#in canon at least there's not enough info to extrapolate on to do anything with like there is with other people

[navree]

I like your take on Daenaera but I still don't have much thoughts on the aegon and jaehaera thing. To me if she lived I just think Aegon will keep a marriage only in name with her. He respect her as Queen but won't have much emotional connection with her. Cuz based on canon: it's very doubtful that she can actually have the concept of consent when she was cognitively 4 when she was 8. Neither did she show much ability to bond with people after the dance (aegon did tho). That's even a hard thing for me to ship compared to Aegon and Daenaera's 7 year old gap

Yeah, that's also been what trips me up on Jaehaera sometimes, which is that the way she's coded is meant to hint to a pretty severe developmental delay that does signify a bigger developmental disability. I'm pretty sure that was just there on Martin's part to make sure people didn't get attached to Jaehaera or her relationships with people like Aegon before killing her off (since I think he was doing a bit of backfilling, since Daenaera and Aegon III as the couple who produced children and reigned together was set in stone before he got into the minutia of the Dance and created the twins and then had to figure out a way to end the Dance concretely), especially considering how sloppily it's handled compared to disabilities like Tyrion's dwarfism and Bran's paralysis in the main series, though that may be because those are physical disabilities rather than mental. And Jaehaera being half her age mentally is something to note, four is incredibly differently, cognitively and developmentally, from eight, especially when Aegon was already older than her by three years, and would have impeded their connection in the short amount of time they had.

But I do also want to note that, because F&B is vague by design and Jaehaera died young and pretty early in Aegon's reign, we don't actually know if her issues were going to be permanent and severe. Jaehaera went through a lot in the Dance, beyond all the deaths of her family members and living through two armed invasions of KL, which is always gonna be scary for a kid, we really can't overstate how traumatic Blood and Cheese would have been for her. She's, like, six, and men break into her home to commit various acts of violence against her grandmother, her mother, her siblings, and her. It's not just that Jaehaera saw her own twin, someone she's never lived her life without, be beheaded by intruders, which would be incredibly traumatic in and of itself, or saw her mother and grandmother both in a state of emotional collapse that would be very distressing for a child, Blood and Cheese also threaten her specifically. At six years old, grown men tell Jaehaera that they are going to rape her unless her mom picks which of her brother's is going to die. In a time and place where she has no space or tools to process all the incredible traumas of that night, or having to later deal with Helaena's breakdown and not even being able to have the comfort of her mother, and likely very little comfort from her father who is first actively participating in a wara nd then later has a long convalescence following Rook's Rest, of course Jaehaera was going to regress. Aenys went back to acting like an infant after the trauma of just learning about his mother's death at age three, it's entirely reasonable Jaehaera went through something similar. The brain is a funny thing, and how trauma affects it is also a funny thing.

I do thing that Jaehaera was neurodivergent, while the severity of her mental condition seems to have only been noted during/after the Dance, even as a kid she's noted as not having expressed emotions the way you typically see from children, and I think that's generally seen as an early indicator of autism by the medical community today. So I'd feel comfortable headcanoning Jaehaera as autistic, likely more severe on the spectrum than Helaena is coded as being in the show, and I know that a lot of people do headcanon her that same way. So in my view, I'd attribute Jaehaera's mental state as a trauma response to the horrors she had to go through at such an early age, and if she had lived longer than the age of ten, it's entirely possible she would have improved and healed.

And with respect to the Aegon/Jaehaera/Daenaera throuple AU that's at the heart of this for me, I'd follow it on those lines, and that's part of what I talked about when discussing how Jaehaera and Daenaera would forge a connection first. Jaehaera's mental issues come not just from her neurodivergency but from her trauma and her inability to deal with that, so having her socialize with someone who, while she too has known grief and strife, has not been through anywhere near the same crucible as Jaehaera, is helpful developmentally. Bonding with Daenaera, and especially Daenaera because of her known traits of being sweet and bright and easy to get along with, would go a long way to helping Jaehaera in a world where mental health counseling and therapy and psychiatry aren't a thing. And that in turn can help lead her to bond with Aegon, who clearly wanted to connect with people but also had a boat load of issues, and as they grow older it turns into something more romantic, along with the romantic feelings springing up with Aegon and Daenaera and Jaehaera and Daenaera too. I'd have Jaehaera certainly be autistic, as mentioned, likely blunt and unaware of social cues and perhaps with a tendency to put her foot in her mouth or fail to follow social norms as a result, since she's described as "sweet and simple" in the text. That's kinda one of the things at the heart of this AU, that the Dance left a lot of young children lonely and lacking in connection that they desperately need, and how those children might grow and develop and blossom if they find that connection, in spite of the sins and rivalries of their parents (the Greens v Blacks, obviously, but also the mistreatment of the Velaryons on both sides and those loyalty switches).

But I'm also glad you like my Daenaera take anon! She's pookie to me, sometimes characters just speak to you without you even knowing why, and she's definitely like that for me, and I'm glad people enjoy the vibes I'm trying to bring.

[tolkien-feels]

HELLO I WOULD LIKE YOUR AMARIE AND ELENWE THOUGHTS :D i am always feelin starved for amarie content (understandably, given how little she appears in canon) and i love reading people's thoughts on non-noldor bc there's much less canon info abt them!

This got a little long so I'm putting it under a cut

These are very much headcanons because as I'm sure you know, we know what? 4 facts about them, combined? Half of which are just who they were in love with? Thoroughly unhelpful, thanks Professor!

Since we have so little, I can actually walk you through my reasoning for coming up with the personalities I headcanon for them.

The meaning of Elenwe's name is pretty generic - Star-person. The -we suffix is usually but not always masculine, and I don't want to put too much stock on that... except that I have to cling to whatever clues I have, and Elenwe is one of the very few women who we know left Aman - so I'm extrapolating to say that like Nerwen, Elenwe received her name because she has unusual strength of body and/or will (which is sexist af but I'm following canon patterns here.) Given what a baddass her daughter is, I would not be surprised. And what if Idril's rescue in the Helcaraxe was not just Turgon's doing, but also brave and headstrong Elenwe forcing Turgon to save their daughter first and then come back for her? I can definitely see that.

The meaning of Amarie is possibly "Most good" and that checks out - she was not permitted to leave Aman? Really? It's literally a rebellion! She could easily have rebelled against this lack of permission as well! If anything, it might've helped persuade her Valinor is a prison! So this gives me the vibe that Amarie is A Good Girl™️ - perhaps one of the Vanyar who loves nothing more than to learn song and poetry to delight Manwe and his court. Perhaps like Nerdanel might have helped Feanor with his crafts in their youth - it was her father who was Aule's student, not Feanor's - Amarie taught Finrod a thing or two about Songs of Power, or they at least bonded over a shared love.

One possibility I like to toy with is that Turgon, Finrod, Elenwe and Amarie were a friend group. In my headcanons, Turgon and Finrod were childhood friends, as were Elenwe and Amarie, so when Turgon and Elenwe began to fall in love, what could be more natural than for the four of them to spend time together? In my mind, Turgon and Elenwe are older, bolder and have known each other for longer, so by the time they get married, Finrod and Amarie are still just making eyes at each other.

Though I think Elenwe and Amarie should be close in age, like I said, Elenwe might be slightly older, and she's definitely bolder, so she's almost a big sister figure? I can easily picture her teasing Amarie for her slooooow courtship of Finrod, or offering to fight the decision to make Amarie stay behind. Conversely, Amarie is probably Elenwe's confidante and supporter, the Jane Bennet to Elenwe's Elizabeth, or the Beth March to her Jo, or the Eliza Schuyler to her Angelica. You get the idea.

When the Darkening happens, I really like the idea of Elenwe and Amarie discussing things and parting on good terms - a rare thing in the families and friendships torn apart by the Flight of the Noldor. Amarie saying that no, Elenwe doesn't need to fight for her, she's made her decision and she's siding with the Valar. Elenwe offering to stay with Amarie as Anaire will stay with Earwen, and Amarie declining. I most definitely think Amarie promises to be like a daughter to Elenwe's grieving parents (you think Vanyar parents are happy about their daughter rebelling against Manwe's authority? I doubt that), and Elenwe in turn promises to look after Finrod in any way she's able. (Which. Um. Well, she does that for the rest of her life, I guess.)

There aren't enough women in Tolkien to allow for many friendships, which is a problem, so I feel like often whenever two women exist at the same time, I want them to be friends, even if I think that's unlikely - I don't know, for example, that Eowyn and Arwen wouldn't bore each other to death, even if I so, so badly want them to be friends in post-canon. But Elenwe and Amarie as I envision them in my head are two women whose friendship I really seriously buy. I mean, admittedly, that's pretty easy since I'm behind the headcanons, but I swear I actually came up with their personalities and then much later went "Oh. Oh they should be friends!" Even though I'm making them up, pretty much, this is a friendship I've grown to really love.

Speaking of which - these headcanons are free real estate. I don't really read fic, but I would for these two, so if you write anything please send it to me. I will reblog every art that finds its way into my hands. Please write headcanon and meta. Like, go wild, I want this to be A Thing.

[trekkie-in-space]

Straight Fact about Marsella/Marseille from La Casa de Papel and some following Headcanon/Theories ✨✨

- Fact -

- Very discreet, he observes a lot and talk a little, called at a least at two reprises a mute (by Bogotà and Denver)

- Close to animals, especially dogs, love them, respect them, trust them more than human. He is against animal suffering.

- Ex-Soldier, has been called an assassin (by Bogotà) and Hitman (by Denver), killed human, killing a human is not a problem (straight up threatened Denver to cut him in half)

- Lost all his friends during war

- Had a dog during war, the dog was very loyal to him, stayed when human left (That dog was probably not Pamuk)

- Had a dog, Pamuk, very loyal/close to him too, got killed by children playing war

- Know many languages : Spanish, French, Italian, German, English, Croatian, Serbian

- React very quickly to Denver grabbing his arm/to physical provocation was trained to react that way + probably has a sharp instinct, not shy to threaten physically and orally someone

- Answer quickly to the professor order, see him as the chief/boss and obey him. One word from him is enough, do not discuss order.

- Extremely lucky - dude crash a car and get out pretty much without a scratch - I BEG YOUR PARDON ? - the car rolled and all, what if it had deformed to the point he couldn't get out ? What if he had broken a bone in the shock and couldn't dash out ? Because you can protect yourself all you want, getting in a crash, even one you plan, is very dangerous. Dude was like 'I have things to do and nothing will prevent me from doing them' and just walked out like nothing happened. Wtf man ?

- Has a lot of respect for the professor and to his plan. Will defend the plan when the professor wants to take risk but still follow change in plans if the risk is less than the gain (When they fight after Lisbon 'death' and then go into the crowd disguised.).

- Try to provide emotional support to the professor, he is clumsy about it but do his best and tries a lot of things

- Caring toward the professor, with (and I'm sorry but I don't know how to say it differently, but..) A certain tenderness. Like anybody in the group (or most) they are not just colleagues. But there is just a softness with him.

- React to Palermo 'Boum Boum Ciao' the same way the professor does. Seem annoyed, middly ashamed but also taken by the energy around (to crack a smile like the professor).

- Can be very intimidating if choose to, but in relaxed situation seem very kind/soft and not unbearing or obnoxious/showing.

- Extrapolations on Canon, Theories and Headcanons -

- The last hit he gave the professor when they were fighting is not because he misread the situation but because the professor just said Lisbon could betray them (which is technically true) and his hit was his way to say, 'have some faith/respect in your wife'

- During that fight he intentionally took hit from the professor to allow him to unload stress/give him a win. Why ? Because he is a trained ex-soldier who clearly shows good physical abilities, he knows how to fight and could probably take on Sergio even if he know how to fight too. Prior to this we see two scenes. One in a relaxed sitting (the soccer match) where Helsinki give him a slap and he doesn't react badly, he takes the hit and laugh, they were in front of each other he could have potentially avoid the hit, but did not hold grudges for that hit, basically taking a hit or two is not much for him and won’t be enough for him to get angry/escalate a situation. BUT during the pig scene to remove a micro, he reacts badly to physical provocation by Denver after he had to defend his position not to touch the animal with the rest of the team. Even if just a few said something, the whole team was baffled by his decision/principle, it was a moment where he was 'alone against all' and he defended himself in a quick and efficient manner.

They are in a middle of a heist, they are allies and he clearly does not want to fight, he fights because Sergio wants to fight and he probably doesn't give his all but just enough not to get bullied and give Sergio a mean to keep unleashing on him. (Man I swear you're doing too much)

- Definitely have some trauma and problem concerning human and trust. In two separate points, he has lost a lot or enough, and he had been deeply hurt by that (his friends all dead, his animals), probably have some unhealed emotional scars or one that heal badly and one way to cope is to keep a bit of distance + he seems to have a certain discipline/restrain in general.

Second, he mistrust humans, he is careful around them. Probably (definitely) has seen a large panel of the worst humanity has to offer. Probably don't trust easily but love when someone proves him they are worth trusting - which I think is what happened with the professor. Otherwise probably work alone or keep some distance.

- Jumping on that. He completely agreed to the professor as the boss, and his boss. Coming from a military background, he is used to having someone above him giving order and he answer promptly to the professor order or demand without questioning it/arguing (except when it touch to something the professor explicitly stated they should not do like improvisation, then he will argue). Overall he trusts him, might even admire him or have a deep respect for him and his plan/what de does/his personality.

-> I also believe his personality is one of a 'shadow' by that I mean he is his best as close support to someone/something acting behind for the good of the plan (which he does in the series), but I think he thrives in that role. He is a real doer. Dude will do anything that need to be done. like, he is perfect for a second, with someone above him to direct the action.

- Always had a good relationship to animals, now it had become a coping mechanism and a way to have companionship without the burden of 'human' nature. Not that he doesn't miss more close relationship to humans. Nor is it not painful when he loses someone or an animal close to him. it's just he find solace in animals compagny.

- Very soft, kind, caring inside. He let that out for the people he care about/trust. We see him mostly with the professor and above it being his role to care for the professor and all the 'beside' matter and needs. There are a lot of moments where he is very attentive to the professor or caring in ways that go above a professional setting (I'm sorry but when in the latest season when he put the cover back on Sergio as he sleep.. Such tenderness I swear ! or the way he tries to offer him emotional comfort/help)

-> Also the way he care for Sofia..

- Give off asexual vibe, sorry not sorry but it's true. That man is ace.

- Why is he on the heist ? I think outside of money and personal material gain he might be in for revenge against the system. He was a soldier, an executor in the government hands, he may want to fuck the system, give shit to a system that has used him, that took a lot from him. Maybe he was betrayed by that government and the people in it, root for his mistrust of human or just added enough to a preexisting base.

- The way he reacts physically and violently to Denver grabbing him when he turn away is very telling. He has a strong instinct and sharp reflex. But also definitely found himself in a situation where this would have been a life of death situation or overall high danger. This is absolutely pure speculation but outside of his work as a soldier and now hitman this reaction could be rooted deeper in child abuse and trauma, which could also reflect to his discreet and unshowing personality, he keeps to himself.

Anyway this looked like reflexes from training and from past traumatic experience. -> In a way his reaction seemed a bit too much (definitely) for the situation they were in, but also somewhat 'slow' (I'm interpreting too much the acting but whatever) as if he thought about reacting the way he did, nearly didn't but still did because he was pissed off from earlier and had been triggered. So he just decided to go with the outburst, and set his position straight.

-> Being grabbed from behind/prevented from leaving might also be from a fear/trigger to be trapped (the way he place himself behind in the class, close to the door (which could be nothing lol x) )). Which could also be tied to his time in military where his agency had been stripped from him completely/where he was lacking freedom and had to do things he didn't want to do.

- A big BIG softy, but also those hands have killed and will kill again. (in a way him and Helsinki are a bit alike)

- Keeps most of his emotions inside, tend to stay mostly neutral and what he show is just the tip of the iceberg, but don't be fooled, that man have a lot of emotions.

- Probably need a lot of time to open up, but do info dump at time when he think it might be relevant (ex: during the pig scene, or in the car with Sergio after Lisbon 'death') and you're like 'what ?' very likely need to be asked question if you want to know things about him.

- He likes honesty, but probably won't be himself, tend to be secretive, probably a good liar. He will be honest on a few important things otherwise...

- That man way of love his act of service x)

[bloody-wonder]

what’s your opinion on people calling thea and kevin’s relationship unhealthy

tbh after spending so much time in aftg fandom my knee jerk reaction to words like “unhealthy” and “abusive” is severe distrust. they’ve been overused and misused in the fandom discouse to the point where they became almost entirely devoid of meaning. like, what’s the use of saying “this relationship is unhealthy” if it can mean anything ranging from “these people hurt each other very badly” to “i don’t like it bc i personally would be miserable in such a relationship”?

the thing about kevin/thea is that it can be anything you make it. there’s just too little info about them in the books and i don’t think that those few moments that have to do with thea can be representative of their relationship in any way and they certainly aren’t enough to pass judgement on whether they’re good for each other. 

so why do so many people believe it’s unhealthy? the arguments that have to do with the text are pretty easy to dismantle. “they would only remind each other of the traumatic past they shared” - or they are uniquely positioned to understand each other bc they went through similar things. “it seems like kevin didn’t trust her enough to confide in her” - or he was protecting her from the mess the foxes were going through. "the only scene thea is in she yells at kevin and generally comes off as a violent person” - you would extrapolate a scene where she expresses her very valid rage in a way that’s maybe a little too much but still very understandable in this specific situation to her entire personality only if you’re already biased against her - bc she’s a woman who interferes with your ship, bc she’s a woman who dares express her rage in an over the top way normally reserved for men, bc she’s a woman period. (and a black woman at that)

so yeah, whatever info about kevin and thea is there in the books it doesn’t mean anything bc you can interpret it however you like. all of those arguments are very subjective - they all are basically “i don’t like it bc that’s how i would feel if i were them”. but you are not them. the difference between these (perfectly fine) arguments and statements like “this relationship is unhealthy” is however that the latter sounds objective and final. it sounds like this is a real relationship that you just evaluated very succinctly - but it’s not. it doesn’t exist and you are the one who envisioned it like that and now you claim that your version is the one that’s objectively true as opposed to the versions of other people who envision kevin and thea differently based on the same canon info. plus you could’ve just said “idk man i don’t vibe with it” but you chose to use an adjective that has some very unsavory connotations. like... some people may relate to kevin/thea, you know. your experiences aren’t universal. many people like aftg specifically bc here they find something to relate to that they don’t find in other books bc those stories have been sanitized lest something looks “unhealthy” or controversial.

and last but not least, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. previously i’ve been talking about this take as if it existed in a vacuum, but it doesn’t - it exists in the discourse around who kevin should date and what he “deserves”. so when you say “people who call thea and kevin’s relationship unhealthy” i don’t think about some random people who just happen to have this opinion - i think about fans who ship kevin with any and every male aftg character and just need to bring thea down to win this shipping war. kevin and jean share the same problematic past as kevin and thea. kevin and jeremy interact in canon as many times as kevin and thea do. kevin and jim from improv... well... the length people will go in order not to ship m/f never fails to surprise me. anyway, i feel like this is by no means exclusive to aftg fandom and has been discussed often enough. basically, if someone thinks kevin/thea is more unhealthy than kevin/jean it has nothing to do with canon and everything to do with how the narrative they’ve constructed for these fictional relationships is influenced by their biases.

[nothingunrealistic]

naturally was going "hmm what kind of fins (fish) would young taylor in the bathtub wish for. how would we know what they think would be the best fish tail to have" & then was just thinking of Younger Taylor Hcs just in general. got any you'd wanna share, or like, any faves from what's been provided either as unofficial ideas or via those glimpses of info in the show's text. Fave can be in a "truly enjoy this" way & or simply more of a "truly Thinking About This An Extra Lot" sense lol. They

Boy Do I… first, a listing of everything we Know from canon about their childhood / early life / family:

taylor grew up in “a place like” connerty’s small apartment where “the heat pipes bang practically all night” in the winter [2x11]

taylor’s mom would deem the apartment they rented for her & douglas too expensive, and if she & douglas were shopping for furniture, they’d argue about how much things cost [4x07]

taylor never thought they’d be thinking about living a life where they book private jets [2x09]

the masons’ home is hundreds of miles from any body of water (as shown here) and douglas had to fly to nyc to see taylor [4x03]

douglas figures taylor’s mom won’t miss him getting in her way back home [4x03]

taylor has a sister; when she gets married, in michigan, taylor is part of the wedding party [2x09]

at a young age, taylor was always measuring information around them, and sweet / affectionate, especially toward douglas [4x03]

taylor’s favorite cereal as a kid was frosted flakes [4x09]

taylor was never really douglas’s “little girl” like he claims [4x03]

the first time douglas brought taylor to his lab, it meant a lot to them, and the next day they gave him designs to remake it [4x06]

douglas taught taylor: “don’t just have an idea, build the model that proves it” [4x07]

according to douglas, taylor gets the “unyielding compulsion to get it right” from him, and their relationship was best when they “kept things mathematical” [4x03]

douglas wishes he could have built real wealth / success and given it all to taylor [4x03]

wendy mentions to taylor that douglas has “exploited your need for his approval,” and taylor agrees that douglas only cares about his own advancement rather than being a father first [4x07]

douglas dislikes the military / the government [4x06]

taylor is surprised by douglas quoting a pop song [4x07]

when taylor was younger, the bathtub was the only place they could go to be alone and think, and they’d press their legs against the sides hard enough to make them go numb [3x11]

taylor started playing online poker at age 12 under the screen name ZackCody892 and played up to 16 tables at a time (and for thousands of hours) [2x03]

douglas was fired from his job at an aerospace firm when taylor was in 7th grade. this firing damaged their relationship with him and “affected the home life.” for years, taylor thought douglas had been fired so that the firm could steal his invention, and only found out the truth from his personnel file [2x11, 4x05, 4x06]

taylor has had 927 hours of therapy prior to their session with dr. gus, and that number hasn’t changed at their first session with wendy [2x03, 2x08]

douglas, in bringing taylor food and coffee, claims they rarely take the time to look after themself [4x04]

taylor used to lie to themself and others but is now past that, and knows “how hard it is to have things inside you that you can’t communicate” and “what it’s like to face public scrutiny over who you are” [2x08, 3x02, 4x04]

when taylor reminds douglas about their pronouns, he says “this talk again?”, implying it’s a discussion they’ve had before [4x03]

taylor once got into a bar fight with a high school classmate (it’s unclear whether they were still in high school at the time) after seeing y tu mamá también in a theater [5x07]

taylor was active in occupy wall street in college [2x10]

taylor played poker in college against classmates, grad students, & professors, but their opponents kicked them out for winning too much; additionally, the competitive aspect made them sick (described as “malaise” or “vertigo-like symptoms”) [2x03, 4x12]

taylor planned to go to chicago for grad school and study with eugene fama [2x02]

mafee picked taylor as his intern because they were the only applicant who wasn’t boring / didn’t care about the same bullshit that everyone from wharton or harvard did [5x04]

douglas initiated the visit to taylor, claiming it was because he’d missed them, after not being ready to see them even though taylor’s mother wanted to visit countless times [4x03, 4x07]

taylor is trying to be “everything to their father” in funding his company, and neither of them will be able to come back from taylor being forced to betray him [4x06, 4x07]

wow that’s a long list. and now, my own thoughts and extrapolations:

taylor grew up somewhere in the west / midwest with their parents and sister, who’s a few years older than them, in a house small enough that they had to share a bedroom with her. hence, needing to hide out in the bathtub to get any space & time alone.

from very early on, taylor was douglas’s favorite child and he was their favorite parent — douglas saw taylor’s intelligence & insight (and saw himself in them) and chose to put time & effort into teaching / guiding / molding them, hoping they’d one day follow in his footsteps / support his ambitions, and taylor liked that attention & recognition. (douglas’s attitude toward taylor’s sister is essentially “well she’s here too i guess.”)

douglas taught taylor enough about aerospace engineering & mathematics for them to understand the value of his lattice fin concept, and to generally have a better grasp of engineering concepts than your average (even very well-read) business major / financier. (remember how rebecca knew a robot’s “proprietary” power source was a combustion engine because her father was a mechanic? same deal here. see also: the “smash electronics apart to find the microchips inside and figure out who makes them” strategy; taylor comparing losing grigor’s money to building a turbo engine and having the nitrous tank blow up in their face.) this manifested in both directly teaching them in his lab and in playing games like the silverware-stacking game we see in 4x03, or like douglas throwing out math problems for taylor to solve on the spot, or the two of them solving math problems together.

douglas also imparted his taste in music (which does not include anything new / popular) to taylor, though their taste as an adult (or even as, like, a teenager) isn’t identical to his. this is how they discovered rush in the first place and why they have such strong opinions about The Best Rush Albums. (if douglas had such a ranking, it’d be closer to axe’s than to taylor’s.)

listening to rush helped make taylor a libertarian 😔 that’s just life when you’re a neil peart stan, which of course they are. they admire his lyrics + his drumming talent + his absolute poker face in performances.

douglas also taught taylor to play blackjack, which inspired them to go and learn poker on their own and start playing online. they tried to keep it a secret, but it's hard to be secretive about spending hours a day playing online poker on the family computer. (this is 2006 or so, after all.)

taylor figured out that they were Not A Girl (or at least had thoughts of “hm i don’t enjoy being addressed / perceived as A Girl”) fairly young but didn’t acquire a concrete vocabulary for / specific understanding of that for some time. (if douglas is calling they/them pronouns “that woke stuff” in 2019, he sure wasn’t saying anything clear or favorable about trans people in 2009 or 1999. ditto for online poker sites.)

douglas’s firing exacerbated every negative aspect of the mason family dynamic. he doubled down on pushing taylor toward his field, urging them to succeed where he’d failed, and warning them against letting anyone Steal Their Value. money got tighter, taylor’s parents argued more, and any activities taylor was in (like, say, swimming at the ymca) that required payment got cut; they may have figured out how to make money (illegally!) from online poker at this point. the combined stress of financial instability, being torn between pursuing their own ambitions and fulfilling douglas’s expectations for them, and increasing Gendered Expectations in general — plus the whole “playing online poker for hours a day” thing — probably put taylor in therapy within a few months, if they weren’t in therapy already. (how did their parents pay for it? i don’t know either.)

stealing this from that interview asia & brian & david did in 2017: if taylor had not already taught themself to think and speak directly & incisively and look people in the eye when they talk, et cetera, it started here, whether in therapy or on their own time.

taylor went to college in new york city. douglas did not want them to do this, for a number of reasons, and would have preferred they stick closer to home (and study something other than finance), but doing so would have made them miserable.

by the time they finished high school (circa 2012), taylor had properly heard of trans people and figured that they were somehow One Of Them, but not until college did they hear of people being nonbinary and go “ohhhh yeah that’s me.” (they’d also gotten a Short Haircut in high school, but didn’t go full buzzcut until college. unsurprisingly, they got some shit in high school for being Visibly gnc.)

for some period of time while figuring out their gender situation, taylor went by the name neil as a nod to neil peart. (it’s fun to imagine that they still have a faceless twitter / tumblr account where they go by neil. doubles as a way to prevent anyone connecting it to their real life.)

taylor came out to their family while in college. their mom and sister had fairly similar reactions of “well i don’t Get this exactly, but i love you and want to support you and i’m sure you know what you're talking about better than i do and you did clearly hate it every time i urged you to conform to Standards Of Womanhood so sure i can call you Them and my [child / sibling] :)” given some time to think about it. douglas… well. if he’s starting from a place of “i don’t get this,” he’ll end up at “so it must be wrong and stupid, because i’m always right,” especially if This = his favorite child being different in some significant way from who / what he thought they were. obviously he doesn’t react well or supportively, and the strain in his relationship with taylor tips over into full-blown estrangement. bad times for everyone.

if taylor’s bar fight happened when they were old enough to legally enter a bar, it happened after coming out to their family (also after the live poker fiasco), and before making plans for grad school / internships. most likely it was on a summer break they were spending back in their hometown. (another fun thought: taylor seeing the video of axe punching a guy, just weeks after they punched a guy, and going “well maybe i should work for him.”)

if douglas was at taylor’s sister’s wedding (and maybe he wasn’t!), it was awkward for everyone when he and taylor crossed paths again. barest of pleasantries, passive-aggressive comments, et cetera. naturally, it took a few more years — and douglas realizing that taylor, now being fairly wealthy and successful, could probably fund his dream project if they didn’t hate him — for him to decide to visit them.

[whitefangworldbuilding]

The Strength of Sienna Khan

I find the subject of how to address where Sienna is on the power scaling of Remnant to be both an interesting question and rather pertinent if one ever wants to write a fic about her and so I have provided my own breakdown on the matter below. 

Opening:

Now, I certainly don't mean it in a "How much Ki does she have" or "Does her Semblance make her an S Class threat" or "She can move at Mach 5". No, I more mean it in a general scaling of, who would she measure up well against in a fair fight sense.

& obviously the answer should be "Whatever doesn't break established canon too much" (Unless an AU or what have you)

However, I do feel there is a sort of bare minimum that needs to be cleared based on what we've seen, but even more, what we know.

So, time for some grounds keeping:

Now I could go into how I doubt one rises to a position like Sienna's and survives being functionally at war with something like the SDC and presumably wanted in every nation save Menagerie and likely Vacuo without being badass, but given she has allies that only means so much, Jac certainly didn't survive based on his personal strength after all, so lets move on.

Someone might argue that anything beyond what we saw in Sienna's trailer (Sorry Adam's, but I digress) to not be applicable, however we only saw her fight once and it seems anyone not at mook level didn't really struggle in that fight so it is hard to get a gauge.

We can infer a lot from the fact that despite having her presumably elite guards, and six other soldiers, plus himself and potentially Hazel on side, Adam still chose to kill Sienna by surprise before she realized he didn't intend for her to step down. This can certainly give the impression that Adam did not feel confident he could defeat her either with that back up, or at least not without severe risks, but that still only gives us so much, because we don't know what those risks were.

Still, I think as a starting point as strong, or more likely stronger/better than Adam seems like a fairly reasonable place to start from based on that and the trailer.

But we can go deeper.

One integral thing to think about when considering where Sienna might be on the overall metric and scale is this.

Cinder didn't try to recruit or intimidate her.

Now, some might argue that "Sienna didn't exist before V4" or that "Adam was High Leader before V3" or what have you. I say this.

But I don't think it matters; not just because Sienna is canon, but because as far back as V1 when Blake imagined the shadow figures who replaced the previous leader, there was not just 1. This means that even if Adam was meant to be higher up than he eventually turned out to be he still would not have been alone, eh wither would have had contemporaries or superiors right from V1 and them needing to recruit in V2 and having such a small pool of forces in V/3 really doesn't give any eight to the idea Adam had the full resources of the Fang at his command.

(Though why the boss of a massive organization would be messing about on a train blowing shit up for the lols is beyond me, hence why I don't think he was ever the leader)

This means that regardless of whether Sienna the character, her design or background, ETC, did to didn't exist specifically before V4 doesn't matter because someone always existed in the WF who wasn't submitting to Cinder as Adam was and held a great deal of power.

So what does that mean?

Well what this means is that to reach a final conclusion we need to look at Cinder Fall and her involvement with the White Fang to reach a final conclusion.

So, Cinder is someone with the training of a skilled Huntress (Seemingly), had an assassin and hallucinogenic thief and fighter on her side, and the resources provided to her by Salem, but rather than going for the High Leader of the White Fang and thus potentially netting the entire organization, she went to Adam.

And we know it was intentional because Cinder knew who Adam would be, seemingly that he had an ego given her degree of flattery and she placed great emphasis on choosing him, meaning that give her intelligence on the WF, means she determined him the best.most likely candidate to agree that would be useful. Now this info wasn't perfect because it either failed to communicate Adam's ego effectively or the political situation in the WF, IE, that they would not be willing to work for a human like this, or at least not with her plan.

But by all of this we can determine Cinder had some moderately good Intel on the White Fang, so the question  becomes...

Why not Sienna Khan? (Or whoever pre her creation, but yes Sienna Khan)

This next segment will involve a slight digression down, but please bear with me.

Cinder is someone not against bribery, flattery or threats to get what she wants, we saw all of this in her recruitment of Adam, so her avoiding this route with the WF's High Leader means a few things. Firstly it means she likely knew Sienna would not agree to such a destructive plan because it served no purpose; this objection could be moralistic or pragmatic, but Cinder would likely assume the latter given her general disposition and attitude.

But would she, would anyone object if it meant not dying? Would someone actually fight a doomed battle and die just to avoid being forced to commit a terrible act, or being subjected to slavery via threat? I doubt Cinder would believe that possible at least for someone who operates at Sienna's level in the world.

Here's the digression.

This was based off Cinder's interactions with Raven but it still feels applicable here. When Raven said that she wanted to kill her own brother, Cinder did not for a second seemingly doubt her, not even assuming something sneaky like an alliance of pragmatism to deal with her (Likely because she knows they fear Salem). No, Cinder just accepts that Raven wants her own brother dead, cheerfully in fact.

Now, say what you will about Raven but given she still has a portal to him & hasn't slit his throat while he was asleep, I think we can agree she, while willing to endanger Qrow, doesn't actively 'want' him dead or to murder him.

But Cinder was willing to accept that she did, and I feel its for much the same reason as one tumblr post mentioned. Cinder assumes everyone else is as petty and evil as she is. That might not be 100% accurate, but I think she'd definitely assume that of people like Raven, Sienna & Adam, even if she likely regards it in degrees, IE, Adam was the most likely to go along with her plan hence seeking him out.

End of digression.

This to me means that Cinder would not be acting on the assumption Sienna would object to her plans morally, or assuming that Sienna would sacrifice herself to stop them, because she likely thinks Sienna is incapable of such things.

So why wouldn't she seek her out and try to force Sienna's hand once she had half the Maiden powers? Cinder seems rather confident in the ability of power and fear to command respect and yet she didn't aim any higher than Adam despite the potential benefits.

Well given Adam was able to blits through her former guards relatively easily -though be it with a bit of shock given they didn't expect him to go that off the hook- this means to m that Sienna would be the major deciding factor here, not her guards or mooks, especially given Cinder can control Grimm and so could likely organize a Grimm attack to keep the grunts busy while she and her allies go for Sienna.

Thus, to me, this means that as far as Cinder was concerned , even with half the Maiden powers, her wonder minions and potentially Adam...

She still did not feel confident in taking down Sienna.

Or at least she was not confident in being able to force Sienna to surrender or to kill her quickly and turn her into a martyr without it being very blatantly clear that she did it, that Adam was a traitor, and generally just turning the entire WF against her or causing it to fracture apart defeating the purpose of the battle.

Given Cinder's ego likely means she has a fairly high bar before she feels threatened or like she couldn't pull off a "just as planned"; the only conclusion I can reach is that even after gaining the Maiden powers and potentially/likely/certainly Adam as an asset, Cinder still did not think she could overpower Sienna easily enough to either win, or at the very least accomplish her goals.

Conclusion

So, when we put all this together what do we get?

Well, we know that Sienna was at least a skilled fighter and one of at least comparable strength to Adam in the trailer.

We know that despite having her guards, back up and Hazel, Adam did not feel confident in either winning or at least not in a quick fight and so resorted to a sneak attack.

We can deduce that despite her powers and connections, Cinder did not feel she had adequate resources to either defeat Sienna and force her to heel, or kill her quickly and frame it on Vale to make Adam High Leader.

Thus, I reason, that Sienna Khan would likely have at the very least be stronger and more skilled than Adam, and could have put up a good fight even against partial Fall Maiden Cinder, Emerald & Mercury, enough that trying it would not be deemed worth the risks involved.

Exactly where you want to put Sienna's strength is obviously up to your own discretion, even if you follow this analyse there's still a lot of room for interpretation or extrapolation.

But I hope that this breakdown has proven insightful and well reasoned, thank you for your time.

Notes:

I almost wish I had made a video of this :D

Brainstorming Semblances could also be fun.

My main one for Sienna is that she has a 'crest' that she can store her Aura in, storing up potentially days, weeks, months or even years that when activated means she can drastically multiply her strength, sorta like Adam, Yang or Nora, but its pre-stored and has a massive gauge, This is the one I give her in the War idea (and in general) hence her being able to vaporize that cruiser, though using said Semblance can be hard, slow and painful and take a long time to recoup.

Other idea include Nine Lives, IE self Resurrection.

One idea I had in a fun little snippet I wrote ages back involved Sienna being able to forge a psychic link with animals, awakening their Aura, extra intelligence & having them fight along side her as her familiars. She had tigers :D

Another had her able to make solid, independent duplicates, or at least one that operated as an e extension of her, dividing her power in half, but letting her be in two places at once.

Another was tat she operated a bit like Cortez from X-Men, but in this case she basically cleaved off a chunk of her own Aura and infused it into others to give them extra strength and energy but could also return said power to herself if she wished to, weakening the, especially if they'd become dependent on her enhancements.

There's probably a lot of other ideas and if you folks have any I'd love to hear-em, but those are some thoughts.

[halfgap]

Some extensive, tangly headcanons / extrapolations of canon regarding Beau and her parents under the cut... extremely wordy and still not Complete (I always have more to say about this kid!)

I doubt her family is anything akin to nobility or aristocracy. Sure, they own a winery in Kamordah (a town renowned for its fine wines) but from Beau’s comments about her father’s desperation to impress the Empire higher-ups, I get the sense that Beau’s parents are sorta the Wildemount equivalent of ‘New Money’. They accrued their wealth through being very industrious and growing their business into something presumably quite successful, but despite being financially secure her father more than anything still wants very badly to gain the respect of More Important People.

Beau says her father “made a lot of sacrifices” in an effort to impress those people, and tbh that could mean anything from “devoted his time to brown-nosing and working instead of to his family” to “literally selling out close friends/family to the Reapers to gain Empire goodwill.” He also probably let the Crownsguard deal with some of Beau’s law-breaking in the past instead of bailing her out, considering Beau’s strong personal reaction to Toya being left with the Crownsguard.

I’m thinking her father is a very intelligent guy who values book smarts a lot. Marisha’s implied on Talks that he made Beau study a lot of crap (even before the Cobalt Soul) which he insisted would be valuable, and Beau is kind of pissed whenever that education actually does come in handy during her adventures today. I think her knee-jerk rebellion against All Things To Do With Her Father is why Beau insists that she hates studying, hates books and history, is TOTALLY a jock and NOT A NERD AT ALL, even though it’s become apparent that her natural curiosity does extend to a lot of nerdy things and she retained a lot of useful stuff from her studies. She loves learning, period, but it’s that thing where you don’t want to enjoy something that your asshole parents forced on you since a young age.

From a meta perspective, abusive parents are too often depicted as ignorant & uneducated with nothing of value to offer to their kids. In reality, perfectly intelligent + highly educated people can still VERY MUCH be abusive. They can have good taste in books or music, they can instill some savvy business acumen in their kids, etc.. Beau likely owes a lot of her education & cunning to her dad. Part of him probably did have her best interests at heart. That doesn’t mean he’s any less of an abusive shithead.

As far as I remember, Beau’s never actually said she hated her parents. There’s clearly a lot of resentment & anger there, but she also makes a lot of excuses for her parents: she says her father’s “not a bad person,” says he could have even been a good father if he made different choices, repeatedly calls him “protective” (as opposed to “horribly controlling and overbearing,” which I think is more accurate tbh), and admits several times that she herself was “a rebellious dick” and how that contributed to her parents’ rejection of her. Beau doesn’t hate her parents and hasn’t claimed to hate them; I’d wager instead that she cares about them despite everything and *still* craves their acceptance and approval (something Marisha supports on Talks). The bulk of Beau’s feelings toward her parents are HURT, not HATRED.

That just makes her whole situation a lot sadder, imo. In ep.1 she comes off as a rebellious drifter who ran away from her rich asshole parents, but in fact she’s a rebellious drifter w/ nowhere to go because she was utterly rejected by her parents *twice*. She disagrees with everything they stand for & won’t change herself any more for them, but she no doubt still cares about them (god, it’s her very nature to care deeply about Everything she touches); she’s just utterly convinced that they don’t give a single damn about her.

Somewhat related- as a child, at least, Beau did try to be what her parents wanted. This is made apparent by Marisha’s playlist commentary and some of her TM answers. Moreover, Beau has the ‘Prodigy’ feat, which I bet only stoked her parents’ expectations of her, expectations that kid!Beau would naturally strive to meet. But as Marisha rightly points out, when someone’s held to an impossible standard like that of the “The Perfect Daughter,” eventual rebellion is inevitable. From personal experience, I can say after trying so hard for so long, failure is addictive. Once Beau gave up trying to be the perfect, obedient kid who was still never enough, she probably found comfort in and clung deeply to her new role as the Problem Child, the Disappointment, the Slacker.

This always confused me but... Beau was only w/ the Cobalt Soul in Zadash for a few months. It’s possible she was at some other training monastery prior to that, but from Marisha’s early-campaign TM comments about “suddenly & recently becoming a monk” and a lot of other confusing shit Beau’s said, it sounds like Beau was only with the Cobalt Soul during that short time she was in Zadash...? And I can’t imagine it’s been THAT long between her running away, and her meeting Fjord and Jester in Game 0. Zeenoth still seems familiar enough with her when finding her in Ep.4 that I think Beau probably only ran away a few months to a year ago, at most? (Enough time for Beau to have wandered through a lot of places in the Empire at least, since she says in Ep. 8 or so that she’s traveled a lot within the country.) Beau is currently 22 or 23, so working backwards, that means Beau was abducted by the Cobalt Soul when she was probably 20 or 21. A young adult. Not a rebellious teen getting sent to boarding school.

I guess it might make sense that an unmarried young daughter is still in the authority of her parents at that age (although gender politics in Exandria have always been ‘???’ and sorta inconsistently represented so...) But it’s more significant that Beau stayed, living under her parents’ roof, doing the bookkeeping for the winery... I don’t know if she was staying purely to continue profiting off her bootlegging operation w/ her family’s wine, or if because even after all that Teen Rebellion she never fully escaped her parents’ influence over her and her own buried desire to earn their respect/affection. I’d say it’s leaning towards the latter, with her using the former as an excuse to herself (or maybe the thought of leaving just. Never even really occurred to her. Which I wouldn’t be shocked by tbh.) Either way I think it’s interesting that she herself never left that small town she hated & that family she resented, until her dad blatantly kicked her out via monk abduction.

I don’t know where I’m going with this other than saying that Beau is a twisty, painful mess of contradiction who nevertheless makes deep sense to me (& hopefully others) in a way impossible to articulate...?

uh I meant to talk more about her mom but prior to more recent episodes the only thing we knew of her is when Beau said “My mother always said nothing in life is free.” Now we also know she gave birth to a son Very Late & once wouldn’t let Beau have a pet rat, but Beau’s overall difficulty with/reluctance to talk about her mother can mean a lot of different things. Two possible interpretations are : a) in some twisted way Beau was a lot closer to her dad, as in... he was a bigger influence on her, more involved in her life and thus in more conflict with her, and her mom has always been more a footnote.. or b) maybe Beau actually had a more.. tender relationship with her mom than she did with her dad (not saying much tbh) which only made her ultimate rejection sting 100x worse to the point that Beau hates even thinking or talking about it.

You could go a lot wilder with the theories here (maybe her mom was the ‘bad direction’ that misguided her dad..? etc) but I think the above two are most reasonable and what I usually go with right now for the sake of simplicity

As for Beau’s personal hang-up with tarot cards, and the (possibly unrelated, but probably related) Mysterious Beliefs of her dad that made him so “protective” and intent on isolating her... that shit is too open-ended and I can’t land on a solid theory yet asjdjsljfjf

Also very conflicted about the whole MY PARENTS WANTED A SON thread but I won’t get into that here

I’m Very Behind on CR and have only caught clips and tidbits of episodes 43 onwards so please talk to me about Beau and let me know if there’s any other interesting hints she’s dropped in recent episodes or if any new info has contradicted these long-held, rambly inferences I just listed

[afishtrap]

(this is a post from a different blog, from several years ago, but since I’m slowly closing down that blog and the post is relevant to some things currently on my mind, reposting here for posterity)

Recently I followed a link over to the ferretbrain, a review-site from a group of Brits, with a focus mostly on SFF (fiction and games) but with occassional forays into romance, history, and other fiction genres. After reading (and being generally pretty impressed by) the original review linked to, I started following links within the site, and ended up on a DNF review for Cassandra Clare's first book.

Now, the disclaimer here is that I've not read it, and had no interest in reading it, and that for the most part, whether or not Clare's fiction is any good -- as an objective value -- is pretty much irrelevant to what I'm about to say here. She's getting mentioned only because that review discussed her work, and more specifically highlights a pattern found in a broader scope of works. The reviewer seems to me to be pretty fair about the fact that the work is ostensibly a rewrite of a Harry Potter AU, observing that:

...there are three possible attitudes, or at the very least a spectrum with some definable stopping points on it: 1) Fanfic is art, man, art and there is ultimately no difference between If You Are Prepared and Bleak House. They're both pretty damn long for starters. 2) Fanfic is like original fiction but not as good, and is basically written by people who can't get their own stuff published 3) Fanfic is entirely different from original fiction Since the first one is clearly non-viable, and the second is actively rude, I subscribe to the third. Writing for fans and writing for publication is vastly different, and to assume that the one aspires to the other is rather to miss the point (and, arguably, the pleasures) of fanfic. Even so, I would have thought the gulf between fanfic and original fiction to be eminently jumpable. I mean, the ability to string a decent sentence together is a transferable skill, right. Right?

From there the reviewer considers the specific story, the characters, per the usual review.

What crystalized things for me was the reviewer's explanation about where she stopped reading. Thus far, the basic plot has been protagonist meets demon-hunter, hijinks ensue, and shortly after that (maybe 60 pages into the story overall), the protagonist happens upon this young demon-hunter while he's alone in a music room, playing the piano. 

Up to this point, the demon hunter has been

...rude and snippy, so it's clear that this little scene is meant to show us a different side of him but character revelation scenes only function when you know the character well enough to experience it as a revelation. This is just ... information, excessively presented. It's like being hit over the head with a neon sign saying: "you should fancy this character now." And for the record, he's a demon hunter, not a concert pianist so there really is no reason to have that scene there except as drool-footage. [...] What the scene did for me ... was exemplify the subtle sense of wrongness I'd been getting throughout the previous 62 pages. Essentially [the book] reads like fanfic - and I don't mean that as kneejerk indicator of poor quality, I mean that it reads like something constructed for a different purpose, functioning on a different ruleset... The scene of Jace/grand piano has utterly no resonance for the reader because, well, partly because it's rubbish and partly because no time has been given to properly establishing the character so it's essentially meaningless, but mainly because it has no real sense of its place in a connected, developing narrative.

The reviewer goes on to suggest that fanfiction works on a basis of potential plausibility, that is, giving the reader a situation or behavior not seen in canon that, when argued/presented by a skillful fanfic writer, become plausible (believable) extrapolations of the original character. But this also means paying more attention to the character's actions, mindsets, mannerisms, whatever, both to reinforce the character's shared story-origins -- eg speaking patterns, or facial expressions -- and then to overlay the subtle changes introduced by the fanfic's author.

I'm a visual thinker and more precisely an architectural-engineering thinker, so the best analogy I could come up with for understanding this is to use the idea of renovation a house. (No surprise, eh.) Let's say you want your guest bath and laundry room a bit more efficiently laid-out. This image is a before-and-after, but if all you saw was the second (right-hand) image, it wouldn't be unreasonable to be completely baffled.

There are few landmarks remaining to tell you how you got from where-you-are to where-you'll-be. That's what the gray outlines are doing in the left-hand image; they're acting as "before reminders" so you can see how things have been rearranged. This is exactly how fanfiction works (and especially AU fanfiction): the character's original/canonical state becomes those "shadow lines", which a good fanfic author must reference in some way, to give readers a starting point before the author begins character or story renovation.

Contrast this with looking at the plan for an entirely new-to-you house. It doesn't need to give you a Before, or tell you how this relates to that, because it can exist independently; this applies so long as you were unfamiliar with the original structure and only seeing it now for the first time. In contrast, if you looked at the above plan of a new-to-you house and saw shadow-outlines of the toilet, the bathtub, and the front door in different locations, it would probably throw you off. It would seem out-of-place, and more importantly, unnecessary information. Against the main set of information (black outlines) that you don't know well enough yet anyway, it's nearly impossible to appreciate the changes.

The reviewer called this "blowing the load" but I think it's more that the shadow-lines of past renovations, or the piano playing, are info-dumps that come with intended emotional overtones, and that is the neon sign bonking the reader in the head with: "you should fancy this character now." Or, "you should hate this character" -- but even those two are just the opposite sides of a coin that says, "you should recognize this character." Those shadow-lines allow you to say, "oh, I seeeeeee, that was there, and this is now gone, and this is here when it was originally over there, I see what you did there." 

But if you've never bloody well seen the house before, and don't have an intrinsic, visceral understanding of the house from living in it and walking through it, then the moment of "I see what you did there" means little, if anything at all. You won't really get any additional meaning you don't already get just from the basic, unshadowed, black-lined, floor plan.

What fanfiction readers look for, and one of the main rules of good fanfiction (especially AU), is to create that moment of walking through a familiar house, looking at someone's suggested renovation, and making that leap from "what was" to "what it'll be" (when renovation is complete, when story is done). That's where we find the familiarity in fiction (in fanfiction and in ofic sequels), such as when an author intends to shift your perception of a familiar character. This technique is often used in sequels where a former alleged-bad-guy gets his turn at being reformed (or is to be revealed to have not been all that bad in the first place). The author must first lay out the original as shadow-lines, and then write over with the new character-plan.

Again to quote the reviewer:

Scenes of certain characters doing things they never explicitly did in the books (even if this is fucking each other) resonate with you because it feels both novel and familiar ... [Such] scenes require no build-up because the reader already knows the characters being written about. Equally, dwelling on the details, and presenting very visual, senusous scenes, seems less purple than it does when you do it in original fiction because it helps to establish a familiar character in what may be an unfamiliar setting ... Fan fiction, even if you're looking at a 100,000 word AU fic, seems to be all about the establishment of moments, which need not necessarily (and probably don't) exist as part of a continuum of moments. [The result is a book that's] original fiction without the necessary underpinnings, and fanfic without any of the characters you like. Worst of all possible worlds. [emph mine]

By definition, those floor plan shadow-lines get written with a certain amount of "this is important!" from the author, because that's part of the gearing-up prior to the renovation, to get everyone on the same spot on the "before" floor plan. I don't mean a build-up before the scene (to give us a logical introduction to it), but the amount of words given to the scene/moment itself. That's where the "seems less purple" comes into play in fanfiction, because that excessive attention paid to this specific moment acts as both black-outline and shadow-outlines at the same time. 

It's a movement that requires your fiction to do temporary double-duty, and is a useful skill when you're writing a sequel and want to tweak the reader's memory without going into a massive info-dump. It's also a hallmark of fanfiction, to tweak the readers on a point (or moment) of original canon, even as you shift the lens a bit to reveal a fuller image.

The problem is if it's the first time you've ever met a character or story, in which case you're getting "this is important!" clanging bells, but you have no basis for what this contrasts with. Now you have two sets of contradictory or near-contradictory information in your head and haven't yet gained the familiarity to distinguish what-was from what-is, let alone to assess the emotional import of either. And that's where the revelation -- because that's really what that moment is, that I see what you did there -- falls completely flat in original fiction.