I know that everyone is like...focused on Great being a terrible person (and celebrating Tonkla for killing him lmao) but I think the original timeline just makes Great's story more tragic.
Since we essentially were in Great's head and he was trying to edit his own past, it revealed so much more about him in a way we would've never known with just the original timeline.
He wants his brother to care for him. He wants sweet, playful dates. He wants to see Thyme smile. He wants to innocently hold Thyme's hand and get his potential first kiss with him interrupted by Thyme's grandma. He wants their first time to be sweet and loving. Just for them. He wants Thyme to listen to him, understand him. He wants Thyme's eyes to soften.
Everybody has wondered why their scenes felt so disjointed but this explains it so much.
Great doesn't think, even in the depth of his subconscious, that his dad could change. Or his mom. Or even his brother. He doesn't crave for his family to be different. Or rather: He can't even possibly imagine that happening in any timeline. His circumstances stay the same.
Every bad decision Great makes, he still makes in his fanfic timeline. But he gets a chance to change it. He's forced to look at his own inactions and the consequences. He's not getting away with his passiveness anymore.
Great's achilles' heel is not that he gets off on hurting and using people. That's not who he is. He doesn't crave his father's approval (like Korn does), he doesn't want people to obey him and hurt them (like Title does) and he's not interested in portraying a certain image (compared to his parents).
Great revealed his deepest desires to Thyme in his wishful timeline: He's just lonely. He just wants to be loved. He wants someone to see him.
And yes, he's definitely spoiled and he's a coward. His achilles' heel is his own cowardice, his inability to decide something for himself, to be ACTIVE and not just passively react to things and let other people decide FOR him. He excuses his own actions with his passiveness because that's just the way he was taught. (Korn said it in the last episode: He will do the dirty work and Great can just blissfully live like everything's fine.) He's deeply anxious, reckless and almost numb to things around him before he meets Thyme in his original timeline.
He just accepts things for the way they are. And because he's surrounded by awful people, he became awful himself.
But original!Thyme miscalculated Great. Because Thyme himself is a morally grey person and hurts the people around him for his own gain (regardless of his motivations being right or wrong). He saw Great as a tool, as someone to use. He was too wrapped up in his own mission, his obsession with getting justice that he wasn't able to see Great for who he could potentially be: A person to love.
They could've been each other's salvation but instead become each other's tragedy.
Isn't that so sad? Thyme used Great and preyed on him. In the original timeline they maybe had like...what....one hour of genuine connection?
And yet – in his dying moment Great still wants Thyme. Still wants to be loved by him. Even in his dying moment Great wishes for them to be each other's haven.
jacobvanloon
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janainaart
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