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You know, I think it’d be such a game changer if Dorian didn’t keep his portrait situation a secret and didn’t decide to let it (and himself) destroy him behind closed doors. As the story progressed, Dorian became more of a menace and people must have known that there was something up. But what if Dorian, early on, realized that he (and the portrait) was driving himself crazy and sought help?

If Dorian sought help, then everything that happened following Dorian’s descent into madness wouldn’t have happened, and that could, in a perfect world, be good. But when author’s purpose and Oscar Wilde’s true meaning behind the book is considered, what happened had to happen.

What I’m getting at is: what if Dorian sought help from Basil? What if Dorian told Basil about the things happening to not only him but also the portrait? How would Basil react and what would he do about it?

Now, I’m a Basil x Dorian shipper (🫡) and I definitely think they had a little something-something going on at the beginning of the book. A relationship that’s just a tad more than platonic is highly detectable (and almost implied) in the beginning of the book. So of course, I think about these questions in a fruity, Dorian x Basil manner.

What I think would happen is, Dorian takes forever to tell Basil about the portrait. His friend painted it for god sakes and spent so much time on it! It would crush Basil to find out that the portrait has been “damaged.” So he prepares what he’s going to say to Basil, but he doesn’t follow up with the plan as he, one night when in deep despair, ventures to Basil’s studio on a whim and begs him for help. Basil is taken aback at first but has got to help his friend, so he listens to Dorian’s frantic spiel about how he’s been feeling lately and the current state of the portrait. Now there’s room for some good old fluff here if you so desire, but on with the main point.

So what are Basil and Dorian going to do? Well first they’re going to go see the portrait and assess from there. I imagine that Basil would question Dorian on how the portrait came to be and through his questioning and Dorian’s teary answers, it surfaces that Lord Henry had something to do with igniting Dorian’s desire to stay young and beautiful forever, so Dorian made a wish/sold his soul to obtain eternal youth and beauty. From there they begin to come up with ideas on how they can reverse this wish/deal and on a whim Basil comes up with the idea to just repaint the impurities on the portrait and make it look like new. Now with that I imagine it messes with Dorian’s head and makes him feel worse so they try other things.

This whole thing could either end in prosperity or tragedy. I’ve thought about it in a few ways. The prosperous ending would include un-wishing the wish/taking back the deal or some other supernatural thing. The tragic ending would include the destruction of the portrait if they decided to give up and see if just “forgetting about it” and “getting rid of it” would help ease Dorian’s mind about the whole thing. This could end like how the book did, or it could actually end in prosperity (so this ending could go two ways technically, but I label it tragic). Another tragic ending could be Dorian’s portrait taking over him and what happens in the book happens here, but of course some of it is altered because Dorian’s dilemma isn’t a secret to Basil. Now that to me is an absolute tragedy. One more tragic ending could be the un-wishing/reversing of the deal/whatever happens going south and turning on Dorian some how, either killing him or whatever other outcome that is tragic. The whole un-wishing thing could be taken either tragically or prosperously. Most of these endings could be taken both ways, honestly, but this is what I’ve come up with. I typically like a tragically happy ending when it comes to things like these, so I like to think that everything was fixed and Dorian’s okay :) but there was some struggle involved for him and Basil.

All of this is completely random but it stemmed from questioning Dorian’s secrecy about his dilemma and if he would tell/who he would tell. It’s just an idea. I could expand on it and write something more about it (like a fic) but I’ll see about that. Honestly this idea could be taken so many ways and I’m sure other people have thought about something along the lines of this. This is just my take on it. If I were to expand on it, it would of course include a lot of Basil x Dorian 🥴. They have a chokehold on me I swear-

If you read my musings and made it until this point, thanks; here’s a cookie 🍪

“I’ll just write basic notes so I understand what’s happening when I decide to write the actual chapter”

2000 words later..