#and on the part about internalized ableism. it negatively impacted his self image because he'd already formulated his 'perfect' persona.

[genderqueer-karma]

so, i got to thinking about my life + the headcanons i have about the vk family. i have one i'd like to share with you (safe)

let me preface this by saying that i'm not physically disabled, but i have had issues with my legs for as long as i've been able to walk (so basically my entire life) which has led me to limp when i walk. more recently, i've experienced pain in my legs more frequently than i used to, and it got me thinking that i might need some type of mobility aid in the future. of course, i don't necessarily want that to happen, but if it does, i won't cry over it (probably).

***

anyway, that got me thinking.

a lot of people believe that manfred began to use his cane after some injury, or they believe that he just has it for vanity's sake. i personally don't see either of those making sense (though if you do, that's totally cool! i'm not the authority on any characters, especially not him).

personally, i feel as though if he had the cane as a walking stick purely to show off his wealth, he would've gone for something a bit more... ornate? it's not as though my guy's a minimalist by any stretch of the imagination; if he does something, it's big and dramatic, which is all well and good. cheers.

as for the injury headcanon, i honestly can't say i personally see it. it does make a lot of sense, but i feel like canon somewhat restricts this from being possible? since he never took vacation days besides after dl-6 (and probably rarely took days off for injury or illness. the only times i imagine he took days off were the births of his children, and legally he basically would have had to with leave and all that).

getting injured, especially the most common way i see people hc that he would've gotten injured, from an accident while riding horseback, would definitely be something that doesn't particularly fit with his characterization, imo, considering that he would most likely take as many safety precautions as humanly possible to avoid getting hurt. (in my mind, he's actually quite anxious and just a generally neurotic person and as a result tends to consistently think worst-case scenario, leading to him over-preparing for just about everything.)

so what exactly is my headcanon?

**

i believe his cane usage was the product of hereditary chronic pain.

in my mind, the vks all kind of have this chronic hip and leg pain that starts manifesting as young as 20 or so and really kicks in around the mid 30s to early 40s. ultimately, this pain requires the use of mobility aids or (worst-case scenario) surgeries that may not actually be effective. of course, i don't actually know much about surgeries, so i am taking a small liberty with this aspect, but nevertheless:

in manfred's case, i think the chronic pain kicks in when he's about 38, and it absolutely wrecks him for the the first six months or so. he rarely goes anywhere other than work (sometimes church, which i also have other hcs about. maybe i'll post about those one day.) and home. he spends a lot of time sitting and debating with himself on whether or not he wants surgery, ultimately to decide that he doesn't because the success rate is too low for his tastes (perfectionism) and recovery time is awful.

because he has to use the cane for the rest of his life, he experiences a lot of internalized ableism. this leads him to do many things that were unsafe for him, and generally caused more angst than anything he might've thought it "solved".

for example (and i'm aware this is a movie specific thing), after being caught for his crimes in dl-6 and after his meltdown, instead of using his cane to walk out of the courtroom, which probably would have been more comfortable and more safe, he walks without it, opting instead to carry it: "maintaining his dignity", so to speak.

***

of course, with this problem being genetic and passed down from generation, his biological kids (for the most part) are affected by it. since only franziska is named in the series, i'll focus primarily on how this affects her. (i debated making this section a separate post, but honestly, fuck it)

as we know, franziska basically disappears from the aa series after aa3/aai2. (capcom please let her out of the basement... that's my daughter and i miss her) this plays perfectly into my headcanon, actually. since we get no information about her whereabouts beyond a very basic "she works with interpol and stuff", i can't help but feel that explanation is incomplete.

so, that also made me think: what if she was affected a bit earlier than most? earlier in this post i mentioned that the chronic pain can manifest as young as 20 years old... which happens to be around the age she is when she all but vanishes from the narrative. basically, i think that the pain, which she inherited from her father, caught up to her.

now, there are other implications to this. after deliberating with a mutual and friend of mine, @bucket-of-hyperfixations i concluded that she would most likely want/prefer to use traditional crutches. (i did also consider that she might use a wheelchair, but then i thought about how wheelchair users are treated and thought hard about how that'd be a no-go)

this is what i ultimately landed on mostly because considering her character and the distance she wants to create from her father (using a cane would probably remind her as well as other people of him, which was a huge thing that she railed against, especially in the third game), as well as the fact that she would most likely want to maintain the freedom to use her arms so she could use her whip, which forearm crutches, another option i considered for her, wouldn't provide.

***

of course, there's a lot more i could add to this, but i think that this is enough for now. i personally like talking about the vk family and making up headcanons about them, considering how little information we actually get in canon. that being said, i accept criticisms of my headcanon and don't think that other interpretations of what we are presented with are inherently wrong, even if i sometimes disagree with them.