#fandom-related

you’re bullied a lot as a kid. people step all over you, push you around, and one day you decided that you’ve had enough. enough of being a weak pushover. enough of being an easy target. you reason, you reason that the only way to make your peers respect you is to rise up the ranks. so you do. you become good at what you do, very, very good at it. you prioritize your reputation more than anything, because you know that people will only respect you if you’re powerful, if you have the status of one deserving of respect, and nobody will ever dream of pushing you around ever again. you prioritize your reputation to the point of obsession. you know it’s not healthy, that you’re destroying yourself with this obsession, but you just can’t stop aiming for perfection. at least you’re not weak. then you meet a nice, pretty woman. she tells you she can change the world, that she can change your world, and you believe her. you love her, and you love her to the point where you cannot see the calculating look in her ice, ice cold eyes. and she says she loves you back, and you trust her. you get married, and have a son. you name him keefe, and you try to love him, you really do but maybe years of replacing the love you needed with a false sense of security earned by reputation, your sense of what love is is warped. you know you’re a bad father, you can see it in your son’s ice, ice cold eyes. you see it in his defeated laugh when you yell at him, why, why isn’t he perfect. yet you can’t seem to stop yourself. the love of your life, your wife, with her ice, ice cold eyes and calculating smiles, never stays around the house anymore. you don’t know where she’s going. does she even love you anymore? and then your world flips upside down overnight. your wife, the love of your life, with her ambition and charm and ice, ice cold eyes. she’s been lying to you this entire time, sneaking away, orchestrating atrocities right under your nose. and you should’ve known, right? you should’ve, should’ve known. but you didn’t. maybe, maybe maybe maybe, you think, hands shaking, the love in her ice, ice cold eyes wasn’t for you. maybe it was never for you. how, how could you have let this happen, how could you have been so blinded, why couldn’t you have stopped this? perfect, perfect lord cassius. all crashing down at your feet. and your son. your son, your son, your son. he doesn’t love you, and you don’t blame him, but you want him back more than anything. you want him safe and home but you can’t blame him for running away and will he ever want to return to a father who had only shown him anger and disgust? why, why why. why couldn’t you have stopped this, why could you have been so gullible, why did you let her push you around like some sort of pawn in her stupid, stupid game? why, why couldn’t you have been a better father, why couldn’t you have made a home where your son felt safe enough to return to? why. why, why why. and now your family is falling apart, piece by piece, and you’re sitting on the porch at night, hearing the echoing of a house empty, and wondering. wondering how, how, how things came to be like this.  you thought you were succeeding, but you’re just another failure.

I like the headcanon that Mingjue loved to play weiqi when he was younger, before he became the sect leader. Then he gave up all unnecessary silly things. After all, training and night hunting can also be enjoyable, and it's much more useful for the sect. It would be funny if Huaisang, on the opposite, didn't really like weiqi in his youth, but tried it later in memory of his brother, and perhaps even came to enjoy it. It would be ironic, because Weiqi is even shown in the opening with him. And imagine if Huaisang casually mentioned that Mingjue used to love that, and that this old set once belonged to Mingjue, no one would believe him, because it's not at all what anyone would ever expect from Mingjue. Some of the stones are missing from the set because little Huaisang used them to decorate bird cages.