Thinking about Su Xiyan and Tianlang-Jun again, especially Su Xiyan as a person. Like, she's a widely admired head disciple of a great sect, but perhaps NOT necessarily also a widely respected head disciple. Female sect leaders are apparently rare enough that Cang Qiong's Xian Shu Peak is notable. The cultivation world apparently generally alternates between benevolent sexism and hideously oppressive misogyny.
Yet Su Xiyan rose to the position of head disciple anyway. She had "the heart of a tyrant." She trained under and possibly was raised by a man who 1) was so obsessed with her that he kidnapped and killed her, 2) REMAINED obsessed with her 20+ years after her death, 3) has a teenage daughter (Binghe's age!!!) with no mother (WHERE is the "Big" Palace Mistress, huh???), so with that plus the general power structures of PIDW's sects and society, plus everything we see in regards to HHP afterwards, I've been under the assumption that sexual abuse was rampant at Huan Hua Palace.
So, there's this talented, beautiful, charming, witty, intelligent, ruthless, ambitious, cold, probably abused woman who's clawed her way to the top of her tar pit of a sect and the cultivation world. And her next step towards proving to her master and everyone else that she's the best there's ever been is apparently to seduce and kill a Demon Emperor about it.
But Tianlang-Jun is... well, he's many things. He's extremely powerful, he can be very cruel, but he's also this wandering loverboy who's apparently abandoned most of his responsibilities to chase stories and music and a good time. The morals and virtues that have strangled her all her life have no hold on him. He also probably grew up in extremely dangerous and disgusting political struggles, but he walked away, and his only company is his bastard(?), beastly snake demon nephew whom he coos at for being ugly and weird. He acts like an idiot, but it's an act, mostly; he clearly understands wearing masks, and he looks at her like he's actually seeing her real face. He flirts so pathetically with her that it's endearing. He's having fun. Yeah, fun! Hey, remember what it's like to have fun?
You can interpret Su Xiyan as genuinely loving her sect, but I'm currently imagining an interpretation in which she's struggling with the dawning realization that she kind of fucking hates her sect. She's been so resigned to the way this shitty world works that the idea of just... walking away seems impossible. It's stupid. It's immature. It's dangerous. It doesn't compute. She's so envious that she can't fucking breathe. She's put so much of herself, blood and sweat and tears, her entire identity as a person into Huan Hua Palace, and now she's drowning in the sunk cost fallacy. She wants to hurt this man so badly for tearing her apart like this. She's GOING to hurt him. She wants to fuck him and get fucked by him so badly that it's making her stupid, and she just can't AFFORD to be stupid or emotional or reckless or sentimental or in any way weak or vulnerable.
(Side joke: Su Xiyan: (wistfully) "I just want to get dicked down again... :/" Random Huan Hua Palace disciple: "SHIJIE?!?!?!")
And she doesn't figure anything out until it's too late. If she came up with a new scheme (it would be WILD if the pregnancy wasn't accidental and this woman was going to try to babytrap the Demon Emperor), then it didn't work. She tried to have it all and then discovered she maybe wanted something else too or instead, and she ended up with nothing. She must have been so, SO angry about... everything. It's so sad to think about her taking the poison and hoping that SHE would somehow survive too, that she'd be clever enough to figure something out, that she'd find TLJ quickly enough, that he might actually care enough to help her.
I just love the concept of Su Xiyan being a hot mess, a ball of rage, an arrogant asshole, a charming liar, a spiteful bitch, a deep well of love, a horny idiot, a walking collection of desperate schemes and emotional damage, a stack of long-reaching plots winging it as she goes, the cleverest person in any room she's in who doesn't know what she's fucking doing anymore, a cool face who has never actually had any chill in her life, an animal chewing her own leg off. People do NOT come out of Huan Hua Palace being "well-adjusted."
prguitarman
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