#but occasionally I like to indulge myself by imagining an Untamed timeline AU in which JGY joins XXC and SL

[symphonyofsilence]

I believe that no matter what he did, there was no happy ending for Jin Guangyao.

Whether he stayed with the Nie (he would always wish that he could have been legitimized by his father. [Because of the better social standing it would bring him which was a very big deal actually he would have been miserable unless he was legitimized, because he really wanted his father's acceptance, because he had to replace that horrible last memory of Jinlintai in his mind, because it was his birthright, & most importantly because it was his mother's last wish], he would get bullied & humiliated & get looked down upon every day by almost everyone, he would always wish [& know that with his potential] he could reach much higher and make the changes he wanted to make in the world) or didn't, or join the Lans (the same problems but maybe with less bullying and fewer shit talks because it would have been against the Lan rules and also the Lans owed JGY big time) or the Jiangs, whether Meng Shi survived or didn't (I think JGY wouldn't have told her about that staircase incident, then who knows what lies he'd make up and what he would do to hide that he was not accepted by the Jins from his mother or get accepted by them at any cost and what it would result in) whether NHS planned his downfall or didn't (he still had the head of NMJ in his secret room that he claimed "wouldn't let him go", he still slept in the same bed as his sister, he still had and had lost a son with her that he claimed that "his blood ran cold everytime he looked at him" & whether he did have him killed or not he blamed himself for his death [I've explained here why I think that], he still had to live with the knowledge that no matter what horrible deed he committed for JGS, no matter how hard he tried he was never "worth mentioning" to his father, and had to lose all his considerable filial piety & what was essentially his life's mission to the point that he murdered his father) whether he went to Dongying (he'd have still lost all he built in his motherland, despite years of trying to build himself a good reputation and prove anyone who taunt him wrong, he'd still always be known as the rotten "son of a prostitute" there. And He'd have to start from scratch in Dongying, He'd still had to leave without Meng Shi's body, NHS would never get off his tail, and he'd be separated from LXC and JL [even if they followed him, he likely would feel bad for separating them from their sects and their families. Those were things that JGY himself longed for most of his life. He wouldn't want them to follow him.]) or didn't. & don't even start with him marrying LXC which would make all his problems exponentially worse. It would probably get LXC in trouble too (maybe he'd had to leave his sect) and that would be something that JGY would never want.

Certainly, what happened to him in canon was the worst possible scenario and he might have been less miserable in some of those other scenarios, but there were just no happy endings for him.