I honestly find Su She so interesting. In the early years he’s a fuck-up but only insofar as he’s… just kinda average, but surrounded by a bunch of people so exceptional that he can’t help but bring down the curve.
I don’t just mean that in terms of his skills, either – regardless of which version of the mdzs story you consume (book, manhua, donghua, untamed) the actions that disgust the people around him are normal human responses under duress. Losing his sword to the waterborn abyss? Skill issue mixed with a snap decision. Trying to give up Mianmian to Wang Lingjiao? Terror will make you do awful things for survival. Ditto on giving up the location of his sect brothers to the Wens in CQL. We all like to think we would be brave and do the right thing in a life-or-death scenario, but the data is clear that only a few of us would actually run into a burning building or tackle an armed shooter. Su She’s actions aren’t praiseworthy, but we aren’t being honest with ourselves if we say they aren’t understandable.
Add to that the hero worship he holds for Hanguang-jun at that young age, and the sting of rejection combined with a deep-seated sense of inadequacy make his later resentment a natural evolution.
The thing is, despite the fact that he becomes the leader of a Lan-esque sect, Su Minshan at no point shows signs of wanting to be Hanguang-jun… not in his Lan Sect days and not in his Su Sect days. He wants to emulate his heroes, sure, but insofar as doing so makes him useful to them. “I just wanted to help.” The Su Clan forms and emulates the Lans because a) having a devoted subordinate running a clan that isn’t under obvious Jin control is useful to Jin Guangyao; and b) Su She isn’t some prodigy and Lan techniques are what he knows. Being taken for a bunch of copycats means being underestimated and that is useful, but I don’t think it’s the point. Lan cultivation is what he knows and so he’ll use that for his new master, Jin Guangyao.
I think this tends to get lost in the admitted pettiness of his targeting of Jin Zixun (which I think a lot of characters at least fantasize about doing even if they’d never follow through) but most of his other later actions are not undertaken against people he feels have wronged him, but for Jin Guangyao’s ambitions. And he really puts his life on the line to do all this. Su Minshan grows into a man with the bravery he admires in others after he finds a master who appreciates him. Su She might not fulfill his expected duty to die honorably for the Lans at the tender age of whatever, but as an adult he sure as hell finds it in him to die for Jin Guangyao. To Jin Guangyao, Su She is a tool, but also a confidante, and that seems to suit Su She just fine. He is happy to die for that.
Su She may not be the most skilled or the most morally upright, but I genuinely think the Lans lost out for not recognizing what they had in him. The propensity for that sort of loyalty is no small thing. It’s just that, as a group of fresh and untested teenagers were suddenly faced with the realities of war, Su She was the one who was not yet ready.