I think there is only one correct answer to this poll, which is why I come with a drastically too long essay some well thought out arguments for why hannigram had the messiest divorce. Let’s go.
Okay so broadly speaking all of these fall into two categories - messy on a personal level and messy because they made it everybody's business, with most of them having some elements of both, of course. We could sort them on a scatter plot, but I'm not going to do that and I'll explain why in a moment. For now, I'm treating them as separate.
So let's look at Made it everybody's business first: The three most important factors in this category are scale, impact and longevity - aka how many people they got involved, how much it fucked everybody up and for how long.
Now let's look at some example pairings, starting with: our leading boys, Jesus and Judas.
You'd look at them and say, clearly, these are people that made it everybody's business, right? We're talking about The pivotal moment in Christian history, right?
WRONG
How much impact did their divorce really have? How many people did it involve? I'd argue very few, because this is about the divorce first and foremost and was Judas' betrayal really at fault for anything that happened? When it was always going to happen? Jesus Christ was always going to sacrifice himself for humanity because that was his destiny and purpose.
So this was a trick example because these two are actually firmly in the interpersonal drama category, their divorce only impacted them and those closest to them, or as my friend put it:
“It only really affected their clique and Jesus was always moving towards dying so really it wasn't Judas' fault when it could've easily been ANYONE set up to put the inevitable into motion.”
However, the death toll was only one person and even that not for long and Judas was immediately forgiven, so here's my first controversial take of the night: Judas & Jesus had the least messy divorce on the entire list.
Now for some actual MIEB couples.
Immediately we have some heavy hitters, namely cherik, stony and obikin.
“Maybe it's because I've been out of marvel comics for a bit but Stony break up just seems.... performative. They made it big and everyone's problem bc there wasn't any substance to it. Like the marriage has been loveless for decades and they're just going through the motions for the sake of it rather than catharsis.”
— My friend @akumastrife
I think stony divorce suffers from adaptation deterioration, MCU really didn’t do them justice and that's the divorce everybody remembers.
Where there was never even a marriage and the divorce was both stupid and short. It might've impacted the entire world for a bit, but the impact was neither particularly big and I don't even remember if it had any long term consequences, which really tells you everything you need to know about that.
Now, if we were only looking at their comic breakup I'd rate them higher, but as it is, they're at the bottom of this category.
Obikin on the other hand have one thing going for them big time - scale. They're the only pair on this list that managed to get an entire galaxy involved and I think that's a commendable achievement.
However, where they lose points is that perhaps their situation got too big. It's not really about them anymore and their positions on their respective sides aren't equal enough where it'd give everything that happens after a real 'exes at war with each other' feel.
It sure was messy, but it wasn't a messy divorce.
Cherik on the other hand, I think are the absolute winners of this category.
Got the entire world involved, for generations to come, all while leading their respective sides. This is how you get everybody involved in your own business.
I don't even think I have to say more about them bc?? Really now. The vibes are impeccable.
Now.
We have to consider how the other half lives.
And to do that I want to first talk about a couple that sits nicely in the middle between the two categories - Jiggy and NMJ, or rather, 3zun.
Because these two are mmm less married to each other than they're both married to the same person, so LXC will inevitably be pulled into whatever they’ve got going on.
On MIEB side, they too managed to get their entire world involved, it's just that their world is sort of limited to one "country", but oh boy do they make up for it in how they did it.
Ruined entire clans, got a bunch of people killed, screwed up generations to come, kickstarted like 70% of the plot of the novel, and on a personal level, it's just a fucking mess.
We've got a two way divorce, we've got patricide, we've got incest babies, we've got multiple resurrected people (take that Jesus), Jiggy ends up killing NMJ with a cursed piccolo? Cursed piccolo????? dude
explodes
because
of some sick tunes
And I've barely even touched on how they're both married to another dude and how that fucks him up.
And here's why I didn't use a scatter plot for this - because that gives a false impression that these two categories, MIEB and PD, are created equal and I just don't think this is true.
Because at the end of the day we're still talking about a divorce, and how messy was cherik divorce really? They broke up over a disagreement. Sure, a big, fundamental disagreement, but as far as divorces go? That's just cliché.
That's not messy, that's understandable.
But the interpersonal drama people? Just look at these mdzs fuckers. I don't even fucking know what the divorce was about because the entire business is so wild that it's impossible to keep track of anybody's motivations.
If you were to pick up a yellow mag, would you rather read about cherik "well articulated reasonable arguments for why their stance is morally right" or would you rather read about Jiggy killing his father via an orgy, marrying his own sister, driving both of his husbands mad, some guy you've never heard of before suddenly popping up to raise a long dead evil necromancer, and the whole thing ending up in 4 funerals and a wedding
but like
at once
in the same room
Which one of the two would have whole youtube channels dedicated to following their drama?
Fake psychiatrists and lawyers making reaction videos?
5 different trending tags on twitter?
That's what a messy divorce should bring.
And now we come to hannigram.
Was their divorce big? Nah, for the most part it involved like. The police force of a single county or something. Did it have a lasting impact? On the psyche of a few people, maybe.
But the interpersonal drama? Unparalleled.
The fact that there never was an argument, a real reason for their breakup and they both know it is just-
This is our starting point and we're already in bananas land.
The fact. That. After. All the murder. Months of emotional manipulation. Purposefully exacerbated case of encephalitis. Murder of their daughter. And heaps of cannibalism.
They broke up over what amounts to bad timing?
Makes me unhinged.
If cherik are messing up the entire world because of ideological differences, post season 1 hannigram are somehow the exact opposite. Two people fucking each other up just because they can and because they can't imagine not doing it.
Mutually.
Arguably consensually even.
These are people who divorced in the messiest possible way for the fun of it
and then did it again
and again.
It’s hard to properly articulate just how much of a messy trainwreck their entire relationship is, because their stated motivations change, their circumstances change, their loyalties change and yet when all is said and done you realise very little of that really mattered. Because the end was inevitable.
It’s messy because despite being focused entirely on each other their combined body count was still in the dozens. It’s messy because by the end everybody involved needed a lifetime worth of therapy and I’m not even sure that’d help them. It’s messy because it’s just downright inexplicable. It’s messy because they never even really broke up.
This is a divorce that doubles as years long courtship, and you know what? Yeah, I gotta give it to them. Somewhere between how fucked up everything they did was and the fact that it was always about them and literally nothing and nobody else but them.
They take the crown for me.
(I’ve seen one season of black sails and know nothing about metal gear, so somebody else write an essay on those lmao)
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