#ill be first to admit its been a long while since i watched 13jttw

[sneakydraws]

Yo I was just thinking about Miss Dune in your modern au.

I'm imagining thay she and Xuslazang met at some kind of office party and Miss Dune got like super drunk and made out with him. Dune was super apologetic about it the next morning but he said it was fine. Thay started dating not long after.

Ok so I'm gonna use this ANCIENT ask as an excuse to dump some duan/xuanzang ideas because i was thinking about them today

I'd always been unsure about their past relationship because if they were an actual couple, actually ENGAGED, then xuanzang's treatment of duan, breaking up without an explanation and immediately marrying wukong, would be so cruel it would run the risk of stretching believability. And it would make duan's attempts to win him back a very understandable, even normal thing to do, considering how ludicrous and devoid of closure their actual breakup was. They wouldn't say much about her actual unique personality.

That's when it struck me. What if they HADN'T been together for ages. What if they WERE engaged, or at least rings made an appearance in some way, but only because duan decided to do that at some absolutely ridiculous point in their relationship - like, two months in or something. Because she's kind of insane.

And with that realisation something clicked and their relationship became that much more interesting and fun to me, and it became that much more of an opportunity to develop and showcase duan's personality with her own brand of absurdity. So ok i like this idea of them drunkenly making out at some party... Xz is a social worker and duan a police officer so idk if their paths would cross in the workplace (maybe?) But they could also just have mutual friends or something. But I'm thinking maybe they'd both been attracted to each other for a while, with xz assuming he didn't have a chance and therefore not giving the matter of pursuing duan much thought and duan already deciding to chase after him with all she's got because she is INTENSE like that. They meet they get drunk (duan gets xz drinking and he's too unassertive to refuse, and he's a bit of a lightweight!!) They make out and starting the next day duan just!! Assumes they're together!! And xz has ZERO backbone ZERO relationship experience ZERO clue how he should react and PLENTY of attraction towards duan so he just rolls with it. But as duan commits harder and harder to xz being the love of her life, xz spends more and more time talking and thinking about his rehab centre dreams. And just as duan whips out the ring and xz, baffled and steamrolled, accepts, xz hears of golden cicadas death and inheritance, and the rest is history.

I think it would be fun to play with duan's weird mix of subverting and confirming to gender roles. Like, she's this fierce girlboss, fighting to have her work as a policewoman respected, and simultaneously seems to believe that her life won't have worth without romance and marriage. She wears the pants in their relationship, unabashedly going after what she wants, and simultaneously sees herself as this housewife by the side of her husband. I think when xz dumps her without any explanation it awakens tons of insecurities within her and makes her wonder if she's too aggressive, too proactive, not coy or demure or feminine enough. Which could be fun to explore once she comes back!