am i crazy or did song qiutong literally not do anything bad enough to warrant her treatment in the narrative. sure she was a bit fucked up and betrayed people to preserve her own life or interests but? so are many male cultivators in the series? her crime is that she's also a woman??? she's a victim of circumstance a victim of the patriarchy and was quite literally entrapped into her "betrayal" in her second life. sorry i do not think we were shown enough for me to be convinced that she truly was an evil, conniving, bitter woman.
in her first life she acted like and emulated shi mei as much as possible in order to stay alive, and she capitalised on taxian-jun's seeming hatred of his shizun by taking it upon herself to torture chu wanning in order to earn his favour because if she doesn't have the emperor's favour, she will fucking die. and not only that she's literally considered subhuman in the narrative? like her race is specifically described as existing to be consumed or bred. her entire existence is predicated on the knowledge that her life can be taken from her for any reason simply because of her race.
in her second life, she committed no actual crime until mo ran got involved. mo ran's internal narrative is so dead set on convincing the reader that she's ineplicably evil and will inevitably turn on whoever she's with in her own self interest, but she has no reason to do that in the current timeline? she's marrying a sect heir, granted she doesn't know that the intention is to use her to fix nangong si's cultivation problem at the possible expense of her own life. so mo ran very publicly manufactures a reason for her to "betray" ye wangxi in an obvious way to demonstrate her treachery.
but mo ran publicly accuses a woman in front of all of the great sects just before her wedding of not being chaste, and then very obviously dangle the perfect "excuse" for her, very heavily implying that she's been sleeping with one specific man. how else can she save face for herself and her marriage other than taking the excuse and saying she was raped? i'm not justifying a fake rape accusation at all, it's a shitty thing to do all around. the issue is that she quite literally did not have an alternative. she was accused of things she did not do and could not prove because mo ran actively engineered the scenario by removing the clear proof that she was still a virgin. mo ran used his sexual escapades with song qiutong in their past life as evidence of her having sex with another man (who was not a man). mo ran literally entraps her, walks her into a bait and switch. what can she do to preserve her life and her dignity other than go along with it when the only proof she has that she's innocent has been deliberately concealed by mo ran? this is proof of her treacherous nature? of her conniving and manipulative and power hungry personality?
yeah sorry i don't buy it.
was she a good person in her previous life? fuck no. should she have tortured chu wanning? definitely not. unambiguously. does she deserve to be ripped apart in mo ran's internal monologue for quite literally obeying his every order and instruction in her previous life in a bid to stay alive? no????????????? regardless, she got boiled alive in oil for these crimes so. fuck it. whatever. she's served her penance surely.
as for the current life, her crimes are: that nangong si was apparently "seduced" by her and sidelining ye wangxi, that she falsely accused ye wangxi of raping her after being manipulated into doing so by mo ran.
i dont think shes a good person, i think she's literally just a person trying to stay alive with odds stacked freakishly high against her.
