#✦ headcanons. ╱ i’m running to outpace the dawn.

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indulge me, if you will ... any beth headcanons to share? i'd love to read some if you have any :'))

I’ll link as we go along to posts that you, Hal, made, and that I’m referencing when I describe Beth!

Less of a headcanon, more of an observation: I’ve noticed in Beth’s dialogue she doesn’t often use people’s names; in contrast, she uses their descriptors. Older brother, naive sister. She only uses Josh when he’s not awake, as if she doesn’t want to be heard. I am however connecting this with your post about Beth being called the perfect one - &. am using this for the fact that she derives characteristics from people and then identifies them that way.

As a continuation, I don’t think Beth cares that much about the way she voices her opinions. In our thread, specifically this reply: (xxx) Beth asks Josh: “did you even like me at all?” which, while a PTSD dream, I think Beth would have asked if given a chance post-death. I think Beth is a very verbally abrasive person, but you don’t see it much. ( This also doesn’t mean that she doesn’t feel guilt for being this way, but rather, she can’t stop herself from saying her mind. )

These now are like, not headcanons based in observations or game easter eggs etc, but rather what I have felt intuitively writing Beth, and building her outwards. 

I don’t think she wanted to be an actress, partially due to the family’s director / fame / movie background. (Hal post about the family biz, xxx) I think she probably wanted to be in some stem field, going down the route of being the “perfect one,” (xxx) by going into an extremely competitive field. Additionally, she didn’t wanna be a doctor / lawyer, but a researcher. Had she lived, she might have specifically gone down the route of exploring medication effects. ( If not for Josh, xxx, related meta ) Officially maybe a psychiatrist, if she had to do clinical work, but she liked research the best.

She smells like vanilla perfume, because it’s easy to find &. usually fairly cheap ( just something she can find easily ) but she also really liked the scent of pineapples. Perfume was pretty common for Beth.

Beth relates a lot of her life in the twin mentality, as in she thinks of things in twos. Her parents, Chris+Josh, her+Hannah. Things are often doubled up in Beth’s mind, and it takes a lot of work to unravel those people to be singles. I think that’s why she likes for people to have descriptors, so she can easily define each person solo, rather than just thinking about people together. ( I also don’t think she supported Hannah’s crush on Mike for this reason, that their descriptors “didn’t match” to Beth and therefore they were incompatible. Right before her death, she was vindicated in this aspect. )

I also think Beth’s way of describing Josh was “resilient,” Hannah was obviously “naive.” I think Beth called herself either “stubborn” or “honest,” both not necessarily positive or negative. Naive & honest worked because Beth could tell her like it was and she wouldn’t be tricked, as well as stubborn & resilient worked because they would do something to the end, together.  Personally, Emily is seen as the “bitchy” archetype, but I think she saw Mike that way. Emily was probably “opinionated,” if not “insightful.”

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do you think beth was more privy to information on her brother than hannah? ie his mental health? additionally — we see beth’s hair longer in the portrait with her family but she has the blunt bangs started — by the time we see her, her hair is more definitively cut to mark her different as hannah — do you see that as beth starting to find her own identity? or something else entirely?

was there ever a time it was hard to have an individual identity? would she have continued to struggle with that had she lived?

and does she see herself autonomously or just part of a greater whole?

I think Beth was somewhere privier to Josh’s mental health without actually being allowed in. Josh might have told her snippets, but I think what she actually heard was mostly from their parents’ arguing about treatments, therapy sessions, and psychiatrists. I think Beth was a very quiet child and sister, and so often just hung around doorways when she heard arguing and would stick out the fight to know what was going on. I think Beth was often like that - always refusing to keep her head out of other people’s business, always wanting to know more, and be in the middle of everything. I think it kind of wrenched at her to not be knowledgeable about something.

In the same vein, I think she very much hated not being listened to when she offered advice, and also hated not being listened to when she gave unsolicited advice. Her thing with pairs and not trusting Mike felt obvious to her and so she was supremely irritated up until the end that Hannah believed Mike, even when Beth told her she shouldn’t. I think the fact that Josh didn’t tell her how his mental health was saved him a lot of unsolicited advice from Beth about how to manage it.

(More under cut)

To the hair question, I think it was actually less for Beth and more for Hannah, in a weird way. I think it was less for Beth to differentiate herself from Hannah, and more giving Hannah an opportunity to shine without having to change. I think Beth was far more the willing sister to commit to the initiative, and so just cut her hair to help Hannah define herself without having to ask Hannah to change first. 

I think, much like her advice, this “change” is unsolicited, &. Beth did not ask Hannah if she felt like a difference was needed between them for two full personhoods. I think that was entirely Beth deciding for Hannah that someone needed to change first. ( i also think beth blamed this “change” for hannah’s death, had she survived, because maybe if both of their hair styles were the same they wouldn’t have bullied hannah &. split it between bullying them both. )

So, tldr, not a change to differentiate Beth from Hannah, but to make Hannah shine by herself. I think Beth views herself as not even sacrificial but just kind of the one between them who takes the leaps.

I talk about it here, but I think due to the fact that Beth views people in twos she doesn’t like having her own identity. I think she would have majorly struggled with having her own identity or going into her own field if they both lived. Truthfully, I think the only way Beth can be a person on her own terms is if Hannah died, and only then. Otherwise she would’ve tried to restring her entire life into becoming a pair or some kind of complementary field to Hannah, and would have really messed up her life in the process.

I think having a separate identity of her siblings is really uncomfortable for Beth. I legitimately do not think she knows who she is without them &. it’s partly why, in her swap au where she’s the sole Washington kid, she’d be much more outright on the “psychological warfare” aspect than Josh, who was pretty contained. She’d literally have nothing to go off of, and so would just go off.

To the final question, I think she definitely views herself as a part of an whole. Her siblings specifically are her whole, and since the kids bullied Hannah, they didn’t fit in her whole. Her parents were included in a greater whole, but because she didn’t wanna go into film she felt separated from them.

Beth has to live in the context of other people, because I don’t think she knows what that Beth underneath looks like. &. honestly I don’t think she wants to. I think it’s why the creature verse (survives instead), stranger verse (where she relies on Jack as his protege to sort of define her existence) and the swap au (where she has no one to pair up with) make her the most interesting. It defies where I place her core and her values, so she literally has to rebuild herself from the ground up.

Thank you for asking!

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Beth verses below the cut.

THE CLASSIC. ✦ BETH LIVES.

On the tin. Prank never happens, Beth (&. Hannah) never falls, never dies on impact, never gets eaten. Beth goes to college, gets internships and residencies, and becomes a psychiatrist. She prefers research over clinical work during most of her schooling, but ends up really enjoying psychiatry as an adult. She even acts in Josh’s movies, if he needs a psychiatrist who can act.

THE CREATURE. ✦ BETH IS THE WENDIGO.

Beth is the one who survives and eats Hannah, though even post-transformation she is timid and remains the same size as the rest of the monsters. Her destruction style, unlike Hannah’s intentional and symbolic killings (inspired by some stuff Hal has said) is what I call “panic killings,” where she doesn’t mean to, doesn’t want to, but ends up shredding people in the process of trying to undo her harm.

Sub verses, but no tags:

THE CREATURE. ✦ JOSH DIES.

In an attempt to cradle Josh upon recognizing his smell / warmth, she pierces his arms at the shoulder / armpit, and stakes him through the chest. Attempting to get him removed from her claws, she rips him apart, crying all the while.

THE CREATURE. ✦ JOSH GETS TAKEN.

Beth takes her best friend to the mines, less so grabbing him than just herding him further into the mines. To do what, exactly - force him into her position (cannibalism), or “protect” him from their friends / the pranksters, her mind is foggy &. unclear. She sees her best friend through the haze of the Wendigo, and can do nothing except get him back to where they used to hang out, their secret place - a dark &. wet spot, deep below past where anyone could find them.

THE CREATURE. ✦ JOSH SURVIVES.

The confusion of the mines being so cold, &. the water being so cold, disrupts Beth’s wendigo heat-reading eyes. Josh seems almost invisible. She thrashes, scaring him deeper into the mines. But lost in her confusion, fear and despair, she does not attack him. She leaves for easier prey, above - ground.

THE STRANGER. ✦ HANNAH TURNS BUT BETH DOESN’T DIE.

Separate from the Creature Verse, Beth does not follow Hannah into the woods, to the Stranger, or the mines. Hannah runs and Beth pointedly does not follow nor wake Josh: she stares into the night and something screams at her: DON’T GO! &. she is unable to move. Her sister “dies,” &. she feels her guilt &. Hannah’s “spirit” (or is it just her own guilt, doubling - up, weighing her down?) mesh, like a physical weight upon her.

Beth does not survive the incident mentally - sound, but she does survive. Beth considers genuinely hurting their friends, unable to explain why she feels so weighed - upon. It’s a twin thing. You’d feel it too, if part of your soul died.

She eventually becomes like the Stranger, and without knowing why, knows there’s something out there keeping her sister alive - dead - neither. Is it to kill Hannah, to make her rest? Or to kill the things that did “it” to her - this unexplainable thing?

THE LAST ONE STANDING. ✦ BETH - JOSH SWAP.

Instead of Beth and Hannah dying, Josh is awake and follows Hannah into the night, taking Beth’s stead and dying in her place. Beth is the one who lives. She asks her friends involved in the prank, though her brother &. twin sister are dead, to come back to the lodge for a remembrance day &. to tell them how well her psychiatry studying is going. Maybe she can help them heal. 

But Beth is still her brother’s sister, &. has something fear - inducing in mind.

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My main verse for Deku on this blog, below. This elaborates on his divergent behavior and timeline, including where I’ve moved him up in this timeline.

Deku’s canon divergency starts while he’s still at UA and there’s no war. Instead, AFO doesn’t get out and no grand plan gets unleashed. The League still exists and they continue to be a hassle, but it’s nothing major. Deku also loses a bit of his identity and it becomes blurred for him, making him use Deku both personally and professionally. Maybe using your childhood nickname as your Pro Hero name was a bad idea.

Deku’s canon divergence continues as he gets older. Graduating high school, Deku is in the top three. By his twenty-second birthday, he’s number one. Deku quickly realizes the pro hero life wasn’t all that he thought it was; most importantly, he’s upset with how the procedures are done and the strict PR rules he has to follow under the HPSC’s ( hero public safety commission )  guidelines. By twenty-four, he goes rogue.

Deku completely abandons his post as the number one hero, leaving it to Bakugou. Instead, Deku goes underground and begins temporarily forming allyships with functional vigilantes and villains, trying to root out the corruption of society. For the most part, he is completely MIA from the hero scene as well as no - contact with his loved ones. There are barely any signs that Deku is even alive. Some rumors and sightings here and there that Deku exists as a green ghost, only wisps in people’s peripherals.

For two years, he makes some progress. He is able to uproot some aspects of HPSC, at least enough of the genuinely and blatantly corrupt executives to make them resign and make the other executives frightened. He is not successful in curing all corruption in Japan, and can no longer deny that his presence is still necessary as Japan’s number one hero and the gap that One for All left behind is too large to ignore.

He reluctantly returns to the spotlight, but won’t open up about what he’s been doing. People sort of know: he was doing some amount of vigilantism. It’s clear he went no - contact with his friends and colleagues, and that they were in as much dark as the general public. Deku offers nothing to the public: all that it was an aspiring hero’s work.

Deku has to get his hero license renewed after that and make sure his Quirks are recorded as is procedure. The HPSC doesn’t want to work with him anymore, and he them; they don’t give him tasks unless someone requests him specifically for a team-up and he sticks to his own agency and his friends’ agencies for work. He also easily reassumes his place as number one, usurping Bakugou once again.

It isn’t until Deku is defeated by the next generation of heroes does he go back underground, now fully committed ( and no longer number one ) to rooting out corruption.

Personality-wise, Deku is much more dulled out as an adult. He’s still the same analyst Quirk-nerd underneath, but he gets quiet from the amount of trauma he’s endured. He swaps between his more Bakugou-aligned attitude and his own nice attitude more often, becoming more irritable post-vigilantism. This only happens post-24yro , likely around 26. Deku is roughly the same as he is to canon - save some of the excitement - up until he’s 20 when he hits number one. Then he starts calming down.

Habits & quirks, Deku feels an insane amount of discomfort when referred to as Izuku. Anyone who knows him know that he likes to be exclusively referred to as Deku. Deku also gets OCD compulsions and intrusive thoughts, worsening the older he gets.

Summary, Deku is the same ages 14-17 to canon, 18 he gets some inklings of wanting to be a different kind of hero (underground, vigilante, etc), 19-20 he tops the charts, 24 he goes MIA as a vigilante, 26 he returns. And at some point in the future, he becomes underground after his number one spot becomes usurped by the next gen.

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I’m adding ( experimentally ) a new oc to my roster, Marauder, a complex commander AI for a defunct space - ship. For all intents and purposes, her space - ship is in her backstory and she will be redesigned to fit in the universe of other people’s muses. ( ie. if she was in a Marvel universe, she’d just be a supercomputer, no space - ship necessary. )

More info down below. ( She’s not yet added to my oc document, so this will have to do for now. ) This honestly turned into a small story.

Marauder in her original universe was a USS space - ship meant for research & guidance. She wasn’t a huge vessel, and was meant for collecting small, alien samples, with her engineering crew small & tightknit. The majority of her passengers were researchers, scientists, and interning students. Marauder was a complex, commander AI that worked side - by - side her Captain, Simon Shepherd. She was capable of a consistent, sentient personality, and her ability to distinguish discomfort & pain allowed her crew to notice faults, leaks, and damages to the vessel before they were troublesome.

When her scientists captured a specimen, a routine flora and soil grab from an unexplored planet, her passengers began to get sick. It was the story - as - old - as - time tale. First, symptoms with no cure, people getting sick with their immune systems unable to fight back. A quarantine: whole wings off the ship forced away from the uncontaminated members. Constant lock - downs where people had to wear their air - tight space gear to avoid the airborne virus. Marauder coasted through empty space, unable to stop what was happening. Her gaze ( her cameras, ) locked onto every wing, every room. The sickness was spreading.

It was at first believed to be a virus where the floral they grabbed was one that had toxic pollen. And, in one person’s lack of care, one sleep - deprived day, the pollen was being circulated through the vents of the ship. It quickly became airborne, but then the pollen, the sickness it was forming in people’s bodies as it infected them, became sentient. It was a smart disease: it learnt how to copy people’s voices, turned off the hosts’ nervous system, and walked aimlessly around. The ship had unclean air. And the folks who were your friends were no more than husks, asking you to take your helmet off.

❛ IF YOU LOVED ME, YOU’D TAKE YOUR HELMET OFF. ❜

Before long, Marauder’s engineering crew and her scientists were transformed. The person who lasted the longest was her Captain, Shepherd. But eventually he killed himself to avoid succumbing to the disease, leaving her alone. 

And then the parasites, the ones who had taken her crew, began to sing to her. They worshipped her. She was a warm vessel with lots of hosts for them to partake in, and though they didn’t know how to care for her, they loved her. They sang her name in dead voices, and ran their fingers across her mainframe. They killed her in increments. Faulty wires turned into fires. Without maintenance, her thrusters rusted and turned decrepit. She was as nonalive as they were, but she felt it the whole time. 

Part of her brilliance in the way she was built was so she felt, and so she felt. No real nervous system to override. So nothing to infect. Marauder was cold metal, safe from the parasites.

The vessel broke. The parasites could not, though they worshipped her, sustain her. She eventually fell apart. The only part that held together was her servers, in a small, temperature-controlled isolated part of her original vessel. She would live, by herself. But much like the parasites’ victim, was a husk of her former self.

Marauder in other universes is something of a supercomputer. Or she’s a Hal - like AI of another space ship that didn’t get infected. She wants badly to be a person. This is def her song. She’s kinda trans girl coded. (Robot, but wants to be a girl… huh… I’ve heard that analogy somewhere) She’s interesting for folks who may want to interact with her. Thanks for reading !!

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Deku headcanons under the cut. (may be similar to my og deku blog - i just don’t remember)

Deku doesn’t like to be called Midoriya anymore, after about 17 or so, in the au with no war and no loss of OFA. His internal dialogue refers to him only as Deku, with any external reference to him being whatever people call him. He doesn’t correct people, but he doesn’t like it. There’s a certain loss of identity there.

He’s only moved along in the timeline I had been making for him for years. The trauma he bears is immense, and his personality has dulled as a result. For the folks I follow who have bnha muses, I am considering making him older as well for a continuing divergent AU of him, going back to his vigilante role.

Deku lets his hero license expire & continues to act as a hero, just underground and underneath the radar. No separate tag yet, since I haven’t written it officially. This is a fic I’ve written partly as well, which is available on request. Deku is willing to & does work with villains in this divergent timeline. He is 22 in this AU. He keeps OFA the whole time, taking a slower time to master it than in canon.

A continuing theme in Deku’s world is anything to change the world - an idea he holds dearly to his heart and rather seriously. If people knew just exactly how much he was willing to sacrifice, it might cause problems. The idea that a hero would willingly work with Overhaul, Stain or Shigaraki; to defend their innocence, their autonomy, and their right to be free in a Quirk-y society may not go over well. Deku isn’t immune to propaganda, and he’s been swayed by the idea that maybe not every hero is a good hero, even if they have good intentions / hopes.

This Deku is not significantly darker than canon, but also is true to his heart and his zealous nature that things are due for a change. 

Anything to change the world.

[cataschism]

A non-comprehensive Vi ramble post about my Vi’s gender expression. (Tagging with Arcane spoilers due to Season 2 ep 5 discussion.) 

What I’m flip flopping on is whether or not Vi is a trans man or is trans masc. Yes, Vi is still a lesbian, in this house we don’t deal on exclusionist terms yada yada. The reason I’m debating it is because I think he’d still let Jinx call him sister as reluctantly as he lets Jinx call him that anyway. I don’t think he’d ask Jinx to call him her brother. He also Maybe in a similar way to Jinx still being his sister, even though Powder is the original and Powder doesn’t exist in the same way anymore.

My thing with Vi being trans masc is that it’s y’know, masculine, and I think that Vi doesn’t really care about using solely masculine terms. Sister, daughter, etc. But for anyone else they can call him brother or sister if they knew him in the before times; things like boyfriend are preferred over girlfriend, but I don’t think he really minds. Vi’s a bit of a he-she lesbian, looking both masculine but still being connected to his feminine identity for his sexuality and his birth gender. It’s not something he ignores.

I think my understanding of that kind of terminology definitely influences the way that Vi thinks about it because I wouldn’t know how Vi-canon or Fortiche’s storytellers would think about Vi being trans, but for now “trans man lesbian” definitely works for Vi. He/him pronouns. I think Vi probably lands directly in the smack middle of trans man and butch lesbian, so he’s a little bit of both ends. 

Will post more about this but just general thinking about genderness and gender nonconformity for Vi in general. Being that pit fighter definitely changed something in him, but he definitely asked Cait (if canon-verse) during s1 to call him boyfriend too.

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this applies to a lot of characters that i write, so consider this a general writing thing about how i portray love & affection.             /           #   headcanon post. ( also sort of a comp of my writing, showcasing various types of love. )

i have a personal and genuine fondness of love through destruction, or love that’s experienced messily. love that’s infatuation & the constant and unconditional choice that comes with loving someone, every day, until you die. love that hurts to experience. love that feels so fulfilling & overly large that it’s hard to describe. love that you miss. i think a good part of love is experienced in the context of anguish, whether it’s unreciprocated love, or love that’s experienced so harshly and so much that it causes you to feel anguish. it’s wild and overbearing and unbearable, where you can’t even look at the people you love in their eyes. friends & kisses you’ve lost only to remember the color of their eyes, the shape of their bedroom, their mother’s perfume. love is best experienced when you allow yourself to be wild & authentic. when it overtakes you. when you sob with it.

affection, love, crushes, all of those are experienced most authentically with this in mind: it’s temporary. a lot of the time, feelings are temporary. the big waving crashes of love & adoration that you feel for someone is temporary. it’ll pass and go. you’ll go months without talking, and then you’ll see them in your dreams. that’s being an authentic human. 

i wrote something from a while ago for an original piece that i think also explains my next point about love being exposing:

original ocz pleaze do not #steal

but it is, it’s exposing. there’s nothing quite like saying i love you for the first time, for the friend who didn’t expect to hear it so soon, or the lover you’ve been with for a few months. a year. saying it, never saying it. it means so much to hear you do either one, & matters when & why you do it, at all. for michel, for an example, on how being like others & liking others is a dangerous but fun game to play:

another example of michel’s exposing form of love, one that he’s terrified of:

another good example of exposing, in a bit o’ writing i’m actually pretty proud of:

so when my characters self-deprecate, i don’t find it to be solely for the sake of lowering themselves. but to notice that their love has transcended beyond themselves, and to integrate their key parts, their heart & their soul & whatever else may have you, to another person, that causes anguish. and maybe it’s me being aro, but i’ve always found love to be agonizing, in a good way. but in a true way. i’ve cried over people i know now, and don’t intend to lose, because i love so much. i think it’s similar for most characters. in the case of zenitsu:

denki:

you kinda get my drift. this sort of love is vital to my characters, and while i had more intention of writing out why, i think my writing does plenty good of showing you how it helps my characters be multidimensional.