao using talismans/spells/something that doesn’t cover your face or alter it in any physical way, but makes it so anyone who looks at you has absolutely no idea what you look like. the epitome of unremarkable and ‘uh, they looked... normal?’. i think that would be super neat for moling su to develop. WEAPONIZED ‘eh, nothing special’.

anyway: so moling su have all that, except is it a known fact, or do they know su minshan just happened to vanish at some point? because i think teleportation is a very neat trick that can both help and make someone’s life hell, and su-furen would probably have a problem, because: should she take care of stuff, educating the disciples and essentially serving as a sect leader/regent (even though she’s not the best, either at cultivation, talismans or general sect-leading, she was a wife and that’s a separate soup of duties to fill), or should she look for (yet another) husband, for her own security and safety of her disciples? what about her daughter, though? she knows what people are like, she can’t just trust them to treat her well.

ETC, ETC, I JUST. it’s so interesting!! i accidentally gave myself moling su sect feelings, lol. also, i have this cracky idea of su-furen committing Microaggressions to the chief cultivator his excellency hanguang-jun, ranging from raising her eyebrow by one mm after something he’s said to using teleportation to butt into his night hunts, deal with the thing and quietly go home, and like. who would it be. jiang cheng. jiang cheng being kinda torn between (BIG SECT LEADER SCOFF) and ‘fuck, okay, that was entertaining, do that again’.