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hunxi-after-hours · 3 years

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Shen qiao has a strong and stubborn personality... I was wondering when did he realize and accept he's in love with yan wushi? Was it at the very end of the novel?

sdlfksjdfksjd oh I love Shen Qiao so much and this is part of the reason why

tracking his relationship with Yan Wushi backwards through the novel is so interesting, because here's the thing about Shen Qiao: unless you're like, literally committing a crime the first time he meets you (@Sang Jingxing @Huo Xijing), he cares about you. he cares about your continued survival and eventual success. he just wants nice things for you, because that's who Shen Qiao is, and it's not that much, is it? to want nice things to happen to other people?

anyway, so it's like, fascinating to me that Shen Qiao cares about Yan Wushi, has cared about Yan Wushi pretty much since day one despite Yan Wushi being, well, like that. Yan Wushi endlessly mocks him for it (what, have you really developed feelings for me?) but that's just who Shen Qiao is--he'll care about you if you give him the chance

but like, when did Shen Qiao fall in love with Yan Wushi, and when did he realize it? both very good questions, and perhaps not ones with definitive answers, because the relationship between these two wasn't an "eye contact, world slowing, love at first sight" kind of business, but the long, slow building of trust and understanding and mutual care. sure they had to rip out the foundations in the middle of the process and start over, but hey, yanshen get there eventually

so, when does Shen Qiao fall in love? well, I think that's an open question, right? is love what brings him back to Yan Wushi at the Panlong Conference, saving Yan Wushi's sorry corpse with just the barest thread of life in him? is love what makes Shen Qiao throw himself into danger, again and again, to protect a greatly-weakened Yan Wushi from the many jianghu people who are still out for his life?

or is it later, perhaps, when Shen Qiao returns to the foot of a mountain he once called home and, overhearing a neighboring conversation, learns that Yan Wushi has challenged Hu Lu Gu to a duel, the timing too suspicious to be anything but a calculated move to protect Shen Qiao himself? is it when Shen Qiao approaches a casually unconcerned Yan Wushi, teasing a small fawn in a familiar-unfamiliar courtyard, and asks to take his place in the duel? or is it even later, when Shen Qiao cradles Yan Wushi's body on the peak of a mountain where it all began, voice shaky with sobs as he pleads I'll do anything, if you just come back?

well, hard to say, isn't it? I don't think Shen Qiao really falls in love so much as he accidentally slides down the side of a mountain into it--inevitably, gaining momentum, not realizing that he'd already left the point of no return much farther behind. where was that point of no return? he doesn't know; perhaps it was at the foot of Half-Step Peak, where a passing Yan Wushi first picked up a battered and broken Shen Qiao and nursed him back to health, because from that moment onward, both of their lives were irrevocably changed

I've been thinking, lately, about what makes Shen Qiao's relationship to Yan Wushi different from his relationship with literally anyone else in the jianghu, and I think it's this: Yan Wushi is, lowkey, the first person to care about Shen Qiao as like. a person

(except Qi Fengge, I do stan one (1) dead mentor)

no wait, hear me out: in his first tenure as sect leader, Shen Qiao was defined more by the position he occupied (sect leader, successor, shixiong, shidi) than he was by his person. and then, as he wanders the jianghu, people care about his beauty and reputation (did you hear? he lost to Kun Ye and I heard he's now Yan Wushi's bedwarmer--) rather than the reality of his person, his skill, his merit, his virtue. and this isn't to say that Yan Wushi doesn't start there either (recall: how little rest Shen Qiao got while Yan Wushi beat the essence of the Zhuyang Ce out of his body), but Yan Wushi actually spends time with Shen Qiao. teases him, teaches him, treats him like a person, not just a sect leader, a person, not just a representation of Qi Fengge's legacy, a person

let’s not romanticize Yan Wushi’s very shitty behavior in the first fifty chapters, but let’s also recall that Shen Qiao can walk away at any time--did, in fact, walk away for a while--but crucially, Yan Wushi never tells Shen Qiao to leave, just lets Shen Qiao choose

my god. has Shen Qiao ever been so free, in his entire life?

then The Betrayal happens, then everything happens, and Shen Qiao is warier now, rightfully distrustful of Yan Wushi's every word, but oh, he never stopped caring, did he? the difference now is that he won't let this care blind him to the reality of the man before him, the difference now is that this man before him swears up and down that he loves Shen Qiao, and if Shen Qiao doesn't believe it, then he could carve this heart out of Yan Wushi's chest to take a look, but Shen Qiao's not going to fall for this twice, he knows where that leads

but the pile of evidence pointing towards the uneasy realization that Yan Wushi is, in fact, telling the truth this time continues to grow, and grow, and grow

this is all getting very long and rambling, but Shen Qiao comes to some kind of realization in the very last chapter, on the peak--curled protectively around a rapidly-cooling body, begging and bargaining back the life of the man in his arms, Shen Qiao admits that he would, in fact, do anything for Yan Wushi, so long as Yan Wushi came back, says as much to Yan Wushi's closed eyelids

is that love? it's sacrifice, it's devotion, it's grief, it's gladness--sure, let's call that love, though Shen Qiao never calls it that by name

and then we have the unrestrained comedy of the fanwai, the extras, the hijinks Yan Wushi schemes, the group effort it takes to get Shen Qiao to make the first move, and it's endearingly clumsy how clueless he is but he gets there eventually, a quick peck on the lips which is all it takes for Yan Wushi to seize the reins of this relationship again and kick it from slow-burn into high gallop

in the fanwai, Yan Wushi remarks that Shen Qiao is both stubborn and proud enough that Shen Qiao would, in fact, refuse to admit his feelings for Yan Wushi unless Yan Wushi took matters into his own hands (engineered an entire melodrama amidst a bandit skirmish, seriously), so the feelings were definitely there. it just takes Shen Qiao a few weeks, a lot of encouragement, and some questionably-applicable courting advice to act on his feelings. it takes these two chuckleheads until the literal extra chapters after the end of the story proper to get together officially, which I appreciate to no end because Meng Xishi really made them work for it and it shows

tl;dr I'd hazard that Shen Qiao realizes that he's in love in the last chapter, but accepting that's he's in love? not until after the book ends; these two literally get together post-canon

#I shouldn't be allowed to write posts after my bedtime #千秋 backlog #this post is made of incoherence and my love for Shen Qiao #hunxi thinks about QQ

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