Nástya

come for an accent, stay for the internal crisis Wattpad

[proxrustes]

High Taxes and Open Wounds - The King's shears go downstream

Read The King's shears go downstream from the story High Taxes and Open Wounds by proxrustes (NEMKA) with 2 reads. fant...

“I think I killed him.” — Chapter 3 mood.

[proxrustes]

The King

Alyssane is supposed to be neither Soldier nor Poet. The King archetype is about sovereignty, about bearing the weight of decisions when no one else will. And that’s what the story strips her down to: the realization that no man will save her, and that her power is her own. She doesn’t get a love that heals, she doesn’t get a second chance romance, she doesn’t even get peace.

She cannot escape the archetype of King — responsible, burdened, caught in structures larger than herself — even as she longs to simply be a girl, untested.

She is the King of nothing, but still a King.

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The Poet

Joff is the Poet, but in the most fragile way possible, since he is the boy who mistakes memory for love, proximity for destiny. In the end, Joff is the illusion of safety — soft, golden, easy to hold — but he collapses under the weight of reality.

The Poet archetype promises beauty and sensitivity, but Joff delivers only fragments: sweet words, warm smiles, no backbone.

And yet, there’s tragedy in him, because he wants to be the answer, to be the soft counterpoint to Garret’s knife-edge pragmatism, but Alyssane can’t slot him into that role: wanting to be salvation doesn’t make you salvation. He’s a reminder that not all failed men are villains — some are simply insufficient.

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The Soldier.

Garret is the Soldier in the starkest sense — not a noble knight, but a man hollowed out by survival. The Soldier archetype is all about discipline, violence, and sacrifice, but here it’s stripped of the honor and banners. Garret isn’t the knight who wins wars for kings — he’s the man who does what no one else wants to look at.

In romance tropes, the Soldier is often the “protector,” the safe arms in which the heroine collapses, but Garret turns that inside out. His protection is real — he will keep Alyssane alive — but it comes at the cost of intimacy, of softness, of anything she could mistake for love.

He is not a harbor, but the stone wall you hide behind while artillery pounds the earth. Useful, yes, but comforting? Never.

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me, when the villain is just capitalism in a cloak: 💀

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the quest is so long because public transport doesn’t exist

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Joff: what’s the plan? Garret: survive. Joff: okay but like… more detailed? Garret: no.

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Joff: I brought flowers. Alyssane: from my own garden. Joff: it’s the thought that counts.

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Victor: I’m the most eligible bachelor in the village. Alyssane: that’s like being the cleanest rat in the sewer.

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breaking the “forbidden magic” trope because sometimes the ban is there for a reason

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Alyssane: why are you sharpening that knife at the dinner table. Garret: multitasking.

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Garret: the safest path is through the swamp. Alyssane: define “safe.” Garret: fewer witnesses. Joff: fewer WHAT??

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High Taxes and Open Wounds - The Poet is absent even in loyalty

Read The Poet is absent even in loyalty from the story High Taxes and Open Wounds by proxrustes (NEMKA) with 2 reads. f...

“Work on horses” — Chapter 2 mood.

[proxrustes]

breaking the “childhood friend endgame” trope because nostalgia ≠ compatibility

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Joff: remember when we were kids? Alyssane: I remember when you had a bowl cut. same energy.

[reginasphalanges]

The Office 4.15 Night Out