#destroying him in the process

[loonarreclipse]

Bad End

[henry-fox-biggest-stan]

It’s SO funny to me when I see movie fans writing alex as this daddy dom, himbo guy because Alex is so!!!

If you scream at him a little too loudly he’ll probably cry, just not in front of you. He falls in love really hard and deeply but it takes him so long to accept that he can also be loved hard and deeply! He has the highest grades ever 1) because he’s smart and 2) because he bases his self worth on making others proud, on being useful. He overworks himself, he runs to clear his head until his feet bleed, his coffee is bitter but so are his thoughts. He’s a softie, who writes his bf love letters and who probably giggles and kicks his feet while reading what henry writes back to him. He can absolutely destroy you in a debate, don’t even try to argue with him he’ll win each time. He talks a lot but he has never been listened to. His rivalry with Henry started with a bad meeting and also with constant comparison, because everyone compared them both, and it was just a constant reminder than Alex will never be enough. Henry was born on the spotlight, Alex wasn’t. Henry was white, Alex wasn’t. Henry had everyone’s support, Alex didn’t. *He is a jester and a devoted knight. He knows hundreds of fun facts and will tell you. He loves Texas despite the bad memories of his childhood and teen years it brings. He feels guilty for making his sister worry so much. He loves his mother despite everything, and she loves him too, but they have an unusual, almost unhealthy relationship. He needs to prove himself every minute of the day. He works as a distraction. He puts on a façade around everyone, golden boy, America’s heartthrob, no one sees his house key, his glasses, the hundreds of papers hidden under the windowsill, the pills stolen from Liam. Someone teach this man healthy coping mechanisms. He is a child of divorce, and this affects him more than he lets on. He is actually a huge nerd. He grew up poor. He was in denial about his sexuality for years. He definitely has abandonment issues. He might be impulsive sometimes (storming Kensington palace after being ghosted by Henry) but he usually thinks things through, and is very reasonable. He makes lists, tons of them. He has undiagnosed adhd and this has shaped him as a person in a way I can’t even describe. Before Henry, bea, and Pez, he didn’t have any friends aside from Nora and his sister. He grew up catholic. He is a romantic. And a dork. He is just as passionate about history as Henry is. But Nora makes friends, and Alex ends up with acquaintances who think they know him because they’ve read his profile in New York Magazine, and perfectly fine people with perfectly fine bodies who want to take him home from the bar. None of it is satisfying—it never has been, not really, but it never mattered as much as it does now that there’s the sharp counterpoint of Henry, who knows him. Henry who’s seen him in glasses and tolerates him at his most annoying and still kissed him like he wanted him, singularly, not the idea of him.

Always the talker, never the heard. Always good, never enough. Always ogled, never seen. Always the first son, never Alex.

[whetstonefires]

Underrated element of where Jiang Cheng is re: wwx after everything is that they always had a sort of dual relationship. Two different relationship premises, superimposed on one another.

There's the one where they grew up together, as close as brothers, beating each other up and complaining and being one another's closest companions, sharing a bedroom as kids and eating at the same family dinner table, actively encouraged by Jiang Fengmian to interact as equals.

And then there's the one where Wei Wuxian was in service to Jiang Cheng's family. Not as a servant--Jiang Fengmian absolutely refused to do that, even if he couldn't adopt him. But as a disciple of Jiang Cheng's father and recipient of his charity, as Jiang Cheng's future right hand and most trusted subordinate.

It's a vertical relationship, intimate in its own way but with very strict expectations about what obligations flow in what directions; they are not identical and reciprocal as between friends and equals.

(It's my opinion that Jiang Fengmian's core deal was a deep-seated discontent with the hierarchies he was at the top of, without access to any way to actually deconstruct them or even coherently articulate his opposition. Wei Changze was his dear friend, and no one thinks that's a good enough reason for him to treat Wei Changze's son like his own, because Wei Changze was also his servant, and you can't make that circle square. That's not a way you're allowed to love.)

Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian were like brothers; Wei Wuxian served Jiang Cheng.

The personal relationship was always the most important one. To them, in their hearts. But it was the other one that was real, that had weight in the world.

And it's important to understand that neither can be held up as more factual than the other, even though they conflict. Both relationships existed, and had power.

So then when Jiang Cheng chose to hate Wei Wuxian and articulate his grudge against him, he chose to do it in the language of fealty. Because as far as he knew, his case there was secure, watertight, and it wouldn't expose him emotionally or politically.

And those are the terms in which he's been condemning him all this time: for abandoning the Sect, for ingratitude, for lack of loyalty.

For fuckups, too, and poor judgment, but some of that now turns out to have been justified and some of it was mostly the fault of enemies behaving badly, or even Jiang Cheng himself allowing himself to be pushed into making unworthy choices.

And it was all for his sake.

The thing, the thing in my opinion, about what Wei Wuxian did, about the core transfer and his silent self-destruction around keeping it secret, is that that is a hideous thing to have done between two people who love each other, as an act of love. Beautiful, but awful. As the man who was like a brother to him, Jiang Cheng has a great deal of standing to object to it.

But as an act of vassalage, it's basically perfect.

If Wei Wuxian were only what he formally was to Jiang Cheng, if he is interpreted through a lens of fealty and obligation, he did exactly what he should have done, and went beyond what duty actually required. And went to his death silently, allowing himself to be judged, taking all the burden on himself rather than let harm come to his lord.

Like, obviously Jiang Cheng was harmed by the part where Jin Zixuan got manslaughtered and Jiang Yanli walked into the line of fire in situations where Wei Wuxian was resorting to violence and probably shouldn't have, but those are one step removed from the core issue. In terms of Wei Wuxian's intentional choices around Jiang Cheng himself, at the times he was feeling betrayed and abandoned Wei Wuxian was in fact being impossibly, poetically loyal, an absolute cliche about it.

But only in terms of the hierarchical form of their relationship.

Which means that even though Jiang Cheng has a lot of reasons to still be mad at Wei Wuxian, his actual complaints that he's centered for thirteen years are basically wiped out by the revelation of Wei Wuxian's sacrifice.

Wei Wuxian was in fact doing the tragic hero loyal vassal thing, which very much includes being misunderstood and slandered by the world. (Chenqing as a name choice absolutely references this expectation, and the idea that Jiang Cheng specifically will never understand that Wei Wuxian was trying to help him first and foremost all along; he is not subtle.)

The debts Jiang Cheng has been spitefully calling in and considering defaulted were already long paid.

So if at this point Jiang Cheng keeps pursuing that same line of rhetorical attack, now that he knows, he'll be putting himself morally in the wrong, and he knows it. But if he pivots to something else, he'll both be signalling the shape of that secret to the entire world and looking like a prize idiot.

Which is already how he feels.

To actually address the remaining grievances between them, which are considerable, would require releasing those safe, open grudges to Wei Wuxian's face and then reclaiming him as a loved one. Which is, one could fairly say, more than anyone could expect.

Which is why Wei Wuxian told him he didn't have to.

Which leaves Jiang Cheng at something of an impasse.

[p4nishers]

thinking about the relationship between mightily oats' "the worthwhile [words] don't burn" and constable dorfl's "the words in the heart cannot be taken"

[bottombaron]

there is no way that Guillermo’s pussy wouldn’t drive Nandor absolutely mad with power

[qcoded]

Sometimes I wonder what the hell Belos would've done if his plan actually succeeded.

Like. The Day of Unity was successful since The Collector wasn't there to stop it, (and technically didn't happen in show) but let's just say he also brought the Collector's disk with him (maybe to free the kid later?).

So everyone is trapped in the Boiling Isles, and he's finally in the human realm. What then? He's going to have to deal with the fact that Witchhunting and such isn't even a thing anymore.

so is he like. just forced to carry out a normal life now? Get a job? A House? And since we're putting in the rhetorical possibility of there being enough titan blood to free The Collector, are they now in some weird family dynamic?

Honestly I think it depends if Luz manages to get back to the human realm in some way, but yeah lot's of questions.

[rakkuntoast]

cant stop thinking of the chance of chayanne dying and q!Phil becoming one of the most threatening forces of the qsmp

and adding to the philever brainrot only q!forever being the one to approach him and try to cheer him up like q!Phil did before. q!Phil entrusted Tallulah's care to q!bad and q!forever and he only let's forever go to his exile home and save him little by little from his own spiraling

[lunarharp]

"Found out" set in kind of a made-up chapter where the girls are in trouble, or something.

[worstloki]

there is a difference between being born to a throne, maliciously vying for a throne, stealing a throne, and having a throne thrust upon you when you are already in the midst of an identity crisis. And I fear Loki's place in the line of succession has people unable to differentiate between any of these

[captain-hen]

if buddie were to be trapped somewhere, eddie dying and buck strong enough to get himself out but not strong enough to also save eddie, do you think he would leave him behind? do you think he would leave eddie behind to die all by himself, just so one of them gets back home to chris? and do you think this is (partially) what eddie wanted to achieve with the will?

god, i don't think buck could ever bring himself to do that. i think if eddie knew that only one of them could get out, he would beg buck to leave him there, but buck would fight against it, because how could he leave eddie? how could he go on living if he had to leave eddie here to die? yes, he would survive for christopher's sake. but he wouldn't live. how dare eddie not give him the easy way out? how dare eddie force him to keep going without him there by his side?

(i do think what eddie wanted to achieve with his will, aside from the obvious—making sure christopher would be taken care of—was also ensuring that buck and chris would have each other. so they could be each other's lifeline. i think the way he told buck about this in the first place—as a manner of telling him that he's not expendable and that there are people who would love and miss him if he were gone—makes this pretty clear.)

[halfyourheart]

On the day that you leave me / I'll forever be bleeding, love

[tears-of-taelia]

[nonokoko13]

Me when the first coherent thought I have in the morning is that Grim was either abandoned or his biological parents died and the only family he has ever known are three ghosts everyone was afraid of so everybody left them alone for centuries and a human who doesn't belong who doesn't entirely fit there just like them so they were all alone until they found each other.

Ghosts tied to a space which is unsure whether they can leave or not and a human who may have somebody waiting them back home and may leave with no chance of return. Who can't take Grim with them because where they come from things such as fantasy creatures and magic only exist in fairytales so he'd either live hidden from the world or in danger of being treated as a monster and experimented on because when faced with what it's new and different the world reacts with anger and fear and want to control it and tear it apart until nothing it was before is left.

He doesn't know or understand this but MC does and that's why they would have to leave him behind. His dream of studying magic and be the greatest mage wouldn't come true on Earth, that's the reason they would tell him. It's true even though it's not the main reason why. But Grim would understand they just don't want to stay with him and prefer to leave and forget him because if they did love him they would stay.

Then again he could try to dig up in his origins and find his first family but what if time travel exists and MC from a previous timeline was who gave him the ribbon, his first gift and only possession before arriving at NRC? Meaning MC was the person his world revolved around before he even knew who they were and there was no other family he had.

Doubting the trouble squad has ever have a heart to heart conversation about Grim and MC's fates if or when they depart either because they have forgotten or pretend they aren't aware but deep down Ace and Deuce and all of MC friends know but prefer to keep ignoring it instead of confront their feelings. Grim and Malleus being the only ones who may have never think of it until the moment arrives nor accept it. Just like young children who believe their parents, their pillars, their everything that makes them feel safe, would always be there until death knocks at their door. Because MC have friends and a home in Twisted Wonderland and they need them so why would they leave?

They know MC keeps searching a way home and wondering if their loved ones misses them as much as they do and how much time have passed on their planet without knowing MC wishes they could have it all so they didn't have to choose between their previous family and the one they found there. And neither Grim or Malleus won't admit they know because thinking of it brings back the feeling of abandonment and losing everything that make them feel completed.

But the prince will have both Silver and Sebek and his grandmother for the rest of their lives with him once he returns home, people who was there from the beginning. Time to grow with them and accept they'll leave too. Everyone will graduate and go home and except special occasions each one will go their own path.

Grim will stay with somebody else but it won't be the same for him because he already had a family he wanted to keep together and failed to do so and without the dorm ghosts and MC the only thing left for him is the wound he carried before finding them opened once again that will remember him that nobody in this world can stay by his side forever so he'll stay and search a way to reunite with MC again and wonder if they miss him as much as he does and wishing MC have had everyone they loved in twst so they didn't have to choose or if they had to they had chosen him instead in the end and thinking of how all the future plans they shared and promises they made of growing old together were empty and the words that made him happy about how they loved him now hurt and they failed him and he failed to have everything he wanted and they left they left and he's thinking of them even after promising himself he wouldn't anymore a lie just like theirs and he's crying again and it hurts it hurts and

[blimbo-buddy]

It's so funny to me to see the lengths people would go to as to insist that you're not a good person or are questionable if you wished ShadowSight had died in ALITM instead

"But it implies that you can't heal from your trauma and it'd just be sad". A: How does it imply that, B: I dunno I think ShadowSight gaining his autonomy back and killing his abuser feels narratively satisfying C: ShadowSight isn't real D: Throwing yourself into evil death water to destroy the antichrist and save your world isn't a thing that happens

[zlobonessa]

hm. i feel like I'm not unhinged enough for the past few days. here's my old-but-reworked omegaverse headcanon tier list.

[loomingtwilight]

truly the biggest Alhaitham Stan Moment (trademark) thing ive ever done was going from tcg player level 1 to 5 in the couple weeks leading up to patch 4.3 and his character card being added to the roster just so i could duel against him and get his card