#apparently my terepy reference was SO off HAH but okay I edited it a little

[rhythmic-idealist]

Do you have any headcanons for the Beforus Ancestors?

YES.

(Thank you, by the way, for such a lovely ask?)

Okay, some are saved for a fic that I am going to push the next two chapters of out sometime in the next year I swear.

That said, I can definitely talk about KARKAT.

In my headcanon, Beforus!Karkat Vantas remained hemoanonymous until his death, and was only outed as a mutant after it, enabling him to pass his name down to Kankri.

(An aside that I’ve talked about before, but—the Signless’s sign exists because of, you know, his execution, and Kankri doesn’t wear a sign, so I’m pretty sure that Kankri and Beforus!Karkat were also, as an adjective, signless.)

I like riffing off the ectobiology thing actually? And making Beforus Karkat’s life’s work lie in that general field. And it’s, yeah, it’s a little bit because if there is any way he can fuck with his own genes and not pass down his mutation to his descendent, he will, but it would be sort of horrible for me to make everything about him stem from “self-hating mutant” especially because in this universe—at least in my headcanon—he gets to actually grow up and have a normal career on planet. (I’m not sure this is a great take anyway. I am open to constructive criticism if my take is sucking ass right now.)

Beforus isn’t as militaristic, although I do not believe they lack a military or even that they aren’t doing imperialism in space. I think that it’s prettied-up. That said, I don’t uuuuusually put Beforus Karkat in the military. Imho, being a threshecutioner doesn’t really have much to do with his actual interests. It’s just the way to be kickass and useful and good and the best on Alternia, them being one of the deadliest branches of the military, and all. 

Unfortunately, though, my reasoning for his career does boil down to “he’s good at it, and looking for something he’s good at,” not that he loves it more than anything.

I like getting him into Feferi’s inner circle, so he’s probably good enough at it that she starts him on some research she particularly needs. Probably some of it is gross bullshit that he recognizes as gross bullshit because that’ll come up when you’re doing genetics based research for a strictly genetic-caste-based empire and probably she sometimes listened and sometimes thought he was real adorable when he got like that and sometimes he didn’t speak up at all.

My Karkat picture is SUPER VAGUE I’m like HE DOES…. SOME SCIENCE even though he would be happier writing screenplays. Probably he does wind up writing at least one successful screenplay before he dies.

Much happier screenplay writer Beforus!Karkat is a nice fantasy to lie in for a second actually lemme do that for a sec. Ah. My boy.

So after THAT load of bullshit. (It is a load of bullshit, don’t quote me on any of that as like, canon to Runaway, Or 50 Ways to Leave Your Culler (one chapter. this still has ONE CHAPTER and tons of the next two drafted what am I doing) or anything, it’s not):

FEFERI PEIXES I have very few headcanons for except I call her Her Benevolent Radiance: “radiance” being a part of her title I’d seen a ton of people tossing around before I stole it, and “benevolent” being something I thought of myself, but one time someone on mxrp thought I was their friend who uses the exact same title so I guess lightning struck twice. Which makes sense.

I’m still puzzling out what I headcanon Beforus as like before her.

SOLLUX CAPTOR you’ll just have to wait until I finally publish chapter three (sorry Sollux) of my years-old fic and see. He and Feferi stand… under TREES together. (I’m deciding whether this is good or not, but it definitely… isn’t… always. There are definitely some times where it’s like Feferi’s kinda… keeeping him under her wing? Is that a thing people say? I just don’t wanna only be mean to Feferi fans.) Sollux and Karkat don’t really stand under trees. I haven’t seen them stand under a tree together in…. EIGHTEEN MINU

(Okay no real talk since I decided to talk about Sollux’s relationships I should add that I love Aradia so fucking much and I don’t know if you all know how much I care about Arasol? But I do, but I just. Literally haven’t hammered down Beforus Aradia yet so I have no idea what she’s up to I’m forced to give no comment.)