#good thing they're not in the same universe or they would wreak havoc on everyone's ears (and sensibilities)

[yume-x-hanabi]

        B²TSM Mozart 🤝 Wingul composing dubious jingles about sweets

[eyedelater]

post about golden kamuy reincarnation AUs

reincarnation AUs seem to be omnipresent in golden kamuy fanart on pixiv. normally i dislike AUs because a character who didn't live that character's in-universe life is not the same person and therefore they're not the same character i care about. but reincarnation AUs offer an interesting loophole in that the character kind of can be almost the same person because they have memories from their past life. so the concept kind of won me over? to a degree. because of the loophole. let's talk about it.

i think reincarnation AUs have proliferated within the golden kamuy fandom primarily because a) the story takes place in our real world, so rather than your typical Alternate Universe, a reincarnation AU would be The Same Universe, and it doesn't feel like as much of a stretch; b) we who live in the present day want to project our own specific struggles and daily lives onto these characters we love, so we bring them into our era; and, most importantly, c) a reincarnation AU serves as emotional insurance: if your fave ends up dying in canon, you don't have to be sad, because you know they can be happy in this future life that you write yourself.

point c no longer applies for people whose faves didn't die in canon, but while the manga was still being released, i'm certain that the very real possibility of characters dying in canon was a huge factor in the proliferation of reincarnation AUs. after all, with this, dead characters can be rescued and live again. and they can live happily this time! they can be the same people with the same memories (in addition to new memories from their new life) but without the same burden of pain and guilt and crimes on their shoulders! it's like a wonderful second chance you can offer to suffering and beleaguered characters, and it feels real and appropriate because they lived in the same world as us in the first place. and of course you can also apply it to your favorite horrible little shit characters and have them wreak amusing havoc in the present day.

it's fun to think about pleasant everyday things like what kind of jobs everyone would have and how they would know each other. there's also the interesting thought experiment of how a character would live and grow and think as someone who has distinct and real memories of having lived before. there are a lot of fun ways to work out the details: at what point in their life did they remember? how much do they remember and how do they feel about it? did they think the memories were dreams until they met someone else reincarnated? do they feel like a separate person from their past self? was there some kind of supernatural blessing or curse or fate that led to their second chance? how do they feel about people who stabbed or shot them in a past life? how do they feel about people they killed in a past life? etc. and if you want, you can change certain minor factors to make things more interesting or more fun or easier for the characters (like, for instance, reducing age gaps...)

despite being an AU hater, i must reluctantly give reincarnation AUs my blessing because the potential for good fun is too high. but that only applies for stories that ostensibly take place in the past of our own real world, like golden kamuy. and you have to actually love the characters and think about what their jobs and lives would be like instead of just putting them all in a coffee shop. that would just be a coffee shop AU and it's not the same.

[shiny-time]

As a "formal" start here, I'll post about my Hera OC Reese! He's got quite a long backstory, so bear with me!

Name: Reese Puffalato (Pun of the Cereal Brand “Reese’s Puffs”, Cereal Names were the thing on the planet he was raised on.)

Age: 87 (Born sometime in Age 767)

Universe: 7 (Alternate Timeline)

Race: Hera/Cokhan Hybrid

Voice Actor: TFS Jeice Couldn’t find voice actor’s name (English) Tomokazu Sugita (Young Joseph voice/Japanese)

Orientation: Unknown

Alignment: Lawful Good

Story: After Cell’s Kamikaze Explosion wiped out Goku, King Kai, and the entire planet they were on, the energy keeping Bojack and his crew sealed away dissipated. They were finally able to wreak havoc and continue their conquest after all these years! To celebrate the occasion, the Bojack Crew started a conquest to take over all of North Galaxy. They took over planet after planet, including a planet named Flingor. When Bojack was on this planet, he would encounter the Whollies, Uwocs, and Cokhans. Bojack would actively seek out Whollies and their colonies just so he could force them out of their underground colonies and punt them around like footballs. He wanted to do the same with the Uwocs, but no matter how many times he and his crew tried to gang up on them, they would always outspeed and outmaneuver them over and over. But to them, the most important race was the Cokhans. Somehow they had developed technology on this arguably primitive planet and were fierce fighters all on their own. They made it especially clear that they did not want the Bojack Crew on their planet, and they sent armies after armies of Cokhans to battle them. The Bojack Crew easily won thanks to Bujin’s magic and the sheer difference in power alone. With the Cokhans humiliated and most of their resources spent, they called it a victory and left the planet in disarray.

That would be the last notable thing heard about the Cokhans, except for one thing. While Bojack was on Flingor, he maybe-probably-definitely had an… incident with a Cokhan woman named Cheria (Play on words for “Cheerios”). Months after Bojack’s Crew had left Flingor, she gave birth to a child (Who she named Reese) and took up the task of raising him as a single mother. She kept the origins of his father a secret since he had cause their planet so much harm and turmoil. Thanks to his Hera genes, Reese looked more like a Hera than a Cokhan, and his peers would mock him just for this. Despite the constant torment, he never snapped back. One day, he questioned Cheria why he looked so different from everybody else and why he was bullied because of it. He was 11 at the time, and had somehow already gotten a simple grasp on the concept of death, so she decided it was time he finally knew about his beginnings. She told him about the Space Pirate Bojack and how he was not only his father, but the same person who had fought and killed millions of Cokhan soldiers and threw the entire planet into its own “depression” that the Cokhans were still trying to recover from. Cheria most likely regrets starting off with telling Reese his father was a space pirate.

Reese had never heard of a “Space Pirate” before, and the words clouded his mind as Cheria explained everything about the Bojack Crew, Heras, and why this made him a target. Reese pretended to listen and absorb everything, but all he could think about was becoming a Space Pirate and going on all sorts of adventures away from his boring home and the people that despised him. For the next 7 years, Reese would study and learn almost everything there is to know about space travel and his surrounding galaxy in secret. If he was discovered by anyone, it could potentially ruin his plans to escape. He also devised an efficient plan to sneak into the Cokhan’s military base where they kept their ships and steal their best ship, the Mars Armor. He figured out that the Cokhans hadn’t done space travel ever since Bojack’s Crew attacked their planet, since they were too focused on rebuilding Flingor. When he was 18, he gathered all his money and important belongings (22780 Zeni, many Guides to piloting a ship and navigating the galaxy, and the other essentials), barely managed to execute his plan, and escaped Flingor on the Mars Armor.

Even though Reese had escaped his home planet, he wasn’t in the clear just yet. To avoid being detected by the Galactic Patrol, he had to strictly follow Space Traffic Laws (You read that right) as any Spaceship Pilot would. However, one Galactic Patrol Elite was catching onto what was really going on. The officer, named Jaco, began following the Royal Ship afar from the safety of his own Patrol Pod. He noticed that not only was the Ship a decommissioned Cokhan Royal Ship, but that it was reportedly being Piloted by a Hera Space Pirate. He decided that he would finally confront the ship after it made it’s next unordinary supply run. That day came when Reese landed the ship on a jungle planet to gather food. Imagine his surprise when he returned to his ship only to find Jaco of all people waiting for him! Jaco was less than amused to see him, and arrested him pretty easily. When he was brought to the Galactic Patrol for further questioning, Reese explained to them that he wanted no trouble and that he didn’t know why being a Space Pirate was a bad thing. After lots of discussion and recounts from planets that reported him, the Galactic Patrol determined that Reese was honest and was actually helping the planets he visited instead of harming them. He just didn’t know that it wasn’t a good idea to go around telling everyone that he was a Space Pirate (Thanks to the bad name Bojack gave them).

After the misunderstanding, the Galactic Patrol offered him a type of part-time job and combat training. Reese happily accepted this, and over the course of 10 years, he gained quite the notoriety for being a hero. He also became fast friends with his very idol, Jaco, who would soon become known as “The Dynamic Buddy-Cop Duo”. The Galactic Patrol were also kind enough to make modifications to his ship that would allow him to fly and fight with it to its fullest potential. Life seemed perfect for the Hera until he received an urgent distress signal from a group of scientists… A group of Frieza Force scientists, no less. A woman they were running experiments on broke out of her confinement and was hellbent on destroying not just them and their facility, but their entire race. Her name was Callisto, and she didn’t take very kindly to Reese getting in her way. He fought the fight of his life against her, and by doing so, bought the Scientists enough time to escape the planet. After one final push against the woman with a new power achieved through the sheer will and desperation to survive… He succumbed to her harsh onslaught of attacks and died. The Galactic Patrol had lost an irreplaceable member that day, and Jaco was devastated. He swore to find a way to bring Reese back, so he began his secret mission to gather the Dragon Balls.

After his death, Reese found himself in on Snake Way. Following others across the Galaxy that had died and ended up on Snake Way as well, he would learn about, and eventually meet King Yemma and King Kai. Yemma judged Reese’s heart as good, but upon Reese’s request to train with King Kai, he directed the Hera to Otherworld to train under him as opposed to just going to heaven (Since in this Timeline, King Kai and Goku were still dead.) He was able to train intensely under the watchful eye of King Kai for years, and after 10 years of grueling training and learning his body’s limits, not only did Reese learn how to fly, but he was able to achieve Kaioken x50. Reese would’ve also learned more about the “Full Power” ability Heras have, but Jaco had finally gathered Namek’s Dragon Balls by then to wish Reese back to life.

While he was gone, the Galactic Patrol had taken Reese’s Ship and upgraded it with one of their first new Combat Programs. This program would allow Galactic Patrol Ships to morph in to large humanoid Mecha Suits that would follow their pilot’s moves. This way, Galactic Patrol Members were more equipped to deal with larger threats. Reese would continue to work alongside the Galactic Patrol and help everyone across the Galaxy in his new and improved ship. One day, he was taking it out for a Galaxy-Wide spin when he happened to intercept a Time Patroller in a heated battle with a fellow Time Patroller under the influence of Demonic and Villainous Energy. After subduing the out of control Patroller, the 2nd Patroller deemed Reese trustworthy to be introduced to Conton City and the Time Patrol. While Reese already had his hands full with working alongside the Galactic Patrol, he promised that he’d visit and help the Time Patrollers every now and then. During some of those visits, he was able to train with some of the Hera Time Patrollers and was finally able to get a grasp on the Full Power Hera Form. Despite his rough beginnings, Reese continues to be an inspiration to aspiring Galactic Patrollers and Space Pirates to this day.

I'm gonna post about the Cokhans sometime later. They're a fanmade race of mine!