"Skin A Cat" is a Oneshot Fic based on Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation: Mo Dao Zu Shi written by nirejseki. It is based on the What If? that Wei Wuxian had slightly different parentage.
It can be read here
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"Skin a Cat" features the following tropes:
- Adaptational Gender Identity: Wei Changze is a transgender man rather than a cisgender one in this.
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Jiang Fengmian and Wei Changze were a sect leader and his loyal first disciple in-canon. In this, they were lovers.
- Adaptational Species Change: In-canon, there’s no hint that Cangse Sanren was anything but a normal human woman. In “Skin a Cat”, she’s...not. It's never quite made clear what she actually is, though she apparently has claws, fangs, and a strong sense of smell.
- Easily Forgiven: Cangse Sanren forgives Wei Changze for cheating on her with Jiang Fengmian despite not particularly wanting to share her lover with anyone or anything. Justified in that he clearly feels terrible and she's looking forward to becoming a mother.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": It's mentioned that Cangse Sanren isn't "Cangse Sanren"'s actual name, but she uses it for convenience's sake.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Wei Changze steps in front of a monster's claws to protect Cangse Sanren.
- Mr. Seahorse: Wei Changze. Jiang Fengmian is Wei Wuxian's biological father.
- The Mourning After: Averted. While Cangse Sanren is heartbroken when Wei Changze is killed on a Night Hunt, she has many other things to live for, and thus resolves to fight for her life. She survives."She liked her lover, but her lover wasn’t everything, had never wanted to be everything, to be the sun and moon and stars for her until she could not live without him.
- No Periods, Period: Averted. Cangse Sanren can smell Wei Changze's, which is how she knows he's transgender.
- The Nose Knows: Cangse Sanren has a very strong sense of smell. Throughout the story, she can smell Wei Changze's period blood and the fact that his encounter with Jiang Fengmian left him pregnant.
- Prophecy Twist: Cangse Sanren sees that Wei Wuxian’s parents will die once she divines his fate before he's born. As it turns out, this meant his biological parents, Wei Changze and Jiang Fengmian.
- Related in the Adaptation: Wei Wuxian is biologically Jiang Fengmian's son. He is thus related to the Jiangs by blood.
- Title Drop: Late in the fic:"There were as many ways to fulfill a fortune as there were to skin a cat."
- Unrelated in the Adaptation: While Cangse Sanren is Wei Wuxian's mother in all the ways that matter, she's not biologically related to him.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Wei Changze and Cangse Sanren see that their child is meant to be an orphan when she divines the unborn Wei Wuxian's fate, so resolve to be happy with what time they have. As it turns out, this only applies to Wei Changze, though on the flip side it applies to Jiang Fengmian as well.
