#but also i realise that all the things ailette does for tesilid

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tesilina is so down bad i can't even look at her. girl what are you doing 🫣 you can't be that forward oh my god

[microwaving-tesilid-argente]

thinking about how the last time reed saw ailette in the 300th, she greeted him with "and i'm still on your side," and now she's definitely not on his side. im okay im okay im okay

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thinking about reed's worldview & morality makes me feel sooo insane this guy contains such multitudes it's crazy

(major spoilers for reed's backstory)

like i mean when you take into account all of tesilid's timelines you see him at his lowest and then get up from it and you realise that hey his lowest was pretty low but it really is so far from his default. he did commit atrocities but like it's not an inherent part of him. when he decided comitting atrocities wasn't worth it anymore he did just stop, because being evil wasn't really very important to him anyway.

my read on reed's motivation is that it's not really about him being evil and wanting to cause pain, but a desperate attempt to save himself. i don't really see all his mass murdering as him being inherently evil tbh because like. he had saved the world 8+ times and all of that reset. what is the worth of other people's lives, when any joy they experience, any pain they felt, would no longer exist except for in his memories? i think to reed, every other person becomes like a video game character. it's perhaps disturbing but the immorality of killing them is a little suspect because death and suffering doesn't even have long-term consequences for said person anyway. reed causing some massive destruction is just... morbid entertainment? reed certainly smiles (smirks) more than he ever does as tesilid. glad he's having fun(?). like everyone in the timeline is going to die anyway according to his plans, and they and anyone else who lived didn't have a future even if he did fail, so what does it matter if they died now or not.

but even after he's become uncorrupted tesilid again, it's still clear that he remains angry and vengeful. he chokes and scares the bandit leader Just Because. The bandit leader in this timeline doesn't even know what tesilid is taking revenge for, so all that scaring is really just for tesilid's own satisfaction. Scaring the hell out of the bandit leader is important enough to tesilid that he risks ailette seeing this happen if she just turned around a little early. And in the pandora's box dungeon, he lied to the order of light pillars about having lost his memories about the sculptor's atelier, but "don't worry my memories are coming back!" There's literally no reason for him to lie in this particular way, if not to see them squirm. and he purposely leaves them with ailette, whom he knows will beat them black and blue for him. he's still going to sacrifice himself for others and put himself in danger, but he's not above some schadenfreude and taking delight in the pain of those who'd wronged him, he's not some saint.

he's still angry and vengeful but even as readers we rarely get to see this side of him, because there are things more important to him than revenge. And doesn't that say something about his capacity to love and to be good. Even after hitting the lowest of low, he still picks himself up. He cares about Ailette's safety so much and tries to get along with her family. I kind of wonder if he woke up and went yeah that "destroy everything" plan was kind of whatever let's try something else this time, and picked up his moral compass where he dropped it under the kitchen counter. his attitude to cardinal cartelyena dooming him to a really terribad punishment is really just "yah i was objectively bad so i don't even hold anything against you lol".

like. shakes him up and down. the way he decides to mass murder and then some time after goes actually you know what sorry god that wasn't very nice of me i think i'll be good this time and he genuinely means it. it's so funny he has such a range and it doesn't compromise the integrity of his character at all, his core still feels the same. do you get me. like he's always been intrinsically inclined towards doing good and he has a great deal of patience, but he can also snap and be angry and decide to just be evil but it also doesnt make his inclinations towards goodness any less real you know what i mean.

also he's so good at lying that it's funny. he's lying all the time and no one even questions it, because why would he lie? he's the pushover doormat who always sacrifices himself for others. the only way you would know that he's lying was if you already somehow knew the truth. and you sure as hell aren't getting it out of him. honesty being a virtue (generally speaking) and he doesn't have an ounce of it. and none of the people in universe would even consider it.

edit: i realised that it's not really accurate to say that destroying the world wasn't that important to reed anyway, because reed did expressedly reject ailette because he was so hell-bent on destroying the world. ah well we all have times when we hit rock bottom and he sure hit at least 500km past that. whatever, the point is that he did that and then went oh whoops let's not do that this time and genuinely meant it. what a guy. i love all the character development he goes through. and the great changes he goes through doesn't feel contrived at all.