You know, I've been thinking about it, and it is absolutely essential to the narrative that Jiang Cheng is a dick and a trash fire. (Affectionate.)
Like, first of all, if he was a sainted little angel of a shidi the way Jiang Yanli is a shijie, Wei Wuxian's choices would become obvious, sort of impersonal, and boring.
Sure, lots of people wouldn't tear themselves apart for such a person in such a scenario, but they're not the protagonists of novels, are they; in a book you have to justify not doing that. So white lotus Jiang Cheng is off the table.
Jiang Cheng who isn't fragile-and-insecure but also stubborn-as-hell and violently reactive also won't wash.
If he wasn't the kind of person who sincerely tries to die under these circumstances, Wei Wuxian would have had the option of loyally supporting him in a less self-destructive way; if he was someone who could be trusted to handle the revelation without suffering a ruinous fracture of identity, Wei Wuxian wouldn't have been forced to distance himself after the war, because he could have come clean.
If Jiang Cheng wasn't the kind of person who centers on his own pride and hurt feelings and lashes out about it, it would be very hard to set up the lategame scenario where they're 'enemies' in a real, meaningful way, despite still loving each other and Wei Wuxian never wishing Jiang Cheng any ill. Even with Jiang Yanli's death.
And I mean, you could get most of the plot without doing this interesting thematic examination of the classic 'bond between martial brothers severed by one going to the dark side' trope, but I'd argue you'd lose an enormous chunk of the story.
And without Jiang Cheng's weaknesses, Wei Wuxian's motives don't cohere. His weaknesses form the foundation of at least two of the backstory's major turning points.
There's the tantalizing possibility that Wei Wuxian wouldn't have done it, if Jiang Cheng hadn't strangled him while blaming him for everything.
Probably he would have, all else being equal! But neither we nor Jiang Cheng can be sure.
Jiang Cheng sucking a lot, and knowing his own flaws perfectly well without that granting him the ability to do much about them, is heavily load-bearing. Which gives him such a fantastic implied point of view!
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i agree with emilie being a typical boy mom jocasta complex style shes been the centre of attention her entire life i dont think she would be okay with having a mini me daughter at all 😭 she definitely enabled gabriels rapunzelment and child modelling i hate headcanons where she is a good person fr 😔 also what does this say about nathalie and her being/wanting to be romantically involved with that couple 😭
i mean... it says bad things? even if she didn't encourage it or just did the bare minimum to scold emilie for being inappropriately close with her son... it says bad things, dude. why are you so invested in the worst couple of blondes to grace the planet?? were there no other options??
or, we could go the route that nathalie was also groomed/manipulated into it. we don't exactly know how old she was when she met the agrestes, she could've been just starting out as a plucky archeologist when these kind and wealthy benefactors introduced themselves into her life via tomoe. and emilie's cult of personality with gabriel's coolheadedness and determined nature might've just drawn her in.
^ of course, this works better for situations where Mayura was never a thing. and there's also arguments that both of these options can coexist. yikes all around regardless
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anyways i did finish rereading episode 1 👍🏻 i don't think i've been paying enough attention to the epitaph and what it means, a lot was said (by kinzo, which means it might have been bullshit) about how solving the riddle would mean the "miracle" would not take place, which is the same thing as beato saying if time ran out she would win by default, which is the same thing as ange thinking maybe eva solving the riddle meant something went wrong... it did seem very odd to me (and i forgot about it afterwards) how eva did solve it and yet the murders didn't stop, they continued on full force, except she herself didn't die. so i'm not sure what's in it for the person behind this, what they gain with this whole riddle situation (enough about reviving rituals)
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