#[ he'd probably go the way of finding a surrogate mother too ]

[lovefail]

[ another fact about Maurice: he would totally adopt children in a modern au. ]

[keikakudori]

Would Aizen's partner be affected if he fathered children while the Hogyoku is embedded in him, given that it enhances his already immense reiryoku? Can the partner carry a fetus that's growing with immense power?

Hello anon, I've touched on that very concept here and here in previous meta of mine, but I suppose it's time for a more extensive answer.

To answer the first question? Yes, his partner would find themselves affected if he ever found himself in the position of fathering children. His own awareness of his power, combined with the understanding that it was his own power that slowly killed his mother gives him excellent reason to never want children and he's never considered that something he's interested in pursuing. However, putting that aside --

Yes, he knows that his power would very much affect his partner. The only way that he'd even consider fathering a child would be if there were extreme precautions taken to monitor the health of the person carrying the fetus to term and ways their power could be bolstered to deal with the impact that the fetus would have on them and their body. He might even find a way to tie his own power to this person's so they could be supported in that fashion and not find themselves so drained as a result.

If this worked and it was viable that the procedure worked, then that might change things. It might not.

Given that his mother was capable of carrying him, it is possible but his partner would need to be immensely powerful themselves before anything close to the idea of children can come into play. I've spoken about it before and I'll say it again; the list of people who could conceivably be a surrogate for Aizen is very short. On that list is Rangiku, Orihime, Hallibel, Yoruichi, and Unohana, just going by canon. Keep in mind, he wouldn't even consider the idea of having children until well after the ending of the series and Unohana, if we go by canon, is dead. The other three would probably also just say no, outright.

But suppose that one of them agreed, just for the sake of consideration on how this would go.

For the second question? If the person who would become the surrogate had their reiryoku trained for several months beforehand, that would aid them quite a bit when the time came for the insertion of a fertilized ovum. What, you thought that Aizen would do the deed himself? No.

But either way, if there was a way to help tie his power to his partner that they ( and more importantly, the unborn fetus ) could absorb his strength to feed both mother and impending child, then that might persuade him otherwise on having children. Might. It's a strong might.

Naoko was capable of carrying Aizen to term because she had the potential to have been a strong Shinigami; if she had received proper training and lived long enough to get to the Seireitei and become a member of the Goteijusantai, then she could have been a seated officer at least, possibly even a lieutenant. Unfortunately, she didn't live that long. And, undoubtedly, Aizen is likely stronger than the man who fathered him; of course, Naoko was also carrying a child who was a direct descendent of the Soul King so it's hard to say whether or not carrying Aizen's child would be more dangerous or less dangerous.

If there was any chance of Aizen fathering a child on someone, there would have to be extensive work put into making sure that the mother in question will be able to not only survive the pregnancy, but equally that the fetus will not ruin their health either the way Aizen's did with Naoko's. Of course, that would mean that Mayuri and Kisuke would also have to be involved in this entire process, along with Isane, to ensure that everything would be running smoothly and that is a case, it could be argued, of too many cooks in the kitchen. Aizen wouldn't want their help but he's not so proud that he won't say that they wouldn't be useful.

So would his partner be affected? Yes, probably. Another possibility for reducing his reiryoku would be for Aizen to wear sekki-seki stone for an extended period of time so it could eat away at his power ( though that would not be an entirely viable solution, possibly, unless it was enhanced; I'm fully convinced that Aizen would burn through those kinds of devices from how hard it'd have to work on counteracting his strength and thus they would need to be continually renewed or replaced ) to some degree that would make it more viable for the surrogate to survive.

Aizen's own power wrecked his mother's body and he continued to wither her away over time due to it being uncontrolled, especially when he was asleep. Unlike Toshiro, however, he had no one there to tell him that he needed to learn how to control it. And given that we've seen that it doesn't take a lot of power for those with Shinigami potential to begin having an effect on those around them, you can imagine how much faster it went for him and Naoko since they were located in what was essentially the hinterlands of the Seireitei. If I remember right, it's rare to see Shinigami out in the Eightieth districts. Not unheard of, but extremely rare. Maybe if someone had stepped in sooner, things would be different.

Of course, Aizen isn't interested in having children, generally speaking. The only way in which you'll find him even entertaining the idea is in the failure!verse; most of my other verses just won't see it happening and it will never happen in a canon-compliant setting. If he did decide he wanted a child, then he and Gin would have to talk things out extensively, agree on a surrogate, and ask that surrogate if they'd be willing to help them out. He doesn't want to ruin someone else's health like that. Aizen may not remember much of his mother or their time together, but he remembers how frail she was before she died.

He would not be able to handle seeing someone he knows much more extensively going through that. Not easily, not with grace, not with skill; it would probably unlock a lot of repressed childhood memories, honestly.

[capriccio-ffxiv]

Oh, god, ok

So Illyria was originally a "bah I don't want kids" type. She LIKED kids, but figured The Adventurer Life is not great for them!

And then she met Haurchefant.

And she (naiively) thought "oh wow. I could settle down up here in Coerthas, we could have a few kids, he'd be an INCREDIBLE dad, but we'd have the whole support network of his family & Dragonhead. And MY family is in the Shroud so it's not too far for visits!"

Pretty shortly before the Vault, a) She and Haurchefant proposed to each other, at the same time, with Edmont's blessing (it was cute AF), b) she got pregnant, though she had no idea. It was about two to three months later, probably right around when Ysayle died (accounting for MMO Wibbly Wobbly Bullshit) that Midgardsormer went "THOU ART WITH CHILD BTW"

THANKFULLY, Midgardsormr is/was an old hand at making sure unborn babies survive some absolutely ridiculous Situations. So while mammilian pregnancy wasn't entirely familiar to him, he at least knew about five thousand ways to protect an unborn child. And, in fact, the discussion really did come down to "Ok. Ok. Can we put my kid in an egg. And can you sit on it. Not kidding, I have to go stab your stupid son Nidhogg and that's not something I should be doing while pregnant."

Which is how, while the kid is (mostly) 3/4 Elezen 1/4 Roegadyn (Illy is half Elezen), she hatched from an egg incubated by the Father of Dragons. Illy... feels like that was cheating on her part, but also is like "Well, I didn't have to give birth; tbh I think having a dragon midwife is incredibly dope and more of us should do that."

She was still there for the hatching, and due to the aetheric connection was still able to nurse her daughter. Illyria named her Ysayle; she's got hair like Haurchefant's but eyes like Illyria, and will probably grow up to be unusually tall and swole due to being 1/4 Roegadyn.

Due to, again, unfortunately, being Thee Warrior of Light, Illyria decided to give Ysayle the Younger up to Edmont for adoption, so she's Ysayle Greystone. Just about everyone inferred that this was Haurchefant's daughter -- he was openly polyamorous (and so is Illyria) and in LOTS of relationships, and while he was normally a hell of a lot more careful than his father, well, accidents do happen. Very few people caught on to her being Illyria's daughter, because of the whole very bizarre situation of Father of Dragons as Surrogate Mother. As in, Illyria was never (visibly) pregnant, to most people's knowledge!

People who know: House Fortemps (obv), Alphinaud (he was there), Tataru (you cannot keep secrets from her), Estinien (Alphinaud had to spell it out for him later on tho; he didn't find out till Endwalker)

People who have inferred/guessed but know to keep their damn mouths shut: most of the rest of the Scions, Aymeric, Lucia

Ysayle the Younger is being raised by an absolutely wonderful wet nurse (a woman working in the House Fortemps kitchens who'd recently had a child of her own) and gets spoiled rotten by Emmanelain and Edmont; Artoriel tries to curtail some of this but can't bring himself to because dangit she's so cute ;-; Francel has no idea who the mother is but doesn't care and just wants her to have a good life. So... even if it hurts Illyria terribly to know that she cannot be in the picture for Ysayle's safety, she knows that the kid's in the best possible hands.

Originally, she'd kept hoping that someday, things would calm down enough that she could at least visit and no longer have it be a secret -- hopefully in time for Ysayle not to grow resentful of her mother for not being there -- but then Endwalker and a bunch of other things happened, so Illyria... well, Illyria technically still exists, but that's not who's "driving" right now (it's a shared duty between three different entities, yes, including Esteem).

So... bittersweet. Illyria loves her daughter so much and wants her to have the best life, but knows she cannot be both a mother and the Warrior of Light. The fact that there was literally no way to square that circle is part of the reason for her eventual breakdown.

Feel free to share more details about why! Love reading other ppls character lore! :3

[disaster-vampire]

i'm so sorry but i have no idea how to put in a "read more" on mobile. this is really long.

this rant was inspired by this post, i agree with most of it but it prompted a lot of thoughts that derailed the more i wrote, so buckle up. i wrote a whole ass post on hannibal and dante that you can find here, where i highlight how impressive it is that hannibal can give lectures on dante as a foreigner, just to get that out of the way. i add a few more thoughts on that specific topic here on the technicalities of how hannibal would even get to that point and why dante is so fitting for hannibal but let's go.

i also grew up bilingual with italian being my main language and sardinian regrettably being my second when it should have been my first. and i learned italian much faster than sardinian, even with both being my mother tongues, because i was taught italian in school and it's kind of "forbidden" to speak sardinian in formal environments as it's considered low-brow to speak it for historical reasons so i only really speak it with family and a few friends that know the language, as not everyone does. bear with me this is part of the meta.

so, all that said, growing up in lithuania and interacting with other lithuanian people, including his family and whatever staff they had in that big ass castle, plus schooling, he probably knew lithuanian better than italian in his childhood. that is not taking into consideration the soviets though. i went to read about it without falling in too deep into the rabbit hole and lithuania has been independent since the 90s, so even show hannibal, who is younger than book hannibal, would have only known soviet lithuania. i unfortunately know fuck all about how soviet russia treated its conquered countries and am not willing to dive into that right in this moment so i'm not gonna make assumptions, but as was said in the original post hannibal did end up in a soviet orphanage so he was likely taught russian there.

this would mean that hannibal grew up knowing russian very well, speaking lithuanian with family and friends outside of school and formal events, which means reduced lexicon, and only speaking italian with his mother, maybe his sister and father, and his other italian relatives who we know nothing of.

i like to think he also speaks esperanto as it was developed during the soviet occupation of poland to be spoken amongst the various countries that were also occupied by the soviets but that's more headcanon than anything.

idk how to feel about him and lithuanian considering what has been said in the original post and in its notes, because i'm a bit biased. i'm very proud of where i'm from and i speak sardinian to spite mussolini and hope he rolls in his grave every time a child learns a new sardinian word. considering mischa in the books was killed by soviet soldiers (correct me if i'm misremembering that, i haven't read all the books yet but i know the gist of his backstory) i like to think hannibal also speaks lithuanian both to spite them and to keep the memory of his sister alive. i'd say if anything he'd hate to speak russian since it was spoken by said soldiers and in the orphanage.

considering that what he does is re-enact what was done to him, he's not letting that memory go, despite how much he likes to say "nothing happened to me, i happened," he feeds other people human meat without them knowing just like he was fed his sister unknowingly.

and yes i do think he probably had it in him before as well, and i do think if nothing had happened to him he still would have turned out to be a criminal anyway, but what happened to him did shape what kind of criminal he became in his adulthood, and he even put (in the show) will through the same ordeal when he convinced him he ate his surrogate daughter and actually force fed him part of her as an effort to change him.

he's very self aware, and i think he knows both that he always had the potential and that what he chooses to do is linked to his trauma.

now, more on latin, dante, and italian. this is about to get unhinged because it's 3am and i have strong opinions on dante (namely: he thought he could dole out judgements on whether or not other people would or would not go to hell- which is a thing he made up btw, based on the greek myth of hades, and the vatican had to make it canonical because so many people read his books that it became a widespread belief- based on his personal opinion of their actions).

i have no idea if hannibal being a dante lecturer in florence of all places is something the show took from the books, and i'm also not sure where the hell hannibal studied dante, but i'll do my best here. i know about dante because boy do they drill dante into your brain in italian school from middle school onwards. i assure you every single living italian can quote the opening of the inferno to you. i don't think they teach dante that religiously in french schools but lemme know if i'm wrong.

so i'm assuming, again, that he went to high school in italy and likely went to a liceo classico, which as you can probably guess from the name, is where you study classic literature. classic as in roman and greek. so. they study latin and ancient greek, and they probably got dante coming out their eyeballs.

i believe the reason hannibal likes dante so much is that dante was an asshole who put all the people he knew irl and didn't like in hell in his self insert fanfiction where he meets god and various creatures from greek myth. and if any of y'all come at me defending dante and being pretentious asshats about calling the divina commedia a self insert fanfiction i will bite you because i hate his guts even if the inferno is a fun read. the dude couldn't write a transition scene to save his life, he just fainted every time he needed to change scene. the only credit i give him is that he wanted to bring academic discourse to the common folk. anyway. the way dante wrote the inferno is very reminiscent of hannibal's modus operandi. he tortures and consumes people that have committed a sin that specifically irritates him, thus making himself god (and yes dante did that too, he hated indecisive people and made a special circle in hell just for people who wouldn't pick a side, and as a non-binary bisexual, i love that for me).

lemme tell you about this real dude that dante put in hell that i believe inspired hannibal lecter as a character: count ugolino della gherardesca. now those of you who know the story know where i'm going with this. count ugolino is in hell because he changed political factions. yea. as i said. dante hates indecision. he's showed gnawing at the head of another politician he was associated with when he was alive, and i won't get into the political side at all because it's been 800 years and i do not care, though dante cared Very Much, in fact this circle of hell is the one reserved for the traitors of the country. the interesting part is that from the way that dante worded the passage about the count, people interpreted it a bit differently from what he may have actually meant. count ugolino died of starvation while imprisoned in a tower with his sons and grandsons. the way dante wrote it made it sound like they died before him and he, mad with hunger, ate them, and then died of starvation after that. thus the legend of the cannibal count was born. we actually have no idea or historical proof if he cannibalised them or not, but that's the story most people hear anyway. yes my family told me they would feed me to count ugolino if i misbehaved as a child.

we also get a quote about his sons offering up their flash for their father to consume after they died as he is the one that created it which i know some of my mutuals are gonna love.

btw did ya know count ugolino was a lord and vicar in sardinia? did ya know the first victims of the real mostro di firenze case were sardinian? did ya know the first suspects in the mostro di firenze case were sardinian? did ya know there were rumors during the case that a foreign doctor was buying the organs of the victims in the black market? did ya know that they consulted quantico in the mostro case? did ya know mason's man-eating pigs trained by sardinian people are a direct reference to sardinian faida culture that i don't think the average italian knows about? did ya know thomas harris was sitting at the mostro trials taking notes that later inspired red dragon?

moral of the story i think hannibal lived in sardinia at some point and he heard the story of count ugolino and then had casu marzu (cheese with worms, yea people eat that and it's considered a delicacy but it's illegal to sell it and hannibal would be down for that and my proof is the ortolans) and it made him a crazy bitch