#especially from the memory / komarr / a civil campaign triptych

[souridealist]

as fair a definition of satisfaction as I’ve ever heard: that whole thing on wei wuxian and regret that I almost left in the tags on that ask

yes I did go back and look at that conversation in the snow AND some meta about it. a clear conscience. a heart without regret. does wei wuxian have regrets in the end? well after all that loss, after so much of other people’s suffering... how could he not? and yet: he did the best he could. he never walked away from a wrong and let it happen.

I think when Wei Wuxian made his wish on that lantern -- and I’m working with the netflix subtitles here, so, Y’KNOW, but -- 

I, Wei Wuxian, wish that I can always stand with justice and live with no regrets.

When he makes this wish, I think, Wei Wuxian believes that one will lead to the other. that if he never lets an injustice pass him by, he will have no regrets. That if he is that kind of righteous, he will be able to look back at his life and say, “yes, I am happy with how this turned out.”

well. He did not, in fact, let injustice pass him by, and he lost everything that mattered to him, even if he got some of it back. And he didn’t even save more than a few of the people he was trying to save. Does he have no regrets?

when we get to that moment in the snow, episode 43, and... yeah for this I’m going way less with the show’s subtitles and more with the much better translations done by the inestimable @hunxi-guilai in various places but. 

Wei Wuxian leans against the door, he considers the deaths of the people who believed in him . And the ones he cites, specifically, Wen Ning, Jiang Yanli, there’s a very short window of conscious time when he believes both of those people to be completely dead? Even fewer in his first life. He had a few battle-filled hours in which to miss them both, that’s it. But those, I think, are the deaths he feels guiltiest about. Wen Ning, whose death he didn’t speak up in time to prevent, whose strange resurrection and vulnerability to others’ control led to so much suffering -- his own, other peoples’. Jiang Yanli, who died for him. (I think that’s why he doesn’t mention Wen Qing, here - that he grieves her death miserably, but that he grieves it differently. That he blames himself less for her choice. That she had to paralyze him to do it.) 

And then:

Lan Zhan, I toast to you. Having one person in my life who truly knows me is enough. No matter how they slander me, I can ask my heart and find no regret in it.

Is he happy with how things turned out? Right after citing those losses, those deaths? The pain in his voice at shijie? Is this what he wanted, the life he wished for on the lantern? No. 

And yet.

in the Vorkosigan books, which are one of my favorite stories of all time, there’s an exchange. Miles Vorkosigan suffers severe prenatal damage from an assassination attempt on his pregnant mother, and as a result he spends his whole life and the whole series dealing with severe physical disabilities including dwarfism. He’s caused a lot of physical pain by them, and is deeply intrinsically shaped by the ableism around him. It frustrates him a great deal, especially while he’s young. He does a lot of mad, reckless, foolish, brilliant, genius things. Eventually, in a late-series book, a woman asks him: if he could go back in time and prevent that attack, change things, would he do it?

He paused, and drew in breath, and let it out slowly. “I’ve made a lot of grievous mistakes in my life, getting here, but... I wouldn’t trade my journey now. I’d be afraid of making myself smaller.”

She cocked her head, measuring his dwarfishness, not missing his meaning. “That’s as fair a definition of satisfaction as any I’ve ever heard.”

Yeah. That.

It’s not what Wei Wuxian thought a life without regrets would look like, I don’t think. It’s not what he wished for on that lantern. And yet, he did manage this much: is he sure he could do better, if he could go back? No. And if he isn’t, doesn’t that mean he did the best he could? 

...Maybe. Yeah.

He wouldn’t trade his journey now. He might lose more than he gained, in that. 

Maybe that’s as close to a life without regrets as any of us can get, in a world where so often there is no right thing, only a least-wrong one. and maybe that, and someone who knows you, is enough.