An Exhaustive Explanation For Why Qin Su Took Her Life Of Her Own Volition
(Or: For God's Sake, Please Just Let Her Have This One Thing)
Okay, so let's leave aside the fact that Wei Wuxian is an unreliable narrator. At the point in the novel at which he insists that Jin Guangyao must have forced Qin Su to kill herself somehow, Wei Wuxian has also insisted that Lan Wangji would totally hate it if he knew they'd made out while drunk. Let's also leave aside that Wei Wuxian himself will reassess his opinion of Qin Su's death later on, and IIRC says nothing about it either way in the drama, because the people who insist that JGY Definitely Killed Made Her Do That sure do. A narrator being unreliable doesn't mean we can't trust anything they tell us, after all; it just means we need to compare their views to outside evidence, the way you would with a primary source document.
AND WHEN YOU DO THAT
IT STILL MAKES ZERO SENSE
Picture all this from Jin Guangyao's standpoint. Let's assume for funsies that you don't care about your wife who is also your half-sister, and have no compunctions about killing her to keep the incest secret. Wouldn't you just... do that? Wouldn't you kill her the second that little paperman flies away and you hear the alarm?
"He obviously couldn't do that! The paperman saw her alive so it'd be weird if she suddenly was gone!" Yeah, and everyone at the cultivation conference saw her alive when they came into the treasure-and-torture room, and it would be even weirder if she suddenly stabbed herself to death in front of them.
"Ah, but he needed to know who sent her the letter! He can't afford to kill her!" Wow, hey, that's right! You, Evil Jin Guangyao, have just spent the preceding scene wheedling and then threatening Qin Su so she'll tell you who send the letter, and she stood firm the whole time! So forcing her to kill herself in front of everyone when she still hasn't told you that important piece of information would be PRETTY DUMB, wouldn't it? (Almost as dumb as giving her the opportunity to interact with all the people you're trying to keep the secret from, but hey, maybe it took you longer to hide da-ge's head than anticipated.)
"Maybe he'd given up on getting her to tell him anything so her killing herself was to divert suspicion away from him!" Okay, first of all, how is "your wife (whom nobody but you has seen recently) kills herself with no warning" going to make things look LESS suspicious? Second of all, things were going JUST FINE. You hid da-ge's head. People were buying your "this cursed cabinet is where I keep my former boss's soul-stealing knife" story. You haven't even subtly brought up Suibian to change the subject. The narrative misogyny means that nobody has directly talked to Qin Su and "of course my wife also hangs out in our house, lol" is flying just fine as an explanation. You had almost put out this fire! Why would you throw gasoline on it by making Qin Su kill herself?
Honestly, the smartest thing for you to do in this situation would be to knock your wife unconscious and move her to her sleeping chambers or a couch or something in the main part of the palace. That gets her out of sight and renders her unable to talk in a way that won't raise suspicions, and gives you the option of going "omg guyyys my wife is sleeping :( this totally unwarranted search of our home is gonna wake her up :(" to make people leave!
But, okay. Let's shift our perspectives here. Jin Guangyao has a history of making deranged choices when he's in Panic Mode. Maybe his brain short-circuited and, somehow, he decided that MAKE QIN SU KILL HERSELF IN PUBLIC was the best course of action. Wei Wuxian himself tells us that she wasn't under the influence of talismans or anything, so somehow Jin Guangyao convinced her to do this with his words. Never mind that we just saw Jin Guangyao deploy an ungodly combination of feigned ignorance, gaslighting, actual sincerity, veiled threats, and manipulation with zero impact. Somehow, he used his words successfully.
What could he possibly say?
Picture all this, now, from Qin Su's standpoint. Your entire world has been shattered. Your husband who is also your half-brother has been lying to you for your entire marriage, has done nothing to reassure you that he didn't murder your son, and has sealed your meridians to prevent you from fleeing. He then brought you into a secret room in your home that you didn't know existed and which, you discover, houses his sworn brother's severed head. All you know is that you cannot tell Jin Guangyao who gave you the letter because you're certain that he will have her killed. Shit's real fucked and you have nobody to help you.
Now every sect leader in the jianghu--including your husband's remaining sworn brother, your young nephew, and your nephew's maternal uncle--has shown up to search your husband's home. His top priority in this moment is quashing their suspicions so they leave him alone enough to regroup.
One of three things must be true for you.
1.) Your top priority is survival. You don't want to die. If you care about your reputation, you know that you're as screwed as he is if word of this gets out, and unfortunately the only way to survive is to play along with your husband's weird shit, at least for now. In that case, the best way to assure him that you're on his team is to help him assure the other sect leaders that Everything Is Normal And Fine. If you don't want to die, then you're not going to be susceptible to any insistence that you kill yourself.
2.) You're so furious that you don't care what happens to you or your reputation as long as you take Jin Guangyao down with you. In that case, you'd tell him whatever he wanted to hear and then IMMEDIATELY scream to the other sect leaders where Nie Mingjue's head is currently located, or you'd drop the incest bomb yourself hoping that the paperman is somewhere in that room and can back you up, or you'd grab that dagger and stab your husband, or some combination of all three! You're not going to quietly kill yourself at his request, because you've suffered enough for his bullshit!
"Well, maybe he didn't threaten her. She's going to be worried about Bicao and her father. Maybe he threatened one of them!" Yeah, maybe, but that's a threat to get someone to cooperate. You can't make sure they're still alive if you're dead! And if you're convinced that this guy has lied to you constantly for the past 10+ years, you're not going to believe him when he says"kill yourself and I'll be niceys to them." There is nothing at all that he could say to make her harm herself if she hadn’t been so inclined.
And that leaves
3.) You're in such despair that you actively want to die. You can never trust your husband again. You can never trust anyone again, honestly, because he wasn't the only person you loved who kept this secret from you. You don't trust that the other sect leaders will do anything to help you, just as your mother didn't trust that anyone would do anything to help her all those years ago. (When they barge into the palace and walk straight past you as though you were a piece of furniture, your distrust is confirmed.) Maybe, despite everything, you still love your husband too much to kill him. Maybe you fear that, without evidence, he will be seen as an innocent victim and you will be seen as his mad, murderous wife. Maybe you don't care what happens to anyone else, but you know that you don't want to deal with this anymore, and you are the only one you trust to help yourself escape it.
The tragedy of Qin Su is that she is never permitted to make a fully informed decision about her life. At least let her final action be something she knowingly chooses.
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this is something that had been really evident in previous episodes, but miorine is really unaware of herself, isn’t she?
i made a joke to some friends about how mio is really putting her whole pussy into looking after suletta, but she really really is! and this episode really put a lampshade on just how unaware mio is of how her actions look to others. suletta might be gullible enough to believe that miorine is only looking out for herself, but nika isn’t! shaddiq certainly knows exactly what’s going on.
you can argue (and on god, mio Would) til the cows on earth come home about how she’s just doing this to put herself in a favourable position to escape to earth. if she’s unattainable to the three houses by virtue of having an unstoppable pilot (and machine), she’s no longer useful to them, and thus she can fade away into the background and better escape. this is true.
you could argue that yeah, of course it’s in miorine’s best interest to keep suletta happy. to help her pass her exams. to stand up for her when she’s being bullied. to make friends with her friends and help them out - even offer to lend them dresses! to chaperone her to stupid parties so she can see if that boy she likes happens to be there!
but it has never been exclusively about that, not for a second. because miorine’s life has been characterised by having nobody to stand up for her. the reason she’s so damn prickly and standoffish and combative is for her own survival! there’s no way she could have made it through life in the position she has, as delling’s daughter, with nobody to look out for her without it.
and yet, the very first thing this strange, cringeworthily anxious girl from mercury did is stand up for her, in the one place it mattered to her -- her greenhouse. miorine protested at the time that suletta was making decisions for her, but baked into that was the assumption that suletta would lose. her entire demeanour changes the moment she sees suletta shift from pathetic to confident, and she lets suletta take control -- “you can win?” -- and suletta wins.
suletta says that the way people treat miorine is wrong, and then puts her money where her mouth is in the only way that matters in asticassia.
no wonder miorine is willing to go so hard and so far for suletta! i’m sure it’s been a long, long time since miorine’s had anyone in her corner.
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hey, ali! i feel your pain about the tbosas adaptation! i cried so much during the movie but not because i felt emotional, seeing MY book comes alive on screen but because we were robbbbbbbbbbed and shot 😞😞😞😞😞😞 anyways, what's your opinion on the music tho? fav/least fav song? (my is the oldtherebefore and least fav the 0livia r0drigo's one)
hey, lollis!
‘robbed and shot’, exactly. i couldn’t have said it better myself because unfortunately, that’s spot on 🥲
I LOVED THE MUSIC! a dystopian reflection of our reality through intentional use of folk/bluegrass music is something that resonates strongly with me. i mean, they knew how to strike the right chord in the hearts of book readers for sure! *the only other thing i wish was different about the music it's the variety of tempo and rhythm because as much as i LOVED the unified sound of LG's songs, i would prefer each song to have its own individual tune and ~aura)
my absolute favourite adaptation that they did was 'nothing you can take from me' (boot-stompin’ version); i am utterly in awe of the powerful passionate energy that they gave to this song?? also i loveeed the similarity of rhythm and tone between 'nothing you can take from me' and a traditional american folk song 'man of constant sorrow', i kinda feel it was a deliberate parallel which worked just great. (also i’m glad they added maude ivory’s 'keep on the sunny side'!)
my least favourite is perhaps 'the ballad of lucy gray baird'?.. and though i did enjoy rachel’s rendition (she copies a young dolly parton in such a warm-hearted respectful manner!), and the respect for traditional appalachian music, she sang it in a cheerful 'to hell with you!' manner which is less intense and intimate that i remember it from the book to be? to quote tbosas here: 'the haunting melody set the tone, and her words did the rest as she began to sing in a voice husky from smoke and sadness' – the movie version really failed to capture both the haunting tune (their version doesn't really tell the story musically because of a major key) and the lucy gray's vulnerability here for me. in the book she did what carrie fisher told us all to do: 'take your broken heart and turn it into art' while in the movie she isn't even angry at billy taupe?? like his betrayal (and her place in the games) is not a big deal? she's openly rebellious and sassy with out of place 'i need no man' attitude and that simply didn't work for me personally.
it took some time for 'pure as the driven snow' to grow on me (i expected it to be more of a waltz-like, similar to maiah wynne's cover), but i'm coming around to it. yet… i wish it was STAGED differently??? they had to combine certain scenes and songs in the film but it was such a SURREAL idea to meld PATDS with 'sell you for a song' setting? and it took away so much from that moment of love and connection and unconditional acceptance, where lucy gray is finally ready to be emotionally unshielded in front of her lover (maybe for the first time ever)?? it was a PIVOTAL snowbaird moment but they needed to blend two songs together because obviously PATDS can't be love confession in form of a song because it should be taken as an ominous warning instead (duh!). 'bitch you better not turn out to be a bad guy even tho i knew you were a villain all along' :??? and it could've worked in its own angst-y way, if there had been any development in snowbaird love story?? but since movie!they are full on survival the whole time (there's no canonical teetering on the edge of an actual fondness/love and survival instinct), PATDS makes no sense at all. so… i extremely frustrated by the use of PATDS on screen but at the same time i love the sound of the full version on the soundtrack album.
annnd i'm actually IN PAIN because they had the audacity to leave so many songs out?? especially given their ties to the original trilogy?? 'deep in the meadow' aka rue's song???? 'the valley song' aka the one peeta mentioned seeing katniss sing at school when they were children???? the festive 'crawling to you' ('that thing i love with') likely performed at finnick’s wedding?? idk maybe it's a musical nerd who is speaking in me but i wish they could have included more of the book songs at least on the album, if not in the actual movie (even tho i'm still sure, it would've been possible to present the whole complexity of this book AND its poetic side too, if they decided to split the film in two).
[the score album wasn't much to talk about but 'snow lands on top' piece tho… vivid, striking, remarkable]
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