Do you want the explanation, or are you enjoying the spoiler mystery?

All this to say: writing fanfiction is about a PROCESS, not a product, and that process is inherently analytical, interpretative, and transformative.

We engage in that process not to produce an end product, but because the process itself, and sharing in it with our communities, brings us joy.

Fanfic writers are fully engaged in writing their own what-ifs. Yes, the common source work is a helpful reference point, but by the time we're writing fic, it's clearly something new. We have a common story as origin the same way people have a bible as "origin" for a zillion different religions.

I feel like in some ways, fanfiction can be a similar exercise for writers. Instead of analyzing brush strokes, composition, color mixing, texture, etc. and figuring out how to adapt painting techniques for them, we're analyzing tone, plot, characterization, etc. But we're a LOT more transformative.

Okay Nie Huaisang

I feel like he would be slightly mystified but eager to please in the way of someone who didn't realize they could even want to fuck but is game once the opportunity presents.

"Being so unhappy, naturally Shen Qingqiu had to go take it out on someone else. So, he had Ming Fan deliver a message inviting Shang Qinghua to the Bamboo House."

Let's not forget that SQQ is not all sunshine and roses when it isn't Binghe he's dealing with. He is a bully, too.

Also, has anyone noticed that not only did SQQ not check on SQH's wounds for reasons he did not specify to anyone out loud, NEITHER DID ANYONE ELSE?! YQY and MQF went running over to check on SQQ, who was up even if he looked terrible, but nobody so much as took SQH's pulse.

But then WHY did he just turn around and leave without sticking around for a fight with the newly unsealed Binghe or saying anything else?

My headcanon is that Shang Qinghua finished dispatching spiders and gave him an extremely pointed Look and he finally took the hint to gtfo.

It really does seem like Mobei Jun just showed up to see if Shang Qinghua was busy and if there were any good snacks and then got distracted by an adorable baby demonling and went, "Huh. Cute kid. If he survives maybe I should keep him."

Mobei Jun flicks aside Zheng Yang and shatters it in a single blow without even particularly paying attention to it. His arrogance towards cultivators is probably actually pretty justified by the power he has available to him! At no point in this confrontation does he appear to feel challenged.

I suppose the trick would be for me to wait long enough to entirely forget my original outline, so I can get back into that discovery headspace that makes me actually want to write instead of that headspace where I'm trying to write to a specific plan and bored/frustrated by the attempt.

Oh, that all makes sense. The timeline and Jiang Cheng's feelings would be markedly different between CQL and MDZS, that's one of the things that started shifting my opinion of him when I read it.

Why do they go to the Burial Mounds instead of Jiang Cheng feeling that with Lan support he can safely back the Wen clan to either reclaim Dafan or integrate with the Jiang, who after all are still a reduced population?